Ugly Things

by Mark Yarwood

  Margaret Parks smiles at me and lights another cigarette. She points at me. ‘I may need you to do me a favour at some time.’

  Someone call the police.

  It’s right then I think I need money to get away from this place. I need to make art with Janet.

  Chapter Nine

  In the middle of the shack that sits on the harbour, where Janet holds her art classes, I stand naked. Everybody else in the class is looking at me or they are watching Janet take off her clothes. I take a quick look round the room to see where everybody has their eyes. Little plump Lisa is staring at Janet’s breasts and I can’t really blame her.

  Underneath our feet is another large white board, and it’s cold.

  I tell Janet that it’s cold in here. She shakes her head and flicks my limp little soldier. ‘That’s no excuse, tiny.’

  Janet shakes a bottle of paint likes it’s ketchup. Cold worms of paint spill across my chests as she draws circles round my nipples and belly button. She puts a bottle in my hand and tells me to do the same to her. Create something, she says.

  I feel my sphincter getting smaller, larger and smaller again, breathing like a tiny mouth. My knees crash together and my ankles follow as I pour paint on her chest. In any other circumstances I would be a few inches closer to her without moving by now, but this is making art in public.

  ‘Now we will fuck our way into the art world,’ she says and lays herself down on the board, her legs open wide. She grabs my arm and pulls me down onto my knees. Come on, she says and pulls me closer. Everybody is watching this live porno.

  The other week, I confessed to Janet, I met a girl in the city and she gave me a blowjob as she hid underneath a table in the club we were in.

  Apparently, Janet made sex art with four other men last week. She had advertised for them in the local paper and pretty much got them in a queue, waiting to perform.

  She’s looking between my legs at my limp penis. She raises her eyebrows. I’m getting a centrespread view, but it’s doing nothing for me.

  ‘You have to get inside me,’ Janet says, like I’ve never had sex before.

  ‘I know.’ I yank it a little.

  ‘Let me try.’ She starts working my little soldier, but he doesn’t want to play the art game. Perhaps he’s a philistine, I say to her. She looks down at him and says, ‘He doesn’t look Jewish.’

  ‘Do you want me to step into the breach?’ Cyrus asks, a slight whimsical smile on his lips.

  No, I say and keep yanking.

  ‘More than five pulls is masturbation,’ Janet says.

  Janet gets on her hands and knees and begins to suck some life into me. In my head, I’m picturing a temp who once worked for me. She was young. Too young for me and her skirts were far too short. I look down and see the colours in Janet’s hair and then do that thing women hate. I push her head down.

  ‘Right, get inside me,’ she commands and falls back onto her elbows. ‘Yes, that’s it. Right in.’

  So, here we are, making art while others watch. They’re watching art history, she tells them. No, they’re watching a pasty backside, I feel like saying.

  Janet says she’s already got a couple of galleries that want to put our art on the walls, ready to pay big money for something so now, so animal.

  On one of the desks, pushed up by the door, is a small video camera watching us, unblinking. Soon, I’ll be on a wall somewhere, another set of rich eyes taking a gander at my art. You’ll never die, Janet says, you’ll just become a rich person’s prized possession. You’ll be something they’ll show their guests at dinner parties, between courses. You’ll be a talking point for years and years.

  I feel her nails grip by buttocks and pull me tighter. The paint smacks its lips and farts between our bodies.

  So we are now artists, Janet and I, mixing it up in the art world. Her painting will be put on walls and from up there she’ll laugh at them all. They’ll pay good money for her joke. Making fun of the self -important snobs, Janet tells us, is another way of making art. Life is our cave.

  Janet’s in trouble, she told me before the class. She needs to raise some serious money or she’ll lose the shop and the flat above it. The old couple, who came into that shop and complained about her sticks of rock, have returned. The mortgage hasn’t been paid and they want to buy. The old lady came floating into the shop, Janet says, with her pink frilly chest stuck out, while her thin husband was a shadow by the door. The old woman demanded to see her mother.

  Where is her mother?

  Janet stood behind the counter reading another trashy novel, while Kevin hung around the books of ancient witchcraft.

