He walked quickly, as although the hood of his rain coat was keeping most of the wetness out, he could feel growing dampness around his neck. Very few people were on the street, except for a small group of young men and an agitated looking Sarah. She was wearing a shiny red, plastic raincoat; tightly belted at the waist. Her hair was covered by a dark red scarf and her feet stood tall in red patent leather heels. He thought she looked great.
The group of men were of the trendy East End type. Most wore khaki-green parkas with small German flags on the shoulders. Two of them were in heavy dark coloured winter coats. They all sported jeans and trainers. As Tom passed them, he could hear laddish muttering and laughter. They all looked in Sarah’s direction.
“You’re late!” Sarah said angrily.
Tom grabbed her arm, and led her urgently into the entrance.
“Have you been waiting long?”
“Long enough to get soaked,” she said.
The corners of Sarah’s mouth began to betray her feigned rage. Tom knew she was not really angry, but it still affected him.
“Sorry!” he said with an overly deep sincerity. He was still in a heightened emotional state and his reactions were disproportionate.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“You keep asking that. I’m fine, really,” Tom said emphatically.
“What’s happened to your head?” Sarah inquired, noticing the plaster on Tom’s forehead and reaching out to touch it.
“What? Oh… that… nothing.”
Tom pushed her hand away and moved off before Sarah could probe further.
Inside the gallery Taylor and Mona were waiting for them. Taylor was a very neatly turned-out man. He had short hair that was cut well, was cleanly shaven and wore an expensive suit. He was the sort of man that always tried to sell you something you neither needed nor wanted, and had the knack of rarely failing.
Mona was dressed with classic good taste; maybe a little too classic for her thirty-five years. She was very attractive, with light brown skin and jet-black hair; a legacy of her black grandmother. Tom had always thought they looked good together.
“He made it, then?” Taylor gestured to the dampened figure at Sarah’s side.
Mona gave Tom a kiss on the cheek while skilfully holding her wet friend at a distance. Tom really liked Mona. She was silly, but very caring and sincere.
“Shall we go in, then?” said Taylor; a little more impatiently than he probably intended.
The four friends negotiated a number of art lovers accumulated around the double doors, and entered the exhibition hall. Tom looked around the building, which had been carefully lit to create a capsule of light around each exhibit. Within each cocoon a number of people stared at the painting in front of them, some with the practised eye of understanding, but most with the vacuous gaze of the disingenuous: those who do not understand why the Emperor is parading around without clothes, but are afraid to voice the truth. When Tom looked at most modern art it left him cold and with the distinct belief that he was being conned. Sarah had once commented that he was simply too cool-headed to be captured by the emotion of the art, but he feared he had become too cold-headed and was no longer capable of experiencing real emotion.
The exhibition was a compilation of surrealist art painted in the early twenty-first century. Artists who, rather than creating a new style for themselves as had Dali, Man Ray and Ernst, instead plagiarised the originality of those greats. It is said there are two ways to greatness: either do something amazing or kill someone that has. It seemed the artists exhibiting here believed they had found a third route and Tom doubted it was the sincerest form of flattery. Originality of thought was what made an individual great. The eureka moment of disparate ideas and understandings coming together for the first time ever. From that moment on, mankind ricochets onto a new course. Imitation does the opposite. It holds our trajectory and suppresses innovation. Tom was desperate to find something original and innovative, but knew inspiration was not in this exhibition hall.
“What do you think?” Mona inquired.
“Not as good as the originals,” Tom moaned.
“They are originals. These are original paintings,” she responded blankly.
Subtle sarcasm was lost on Mona. She exhibited advanced myopia when reading between the lines and on occasion, when trying to read the lines themselves. Tom looked at her for a long moment.
“Well, they’re paintings. I’ll give you that.”
“Lighten up, for God’s sake,” Sarah interjected.
“Sorry. I’m just not in the mood for this tonight,” Tom said quietly.
“It’s not really my cup of tea either, but we’re here to support Mona’s friend,” Taylor said, emerging from a small group who were discussing Salvador Dali, but pronouncing his surname as if it rhymed with alley, which ironically was nearer to the correct Spanish pronunciation, but in the mouths of pretentious Englishmen somehow sounded wrong.
Mona took Taylor by the arm and pulled herself close to him. Taylor did not acknowledge her.
“My friend is exhibiting here. So, when I introduce you to him, if you can’t say something nice…”
“Yeah, I know. Say nothing,” pre-empted Tom.
“No,” corrected Mona, “lie!”
Mona’s unexpected humour caught Tom by surprise and caused a smile to slip by his melancholia.
“That’s better,” Mona laughed, “Mr Black Sky is smiling!”
Tom’s darkness was lightened again.
A man in his early twenties approached them. His long hair was in an anachronistic pony-tail and bad condition. Tom always wondered why men who go to the trouble of growing such long hair seem to have no desire to look after it. Do they believe it enough of an achievement to grow the damned stuff that they needn’t bother with grooming, or were these just the rantings of a bald man?
The young man wore a dark suit that hung on him like it had been flung carelessly over a broom-handle, and modelled his gaunt skinniness as if it were a virtue. When he opened his mouth to speak, his blackened teeth smelt of stale tobacco.
