A black Mercedes turns the corner from Belvedere Road. She can see the muffled figure of Anthony Armitage in the back. The Mercedes comes to a stop in the middle of the road. Christina goes out into the drizzle to tell the driver to go on into the Hayward car park. It’s the kind of rain that totally screws your hair, but what can you do?
The barrier rises. The Mercedes pulls to a stop just past the rank of parked motorbikes. The rear door opens and Anthony Armitage gets out of the car very slowly. He’s wearing a navy blue felt overcoat like an over-long donkey jacket, and a black Homburg hat. He looks older and frailer than she remembers. As he straightens up, reaching for the car door to steady himself, his eyes look round with an uncomprehending and fearful gaze. He’s not wearing his glasses.
‘Where am I?’
‘This is the Hayward Gallery car park.’
He stares at the receding parking bays punctuated by concrete pillars. The ghosts of dimly lit cars. Then he fumbles in a pocket and pulls out a card.
‘For you,’ he says, pressing it into Christina’s hand. ‘Come to my show.’
Christina puts the card into her bag without looking at it. She steers him into the bowels of the car park.
‘There’s a lift.’
He enters the steel box with reluctance. He appears to be overwhelmed by his surroundings. He has closed his eyes.
‘Are you all right? We’ll be there in a minute.’
The lift doors open into the gallery lobby. Seeing it now through his eyes Christina is struck by the joylessness of the space. No grandeur, no colour, no wit. Even the crowd gathered round the entrance to the display rooms are sombre in appearance, clad mostly in greys and blacks.
The old man stands staring at the name of the show: BREAK OUT.
‘Break out,’ he says, forming the words slowly, like a child learning to read.
She offers to take his coat, get him a coffee. He shakes his head.
‘All I need is a piss. Bloody bladder.’
She leads him to the men’s lavatory. By the doorway she whispers, ‘Do you have a hammer?’
‘A what?’
She takes the hammer from her bag and slips it into his overcoat pocket. It takes him a moment to realize what she’s done. Then a smile creases his much-creased face.
‘Pinoncelli,’ he murmurs.
Christina gives the cameraman a discreet sign to turn over as Anthony Armitage emerges from the toilet. She guides him to the gallery where Joe Nola’s installation is on display. The room is packed. Word has spread. The old man, unaware that he is the exhibit they have come to see, pauses before the panel of explanatory text.
‘Break Fast.’ He reads out the heading. ‘I can manage that. The rest is too small.’
‘Do you want me to read it for you?’
‘I think you’d better.’
So she reads it aloud to him while the soundman holds his furry blimp in the air between them.
‘My work explores the tension between self-slash-other—’
‘What what what?’
‘Self-slash-other.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘You know the slash sign? The diagonal line you put between words to mean either-or?’
‘Either self or other.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Go on.’
‘The tension between self-slash-other in the medium of memory. Nostalgia is private-slash-shared—’
‘Either private or shared.’
‘Art is the slash that separates-slash-joins you-slash-me.’
‘Either separates or joins either you or me.’
‘The artist-as-child is made universal by brand magic, by in this instance the sacrament of Kellogg’s Cornflakes.’
She waits for his gloss, but he says nothing. He seems to be listening attentively. She goes on to the end.
‘The table an altar, the meal a Mass. True art is the priesthood of all believers.’
She falls silent.
‘Is that it?’ he says.
‘That’s it.’
‘Deep, isn’t it? Challenging. Makes you think.’
Christina’s heart sinks. She wants anger, not irony. But he hasn’t seen the exhibit yet.
‘Joe was brought up a Roman Catholic, you know,’ says Anthony Armitage. ‘A flying start for an artist.’
The crowd parts before him. This should be a giveaway but he seems not to notice, cocooned in his long dark overcoat. He moves slowly towards the platform on which stands Joe Nola’s work of art. Joe himself, Christina notes, has appeared in the doorway to watch.
