The Enemy of the Good

by Michael Arditti

  The thought of that pair of unlikely anarchists roused him to action. His painstaking efforts to spare them had backfired. He longed to assure them of both his health and his good faith. Mike offered to drive him to Oxford, but a reluctance to brave the reporters at the gate left him reliant on the phone. As usual, it was his mother who answered. Any hope of breaking the news to her gently was dashed by her announcement that Mrs Shepherd had shown her the paper.

  ‘So she’s read it too?’

  ‘She swears that she never takes a single word it says seriously.’

  ‘Let’s hope the other three million readers feel the same.’

  She tentatively asked him how he felt. Her discreet concern reduced him to tears and he struggled to regain his composure. He promised her that he was fine, quoting the official line that HIV was as manageable as diabetes, but he sensed that she remained unconvinced. After urging him to come down to Beckley and offering to come up to London, both of which he dismissed as impractical, she passed the phone to his father, who was equally defiant but more hurt. As he repeated the questions: ‘Are you all right, boy? Are you sure? Are you sure?’, irrespective of the replies, Clement wondered if it were his mother’s history or simply her gender that made her better equipped to withstand the shock.

  He had barely put down the phone when he was rung by Susannah. While her knowledge of HIV made her slower to panic than his parents, her knowledge of the press made her quicker to protest.

  ‘It’s outrageous! You must lodge a complaint. Or I will. There’s no possible public interest defence.’

  ‘Funny, Mike said the same.’

  ‘It’s no time to hold back. Would you like me to come over… talk through some strategies?’

  ‘That’s very kind, but not now. There’s an army of reporters outside. I figure the less that happens, the more likely they are to leave.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be so sure. You must go on to the attack. If we could only feed them another story. When the Mirror was planning an exposé of the Snow Leopards and some teenage fans, I got it spiked in exchange for the low-down on a brothel owned by a TV chef.’

  ‘It’s hardly comparable,’ he replied with a shudder.

  ‘Why not publish your design? Let the Readers Decide. That sort of thing. But I know you, Clem. Promise me you won’t get on your high horse. Give Christ a loincloth. You and Carla can easily rustle something up. Show that the offence is all in your opponents’ minds.’

  He thanked her for her advice and agreed to make a public statement. To that end, he offered an exclusive interview to The Times which, as the paper of record, had a duty to set the record straight. Wary of being defined by his decor, he arranged to meet Ben, the interviewer, in his studio. Faced with such a self-confident young man, he was doubly determined to be on his guard.

  The introductions effected, tea chosen and tape recorder set up, Ben asked if he could ‘plunge right in,’ flashing a cheeky grin to make up for the innuendo.

  ‘Be my guest,’ Clement replied.

  ‘Are you surprised by the strength of feeling your window has evoked?’ Ben asked.

  ‘All change provokes backlash. Many people find it impossible to imagine any improvement in a building they’ve spent fifty years contemplating, even if it’s only contemplating its decline.’

  ‘Surely it’s more than that? You stand accused of flouting the basic tenets of the Church.’

  ‘That’s utter nonsense! I admit I reject several of the Thirty-nine Articles.’ He was grateful that Ben’s reliance on a list of prepared questions prevented his having to enumerate. ‘But I’ve found that the Church has always afforded me the space to express my dissent.’

  ‘Should the Church have a policy of employing Christian artists?’

  ‘To my mind, yes. Of course, it’s perfectly possible to employ excellent artists with different beliefs – or, indeed, none at all – but it reduces the building to the status of a gallery. Try as you might, there’s an element of the ersatz to it. You only have to look at the wealth of stained glass produced in Germany since the war. It’s all very cold, very hard-edged and abstract: powerful aesthetic qualities but no soul.’

  ‘Yet it’s caused far less offence than your own work.’ Clement shrugged, forgetting that it would not translate into copy. ‘Don’t you care what your critics think?’

  ‘Which critics?’

  ‘Fundamentalists.’

