Notes from an Exhibition (16 page)

‘He’s probably relieved to have the place to himself for a bit.’

‘Eh?’ Antony cocked a hand to his better ear. He was becoming so deaf it could only have been scrupulous political correctness that had made the literacy place hold on to him so long.

Hedley tapped his father’s glasses back up his nose and Antony took the hint and manoeuvred their built-in hearing aid back into his ear.

‘Everything’s fine,’ Hedley told him finally. ‘Now look. When you dial up, this little icon appears in the bottom right-hand corner. If you can’t see that, you’re not connected. OK?’

‘OK.’

However grim of itself, Rachel’s death had provided a welcome distraction and an excuse. When she made her last insanely jabbering phone call to him, on the attic handset, he had been entering a crisis of his own.

This had a face and a name. She was called Ankie Witt. She was a Dutch painter who had moved back to Europe after a spell in South Africa where she had dropped art in favour of politics and worked for the ANC. She produced the sort of work Hedley loathed that seemed to be all about ideas and very little about paint: close-ups of parts of her body variously wired to car batteries or Bibles, wilfully childlike images of her being abused by her father, huge squares of canvas on which she had
painted, with stencilled letters, rambling accounts of same abuse unpunctuated by insight, wit or punctuation. She wasn’t especially young, perhaps thirty-eight – but she retained a young woman’s confidence and a child’s self-belief. She wasn’t especially attractive – she had disconcertingly large, square teeth and a bovine brow – but she had a room-stilling sexiness that had something to do with a sense she conveyed in seconds of being unafraid and unshameable. She was a talented self-publicist and a hot new thing and, even when being bored or offensive, assured journalists of good copy.

It was a coup for Oliver to have brought her to the gallery; the painters with whom Mendel’s had made its name in the Sixties and Seventies were now so Establishment that it was in danger of becoming a dinosaur park. Oliver’s brief was to bring in artists people could actually afford for a year or two, whose work sold for thousands not tens of thousands.

He effectively represented several younger artists, not just painters, and was in regular, supportive contact with most of them but his role with them had professional distance. Apart from mounting their shows he acted as a kind of agent and matchmaker, introducing them to collectors who were likely to favour them, brokering occasional commissions for site-specific work. But unlike some gallery men who collected artists like big-game trophies, he preferred not to become too close. He claimed it made it easier on both sides for money to be discussed if the relationship remained professional.

Ankie was different. Overnight, seemingly, she was his new best friend. Had she simply come to three dinner
parties in a row, Hedley would not have cared, but she started dropping round without warning – only ever when Oliver was home – or turning up at Mendel’s when he was about to leave so that he drove her home with him or, worse, changed his plans to fit in with her wishes. Hedley would already be cooking when Oliver would ring to say, ‘Ankie’s dragged me to this amazing bar she’s found. Do you want to join us?’ or ‘Ankie says I’ve got to see this Korean film at the Curzon. Come too and we can go somewhere afterwards.’

So assertive with others, Oliver seemed to be incapable of saying no to her. He always tried to include Hedley at least. Ankie never did. Hedley might not have felt so threatened by her had she at least had the subtlety to go after him on a charm offensive. From their first meeting, when she let her eyes slide off his while saying, ‘Oh, hello,’ when Oliver introduced her, she had barely acknowledged his existence.

The few times she rang and he answered she said only, ‘Is Oliver there?’ She bypassed that problem entirely once she had Oliver’s mobile number. She ate the food he cooked, without comment, looked in on his studio without comment. If she found herself sitting by anyone who wasn’t Oliver or famous, she ignored them to talk to Oliver across the table. She was not above simply taking his neighbour’s seat when they left the room for a minute and laughing off any objections.

Ankie laughed a lot and made people laugh. Had her voice not had a buzz-saw edge to it one could have found her swiftly in a crowd by the telltale sign of a circle of people laughing and not saying much. She could be very
funny, as monsters so often could, always at the expense of others, usually at the expense of others within hearing range. Just as there were people who did not feel a night out was complete without someone passing out or throwing up, so Ankie did not seem to feel socially fulfilled unless someone, usually a woman, had left the room in tears or, better yet, attacked her with words or a wineglass. Then her eyes would shine and a kind of moist satisfaction stole over her. If she was ever sweet or kind it would be in the hour after some such scene, as though some hunger in her had been answered and she could finally spare some attention for others.