“Mona, darling, you made it.” His voice was fashionably coarse and affectedly Cockney. Mona grabbed the young man’s hand.
“Preston, come and meet my friends. This is my husband, Taylor, and this is Tom and Sarah.”
“Yeah, cool!” Preston’s vernacular was from the same era as his hair. Mona continued playing hostess.
“So, which are yours?”
Preston led them to a group of oils that were no less an homage to Dali than if he had left a pocket watch in an oven, but less artistic. Dali was not an artist that Tom enjoyed seeing badly imitated. As a teenage schoolboy, he had been the Spaniard’s greatest fan, and was so in love with his psychotic persona that he even sent him birthday cards.
“Oh, these are excellent!” Taylor gushed, but one had to understand that to Taylor, Lladró was high art.
Mona moved in closer to the paintings.
“Are these in oil?”
No one answered. Her question was obviously polite rhetoric; except to her.
“They are oils, aren’t they?” Mona continued.
Preston grunted. An uneasy silence enveloped the five people gathered around Preston’s masterpieces. Tom was the first to break the hiatus.
“So, shall we have a look around?”
“Yeah, you guys look around. Later.” Preston affected a glottal stop on his last word.
The four friends spent a further forty minutes half-heartedly looking at the paintings before Sarah drove them back to Taylor and Mona’s house.
Their home was in Hampstead, and was a very pretty semi-detached Georgian residence. Taylor was a successful banker who, unsurprisingly considering his profession, had been clever with his money. Mona and Taylor appeared as comfortable as their fat ginger cat who greeted them as the front door opened.
Passing the line of Lladró figurines in the hallway, they filed into the living room.
<
br /> “Drinks?” offered Mona as her house-trained, but insensitive partner collapsed into his favourite armchair.
“‘G’ and ‘T’, please,” said Sarah, sinking onto a leather sofa with great femininity. Tom sat next to her, but perched on the edge of the cushion. Their legs touched. Neither addressed the connection.
“Me too, please,” Tom said.
“Two ‘G’ and ‘T’s,” reiterated Mona, “and you?” she asked Taylor.
“Sounds good to me.”
Taylor made no attempt to help. Mona looked at him for half a beat more than a passing glance.
“Can I give you a hand, Mona?” asked Sarah.
Mona’s eyes turned back to Taylor and without moving her gaze answered Sarah pointedly.
“No, thanks. I’ll do it.”
Taylor began to rise out of his armchair.
“How about a little something special?” he said.
Sarah reacted.
“Taylor, you know I don’t like that.”
“Oh, you’re such a square,” admonished Taylor.
“I’m a neurologist. I know what that stuff does to the brain.”
Taylor dismissed her with a wave of his hand and a noise that sounded almost like Ebenezer Scrooge’s humbug! Sarah exhaled heavily through her nose, but it would take more than a nasal rebuke to make Taylor desist from his favourite illegality. He produced a small polythene package from the back of a drawer in a mahogany cabinet.
“Umm, talcum powder,” he joked, holding up the drug.
It was his little funny to refer to cocaine as talcum powder because when he was high he lost his appetite for alcohol; it kept him dry.
He moved papers and coasters from the coffee table, and poured a small amount of the white powder onto the glass top. Taylor chopped the drug with a razor blade before making two neat lines. Taking a dog-eared piece of rolled-up cardboard, he placed one end in his nose and sniffed loudly as he drew the other end along one of the lines. He made a noise like a boxer being punched in the head and sat back with a childish smile on his face.
“Tom?” he said gesturing to the second line.
“No, you know I don’t do coke anymore,” Tom reminded him with long practised conviction.
It had been nearly two years since he had held that cardboard tube to his nose. Sarah smiled uneasily and looked at Tom. He avoided her gaze; he knew what she was thinking. Although she was pleased he no longer took drugs, she had often banged on about the idea that drug abuse was often followed by varying levels of psychosis later in life, and he was sure she equated his recent moodiness with his historic addiction. But more importantly, he knew she was wrong. He had no problem understanding reality, he simply didn’t enjoy it. Sarah had tried many times to talk to him about his behaviour, but so far, he had managed to evade her.
“You know, I’m proud of you, Tom,” she said, but although a well-meant comment, her parental attitude towards him made him feel like a child being praised for eating all of his vegetables.
“What?” Tom said, responding less graciously than he wanted to, but not able to help himself.
“It’s been nearly two years, hasn’t it? You know, since you last…”
“I bet you know exactly, to the day,” Tom snapped.
He got to his feet, feeling he was being surveilled rather than watched over. A feeling he had been having frequently over the last few days.
“I’m not spying on you, Sweetheart. I just care.” Sarah took his hand. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“I know.” Tom tried to be kind, but took his hand back involuntarily.
“I didn’t want to start World War Three!” joked Taylor.
Mona glared at him.
“Well, you have!” she admonished.
Tom sighed.
“Sorry. I guess I’m just in a bad mood tonight.” Tom said with a stifled laugh, and then looked around the room. His eyes moistened.
“That’s why you need to do a line,” said Taylor.
