Paint. The art of scam.

by Oscar Turner

  ‘How about herbal tea?’ said Ed.

  Rosey shook her head again.

  ‘Oh.’ said Ed. ‘Ok blow it, why not, I'll have the same as Seymour.’

  ‘You sure?’ said Rosey and Seymour in unison.

  ‘Yeh, damn it. Why not’ said Ed.

  ‘Ok sit down, I'll bring it over.’ said Rosey smiling at Seymour mischievously.

  Seymour led Ed over to his favourite table by the window and sat down. Ed nervously rummaged through his little backpack and pulled out a Phillips cassette recorder.

  ‘Mind if I record this Seymour? Helps me remember things, you know? Artists get pretty deep sometimes.’

  Seymour took a sip of his delicious Cafe Loco.

  ‘No, I don't mind, no problem, what do you want me to say?’ said Seymour, savouring the rich spicy aroma coming from the coffee as Rosey appeared and gave Ed his mug. ‘Thanks Rosey.’

  ‘Yeh thanks Rosey.’ said Ed laughing nervously. Rosey flashed him a look and smiled sarcastically.

  Ed took a sip, as Seymour watched Rosey's bum until it disappeared behind the counter.

  ‘Interesting looking woman.’ said Ed.

  ‘Yeh. I reckon she would suck you in and blow you out in bubbles.’ said Seymour.

  Ed momentarily visualised Seymour's words and really didn't know what to do with the image. It was a strange thing to say, he thought. He was hoping this was going to be his scoop. An intellectual insight into a real artist that's had a show, in a proper gallery and had sold his work! ‘Maybe he's a rebel, a maverick,’ thought Ed, ‘like Dali or Picasso or Van Gogh or someone.’

  ‘Ok.’ said Ed, moving things along. ‘Shall be begin?’

  Seymour nodded, Ed pressed the record button with a clunk.

  ‘So, hi Seymour. How are you doing?’

  ‘I'm good, how are you?’

  ‘I'm doing great, really like your paintings.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘So Seymour, what are they about?’

  ‘What do mean?’ said Seymour, taking another long sip.

  ‘Well you know uh, what's your inspiration?’ said Ed taking a sip of his coffee. ‘Hey this is real nice coffee.’

  ‘Yeh, it's great innit, you can't beat a good cup of coffee.’

  ‘So what is your inspiration Seymour?’

  Seymour thought for a moment. He'd been asked this before and indeed had asked himself the same question.

  ‘Um. I don't know.’ said Seymour watching Rosey as she blew the dust off an LP record and bent down, delicately placing it on the turntable deep inside the old valve radiogram in the corner by the counter. Rosey had a wonderful cleavage even though, Seymour suspected, her tits would be a bit saggy.

  ‘Oh.’ Ed looked around the cafe. There were just a couple of other people sat at their tables, reading papers who were now swaying their heads to Mendelssohn's violin concerto. Ed was racking his brains to remember that bit on his course about how you keep an interview going and keeping in control, by steering the narrative with clever questions.

  ‘I suppose,’ said Seymour thoughtfully, rubbing his unshaven cheeks. ‘I suppose, well, life?’

  ‘Life?’ said Ed. ‘life is your inspiration?’

  ‘Why not?’ said Seymour.

  ‘But the description about your work in the catalogue of your first show at the Carva Gallery was kinda in depth.’ said Ed. ‘I thought...’

  ‘Oh that was Polly,’ said Seymour interrupting. ‘Fucking hell, she's amazing the shit she can come up with. Sort of makes sense though.’

  ‘So all that stuff was written by Polly, and you had no say in it?’ said Ed.

  ‘Uh, not really, why should I, why should I tell her or anybody what it's all about? I paint stuff. It's up to you what you make of it. It's not my business.’

  ‘Yeh right, wow, this is kinda blowing my mind.’ said Ed, battling to concentrate. ‘So you don't really have a concept when you work, you leave that to everybody else?’

  ‘Yup.’ said Seymour, taking another huge glug of his cafe loco. Ed did the same. The coffee was cooler now and the fireworks of spicy, exotic flavours seemed to aerate his brain as he copied Seymour's, almost ceremonial coffee drinking. This involved burying one's nose and mouth inside the mug, taking a healthy gulp and then a single large slow breathe through the one's nose.

