The Horse's Arse Read online

  “And now, if you don’t mind, it’s siesta time. I usually grab one after lunch under my desk, but a tree is nicer.”

  “70!” yelled Sami. “A record!”

  Yasmin opened one eye, smiled at him, and closed it.

  “Come on,” said Daniel. “Mum’s resting. Let’s see how good you are against a live opponent.”

  “Mind that ball,” murmured Yasmin, “it’s a collector’s item.”

  * * *

  It was only later, on his way home to Finsbury Park, that Daniel remembered the pad. He got off his bike to text Yasmin but she’d beaten him to it.

  “Got your notepad. Text your address and I’ll post it. Btw I thought you were an arts journalist, what’s with the hairdressing? Pardon my curiosity, professional interest.”

  “Don’t post it,” Daniel texted back. “I’ll pick it up when I come back to visit the allotments. I can explain about the hairdressing, honest, Inspector.”

  Chapter XXVIII

  Since Ron Wilkins started as a cashier at the Muswell Hill branch of what was still, in 1988, the Nationwide Anglia Building Society he had only missed two days’ work. One was in 1996 when the upstairs neighbour’s boiler burst and flooded his kitchen and the other was the day of his mother’s funeral.

  Two years ago almost to the day that was: 3rd of September, God rest her soul. But yesterday afternoon at work his jaw had started aching and he’d begun feeling hot and queasy. He’d got home alright, not felt like dinner – though he usually looked forward to his Wednesday night chilli con carne – and had gone to bed.

  At 5am he’d woken with a splitting headache, swollen glands and a raging sore throat. He found his mum’s old mercury thermometer in the bathroom cabinet and took his temperature. It registered 103! When he rang the NHS Direct telephone service they diagnosed mumps and told him to stay home until he was better. The nurse on the other end of the line advised him to take Paracetamol, drink plenty of water and apply a cold compress to the swelling. Bed rest was the only treatment for the disease, but if his temperature didn’t go down he should call his doctor. He should avoid going out for the next five days, as the disease was highly contagious. Apparently there’d been a spike in cases in London caused by the arrival of unvaccinated immigrants from outside the EU.

  Just his luck, thought Ron, running a mental scan of all the swarthy-looking individuals he’d sat next to over the past week on the bus to and from work. The exercise made his temperature rise. So it was thanks to immigrants coming here to take our jobs that he’d had to call in sick for the first time in his working life, thanks to foreigners importing their filthy germs without a visa that he was here on a Friday morning sweating under a duvet on the living room couch with a sockful of ice around his neck and another sockful melting in the bucket beside him.

  ‘Bed rest’ was for skivers, an admission of defeat. At least on the couch he could look out over the garden. He’d got nothing to read, having forgotten, in the state he was in yesterday evening, to pick up his free copy of the Evening Standard. Ron never bought the papers, couldn’t see the point of paying good money for news you could get for nothing. Some evenings he only did the cryptic crossword.

  He’d never been much of a reader, never acquired the habit. Novels, to his mind, were a complete waste of time. Fiction was for wimps and women. The only publications on his shelves were military histories and an almost complete run of back issues of Making History magazine dating from his period as Treasurer of the Medieval Combat Re-enactment Society. That was before his historic bout of hand-to-hand combat with the Society’s President, an idiot who needed a calculator to count. Ron still didn’t know what all the fuss had been about. The man was asking to have his head cleft with an axe and Ron had only given it a light tap.

  There wasn’t anything worth listening to on Radio 4. The news came round without variation. Nothing happened on a weekday when you were off work. Ron dozed on the couch, drifting in and out of consciousness, until the dum-dee-dum-dee-dum-dee-dum reveille of The Archers’ theme woke him. He’d missed it yesterday evening and the thought of the 2pm repeat put lead in his pencil. He picked the lukewarm sock off his neck, dropped it in the bucket and got off the couch with a splitting head to put the kettle on.

