Every Picture Tells a Story

by Gregory Dowling

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Foreword

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Previous books by Gregory Dowling

  Copyright

  AGAIN FOR PATRIZIA

  FOREWORD

  My sincere thanks to Chiara Maida of the Accademia Gallery, Venice, and Jess Wilder of the Portal Gallery, London, who both gave me technical suggestions and help which I can only hope I have put to good use.

  All the institutions, establishments, and people described in any detail in the novel are imaginary. Venice, on the other hand, may seem so but is not.

  1

  WELL, they noticed me, there was no doubt of that. When I entered the gallery at eight-fifteen and handed my coat and shoulder bag to the lady at the door, a definite murmur ran around the room—a frisson even.

  I don’t suppose everyone in the room had instantly recognized me, but enough people had done so for the message to start moving and it was still doing the rounds, together with the frisson, as I walked toward George, whose exhibition it was. He greeted me coldly from behind his Old Testament beard, pointed out where I could get a drink, and then turned back to the true believers gathered in a mystic circle around him.

  I picked up a glass of wine and looked around the room oh-so-casually. I found my eyes meeting other sliding eyes everywhere: and then a few seconds later there were just backs of heads, and the murmur was the usual low-pitched one of discriminating appreciation as they studied the paintings or chattered in little clustered knots. The knots all seemed to be pulled extra-tight, and I didn’t know any of the people outside the knots well enough to start up a conversation with them.

  So I’d just have to look at the paintings. What had I expected anyway?

  Then Adrian Limpett appeared, popping out from what had looked like a granny-knot of clustered Chelsea dames. “Martin!” he cried. He was wearing his usual earnest gray suit, earnest gray mustache, and glasses, but his expression was almost exuberant for once: that murmur of recognition as I entered had obviously been all that he, as owner of the gallery, had hoped for.

  “Oh, hello, Adrian. Thanks for the invitation.”

  “Not at all, not at all. Glad you could come. Do you know everybody?”

  “No, but they seem to know me, even without the ball and chain.”

  “Oh, Martin. People forget these things. The past is the past, you know.”

  “Then why do you keep asking me to do a picture of Wormwood Scrubs for my show?”

  “Well, there’s no point pretending it didn’t happen. In fact there should be a lady here from the Evening Standard who said she’d love to ask you one or two questions.” He looked vaguely around the room. “Hmm, she doesn’t seem to have arrived yet.”

  I swilled back some wine. “Adrian, you do realize that I’m yesterday’s story as far as the newspapers are concerned. Okay, so people turn and stare when I enter a room: that doesn’t mean they’re all dying to read my views on prison reform.”

  “Prison…? No, I’d suggested ‘True Forgery’ as a headline to this lady.”

  “For God’s sake—”

  “You’ve got to understand, Martin, that publicity is part of the name of the game nowadays. Your show is in three weeks’ time. You say they’ve forgotten about you, so we’ve got to remind them. Get them talking about you. And, well, let’s face it, forgery is one of the things you’re known for. So talk to this lady about it. Frankly and fearlessly. It’ll be a chance to set the record straight.”

  “My record is irredeemably crooked. It’s myself I’ve got to think about getting straight. But what the hell, put her onto me if she comes. It’ll be nice to have somebody to talk.”

  He patted my arm and then set off toward George, probably to reassure him in case he was getting jealous.

  Well, it had been too much to hope that I’d been invited for my charm.

  It was almost enough to make me try and look at the paintings—the last thing one comes to a private view for. But a mere glance around myself convinced me that this would be a hopeless task. All I could see were occasional chinks of color through the wall of people. This told me that green was this year’s color for shapeless blobs (chromatic abstractionism, according to the catalog); I was quite prepared to be satisfied with this knowledge.

  I’d have a go at mingling, I thought. After all, they weren’t actually going to walk out on me. I started walking round the gallery.

  I realized I’d completed a full circle and still not met any eyes, so I snatched another glass of white wine as a tray went by. I might as well take what consolation I could there. I could see two bubbles rising from the bottom of the glass; well, that made it more sparkling than the conversation around me. It was about the same temperature as the two pints of beer I’d swilled before coming in—somewhere between blood and urine.

  I kept circling, listening to little snatches of conversation here and there—“Oh, I so agree”; “Do you really?”; “Oh, yes, I do think so”; “Such a nice man”; “Oh, isn’t that just too exquisite.” I’d not heard such italicized conversation for ages. Nobody had talked like that at the Scrubs—maybe that had been one of the few pluses of the place. If I drank too much, I’d probably find myself parodying the tones. If not pulling faces at the speakers.

  I was on my fifth glass before anybody talked to me. I was staring at a painting and wondering if the fact that I could see blobs hovering outside the picture frame was a proof of what the catalog said about George’s works “deconstructing the formal limits of the confined surface area and thus giving rise to a new spatial awareness, a new dialogue between the container and the contained,” or whether I was just plastered, when a blond girl with a breathy “upper-crust” voice said, “May I have a look?” She was pointing at my catalog.

