The Late Hector Kipling (26 page)

Lenny picks himself up from the floor and comes at me.

I’ve known Lenny for twenty-six years and he’s never come at me. But here he is, coming at me.

‘Lenny, man, what the fuck!’

He starts slapping me about the head with the slabs of his palms. Well at least he’s not punching me.

‘Lenny, man, what the fuck? Fuck’s all this about?’ I manage to squeal.

‘You’re no fucking help! You’ve never been any fucking help! You’ve never been ANY fucking help! All you think about is you!’ And he keeps on slapping me about the face. Fuck, I don’t need this.

‘Lenny, Lenny, Lenny,’ I say, in between blows.

‘You don’t give a shit about anyone, you twisted fucking get! All you wanna know is whether or not I fucked Rosa, and you only wanna know that cos you wanna fuck her, you don’t give a shit about me, or Brenda, or the piece, or any-fucking-thing else!’

He may have a point there.

‘Lenny, that’s so not true!’

‘All you care about is your fucking self!’

‘Lenny, Lenny, please.’ I’ve got my arms up and I deliver a few slaps of my own until the whole rumpus dwindles into a melee before tailing off into a debacle. Fuck, I’m tired of all these words. Why don’t I just paint all this? ‘Lenny, come on, calm down, I haven’t said anything.’

‘It’s fucking ruined. The show opens in a week and it’s totally fucking annihilated. Ripped to fucking shreds.’ And he collapses back onto the floor into a ball. An almost perfect ball. Difficult, when you’re so tall. Still, he pulls it off.

Idea For a Piece: A black bucket of tears. Real tears. Collect the tears of loved ones. Make loved ones cry enough to fill a bucket. A big black tear-filled bucket in the middle of a white room. Call it
Autumn
.

She’s out there somewhere, thinking. What is she thinking? Rosa, are you thinking what I’m thinking? And what is it? What is this thing we’re
thinking? Or is it just me? Are you thinking of other things? Did it all mean nothing? What did it all mean?

‘So then Kirk starts wiping it down with a cloth.’

‘A wet cloth?’

‘Yeah, a cloth dipped in turpentine.’

‘Idiot.’

Lenny’s sat on Eleni’s piano stool, hitting notes now and again. We’re sharing that last beer.

I tell him about being hit by the car and make up some story about being taken to the hospital by some passing coppers; quite an elaborate story. I give the coppers names and features. I describe the doctor and how I quite fancied one of the nurses. Oh yeah, that’s right, I’m pathetic.

‘So what are you gonna do?’ I say.

‘About the piece?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Well, I’m gonna have to start again – if there’s time – or just forget the whole thing.’ He starts to cry again and I put my arm around him. He feels huge. I’ve never held Lenny before. I’m not sure what to do. When I’ve held crying girls (and I’ve held plenty), I’ve kissed their brows and cheeks, I’ve squeezed their hands and stroked their hair. I can’t be doing any of this with Lenny so I just rock him a little, but that just feels silly and so I stop. ‘Can I stay here for the night?’

‘You can stay here as long as you want, Len.’

I tell him about Monger, and Monger’s story. In an attempt to present some consolation I tell him about Monger’s plan to buy back the settee and that maybe he could bring it back to London, and how the settee might be a possible replacement for the one that Brenda destroyed.

‘But you said that it was fucked. I thought the whole point of your dad being in hospital was that this settee was totally fucking ugly.’

‘The ugly may be beautiful, the—’

‘The pretty never. When are you gonna stop saying that?’

‘When it stops being true. And anyway, my mum and dad’s idea of what’s ugly may not be the same as ours. Maybe it’ll be a fantastic settee.’

‘We’ll see,’ says Lenny and releases himself from my embrace. He stands up and pulls on his jacket.

‘Where’re you going?’

‘I have to go down to the Tate to sort things out.
Domesticated Goose Chase
is arriving from Amsterdam. That’s if Brenda hasn’t intercepted it.’

‘Here, take a set of keys,’ and I hand him mine.

