Ten Storey Love Song (5 page)

Observer
about Van Gogh being a nutcase and chopping his ear off and not being appreciated in his own time, and she sat in bed reading with her husband while the clock ticked way past 9am. It’s so difficult getting out of bed since Mr Fletcher got laid off at the post office – nowadays he just sits in the floral armchair, checking Teletext for jobs, sipping cups of coffee getting colder and colder, spring-cleans the apartment, stays in bed till afternoon. It was incredibly tempting to stay under the covers with him this morning, enjoying the paper and pasties he purchased that morning from Premier, but now Mrs Fletcher’s cursing herself because she’ll never make it to the office for 9.30 and it’s not fair Jennifer covering for her when the poor girl’s got loads of filing and phone calls to answer herself. Mrs Fletcher grimaces, bobbing and weaving past carriers of rubbish as she charges down down down round round round. Her Elizabeth Duke watch tells her she’s missed the 9.23 bus already, and she mutters something shitty under her breath and wonders if it’s worth running down the stairs at all. Those new heels from Priceless still aren’t worn in, and it’d probably be Mrs Fletcher’s luck to snag one on a binbag and collapse all the way down to ground floor. If only the lift was working, there’d be none of this hassle. Apparently the men from the council have been informed about the faulty cable mechanism, but Mrs Fletcher’s experience with authorities and councillors and workmen in general leads her to thinking it’ll be weeks before it’s even looked at/diagnosed. The world of work is very disappointing. She can’t help but think Mr Fletcher was so hard done by losing his job at the post depot – he was a solid worker, never had a day off in eleven years, and he found pleasure inventing magical stories about the people on all the envelopes he sorted. When Mr Fletcher was at the PO he was as happy and radiant as the stallion she met twenty years ago in the George public house in Normanby, but as the mail became more automated, more and more workers lost their jobs and Mr Fletcher was one of the first to go in September. The Fletchers had to downsize from their cosy semi into Peach House, and her husband blames himself and spites all technology and machinery, and he doesn’t even like boiling the kettle any more. He has nightmares about a sort of
Terminator
ish world where all the robots and machines and tin cans wage war against the humans, and all the Luddites would have to go hide in some kind of underground Butlins holiday camp, awaiting death or batteries running out. He mopes around the house with nothing much to do. The Fletchers don’t even have a garden he can potter about in, and living on floor eight makes him feel particularly housebound and lonely, cut off from the trees and the flowers and the streets and the human faces. Mrs Fletcher herself doesn’t mind living in the sky – they’ve made the flat quite homely, kitted out with chintzy furniture, and the view’s incredible – but this morning it’s a nuisance and all she can do is just grumble, tumbling down the spirals and landings. She’s reduced to a walking pace by the time she reaches floor four (and desperate for one of the ten Sterlings she limits herself to each day), and she’s in an awful mood. She can’t be bothered explaining why she’s late to Mr Gosling when she’s got no proper excuse, and he’ll probably be on her back all day, and it’s nowhere near the weekend. Mrs Fletcher’s almost tempted to scuttle back upstairs and phone in sick, when suddenly she trips and stops and gazes at that ‘Blob with Eyes’ (58x81cm) Bobby the Artist discarded on the landing. Except to her it’s not a blob with eyes; it’s a dazzling masterpiece, a wacky celebration of colour and seaside, and the most beautiful sleeping beauty since
Sleeping Beauty
. Mrs Fletcher blinks, picks up the picture, and suddenly she doesn’t give a shit about being late for work any more. She loves art, you know. She touches the surface, tracing the lumpy bumpy brushstrokes over the top of Georgie’s over-the-top mascara. Mrs Fletcher wonders how such a gorgeous artwork could be chucked so brutally down the corridors of her block, and she’s about to slip it in her briefcase when suddenly the door of 4E creaks open and the real Georgie staggers out of her Hansel and Gretel flat made of sweets, bleary-eyed. Georgie’s got work at ten at Bhs, and she steps down the steps all grumpy and knackered. She’s still a bit dazed after a great dream about a gigantic piñata, candy raining down on her as she bats the hell out of her boss Mr Hawkson strung way up high from a tree. She can’t be fucked going to work either. Georgie scratches under her unflattering nylon uniform, hardly noticing Mrs Fletcher standing there with the painting halfway in her briefcase. Fletcher smiles sheepishly, suddenly recognising Georgie as the girl from the picture, and she asks her, ‘Excuse me, is this your painting?’ Georgie snaps out of her sickly trance, glances at Mrs Fletcher and the bit of paper in the quarter-light of the corridor, then croaks, ‘Erm, naw, it’s Bobby’s, my boyfriend.’ Georgie’s pretty desperate to avoid all contact with human beings and just get to work, so shattered she is, and she tries to creep down the stairway but Mrs Fletcher pulls her up and carries on, ‘I love it. It’s so … raw. Yet, like, delicate.’ Georgie says, ‘Cheers,’ wishing she hadn’t stepped out the door at that very moment. She can’t even stand eye contact with anyone when she’s in this mood, although it’s worse when someone you hate sits next to you on the bus and you’re forced to make small talk with them for twenty minutes. She picks out a bit of sleepy mascara, yawning a big O to herself while Mrs Fletcher persists, ‘Can I speak to the artist?’ Georgie shuts her mouth, then opens it again and says, ‘I wouldn’t if I was you. He’s in bed, and like he hasn’t been sleeping very well the last few days and he’ll be really off with you. Nothing against you, by the way …’ Mrs Fletcher nods, glances again at ‘Blob with Eyes’ (58x81cm), then asks, ‘Well, can I take his number? Sorry to be a nuisance, it’s just my cousin Lewis is actually a dealer in art in London, and I’m sure he’d love to see some of Robert’s work. It’s really interesting stuff; I’d like to see more!’ Georgie stares. ‘It’s Bobby, not Robert,’ she says, ‘but erm yeah, here you go then.’ Giving Mrs Fletcher his number, Georgie urges her to phone ‘at least after tea. He’ll be in a bad mood with you otherwise.’ Mrs Fletcher nods and grins, returning the painting to the grubby vinyl so as not to seem like a dodgy thieving cow. For a bit Georgie and Mrs Fletcher carry on down the stairs together, but on reaching floor two Georgie stops and pretends to tie her shoelace so she doesn’t have to talk to that weirdo any more. Mrs Fletcher takes the hint and walks by herself to the hot magnifying-glass bus shelter, satisfied in her head that she might’ve discovered the New Van Gogh. If only she could get him to cut his ear off! Mrs Fletcher gets on the 65 pulling a smug grin, and while the bus starts and stops and stops and starts down Cargo Fleet Lane she pulls out her Mitsubishi ‘brick’ and dials her cousin’s office. Bent Lewis sits on his grey spinning-chair in his gallery in Clerkenwell (that’s in London), half flicking through slides of nude males and half daydreaming out the brushed aluminium windows. It’s a lovely day in London as well, and Bent Lewis rolls up his salmon sleeves, answering the phone placed with brilliant feng shui between art books (
Francis Bacon: Portraits and
Heads, Hockney’s Pictures
, and
Robert Mapplethorpe
, the one with all the men’s willies in it) and press releases with the names of artists and the names of artworks and the names of prices on them. ‘Hello?’ he ding-dongs, sweat collecting in the fat grooves of his neck. ‘Hi, Lewis, it’s Mary,’ Mrs Fletcher says, the 65 turning up King’s Road (that’s not in London), where the Buccaneer is and the Majestic Bingo. She scrunches her eyes at the sunshine like a seashell shutting and says, ‘You’ll never guess what I’ve seen today. The New Van Gogh! There’s this incredible young artist living in my block – God, I don’t know how to describe it … sort of, imagine the love-child of Keith Haring and Basquiat, if they ever had sex that is … haw haw haw …’ Back in Clerkenwell, Bent Lewis wakes up slightly in the groggy Cadmium Yellow heat – recently London’s been getting him down, what with the trains beginning to smell and the gallery opening looming faster and faster and the lack of cheap young talent to hang in his white cube. Back in June he sent a few feelers out to the college degree shows, but found all the work to be trash. Fucking trash! Lewis’s list is fairly uninspiring – he represents a couple of photographers (mostly nude portraits/commercial plop), an abstract painter he fucked at the Frieze art fair last year, a multimedia artist whose videos bore you to tears (his work ‘Watching Paint Dry, 2001–2’ is a particular no-no) but he’s got a pretty face, and Lewis’s ex-boyfriend Michael – a painter of still-lifes he’s still on good terms with, and always tries to get back with when he’s pissed on free champers. Bent Lewis watches a pigeon or two lingering on the warehouse roof across the road, chewing his nails, feeling an odd tear of hay fever or loneliness in his left eye. He swaps the telephone to his other ear, then tells Mrs Fletcher, ‘Tell me more.’ Fletcher shuffles on the bus seat, explaining, ‘Well, I was coming down the stairs this morning, and there it was – this amazing little painting amongst the binbags and all that … even the paintings Bobby throws out are amazing!’ Bent Lewis begins bouncing on his spinny chair, and he takes the Artist’s number and takes a walk round the office beaming to himself. He loves Northerners. He spends the rest of the day obsessing over the New Van Gogh, imagining all the luscious paintings but also imagining the rusty stink of pennies and boys’ bottoms on his fingers. On his way home (he gets the overland from Farringdon to Tulse Hill; it’s always fucking busy) he squashes on a three-seater with two office workers doing crossword puzzles, and phones Bobby the Artist staring out the glass at the sun going down. The sun’s going down up North as well, and Bobby throws down his paintbrushes in disgust at the shitty falling light. He’s still on a mighty old comedown, slurping china tea feeling all Buddhist in his kangaroo PJs. He feels quite sad today for no particular reason. Bobby gazes at the large canvas perched against the pink couch, all these beautiful girls staring out of the slop like les Demoiselles d’Avignon but not as triangular and whor-ish. The new piece is called ‘The Angels’ (244x233cm) – sort of a celebration of all the lovely ladies living in the tower block. The thing with Bobby is – although he’s attached to Georgie – he’ll always feel some sort of attraction or affection towards other girls. He enjoys following a strange sixties idealism, which involves taking many psychedelics, listening to far-out music and spreading lots of love. He wants to be Jack Kerouac – or the more hardcore one, Neal Cassady. He doesn’t think he’ll ever cheat on Georgie, but often he gets that sensation walking down a busy street that all the girls are better looking than his own, or that they’d do more drugs, or that they’d do much dirtier things in bed. He thinks it’s natural to want sex every single day, but it seems an eight-hour shift at Bhs kills a girl’s libido. He loves so many things about Georgie (her kitten face, her dressing-up box, her passion for sweets), but those are things he’s gotten used to over the months and the napalm-ish excitement he felt for her when they first started going out has gradually dampened. Why is it that, as soon as you start living with a girl, you hardly seem to have sex with her any more? Breathing out a hot puff, Bobby the Artist leans into the canvas and applies a thick splurge of cream across Georgie’s breasts. Georgie stands with a big flashing halo in the centre of all the others: Pamela from upstairs with a glazed expression in raunchy nurse gear (a perverted vision of her doing her shift at the kid’s playschool), Ellen in miniskirt with fluorescent thighs, Mandy all skinny brushstrokes on speed babbling nonsense. Oh, drugs. All the money’s gone now, hasn’t it, and Bobby feels generally very depressed like he’s carting a ton weight around with him. He owes
£
200 ticky to Johnnie and about
£
100 rent to Georgie, but fuck money – Bobby doesn’t think you’ve been put on this world to worry about paper and coins, you’ve been put here to enjoy every one of your breaths like a drowned sailor finally pulled back up to the surface. He sighs. Bobby’s destructive drug-taking stems from a terrible incident in his childhood: he discovered rock and roll. Ever since he saw the video for ‘I Am the Walrus’ on
Top of the Pops 2
aged eight and a half, Little Bobby knew he wanted to dedicate his life to drugs. But it didn’t take long to spiral out of control, sending him into a horrible, vicious world of technicolour, sunshine, and fun. Now he reads Baudelaire’s ‘Intoxication’ every morning when he gets out of bed. He wants it tattooed across his forehead. Sighing again, Bobby’s incredibly tempted to go upstairs for more ticky off Johnnie but stops himself, suddenly put off by his screaming siren mobile phone. His ringtone is a garbled spaghetti of sounds he inputted high on mushrooms one evening, thinking he could hear exotic birds and rainforest animals every playback. He ceases the horridness, answering the phone to Bent Lewis with a paintbrush in his mouth and the word, ‘Eh?’ Bent Lewis: ‘Hello, is that Bobby? This is Lewis from the +! Gallery’ (pronounced with a big camp yelp – ‘PPLLUUSS!’ – which makes Bobby shit himself) ‘in London. How do you do? I think my cousin has been in touch with you, no? She saw a wonderful painting of yours this morning, and I was wondering if you’ve ever thought about representation, or if you’d be interested in showing me some work perhaps? Your stuff sounds ideal for my opening exhibition …’ Bobby the Artist blinks once or twice, not sure if they’ve got the right number. Cousin? Paintings? Wiping his schnozzle, Bobby stares blankly at the wall and says again, ‘Eh?’ Bent Lewis: ‘Oh yes, sorry, well obviously I need to see some paintings! Let’s not jump the gun … Are you busy next week? I’d love to come up and see your studio – your work sounds
so
fantastic. I could make you a lot of money!’ Bobby the Artist sniffs. ‘Well, the flat’s a bit of a state, like,’ he mumbles, glancing at all the candy wrappers and all the druggy wrappers and splodges of acrylic and paintings and the ballerina/sailor/brownie outfits and the sleepy shoes and wormy fag butts. Bent Lewis: ‘Oh, don’t worry, you should’ve seen Francis Bacon’s studio!’ Suddenly becoming more animated, Bobby leap-frogs off the carpet and asks, ‘You knew Francis Bacon?’ Bent Lewis says, ‘Yes,’ although he actually means no. Back in Clerkenwell, Lewis nudges that book