  ‘In a word, no. But then I deny the premise of the question. Fundamentalists don’t think: they bray; they parrot.’

  ‘What about their claim that your design is immoral?’

  ‘I regard it as a moral imperative to resist intolerance.’

  ‘One of the canons at Roxborough – ’ Clement had no need to ask which – ‘has described it as liberalism run wild.’

  ‘If there’s one thing on which liberals should be dogmatic, it’s championing their own cause. Far from the woolly compromise of popular myth, it’s the essence of Christianity: a belief in the sanctity of the individual; a definition of Love thy Neighbour that doesn’t stop at the people who live next door.’

  ‘Critics – I should stress that these are in religious, not artistic circles –’ Ben’s grin was yielding diminishing returns – ‘claim that your assertion of individuality masks a deep egotism.’

  ‘I can only point to the gospel and suggest they cast the beams out of their own eyes before looking for the mote in mine… Actually, I’d rather you didn’t use that. I expressed myself badly.’

  ‘Sure thing,’ Ben said, at which Clement knew that he had handed him his opening line.

  ‘Creativity is one of God’s greatest gifts to us,’ he added quickly, ‘and it’s through our creativity that we both reflect and honour Him. Next to that, ritual and even prayer strike me as arid.’

  ‘Are you saying that you hope your work will lead people to God?’

  ‘That would be presumptuous. Let’s just say that I hope it might be a signpost along the way. Think of the key events of the gospel story – the Nativity, the Crucifixion, the Last Supper – and I’d like to bet that, nine times out of ten, the first thing that springs to mind is an image. The word of God comes complete with illustrations. In no other area of life is the artist so conscious of working within a tradition.’

  ‘Yet you want to destroy that tradition.’

  ‘Not at all! I want to revitalise it. What’s the first thing you see when you enter a church? A broken man on a cross. Most Western churches are even built in the shape of that cross. The Church is literally fashioned on suffering. What does that say about the way we see God?’

  Ben clearly resented having his prerogative usurped, but Clement’s silence obliged him to answer. ‘That He takes no prisoners?’

  ‘Right. I swore never to paint another crucifixion after hearing a little girl in the National Gallery ask her mother whether everyone was crucified when they died. It summed up how the Church down the ages has used imagery to reinforce its power: Christ suffered to relieve our suffering but, if we reject His suffering, then we’ll suffer in Hell forever. My own work couldn’t be more different. Take the Pier Palace Christ – ’

  ‘That’s the one where people put their heads in a wooden cut-out of Jesus?’

  ‘Yes. The one that’s earned me the “controversial” tag in your paper ever since. I was accused of being trivial, offensive and blasphemous, but the piece sprang from a deep conviction that Christ is to be found in us all.’

  ‘Wasn’t it vandalised?’

  ‘Twice,’ Clement replied impatiently. ‘But surely the important thing is that more than 100,000 people engaged with it when it was exhibited outside the Serpentine Gallery, and almost a third of them bought a photograph to take home? Even if they did it as a joke, they made some level of connection.’

  ‘Would it be fair to suggest that your unorthodox views are a way to justify your own very public sexuality?’

  ‘You say “public sexuality” as though I spend m
y life cruising Clapham Common or Hampstead Heath! My sexuality is only public in response to the people who believe I should lie about it.’

  ‘In that case, why have you deliberately concealed having HIV?’

  ‘It’s not always easy to live up to one’s principles,’ Clement said, suspecting that Ben would sacrifice every principle he had ever had for a regular byline. ‘I was eager to protect the people close to me. And I admit there was another, more selfish reason. Much of my work is commissioned by the Church, which has never been as willing to embrace the leper on its doorstep as one that’s overseas.’

  ‘Leper?’

  ‘I use the word loosely.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Ben’s grin became all teeth. ‘One last question and then I’ll leave you in peace: are you really saying that you have no difficulty reconciling your Christian faith with your HIV?’

