Ralph's Party (31 page)

'Mmmmmm,' he'd said, 'I've never had one of these before, they're quite nice, aren't they!'

They'd danced for ages, to Oasis and Counting Crows and REM, chatting and laughing and eyeing up everyone on the dance floor.

'See that guy over there,' Rick had said, 'he's looking at you.'

'Which one?'

That tal one, with the white T-shirt on — brown hair - over there.'

He'd indicated with his eyebrows.

'No, he's not - don't be stupid.'

Tes he is! Look - he can't take his eyes off you. D'you want me to go and say something to him?'

'No!' Siobhan had grabbed his arm. 'No! Don't you dare! Please

— don't!'

But it was too late. Rick was already winding his way across the dance floor. Siobhan had turned away in horror and stood rooted to the spot, hoping that the flashing plastic tiles would open up and swalow her until, a few minutes later, she'd felt Rick's hand on her shoulder.

'His name's Mike, he's American, he's an engineering student, he's nineteen and he thinks you're gorgeous.

'Oh, don't be ridiculous.'

I'm not! Look! He's waving at you.'

And sure as could be - he was. Siobhan had wavec back, a feeble little gesture and turned away again

'Aren't you going to talk to him?'

'No way!'

'Oh, go on!'

'No. Realy. I couldn't. I just couldn't. I don't even fancy him.'

'What! How can you not fancy him? Look at him. He's handsome, he's clever and he's only nineteen!'

'Exactly! What the hel am I going to have in common with someone who's probably never seen a black-and-white television, who's never owned a vinyl record and who thinks that al-night TV is a God-given right?'

They'd both dissolved into hysterical laughter then, and Rick hadn't pushed it. 'Fair enough,' he'd said, 'fair enough!'

By the time she and Rick got back to his flat, at three o'clock in the morning, they'd drunk another five spritzers, chatted to dozens of people, al young enough to conceivably be their children, had two phone numbers a piece, Rick had been thrown out of the ladies'

toilets twice and Siobhan was laughing so hard she could barely breathe.

'Oh, Rick,' she'd giggled, 'you realy are the best friend a girl could possibly ask for!' Siobhan hadn't had so much fun since Brighton, before she'd met Karl. She'd never been a single girl around town.

She and Karl had moved to London together and made al their friends together, and because she'd never worked in an office she'd never realy had 'girlfriends' as such, just couple friends. And even though tonight had just been a joke, a piss take, it had given her an idea of what she might have been missing out on for the last fifteen years. Fun. Spontaneity. Childishness. Siliness. It had been briliant.

'Feeling a bit happier now?' he'd asked, handing her her coffee and joining her, dressing-gowned, on the sofa.

Wel, let's see. I've been taken out to dinner to my favourite restaurant, I've drunk champagne, vodka and white wine spritzers, I've been lusted over by a nineteen-year-old American, a twenty-year-old South African and a twenty-two-year-old Estonian, I've danced myself sily for three hours, I've walked home in the rain singing motown and now I'm wrapped up in an airing-cupboard-warm dressing-gown on a squidgy sofa in a beautiful flat, drinking real Colombian coffee. Yes, I'd say I'm feeling a bit happier now.'

'Glad to be of service,' he'd said.

They'd falen silent for a moment then and stared awkwardly into their coffee cups feeling that something more should be said, that this was a special moment. Siobhan had been the first to look up and had been suddenly startled by the blue of Rick's eyes, by the softness of his skin, the sincerity of his expression, the kindness of his mouth and the warmth of his smile.

'Oh, Rick,' she'd said, 'who are you? You always seem to be in the right place at the right time, saying the right things. You always make me feel so much better, so much like I want to feel.' She'd looked deep into his eyes. 'Are you an angel?'

He'd smiled and put down his cup, taking Siobhan's hands in his.

'No,' he'd said, 'no, I'm not an angel.' And then they'd instinctively moved towards each other,

across the ivory damask skin of the sofa, and grabbed hold of each other in a deep, warm embrace.

She'd clasped him to her and rested her head against his, breathing him in, breathing through the layers, the slightly herbal aroma of his hair gel, the fruity tang of his shampoo, the oily pungency of his warm scalp and underneath it al, the base notes that words couldn't describe — the smel of him. It seeped through her nos trils, down the back of her throat and rushed into her heart. She caught her breath and held him tighter.

