They brought the clocks round to the house because he couldn’t really be left wandering around the ships unattended.
“After the war, he was disappointed that his supply of ships’
clocks dropped off. He liked the shape of these clocks, and it was not much fun going back to the fixing of mantelpiece clocks for the neighbours. Eventually he asked why there were so few ships coming in and was told that the war had finished three years ago.”
“Oh,” said Uncle Jimmy. “Who won, then?”
Matthew’s father had for some reason found this story vastly amusing, but Matthew thought: poor Uncle Jimmy, and remembered those Japanese soldiers who had come out of the jungle twenty, thirty years after the end of the war. Presumably they knew who won, or did they?
42
Matthew Gets Ideas from a Blank Canvas He unlocked the door of the gallery, removing the notice which said Back in half an hour. Surveying his desk, from which he had earlier cleared the day’s mail, he realised that there was not much to do that morning. In fact, once he thought about it, there was nothing at all. He was up to date with his correspondence, such as it was; he had paged through all the catalogues for the forthcoming auctions and knew exactly which pictures he would bid for. There were no invoices to send out, no bills to be paid. There was simply nothing to do.
For a few moments, he thought of what lay ahead of him.
Would he be doing this for the rest of his life – sitting here, waiting for something to happen? And if that was all there was to it, then what exactly was the point? The artists whose work he sold were at least making things, leaving something behind them, a corpus of work. He, by contrast, would make nothing, leave nothing behind.
But was that not the fate of so many of us? Most people who made their way to work each day, who sat in offices or factories, doing something which probably did not vary a lot –
pushing pieces of paper about or moving things from one place to another – these people might equally well look at their lives and ask what the point was.
Or should one really not ask that question, simply because the question in itself was a pointless one? Perhaps there was no real point to our existence – or none that we could discern –
and that meant that the real question that had to be asked was this: How can I make my life bearable? We are here whether we like it or not, and by and large we seem to have a need to continue. In that case, the real question to be addressed is: How are we going to make the experience of being here as fulfilling, as good as possible? That is what Matthew thought.
He was dwelling on this when he saw Angus Lordie walk past, carrying a parcel. On impulse, Matthew waved and gestured to him to come in.
“I was on my way to Big Lou’s,” Angus said. “And you?”
“Going nowhere,” said Matthew. “Sitting. Thinking.”
Matthew Gets Ideas from a Blank Canvas 43
“About?”
Matthew waved a hand in the air. “About this and that. The big questions.” He paused. “Any news of Cyril?”
Angus shook his head. “In the pound,” he said. “It makes my blood boil just to think of it. Cyril will be sitting there wondering what on earth he did to deserve this. Have people no mercy?”
“They used to try animals for crimes,” said Matthew thoughtfully. “Back in medieval times. I read something about it once.
They had trials for pigs and goats and the like. And then they punished them. Burned them alive.”
Angus said nothing, but Matthew realised that he had touched a raw nerve and changed the subject. He gestured to the parcel that Angus was carrying.
“That’s a painting?”
“It will be,” said Angus. “At the moment it’s just a primed canvas. There’s a man down in Canonmills who does this for me. I can’t be bothered to make stretchers and all the rest.”
“Well, don’t leave it lying about,” said Matthew. “It might be picked up and entered for the Turner Prize. You know the sort of rubbish they like. Piles of bricks and unmade beds and all the rest.”
“But they wouldn’t even consider this,” said Angus. “Although it’s only a primed canvas, it comes too close to painting for them.”
Matthew smiled. An idea was coming to him.
“Antonin Artaud,” he muttered. He looked up at Angus. “You know something, Angus. I would like to try to sell something of yours. I really would.”
“You know that I don’t sell through dealers,” said Angus.
“Even a semi-decent one like you. Why should I? No thank you, Mr Forty Per Cent.”
“Fifty,” corrected Matthew. “No, I’m not asking for any of your figurative studies. Or even those iffy nudes of yours. I’m thinking of something that wouldn’t involve you in much effort, but which would be lucrative. And could make you famous.”
“You’re assuming that I want to be famous,” said Angus. “But 44
Artaud’s Way Proves to Be an Inspiration actually I can’t think of anything worse. People taking an interest in your private life. People looking at you. What’s the attrac-tion in that?”
“It’s attractive to those who want to be loved,” said Matthew.
“Which is a universal desire, is it not?”
“Well, I have no need to be loved,” snorted Angus. “I just want my dog back.”
It was as if Matthew had not heard. “Antonin Artaud,” he said.
“Who?” asked Angus.
14. Artaud’s Way Proves to Be an Inspiration This was something that Matthew knew about. “Antonin Artaud,” he pronounced, “was a French dramaturge.”
Angus Lordie wrinkled his nose. “You mean dramatist?”
Matthew hesitated. He had only recently learned the word dramaturge and had been looking for opportunities to use it.
He had eventually summoned up the courage to try it on Big Lou, but her espresso machine had hissed at a crucial moment and she had not heard him. And here was Angus making it difficult for him by questioning it. Matthew thought that a dramaturge did something in addition to writing plays, but now he was uncertain exactly what that was. Was a dramaturge a producer as well, or a director, or one of those people who helped other people develop their scripts? Or all of these things at one and the same time?
“Perhaps,” said Matthew. “Anyway . . .”
“I don’t call myself an arturge,” Angus interrupted. “I am an artist. So why call a dramatist a dramaturge?”
Matthew said nothing.
“Simple words are usually better,” Angus continued. “I, for one, like to say now rather than at this time, which is what one hears on aeroplanes. They say: ‘At this time we are commencing Artaud’s Way Proves to Be an Inspiration 45
our landing.’ What a pompous waste of breath. Why not say:
‘We are now starting to land’?”
Matthew nodded, joined in the condemnation of aero-speak.
At least this took the heat off his use of dramaturge.
“And here’s another thing,” said Angus Lordie. “Have you noticed how when so many people speak these days they run all their words together – they don’t enunciate properly? Have you noticed that? Try to understand what is said over the public address system at Stansted Airport and see how far you get. Just try.”
“Estuary English,” said Matthew.
“Ghastly English,” said Angus. He mused for a moment, and then: “But who is this Artaud?”
“A dram . . .” Matthew stopped himself, just in time. “A dramatist. He was very popular in the thirties and forties. Anyway, he painted monochrome canvases and gave them remarkable titles.
It was a witty comment on artistic fashion.”
This interested Angus. “Such as?”