The cameraman crouches before the old man, under instruction to capture his earliest responses to the installation. But the old man seems to have no response. He looks at the fully-laid breakfast table with an expressionless gaze, registering but not judging.
Christina closes in, realizing the response will have to be provoked. Aware also that she has promised a show, and her audience waits.
‘What do you think?’ she says.
‘Joe arranged this? Joe Nolan?’
‘Yes.’
‘He was good, you know. He had talent.’
He sounds a little confused.
‘You taught him at art college, didn’t you?’
‘Yes. I did. He was good. What I mean is, he could see. He could use his eyes.’
‘What sort of work was he doing then?’
‘Oh, this was long ago. He was my student. I taught Life Drawing. Joe Nolan was the best student I ever had.’
Joe has crept forward, keeping among the crowd. But there’s a hush in the gallery. Everyone can hear.
‘And what do you think of his work now?’
‘Now?’
He gazes at the breakfast table and gives a very slight shake of his head. His hand reaches for the overcoat pocket where the hammer is stowed. Christina stiffens. Everyone has seen the movement. Everyone is motionless, anticipating the act.
Christina catches the mood of the crowd like a vibration in the air, like the smell of blood: they are willing the act. They want the work of art to be destroyed. They want the hammer to smash into the sacred space. They want to overthrow the god.
I want it too. Even though this is Joe’s creation, I crave destruction.
Her eyes, flicking to all sides, meet Bill Lennox’s eyes, and she sees it there too. He craves destruction.
How has this happened? When did we all start to hate art?
But now the old man is turning away from the exhibit, away from the camera. He looks down at the floor. Reaches up one hand to rub at his eyes. When he looks up again, Christina sees the smear of tears.
He’s standing there in silence, weeping.
Only the cameraman moves, crabbing round and in, the black lens of his camera sucking up the old man’s pain and grief. Well, there’s a response. Not as dramatic as a blow with a hammer, but powerful for all that. Maybe more powerful. Only, like the art itself, the weeping man requires a panel of explanatory text.
Christina dares to ask.
‘Can you tell me why?’ Her voice soft, respectful of his alltoo-visible emotion.
He shakes his head. She persists: it’s her job.
‘What is it you’re feeling?’
‘Loss,’ he says. ‘Loss.’
Joe Nola himself now comes forward. Unasked he takes Anthony Armitage’s hand in his and holds it.
‘Remember me? I’m Joe.’
The old man gazes at him through tear-blurred eyes.
‘Joe, yes. Come to my show, Joe. I’d like you to be there.’
He withdraws his hand from Joe’s, feels in his coat pocket, pulls out the hammer. For a moment he looks at it, uncomprehending. Then he holds it out to Joe.
‘Here,’ he says.
He starts shuffling towards the exit.
Christina is about to stop him, to get him to exchange at least a few more words with his former student, when Joe takes hold of her arm.
‘Leave him alone. Let h
im go.’
‘But he’s hardly said a word.’
‘He gave me this.’ He holds up the hammer. ‘One hammer is worth a thousand words.’
Anthony Armitage makes his slow way out through the gallery rooms to the lobby. Christina remains rooted to the spot. Before her gaze, before the shining eyes of the gallery staff and the security men, filmed by the crew from Sky Arts, Joe Nola proceeds to destroy his own installation. The hammer falls on plates and bowls, on milk jug and marmalade jar, on the toast-rack and on the packet of Kellogg’s Cornflakes. As he strikes he shouts over and over, ‘Loss! Loss!’
When the breakfast things are all broken he attacks the table itself, splitting its planks, slowly forcing it to its knees.
Then suddenly exhausted, his passion spent, he stops striking and lets the hammer fall to the floor. The spectators look down, ashamed to meet each other’s eyes.
‘Cut,’ says Joe.
28
On Tuesday morning, Belinda and Laura meet at the station in good time for the London train. ‘I have to have a cup of tea,’ announces Belinda. ‘I can’t survive another minute without caffeine.’