  Clement realised that he had given Ben insufficient credit. For all his youth, he knew enough to keep the crux of the matter to the end. ‘I was recently on a retreat where I met a woman whose infection was the direct result of her faith…’ He stopped short, determined to preserve the confidentiality that Christine, however unwittingly, had stripped from him. ‘No, no difficulty whatsoever. After all, if the Eucharist means anything, it’s that no matter what else may be in our veins we all share the same blood.’

  8

  So many flowers were delivered to the house that Clement ran out of vases. Every shelf in the sitting room and hall was crammed with cards. Old friends from Beckley and Wells, from school and the Slade, wrote letters of support. Some sent more tangible tokens. Newsom brought round a small Native American totem which, out of consideration for Mike and an ill-defined sense of unease, he confined to the shed. Mrs Shepherd, showing her customary faith in the healing power of sugar, baked him a date and walnut cake. Most moving of all was a call from Christine, who confessed through stifled sobs how she had unwittingly betrayed him to Deedes.

  ‘You remember the drawing you did of me on the Retreat?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I was so thrilled, I showed it to my mother. I knew she was friends with Mrs Deedes, but I had no idea of the cathedral connection. I never thought… I feel dreadful.’

  ‘There’s really no need.’

  ‘Please don’t be nice to me!’

  ‘Believe it or not, you’ve done me a favour. All that secrecy did me no good… no good at all. Do you remember the Japanese soldier they found hiding out in the jungle forty years after the end of the war?’

  ‘Vaguely.’

  ‘I see now that he was me.’

  Not all the messages were well-disposed. The Christian Institute published his phone number on its website, prompting a string of nuisance calls, including one from a man who claimed that reading about the window in the Daily Express made him feel so dirty that he wanted to rush out and strangle someone, preferably Clement. Even so, such threats disturbed him less than the blunt demands that he repent his sins and turn to Jesus. One letter warned that ‘the millions of decent folk who love Our Saviour will no longer take your insults lying down’. Another wondered whether anyone with children would have produced such an abomination. Several, written in different ink but the same hand, exhorted him to ‘think of your father and mother naked next time you heap scorn on the Lord’.

  Meanwhile, he started work on a full-scale portrait of St Sebastian, partly to occupy his mind in the run-up to the consistory court hearing and partly to occupy Rafik who was desolate at the dismissal of his appeal. He knew that the choice of subject was ripe for mockery. He had already had to contend with Mike, whose humming of Bring Me My Arrows of Desire was off-key in more ways than one. The transparency of the symbolism was precisely why he had chosen it. He was consciously invoking tradition, basing both the composition and setting on Altdorfer’s Linz altarpiece. In the foreground Sebastian, leaning languidly against a tree, faced an arc of sinewy soldiers drawing bows; in the background a crowd of upright citizens, cloaking their furtive lusts in religious fervour, gaped at the saint’s naked flesh.

  He studied the half-finished picture as he paced the studio, waiting for Rafik to arrive. He was more impatient than ever to see his model, who had spent the previous afternoon in court. After Shortt’s insistence that only the principal parties should attend, Clement had sat up half the night, aching to know the result. Rafik failed to ring and he was reluctant to call Shortt and risk irritating him further. He told himself that no news was good news, a formula that had failed to satisfy him even as a child, and went on to adapt another nursery adage: that the three heads of the Reconsideration judges were bound to be better, wiser and more compassionate than the single one at the Immigration Tribunal.

  He had been disgusted by the Tribunal judge who had ruled that Rafik had nothing to fear from a return to Algeria provided that he practised discretion, treating him as if he were a philandering husband with a bit on the side rather than a young man forced to deny his sexual identity. He had wanted to appeal on the grounds of the judge’s inhumanity but Shortt, more soberly, had cited the failure to give due weight to the conclusions of the Amnesty report. As he tried to second-guess the panel’s verdict, Clement gazed at the bleeding saint who was emerging on canvas and prayed that the model would not suffer a similar fate.