  The kettle stood on the kitchen windowsill overlooking the garden, and flicking it on always caused a surge of irritation at the sight of the enormity of his neighbour’s shed. He was sure the old hippy never got planning permission, if he even knew such a thing existed. Ron would have had it taken down by the Council if it hadn’t replaced the wilderness of brambles and bindweed that previously scrambled over the hedge and smothered his clematis. And since it went up, the family of foxes that used to sun themselves on Ron’s lawn like they owned the place had pushed off and taken their flea-bitten brood elsewhere. He regarded the foxes as Phelan’s responsibility: refugees who had taken asylum in the slum of his garden. Ron resented his own garden being invaded by nature. There was still a yellow stain where the foxes lay which no amount of Miracle-Gro Patch Magic would fix.

  Just recently, though, Phelan’s shed had been expanding. Only last Saturday, while having breakfast, he’d noticed that a bulge had appeared on the far side like a boil in the night. God alone knew what the old hippy used the place for. He never saw anyone coming or going.

  Until now, that was.

  As he squeezed the teabag against the side of the mug and popped in two NutraSweets, Ron’s peripheral vision picked up movement in his neighbour’s garden. He looked up to see the shed door standing open and Phelan framed in the entrance with a large square canvas almost as tall as the doorway, which he was carefully manoeuvring through the opening into the arms of a man on the deck outside. Ron thought he caught a flash of polka dots as the swarthy-looking individual – probably the carrier of some foreign disease – covered the canvas in bubble wrap from an industrial-sized roll and passed it down the steps to someone below.

  At this point the canvas vanished below the line of the hedge, which was 10ft tall on his neighbour’s unclipped side. Ron watched Phelan reappear with a second, a third and then a fourth dotted canvas, each one duly wrapped and swallowed from view. With wobbly legs he climbed onto the kitchen chair and then the table, affording him a clear view over the hedge.

  On Phelan’s back lawn a chain of handlers – two men and two women – were passing canvases down the garden and into the side alley between the houses, where an elderly lady with a shopping trolley was wheeling them away. Ron counted 12 out of the shed before Phelan shut the door and disappeared with the Dago and the others down the alley.

  With a spurt of energy Ron scrambled off the table and scuttled to the front room window overlooking the street, where a white hire van was parked with its back doors open. On the tail lift stood that delinquent son of Phelan’s, loading the canvases into the van. When the last one was in, he pulled out a wad of cash and counted out notes – big red £50 smackers – to the four handlers, the trolley lady and the Dago, while his father stood on the pavement watching. Then he closed the back of the van, jumped into the cab and was waved off by the group on the pavement.

  So that was it. Caught red-handed. Phelan was running an unlicensed factory from his shed, turning out canvases for cash on the black economy. For the past week or so Ron had suspected someone was sleeping there, as the light seemed to be on at all hours. Now the truth was out. His neighbour was operating as an unlicensed gang-master. That lady with a shopping trolley was clearly a pensioner and there was an older gentleman walking with a stick.

  Ron found the number of the Planning Department. He felt a whole lot better, though his balls hurt.

  Chapter XXIX

  Shropshire Fields Allotments lived up to their billing. In the slanted light of an Indian summer afternoon, they glowed. A grande allée of rough cut grass ran down the middle of a vast expanse of autumnal vegetable patches, crisscrossed by rows of overgrown bean canes, bolted lettuces, mildewed marrows, wilted maize
stalks and burned out sunflowers. As Yasmin had promised, the place was alive with sheds.

  It was veritable shed heaven. There were sheds of every conceivable design that could be constructed from clapboard, plywood, fibreboard, corrugated plastic, corrugated iron, discarded doors, discarded windows, bits of old mirror – any material that would keep water out – with roofs swathed in scaffold netting or smothered in vines. It was a free-for-all, with no distinctions of class or school. Arte Povera shacks cobbled together from plastic sacking, polythene sheeting and soggy hardboard stood alongside model Appalachian log cabins; mini-Merzbarns mingled with Gothic follies.

