The Late Hector Kipling (8 page)

Mum called the next morning. She said it’s fine about the blood on the settee cos they never really liked it anyway, and it’s old, and my dad, based on nothing, is allergic to it, and it’s gone. They’ve taken it to the dump and they’re looking for a new one.

‘Why didn’t you wait till you’ve got a new one before you chucked out the old one?’ I said.

‘Cos we’re mad,’ she said and giggled.

‘But what will you sit on?’

‘The chairs,’ she said, and I couldn’t argue with that.

She asked how her lovely Eleni is and I told her she’s fine and how she’s really sorry about the blood. Mum said not to worry cos now it’s at the dump. She’d seen an advert in the paper and she’s off to take a look but Dad’s not going with her cos his guts are playing him up and he’s in bed with a fever and a book about shelving.

‘Go easy,’ I said.

She asked me what I meant.

‘Just go easy,’ I said, ‘with all that stuff you’re doing to the house. You’re both knocking on and you should be paying someone to do all that.’

‘Nay,’ she said, ‘we’re not paying folk to do what we can do ourselves. What’s the point of that?’

I could see lots of points to that because I paint big heads and people buy them and I’m lazy and I’d pay someone to brush my teeth if there was such a thing. ‘Oh well,’ I said instead, ‘I suppose so.’

She said goodbye and then rattled on for another ten minutes about how it’s a good job that I don’t eat meat because the French are feeding shit to their cows. She didn’t say shit, of course. Dung, is what she said. Dung. I love Mum. I love the way she makes an effort.

J. SHEEKEY’S, ST MARTIN’S COURT, LONDON

I’m prodding at my tuna and crafting elaborate contours with the barley. I’m attempting a little barley head and squeezing the blood from my tuna to render the lips. Eleni’s got the fisherman’s pie but she’s not playing with it, she’s eating it, like everything’s all right, like everything’s as usual, as though last night’s epiphany never happened. But then again, she was asleep and I’ve said nothing so she’s entitled to eat her fisherman’s pie. And now I’m beginning to shake. I am, I’m definitely shaking.

‘What’s the matter?’ says Eleni. ‘You’re shaking.’

‘Oh, nothing,’ I say, looking for a dribble of soy sauce to work into the shadow beneath the nose.

‘What’s that?’ she says, looking at my barley face. ‘A face?’

‘Yep,’ I say, and grit my teeth, cos I hate people who say things like ‘yep’ and ‘nope’, and ‘poss’ and ‘gotcha’. But I say ‘yep’ and grit my teeth. Not my real teeth; the teeth in my brain. I’ll tell you about the teeth in my brain later.

‘Is something bothering you?’ says Eleni.

‘Nope.’

‘I think something is bothering for you.’ Her accent, or her grammar or her inflection, makes it sound like a question or an accusation or a reprimand. First it was the nibbling on her toast in Blackpool that got to me, and now it’s her accent. I love Eleni. I love her accent. What’s going on?

‘Well, maybe something is bothering me,’ I say, and I think that my
accent, my dull, Blackpudlian mumble, must make it sound like a confession
or a rejection or an ultimatum.

Eleni puts down her fork and strokes my neck. I put down my fork next to hers and cover her hand with mine and press, like I love her. Like I love her for stroking my neck when I’m being such a moody prick. I stare at my fork. I stare at both our forks there on the crisp white cloth. And I think of Kirk and my heart fills with petrol.

I tell her the story of Kirk’s revelation and the journey home and the stairs and the bed and the shit and the dream and how Lenny couldn’t face Brenda, and how Dad couldn’t face Tutankhamen’s queue, and how I could, and wanted to, and would have loved to, but didn’t, cos Dad couldn’t. And I tell her about Bob, the dead budgie, and Pat, the dead aunty, and Yoko and Bolton and Kirk’s pessimistic doctor, and wouldn’t it have been stimulating if that biker had died when he went crashing through my head? Wouldn’t that have been fine? Wouldn’t that have been a story? We didn’t know him. What the fuck do we care? It might have helped the situation. Eleni frowns at the word ‘situation’. Or maybe it’s just the rest of it that she’s frowning at. Yeah, now I think about it, it’s got nothing to do with the word ‘situation’, she’s frowning cos I’ve just revealed some horrendous and Satanic depravity, and I sit there thinking, ‘Maybe she wants to call the police, or an ambulance, or . . . Fuck, I don’t know, maybe I need the fire brigade. I need something, I know that, I need someone.’ And Eleni strokes my neck again and I realize that I need Eleni. Then I realize I have Eleni, and calm down a bit and stop shaking. And I love her accent and I love her nibbling. Fucking hell, Hector, get a grip. You’re losing it.

‘I see,’ says Eleni. I think she does see. I really think she does. ‘I understand what you’re saying.’

‘But is that sick?’ I say. ‘Is all that perverse?’

‘No,’ she says, picking up her fork and loading her mouth with a ball of monkfish. ‘No, I don’t think it is perverse. I think it is an honesty of you and brave.’

