The Naked Drinking Club (11 page)

‘No, no, we promise to behave,’ said Dick Two, pulling up a chair for his feet.

I pulled out the ladies in the field.

‘An absolute classic!’ applauded Hugo. I remained looking relaxed and moved slowly to give myself time to work out what to do. I had no idea why I didn’t leave and spare myself the effort of trying to get them to like and want what I had, other than I was becoming addicted to the risk of losing and the challenge of winning – and the realisation that it was me I was trying to sell to people.

‘Sorry, I can’t let the girl go on; I’ve got to help her out here,’ said Dick One.

‘What?’ I made myself look as though I was enjoying their game as much as they were enjoying mine.

‘This is Robin Bullivant, one of Sydney’s most up-and-coming young painters.’

I gulped my wine. ‘Yeah, really?’ I turned to Robin. She was a fairly attractive woman, perhaps a few years older than me, with cropped blonde hair and glasses. ‘Great. Are you currently exhibiting? Sorry, I don’t know anything about the Sydney scene. I haven’t been here long.’

‘Yes, I am actually, in Paddington. Do you know the Signs Gallery?’

‘Nope, sorry. Like I said, I’ve only just kind of got here.’

‘Pleeease, can we see more of your terrible paintings?’ begged Dick Two again. He had dry white bits in the corner of his mouth.

‘Well, I do have to sell some at the end of the day. It’s my living and you’re just blatantly taking the piss.’ Although I was direct I didn’t lose the casual relaxed tone.

‘Did you pick these up in Bali on the way over?’ asked the woman who had wanted to leave earlier. I took off my cagoule as a bead of sweat ran down the side of my face.

‘No, I didn’t actually. I painted them.’ I drank more from my wine, and took a cigarette Robin had offered to me, allowing them time to laugh then feel the silence afterwards as they realised what I’d said. I was cranking up, I had found some direction. I stepped purposefully over to the folder and dragged heavily on my Marlboro.

‘Do you honestly think I like trying to get rid of this shite? Of course not, but I’m an artist and I have to make a living.’

‘Seriously?’ asked Robin.

‘What do you think? I mean, look at this stuff.’ I pulled out the unicorn drinking by the lake. They erupted, except for Robin and the couple who wanted to pick up Max from the wife’s parents. ‘It’s a fuckin’ unicorn, for fuck’s sake.’ I had them howling. ‘But I’ll tell you something, it sells.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ said Hugo. ‘Not round here, please. Maybe over in Redfern.’ I didn’t know where Redfern was. ‘So, is this a tourist rip-off thing or something? I mean, Nick’s right, they’re from Bali or Hong Kong, yeah?’

‘It’s a long story,’ I said, finishing my wine and wondering what my long story was going to be.

‘Sit down, sit down.’ Nick slapped a seat next to him and Robin. ‘Tell us all about it, wee travelling lassie.’

‘That’s a really good Scottish accent by the way,’ I said, toasting him with my empty glass and winking at Robin.

‘More wine?’ asked Dick Two.

‘Why not? It’s Sunday.’ I smiled at the gathering. Then I continued, directing most of my spiel at Robin and at Max’s parents, who seemed to be the dullest of the bunch. ‘No,
seriously.
I graduated from Edinburgh College of Art last year.’ I felt much more confident out of my cagoule.

Robin said, ‘Oh OK. In?’

I could see she was genuinely interested and not doubting my credentials in the slightest. ‘Oh, fine art, painting mostly.’ I worried that it was wrong to say ‘painting mostly’ and that ‘fine art’ should have covered it.

‘Right, right. I also did fine art, but I graduated four years ago now.’

‘Sydney?’ I presumed they had an art school in Sydney.

‘Mmm.’ She nodded and smiled. I tried to ignore Nick unravelling a small piece of folded paper, which I knew would be coke. He fumbled around, spilling a little, mopping it up with his finger and sucking it.

‘Nick! Come on, eh?’ Hugo gestured to me. I looked up, pretending just to notice.

‘No, it’s fine, really, it’s totally all right, go ahead.’ I turned back to Robin, my only real hope.

‘So you were saying, you graduated,’ she prompted.

‘Yes, I graduated but my trouble was—’

‘Kerry?’ Nick offered me the first line. There were six chopped out on a table mat with pictures of different kinds of fish. This surprised me, given that Max had to be picked up from his grandparents.