  “Of course,” I said.

  “Thanks.” She flipped through it perfunctorily, then said, “You’re Martin Phipps, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “I—I’ve always loved your works.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I mean, they—they really seem to say something about the state of Britain. You make a real statement.”

  “Ah. I thought I made paintings.” My no-nonsense Kingsley-Amis style this.

  She smiled a bit nervously at this. “I suppose your next exhibition will be—will be even darker in tone.”

  “Pitch-black. You won’t be able to see a thing.” This was stupid. How could I hope to get people chatting to me, particularly a really pretty girl like this one, unless I opened myself up a little more welcomingly? I put on a sweeter smile and got ready to say something nice about containers and contained. Then I saw her make a little grinning turn of the head to the other side
of the room where another girl was watching, her hand clapped over her mouth to suppress the giggles. I clammed up.

  The blond beauty said, “Gosh, well, I—I can’t wait, goodbye,” and then turned and almost ran to join her friend across the room; she at once exploded in a fit of quiet giggles herself. She’d obviously won her dare.

  I looked around for another glass. There was none in sight.

  Adrian came up again, bringing with him a bemused-looking young man, obviously foreign, whom I’d earlier seen him leading over to talk to George. “Martin,” Adrian said, “this is Signor—Signor, er. He’s from the Corriere della Sera. Their art correspondent. I’ll leave you to have a chat.”

  “Yes, sure.”

  Adrian walked away, no doubt still in search of the Evening Standard lady. The Italian, a thin man of about thirty with a nervous face, looked after Adrian rather forlornly, and then at me, even more forlornly. I waited for a second or two and then as he still hadn’t opened his mouth, I said in Italian, “Do you know this place?”

  His expression changed to one of surprise. “You speak Italian—cioè, lei parla italiano?”

  “Un po’,” I said, with bashful modesty. “I’ve often visited Italy. I’ve even lived there for a while.” I like to think of my Italian as fluent rather than correct—which means I babble away and let the details sort themselves out in the rush. And it’s always better when I’m drunk—or at least it seems to me to be so.

  “You speak very well,” said the young man, as if bearing me out.

  “Are you from the Veneto?” I said. I was interested in placing his accent. And in showing off, of course.

  “Venetian. That’s very clever of you.”

  “Thanks. Do you cover all the exhibitions in London?”

  “Well, only the ones I think interesting. You’re an artist, yes?”

  “That’s right.” I saw Adrian looking at us from the other side of the room as if hopefully trying to lip-read the word forgery. Or perhaps he was going to mouth it at me.

  “But you’re not exhibiting here now?” the Italian said.

  “No. This is all George’s work.”

  “George?”

  “Yes. The man you were talking to a moment ago. The one who looks like Michelangelo playing Charlton Heston. His name’s on the invitation card. Didn’t Adrian explain?” He seemed a singularly vague journalist.

  “Ah. I’m not used to the first name, you know.”

  “Is George well-known in Italy?” I’d never thought of him as being well-known much beyond the Old Brompton Road.

  “Not very well-known.”

  “So why are you here?”

  “I—I, well, in fact I hoped to meet some people from the London art world, you know. For a story.” He paused in thought, and then as if on sudden impulse, and lowering his voice, said, “Do you know a Signor Osgood?”

  “Vaguely.” I looked at him curiously. Because Osgood—Harry Osgood—was one of the crookedest art dealers in London—and I, as they say, should know. (He was also probably the fattest, but that was by the way.) He had never actually been had up for anything definite as far as I knew, but everybody in the art world knew that honestly acquired paintings made up about ten percent of his business. “You could get a good story out of him, I’m sure.”

  “Yes, I hope so. But please, keep it quiet.” He was looking around himself in a manner guaranteed to arouse suspicion. “I was told he might be here tonight.”

  “Really? Adrian doesn’t seem to have nailed the paintings to the wall.”

  “Sorry?”

  “No, nothing. Silly joke. So you’re not really covering George’s show then.”

  “Well…”

  “Don’t worry. I won’t tell him. So long as you promise to cover mine. Shall we ask Adrian if he knows when Osgood’s coming?”

  “No, no, please not. Il Signor Limpett is—is a friend of Signor Osgood, I think. I don’t want…” He tailed off vaguely.

  “Ah. So what’s the story?”

  “It is complicated. Tell me, what do you paint?”

  “Forgeries. Hundreds of them. For money. Lots and lots of money. And for sex and drugs when I can.” I said all this in English and loudly. Suddenly all other conversation stopped.

  The Italian looked alarmed. “Ah, I see, I see.” He too spoke in English. “I think I must go to see some paintings.” He gave me a quick smile of salutation and made toward the nearest visible blobs.

  I looked at Adrian. He was the only one still looking at me; everyone else had gone back to fierce consultation of catalogs or close examination of paintings. The conversations had started up again, with extra-urgent but hushed italics. Adrian’s expression was one of earnest concern: I suppose he was trying to decide where the borderline lay between Good Publicity and Unacceptable Scandal.

