The Colour of Love

by Preethi Nair

  ‘One day early, one day late. Twenty-five years I’ve been on time,’ I heard him shout to my mother.

  ‘She has a lot to think about with the wedding.’

  ‘What’s there to think?’

  ‘Lots of things. Girl has a lot to think about before she takes a decision like that.’

  She was right. It was a big decision. What if it didn’t work out? What if Mangetti suspected that it was me who did the painting? He had the kind of power to make sure that I didn’t step foot in the art world again, as a lawyer, an agent or even selling paintbrushes.

  ‘It is the easy. She doesn’t have to think, just do it, like me and you, Kavitha, we just do it.’

  ‘Yes, get up and just do it, do it like you have nothing to lose,’ I told myself, getting up. What about Foruki? He was still expecting Foruki. What could I say about that? It was a mess, he would see right through all of it. Think; think it through carefully.

  ‘What is that girl doing up there? This far we make her come, we give good education and what does she do? Taking it easy now she’s getting married; having the lie in. Nina, what you doing there? Enough of the lie in,’ Dad bellowed.

  The word ‘lie’ reverberated around my head. Not just a simple bending of the truth; this one was going to be one big whopper. I got into the shower and began planning. Foruki wouldn’t turn up to meetings, he wasn’t like that, he didn’t listen to what other people said, didn’t do what they wanted. He was his own person, an artist who valued himself and his work, and if he didn’t feel like showing up, he wouldn’t, and nobody, not even Tastudi Mangetti, could make him.

  I got changed into my best suit – the suit I wore for important days at work – and while putting on my make-up tried to steady my hand. This was it – all I had to do was to act professional and it would be fine. I went downstairs.

  ‘We didn’t see you yesterday, beta. Did you eat anything?’

  ‘Yes, had something with Raj.’

  ‘Have the breakfast.’

  I couldn’t eat anything or I would be sick.

  ‘Have to go, I’m running late.’

  ‘What? No breakfast?’ my mum asked.

  ‘If you get up earlier then no need for this hi, bye,’ my dad interrupted.

  ‘Wish me luck, I’m dealing with an important client today.’

  ‘Nothing to do with the luck, just hard work. When I made my money in the plantations …’

  I left before he had a chance to go over that story again.

  Mangetti was more conservative in his approach to art and his interest was more in paintings than installations, photography or sculptures. I sat in a café near Green Park planning meticulously what I was going to say about Foruki. All I had to do was pretend he was a very important client, and how hard was that going to be? I had pretended for the last three and a half years with clients I didn’t even believe in, bullshitted about liking statues built with dried fruit, put all my emotions to one side and remained calm and professional.

  Raj had once told me that in every meeting he had he visualised good outcomes, something about the body sending out chemicals that gave off positive vibes, so over and over again I imagined Mangetti agreeing to buy a painting.

  It was one o’clock when I made my way nervously to the restaurant. Brown’s was busy, but as soon as I walked in I knew who he was, and when I told the head waiter that I was there to meet Mangetti I knew very well where he was going to lead me. Mangetti was tall, immaculately dressed in a black polo-neck and black suit and appeared to be in his mid-forties. His nose was crooked and extremely prominent so I thought if at any time he made me nervous I would just focus on it and stare hard. My heart beat faster as I went over to meet him.

  Taking a deep breath, I smiled. ‘Nina Savani, pleased to meet you, Mr Mangetti,’ I said, holding out my hand.

  He gripped it solidly. ‘Mr Foruki?’ he indicated at the empty space next to me.

  ‘I’m terribly sorry but Foruki is unable to make it. He’s very introspective and doesn’t like attention so he’s hired me to conduct all negotiations here in London.’

  I focused on his nose while I waited for him to leave.

  ‘Really?’

  I nodded.

  He gestured for me to take a seat and then sat down himself.

  ‘It’s strange I haven’t come across his name before.’