I sniffed it up my right nostril, for only the third time in my life. Robin went next.

‘You were saying?’ she asked when she’d finished and passed the mat on.

‘Yes. You see, my father was actually a famous artist.’ I offered Robin and the others a Benson & Hedges. They all declined in favour of Marlboro and Silk Cut.

I scanned the area for ideas of my father’s name. I thought about the child called Max, waiting on his mum and dad. Then I thought about
Mad Max
and how it starred Mel Gibson who was Australian, then I put Mad and the ax from Max together and I formed Maddox which sounded like an artist. In fact, there was an artist called Conroy Maddox who was part of a surrealist group of British painters. I remembered him from sixth-year art studies, the one subject that
kept
me at school for my final year. The discovery of the name excited me and caused my heart to pound as my brain raced for another name which was to be his second, which had to go well with the first but it had be quick; I mustn’t take too long, otherwise I would give myself away.

On the table was a lighter with a Harley-Davidson on it, and so my father was named.

‘Maddox Davidson. He was part of a group of Scottish painters from the sixties. No?’

‘No, doesn’t ring any bells.’

‘Well, he was very well thought of. Not by me, though.’ I added some criticism of my father for authenticity.

‘So it’s in the blood, then?’ asked Nick, grinding his teeth.

‘Must be. Unfortunately it’s not the only thing, though.’ I tilted my wine glass to the side. Some of them nodded like the suckers they were becoming. ‘Yep, unfortunately my father died a penniless drunk.’

‘Oh no, that’s so sad,’ said the thinner of the two thin girls, the one with the lipstick and the sunglasses.

‘Yep, everything we had, all the fortune he’d acquired, the lot, all gone. He was just mad, destructive. He got called Mad Maddox, that’s how Edinburgh knew him.’ I was really pushing it now, surely.

‘So when was that, then?’ asked Robin sincerely, pulling her knees up under her chin and wrapping her arms round her legs.

‘In my final year at art school. He didn’t even make my graduation show.’ I quickly scanned the group to see if anyone was going to pick me up on ‘show’. I didn’t know if one had an art show or not.

‘So you decided to get away and start afresh. I can understand that.’ Hugo spoke slowly, trying tentatively to guess my life story.

I nodded to encourage him. ‘I was tired of living in my father’s shadow. He was a very powerful character and extremely well thought of on the British art scene. I mean, he was a terrible father, but a great painter.’

‘Maddox Henderson,’ muttered Robin.

‘Maddox Davidson,’ I corrected her. Nick laid out another batch of lines.

‘What sort of stuff did he paint?’

I should have prepared myself for Robin’s question but I was concentrating on Nick chopping out another six lines. It felt like seconds ago since he was chopping out the last lot. How long would this go on for? How was I going to tie in my father’s death with me being here trying to flog a group of well-educated people some tacky piece-of-shit paintings for a couple of hundred dollars? One thing at a time. Right now, I had to explain what sort of stuff he painted.

On the table were the remains of some cantaloupe, which made me think of antelope.

‘One of his most famous pieces of work centred round his trip to Kenya, in the late fifties, where he photographed antelope, which he later worked with on his return to the UK. The antelope period was fairly abstract. I mean, he was an abstract painter, drifted into it after the Kenya trip.’ I lit up another cigarette for something to do and to cover up the panic at the end of each new bullshit sentence.

‘Really?’ asked Robin, while the others listened attentively to my increasingly odd story.

‘He was really a surrealist at heart.’ Absolute silence prevailed. ‘But became abstract for a while.’ Oh my God, I thought. Is it fucking possible to be surrealist and then
a bit
abstract for a while? Did I say a bit abstract? Or just abstract? Because a bit is very poor.

‘Right.’ Robin kept nodding. ‘Sounds a bit confusing.’

Acknowledge confusing, I thought. Don’t deny confusing, you’ll only look as though you’re being defensive and that will convey dishonesty.

‘Extremely confusing, that was him, and that was life with him.’ I felt clever for building on confusing and making something of it rather than letting it bring me down.

‘Pretty amazing story.’ Dick Two was still with me.

I took another line, this time up the left nostril. I didn’t want to use too much of the right, I wanted to balance it with the left. Also, I had turned left out of the phone booth and that had brought me here, which was where I was meant to be for some reason, so left is good, I thought, hoovering up.

