Notes from an Exhibition (35 page)

Authors: Patrick Gale

BOOK: Notes from an Exhibition

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Perfect. Lenny wheeled into the kitchen, poured him a glass of water and tipped his own drink into a second glass.

‘Thank you.’ Barnaby took his water and raised it. ‘Cheers.’ He drank, looked around him. ‘It’s nice,’ he said. ‘You’ve settled in?’

Lenny nodded. This was proving harder than he had imagined.

‘It must be a relief to be on your own. Your mum worries and that can be …’

‘Yeah.’

Barnaby stopped talking and let silence fall between them. He looked Lenny directly in the face. Lenny met his gaze for a few seconds then glanced away and fiddled with his glass. He remembered Barnaby as handsomer – Hollywood cowboy handsome – perhaps because of all he represented. In the flesh his jaw was weaker, his nose smaller than in Lenny’s memory. But his pale grey eyes had a startling intensity that was unnerving at close range.

‘How can I help you, Lenny?’ he asked at last.

‘I’ve not been a very … Does it matter that I never go to church these days?’

‘It does if it makes you unhappy. Does it?’

‘Not really. But … Do you pray for us? The people that don’t show up?’

‘Yes, but that’s a pretty impersonal prayer. I pray for you specifically.’

‘Do you?’

‘Do you mind?’

‘No,’ Lenny said, ‘but why?’

‘Lenny! Obviously I’ve been praying for you ever since your accident and during the operations and so on but … Do you need me to pray for you now for a specific reason?’

Lenny forced himself to meet Barnaby’s stare. ‘I’m going to die,’ he told him.

‘We’re all going to die. Does dying frighten you?’

‘I mean I’m going to kill myself.’

‘You can’t.’

‘Fucking can. Sorry.’

‘That’s all right. Why?’

‘Isn’t it obvious? Don’t worry. I’m not depressed or mad or anything. I know exactly what I’m doing. It’s a decision, that’s all. My life, my death.’

‘Lenny, your hands are shaking.’

Instinctively Lenny clasped his hands onto his useless knees to hold them still. ‘That’s because I haven’t told anyone this. Not my mum. Not …’

‘Not Amy?’

‘Certainly not Amy. Jesus! Sorry.’

‘That’s quite all right.’

‘I just can’t do this, OK? Everyone has been brilliant – the boys at the club, the people at work, the council, the physios, the old bats in this place. But I can’t do it. I mean look around you. No books. Not even a few. I don’t have – what did you call them that time? – inner resources. I know you think I just have to wait and they’ll well up in me like a bath but they won’t. I’ve always been a doer, a player. I did OK at school and college but I hate indoors. Working in a dispensary, it’s just a job. I lived for the nights out with Amy and practice and matches and … If I stay here like this I’m going to turn into some bitter old fuck-up downloading porn and taking pictures of girls who pass the window there …’

Barnaby winced: not as cool as he liked to make out.

‘Lenny, I’m so sorry. You should have said you needed help.’

‘Yes, well, everyone was being so nice.’

‘It’ll pass. You’ll find new things. New things will enter your life and change it.’

‘They already did. They’re called incontinence pads.’

‘Christ!’

‘You swore!’

‘Lenny, please. Give life a chance. I’ve seen lesser men than you work through things like this. When the mines were still open here the accidents could be—’

‘I’m never going to run or walk or surf again. I’m never going to score another try again. Or fuck.’

‘They kept you a place at the chemist’s, didn’t they?’

‘Oh yeah. They’ve even installed a ramp so I can get up high enough to see over the counter. But I won’t be able to reach the higher shelves so there’ll always have to be another dispensing assistant on duty with me. It’s charity. It’s making allowances. I know they mean well but I don’t want that.’

‘Please, Len. Think of your mum.’

‘I am thinking of her …’

‘And Amy. You’ve upset her dreadfully already. This’ll devastate her.’

‘Well she’ll get over it. I had to push her away. I couldn’t let her martyr herself.’

‘But if you’d been married already?’

‘I’d have divorced her.’

Barnaby broke off and looked at him with those eyes.

That’s shocked him into silence
, Lenny thought.

Barnaby glanced at Lenny’s untouched glass in a way that made Lenny think he knew. He sighed. ‘All I’m saying,’ he started.

‘Don’t,’ Lenny said. ‘Don’t say anything, OK? I didn’t ask you here for that. I could have rung Samaritans if I wanted that.’

‘So what do you want me to do?’

‘Just … stay here for a bit.’

