Paint. The art of scam. (36 page)

‘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.

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.