  The posher the shed, Daniel noticed, the poorer the vegetables. The posh sheds apparently functioned as landlocked beach huts complete with deckchairs, tables, even parasols. An elderly couple was having tea outside their prefab model, a Wendy house for her, a Walden for him – a sop to atavistic urges no amount of civilization could quash. A less salubrious establishment two plots down appeared to be in fulltime occupation, the return to nature semi-permanent to judge from the build-up of cider cans and vodka bottles outside. A tea towel pinned to the window twitched as Daniel passed.

  Shropshire Fields was evidently more than shed heaven; it was shed hell and purgatory too. That explained the crucified scarecrow and the tortured gloves mounted on broom handles, apostrophising the heavens. Too scary for bird-scarers.

  Daniel snapped away with his camera, as happy as a pap at a premiere. Everywhere he turned he found visual echoes, here of the rickety stable in Hieronymus Bosch’s Adoration of the Magi, there of the weird wooden structures of Philip Guston, who as a boy of ten had found his father hanged in the garden shed.

  Out of courtesy he refrained from photographing allotments whose owners were at work, though on a midweek afternoon there were very few. At the end of the grande allée on the right he spotted a shed in a delicate shade of sun-bleached blue as luminous as the sky in Piero della Francesca’s Baptism of Christ. He was about to take a picture when he became aware of a couple sitting in its shade.

  The woman wore a flowery lilac dress and the man a bright orange shirt and camo shorts. Daniel wondered how he could have missed them: they must have blended into the bed of dahlias and Michaelmas daisies behind. It was only when the man cleared his throat in a commanding manner, like an actor launching into a soliloquy, that Daniel noticed them.

  This couple weren’t drinking tea; they were busy painting. The man had a pochade box in his lap and the woman had a small canvas apparently lashed to the handle of a shopping trolley.

  Sunday painters out on a weekday. Daniel suppressed a patronising smile as he crept up behind them to sneak a look.

  The woman’s canvas was a blizzard of soft marks, an inchoate haze from which vague forms were emerging. Sweet peas? There were sweet peas growing in the next allotment, but it was still a little hard to say. The pastel palette seemed too delicate for dahlias and too pink for daisies, though Daniel had to admit the painting had promise. The brushwork breathed.

  The man’s was a sketch of a shed, and what a sketch it was. The shed in question was a common-or-garden model two plots down: clapboard, single window, felted roof, Wickes standard circa 1980. Apart from the faint romance of its faded green paint it was unprepossessing, one of the least interesting structures Daniel had seen. But the door was ajar and through it you could see the wheel of an upturned barrow, the edge of a red-striped deckchair and the diagonal handle of a garden fork leaning up against a cobwebby window.

  As a subject it was nothing special. It would not have occurred to Daniel to photograph it and if he had, people would have wondered why. But on the small scrap of board in the man’s pochade box the contents of that shed, caught in slanting sunlight, were exposed in an intimate moment of revelation as tender as the unlocking of a heart. What colour were the shadows? Daniel could not have named them. They were as warm and rich as coagulated blood.

  Just then the woman noticed Daniel and tapped the man’s arm.

  “We’ve got an audience,” she whispered, and smiled shily.

  Daniel felt himself blush as he apologised for disturbing them.

  “That’s beautiful,” he pointed at the man’s painting.

  “Yes, it’s a prince among sheds,” the man replied. He waved his brush-holding arm around the allotments. “This is a necropolis of princely tombs, the Royal Cemetery of Ur, E17. A garden of remembrance,” he declaimed in a voice as rich and resonant as his throat-clearing.

  The woman smiled again, this time at Daniel.

  Daniel itched to photograph the picture but it seemed intrusive. Instead he heard himself asking if he could buy it.

  “I don’t suppose so. It comes with the allotment,” answered the man, indicating its surroundings with fluttering hands.

  “Not the shed,” laughed Daniel, embarrassed. “I meant the painting.”

  He hadn’t even considered what it might cost.

  “Oh, that.”

  The man looked a little shocked, even defensive.

  “It’s not finished,” he said with an air of finality.

  “Can I photograph it then?” Daniel persevered.

