Moths of happiness went up Sue’s chest.
The sun peeped over the trees. Philip’s eyelids twitched. The sun beamed into his body. Beneath his dressing gown, sweat-beads budded and spread.
Having dealt with her emails, Sue thought: why not? Go down and take a peek. Drift through. Pretend to be one of the masses.
She pushed back in her Aeron, stood, turned, and walked out past Caro’s back and Elmer’s back. She stepped quietly down the stairs. As Osh looked up she raised a hand. She paused in front of the inner door. Looking through the glass she saw a chubby man in the middle of the sitting room exhibit. He was looking this way and that, deciding. He revolved. Having made up his mind, he moved towards the Breuer steel and leatherette chair. Having stopped, he rotated. Having rotated, he sat. Patted the arms in a friendly manner, pleased. Then leaned back gingerly as though afraid the whole contraption might collapse.
It didn’t.
At which, he crossed his legs. Having gaily crossed his legs, he reached out his right hand to gesture in a francophone style. Then leaned forward. His hands in front of him, fingertips touching, he held forth. He was an interviewee on air.
Carefully, slowly, Sue squeezed the door open, sidled in.
There were no words! His mouth was mouthing but he made no sound.
He saw her. He stopped. He looked puzzled. Looked around him as though there were something he was trying to find. Then he rose and walked on through.
Sue also walked on through. In the second room two people had their attention held by the walls. A sunny, pastoral young woman in a white top and long red skirt and straw hat was angled to the left looking into the photographs. She focused on one and then her head bobbed a bit and then she focused on another. Could it be the woman who had brought the lamp, what was her name?
The woman sensed Sue looking at her, turned her head, smiled, lifted her hand in greeting; and then returned once again to the photos.
Angharad. Angharad with the hatstand. In a hat.
On the right a small man stood. He was wearing a pale jacket and pale trousers and flipflops. Through his glasses he was reading the names. Sue watched as his knees began to bend. His head and therefore his gaze were lowered by an inch. And then another inch.
Was he going to read them all?
She walked on into the darker space of the third room. Tahrir Square still crammed; a white banner stretched between two poles. Philip’s grass and flowers, the lip of a poppy wobbling. The streaked, greenish face of the Buddha with its elegant eyebrows. The pavement outside: a foot landed on it and was lifted off.
People were clustered, watching. She let herself lean against the wall. She watched the backs of the heads on the fronts of which were the eyes that were watching the monitors. The heads made a black mountain range that partially obscured the lit-up samples of the world.
Into the open-top box of the patio, the sun shone. Philip’s face pinkened. Moisture gathered on his forehead and trickled leftwards down around the orbit of an eye.
Happy, Sue wandered through, back up the stairs, past Caro and Elmer who both looked round and smiled, to her workplace. She sat.
Maybe she should tidy her desk. Piles of paper; piles of catalogues; swan’s-nest heaps of this and that; scatterings of paperclips and pens.
Or maybe actually the thing to do on a day like this was to look forward. Because there was Art and Language, then Johnson Epp; but after that it wasn’t yet fixed; there were several possibilities. In her Aeron she rolled forward, reached for her mouse, moved it, clicked.
Philip’s sweat was drying and his skin was deeper pink.
Yes: that outsider art idea, Scottie Wilson and the others, Bart Powers. She clicked open the file.
In his blood vessels the plasma thickening; in his tissues the osmolality tailing off.
There was a certain amount you could do via Google.
Uuurghhtfh. His head tipped and an eyelid hauled itself open.
What was it exactly that Elmer had said about dates?
Bright. His eye hurt. He hurt. He felt terrible. A thought levered itself up out of his salt-mine mind. Must get out of the bright. Must cool. Must stand. Must drink water.
Though actually now . . . Sue wondered what the time was.
He needed to arrange his weak, sore limbs to make it possible to stand. Or crawl.
Past two already so she could go out for a sandwich and swing through the gallery on the way. It was bright outside: looked hot.