Siobhan realy hadn't expected to fal in love with Rick She'd thought she was stil getting over Karl. And maybe she was. But she was unable to control the feelings that swept through her like a magical hurricane whenever she was with him. He made her feel as special as Karl had always told her she was, he made her feel beautiful and secure and brand-spanking-new, like she'd just been taken out of the box.

She truly felt that Rick was an angel. They were two angels together and she had never felt so serenely, perfectly happy in her whole life as she had in the last month, since she'd been going out with Rick.

This was as good as it got, as it could ever possibly get.

And one day soon, she didn't know when, she was going to have to tel Karl al about it...

CHAPTERTWENTY-SEVEN
The Evening Standard 27

February 1997

A Star is Reborn

In today's faddish, fickle world, in which fashion, fame, opinion and favour are fleeting and so dependent on the vagaries of the media and its self-appointed pundits (and I include myself in this possibly quite disagreeable fraternity), it is gratifying to discover that from time to time a talent can emerge that is so unquestionable, so prodigious, so undeniably briliant, that it can survive a backlash from even the most vicious hack's keyboard. I stand humbled.

The name on the invitation sounded familiar. Ralph McLeary. Those of you with elephantine memories may wel recal the artist - I certainly didn't. The accompanying press release filed in the gaps for me. Ralph McLeary was a Royal Colege luminary back in 1986, whom I, in this very column, once described in a glowing, almost embarrassingly gushing manner as 'a young man with an incestuous relationship with his medium, a young man who has created, at the tender age of twenty-one years, works in oil on canvas of such magnitude and importance, of such precocious maturity that I am obliged to employ the word "genius" to describe him.' I was not alone at the time. The

press was united in a froth-mouthed frenzy. It all came flooding back to me.

However, I have no recollection of his works, not one brushstroke or colour or shape; the detail has been cleared from my ageing and ragged memory to make room for the proliferation of fresh young painters paraded before my jaded eyes in the intervening years, whose works I am contractually bound to find words, daily, to describe.

I am, I fear, a fickle old man, my head so easily turned by a pretty canvas and the indulgent pleasure of my own words on paper. But, like the abandoned wife who makes a dramatic re-entrance — years after she has been traded in for a younger model, whose charms soon fade - thinner, happier, more confident, and glowing with inner beauty, Ralph McLeary has re-emerged to put us all to shame. His show, currently on display at the Netting Hill gallery of his one-time mentor Philippe Dauvignon, is a reminder that art is not, and nor should it ever be, prey to the same fads and foibles as the eminently more disposable, high-turnover worlds of fashion, film or popular music, and that a true genius can quite happily survive and, in McLeary's case, positively flourish without the ego-driven attentions of some fossilized Fleet Street flunkey.

These are McLeary's first works in over five years and I find my fingertips nervously twitching above my keyboard with the effort of not gushing forth, once again, in the manner of a lascivious old man. I will restrain myself.

McLeary's work has matured in a most satisfactory manner, his earlier anarchic stabs, jabs and thrusts at the canvas being replaced by a soft, almost romantic realism in a series of portraits of heart-breaking beauty and haunting eloquence. Maybe the previous McLeary incarnation was suffering from a delayed and troubled adolescence, but the McLeary of today is al grown up with a freshly pressed shirt, a decent haircut and is, no doubt, nice to his parents. And al the better for it. In these days of toilet bowls, chocolate bars and maimed animals masquerading as art, it makes an old man very happy to view a colection of paintings that speak so traditionaly and with such beauty of the simple concepts of love and happiness and light and dark. I wil not say another word...

Ralph's back was a mess, his shoulders ached, his hands felt arthritic. His nose was streaming, his throat was raw, his sinuses felt like they had fishing hooks stuffed into them. His clothes hung off his rake-like, emaciated body like enormous flaps of skin, dark circles surrounded the grey pits of his eyes, he hadn't had a haircut in nearly two months and his hair was matted into smal grimy peaks of grease and paint and dust.

He looked appaling, he felt appaling, but he didn't care. He was a man possessed. He hadn't had a decent night's sleep since Christmas, he hadn't been out for a meal, touched a drink, seen his friends, watched tely, been to the shops, had sex, had a bath, read a paper, sat on a sofa. Nothing. Al he'd done, for nine weeks, was paint and smoke. Paint and smoke. Paint and smoke.

