The Naked Drinking Club (2 page)

Someone asked how many was a good amount to sell, and Anaya replied in what I took to be a German accent, ‘How many’s enough?’

Then Greg told us that he had sold the most on a coastal trip, where he offloaded ten in one house alone. He ended his talk by telling us we would be back in the city by nine thirty at night, leaving us enough time to get drunk.

This all sounded perfect. I didn’t say anything because I didn’t need to. This was right down my street. I knew I could do it.

There were ten paintings, all oils, most of them still drying, which Greg insisted people liked because it made them real. They were all the same size, done on artist boards without a frame, although the company could arrange to have them framed at an extra cost. They were made in Bali by someone with painting skills looking for extra money. We would all start with the same ten paintings each in our folders, and nearby Scotty would be waiting in the car with a whole fresh supply to replace the ones we’d just sold. We were told to be discreet and to move from one house to another as quietly as possible, under no circumstances letting any of the residents see us with our supervisors replenishing our stores. We were selling our paintings as ‘original works of art’. All except the queenie guy, Nigel, who made it known to the group that he didn’t have the stomach for deception and walked out early. After that, Greg spoke more frankly.

‘Look at it this way. This is not illegal. These
are
paintings, look!’ He tapped a canvas. ‘People want pictures to put on their walls. You don’t force your way into their homes. They let you in. How you manage to get in is down to you, there are so many different techniques. But once you’re in, chances are they will buy from you.’

I felt geared up; this looked easy. I was already multiplying paintings by dollars in my head.

‘Listen, somebody painted them ’cause they needed the bucks. And you are selling them ’cause you need them too, and somebody’s buying them ’cause they have the bucks and they like what you’re selling, so where’s the harm in that?’

‘No harm!’ I shouted out, keen to get going.

‘Excellent stuff,’ Greg said to me but smiling at Anaya first. ‘Excellent stuff.’

Anaya brought Greg a beer from the fridge as he moved up a gear.

‘Now then, you need to familiarise yourselves with the actual paintings, and I’m going to start with my personal favourite, and it is my favourite because in my experience it’s always been a great seller. And here it is at number one …’ He swigged his beer before he bent down to pick it up. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Peter Stuger and his beautiful boat composition.’

We looked at it not knowing how to react. Scotty laughed, which broke the ice, so we all managed a round of sniggers.

Anaya reined us in. ‘Yeah, guys, you can laugh but like Greg said, this is a good seller, it’s one of our best paintings.’

‘Where’s Peter Stuger from? You tell them.’ Greg pointed at the older man on the sofa. He had a kind strong face and big hands, and I liked him at once. He was in his mid-thirties by the look of him and we’d already caught each other’s eyes and smiled during the talk. Now he looked embarrassed and rubbed his brow, trying to suppress his laughter.

‘By the way,’ Greg went on, ‘I should introduce you properly. This is Jim, he’s your new supervisor, and you couldn’t melt butter in his mouth. Look at this honest face, folks.’

We all laughed again. I could tell Greg was really enjoying himself now and that the beer helped.

‘Hello, there.’ Jim was shy in front of the group, and spoke in a soft Yorkshire accent.

Greg proclaimed, ‘Peter Stuger is, of course, from Holland. He’s a Dutchman and, like Van Gogh, one of our best painters. And the Dutch love painting boats.’

This was my favourite line so far. I’d done art history at school the year I applied for art college and I didn’t remember anything about the Dutch loving boats.

The picture itself was a mass of dripping oil forming a cluster of old-fashioned boats, which I took to be moored together at a harbour. The main boat, which was moored at the front of the others, had a creamy sail that dripped all the way down the boat through a porthole into the water. There were lots of ropes tying the boats together. The painting looked as though it was done in a matter of minutes, which of course it was. We all stared at it intently, nodding politely like the good pupils we were, as though there was so much more to this lesson than a drunken conman teaching us how to sell shite.

‘Who owns the company, and how is the artwork distributed?’ asked one of the blonde girls.

‘I’ll be coming on to that.’ Greg raised his eyebrows in an ‘and your name is?’ fashion.

‘Karin. I’m from Denmark.’

‘Then you’ll know Peter Stuger?’ came back Greg.