  ‘It’s taken me a long time to persuade him to share his art. He’s only done a very limited amount of exhibitions in Japan. He doesn’t do them to sell his paintings. He doesn’t need to.’ You’re talking too much, Nina, there’s no need to go into so much detail. Let him ask the questions.

  ‘Come now, Ms Savani, you hardly expect me to believe that?’

  Of course I didn’t expect him to believe any of it. Was he going to put his napkin down and walk off?

  ‘You’re expecting me to believe that a man who signs his name so boldly on a canvas doesn’t want to be known?’

  ‘He doesn’t want to be known but he wants his work to be respected. There’s a difference; he has his reasons for signing so boldly,’ I said, surprising even myself by how convincing I sounded.

  ‘They are?’

  Yes, what were they? ‘His upbringing …’ Oh God, what kind of disturbed upbringing was the poor man going to have to go through. Don’t go there, Nina, get back on track. ‘… but I’m not here to talk about that,’ I replied assertively.

  ‘Is he British? Japanese? How old is he?’ The more I refused to go into Foruki the more he wanted to know. That’s how people in the art world worked; elusiveness equalled more hype; give it to them on a plate and they didn’t want it. My boss used to term this as ‘whispers’, leak a little information and then act all vague and elusive so they would be left craving more.

  ‘He’s in his early thirties, was born in Britain to a Japanese mother and had to return there as a child. Hence the fact that he doesn’t speak English.’ Having not had the heart to ask Hikito, I thought if I was desperate my grocer could step in and keep his accent under wraps.

  ‘Every day I come across talented artists, there are thousands of them. But this one, he seems interesting. Tell me about his concepts.’

  The waiter came to take our order. Mangetti ordered a bottle of wine that cost as much as my father’s chandelier and his Land of Leather suite. I imagined my dad keeling over if he knew the price of that bottle. I worried about the bill – it wasn’t looking good. We ordered our food. I chose the cheapest thing on the menu.

  ‘I’m sorry, you were talking about concepts,’ I said, composing myself and deflecting the answer back to him.

  ‘Yes, when I saw that buddha painted in the form of a red Coca Cola tin, I was struck by Foruki’s critique of how far the fusion of East/West culture had gone. And the juxtaposition of the subject and material – highly original.’

  What was he going on about? Hardly juxtaposition, more memories of Ki’s sweetshop and her souvenir. I smiled, thinking she would be laughing at all of this. Just go with it, if that’s what he wants to hear, tell him that.

  ‘Yes there is an element of social critique there but his particular interest is resuscitating inanimate objects.’

  He nodded, waiting for more.

  ‘He attempts to infuse inanimate objects with magic. All part of the upbringing, as I said, which I am not at liberty to divulge.’

  ‘Intriguing. And the painting of the buddha, how much is it?’

  ‘As I’ve said, it’s been earmarked,’ I replied.

  The food came.

  ‘Surely you can sell it to me. Everyone has a price, Ms Savani?’ he said, looking at me directly in the eye.

  He was asking me to name a price, any price. This is what I wanted – to sell a painting – but he couldn’t have that one, that was for Ki’s mum. Don’t buckle; don’t buckle. I focused on his nose. ‘I’m afraid not,’ I replied.

  He seemed like a man who was used to getting his way but surprisingly he didn’t insist
. Just as I was about to say that there were other paintings he could buy he asked, ‘And where do you come into the picture?’ He took a sip of wine and laughed at his pun.

  ‘Mr Mangetti, I have come across many artists but very few have actually managed to really captivate me and lose me in their paintings. It’s rare. A year ago, I was in Japan and I came across his work. I was so inspired by Foruki that I tracked him down and convinced him to come to London. There are few times in life when I have had this gut feeling so I’ve brought him over so his work can be shared.’ Keep going, keep going, Nina.

  He listened intently.

  ‘I gave up a good job at Whitter and Lawson to back Foruki: I don’t give up the luxury of working for a firm like that for backing people I don’t completely believe in – and with Foruki I’ve never believed in anyone more.’

  ‘As you know, Ms Savani, it’s my particular interest to bring new talent to the fore. I’d like to see more of his work.’