Maybe I love her cos her language is so simple, which makes her thoughts seem so simple. Each word to her is a foreign word, so each word comes out with a balloon tied to the corner and the effect is wisdom. The effect is wisdom when maybe the reality is just limitation. No, Hector, that isn’t true. She knows what she’s saying. She chooses her words like a native. Perhaps more carefully than a native, so she’s right and she’s wise and it isn’t perverse. Except it is. Cos something, some shitty dark thing inside me, wants Kirk dead. It wants Kirk on a slab and me in tears and a black suit saying what devastation all this has wrought. I’m a monster and I should be nailed to the side of a mountain. I’m a ghoul and a freak and someone should notify the tabloids.

The waitress takes our plates away. ‘Kirk wanted my canvas to paint a big spoon.’

She smiles.

I smile.

We’re both smiling.

It’s beautiful. I think.

We’re not being cruel. Kirk’s a wonderful human being. I love Kirk. Kirk deserves the earth. But his paintings of cutlery are really quite crap. Is that wrong to say that? Should we tell him? Is the essence of friendship to tell a friend when you think he’s squandering his life painting kitchen utensils? Or is it to encourage him, cos maybe it’s you who’s ignorant and perhaps the world just isn’t ready for a ten-foot spoon. I don’t know. Actually, didn’t Claes Oldenburg already do a ten-foot spoon? He did a ten-foot dead match and a big burger and some lollies. I’m sure he did a ten-foot spoon. Who would have thought it, eh, Kirk? But there you go. It’s been done.

We talk around it all for a little while, occasionally interrupted by the waitress saying ‘thank you’ as she fills up our glasses and empties our ashtray.

‘Perhaps you should investigate the body,’ says Eleni, all serious and Greek. ‘Perhaps you should explore tableaux.’

Only Eleni Marianos could say ‘perhaps you should explore tableaux’ and not come over as bonkers.

‘Perhaps you should experiment with narrative.’

Ditto.

‘What do you mean?’ I say, buttering my olive bread. Jay Jopling’s just walked in with Sam Taylor Wood.

‘If you want to examine it to be something more lateral then you should exploit fable.’

‘Mmmm.’ I’m not sure what she’s talking about now. Examine something more lateral? Did I say anything about examining something more lateral? I don’t think so. The word lateral never came into it as far as I can remember. Jopling’s just had a glass of beer spilt over him by some actress he was shaking hands with. It’s a funny old spectacle, cos he’s obviously excited to be saying hello to her, and at the same time he’s pissed off at the ale on his Nicole Farhi.

‘You understand what I mean?’

I’m dragged back to the matter in hand by the inflection of a question. What is she saying?

‘What? What are you saying?’

‘Do you understand what I mean?’

‘What do you mean by fable?’

She embarks upon a protracted and confusing speech about Greek mythology, citing Goya, Picasso and Malcolm Morley. Malcolm Morley? Malcolm fucking Morley? I listen as though she’s on to something. But the truth is I don’t think she is. She’s not on to something. She’s floundering. She doesn’t understand. She just doesn’t get it. She’s Greek and her solution is to paint something Greek. ‘Paint the Harpies,’ she’s saying, ‘paint the Furies and the Fates,’ stuff like that. She’s wide of the mark. She’s very fucking wide of the mark. ‘Neo-classicism is the way ahead,’ is what she’s saying and it’s fucking awful, a fucking disaster, cos I sit there feeling the love beginning to slip. I don’t want the love to slip. Not with Eleni. Please God don’t let the love slip with Eleni. Not like it
slipped before. Not like it slipped with Sheba. Why is she saying all this? Stop her saying all this. Put an end to this ill-informed inventory of mythological freaks. Stop her suggesting that neo-classicism is the way ahead, cos it’s not. It’s definitely not. Not even close, Eleni. Why are you being so stupid? Why are you being so unlovable? Why is the love slipping? Please, God, please. Die or something, but don’t do this. Die, right here at the table, face down in your sorbet, but don’t get it all so wrong.

I ask for the bill and smile at the waitress. She’s French with unruly black hair and magenta nail polish, and I watch her as she glides towards the till.

We walk home along the river, in the rain, which is supposed to be romantic, but it’s not. It’s foul and wet and stinks of pigeon. We hardly speak. I hardly speak. Now and then Eleni points out a building or a puddle or a dog or a boat. She asks me where I think the wind comes from and I mumble, ‘I dunno,’ and stare at my boots. She rambles on about how, when she was a child, she thought that the wind was caused by trees and that’s why they shook so much in a storm. ‘And the more they shook the windier it became.’

‘Hmm,’ I say. ‘Hmm.’

She talks about meteors and astronauts, about stars and time and life on other planets. ‘Hmm, yeah,’ I say, and then, ‘I suppose.’ But what about death on other planets, Eleni? Ever think about that one? And then I close my eyes and see how far I can walk without hurting myself. ‘Shut up, Hector,’ I think, ‘shut the fuck up. Ever think about that one, you twat?’

As we slump through the door the phone’s ringing. It’s midnight. I pick it up, hoping for something. I don’t know what.