‘Is he for real?’ Karin was such an innocent.

‘He is as real as you make him,’ snapped Frau Anaya, never missing a trick.

‘He’s Dutch, right?’ piped up the other blonde girl.

‘So they say.’ Greg was unfazed by any interjection; instead he just lazily smoked away taking it all in his stride, for all these comments and questions had no doubt been made a hundred times before.

‘Karin and I are from Denmark, not Holland.’

Jim and I suppressed laughter.

‘Trust me, sweetheart, people over here will not know the difference. As far as they are concerned, you are European and Europe is where all great art is from. OK?’

‘OK,’ said the girls in sync.

‘Right, let’s move on to the triptychs,’ said Anaya, over-smiling in an attempt to keep the atmosphere light.

Jim and I had started a non-verbal communication about everything going on: eye-rolling, smiling, head-shaking in disbelief.

‘Scotty?’ Greg gestured to the other paintings against the wall. Scotty, mid-cigarette, gathered three of them up, bounded over and handed them to Greg, taking away the boats.

‘Thanks, mate. Oh, Scotty’s the other supervisor and nobody, and I mean nobody, apart from me of course, can sell more than this fella.’

Scotty took off his baseball hat and lowered it to the group. Anaya encouraged a round of applause which everyone except Jim reluctantly joined in. Greg drank the last of his beer and went on to the next painting.

‘Now this is more your John Constable sort of thing.’ It was a very dull landscape of some watery green hills and a couple of distant trees. ‘It’s naturally very beautiful but there’s more to it. The artist has not been able to capture his subject in its entirety because there’s not enough room on the board, so …’ He bent down and turned round the other two paintings to reveal pretty much the same as the one he’d been talking about, except there was a bigger hill in the background and the start of a distant fence in the second one.

‘He’s created a triptych, which in artistic terms means three, one of three, you see?’ He moved the three paintings together. ‘Hence enabling him to paint all of the countryside before him that he loved so much.’

This was surely the limit, I thought. Who could buy this stuff? I turned to Jim with a look of disbelief but he was already nodding at me, confirming all that Greg was saying to be true.

‘The trick with the trip is to slowly tease the customer with the background to it.’

‘Are you joking? Are we both looking at the same background?’ I couldn’t resist and said it without meaning to. Jim laughed immediately, then Scotty, then the Danish, but the English didn’t really go with it. Anaya and Greg looked at each other again and Anaya took a long slow inhale on her cigarette.

‘Very good,’ she said, as I imagined her in an SS uniform. ‘I think you’re going to do well.’

I tried not to start really laughing and felt told off. Greg went back into relaxed teacher mode.

‘Yeah, like it. Sorry, didn’t get your name?’

‘Kerry.’

‘Kerry. Well, when I say background, I mean, of course, the
story
I told you that led to the creating of two other paintings to join this one. And the beauty of it is, Kerry’ I wanted him to stop using my name and for Anaya to ease off on the staring ‘the beauty is, that if you get it right, nine times out of ten they buy three and not one, which means you can buy us all a drink afterwards.’

Without instruction this time, Scotty took away the landscapes and brought out another two paintings. Greg clicked his fingers, prompting Anaya to go to the fridge to get him a refill.

‘Got two beauties for you now, folks.’ He held two paintings facing away from us. ‘This one,’ he said, turning the one in his left hand round, ‘is a bit bland for me but a lot of older people like it. Two ladies in the field.’

We stared at a canvas made up of largely two shades of green and two small white figures with what I thought were brown hats on.

‘And this one, which some of you might be familiar with already.’ He proudly revealed the painting in his right hand. ‘Australia’s very own Blue Mountains, everyone.’ He showed us a purple blur that could have been painted with a potato. ‘For those of you who have not been in our fair land very long, the Blue Mountains are a big tourist haunt a couple of hours north from here. They’re a large range of mountains and are remarkably blue in appearance, caused, of course, by the foliage covering them.’ I looked over for Jim’s response, but he was already adopting the fake ‘Oh really, is that so?’ look for my benefit.

‘And a big favourite with the oldies,’ added Greg.

