The Late Hector Kipling (31 page)

‘I mean is my dead mother enough death for you, Hector? Is it? Or which one will you be wanting to be next? Kirk? Your father? Then will that be enough? Or me? What about me?’

‘Eleni, how can you say such things?’

‘I open my mouth and move my tongue! Because it is true.’

‘It is not true.’

‘You don’t even believe yourself when you say that.’

‘Eleni, this is awful. This is the most awful moment of my life.’

‘Then go and fucking paint!’

‘Stop!’

‘I’m going.’

‘Just don’t get into this taxi!’

‘All there is left for me is to get into this taxi!’

‘Eleni, come back inside!’

‘Hector, goodbye!’

And she throws her bags into the taxi. I hold open the door.

‘Eleni, I love you!’

‘No, Hector, you do not love me! Love resists!’

‘Eleni!’

‘You have not resisted!’ She ducks into the car and sits back.

‘Where to, darling?’ says the driver.

‘Hell!’ screams Eleni. Really screams. Screams like I have never heard her scream. And I have never heard her scream. Not once. ‘Hell!’ she screams again. Really, really screams. The driver fiddles with his meter.

‘Eleni!’ I plead.

‘Just drive!’ she barks. She slams the door and her grief is swallowed by the glass. I feel like she’s shut herself up in some gas chamber. Or shut herself out. Maybe it’s me, who must now inhale this poison. He lets off the handbrake and shifts it into first. I watch as his little brown shoes dance upon the pedals, and the next thing you know the whole package eases off. The back of Eleni’s head – her beautiful Greek head – shrinking with the distance.

I watch it go.

Her go.

The humped taxi, like a fat black orthopaedic shoe, slides away. The orange indicator. The wide left turn. The puff of the exhaust. And then ...

Nothing.

And only that which was there before.

Silence.

In the lift on the way back up, my heart is in my mouth, hanging out over my lips. I poke at it with my thumb. My tongue can’t bear the taste. My brain can’t bear the stink. I take a breath and spit it out. I watch it on the floor and crush it with my boot. The lift’s bell rings. Here I am, on the fourth floor, and in I go. Now here’s a most splendid conversation:

‘Rosa,’ I croak, leaning my head on the bathroom door. ‘Rosa, please, say something.’

Silence.

‘Rosa, let me explain.’

Silence. A turn of the knob. The squeak of the hinges.

‘Rosa, really, let me explain.’

The rug scuffing up on the base of the door.

‘Rosa?’

My feet across the threshold.

‘Rosa?’

Silence. The silence of an empty bath and the last hundred bubbles, bursting against the enamel.

‘Rosa?’ I shout, out into the room, out into space, ‘Rosa? Where are you?’

She is nowhere. Nowhere that I know.

I drift out into the hall and cock my ear to the stairwell. The distant patter of dirty combat boots on stone. The clunk of a Zippo. The twisting of a lock and the slamming of a door.

Idea For a Piece: The main door of the gallery, slammed shut over and over. Ten o’clock till six o’clock, six days a week, twenty-six weeks, over and over, again and again, every ten seconds, opened and then slammed, opened and then slammed. The artist dressed in blue. The door painted white. Call it
Communicating At An Unknown Rate.

The last time I sat on this train, Eleni slept in my lap. I remember how I wanted everyone who passed to see her. To see how pretty she was in sleep. How happy and safe. How happy with me. I smiled at people just to attract their attention, just so they would notice her. I’m not smiling at anyone now, quite the opposite. In fact my radiant contempt must be affecting business at the buffet. No one wants to pass me twice. Can’t blame them. I wouldn’t want to pass me. On the other hand there is nothing I would rather do than pass me. At least then I could leave myself behind. Board another train. Go somewhere better. Be someone else. Perhaps that’s what Monger has perfected. Perhaps he is someone else every few days. What bliss. To lead a thousand lives in the space of one – and then to make a bit of money on the back of it. What’s his game, then?

There was no discourse between Eleni and Rosa. Rosa remained in the bath and Eleni ran into the bedroom. While she packed a couple of bags, I stood in the doorway, scratching my head, unable to utter one word – and the idea of putting two words alongside each other was completely beyond my comprehension. Hence, I was silent. Not one part of me made the smallest sound. Not even my heart, which had stopped and hardened into glass. And even when it shattered, deep inside my breast, and rained down on my bones, even then there was silence. Eleni’s dresses fell into the suitcase like secret parachutes. Even her shoes made no sound. She packed away old diaries, documents, statements,
certificates, a rosary, sunglasses, two toy owls and her favourite cow. All of them silent as they found their place in the hush of her luggage. I felt as though my head were underwater. Under Rosa’s water. Which in turn made no sound. She was obviously not about to step out. And for that I was thankful.