‘Hello?’ I say, and shrug off my coat.

‘Hello,’ says the voice. I watch as my coat leaks a puddle across the wood.

‘Hello, sir,’ I say, changing my tone.

‘Sir’ is Eleni’s father. His name is Yiorgos. I don’t mess about with Yiorgos. I’m very polite with Yiorgos. Yiorgos is a big man. Yiorgos is as big as three men and he’s suspicious of me. So he should be. Perhaps if
he
died . . .

‘How are you doing, Yiorgos?’

‘Is Eleni with you?’ OK, Yiorgos, I’ll assume you’re fine.

‘Eleni’s always with me.’

‘Can I speak to her?’ I can hear him sniff, and then a small grunt. ‘Please’ wouldn’t hurt, Yiorgos.

‘Of course, Yiorgos, I’ll call her.’ See how polite, craven and dull I am with him? That’s the story of me and Yiorgos. I hold the phone against my chest. ‘Eleni!’ I shout. There’s an echo. Eleni comes through from the bedroom towelling her hair. ‘Your dad,’ I shout. She runs across the room and takes the phone from me. I turn and set off walking towards my canvas in the far corner. My big white empty fucking canvas. I think about pissing on it.

Eleni whistles me and holds up two fingers, like a child miming a gun, and moves them back and forth in front of her lips. I light a fag, take twelve big strides across the room and slip it into her mouth. ‘Thank you,’ she says, and ‘Papa?’

A cloud. It seems as though a cloud has just seeped into her eyes. I lie down on the floor and light my own fag. I’m just glad to be out of the rain. Glad to be home. I lie back on the floor and stretch out my arms and legs. I think of da Vinci and raise my head to look at Eleni. My chin doubles. I’m sorry, Eleni. I’m sorry I’m not good enough. I’m sorry I’m so feeble. I am. I mean it.

She’s wearing a blue T-shirt with ‘God Shave The Queen’ written across the front in yellow letters. She pushes a marble around the floor with her foot. ‘Oh my God!’ she says, and then, ‘Papa, no, no. Oh my God.’ She loses control of the marble and it rolls towards my head. I look inside. I stare into the bleeding helix of green and yellow. How do they
do that? Could that be done big? Could a giant marble be made? A marble the size of a man? How do they do that? I bet Claes Oldenburg knows how. I bet Claes Oldenburg’s already thought of it.

‘Oh, Papa, don’t cry,’ says Eleni, and then the rest is in Greek. I’ve not really made an effort with the Greek. I can say a few things, read a few things, but when they start speaking, well, I’ve not quite got that far. ‘No, no, no,’ she’s saying. Is Yiorgos crying? Yiorgos? Huge Yiorgos? Crying? I try to imagine such a thing. I picture his hard black whiskers made soft by tears. I picture his lips all bubbled with spit. The sound of him. The smell of him. His immense leather fingers pinching the bridge of his quarried nose. What’s going on? Eleni pulls on her cigarette and it’s almost gone. What’s going on here? It’s all Greek to me.

At half-past midnight Eleni puts down the phone like she’s putting a small animal to sleep.

‘My mother has been badly burned,’ she says.

‘Oh my God,’ I say, raising myself up. ‘How?’

‘There was a fire in the kitchen,’ she says, Alexis tried to put it out with water.’ Alexis is her stupid brother. ‘She has been burning with a boiling fat. And then she fell into the fire.’

‘How bad?’

‘Bad.’

‘Oh my God,’ I say. ‘Oh my God.’

I’m not sure what it is, but I don’t think that I trust myself. I really don’t trust these Oh my Gods. I stare at my canvas.

I like Eleni’s mother, Sofia. I don’t just like her; I love Sofia. I think I can say that I love Sofia. She looks like Eleni. I’ve seen photographs of her when she was young. It’s Eleni. Sofia always holds me tight; really tight; beautiful amber arms full around me. Face against my chest, eyes closed. Turquoise eyes. Like she’s listening to my heart and blessing the saints of my nativity. Like she’s protecting me from big old scary Yiorgos who watches all this and breathes and grinds his feet into the
tiles of his taverna. Sofia always holds me, and it feels a lot like love. Eleni’s happy and that’s what Sofia sees. I don’t know what Yiorgos sees. Perhaps he sees the blackened pips buried in the core of me. Clever Yiorgos. Wise old Yiorgos. I’m sorry, sir. I’ll do better sir. Try harder. Sorry, Yiorgos. Sorry, Sofia. Sorry that you’re burned. Sorry that your daughter’s crying. Sorry that I’m all fucked up and jealous of her; jealous of her burned mother. My mother’s fine. She’s looking for a new settee, Yiorgos, cos I fucked your daughter on the old one and made her bleed. And I know that you want a grandson, you’ve made that clear. But I’ll tell you what: you don’t want one like me, do you? Oh no, sir. I know you don’t want a grandson that in any way resembles me. Sorry, sir. See how big he is? See how much he’s crying? Strange isn’t it, when big men cry. Strange when anyone cries.