OK this is it. Hands on his knees, he tried to stand.
As she came down the stairs into the hall, Sue noticed the white piece of paper on the clipboard on the desk. She asked: ‘No press yet?’
‘No since they’re all coming at 6,’ said Osh.
‘Why are they all coming at 6?’
‘Because of the change of plan?’ – he spoke as though he were reminding her of something: ‘the decision to have a standard press view after all?’
‘Whose decision was that?’
‘All of yours, I thought.’ Osh was looking puzzled: ‘Omar told me.’
Omar told you, she didn’t say. What was. What was going on? Charlotte.
‘Have you seen Charlotte?’
‘She’s in there.’
So Sue pushed into the gallery and stepped methodically through the space, not seeing the work now, looking for Charlotte. Who was standing by the monitors.
In a teetering voice she said: ‘Charlotte? Press view?’
‘Oh,’ said Charlotte, as though it were something she had forgotten. ‘Yes,’ she said, in a more melancholy tone.
Sue followed Charlotte as she moved away towards a corner.
‘Omar decided’ – Charlotte said slowly and quietly – ‘it would be better.’
‘But it’s our . . .’
‘Sue,’ said Charlotte, looking enquiringly into her eyes: ‘I should have told you this before. But I didn’t know how.’
Sue waited.
‘Omar’ – Charlotte sighed the name – ‘is going to announce that the show is by Elton Barfitt.’
Sue had the answer to that: ‘But it isn’t.’
‘Well, it could be.’
‘But it isn’t.’
‘And sometimes, ‘ Charlotte hazarded, ‘I wonder if it isn’t in a sense really theirs after all. Because if it wasn’t for them we wouldn’t have . . .’
‘Oh fuck off.’
‘And if you think about the show they outlined to us, ours is in a sense a development of . . .’
‘Rubbish.’
‘Physicality. The nature of the image . . .’
‘Charlotte, it is not by them.’
‘. . . so that if you ask what the origin of the exhibition really is, who the author of it, artist of it really is . . .’
‘If Omar says that, then they’ll come out and say they’ve had nothing to do with it. It’ll be a disaster!’
Or actually, she was thinking, it’ll be a scandal, which isn’t the same as a disaster. It’ll be a great big explosion. There’ll be publicity. She’ll have a platform. Yes, this is it: this is going to make the gallery explode. Because, by his own act, Omar is going to self-destruct.
‘He says,’ Charlotte said, in an oddly sing-song voice. ‘He’s talked to them and they’ve agreed to abandon their incognito.’
They’ve agreed to abandon their incognito. They’ve to them he’s talked and they’ve. To them agreed to talk and they’ve abandon. To them he’s talked to them and incognito.
‘Ask Omar,’ said Charlotte. ‘You need to talk to Omar.’
By Omar ask is them he says abandon. They’ve talk. To them is Omar ask is need to talk.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Charlotte. ‘There was nothing.’ Charlotte seemed to be starting to cry. ‘There was really nothing I could do.’
Charlotte had gone and Sue stood in the gallery. She saw the monitors. A foot appeared and vanished; a geiger counter clicked from 34 to 30; the surface of the river water flickered;
the meadow grass . . .
There was no meadow grass.
In place of the meadow grass and the poppy with the flickering lip was something else.
The camera must have tipped.
Sue stepped closer. Sue studied the image.
It was blurry. There was a contour. There was a reddish bit and a brownish bit. From out of the brownish bit a whiteish curve emerged.
She narrowed her eyes.
She opened her eyes and let them wander here and there.
She tried to understand the image.
Then she saw that it was part of a face, the side, between the edge of the eye and the start of the ear. Then she thought that it had to be most probably Philip’s face and then she recognised it as his because of the brownness of the hair and the puffy roundness of what she now knew was his earlobe.
So for some reason he had turned the camera on himself.
