The Late Hector Kipling

FOR ANNA AND GRACIE

Illness, insanity and death

were the black angels that

kept watch over my cradle,

accompanied me all my life.

Edvard Munch

1 - TATE MODERN, LONDON

2 - 57 NORRIS AVENUE, BLACKPOOL

3 - BOX STREET, BOW, LONDON

4 - J. SHEEKEY'S, ST MARTIN'S COURT, LONDON

5 - GROVE ROAD, BETHNAL GREEN, LONDON

6 - OLYMPUS DESK, HEATHROW AIRPORT

7 - BOX STREET, BOW, LONDON

8 - THE DOODLEBUG GALLERY, BETHNAL GREEN, LONDON

9

10

11

12 - ST THOMAS'S HOSPITAL, LONDON

13

14

15 - BOX STREET, BOW, LONDON

16

17

18 - TATE BRITAIN, PIMLICO, LONDON

19 - WANDSWORTH PRISON, LONDON

TATE MODERN, LONDON

‘So New York was a success?’ I say.

‘New York?’

‘You said the other night that it was a big success and everyone loved you.’

‘Oh, it was a bit special,’ says Lenny, and pulls his coat around him. He’s come out in a long red leather coat – jacket – maybe it’s a jacket. Whatever it is, it’s got a belt, and he looks a fool. ‘New York’s always amazing, though, isn’t it?’

‘I’ve always thought so,’ I say, and think about administering a brutal volley of spiteful little kicks to his pompous, self-satisfied shins.

‘It gets better every year.’

‘Doesn’t it?’

‘I mean, people say that it’s not what it used to be, but you know what, Hec?’

‘What, Lenny?’

‘I regard that as a tautology.’

‘Well, not really. A tautology is—’

‘I mean, what is?’

‘What is what?’ and I’m limbering up for that first important kick.

‘What is
not
what it used to be, if you’re gonna look at it like that? I mean, really, if you think about it?’

‘Hmmm.’

‘I mean you could say that about the potato, or the Pantheon, and I’m sure there’re lots of people who do; but you could say it about the
moon – “It’s not what it used to be” – well, yeah, I suppose, by definition, but you know what? Fuck off! The moon’s not what it used to be? Fuck that right off.’

‘Tautology, though, is when—’

‘So when people say that about New York, it’s just—’

‘Fuck off.’

‘Exactly.’

‘So it was good, then?’

‘Better than ever.’

‘Good, I’m glad.’

‘I mean, there was this show, in Chelsea, couple of galleries down from the Gagosian; new lad, early twenties, first exhibition – fucking phenomenal.’

‘What was it?’

‘Minimalist. Genius, Hec.’

‘Genius?’

‘Total genius.’

‘Like what, then? What’d he done?’

‘He’d flooded the entire space with broken eggs. The walls, the ceiling. Twelve thousand broken eggs. They gave you a pair of galoshes to walk round it. The floor was a-fucking-wash with smashed-up fucking egg.’

‘And that’s minimalist?’

‘Well, isn’t it?’

‘Sounds excessive.’

‘It’s definitely minimalist, Hec. Twelve thousand broken egg whites and yolks, all squished up all over the fucking place. He called it
Miscarriage
er . . .’

‘
Miscarriage
?’

‘
Miscarriage Of Just This
.’

‘Fuck!’

‘Exactly! And the smell!’

‘The Gagosian?’

‘Couple of doors down.’

‘Eggs?’

‘Eggs, Hec, eggs.’

‘You’re right, Lenny ...’

‘
Miscarriage Of Just This.
’

‘Fucking genius.’

Suddenly Lenny stops in his tracks, arrested by the sight of Lichtenstein’s
Whaam!
. He takes a step or two back and begins to nod his head, like a novelty dog. ‘Lichtenstein was forty when he painted this.’

‘So what,’ I say, ‘it’s dung.’

Lenny doesn’t comment upon whether he thinks it’s dung, he just stands there squinting at it, through his tinted specs, as though some other thing is hidden beneath, or above, or just to the side of the only thing that it is – which is tired.

I’ll tell you what: Lenny’s father died when Lenny was twelve. He was torn to slivers at an air show in Lossiemouth. A faulty red helicopter burst into flames, split in half, dropped from the sky and landed on his umbrella; and I’ll tell you what: I hope Lenny isn’t trying to tell me that this reminds him of it.