  ‘She’s sick. Too sick for visitors,’ Janet said. ‘She says she doesn’t want to be disturbed, ever.’

  The woman looked at Kevin suspiciously as he hovered. ‘Your mother never used to be a sickly person. She was always so lively.’

  Janet snorts. ‘Well, that’s what happens when people are dying, they get less lively.’

  ‘Let’s go dear,’ the husband said.

  ‘I don’t believe she’s dying,’ the woman said and looked towards the wooden stairs.

  ‘Let’s just go and talk to the police dear,’ the old man said and touched his wife’s elbow.

  She flinched, and pulled her arm from his touch. ‘I think you’ve killed her. You murdered her and keep her body stuffed somewhere.’

  Janet put down her book and walked across to the old woman, looking her up and down. She sniffed at the old woman’s neck and then laughed in her face. The husband took his wife’s arm and led her, opened mouthed, out into the street.

  Kevin said, ‘Where is your mother?’

  Janet watched the old couple dawdle outside in the street.

  Kevin stepped out of the black magic section and stood near Janet. ‘Is she ill? Or is she dead?’

  ‘She’s in hell,’ Janet said and returned to her counter.

  ‘So, she is dead?’ Kevin asked again.

  ‘No, in hell. But there is a way out.’

  When the police arrive later in the evening, just as Janet is shutting the shop, they stand in the lane watching her. A meaty looking detective finishes an ice cream cone as the old couple are whispering in his ear. Janet turns the closed sign as Kevin follows her out and stands in front of the door. The detective drops the ice cream cone, much to the disgust of the old couple, and approaches Janet.

  ‘Good evening, Miss Coleman,’ the policeman says and smiles a little.

  ‘I’m just about to close up for the night.’ Janet smiles. ‘You’re a bit too late to buy anything.’

  ‘We want to see your mother,’ the policeman says and points up to the second floor.

  ‘She hasn’t murdered her mother,’ Kevin says and receives a burning look from Janet.

  No one has seen your mother for some time, the policeman says. That makes people suspicious, he tells her. Your mother, he says, was a very popular person in the village and now she’s missed. Since she’s been gone, the cop says, you’ve been making porn and sticks of rock with filthy words running through them.

  ‘You think I killed my own mother, so I could get the shop and sell my stuff?’ Janet leans against the door and laughs.

  The policeman looks over at the old couple and they nod fervently at him.

  ‘Your mother dying,’ the detective says, ‘might be in your favour. Maybe you had a row. Mother- daughter relationships can be tough sometimes.’

  A nearby police constable starts talking into his radio about something, while he looks at Janet, looking her up and down. He turns away and walks further so she cannot hear what is being said. She only hears her mother’s name being mentioned.

  ‘Can we just come and see that she’s okay?’ The detective smiles and wipes some sweat from his top lip.

  Janet doesn’t move from the door. Kevin, when he told the story to me, said she bit her bottom lip and her skin seemed to vaporise.

  ‘We can go away and get a warrant, i
f you like?’ The detective picks a leaf off his shoe.

  Janet steps aside and lets the smiling detective into the shop. The constables follow, their eyes fixing to every object as they travel up the stairs, their boots echoing round the shop. Janet follows slowly, looking up at the dark blue trouser legs hopping upwards, towards her living quarters.

  ‘This is terrible,’ Kevin says and Janet realises he’s following her.

  ‘This is perfect,’ she says.

  ‘And this is your mother’s bedroom?’ The detective points to a worn door, the handle slipping out of position slightly.

  Janet nods and watches the policeman raise his hand, tightly held in a fist, knocking on the wood. Nothing. He knocks again and calls her mother’s name. But still there is nothing from within.

  ‘Is she in there?’ the detective asks.

  ‘Unless she went out the window,’ Janet says. ‘She likes going out the window sometimes.’

  He stares at her for a moment. ‘Hospital records say she’s pretty much bed ridden. How could she climb out of a window?’

  Janet shrugs.