  He came over to me. “Martin, are you feeling all right?”

  “I won’t drink anymore, if that’s what you mean.” Just one of my many comic turns, I tried to suggest.

  “Well, maybe you should slow down just a little.…”

  “Yes, yes. Any chance of the drink at my do having more bubbles? So people can watch them pop if they get fed up with the paintings.”

  “What? Oh, er, well…”

  “Look, sorry, Adrian. I’m in danger of making a fool of myself. I mean even more of one. Maybe I’d better go.”

  “Well, er, perhaps, if you’d feel better…” He’d obviously given up all hope of the Evening Standard lady. “I’m sure people will understand.”

  “Yes, I’m sure.” I realized he was walking me slowly to the door: not exactly pulling me or even ushering me; just leading the way. We passed the two giggling girls; they were listening to a young man whose suit suggested merchant banker and whose face suggested berk; he was probably here looking for sound investments. I heard him say, “Of course they say the jails are riddled with drugs—they spend all their sentences on a permanent high.”

  I stopped. “Excuse me,” I said to him, not quite so loudly as before but loudly enough for most people to stop talking and listen in. “Can I just add my little contribution to this sociological assessment of the prison situation?” I felt rather proud of this sentence—particularly at having pronounced all the words correctly—and was tempted to repeat it. But I went on: “Because maybe you don’t know it, but I do have firsthand experience of the problem.”

  “Well, yes, actually I did know,” he said, smiling and adopting a casual arm-folded pose that revealed the Wall Street braces on his trousers and said to the room, Look at tolerant me, hobnobbing with an ex-con.

  “Oh, you did? Jolly good. Well, it’s true some of the lads do get hold of a little hash or coke or whatever. But would you believe it, I didn’t even know what marijuana smelled like until I went to the Scrubs?”

  “Really.” No, I wouldn’t believe it, his Michael Douglas smile said.

  “And in case anybody thinks otherwise, at this moment I am drunk—simply drunk, inebriated, pissed, flown with wine—or warm fizz. I have never touched bloody drugs in my whole life.” This was addressed to the whole room. Adrian’s fingers were now on my arm, almost tugging.

  The room was silent. Because, of course, they all knew: they’d seen the headlines—DRUGS IN FORGERY CASE, or FORGERY IN DRUGS CASE, depending on which crime the newspaper thought the more sensational.

  “I was imprisoned for forgery and nothing else. Clear? Clear?” I’d intended this little banter to be a supreme Oscar Wildean put-down, but the way it was coming out, I’d have done better to yell “yah boo” and stick two fingers up in passing.

  “Crystal clear,” the merchant-banker type said. He was standing as if to protect the two young damsels. The blond girl must have been feeling pretty smug; her dare was definitely rising in story value.

  “And I’m ready to sue anyone for libel or slander or defamation who says any different. Or tweak their bloody braces.”

  “Come on, Martin, come on.” Adrian was no
w unambiguously tugging.

  “Yes, all right, all right. Sorry, everybody. Interlude over.” I walked to the door. The chattering broke out again, the italics extra-excited. George was standing by the door, looking just like Charlton Heston eyeing the debauchery under Mount Sinai. “Sorry, George,” I said. “That was unforgivable. Your show. I’m a bastard. Come along and smash mine up in three weeks’ time.”

  “A pleasure.” I couldn’t see what his mouth was doing way down below the beard, but he didn’t sound as if he was smiling as he said this.

  “And sorry to you too, Adrian. Not even any journalists present—unless you count the Italian bloke.”

  “Never mind. Go along and get a good rest. Don’t worry about anything.”

  I put my coat on, picked up my bag, and stepped outside. The January wind swishing down the road sliced through my anorak, pullover, shirt, and skin, so that even the wine finally got chilly inside me. I started off in the direction of the Gloucester Road tube station.

  I wasn’t so very drunk, I realized. I’d been trying to pass off the outburst, even to myself, as the result of my lower toleration level of alcohol since prison, but I realized that my reasoning faculties, if not brilliantly lucid, were far from being out of control. The proof was that I was fully aware of what a bloody fool I’d made of myself.

  So what had slipped the reins inside me? It must have been a sudden low toleration level of ostracism: I just hadn’t been able to take the role of outcast.

  That prison made you different I’d long known: different from what you’d been and different from other people—and not just in little things, like getting drunk more easily, or never throwing anything away without first thinking of its possibility as barter, or expecting other people to open doors for you. But I’d always preserved, somewhere in the deep medicine cupboards of my heart, the little hope that sooner or later it wouldn’t matter: I’d get closer to other people or they’d move closer to me. Tonight’s social occasion had made me feel that the divide was permanent: my cell bars had been replaced by unbreakable reptile-house plate glass; I lay slobbering behind it for all to look and shudder at, with a big sign around my neck, PICTORE CRIMINALIS STONED-OUT-OF-MENTE.