‘
Whaam!
’ he says, and nods. He takes off his silly little blue-tinted specs and swings them around on his finger. Girls look at him. Women look at him. Middle-aged women, old women, a few men. I look at him, and to say that he’s getting on my nerves doesn’t do it justice; he’s finding footholds on every fucking synapse. Standing there like a rock star in his long red leather coat. The bald get.

We pass through a room of Modiglianis. I’m looking at the skirting board, Lenny’s looking at the lights. Modigliani can bog off. And Giacometti, he’s in there too with his horrible little thin things. Next thing you know, we’re in a dingy little side gallery riddled with huge and gloomy maroon abstracts. I begin to huff and tut, and eventually, and not before time, Lenny asks me what the problem is.

‘Why does Rothko always get his own room?’ I say.

‘I don’t know, Hector,’ say Lenny, ’you tell me, why does Rothko always get his own room?’

‘It’s not a joke, Lenny, I mean it. Why does Mark Rothko always get his own room?’

‘Yeah, Hec, I know.’

Silence. He puts a fist up to his lovely lips and affects a cough. He must think that I’ve finished with him.

‘Lenny, it’s not a joke and it’s not rhetorical. I’m just asking you, plain and simple, man to man, as one artist to another, why does Mark fucking Rothko always get his own fucking room?’

‘Oh, I see.’

‘Well?’

‘Er, well . . .’ and he sets about stroking his cheek as though the answer might be written in Braille on his pale and gorgeous chops. ‘Because he killed himself?’

‘No! No, no, no. Van Gogh fucking killed himself, he doesn’t get his own room.’

‘Sometimes he does.’

‘Only in fucking Amsterdam, or if there’s a retrospective.’

‘Everyone gets their own room if they’ve got a retrospective.’

‘That’s my point.’

‘Well, I don’t know, what the fuck, Hec? Because he’s spiritual?’

I do a little dance. ‘Spiritual? Because he’s spiritual?’ I say. ‘I’m fucking spiritual, but I don’t get my own fucking room.’

‘Maybe if you killed yourself.’

‘Maybe if I killed myself?’

‘Yeah, Hec,’ and he smirks and straightens up his back, like he might have a point, ‘maybe if you killed yourself.’

‘Yeah,’ I say and stick out my gut, ‘or maybe if I killed you.’ And I leave it right there.

Before we’d tipped up at the Tate we’d stopped off at Trafalgar Square so that Lenny could suitably probe and thoroughly fetishize the Fourth – capital letters – Plinth. It’s not like he’s been commissioned or anything; he was doing a just-in-case kind of recce, I suppose. The sky was fat and black, and Nelson, if you could have got a good look at him all the way up there, looked about as unimpressed as I was. Lenny, bless him, paced, frowned, gurned, fingered his chin, fiddled with his specs, and then, just in case I was missing the point, unfolded his fancy two-grand German camera and took a lot of tedious photographs of the space between nothing much and nowhere at all. After two minutes of this posturing fucking nonsense he pulled out a big industrial tape measure and something that looked worryingly like a sextant. I was having fuck all to do with it and wandered off through the filthy rain to scream a little scream against my tongue and gums and stare down the lions.

We move on from the Rothko room, turn a corner, snort at a Leger, howl at a Degas, and that’s when I see it.

I don’t know what it was that made me cry. I don’t think I’ve ever cried in public before, and I know that I’ve never cried at a painting. Apart from my own. But that was in private. And they were tears of despair. Worst of all, the whole fiasco was played out in front of Lenny. I wept in front of Lenny Snook and he shuffled away, well away, to gape at a Matisse, ashamed to be seen with me. I swear to God, I don’t know how all this has come about. Why did I cry? Why did I suddenly buckle like that?

It was quite a spectacle, quite a performance. Some woman (who may or may not have been Eleanor Bron) scuttled across the room to hand me a tissue. I used it up before it had left her hand and she went into her bag for another. At one point I had to lean against the wall. I’m leaning against the wall (Lenny’s already in the doorway) and I realize I’ve woken up the guard, who asks me to step away from the paintings
and make my way to the lobby. In the lobby I’m drawing a small crowd and I’m advised either to leave the building or take myself off to the toilets. I’m in the toilets now, trying to make some sense of it all. I’m having no luck.