And the question was how to deal with Omar, because if he’s talked to them then they must be claiming that this is their show and why would they do that when it isn’t, and, not only that, when they turned down the offer of an exhibition in the first place?
But actually, no, given who they are . . .
Because it was just conceivable that maybe it was exactly the bloody-minded ‘playful’ sort of thing they would do. To dramatise the question of identity. To ask: where does the being of Elton Barfitt end?
Why would Philip do that? Why would he turn the camera on himself?
If it is the case that Elton Barfitt actually said that. If it wasn’t Omar’s blustering bravado.
She looked again at the blurry, grainy image on the old-fashioned television. He had not moved.
But Omar wouldn’t take that risk. He couldn’t make that announcement without having first persuaded them. Nobody could. And especially not Omar.
Still not moved.
Or Charlotte, if it wasn’t Charlotte who had somehow . . . or maybe all along. Because she was the one who had done the emails and maybe behind them all along? Maybe E.B. had somehow been behind her all along? Maybe the whole thing was a fucking sick E.B. experiment in which she, Sue, figured as some kind of animal in an experiment with electrodes stuck into her so she could respond to stimuli, so she could be given a series of electric shocks and her interesting reactions could be studied.
She had to think out why he was not moving. She had to clear her mind and make it cold and think out carefully why he was not moving. In her mind she drew a picture of the patio. She positioned the camera. She thought about the meadow grasses and the raised flowerbed with its brick edging and she looked again at the angle of the part of the face that she could see.
She pulled out her phone, pressed Philip.
Ringing ringing.
Divert to voicemail.
She clicked End Call and rang again.
The same.
Now anxiety was wobbling in her stomach and prickling in her throat.
Think it through. The neighbours. She did not know the neighbours’ names and so she could not get their numbers.
So she could call someone they knew for instance Sara. And Sara could go round and. And what? Put a ladder against the wall and see? See what? And do? Vault over and pick up Philip under her arm and zoom into the air and fly all the way to the hospital.
No, but she could call 999.
Well but in that case then she, Sue, could also call 999. Because that was what you did in an emergency. Even an emergency you weren’t quite sure was an emergency? But she was quite sure! He wasn’t moving. He must have fallen. He must have fainted and fallen. He must have had a heart attack and fallen. Robbers must have jumped over the wall and clobbered him so he had fallen. Or shot him so he had fallen. Someone had held a gun to his head, to his sweet, chubby, pale-pink head, to the forehead where the fine brown hair was always so neatly brushed across, and . . .
A black hole appeared in the forehead.
A trace of smoke vanished into the air.
Calm. Be calm.
It was not that, not necessarily exactly that. But it was something. It was still an emergency. Just because she had had to reason it out didn’t mean it wasn’t real.
And then she could go and deal with Omar.
She would have to go out to call because the people.
But she had to be able to see.
So, watching the screen, she stepped backwards, and then crabwise, always watching the screen, until she hit the wall and could hunker down in the shadows of the corner and call. And explain. And expostulate. And explain again. And shout, insofar as it was possible to shout while keeping your voice lowered so as not to disturb the punters in the gallery. And, with icy intensity, explain once more the situation. And then say:
‘Thank you. Thank you.’
And then: ‘Please do.’
So that, as Sue walked off through the gallery to talk to Omar, an ambulance left its station and set about nee-nawing through the streets.
So that, as Sue paused in her workspace to gather her thoughts, the ambulance was taking a right into The Willows.
And, as Sue knocked, just a formality, before brusquely pushing her way into Omar’s office, two paramedics in green overalls propped a ladder against a wall.
‘Omar,’ she was saying frankly, ‘the show is not by Elton Barfitt.’
To which he answered: ‘I’m sorry?’
A paramedic was kneeling next to Philip, feeling for his pulse, tenderly lifting his head away from the brick edge to assess the gravity of the gash.
‘It’s my show. I mean, Charlotte and I curated the show. There’s no Artist behind it.’
‘Sue?’ – said Omar, ‘are you alright?’