‘Thanks, Hec,’ and he smiles at me. A beautiful smile. ‘Sorry for hitting you.’ What a beautiful man he is, this friend of mine, this Lenny Snook. What a gentle soul. And what a twat sometimes. But not now, not now. God bless him.

I heat up some sardines and boil some broccoli. There are a few cherry tomatoes from last week but they’ve gone a bit soft. No matter, I bung them on the plate with a smear of mustard. Some kind of peace has descended.

I take a page of sheet music and begin to make a list of the things I should say to Eleni. This has gone on long enough and I’m about to ring her, but I can’t afford to be an idiot about it. I number the issues, one to ten:

I stare at the page and then, after some careful consideration, obliterate the list with a fit of heavy grey squirls. My stomach is filled with dead butterflies and my left thigh is beginning to fizz.

The telephone rings. I’ll just have to play it by ear. If it’s Eleni, my love, at last, I shall just speak from the heart, for the heart is no fool. Except, of course, for those times when it is the biggest of all fools. Whatever. I pick up the phone.

‘Hector?’

‘Yes?’

‘Hey, Hector, it’s Rosa.’

‘Rosa!’ I say, nearly falling off my chair. And then I say it again, ‘Rosa!’

‘Hey, what are you up to?’

‘Erm . . .’ I look around the room. For what, I don’t know. ‘Nothing much. Just making a shopping list.’

‘How ya doin’, angel?’

‘I’m doing fine, chuck.’

She calls me angel, I call her chuck. Such is the language of love. Well not love, but you know what I mean.

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah. Er . . . how are you?’

‘Oh, I’m just hanging out. You know . . . I just bought a new little frog skull, so I’m painting it green.’

‘That’s nice.’ What a girl.

‘Have I caught you at a bad time?’ says Rosa.

‘No, it’s a good time. A very good time.’

‘I just called to say thank you for your sweet note and . . . and . . .’

‘De rien.’

‘What?’

‘I said “de rien”.’

‘What?’

Fuck, this is going terribly. ‘It means “that’s nothing” in French, “not at all” . . . well not “not at all”, that’s “pas de tout”, which means the same thing. It means “don’t mention it”.’ Fuck, this is all so fucked.

‘Well, listen,’ says Rosa, ‘I think maybe we need to talk.’

‘Oh yeah, we should talk.’

‘I mean – like you said in your note – it’s unthinkable that we won’t see each other again.’

‘Unthinkable,’ I say.

‘Yeah. So . . . you wanna meet up?’

‘Oh yeah.’

‘You wanna meet up right now?’

‘Oh yeah,’ I say.

‘Yeah?’ she says, a little excited.

‘Yeah, yeah,’ I say, a little excited myself.

‘OK, why don’t I come round in like an hour?’

‘Round?’

‘Lenny told me you live in my part of town.’

‘You’ve spoken to Lenny?’

‘The other night at the show, he said that you lived nearby.’

‘Oh yeah, nearby.’

She asks me where I live and I give her the address. She says that she’ll be over in an hour and I see no way of contesting such an announcement and say’ Fine’ and ‘Great’ and put down the phone. She’ll be over in an hour.

‘Fine. Great!’ I say to the ceiling, ‘Over in an hour.’

‘Fine,’ says the ceiling.

‘Great,’ says the door.

I light a cigarette, and smoke it as fast as any cigarette has ever been smoked. I light another one and try to get the time down. I dunno, it’s close, you’d need a stopwatch. I pace up and down the room, and then around the room hugging the corners, a mad rabble of possibilities all barking out their bids as my brain turns into the floor of the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

There’s nothing in the room to imply the presence of Eleni. I mean there are a hundred things, but nothing overtly feminine that might give the game away to a stranger. We were never one of those couples who populate their home with photos of themselves. That’s one of the things I loved about her. I mean love about her. I only mean loved, in the past tense, meaning when I first met her. One of the things I loved about her when I first met her. And still do. I still do love her, really love her, for not wanting to populate our home with photos of ourselves. There’s her piano, of course, but that could be mine. There’s her coat on the back of the front door but I can put that into the bedroom.