  The policeman, after trying the door and finding it locked, nods to a uniform. The constable kicks at the door, until it splinters and splashes against some furniture inside. The detective pulls the constable away and walks into the room. Janet enters too and sees him pick up a note from the empty bed. He holds the piece of paper in his hand as he looks at the open window. He turns and faces Janet with a smirk. ‘She left a note.’

  ‘That’s nice of her.’ Janet sits in a wooden chair and examines her own blue hair.

  ‘What does it say?’ the constable asks.

  ‘I went out of the window. Don’t come looking for me, I will be dead.’ The detective folds the note and puts it away.

  I fold in on myself as our art finishes. Janet pushes me off her and I lie, with prickles of cold across my body, on the board. She leaves me lying in the wet paint patch.

  ‘That’s a beautiful piece,’ Cyrus says and steps closer. He puts out his arms and Janet presses her naked body against him. As she hugs him tightly, Janet says this is only the beginning. You will all make art like this with your bodies.

  When they’ve done hugging, Cyrus has two mud coloured breasts on his T-shirt. He follows my eyes to his chest and looks up proudly.

  Soon Cyrus will be the one fucking Janet for the sake of art. All of them will be using their bodies like sable brushes, screwing their way into history.

  I start getting dressed and look down and see my paint splattered little soldier. He’s splattered with blood colour paint. Man down, I think, and tuck him back into my trousers.

  Chapter Ten

  I can see, from where I’m desperately gripping to the rock face, Cyrus’ arse. I can see the damp spot of sweat in the crack of his shorts as he pushes his muscular calf muscles against the cliff and gains a foothold. Cyrus’ stringy muscles were made through sheer stupidity, hanging upside down from cliffs like this, pulling himself up by only his thick and torn fingers.

  White dust sprinkles across my eyes and I look up to see my ginger friend patting his chalky hands together. He smiles at me and keeps on climbing. Cyrus is crazy enough to climb without supports, but every few feet he digs a crampon into the rock so I can connect my rope to it. Supposedly, this is safe, dangling by a rope on a sunny day, the hot huge star above you, roasting your bare back. Across Cyrus’ shoulder are spatters of moles, like drips of chocolate sauce.

  You can still fall, if your footing slips, but you will only fall a few feet. It’s enough.

  I hang there for a second while I search for a good handhold, swearing to myself for being stupid enough to climb with Cyrus. I don’t like heights and I especially don’t like hanging from them.

  There’s a ringing from the small rucksack on my back and I manage to put my earpiece in.

  ‘Mate, Janet’s mother is bed ridden, she says,’ Kevin tells me.

  ‘Where are you?’ I ask and look down.

  Kevin waves up at me, the other hand holding a phone slightly away from his ear. I can see his mouth moving. ‘I think I could help her mother in some way then Janet would like me.’

  After I get to the top, I walk back along a path that leads down the cliff until I’m standing on the beach with Kevin, my climbing shoes sinking into the hot sand. ‘You want to do something for her mother?’

  Kevin nods and only now puts away the phone. ‘Mate, I could go and visit her and bring her flowers or…’

  ‘Stop it,’ I say.

  Kevin blinks at me, his mouth open. ‘Stop what?’

  If it wasn’t for the fact that I know Kevin can’t help himself, that a doctor had not only diagnosed him with an obsession for cleanliness, and food, but also for women, then I might just hit him. Kevin has been volunteering to help Janet in her shop, telling her he doesn’t need paying, just so he can be near her. He puts on gloves and puts her sticks of rock on shelves, handles her paintings, knowing he wants to handle something else of hers. Something he wouldn’t be able to touch without surgical gloves.

  I take off the climbing shoes and give them to Cyrus, who’s lying down in the sun giving his pale orange skin a dose of cancer. I walk into the sea, feeling the ice below the steaming surface. Wading in, just because I know Kevin will stay on the beach.

  ‘Mate, I said I’d like to meet her mother!’ Kevin shouts at me. ‘But she says I can’t go upstairs.’

  This is the first time I’ve felt the sea against me since I arrived. I slip off my shorts and start walking in further, the saltwater slapping against my bare chest. The cold pinches my nipples as I cup the water and throw it over my head, soaking my hair.