‘I’m here, Len. I’m not leaving until you want me to.’

‘It’s really fast. It takes two minutes till I pass out and another till my heart stops.’

‘Think of the risks. If it goes wrong you could end up—’

‘I know the risks. I researched them. Like a fucking chemistry project. I’ve tested it. It won’t go wrong. People do this all the time.’

‘And plenty choose not to.’

‘Don’t. I don’t need that.’ Lenny pointed to the table where he’d been writing earlier. ‘Those are letters to Mum and Amy. And you’ll need to call a doctor.’

‘Len, I’m a priest. I know what to do when someone dies.’

‘Sorry.’

There was a fresh blast of music from outside. Perhaps the front of the parade was already coming around again. Was that possible? Barnaby glanced away towards the sound and Lenny seized the moment to drain his glass. Barnaby didn’t see him do it. Lenny knew he had no idea.

It was unbelievably bitter, like drinking a whole glass of Stop’n Grow. Like drinking death itself. He gasped but managed not to retch. He felt utterly calm. A seagull hovered briefly outside the window then rolled off to the side.
They can because they think they can
.

‘Not long now,’ Lenny said and saw that Barnaby had realized then what was happening.

‘No!’ he shouted. He took Lenny’s hands in his. He kissed one of them. ‘Len?’

‘You’ll send the letters?’

‘I’ll send them.’

‘You can pray now. If you like.’

His mouth was going funny already and he wasn’t sure Barnaby had even understood him. Barnaby was gazing at him with those I-will-find-you eyes and he whipped out a little silver bottle and tipped some oil onto his finger, hands shaking, and touched Len’s head with it.

‘O Almighty God,’ he said, ‘With whom do live the spirits of just men made perfect, after they are delivered from their earthly prisons, I humbly commend the soul of this thy servant, our dear brother Lenny, into thy hands as into the hands of a faithful Creator, and most merciful Saviour; most humbly beseeching thee, that it may be precious in thy sight.’

Barnaby’s voice grew quieter. His face was wet with tears but his words didn’t falter. It wasn’t like a prayer in church. It was like an important conversation with someone in the room. Someone else. Len’s sight clouded and he felt his head grow insupportably heavy. For a short while he was aware of nothing but the continuing voice.

‘Wash it, we pray thee, in the blood of that immaculate lamb, that was slain to take away the sins of the world; that whatsoever defilements it may have contracted in the midst of this miserable and naughty world, through the lusts of the flesh, or the wiles of Satan, being purged and done away, it may be presented pure and without spot before thee.’

Without spot, Len thought. That’s nice. Like sheets. And he pictured bed sheets on his mother’s washing line high above Morvah on a day when the sea down below was deep blue with white horses on it, and the temptation was strong to hold your face in them as they flicked and cracked in the wind and the bleaching sun. Pure. White. Without spot.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The Dame Barbara Hepworth who appears in this novel is a fictitious character loosely based on the real woman however. In the construction of that fiction I was indebted to first-hand accounts from Michael Sheppard and Elizabeth Anderson and assisted by Arwen Fitch at Tate St Ives.

Michael was one artist friend whose work and dedication triggered the novel. Another, less happily, was the Scottish painter, Graeme Craig-Smith, who lost his life to bipolar disorder.

Heartfelt thanks to Alexander Achilles, Mark Adley and Catharine Gale for furthering my understanding of bipolar disorder and the challenges of its treatment, to Simon Ewart, Margaret Chinn and Nancy Buchanan for teaching me about the Quakers as much by quiet example as through facts, to Barbara Gowdy and Rob Lindey for their invaluable assistance with the Canadian elements of the story, and to my editors, Patricia Parkin and Clare Reihill and my agent, Caradoc King, for their unwavering support.

Notes from an Exhibition
was completed during a residency in Brussels in 2006 thanks to the generosity of Piet Joostens and Het Beschrijf.

Also by Patrick Gale

The Aerodynamics of Pork

Kansas in August

Ease

Facing the Tank

Little Bits of Baby

The Cat Sanctuary

Caesar’s
Wife

The Facts of Life

Dangerous Pleasures

Tree Surgery for Beginners

Rough Music

A Sweet Obscurity

Friendly Fire

First published in Great Britain in 2007 by
Fourth Estate
An imprint of HarperCollins
Publishers
77–85 Fulham Palace Road
London W6 8JB
www.4thestate.co.uk

The right of Patrick Gale to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins eBooks.

Epub edition DECEMBER 2011 ISBN-9780007292356

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