‘Not being funny or anything, but your dad is this great
painter
in Scotland, yeah?’ Fucking Nick was on to something.

‘Yeah.’ Now I’d joined the nodders.

‘Well, how come you’re painting this shit?’

I took the longest drag of my cigarette I could possibly manage in order to stall. ‘The Girl From Ipanema’ stuck on ‘looks straight ahead, not at me’, which I took as a sign, which reminded me that Robin had an exhibition at the Signs Gallery in Paddington. Which made me think about Paddington Bear, my childhood favourite, which made me think of Paddington’s favourite food, which was marmalade sandwiches, which reminded me of my poor old granddad who lived on marmalade sandwiches before he moved to the home, which made me feel sad, which I feared I would be unable to smoke off as it was exacerbated by the Santana CD that Nick had just put on. I felt myself slipping into a rare melancholy and I wanted to hold Robin’s hand. Instead, I attempted to answer the question.

‘Well, I wanted to get far away from Scotland and where I was from and all the reminders of my family name. I have a brother out here, so I decided to follow him and start a life here.’ That explained the personal journey. ‘In terms of my work, I want nothing more than to exhibit here in Sydney, but I’m a long way off that right now because this is just the start for me.’ Nodding all round. ‘Incidentally, my brother is a sculptor.’

‘Cool,’ said Robin.

My pathological dislike of people who said ‘cool’ brought me momentarily out of my depressive slump.

‘My brother and I and a couple of his mates, who’re painters as well, want to hire a big studio down by the docks to work in, but it’s so pricey and I’ve got to pay rent where I’m living, so I decided to do some basic stuff to earn me some cash while I work on my real art.’

Fucking brilliant, I thought. But my made-up story, I noticed, was as sad and difficult as my true life, which I regretted. I could, after all, have made things a little better and happier in my fantasy life. I was battling against ‘Samba Patey’, which Nick had turned up with a remote control from
where
he was sitting on the patio. The wine tasted like apple juice that I couldn’t stop drinking to quench my thirst. My larynx was numbed out from the coke. I must pace myself and not bombard them with too much of my sad fantasy life, I thought. I looked down for a while, feeling the music, but my shoes made me sad. I looked under the table at the other shoes on display; the others mostly wore flip-flops, which seemed happier.

Then the thin woman spoke for the first time in ages.

‘But there are other paintings like this going round the suburbs. My cousin’s got some; she’s become a real westie.’

Her boyfriend and the other thin girl sniggered.

‘Westie. What’s that?’ I asked.

‘It’s someone that lives in a daggy part of town and dresses really daggy, and like, I suppose, well … What would you say, Rod?’

‘Common, I suppose. The pommies would say common.’

Oh, please, not the colonial jargon coming from some rich city-boy twat, I thought, stubbing out my cigarette with regret.

‘Yeah, common, you know, white patent shoes, really westie.’

‘Schemer.’

‘What?’

‘I think you mean schemer – that’s what we say in Edinburgh.’

‘Schamer.’ Robin struggled with its pronunciation.

‘Schemer, yeah. So your cousin’s a schemer?’

‘Yeah, she is, and a couple of summers ago some people came round like you and sold her some tacky picture of the Blue Mountains, or something.’

‘Right.’ I overnodded.

‘So, is this an organisation? That’s what Penny’s asking,’ said the boyfriend. Which was a real shame because I was banking on taking all the praise for the paintings and the idea that there must be a market for them out here, away from the city.

‘Yeah, it is an organisation called ART, it’s based in Sydney, and me and the other painters use the studio space they have
to
paint in, and they supply that and the materials, and we bang them out very quickly – the same eight or ten scenes that are recycled with each group working there. Then we go round trying to sell.’

They looked blank.

‘It’s all a means to an end for the time being.’

That was it. I was spent. It took all my powers of concentration to hammer that out under the coke, which was making me feel increasingly withdrawn and in need of silence from all talk.

This was only the third time I’d taken coke, the night in the Naked Club being the second. The first time I tried it, I was nineteen and worked in a hotel. The head gardener, Dougie, let me try some at the end of my last day. We sat in the greenhouse listening to Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s ‘Two Tribes,’ and Jerry, whose slight coke habit I hadn’t noticed until that day, explained how close we were to nuclear war with Russia. Then we hugged and I got on my bike a bit horny and cycled home with great vigour.