If this was chess I’d simply lay my king on its side and shake the hand of my opponent. But it’s not, and I can’t, and I’m not even sure if my opponent has a hand. I believe he has a fist, but his fist is bloodless. His fist is made of diamonds and tar.

We’re pulling into Warrington. I snap open another lager. I watch an ant as he crawls across my ticket. I flick him into oblivion.

There’s seagull crap all over Dad’s blue Mazda. I ring the bell and peer through the frosted glass for a shape in the hallway. Nothing. I ring again, a silly and erratic sequence of rings that I’ve been doing ever since I was tall enough to reach the bell. I don’t have a set of keys. Never did. There’s a Kentucky Chicken box in Mum’s shrubbery and a parcel in the porch. I should have phoned to tell her what time my train got in. But I didn’t, and now I’m locked out. But that’s all right. I’m too drunk to bother much. In fact I might just be drunk enough to climb on top of the garage and squeeze in through the window of the spare room. Yeah, now I think about it, I’m definitely drunk enough to climb on top of the garage and squeeze in through the window of the spare room. Just let me lie down for a few minutes. Let me just lie here on the floor of the porch for a few minutes and snore beneath this boorish watercolour of Tintern Abbey. There’s fly paper hanging from the lantern. A moth trapped in the letterbox. One of Sparky’s old stools, drying on the lino. Damien would love this space. He could call it
Porch.
He could fill it with seawater and pills, call it
The Logic of Fossils in the Comical and Rococo Arsehole of a Long Distance Lorry Driver Called Balzac.
I don’t know. I’m past caring, I really am. I sleep. I dream. In my dream I’m
asleep, and in that sleep I dream, etc. My brain is dipped in lager and cheese, and when Mum wakes me up I wish that she hadn’t. She wakes me with her foot.

‘Hello, Mum.’

‘Hector!’ she yells, boggle-eyed, scandalized. ‘What on earth are you up to?’

‘What?’

‘What on earth’s going on?’

‘Nothing’s going on, Mum,’ I say, ‘what do you mean what am I up to? I said I’d come home today and I have. Here I am. I was locked out and I fell asleep in the porch. What’s the big deal? What do you mean what’s going on?’

‘I mean why’s your thingy out?’

‘My thingy?’

‘Your thingy’s out,’ she says and nods at my groin.

I look down. I’m wearing a pair of black button-up Levi’s and all the buttons are undone. My green and yellow pants are peeled down to my thighs and sure enough, there it is, my thingy. My poor confused fucking thingy, basking in the dusk. That’s it. That’s definitely it. No more drinking.

As I help her unpack the shopping there’s a long interrogation regarding my bald head and the bruises on my face. I manage to justify more or less everything and then it’s back to my thingy in the porch. This I cannot justify. ‘I must have been dreaming,’ I say.

‘About what?’ says Mum.

‘I have no idea.’

We can visit Dad at seven o’clock. Until then me and Mum sit in opposite chairs wolfing down plates of paella and lettuce. The paella’s full of peas and they roll off my fork till I’m left with nothing but peas. Thirty, forty, perfectly spheroid, perfectly green, chemically shiny, stupidly salty, ignorant peas.

Idea For a Piece: Ten trillion peas packing out the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern. Er ... that’s it.
Peas In Our Time.

‘I thought you were going to go and see Eleni,’ says Mum.

‘I was going to see Eleni, I was, but then you rang and told me about Dad. How can I go and see Eleni when Dad’s lying in hospital?’

‘Have you heard from her?’

I take a breath. I’ve spent most of the journey preparing for this conversation. I’ve been over and over every option. Finally, exhausted by the demands of duplicity and the relentless maintenance of my deceit, I’ve resolved to tell the truth. Every last detail. Well, not everything. There’s no need for me to go into too much detail regarding Rosa. I don’t have to talk about ropes and knives and flambéed nipples. In fact I should just leave Rosa out of it for now. But I’ll tell her everything else. I’ll tell her that Eleni came home, but I won’t explain the circumstances of her departure. But then Mum will want to know about her departure. Well, if I leave out the bit about Eleni actually coming home then I won’t have to get into the whole departure thing. And anyway if I tell her about Eleni coming home then I’ll have to explain why and that means telling Mum that Sofia’s dead, and I’m not sure that I’m up to that right now. Not right after the paella.

