Paint. The art of scam. (7 page)

But first things
first: cigarettes, alcohol, food, electricity and gas were needed urgently.

She had made many
connections in the past and assumed that securing an undemanding, well-paid
position using her looks and personality would be a routine exercise.

But, she soon
realised, those connections were only valid by association with her now bitter
former partners. Word had quickly spread about her conduct and she was on an
invisible blacklist.

Her sights
lowered, she eventually found a job as a pay clerk with an engineering company
subtly entitled 'Hogarth Heavy Engineering,' in Shoreham, a short bus trip
away. She hated it, but, believing it to be temporary, chose to see the whole
experience as character-building. It would be a journey with a destination.
She hoped.

In the early
days when Polly first started work, they would both get up around seven,
shower, usually together, have breakfast, chat, cuddle and generally bathe in
their blissful ignorance. Polly would then kiss Seymour at around 8.15, saunter
out of the door and down to the bus stop.

Seymour would
then work furiously all day, fired by the inspiration of his perfect life. It
was a dream partnership for about 6 months. Then Seymour painted himself into
a creative cul-de-sac. He began to find himself standing in front of a blank
canvas after Polly had left for work and - nothing would happen. There was
nothing in his canvas arena to argue about, nothing to insult, no revelations
to celebrate. He had dried up. Polly knew it too. She kept an eye on his
output discreetly, but not wishing to pressurise him, said nothing.

It was then that
Seymour discovered the joys of daytime television. Increasingly, he even didn't
bother to stand in front of the blank canvas, hoping to become repossessed by
the talent that now lay snoring in his spirit. These days, he would climb out
of bed, slump into the old leather armchair, and zap the TV on with the sticky
remote control, usually to be found in the bowels of the armchair. He didn't
even enjoy TV, although he had developed an intimate relationship with Tommy
and Val, the antiseptic couple who hosted a smug morning chat show set in a
simulated lounge. Well, his relationship was with Val, really. Seymour found
her strangely attractive in a teenager's Aunt sort of way - and in need of a
damn good rogering, a task, Seymour decided, Tommy was probably incapable of.

However, he would
never watch the TV after three o'clock. It took two and a half hours for the set
to cool down to room temperature, just in time for Polly's return.

These days he
didn't even get out of bed until Polly was well gone. There seemed little
point. He got in her way and irritated her. Pseudo-sleep was the only option.

Occasionally he
would have a spontaneous burst of inspiration, and when he did, he could
complete a painting a day. But as time passed, these bursts became less
frequent. He'd produced enough work to fill at least two small galleries since
he'd been with Polly, and probably a warehouse full pre-Polly, most of which
had been destroyed or lost. However, his ability to persuade a gallery to show
his work was non-existent. Seymour knew what it took to get his work exhibited,
and artistic talent had little to do with it.

Being untaught,
he had never become involved in the institutional framework of the art world.
An aspiring professional artist was expected to clamber on this framework with
white-knuckled hands, withstanding the pain of the boot of the rising star
above, dodging the swinging tongues of the bitch critics below. Not only was
the Art World out-of- bounds to him; it was also a mystery. Conveniently. Seymour
had no intention of getting involved. Art was something he hid behind.

The last thing he
wanted was to be found.

The fact that
Polly had her own plans for his future was of no concern to him: she would
fail. As far as he knew, she understood even less about the art world than he
did, despite the fact that she had witnessed its intricacies via the former art
dealer lover she refused to discuss for some reason. She bought every art
magazine she could find, went to every exhibition she could, ensured her name was
included on gallery mailing lists, and spoke with some expertise on the subject.
Or at least in a language that was convincing enough to make Seymour's eyes
cross. She had become obsessed with her mission to find a way to promote
Seymour, as he was obsessed with his survival as a freeloader.
Of
course it was flattering to see Polly putting so much enthusiasm into her
mission, but then it was Seymour's work that had sparked their love in the
first place. He never told her of his cynicism, for her naiveté amused him, her
hard-earned money fed him, got him drunk, stoned, and housed. Her fabulous body
satisfied his sexual desires and her sharp mind kept him on his toes. It was
all perfect.