Lenny hasn’t come down, I notice. He saw me sobbing in the lobby, I know he did. He was watching me from behind a pillar. My hands were over my face and I saw him through the slits of my fingers. Then, as I made my way to the stairs, I glimpsed him nipping out front for a fag. I assume it was for a fag; I saw one behind his ear. Either that or he’s just gone and fucked off. It wouldn’t be the first time. He fucked off last Thursday, the night he came back from New York. There were the three of us: me, Lenny and our friend Kirk in a back room at Blacks club in Soho. Lenny was telling us about how he’d spent an evening with Jeff Koons, getting pissed on Manhattans, puffing Havanas, exchanging ideas. He put on Koons’s voice and at one point he pulled out a Polaroid of him and Jeff snuggled up in some dark booth. Kirk snored and lolled his head. I questioned the word ‘exchanging’.

‘You know, exchanging,’ said Lenny, ‘like sharing. I told him some of my ideas and he told me some of his.’

‘Ideas about what?’ said Kirk.

‘You know ...’ said Lenny, and me and Kirk couldn’t believe he was going to say it, but he looked like he might, he looked like he might, and then suddenly he did, ‘. . . art.’ He picked up his bottle and took a big swig.

‘Wanker,’ said Kirk, and laughed. I should mention that he laughed. And I should mention that I laughed when I said: ‘So does that mean that now you’ll be nicking work off Koons as well?’

And that’s when he fucked off. Just stood up and walked out of the club, into the night, like a mental head, like a moody fucking get. Like a ponce. It was that ‘as well’ coming after Koons that got him. Good that it got him. I’ll always get him with that one. Always. He’d better get used to it.

So where is he now? Where’s he gone? He can’t walk out on me just cos I’ve gone and got a bit of a monk on over some soft painting in the Tate, can he? It’s a big fag he’s having out there. Why doesn’t he come down? What’s he doing? What’s happened? What’s happening? Why am I crying in a public toilet? And such an ugly public toilet. You’d think they might make an effort, given it’s the Tate. Considering the ubiquity of the lavatory in art, they’re missing a few tricks, aren’t they?

The mirrors are enormous and vicious. I look at my feet, worried that they’re too small. I look at my hands, worried that they’re too fat, too blue. I look at my ears. I look at my chin. Monkey-black hair. Hopeless shoulders. I’ve bought this horrible old Crombie, and I’m wearing it now, and it is – it’s horrible. I’ve been putting it off, but suddenly my eyes catch a glimpse of themselves. All pink and liquid. Squandered. Blunt. And then the face. The face, and then the whole. The whole rotten thing. The whole peculiar thing that I, and others, sometimes refer to as ‘me’. What do I look like? I look like I live on a diet of sand.

There’s the flush of a toilet and a tall, lopsided, foppish-looking fella steps out of a cubicle. I activate the hand dryer and dry my dry hands till they scald. He smiles at me and asks me if I have the time and I tell him that I don’t wear a watch. ‘Oh,’ he says. For some reason I add that I never wear a watch. He asks me why. I tell him that I don’t like to. He asks me why I don’t like to, and I tell him that I just don’t. He asks me if I’m feeling all right. I tell him that I’m feeling just fine. ‘Aren’t you Hector Kipling?’ he says, and I tell him that I am. ‘Thought so,’ he says, ‘I’ve seen your stuff.’

‘My stuff?’ I say.

‘Yeah, your stuff,’ he says and turns on the tap. He begins to splash his face with water and takes no further interest in me, nor I in him. I walk to the door and make my way up the stairs.

Stuff!

After a long search, during which I nod apologies to anyone who’d caught the earlier sob-show, I find Lenny lingering before a Pollock,
specs off, toecaps in the air, hands behind his back, like the Duke of fucking Edinburgh. What the hell is he doing? Looking at it? Looking at what? What the fuck does Lenny Snook know about painting? He couldn’t paint his fucking toenails. What’s he looking for? Detail? Technique? I’ll tell you what he’s looking for: most of the time the only thing he’s looking for is his reflection in the glass. I swear there was one time I caught him gazing into a painted mirror on the back wall of a Vermeer, baffled, totally fucking perplexed because he couldn’t see himself in it. That’s how much Lenny fucking Snook knows about painting. True story. But that never held him back. That never deterred the critics and the judges. Oh no. That never stopped him from making an ’outstanding contribution to art in Britain in the previous twelve months’, did it? No it fucking did not!