Hedley tried. Of course he did. Because he loved Oliver and would have walked over broken glass to please him. He always liked Oliver’s friends, at first simply because they liked Oliver and then in their own right. Many of his best friends now were friends they had in common. But Ankie defeated him. He tried but even when he laughed at her jokes her laughter would dim slightly and she would turn aside as from a bad smell.

So he tried objecting. He told Oliver she was offensive, but that was like pointing out that rain was wet and Oliver merely shrugged and said what could he do, she was his highest-earning artist and so on. So he tried pointing out that she had no boundaries, that she clearly fancied Oliver and wanted him for herself.

‘Well sure she’s insecure. But who wouldn’t be after what she’s been through?’ Oliver said. ‘She knows I’m not available.’

‘Has she said so?’

‘She’s been here. She’s met you. Look, what is this, Babe? Are you jealous?’

Raising the subject at least meant that Oliver realized Hedley didn’t like her but then he merely stopped bringing her back to the house or involving Hedley in what were now effectively their dates.

Rounds one and two to Ankie.

Alone too often, frustrated and feeling he had mishandled the situation, Hedley attempted retaliation and began to see something of a handsome and flirtatious ex of Oliver’s who had begun to hover like the proverbial chicken hawk. This made matters worse in that the ex became extremely keen, scenting encouragement and when Hedley, tempted, put him off, he threatened to tell Oliver they were already sleeping together to help him make his mind up.

Hedley finally cracked at the end of that rare thing, a quiet night in with just the two of them. It was their anniversary and Oliver was very attentive and full of rather sweet nostalgia and, best of all, managed not to mention Ankie once all evening. They resisted the lazy, anaphrodisiac of slumping comfortably in front of the television and, with one accord went to bed early and were making love of a kind that quite put the flirtatious ex out of Hedley’s thoughts when the phones rang, first Oliver’s mobile, muffled in a distant jacket, and then the land line, just inches from the mattress.

They both manfully ignored it, Oliver even smothering it with a pillow before returning to the matter in hand, but then the answerphone clicked on in the study. Soon the unmistakable tones of Ankie were burbling through the open doors to where they lay.

‘Oliver? Ollie! I know you’re there. Listen, you handsome fucker, pick up the phone. Pick it up now!’ And so on.

Unfortunately the machine was set up for taking long, involved messages from fretful artists so had no time limit fixed. She hung up eventually but not before the mood in the bedroom had cooled to the point where she might as well have been there between them.

Hedley lost his temper so rarely it was like a violent fit coming upon him.

‘Why don’t you sleep with the silly cow just to shut her up?’

‘Not this again.’

‘It’s what she wants! Isn’t it?’

‘No. She’s …’

‘It’s harassment, Oliver. Plain and simple. Can’t you see that? She’s coming between us and I’m not strong enough on my own, not with you off schmoozing her.’

‘She’s a friend, Hed.’

‘Isn’t that a bit unprofessional?’

‘Fuck off.’ Oliver had never said this to him, not in anger. They both fell silent, possibly equally shocked. Then the phone started to ring again.

‘If you’re not man enough to tell her when to back off,’ Hedley said.

‘No!’ Oliver tried to get to the phone first but Hedley pulled him aside so furiously he struck his skull on the headboard.

Well good
, he thought.
Serves you right
. He tossed aside the pillow and snatched up the phone. ‘Listen, you talentless bitch …’

‘What?’

‘Rachel?’

‘Petroc?’

‘Sorry I … It’s Hedley, Mum. Petroc’s dead. Why are you whispering?’

‘She mustn’t hear me,’ Rachel hissed. ‘She’s under the table there and. Oh, fuck. Hedley, are you still there?’

‘Yes,’ Hedley sighed.

‘The stones. How many should there be for it to be perfect?’

‘Which stones, Mum? Where’s Antony? Have you had your pills?’

And so began the last forty-minute phone call of Rachel’s life.