‘Well?’

‘What?’

‘I said have you heard from Eleni?’

‘No.’ There we go. Nicely handled.

Mum clears away the plates and shuffles off into the kitchen, her slippers barely leaving the carpet. ‘Sparky’s still not turned up,’ she mutters as she banks the corner out of sight.

‘He will,’ I shout. Though I don’t know why, cos he obviously won’t.

*

Dad is stoned out of his mind. I don’t know what they’ve given him but he looks like William Burroughs, propped up on his pillows, drawling on about the hospital food. Christ, he even sounds like Burroughs.

‘And then they brought me some meringue, but I couldn’t eat it and it was covered in pins and the wool wouldn’t... it was singing that song. It was singing that song again.’

‘Right, Dad.’

And he starts to whistle, but his mouth’s all dry and white and all that comes out are toneless little puffs of breath. ‘So what is that?’ he says.

‘I dunno.’

‘Derek,’ says Mum, placing her hand upon his, ‘don’t keep going on. You’ll tire yourself out.’

He glances over with these new reptilian eyes and stares at Mum’s hairdo. ‘There’s Sparky,’ he says.

‘Dad,’ I interrupt, as Mum looks to the ceiling, ‘Dad, listen, my exhibition went really well. You know that I had that show opening? Well it went really, really well. I’ve got lots of commissions. I’ve written a letter to Michael Parkinson, asking if I can paint him. The National Portrait Gallery have shown an interest in that one. Should get a lot of money for that one. I’ll do it for you, Dad. I know how much you like Michael Parkinson.’ He’s looking at me, but he’s staring straight through me. And guess what, here’s the best part, you know that painting I did of you? Remember when I painted you? Well, it was in the show the other night and someone wants to buy it. And you know how much they want to buy it for, Dad? Eh?’

No response.

‘For forty thousand pounds, Dad. Forty thousand pounds. And I thought that since it’s of you, then some of that should come your way. In fact all of it should go to you. What do you think of that then, Dad? How do you fancy forty thousand pounds?’

Of course there’s not a word of truth in any of this. His pyjama
buttons are undone and there’s a long strip of taped bandage cleaving his blue-and-mustard torso.

‘What do you say, Dad?’

Dad looks at me as though I’m speaking Aramaic and turns to Mum. ‘Who is this?’ he asks her. ‘Is it Mr Chorley? Is it Baldy Chorley, that bingo caller?’

‘No,’ says Mum, ‘it’s Hector. Hector, your son. He’s had a haircut.’

‘Remember when he wa’ having a doo-dah wi’ that Mrs Slatt and he kept fixing it for her to win? It wa’ in the
Gazette,
’bout three years back. He wa’ buggering about wi’ the balls, reading out whatever numbers came into his head, which were always the numbers where Slatt was sat. Remember that?’

‘It’s not Mr Chorley,’ says Mum, ‘it’s our Hector.’ She wipes his nose tube with her tissue. ‘Derek, it’s our Hector. Listen to what he’s saying. Did you hear what he just said?’

No response.

‘It’s me, Dad. It’s Hector. I was just saying, remember that painting I did of you? Well, someone’s buying it.’

‘Ey up,’ says Dad, craning his neck to see behind me, ‘there goes that chair again, off out the door.’ He rests his head back on the pillow. ‘It’s a rum do,’ he says and closes his eyes.

It was a beautiful thing. When we arrived home Mum made us both a cup of tea, set them down on the coffee table and then asked if I would draw her, like I did when I was little. And so I did. And you know what? It’s the finest drawing I’ve ever done, by far. She lolled back in her chair and sipped at her tea. As I unpacked my charcoals and pads she began to weep. I worked fast, scratching at the paper, describing mad, erratic loops and lines, sometimes from the wrist, other times from the elbow. When I tackled her hairdo, it came straight from the shoulder and maybe my lower back. I wet my thumb with spit and smudged every
shadow, one by one, starting with the jaw, ending with the relief of the fringe on the brow. Mum wept the whole way through.

‘You know what this is about, Hector?’

‘What what is about?’ I said, breaking up another stick.

‘It’s all about that settee. All this would never have happened if I hadn’t bought that bloody settee.’

‘Well, you did, Mum, and that’s that. There’s no point in regretting what’s done. Where’s that gonna get you?’ I sharpened the charcoal with my teeth and returned to the eyes, reworking the lashes.