Jesus. I panicked for a moment. I hadn’t thought about conning old people, and thought immediately about my grandfather, the one family member I cared about, and the one reason for returning home once my search here was complete. I wouldn’t rip off old people on any account, no matter how desperate I was. Greg’s comment threw me as I’d imagined all the people in the suburbs to be rich and annoying. Scotty did his bit again, giving Greg a chance to get a few good gulps in. He could feel us all looking at him enviously.

‘Sorry, thirsty work all this talking,’ he said, lighting up in
addition
to drinking. I was desperate for a beer and couldn’t wait for the lesson to finish. ‘Now, a portfolio wouldn’t be complete without a couple of experimental pieces of art thrown in.’ He seemed half cut by now, not noticing that some ash had fallen on to a blue mountain.

‘This is abstract. The Chinese favour this stuff, they like it ’cos it’s modern and clean, and they like all that minimalist stuff. Last year I hit a Chinese area, and they just bought in bulk, mate, they just can’t get enough of those bloody abstracts. I sold out the whole bloody car, and some others. And if you can get a Chinese family that have just moved in … bloody gold mine, mate, I’m telling you.’

We all stared in silence at the three abstract paintings. One was a red square in the centre of the board with a background in two halves, half of the board coloured orange, the other half brown. The second had a yellow background with three blue circles overlapping, and the third was basically just a board of fawn with what looked like an oatmeal handkerchief painted over it. Jim was staring ahead in a joke trance with his mouth open, and I burst into laughter.

‘Sorry, I just …’ I said apologetically, trying to contol my giggles.

Anaya deliver me a cold, controlled smile. ‘It’s OK. I was the same. But if you get it right, people buy this. It is Art, after all, Carrie.’

‘Kerry.’ I pulled myself together. ‘It’s Kerry.’

‘Ah, you don’t like Carrie?’

‘Hate it.’

‘Sorry, Carrie, let’s get it right, uh?’ That bitch wouldn’t let up, so I composed myself to shake her off, as I could tell she liked to get at people.

‘Don’t take it personally, mate, Anaya is useless with names.’ Greg tried to soften things again while Anaya outstretched her arms in the ‘I’m innocent’ position.

Jim made a small O with his mouth.

Greg took a quick break in order to finish his second beer and light a new cigarette from the one he was just finishing. As there was only one painting left, I had the feeling that Greg was going to pull something special out of the bag. I wasn’t disappointed.

‘This, my little travellers –’ as he slowly turned the painting round, he began to laugh himself at what he had just said; his laugh went into a cough until he gained control of it – ‘this is something very special. I know I’ve said it before but I really mean special.’

He revealed the last picture, which featured a unicorn drinking from a lake, surrounded by mist, in front of an oriental-looking mountain like you see in pictures of Japanese golf courses.

‘Something for the single ladies of the suburbs. And the bikers love it.’

‘Bikers!’ I laugh-shouted.

‘Don’t knock it, mate.’ Scotty jumped to its defence. ‘Loads of bikers in the some of the suburbs round here.’

I looked to Jim for confirmation of this. He was nodding again.

Greg said, ‘The thing to say is, this art is for everybody. You got that?’

The Danish nodded with complete absence of humour. I was still coping with the biker info.

‘The whole idea with this and all these paintings is – and this is the bottom line, and they love to hear it – We. Bring. Art. To. The. People.’

‘Art for everyone!’ shouted the Frau, rallying the troops.

‘Now let’s all grab a beer for five and come back, when I’ll fill you in on technique with my good man Scotty here.’

Scotty rubbed his hands eagerly, and Anaya threw out the beers.

We all shuffled towards the kitchen area. Scotty lit up a joint on the patio. He gestured to offer it out but nobody was interested. He made gasps of relief as he sucked on it for the benefit of the Danish girls who were predictably impressed. Jim and I drank a beer and got talking.

‘So, you been here long?’ asked Jim.

‘Few weeks. What about you?’

‘Around eight months – seems like nothing, though. Been doing this lark for six months.’

‘What did you do at home?’

‘I was an English teacher.’ He drank from his beer. ‘Far too sensible, was worried I was becoming boring so thought I’d try something completely different.’ He laughed in a self-conscious way. He was an attractive, big, solid man. ‘What about you?’