Mona and Sarah spun their heads towards him.
“Taylor!” they shouted in unison.
“Sorry, guys,” Tom said, wishing he could stop saying sorry all the time. “I think I’d just like to call it a night, if it’s all the same.”
“Yes, of course,” said Mona.
She squeezed Tom’s arm.
“Sorry,” he blurted out again.
“I’ll see you out,” Mona said, and led them into the hall. “Sorry about him,” she apologised, at a level loud enough to be heard in the living room.
“He means well,” Sarah said in a low voice.
“You think so?” Mona’s voice was even louder than before.
She stood at the door and watched them walk away, and then turned her head towards the living room. Her pleasant smile gave way to a scowl.
Sarah and Tom walked down the path towards her car.
“I wouldn’t want to be Taylor tonight!” Sarah laughed.
“I’m not so keen on being me, to tell the truth,” replied Tom with more pain than humour. Sarah stopped and arrested Tom’s progress, taking him firmly by both arms.
“It’ll be okay. Whatever it is. It will be okay.”
Tom looked at her, and then turned his head away.
“You know, it’s weird. I keep getting the feeling that…” Tom broke off. Sarah waited. The moment started to fade.
“You keep getting the feeling that…?” Sarah prompted.
“No, it’s nothing.” Tom said, then pulled away and continued down the path. Sarah looked after him as he moved away from her.
The car bleeped and all four of its indicators flashed as Sarah pressed the central locking button on her key fob. Tom got in, not waiting for her to get to the car. He looked at the dashboard in front of him and followed the flowing lines of plastic to the driver’s side. He knew what all the controls did, but had never operated them. Somehow, he had reached the age of forty-five without learning to drive. He had a motorbike licence from his teens, but cars had never interested him, even as a utility. The driver’s door opened and Sarah got in.
“Thanks for waiting for me,” she said having regressed to her earlier mode of playful sarcasm. She started the engine. “Belt up!” she said automatically.
“And I thought you wanted me to talk?” Tom joked.
Sarah laughed and selected first gear. They drove away while Tom stared out of the window, and although he knew where they were going, he continued to wonder where he would end up.
As they drove through the deserted London streets, Tom and Sarah remained silent. The quietness was not the uncomfortable vacuum that plagues first dates and important interviews; their aged knowledge of each other was way beyond that. This was simply the absence of talking rather than silence. However, Tom could sense that Sarah wanted to chat.
They had both always enjoyed the eclectic, meandering discourse in which they often engaged. She, like him, was an experiential sponge soaking up all of life’s foibles both useful and inane.
“I’ve just remembered something really interesting,” said Sarah.
“Pray tell, O tormentor of mine.”
“It was a lecture, at university, about psychotropic drugs,” Sarah continued, “Apparently, lots of artists took various substances, which they believed, opened their minds to an unseen reality.”
“As if reality isn’t bad enough, they wanted to see more?” Tom joked.
Sarah persisted.
“No, not more reality, an altered, hidden world. That’s where the strange visions came from; like the visions the Surrealists painted.”
“Do you think we’re not seeing the full picture, then? There are hidden dimensions?”
“Maybe, but I don’t think swamping our nervous systems with drugs is a particularly wise move.”
Tom was really becoming tired of her incessant banging-on about his past drugs taking. Sarah continued.
“What if there are unseen things? Maybe there are good reasons why
we can’t see them.”
Tom’s irritation subsided as he spied a good argument.
“So, you would rather stay in ignorance to be safe?”
“No, but I’d want to be in control. I wouldn’t want to wake up in a new reality wondering where the hell I was and not understanding anything around me.”
“Well, to tell the truth, I wouldn’t mind something new, and I’d certainly love something different. Wouldn’t it be great to find out this is not it? I tell you, it would make sense to me, because this bloody existence doesn’t.” Tom was getting into his existential swing.
“Did you ever have any altered experiences when you… you know?”
She faltered. Tom had often noticed that although Sarah was desperate to get him to talk about his self-medicated past, she also seemed fearful of mentioning it, except in covert terms. Maybe she believed it would somehow weaken his abstemious resolve if she said the words too overtly.
“When I was taking coke? You can say it, you know.” Tom looked at her, then back out of the window. “No, I didn’t… but I have been having some strange experiences recently.”
Sarah missed fourth and the gearbox crunched.
“What strange experiences?”
“Well, it’s weird.” Tom laughed nervously. “I keep getting the feeling that I am being… followed.”
“Really?” Sarah gasped.
“Yeah, and before I came out this evening… I thought there were people in my house.”
“What sort of people?”
“Oh, you know, grey aliens with big almond-shaped eyes!”
“What?”
“Well, what do you think I mean? Intruders, burglars.”
Sarah regained her composure.
“Oh… and was there anyone there?”
“No, as I said, it was a feeling, but no one was there. It’s probably just stress… or maybe all the psychotropic drugs I’ve been taking recently!”
The car drew to a stop outside Tom’s house.
“Home, sweet home. Thanks for the lift,” Tom said with a dry smile.
He got out of the car, then bent down to look at Sarah through the open door.
If The Bed Falls In Page 2