He'd survived on Ginster's pasties, plasticy sandwiches and microwaved burgers from the Esso station around the corner on Cable Street. His social life consisted of sharing the occasional spliff in the wheelie-bin area with Murray the security guard.

Bed was a large, smely piece of foam, covered over with an old dust-sheet, and his pilow a couple of T-shirts folded into each other. Entertainment was his paint splattered old tranny and sex was the odd half-hearted wank.

Everything else was painting and cigarettes.

It had been a smal life, an uncomfortable life. It was cold and dark and lonely and unhealthy. He lay on his mattress at night, listening to the wind whistling through the cracks in the window-panes, the scurrying of rats outside his door, the never-ending drone of four lanes of traffic speeding by on Cable Street. He awoke each morning at five, he washed in the toilets down the corridor, he painted, he popped out to the Esso station, he ate something, he painted, he painted and he painted, he went to bed at midnight, one in the morning, two in the morning, and then he woke up and did the same thing al over again.

He was prolific. Pro-lif-ic. After so many barren, stagnant years, he was unstoppable. He'd phoned Philippe, who'd been to visit him after the first two weeks, seen what he'd already produced and immediately written him out a Coutts account cheque for five hundred pounds, which Ralph had banked and spent on canvases and paints.

Day by day the wals of his studio were lined with more and more paintings — twenty-one paintings to be precise, smal and large, portraits and stil lifes. Twenty-one paintings in sixty-four days.

Quite an achievement. Philippe said he'd never known anything like it.

What Ralph didn't explain to Philippe, because it sounded so naff, was that his inspiration through it al

had, strangely enough, been a DJ, a DJ caled Karl Kasparov.

Ralph had tuned into ALR one afternoon, by mistake. He didn't usualy enjoy commercial radio, al those adverts and brain-dead D

Js. But something about the desolate tone of the Irish D J's voice had appealed to him and then he'd understood what he was talking about -lost love — and he'd been almost moved to tears by the empathy he felt with him. He sounded like such a nice bloke and his honesty was breathtaking. And then he'd seen a picture of him on the front of some trashy magazine in the petrol station and had put two and two together and realized who he was. He was the guy from the upstairs flat at Almanac Road, the one with the quiff and the spaniel and the fat girlfriend, the guy he'd said helo to in passing dozens of times, but had never realy spoken to...

He'd started listening to his show every day, like the rest of London, just to make sure Karl was al right, to find out how he was feeling, poor bastard. And he'd found that Karl's misery had fueled his own, motivated him, inspired him. Cut off from humanity, from reality, and from the source of his own unhappiness, Ralph had needed Karl to remind him why he was there in the first place.

Three-thirty p.m. had been the high spot of his day, his chance to feel something again, to feel human. He had a lot to thank Karl Kasparov for. He'd never realy met him, but he felt like an old mate now, a realy good mate. Once this is over, he'd promised himself, I'm going to buy that bloke a drink; actualy, I'm going to buy that bloke a lot of drinks.

Ralph sat back now, a cigarette burning between his fingers, his stiff, sore back against the wal, his knees brought into his chest. He sucked hard on his Marlboro and blew out a thick cloud of soft, white smoke He had finished. He couldn't paint another stroke even if he wanted to. His colection was complete and he was satisfied.

He looked around his studio and breathed a sigh of relief. And then he felt a smal stab of sadness.

God, he missed Jem. He missed Jem so much. He couldn't wait to go home.

He'd managed two days of attempting normality at Almanac Road after their disastrous curry in Bays water, two days of hiding out in his bedroom, trying to avoid Jem, trying to avoid Smith, controling his urge just to leap on her, shake her by the shoulders and tel her al about Cheri, to tel her that Smith was a tosser, before he realized that he had to go. Jem barely acknowledged him, the atmosphere was foul. He couldn't live like that. So he'd packed a smal bag and gone to the studio, started painting and not stopped since. He spent Christmas Day painting, New Year's Eve painting.

He'd phoned Smith to say he didn't know when he'd be back, he'd phoned his parents to wish them a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and, apart from Philippe, he hadn't contacted anyone else for more than two months.