  I had prepared myself for this eventuality; this for me was very-best-case scenario and I honestly didn’t believe it was going to happen.

  ‘I am trying to persuade him to hold an exhibition.’

  He nodded.

  We finished the main course and he asked if I wanted dessert. I declined, thinking about the mounting bill; at this rate I’d have to take out an overdraft and I just wanted to get out of there while I was on a roll, but he ordered something for himself along with dessert wine.

  Putting my chips again on one number, I said, ‘Give me six weeks. My new cards are being printed but I’ll call you with a concrete date, Mr Mangetti.’

  He gave me his card. ‘So you won’t sell any more of his paintings until I have had an opportunity to see them all first?’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ I replied.

  He ended the conversation by telling me that he was going to Italy on business and that he would wait to hear from me soon.

  ‘It was a pleasure meeting you, Mr Mangetti,’ I said as he left.

  ‘Call me Tastudi and the pleasure was mine.’

  By that time I was so excited and relieved at how the meeting had gone that I didn’t care what the bill came to, and after I had paid it I ran to Green Park.

  ‘Yes, yes, I bloody did it,’ I screamed, jumping up and down, punching the air. ‘I did it.’

  People stared but it didn’t bother me, nothing at that moment in time bothered me, not even the fact that I had never organised an exhibition.

  After getting over the initial excitement and beaming at everyone on the tube, I went back to the studio, put my painting to one side and sat in front of a blank canvas. The reality of what I had done started to dawn on me. I had told an outright lie to one of the major players in the art world and now had to organise a successful exhibition in six weeks. That was two weeks before my wedding. If it was shoddy and if Mangetti found out that I had deceived him, he had the power to make sure that I never worked in the art world again.

  Don’t panic, I kept telling myself, opportunities like this never came along and I could make it work. I had to make it work. But how the hell was I going to find a venue and then make sure people turned up? I needed journalists and people from the art world. Foruki, he had to have a past, galleries in Japan that he had exhibited at – he couldn’t just suddenly materialise from nowhere. What about a mailing address? Invitations? It suddenly all seemed far too much for one person. And how was I even going to begin to think about the wedding.

  Do it step by step, don’t panic, you can do this, you can make it work, just hold your nerve, I reassured myself. Take another leap of faith and go for it. And though I knew I was way out of my depth, and was nervous and scared, there was a certain part of me that felt totally exhilarated and alive.

  I took some black paint and on the canvas I made a list.

  Find venue

  Office space? (Computer, phone, mailing address)

  Stationery (invitations, letterheads, brochures)

  Invent Foruki – will the grocer do? (Past? Profile? Concepts?)

  Talk to all art contacts/hype to other artists

  Enough paintings for exhibition? Do more? COST???????

  Money wasn’t going to be too much of a problem as my dad had asked me to stop paying my monthly instalments into the wedding fund. He had also given me a three thousand pound rebate; a sort of bonus disguised as a wedding gift. Feeling that he’d better share his good fortune of finding both a groom and a mother to pay for most of the wedding he handed me a cheque: ‘Wedding gift. Buy a sofa for your new house, Nina. You never lose the money on good leather sofa. I will come with you when you buy it.’ His obsession with sofas had started with a flippant comment that my Uncle Amit made years ago about a man not making his mark in England until he owned a Chesterfield. This stuck in my dad’s psyche and he dreamed of owning Land of Leather.

  I took out a sheet of paper and elaborated in more detail on what exactly I needed to do. Treating Foruki as if he were one of my best clients I drew up a strategy. I would email Gina and ask her about galleries in Japan – she said she had lived there and so she would know. I didn’t have to go into what exactly I was intending to do.

