I caught the Tube to Green Park and walked down Piccadilly towards a pub in Shepherd’s Market to meet Jess. In the evening dusk, the former red-light district still had a raffish air. Several pubs, a few cramped restaurants with tables that over-spilled to the pavement outside and the unmistakable whiff of London drains.
I saw her standing outside the pub, a bottle of wine in a cooler between her feet. She was smiling and chatting to a tall man in a black polo neck and a leather jacket. One of the art crowd, I decided, walking towards them. Either that or a trained assassin.
‘Hiya,’ I said, giving her a hug.
‘Hi, babe, here you go,’ she said, picking up an empty glass at her feet and filling it with wine. ‘And meet Alexi. He’s coming to the party too. Alexi, this is Lil. My best pal. Knows literally nothing about art. No offence, love.’
‘None taken,’ I said, reaching for the wine glass from her.
‘Lil, sensational to meet you,’ said Alexi, whereupon I went for a handshake and he went for a kiss on the cheek, so we did both and I then pulled back, awkwardly.
I thought sensational was over-egging it a bit. Was he high?
‘How do you guys know each other?’ I asked, before tipping back my wine glass. Ah, that first mouthful on a Friday evening.
‘We don’t,’ said Jess. ‘I met him at the bar and we realized we were both going to the opening.’ She smiled at Alexi and reached behind her neck to pull her hair over one shoulder. Oh dear. I recognized that flush on her face. She fancied this tall, dark stranger who was wearing a polo neck even though it was a balmy Friday evening in September. I glanced from Jess to Alexi. She and I had very different taste. Jess was into beautiful men – slim, delicate, arty men. The sorts you saw drifting about Rome or Florence in drainpipe jeans, who existed on tiny coffees and rolled cigarettes. Not for me. I’d never fancied a man with skinnier thighs than me.
‘Rrrrrright,’ I said, slowly. ‘And Alexi, how do you know Walt?’
‘Old friend from art school,’ he said, scratching his chin.
‘You’re an artist?’
He shook his head. ‘A collector.’
As Jess said, I knew little about art. If you asked me, most Picassos looked like they’d been drawn by a 4-year-old with a packet of Crayola. But collecting meant Alexi had money, no? Rubbish collecting was a job. Art collecting was less of a job, more a hobby for rich people.
‘What sort of thing do you collect?’
Alexi shrugged in his leather jacket. ‘I’m interested in young artists, but it can be any medium. Paint, graphics, installations. So long as I feel something towards it. A reaction. Something visceral, you know?’ At this, he curled his right hand into a fist and held it up to his chest, beating it against his heart.
‘Mmm,’ I replied vaguely into my glass of wine. I went to gallery openings every now and then with Jess and the only thing I felt at them was hunger because there was always plenty of wine but no snacks.
‘I think you’ll love this show,’ Jess said to Alexi, eyelashes fluttering like a baby gazelle’s. Christ. I wondered if she’d told Alexi she knew Walt because she was dating him.
Alexi smiled back at her. ‘I’m excited about seeing it.’
I felt like a pawn in a game of foreplay. ‘What is it?’ I asked. ‘I mean, who’s the exhibition by?’
‘A young artist called Daniel,’ said Jess. ‘From the Ukraine. So his work is quite intense. Twisted.’
‘He uses light to show darkness and darkness to show light,’ added Alexi.
‘Exactly,’ said Jess, gazing at Alexi with such admiration it was as if he’d just announced he’d discovered the secret to everlasting life.
‘Sounds cheerful.’
‘Oh, come on, misery guts,’ said Jess, digging me in the ribs with an elbow. ‘I take it no word from you-know-who then?’
‘Nope,’ I said, grimacing at her. ‘But it’s all right. Onwards and sideways, as Mum says.’
‘He’s an idiot, in that case, and there’ll be millions more,’ said Jess, before turning to Alexi. ‘Lil had a date last weekend but he hasn’t texted her.’
I wasn’t sure I wanted Alexi knowing about my love life, but too late.
‘Lil, I can’t believe it,’ said Alexi, smoothly. ‘I’m sorry. You liked him?’
I sighed. ‘Yeah. He was interesting. And it was my first date in ages. But I reckon if you haven’t heard from someone in five days that’s probably a bad sign, right? You’re a man. If you guys want to see someone again you let them know, no?’ I hoped my tone didn’t come across as desperate.
Alexi looked thoughtful for a moment. ‘Normally, yes. But without knowing the details it’s quite hard to say. Sometimes we can be just as complicated as women.’
‘Fiiiiiinally, a man who admits it,’ said Jess, laughing.
Oh God. If there was one thing that Jess liked more than a skinny man who was into art and tight trousers, it was a complicated, skinny man.
‘What about you, Alexi?’ I said. ‘You single?’
‘Ha.’ He grimaced and ran a hand through his hair. ‘It’s complicated for me, too.’
Course it was. This was a disaster. Poor, innocent Walt, I thought, who was probably this second pouring wine into plastic cups and brushing down his neatly ironed chinos ahead of the opening. He didn’t stand a chance.
Walt’s gallery was a few minutes away on a little street off Piccadilly. ‘Walter de Winter’ said a sign hanging outside it. By the time we arrived, people were already overflowing on to the pavement outside the gallery, under the sign, plastic cups of white wine in hand. It looked like a circus gathering. A woman with bright purple hair stood talking to a man in a tartan jacket with a large dog asleep at his feet. Behind them was a man wearing a cravat over a T-shirt and a panama hat, deep in conversation with a lady who’d come dressed entirely in black lace. One man, standing with his back to us, had the world ‘REAL’ tattooed across his neck.
‘Alexi!’ shouted someone, so he said he’d come and find us in a minute and slunk his way through the crowd.
‘Let’s find Walt,’ said Jess, so I followed her inside the gallery where I spotted him, just as I’d suspected, in chinos, a sensible blazer and suede loafers, standing in front of a large canvas, gesturing to a lady with cherry-coloured lipstick beside him. We snuck up behind him and stood silently, not wanting to interrupt.
The canvas was entirely black, so far as I could see. As black as a blackboard. It was like looking out through a window into the night. No colour whatsoever.
‘And you can see here,’ said Walt, sweeping his hand across the bottom left-hand corner of the canvas. ‘He intensifies the drama. There’s a sense of heightened emotions, of fury, of anger and despair which is juxtaposed with here, where the mood changes.’ Walt stopped and waved his hand towards the top of the canvas, which was exactly as black as the lower half. ‘It’s calmer, it’s lighter, there’s less chaos. So really what he’s revealing is a true picture of mental anguish. Black and violent at times, but at other moments, far less disturbed.’
The lady with the vibrant lipstick nodded. ‘Hmmm,’ she said. ‘Eeet ees fascinating.’ And then she squinted at a small label beside the canvas. ‘Let me haff a look at the others and decide, but I like thees very much.’
‘Absolutely, take your time. Would