Christ, the bedroom! The bedroom’s full of Eleni. Her clothes, her shoes, her hats and bangles. Her books are all in Greek. Her collection of owls and cows all lined up on the purple shelves. There’s a photo of Yiorgos and Sofia on the wall by the window, and on the wall above the bed there’s a charcoal sketch, naked and alive, her eyes wide and rich with trust. I drew it two hours after our first kiss. I pace around the room, bouncing off the walls like a lost bluebottle. Fucking hell, Hector lad, what are you doing? Don’t do it. Don’t bring Rosa into this bedroom. Don’t fuck Rosa Flood. Do not bring Rosa Flood into this room and fuck her.

‘Fuck her in the kitchen,’ says the ceiling.

‘Fuck her on top of the piano,’ says the door.

In the bathroom I pile all Eleni’s soaps and creams into an old rucksack. There’s no way I’ll be able to keep Rosa out of the bathroom. I can lock the bedroom and say it’s a dump room, tell her that the settee’s a
sofa bed, but how the fuck am I gonna keep her out of the bathroom? Combs, tweezers, ducks, sponges, perfumes, tampons, lipsticks, toothbrush. All of them into the bag. It’s a disgraceful obliteration.

I can’t do this. When she rings on the bell I’ll go down to meet her. I’ll say I’ve got the builders in, I’ll say there’s been a small fire and maybe we should just go for a coffee. I just can’t do this to Eleni. I mean I’ve already done it, but that was a one off. A lapse of will. Think about it, Hector. Just fucking think about it, you piece of dried-out old crap. Eleni’s mother is dying. Really, really dying. Not dying like people die in films or in books. Dying in real life. Proper dying. Eleni’s watching her fade. Eleni’s holding Sofia’s cooling blue hand and I’m fucking some whacked-out American child poet. No, no, no. There is no way that this can continue. There is no way on God’s earth that I will allow this treason to continue.

‘And forty Camel Lights,’ I say, placing the basket on the counter. I’ve got three bottles of Rioja in there as well. ‘In fact, make that sixty.’

‘I only have them in tens,’ says Sergio, the old, silver-haired Italian rake.

‘Whatever, give me six. It all goes down the same hole – as my father used to say.’

‘Same hole,’ he repeats as he raises one grubby grey eyebrow, making it sound rather ribald.

Used to say? What am I talking about? He still says it. He’s not dead. ‘All goes down the same hole,’ he says, has always said, will always say. He’s probably saying it right now as some nurse spoons Angel Delight and gravy down his lovely freckled neck.

I’m having difficulty standing in one spot. My thigh is fizzing again and my legs seem hell-bent on walking. They haven’t discussed this with me, but they seem to have made their own decision. Fair enough. Who am I to dictate the will of my lower half? I pace over to the bread display and look at the bread for a long time. I’m not sure what I’m looking
at? What is bread? And what are these? What are these things in jars? Herrings, it says on the label, but what, or who, are herrings? And why?

‘Is that all?’

I turn around. ‘What?’

‘The wine and sixty Camel Lights? Is that all?’

‘Er . . .’

‘Yes?’

‘And some of those,’ I mumble, pointing at the condoms behind him.

His face breaks open in a broad bright smile, all gold teeth and basil. ‘Avanti!’ he yells.

‘What?’

‘It is the name of the condom.’

‘Yes, that one.’

‘
Andare avanti! Andare avanti!
’ he shouts as he tosses them into my bag with great gusto. ‘It means for you in English, I think, how you say – go for it, my old son!’ and he winks at me like an old pantomime pirate.

‘Ah yes,’ I say, for I seem to remember Eddie Waring yelling such a thing when they held the grand final of
It’s An International Knockout
in Blackpool, when I was a kid.

I pay in a hurry and beat a retreat to the door. ‘Go for it!’ he screams after me as I run out onto the street, appalled. ‘Go for it, my old son!!’

As I reach the corner of Box Street I see a dirty red truck pulling up outside my door. Two men jump out, open up the back, and begin to manoeuvre a huge beige battered and ugly settee onto the pavement. It’s difficult not to think of childbirth. I’m Hector Kipling and I have this voice in my head screaming, ‘Push! Push! Push!’