  I went to the library to do some research on Japanese art and art galleries in Japan. A lot of Japanese paintings were about relating big flat areas of colour together using flat shapes. I was astounded to read that Matisse had been influenced by the Japanese style, when I – rather, Foruki – was heavily influenced by Matisse. Was this a sign? A sign that my paintings really did have Japanese influences without meaning to? Is that why Mangetti readily believed that the painting had been done by a Japanese painter? I read on. It was plausible and it didn’t seem that far-fetched when I looked at some of the pictures in the books. After I felt I had enough information to make it all hang together, I moved on to logistical planning.

  The search engine threw up hundreds of names after I’d typed in ‘office space, London Bridge’, ‘hot-desking, London’ and ‘printers, London Bridge’. Reading through each one carefully I wrote down contact names, numbers and addresses and then I went to Green Park, sat on my bench, took a deep breath and started calling people who rented out desk space in offices, making arrangements to see them the next day. Before I knew it, it was five o’clock and time to go.

  Raj was leaving work early and meeting me at Chancery Lane so we could pick up my engagement ring, which was being altered.

  He kissed me. I wanted to tell him how well the meeting had gone and so did it in a roundabout way. ‘We got a really important client on board today. I said I’d help him with his exhibition.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘A Japanese artist by the name of Foruki.’

  ‘I think I read something about him recently.’

  ‘Did you?’ I asked, astonished. He couldn’t possibly have. Was he prone to truth-bending as well or had he confused the name with someone else? ‘Where did you read about him?’

  ‘I can’t remember but his name sounds familiar.’

  The ring was still too big so we left it at the jeweller’s and then went to Raj’s mother’s house.

  His mother had wedding invitations sprawled across her table and was bursting to tell us that she had booked the Park Lane Hilton. ‘What do you think?’ she said, thrusting an invitation into my hand. ‘Four hundred guests, maybe more.’

  ‘I don’t think we even know two hundred people,’ I replied.

  ‘We do,’ she interrupted. ‘So, what do you think?’

  The one I was holding was embossed in gold and very simplistic. ‘Which printer did you use, Auntie?’ I asked, thinking maybe he could do Foruki’s invites, perhaps even the other stationery.

  ‘One of Uncle’s friends. He’s done some work for the Queen. Which one do you think, then? This one, no, Raju? Do you want to use our printer to do your invitations too, Nina?’

  ‘Thank you, but we’ve found a really good one,’ I lied, only because I wanted to do something t
hat she had no control over.

  ‘He said it will take only four days to print so by the end of this week we can send them out. When is your mother going to India, Nina?’

  My mum was going off to India on her own, disappointed that despite all the praying and singing Bhagavan hadn’t managed to wangle it so I could go with her. Her imminent trip would make it slightly easier for me to organise the exhibition, though, and I was relieved that she would soon be gone.

  ‘This weekend,’ I replied.

  ‘OK, OK, so we all agree on this one,’ she said taking back the invitation that was in my hand. ‘I have sorted out all the catering. At the Hilton they have a select list of caterers who they use so I’ve asked them to send me a fusion menu – you know, a mixture of East meets West – as a lot of our friends are English.’

  Caterers, that was a point. Would I need food at the exhibition? What about the drink? I hadn’t even thought about the drink. ‘The drink,’ I mumbled.

  ‘All arranged too. We’ll have an open bar. Your mother was going to take care of the flowers but if it’s too much for her to do before she goes away we have an excellent florist.’ Raj’s mother indicated a huge vase that had some swirling twig-like arrangement going on.

  ‘Thank you, Auntie, but I’m sure she’ll be able to sort it out.’ What was the point of making Raj and I wade through her endless lists if she had it all planned.

  ‘OK then, let’s have dinner,’ she said.

  She summoned her husband who was sitting quietly in the next room with a piercing screech, and served a concoction of curried puff-pastry followed by apple crumble and cream. My dad had suffered indigestion when he and my mother had first gone to meet the in-laws and he had made sure he ate well the next time they went to see her, muttering, ‘This is why woman must know how to cook or she will kill man.’

  Both my mum and dad were in bed when I arrived home.

  ‘Beta,’ my mum whispered out on hearing my footsteps. ‘Beta,’ she called out again in between my dad’s snores.