The station buffet stands on the broad triangular island between the London and Brighton lines. The licensee writes poetry. His poems are blu-tacked to the glass doors. Belinda and Laura pause before entering to read the latest poem, ‘A River through Lewes’.
Where the river meets the bend gently meandering along All your troubles seem to disappear in front of your eyes The pure energy is worth sitting and being at one with nature. The clock on the supermarket wall reminds you of the time Or just that time disappears …
‘I adore Vic’s poems,’ says Belinda. ‘Don’t you adore them, Laura?’
‘I think they’re just about the best railway buffet poems I know,’ says Laura.
‘Don’t be a snotty cow. I love Vic.’
Vic is sitting at one of his own tables, composing his latest poem. He rises as they come in.
‘La-a-a-dies,’ he sings in a rich baritone. Round his solid form he wears a long black apron. ‘Off to town for Christmas sho-o-opping?’
He sings it like recitative in an opera.
‘Oh, Vic,’ says Belinda. ‘Make us one of your nice cups of tea. I’m so miserable.’
The clock in the buffet shows that they have three minutes before their train, but it’s set by tradition five minutes fast. Belinda and Laura sit at one of the little round tables beside the framed sepia-toned photographs of Lewes station in bygone days. Vic goes behind the counter, which is decorated with a painting of a jolly green train bouncing off its wheels in its eagerness to please. Overhead an indoor trellis is festooned with ivy and twinkling white Christmas lights.
‘I could write an opera, you know,’ says Vic, pouring their tea from a shiny stainless steel teapot. ‘I could write about anything. I hear music in the air. I don’t mean in my head. In the air. It’s all round me.’
He brings them over their cups of tea, bursting into song again as he comes. ‘When the teapot is empt-ee-ee I can make you a cup of coff-ee-ee.’
‘They should have you at Glyndebourne, Vic.’
‘You think you’re joking. There’s a fellow comes in here, he’s big at Glyndebourne, he said to me, Vic, write it down. Write your opera.’
More customers come in, and Vic returns to his counter. Laura hasn’t had a chance to catch up with Belinda since their lunch on Friday.
‘What’s all this about being miserable?’
‘Oh, God, Laura. It’s a nightmare. Tom’s been having an affair.’
She gives Laura a rapid rundown on the headline facts, impatient to revert to her own feelings. She is in a state of confusion that interests her to the exclusion of everything else.
‘The thing is, it’s opened my eyes. I feel like I’ve been such a fool. Apparently this sort of thing’s going on all the time. I mean, I’m not stupid, I know there’s a lot of it about. But Tom! If Tom’s got a secret life, then who hasn’t? Only me, as far as I can see.’
‘And me,’ says Laura.
‘Henry’s bound to be poking some little telly dolly.’
‘I suppose he might,’ says Laura doubtfully.
‘They’re bastards, Laura. Take it from me.’
The train is already full when it pulls in to Lewes station. There are people standing in the bays by the doors. This adds to Belinda’s sense of outrage.
‘I’m not standing all the way to London,’ she says. ‘Just because they live in Eastbourne and get on earlier than us doesn’t mean they have a right to a seat. I’ve paid the same as them.’
A man is talking loudly on his mobile in an Australian accent. ‘You’ll never go broke by making money, eh? Keep reading that Donald Trump book, eh?’
‘There was a time,’ says Belinda, ‘when gentlemen gave up their seats to ladies.’
‘You have to be pregnant,’ says Laura. ‘Or disabled.’
‘Well, I am disabled. I’ve got an adulterous husband. That’s a disability.’
‘Not so loud,’ says Laura, going pink. ‘Everyone’ll hear.’
‘I don’t care.’
Belinda has discovered against all expectations that there is relief in full disclosure. What hurts is trying to keep up appearances.
‘There’s bound to be someone we know in the carriage,’ says Laura.
‘No way,’ says Belinda. ‘They’re all from Eastbourne. I don’t know anyone from Eastbourne. All they do in Eastbourne is sit on their bottoms.’ She glares round the carriage. ‘And have affairs, I expect. Look at that one. You can just tell he’s cheating on his wife.’