‘I don’t know whether you are in on the deception, or whether Charlotte has deceived you, or whether Elton Barfitt are deceiving both of you. But the fact is Charlotte and I have done this show. It is nothing whatsoever to do with Elton Barfitt.’
‘Sue, I spoke to them about it yesterday.’
‘They were lying.’
‘Sue,’ he said more shrilly: ‘They signed a contract, months ago. Over the intervening period they have sent us numerous instructions via email, listing every detail of this exhibition which we, which you and Charlotte, have put together according to their stipulation.’
‘Charlotte signed the contract. Charlotte faked the emails.’
‘Sue, I repeat, I spoke to them about it yesterday.’ He was looking at her with sorrow and with maybe also a teeter of unease.
As Philip was being laid on his side in the recovery position, one leg bent across the other, its toes hooked behind the other’s calf, Sue was saying: ‘I can prove, I’m sure technicians can prove the origin of those emails. And it was not, I can tell you it was not, on any computer belonging to Elton Barfitt.’
‘Sue,’ said Omar carefully, ‘you’ve been working very hard, I know you have. And I think it possible the stress has been too much for you.’
Swab the wound. Gently guide the lips together. Press one end of a suture strip and pull across. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. Now lay the gauze padding over. Stick down with microporous tape. Wrap the bandage round, around, around.
The show! – Sue wanted to scream – Is not by Elton Barfitt! It is not! Not! Not!
‘I know’ – Omar was saying – ‘how much you were attached to the idea of this exhibition being anonymous. I am aware of your analysis, and I respect it. But I think’ – Omar raised a hand, bunched his fingers – ‘that people create these works. Individual artists. Geniuses, if you like. And since they did the work, why not let them take the credit?’
Now try again to wake him. Call loudly. Give him a little shake. Pinch an earlobe hard.
‘So I visited Elton Barfitt. I put that argument to them. And they agreed.’
The thing to do was not to scream. The thing to do was try to find an angle. Try to find the piece of evidence or the argument that would persuade.
Philip was b
eing scooped onto a stretcher by the two men who were on their knees. They laid him on his side, with a pillow carefully positioned to support his wounded skull. That done, they strapped him in.
‘And, to be pragmatic, Sue, it’s very much better for the gallery.’
The two men in green lifted Philip and set about walking through the house to the front door.
‘When I rang the arts desks to tell them that The Whole World was in fact by a major artist whom I would name to them at the press view, they were very much more interested than they had been before. I think you’ll agree’ – he raised his eyebrows again, tipped his head back – ‘there was not a tremendous amount of interest before?’
‘It was alright,’ Sue protested automatically.
‘But hardly . . . mega.’
Oh god, as though the level of press interest were what mattered.
As the ambulance moved off, Philip’s eyes were opening and shutting and he was moaning: water, water.
There was no way through. Sue’s mind scurried this way and that: bounced off this and rebounded onto that, the emails, the careful, oh-so-careful covering of tracks that she had done with Charlotte and that now was being turned against them, against her. Because whatever Charlotte had done she could not be relied on. Whatever Charlotte had done she would not back her up.
Which meant that Elton Barfitt were utterly and oh so casually able to appropriate all this work done by so many different people.
Philip was managing to sip some liquid.
It was just so unjust.
He was emerging from the faint-compounded-by-concussion. He looked around him woozily and everything was blurred. But this must be an . . . he must be in an . . .
So fucking wrong.
There must have been a crash.
Such a fucking lie. So fucking fucking wrong.
‘Sue,’ he called out in a whisper.
The car must be a write-off. It was smashed. It had hit the side of a bridge. They had been on their way back from his parents’ house when . . .
He could not remember.
‘Sue,’ he whisperingly howled.
‘It’s alright mate,’ a blunt voice said. ‘You had a tumble. Knocked your head. Try to stay quiet now. Try to keep sipping.’
The World Was All Before Them Page 27