Seymour heard the
bus pull away from the stop outside and blew a sigh of relief. He was safe for
the rest of the day to wallow.

Reality.

Polly despised the
bus and everybody in it. It was an ancient, ex-military single-decker belonging
to Hogarth's, badly repainted and sign-written to tell the world that the
people on this bus were doomed to a life of endless misery. She would often
catch its reflection in shop windows and see her bowed head, suitably distorted
and badly lit, slightly moving with every jolt and, written on the side of the
bus, 'Hogarth Heavy Engineering' as an apt subtitle.

The bus stank of
cheap after-shave, cheap perfume, rank armpits, cigarettes and burnt oil. It
reminded her of death, the sweet smell of rotting flesh she had smelt only once
when she had to visit a mortuary as part of the initiation for her two week
career as a student nurse back in 1970. That smell still burned her nostrils
whenever she thought about it.

Each day,
everybody sat in exactly the same seat on that damn bus, including Polly. Most
of the men sat in groups yelling at each other about the telly the night
before. ‘What about when he caught her? Yeah yeah and then that fucking other
bloke, his wife, gaw I wouldn't mind
...
yeah, not 'alf.’
Male gang camaraderie at its best. It amused her whenever, for some reason or
other, the men were separated, like the days when a hard of hearing blind man
would use his free ride to Supasave. He would sit in one of the blokes' seats,
leaving one of the gang to sit away from his support group, sometimes next to
Polly. It had happened recently. Just the day before, one of the separated men
had drawn a comparison between Polly and an airhead with pert tits on page
three of The Sun, but when he sat next to her, close enough to her to arrange
to ‘run one through her’ as was his desire apparently – then, he was such
a good little boy.

The gang of girls
on the bus from the factory disgusted her more, constantly teasing and enticing
the men to delve deeper and deeper into the bottomless pit of human behaviour.
Scraping the fingernails that scraped the barrel of depravity.

Polly was the
only member of the office staff to ride in the bus. The rest either had cars,
found their own way, or were dropped off by their loyal husbands: any way of
avoiding this nightmare on wheels.

It was at times
like this she resented Seymour's ineptitude, a quality that at one time she had
found cute. Seymour had forgotten to learn to drive; she could, but they could
barely run themselves on her wages at the moment, let alone a car.

There was an
option to this bus, however. The number thirty two went to the bus station and
then, if all went well, she could catch the number three to a stop near
Supasave. But that involved leaving home fifteen minutes earlier and cost three
quid a day. That bus only stank of pensioner pee and beer vomit, which was, to
Polly, a bargain for three quid. The only down side was that if she screwed up
in any way, she'd miss the number three and would have to get the number nine
which made her twenty wonderful minutes late for work.

As infuriating
as it was to Mr. Arnold, the office manager, it was an option she took whenever
she could. But today it was not to be. It was Thursday, the day before pay-day.
She'd woken early after arguing with Seymour until the early hours, hadn't
showered and didn't have a penny to her name.

Polly, as usual,
did her best to block out the bus using the meditation she'd learnt long ago.
Those were the days when everything around her always smelt of incense. Those
pre
-what-am-I-going-to-do-with-my-life days. The
pre-
how-do-I-look days. Certainly
pre-Seymour Capital days. She remembered snippets she had learnt from an
emaciated hippy who was a Guru but was now back being a plumber in Manchester.
She had met him in the Sixties on an Ashram in Spain. Visualisation,
reinterpretation of experience, positive thinking, all simply achieved by deep
breathing and focused attention. But deep-breathing the nauseous cocktail of
smells in the bus just didn't quite have the same effect.