  Ed sat back. Seymour had just said something significant. If only he could remember what it was. Ah the cassette, Ok then, that's good, it'll be on there. Right. Ed looked at Seymour, who was staring out of the window. It didn't seem right to stop the interview, to rewind the tape to see what the hell Seymour was talking about. You should never do that, it kills the flow of connection with your interviewee. Ok, change the subject.

  ‘So Shemour, oh sorry, Seymour, tell me about your background, like your college days and stuff, where did you study art?’ That felt like the longest sentence that he had ever spoken and he immediately forgot what he'd said. Things were looking fuzzy; like this weird sepia fog like thing everywhere. Wow that music! Never really liked this kinda stuff, hard to dance to.

  ‘Yeh, I like music you can dance to!’ said Ed loudly.

  Everyone in the cafe turned and looked at him suspiciously as Sir Neville Mariner wound up the St. Martin in the Fields Orchestra to a soaring violin crescendo.

  ‘What?’ said Seymour.

  ‘Did I say something?’ said Ed, looking worried.

  Seymour looked at Ed. He looked lost and confused as he stared at Seymour, waiting.

  ‘No.’ said Seymour, realising it was stupid to engage in conversation with anyone who would say something like that.

  Ed seemed relieved and adjusted his composure, in attempt to reboot his mind.

  ‘So yeh, cool, oh yeh, tell me about your art college days?’ said Ed, pleased with himself that he'd remembered the last question.

  ‘Art college days?’ laughed Seymour. ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘No. I mean yes.’ said Ed. By now Ed was convinced the floor was moving and held onto the arms of his chair to steady himself.

  ‘Do you know how jelly babies are made Ed?’ said Seymour, leaning forward.

  Ed thought for a moment, he liked jelly babies, but no, he’d never thought about how they are made. The way Seymour had asked the question, suggested he wasn't asking how they are made, he was asking if he knew how they were made: there is a big difference. Is this some kind of trick to hijack the interview? thought Ed. Why was he doing this to me? Is he trying to humiliate me or something? Did I change the batteries in the cassette recorder? I'll never remember all this stuff.

  ‘Um. No.’ said Ed, as if waiting for an axe to fall.

  ‘Well you see,’ said Seymour leaning further across the table, concentrating, ‘They have this metal plate with 400 identical metal jelly babies on it. That is lowered onto a tray of glucose powder, then, when you take it off, it leaves a perfect imprint of 400 jelly babies in the tray. Then, that goes into a machine that injects hot jelly into each jelly baby imprint. Ten minutes later, you just empty the tray upside down onto a sieve and hey presto! 400 perfect jelly babies.’

  ‘Wow!’ said Ed. ‘How do you know all this stuff?’

  ‘I'm making a point Ed.’ said Seymour emphatically.

  ‘Right.’ said Ed.

  ‘I worked in that Jelly Baby factory Ed and it was fucking horrible. There was this bastard supervisor there, Dennis Brampton, he was in charge of quality control. They were strict on quality control Ed. Particularly when Leprosy was running rampant in Africa, not to mention the thalidomide baby scandal, they didn't want disfigured jelly babies around Ed. And it did happen from time to time, I can tell you. I saw it. Just one little air bubble in the jelly or a partial collapse in the glucose impression and you've got yourself a mutated jelly baby.’

  Ed nodded in agreement. Seymour's point was clearly a serious one. He looked down at the cassette recorder to check that the red recording light was still on. It was, but moving around, in and
out of focus.

  ‘Now this factory was basically staffed by female prisoners on parole, Ed. It was like their stepping stone to freedom. If they put one foot wrong in that place? Bang! Back they go back to jail. So Brampton had a hold on those girls. I got to know them quite well, great laugh, despite what had happened to them. That's when I met Roland.’

  ‘Roland?’ said Ed.

  ‘Yeh, Rolland Mann he was on parole too, I worked with him on the jelly pump. Anyway it turns out that Brampton was fucking some of the girls against there will, threatening to report them if they said anything. He was an ugly bastard. It was Roland that found out about it. So we - that's me and Roland -had to do something. Roland was close to the end of his parole anyway and was ready to bugger off to Spain and I didn't care less about anything. So you know what we did?’

