‘Well,’ he said, ‘you’ve never asked about the client.’
‘I didn’t want to know. Jance, I swear to God, I nearly died.’
He chuckled, not really understanding. He was in Zurich, sounded further away still. ‘I knew Joe already had a couple of Voores,’ he said. ‘He’s got some other stuff too – but he doesn’t broadcast the fact. That’s why he was perfect for Herbert in Motion.’
‘But he was talking about not wanting to be reminded of the suicide.’
‘He was talking about why the painting was there.’
‘He thought it must be a message.’
Jance sighed. ‘Politics. Who understands politics?’
I sighed with him. ‘I can’t do this any more.’
‘Don’t blame you. I never understood why you started in the first place.’
‘Let’s say I lost faith.’
‘Me, I never had much to start with. Listen, you haven’t told anyone else?’
‘Who would I tell?’ My mouth dropped open. ‘But I left a note.’
‘A note?’
‘For my boss.’
‘Might I suggest you go retrieve it?’
Beginning to tremble all over again, I went out in search of a taxi.
The night security people knew who I was, and let me into the building. I’d worked there before at night – it was the only time I could strip and replace the canvases.
‘Busy tonight, eh?’ the guard said.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Busy tonight,’ he repeated. ‘Your boss is already in.’
‘When did he arrive?’
‘Not five minutes ago. He was running.’
‘Running?’
‘Said he needed a pee.’
I ran too, ran as fast as I could through the galleries and towards the offices, the paintings a blur either side of me. Running like Herbert, I thought. There was a light in my superior’s office, and the door was ajar. But the room itself was empty. I walked to the desk and saw my note there, still in its sealed envelope. I picked it up and stuffed it into my jacket, just as my superior came into the room.
‘Oh, good man,’ he said, rubbing his hands to dry them. ‘You got the message.’
‘Yes,’ I said, trying to still my breathing. Message: I hadn’t checked my machine.
‘Thought if we did a couple of evenings it would sort out the Rothko.’
‘Absolutely.’
‘No need to be so formal though.’
I stared at him.
‘The suit,’ he said.
‘Drinks at Number Ten,’ I explained.
‘How did it go?’
‘Fine.’
‘PM happy with his Voore?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘You know he only wanted it to impress some American? One of his aides told me.’
‘Joseph Hefferwhite,’ I said.
‘And was he impressed?’
‘I think so.’
‘Well, it keeps us sweet with the PM, and we all know who holds the purse-strings.’ My superior made himself comfortable in his chair and looked at his desk. ‘Where’s that envelope?’
‘What?’
‘There was an envelope here.’ He looked down at the floor.
I swallowed, dry-mouthed. ‘I’ve got it,’ I said. He looked startled, but I managed a smile. ‘It was from me, proposing we spend an evening or two on Rothko.’
My superior beamed. ‘Great minds, eh?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Sit down then, let’s get started.’ I pulled over a chair. ‘Can I let you into a secret? I detest Rothko.’
I smiled again. ‘I’m not too keen myself.’
‘Sometimes I think a student could do his stuff just as well, maybe even better.’
‘But then it wouldn’t be his, would it?’
‘Ah, there’s the rub.’
But I thought of the Voore fake, and Joe Hefferwhite’s story, and my own reactions to the painting – to what was, when all’s said and done, a copy – and I began to wonder…
Glimmer
This is the way the sixties ends.
Someone told you Anita’s a witch. You can believe it. When you ask her: ‘Black or white?’ she says: ‘Black.’ So you don’t put any milk in her coffee. She tips some of it on to the carpet, leaving room for a measure of JD. Then she goes to find Keith or Brian. Or somebody.
You screw the top back on the bottle, stepping around the coffee patch. The floor accepts this latest insult, this new recruit to its wash of…
Wash of what? Come on, you’re the writer here. You need to describe that carpet, keep the metaphor going. ‘Recruit’ because the floor looks like a battlefield. Original carpet colour: raw liver. Not much of that on view beneath the layered effluvium of trodden crisps, sandwich crusts, paper bags, butt ends, spent matches, roaches, chocolate wrappings. The drinks cans, the bottles, the music papers and magazines, autographed photos, flash-bulbs, envelopes and tape reels.
(How much of this do you need?)
Look there: beside a cigarette packet – three crumpled balls of paper. Lyric sheets. Let’s pick up one of those, unravel it. A rough draft, just a few lines really, searching for an internal rhyme. At the top, the words ‘Tea and Sympathy’ underlined, followed by a double question mark: the song’s working title.
The band photo: might be worth something to the groupies outside. Except most of them have gone further: their bodies are their autograph books. They trade stories of scenes they’ve been part of, tales you’d have to tone down even for the Sunday scandal-sheets. It’s four in the morning now, but you can bet there’ll still be a huddle outside the studio. Sometimes someone takes pity, gives orders for hot tea to be dispensed, with or without the sympathy. Four o’clock and London feels like a backwater. There’s a man seated on the floor in the corner. He’s asleep. He was asleep twelve hours ago. Twice now you’ve checked he’s still breathing. Thin grey hair, curdled beard, clothes from California. He’s a writer too, only he’s more famous than you. His first novel made him rich. He’s been working eight years on a follow-up. When he was last awake, you interviewed him for your piece.
‘This’, he told you, ‘is the beginning of the negation of a generation. The cusp of devilment, my friend, seizing the day and wringing its neck. All God’s children got wings, but only acid has the flight schedule. You have the look of a smoker: give me a cigarette.’
You’d seen him described once as ‘a lost generation guru’. More than one meaning there, friend.
Where did they come from, these people? They seemed to attach themselves to the band for hours, days, weeks. They seemed to do so with ease. But the core of the band… you’ve yet to see anyone penetrate that. Like there’s some inner sanctum, someplace no one else is allowed. That’s what you want your piece to penetrate; yours would be the last word, the defining statement. This was the deal you’d made with yourself.
Biography: born working class; local secondary modern; art college and rhythm guitar in a couple of groups. Then you’d written your four angry plays and they’d become a quartet, a success on the London stage, now touring the provinces. Nobody got all the jokes; nobody got all the anger.
The thing is: you’re not angry now. But anger is what everyone wants from you. You’ve written five hundred words on the band, only another four and a half thousand to go. And there are girls outside who would sleep with you for your mere proximity to something they can’t have. And there’s a man asleep in the corner who earns more for a public lecture than you did for your first two plays. And as he told you, he lectures off the top of his head. The head you’re itching to kick, but not in an angry way…
And here’s Anita again, and she’s saying: ‘You’re my chauffeur, darling.’ Handing you some keys, she pecks your cheek, her eyes smeared black. You ask her what your name is, and she laughs.