  “If you like,” said the man and turned the lid of the box to face the camera, striking an authorial pose behind it. It was about as close to a swagger pose as could be achieved in a folding chair with a wooden box in one’s lap.

  The woman looked on indulgently, and laughed.

  “Now, if you don’t mind,” the man told Daniel, “we’ve got work to do. The magic hour will be over in another 10 minutes. Tempus fugit.”

  And he turned the box back around and picked up his brush.

  Daniel thanked him and left. He wanted to ask his name but felt he’d already intruded enough. Still, on his way back he sneaked a photo of the two of them sitting painting, with the shed with the open door behind. For some reason he could not have identified, he wanted to fix the moment in his memory.

  * * *

  It was ten to seven when he rang Yasmin’s bell; she’d said she would be home after 6.30. His heart leapt as he heard footsteps running downstairs, then sank as the door flew open and he saw his notepad in her hand.

  She apologised for not inviting him in. Sami was ill, the doctor had diagnosed mumps and she wouldn’t want to ruin Daniel’s prospects.

  Daniel was touched by her concern for his prospects, but it didn’t lessen his disappointment at being sent away. He wished Sami a swift recovery and thanked her for the tip about the allotments.

  “I’ve spent the whole afternoon there and only just scratched the surface. I’ll be back.”

  She handed him the pad with an apologetic smile.

  “Did you get anything on Orlovsky?”

  “Not yet, but I’ve arranged to meet him next week on the pretext of an interview about the global pandemic of dot painting exhibitions he’s planning for his various outlets in the autumn. I hear it’s going to be called Dot dot dot.”

  Yasmin didn’t laugh. She looked taken aback.

  “I hope you know what you’re doing. This isn’t hairdressing, you know – Orlovsky is a gangster. These days he can afford to keep his hands clean, but there are some things daily manicures don’t change. Other people do his dirty work for him.” There was a hint of reproof in her tone as she added: “Take care,” and closed the door.

  Chapter XXX

  It was 90 degrees in the shade in the harbour at Collioure and freezing everywhere else. An electric heater was fanning hot air onto the fishing boats and the fishermen loafing on the waterfront, but it couldn’t disperse the damp in the rest of the basement.

  Autumn had come early. It had been chucking it down since the middle of September and the buckets in Duval’s conservatory needed constant attention. The central heating timer in the kitchen upstairs was set to come on when his wife returned from work, and he was no longer permitted access to it. But why bother with heating? There was no possibility of receiving clients in his ‘basemen
t-showroom’, which looked more like a junk shop than an art dealership since Valerie had had all his possessions carted downstairs.

  Duval’s office now contained an 18th century French armoire, the green leather chesterfield Valerie had always hated – she accused it of turning the drawing room into a gentleman’s club – and the baby Bechstein grand. The rowing machine was under a polythene sheet in the conservatory beside the stacks of cardboard boxes with soggy bottoms holding his record collection and overflow art library, which had previously enjoyed the run of the house. The shelves upstairs had been evacuated in advance of the divorce because, said Valerie, she needed to take in lodgers.

  Now every remaining cranny was filling up with unsalable pictures by Pat Phelan. So far Duval had managed to squeeze them in behind the piano, but the pictures kept arriving and getting bigger. If this went on they’d have to take their chances in the conservatory with the rowing machine. Still no sign of the Modigliani, never mind the Jawlensky and the Vlaminck. And on completion of those, Martin had warned, his father was threatening delivery of a series of seven-footers.

  Artists! The most deluded race on earth. They imagined that all that was needed was a gallery where their work could be seen and the world would immediately beat a path to their door. Poor fools! That was only the start of their painful awakening. The gallery was where it all began to go wrong.

  In the privacy of their studios artists could dream that the pictures they were painting were revelatory, that their vision would flick a switch in the viewer’s mind that would illuminate the world in a new light. But in the glare of the gallery they woke up to the fact of public indifference. You could count on the fingers of one hand the private views where people actually looked at the pictures. If anyone did, it was an odds-on bet that they were fellow artists. Everyone else, even the critics and collectors, stood with their backs to the pictures and drinks in their hands.