  Ed, intrigued, shook his head.

  ‘Brampton used to slip out to the pub at lunchtime. Usually gone for a couple of hours. Then he'd come back to work pissed.’

  ‘Why?’ said Ed.

  ‘What do you mean why?’ said Seymour looking at Ed impatiently.

  ‘Why was he pissed? Oh sorry. You mean drunk. Back in the States we....’

  ‘Whatever.’ said Seymour interrupting. ‘So, we waited until Brampton had gone and, using a match stick, we poked a little hole in the crotch of the jelly baby glucose imprints, then ran them through the jelly injectors. Fuck, you should have seen them Ed. Brilliant, hundreds of jelly babies with bloody great erections. We did about 5,000, all different colours. Then, because all the batch labels are dated and timed, we switched the batches, so it looked like they were done at the times Brampton was supervising the injection machine. Fucking brilliant! Nobody found them until a school teacher spotted unusual activity in the playground. Turned out that kids were collecting them and swapping them for stuff. Anyway Brampton was fired, his wife left him and the girls reported him. He was done for rape. Ended up in jail. Got the shit beat out of him.’

  Ed sat back, copying Seymour, who seemed to have finished his point. Ed wondered what it was.

  ‘You see what I mean Ed? Ed, are you OK?’

  Ed was as white as a sheet and beginning to look distressed, as he watched Seymour pick up a box of matches and, after some clumsy fumbling, held a single match in front of him.

  ‘That Ed, is what art is.’

  Ed stared at the match wavering around in Seymour's hand.

  ‘Wow!’ said Ed. ‘Art is a match.’

  Seymour rolled his eyes. ‘It's a metaphor Ed!’

  Seymour looked up at the clock on the wall.

  ‘Shit, gotta go Ed, meeting Polly for lunch, see you round, hope you got everything.’ Seymour stood up.

  Ed, still contemplating why the match was a metaphor, stared into space.

  ‘Right.’ said Seymour, holding onto the wall for balance. Sitting down with a Cafe Loco ripping around your head is one thing, standing up is a completely different matter. ‘See you then.’ Seymour tiptoed away and out the door. ‘See you Rosey.’

  ‘Not so fast Seymour.’ said Rosey looking across at Ed, now resting his head on the table.

  Ed played back the tape many times and still didn't get the match/metaphor thing. About the only thing he did get out of the interview with Seymour, was a stark reminder of how caffeine affected him. He vowed never to touch anything that contained caffeine ever again, except Coca Cola. Ed loved Coca Cola and hell, you have to have some pleasure in life.

  Then one day it clicked. The match was the pen! The pen is mightier than the sword, the match mightier than the... He wasn't quite sure what the match was mightier than, but it was something. That match had changed lives! A single match had created a bunch of sexually aroused jelly babies, that in turn had changed lives forever. Maybe there was an issue in there to do with the fact that all jelly babies, up and until then, were all females! That match sure knows how to get things done. The more Ed thought about the match, the more the idea fermented and grew into a thoroughbred concept. Fire! One strike of a match and you could burn down an entire civilisation. Matchstick men! Those cave paintings he saw in France. They were matchstick men! At last he was getting an insight into the mind of Seymour Capital. When he cross-referenced his findings with the text Polly had written for Seymour's show catalogue, Ed could see no connection. Her descriptions were deep, evocative, inspiring investigations of how far you can dig down to get true meaning, in order to understand something that is totally irrelevant, if you didn't bring it up in the first place.

  Polly used words that Ed had never heard of before, but somehow, he knew what they meant without looking them up. That, thought Ed, was pretty clever. Ed figured that Polly would be cool Scrabble player.

  It was a tough article to write. He either had to choose Polly's or Seymour's angle and their juxtaposition to each other made it literally a toss of a coin decision.

  Then it really clicked. It was all about the juxtaposition between them, the artist, Seymour and his partner, Polly. Their relationship was like ivy, their lives entwined together, yet apart in so many ways. Seymour's simplistic framework, at times primitive, at other times infantile, somehow offered a rescue from drowning in a cruel sea of rationalisation. Rescued by a beauty that defied meaning, but invited thought.