The Australian has finished his call.
‘Why don’t you shut it, love?’ he says mildly.
At Plumpton most of the men get out. It turns out there’s a race meeting on. Belinda and Laura rush for the empty seats and sit there laughing like children.
‘So where do you want to go?’ says Laura. ‘I have to do John Lewis at some point.’
‘Selfridges,’ says Belinda. ‘They’ve got a better caff.’
‘I’m totally stuck on what to get for Jack. Why are boys so difficult?’
‘That’s nothing. What am I supposed to give Tom for Christmas? A chastity belt?’
‘I don’t think there are chastity belts for men.’
‘How about a pair of Spanx? His tummy could do with holding in. I’d like to see him get a stiffy in Spanx.’
Laura bursts out laughing.
‘You don’t think you’re just a tad manic, do you, Belinda?’
‘Probably. I don’t know what I am, to be honest. It’s like all the old rules have been torn up.’ She drops her voice for the first time since they met at the station ticket window. ‘Guess what I’m doing on the way home?’
‘What?’
‘Meeting up with Kenny.’
‘Oh my God, Belinda! Where?’
‘He’s working at Gatwick. We’re meeting at the Hilton.’
‘My God!’
‘I’m so excited. I’m seventeen again.’
*
In the taxi which Belinda insists on taking to Oxford Street – ‘Let the fucker pay’ – they get into conversation with the taxi driver. He’s frustrated by the slow-moving traffic.
‘This congestion charge, it’s a joke,’ he says. ‘Look at it. It’s a joke.’
‘You know what jams up the streets,’ says Belinda.
‘I’ve got an idea or two,’ says the taxi driver.
‘Infidelity,’ says Belinda. ‘All the men going out to poke their mistresses.’
‘You reckon?’ says the taxi driver, intrigued. ‘That’s a new one on me.’
‘They should have an infidelity charge,’ says Belinda. ‘That’d clear the streets in no time.’
When Laura rejoins Belinda an hour or so later, in the Food Hall at Selfridges, she’s hauling two heavy carrier bags, the proceeds of a tiring but successful afternoon. Belinda has bought nothing.
&nbs
p; ‘I can’t concentrate,’ she wails. ‘I can’t make decisions. I think I might be having a breakdown.’
‘You’re over-excited about Kenny.’
‘Well, yes. That too.’
They queue up to be served at the Brass Rail.
‘One ninety-five for a cup of tea!’ Belinda is outraged. ‘How can you have the nerve to charge prices like that?’
The young man behind the counter grins.
‘Captive market, isn’t it?’ he says.
Laura carries their tray to the bar in the middle, where there are red leather stools on chrome stalks.
‘Are you okay here? I love to swivel.’
Belinda is looking round.
‘Every single person here is female,’ she says in disgust. ‘Where are their men? What are they doing? As if I didn’t know.’ She peers inside the white china teapot. ‘One tea bag. So stingy.’
Laura displays her purchases.
‘This is for Carrie. They’re speakers for her iPod.’
Belinda puzzles over the large box.
‘How are you going to get that into her stocking?’
‘Stocking? This isn’t for her stocking. This is her present from Henry and me. The stuff in her stocking is from Father Christmas.’
‘But you are Father Christmas.’
‘Yes, I know. But stocking presents are little things like felt-tip pens and hairbands and tangerines.’
‘Christ, my kids would leave home if they got felt-tip pens and hairbands in their stockings.’
‘Do you give them their big presents in their stockings?’
‘Yes, of course. Everyone does.’
‘No, they don’t. They give them their big presents after lunch.’
‘Are you seriously telling me that you make your children wait all morning on Christmas Day before they get their presents?’
‘Yes. But they have their little presents, from Father Christmas.
In their stockings when they wake.’
‘That is sadistic.’
‘But Belinda, you must see it.’ Laura feels herself getting agitated, which is ridiculous. ‘Your way makes no sense. If Father Christmas gives them all their presents, what do you give them?’