  ‘The sea is full of shit,’ Cyrus yells.

  ‘It’s not enough for you to be obsessed with the daughter, you want the mother too, don’t you?’ I turn and shout to Kevin, but he just cocks his head like a confused puppy and shrugs.

  Picture Kevin in the middle of an incestuous threesome, changing surgical gloves in between sexual acts, popping them off his finger and pinging them across the room.

  Far out in the horizon are tiny specks bobbing up and down. One of the specks will turn and eventually you can see a black wet suit paddling towards you as a hump of sea builds into a monster behind. Straggles of bleach blond hair explode off their heads as they jump up onto their surfboards and do that magic thing they do.

  I take Kevin to Shelley’s café and I sit there picking the grains of sand out of my feet, just because it makes Kevin frown. I shake my head as he tries to eat one of her club sandwiches whilst trying to hold it between two serviettes. Like a crime scene detective using a hanky to handle a murder weapon, Kevin munches at the sandwich, his eyes closed.

  Usually Kevin will only eat the food he’s bought and prepared himself. I don’t tell him about the cockroaches I’ve seen crawling along the kitchen floor. Not even the seagulls will eat here. I tell him it’s good to see him eating out and he looks funny for a moment, like he’s been caught wearing his mum’s underwear.

  After biting into my bacon roll, I almost spit it out. Kevin nods. ‘The food tastes horrible.’

  Shelley comes over and asks us how the food is.

  ‘It’s great, thanks,’ we both say.

  Later, Kevin has me crouched in the lane leading up to Janet’s shop, him with his binoculars, peering up at the lighted window. I lower myself when I see Janet walk across the window. I don’t know what Janet feels about peeping toms. I don’t know if she might see us spying on her and her mum and call it art. Sexually deviant art.

  Janet could get a restraining order. That would be one less woman in this village to have sex with. The word gets round, I might lose them all.

  Masturbation is a great hobby, but I don’t want to end up doing it for a living.

  ‘Mate, I’m not sure her mother is bed ridden,’ Kevin says quite loudly and I tell him to be quieter.

  I have tried to turn a blind eye to Kevin’s obsessions. I l
ook at him and remind myself that he cannot help but think about her mother, cannot help make up some stupid story in his mind about her. When he worked for me, when I was his boss, and I saw him taking a file out of a drawer and put it back in ten times, I would remind myself that, in his mind, if he didn’t do this his family would die.

  Kevin pulls his shirtsleeve over his hand and grips my arm with it. ‘Mate, I don’t think her mother is bed ridden at all.’

  What Kevin says never really scares me as much as it makes my mind work faster. Like some kind of crazy crossword puzzle, I have to find the clues that led him to his conclusions.

  A doctor told him, after he kept following women home and they screamed at him and called the police, that his obsession stretched to his relationships, or rather the relationships he was having with these women in his head. He told me this with a look of relaxation- a man simply fitting himself into his illness like it’s a comfortable chair.

  I’m sorry I followed you home and looked through your window when you were undressing, but I have this illness you see.

  Kevin keeps a stick of rock by his bed that reads: I want you.

  I don’t know why, but I’ve started leaving plates around the house with half eaten remains on them. I throw my dirty underwear on chairs and leave it for days.

  Kevin told me it was love at first sight.

  Not so long back, Janet was in her shop, behind the counter reading a book. I came in and saw her turning the pages of the erotic novel with her paint- covered hands.

  ‘This,’ she said, shaking the book in the air, ‘is not art.’

  ‘Then why do you read it?’ I asked.

  ‘Because it gets me in the mood.’

  I leaned on the counter and looked into her face. I heard creaking floorboards above my head and looked up. Janet followed my eyes and nodded. ‘That’ll be my mother.’

  ‘I thought you said your mother was stuck in bed.’ I followed the slow footsteps across the ceiling. ‘I thought she had lost the use of her legs.’

  Janet shrugged and turned a page of the book. ‘Did I? Well, she does manage to get about sometimes. She’s a crazy bitch.’