She was tired,
hungry and angry and had nothing to look forward to beyond the excitement of
being paid and catching the thirty two bus home that night.

At times like
this she wished she knew no different
from
her mindless existence. That
was a prerequisite for tolerating tedium. But she did know differently. She had
nibbled the apple, liked it and shaken the tree until the roots had loosened.
She had eaten men like fun food, spat them out and survived fairly unscathed.
The brief and disastrous relationship with Kevin had been the final straw in
her life as a dependent. The worm had turned. Then she had met Seymour Capital
and here she was, sat with a bunch of toilet-trained gorillas on a bus to hell.
Life played strange tricks.

Polly stared dead
ahead, her eyes doing their best to avoid the irritating neck of Mr. Dawson,
the stock control supervisor, who always sat alone in front of her. She hated his
Christian neck.
It was always perfectly shaved, tapering from his starched collar
to the military style haircut emphasising his huge FA cup ears. He stank of
Brylcreem, polo mints and shoe polish and he was always reading some badly
printed Christian paperback. She enjoyed hating Dawson.

As her thoughts
battled to focus over the puerile banter in the bus, she was able to replay
vague snippets from the previous night's row with Seymour. Everything that she
had said made sense - to her anyway. Now that Seymour had accumulated a
healthy stock of work, it was obvious to her that she should start working as
his agent and Seymour take on the role of supporting them both. That had
always been her plan and now was the time to implement it.

Seymour had
pointed out over and over again he was almost unemployable. He had no trade, no
education and although he didn't actually admit it, no inclination. He had
tried every desperate angle: the disruption that work would cause to his art,
the danger of losing a limb in some hideous machinery, or sustaining a
repetitive strain injury through being a part of the hideous machine. Polly, of
course, always had an answer. Manual work would give him a chance to get a
different perspective on his art.

Seymour didn't
seem to appreciate the relationship between the decline of his productivity and
the collapse of Polly's enthusiasm to support them. But then, Seymour rarely
noticed anything in his life unless it actually punched him in the face, which
it often had done. Polly had pointed out to him that he shouldn't worry about
drying up: it happened to everyone.

‘You need food
for your soul, Seymour. Go out there, just for a while, until I get things
happening.’

‘Where?’ he'd
said.

Polly's train of
thought faded away when the bus jolted as each of its wheels mounted the two
speed bumps at the main entrance of Hogarth's. Its aged body twisted and groaned
as it inched through the wrought-iron gates, which remained open around the
clock. Every employee had to pass through these gates. Polly often wondered
why they were there at all, given that they never closed.

A rat-faced security
guard was always on duty at shift changeover time, and he peered in through the
windows of the bus as it passed. The rest of the time he sat in his cubicle
reading war comics, picking up hints on tactical manoeuvres in war zones and other
useful information for a security guard. Polly wondered what on earth the
security guard was guarding. Perhaps against anybody sneaking in to do a day’s
work?

Polly watched as
everybody in the bus clambered to their feet well before the bus stopped and
jostled their way out, the moment it did. They just couldn't wait to get stuck
into their day’s work. The exception was, of course, Mr. Dawson, who always
waited until last and allowed Polly to go before him
,
probably in the
hope that he might grab a glimpse of her tits as she stepped out of the bus.

Seymour was still
in bed, his thoughts chaotically rolling around in his head, doing his best to
avoid the inevitable conclusion. Get a job. The very suggestion made him shake.
It wasn't work itself that concerned him so much: when he was on a roll he'd
been known to keep going for hours, even days without a break. But that was
different. That was
his
work. But
being a cog in some meaningless machine that droned on and on, with all those
other cogs beside and above him, never below him, endlessly spinning? Lunch
boxes, tea breaks, pin-up girls, overalls, clocking on, clocking off, canteens,
dirty jokes, stinking toilet cubicles, bus-stop queues with people who looked
like they were waiting to be shot. He'd experienced it all first- hand on a
careers information school trip onc
e.