  Rafik finally turned up at eleven thirty, disorientated, as Clement had feared, by his experience in court. Clement made him a cup of tea, which he left untouched, and asked for a full account of the hearing.

  ‘What must I say? There are three judges, but no one of them speaks to Rafik. Mr Shortt says to me it must be like this. They must decide if they wish to send case back to Tribunal. But I am there. Why they speak only to him when I am there?’

  ‘I presume they have strict procedures.’

  ‘One judge asks Mr Shortt to say how I am hurt in Algeria. He says I am not hurt. I have left land so I am not hurt. This judge, he says this is not good enough.’

  ‘I’m sure when he thinks it over…’

  ‘I think he is happy when I am hurt. When I come into court with blood and bandage, he says: “Poor Rafik, you sad man, you can stay in this land.”’

  ‘He may still say that. Don’t give up hope.’

  ‘I must be like Desmond. If I try to kill person then I stay here for ten years.’

  ‘And even if the worst comes to the worst – I’m not saying it will but it’s best to be prepared – nothing’ll happen for a very long time. We’re constantly told that, because of the backlog, people stay on for years after their applications are refused. By then the political situation in Algeria may have changed.’

  Rafik gave him such a pitying look that he felt ashamed. ‘Do you still wish me to sit for you?’

  ‘If you feel up to it.’

  ‘What else must I do?’ Rafik stared at the canvas. ‘You make mistake, my friend. Saint is killed with… how you say this?’

  ‘An arrow. Saint Sebastian was killed with arrows.’

  ‘Yes. For Rafik, you must have saint who is killed with stones.’

  ‘Whatever takes your fancy,’ Clement replied, eager to lift the mood. ‘Maybe next time we’ll try St Stephen?’

  ‘This is how you must paint me. This is how you must remember me. It is what must be.’

  ‘If you go on like this, I won’t be able to paint at all.’

  ‘In my head I see all village watch man and woman killed with stones. All persons laugh and make happy. Fathers hold sons in sky so they must see.’

  As he spoke, Rafik tore off his shirt to reveal livid bruises on his arms and raw weals across his back. Clement was appalled, assuming that he must have been attacked by racists, until Rafik explained that he had spent the night in a Vauxhall club. He had no idea that his body was so scarred and stood, gazing proudly at it in the mirror, twisting and turning to obtain the best view. Clement struggled to assimilate this new image of his model, wondering if it sprang from deep-rooted desire or recent despai
r. As though reading his mind, Rafik declared that it was his first visit. ‘I have no count of men who fuck me. I am nothing, so I say they must do all these things to me. It is small hurt. Not like big hurt in heart.’

  Clement examined Rafik’s back, keenly aware that after months of contemplation he was fingering his flesh. The touch of the lacerated skin made him tremble. Some of the welts were inflamed, but Rafik adamantly refused to see a doctor for fear that his records would be passed to the court. So Clement soaked a cloth in antiseptic and dabbed it on the scars, praying that he wasn’t profiting from Rafik’s pain.

  ‘Please tell me if it’s none of my business, but you do know about HIV?’ he asked.

  ‘I know,’ Rafik replied savagely, ‘you think because I do not know English, I must know nothing.’

  ‘Of course not. Besides, your English is very good.’

  ‘I know, but I do not care. I let you poison me with fuck if you wish.’

  ‘I don’t wish,’ Clement replied, desolate to learn how Rafik thought of him.

  ‘Then I go back to my land and I must poison all men who touch me. I let them fuck me in prison and I must smile.’

  Rafik resumed his pose as if defying him to protest. Clement picked up his brush but he was unable to see past the pain in the studiedly vacant expression. The image of Rafik’s self-abasement was so strong that he was in danger of colluding in it. So, with an apology to the indifferent model, he broke off after less than an hour and cycled home.

  Sweating profusely as he carried his bike into the garden, he was surprised to find Mike. ‘You didn’t say you’d be early.’