  Ed looked at the front cover again, wondering if should have underlined 'Perfect Match' with a matchstick. Was it too obvious? It had taken Ed a long time to do the artwork: the matchstick had been particularly troublesome. There was no reference to matchsticks in the text. Ed figured, that if he explained the matchstick metaphor, it wouldn't be a metaphor anymore. That's the thing about metaphors. It's hard to talk about them, if you do, they somehow lose their power.

  Anyway it was too late now. Ed checked his watch, picked up the phone and dialed.

  ‘Hello Amsted Press, how can I help?’ said the charming female voice.

  Ed coughed to clear his throat. ‘Print it.’ said Ed. He'd been dying to say that all week.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ said the voice.

  ‘The Easel. Print it.’ said Ed again.

  It took sometime before he actually got through to somebody who could verify who he was and what exactly he meant. They even phoned the hospital to speak to Henry. Doris, the book keeper, took the call and gave the go ahead. Henry had just moved his eyelids whilst she was talking to the printer and Doris took it as a sign that it was Henry's wish. ‘Print it!’ said Doris.

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  The New Carva Gallery.

  Simon Carva unlocked the doors of the gallery, hopefully for the last time. Jason was to officially starting work today. Jason had appeared at the gallery two weeks before, enquiring about the job.

  ‘What job?’ Carva had said indignantly.

  It transpired that Carva, at a large dinner party hosted by Harry, with whom he become good friends, had mentioned that, maybe, if the right person came along, he might consider stepping aside at the gallery. That, via a network of tribal gossip had become: Simon Carva is looking for a manager.

  Carva, although happy with the gallery's revolution, especially the wads of cash involved, was feeling uncomfortable in the new, slick, white, minimalist environment. He looked it too, in his tweed sports jacket, perfectly creased trousers, collar and tie and always highly polished shoes. Simon Carva had dressed like that for years and often took longer to dress casual than formal and he wasn't about to change to suit this new environment he found himself in. Since becoming involved with Polly and Seymour he had seen many a man of his age attempting to go modern, usually with tragic results; old men in jeans in particular. Jeans, when worn on a trim, young, fit body, male or female, look acceptable, despite the fact that the entire concept of jeans was questionable to Carva; possibly vulgar, due to their American roots. But jeans, on a body that has become fat and old, were just downright ugly and only accentuated the cruel fat pump of time and poor diet. Forget it. That's what trousers are for. Denim trousers however, are another
issue and do not count.

  The main feature of jeans is the back pockets. If trousers have back pockets sewn on the outside, they are jeans. No question. The denim element is irrelevant. And the way those pockets sit on the buttock is vital. On a tight, young bottom, the jean back pocket can make that bottom turn into something one can barely take one's eyes off. They actually enhance an already pleasant sight. Like the opposite of a frame.

  There is a reason for the style and design of elderly gentlemens’ clothing. It is a perfect camouflage to hide the horrors of age, as much for the public’s benefit as the wearer.

  It was only when he was alone at home that he had these thoughts: surrounded by the icons of his past, gulping neat scotch and talking to Desmond about what was happening. Desmond would have told him to shut up and get on with it. In fact, Carva suspected Desmond that had a hand in this whole thing.

  Carva’s social life too was picking up of late. Harry, especially, had introduced him to some interesting characters, mostly around his age group, with well planned pensions and time on their hands. He was often being invited 'to go out and play' as they put it in Harry's circle. Going out to play, was code for getting politely drunk in various locations, often on weekend trips to Chateaux in France, which were owned, usually by someone's brothers best friend's cousin who didn't mind at all being invaded by a bunch of well bred, geriatric party animals.

  When Jason arrived on the scene, recommended by Harry, well at least by the husband of a friend of Harry, it all fell into place. Carva could go out to play and not have to sit around all day, sneering at pretentious cretins dressed like fucking shop window dummies. Jason had spent the afternoons of the last week learning the workings of the gallery. The, what to do's and what not to do's, according to guidelines, set out by Carva in 1967.

  Jason was full of new ideas to improve the gallery, was well connected to the scene, as he called it, and knew plenty of artists that could bring something to the now renown, New Carva Gallery.