By the end of it Oliver had draped the duvet over Hedley’s shoulders, pulled on a dressing gown and gone to watch television. Hedley looked in on him once he had tossed a few things into a bag. ‘I’m sorry about your head,’ he began.

Oliver said nothing.

‘She’s really bad again. I’d better drive down. I don’t understand it. Maybe the valproate isn’t working as well as the lithium did or she’s changed back or …’ He realized Oliver wasn’t looking at him so he left.

He seethed most of the way down, speeding like a madman on both motorways. He turned on his mobile when he stopped for petrol or coffee in the hope that Oliver had left a message, only to seethe afresh when he saw that he hadn’t.

Finding Rachel dead blasted all those thoughts aside apart from a momentary, low, childish voice that said,
Well he’ll have to be nice to me now
.

Oliver was scrupulous. He bought crazily beautiful flowers as soon as he heard the news and had them sent to Antony and they were from him, not the gallery. The Mendel’s ones were considerably less special but then she had made them no significant money in years and hadn’t had a solo show there since the mid-Eighties. He came down for the funeral, bringing Hedley a choice of suits and a shirt and black tie bought for the occasion. He stayed one unbelievably weird night below him in Petroc’s old bunk then drove back early with the parting instruction, put with warm sincerity, that Hedley was to take as long as it took.

Since then he rang every day and even sent a few postcards. Together they sustained an illusory continuity of their normal life together, exchanging dull bits of information about what they had done or who they had spoken to. He loved Hedley and missed him, he said. He couldn’t wait for him to come home. Oh and which fabric should they use on the old kitchen sofa, the soft pink stripes or the pinky brown weave or the taupe stuff that felt like suede? And if he posted Hedley a bundle of catalogues, could Hedley choose the light fittings for the new bookcase?

And then, that morning, with lethal quietness, like the scene in the horror film where the audience suddenly spots the killer crossing a doorway behind the heroine’s back, Oliver let slip a
we
.

‘I think,’ he said, ‘we’re going to see another Gong Li film tonight.’

Hedley kept his responses light and neutral and hung up soon afterwards but when Antony started asking him
if everything was all right between them he had to leave the house for a while.
We
might have referred to several people, but Oliver only saw Korean films with Ankie. Then there was the little matter of that
another
, which began to suggest they had been taking in a whole season of the things in Hedley’s absence.

He needed to speak about it with someone. Morwenna. If only. Even in her adult strangeness, she remained a good listener and would take his side with the reliability of magnetic north.

Antony wouldn’t begin to understand. If Hedley could not fathom Ankie’s motives, how could he expect his father to? Spite was not in his vocabulary. Besides, contemporary London life having lain so far outside his sphere of reference for so long it would have been like explaining house music to William Penn.

Garfield was no better, but for different reasons. He was too much the older brother, always so high-minded, so fixated on pleasing Rachel and Antony it was a wonder he had focused on any girl long enough to convince her to marry him. And ever since he had thrown in law for this Joseph the Carpenter act, the fog of inhibition that came between the brothers had been thicker than ever. Oliver’s theory was that, for all that Garfield meant well, he found the idea of having a gay brother deeply distasteful so got around it by treating Hedley as though he had never grown up. The insulting implication of this being, of course, that he thought gayness just a stage out of which Hedley would eventually mature.

The solution came in a phone call Antony took while
Hedley was out; Garfield had invited them over for Sunday lunch. Hedley would talk to his sister-in-law.

Hedley drove Antony over to Falmouth for Meeting, then they went back to Garfield and Lizzy’s house for the rest of the day. Spring was in the air. The trees were greening up and, in the daffodil fields, the unpicked flowers were nearly all spent and browning. As if to chime with the clamorous birdsong outside, the Meeting seemed extraordinarily talkative.

Garfield seemed happier and less brooding than they had seen him for weeks and he announced over lunch that he was going back into law. The man he had introduced them to after Meeting worked for one of the numerous firms in Truro based around the county courts and thought he could find an opening for him on a six-month trial basis. He would wind up the instrument repair business and start there in a month. The understanding was that, as a sop to his conscience about making money from other people’s trouble, he would only work on pro bono, legal-aid cases.