“Oh,” I said, remembering, remembering everything. “Cassandra.”
And I did remember.
“Yeah,” said Scallie. “She dropped me a line on Facebook. She’s running a community theatre in East London. You should talk to her.”
“Really?”
“I think, well, I mean, reading between the lines of her message, she may still have a thing for you. She asked after you.”
I wondered how drunk he was, how drunk I was, staring at the canal in the early light. I said something, I forget what, then I asked whether Scallie remembered where our hotel was, because I had forgotten, and he said he had forgotten too, and that Rob had all the hotel details and really we should go and find him and rescue him from the clutches of the nice hooker with the handcuffs and the shaving kit, which, we realized, would be easier if we knew how to get back to where we’d left him, and looking for some clue to where we had left Rob, I found a card with the hotel’s address on it in my back pocket, so we headed back there and the last thing we did before I walked away from the canal and that whole strange evening was to pull the itchy Starsky-and-Hutch wig off my head and throw it into the canal.
It floated.
Scallie said, “There was a deposit on that, you know. If you didn’t want to wear it, I’d’ve carried it.” Then he said, “You should drop Cassandra a line.”
I shook my head. I wondered who he had been talking to online, who he had confused for her, knowing it definitely wasn’t Cassandra.
The thing about Cassandra is this: I’d made her up.
I was fifteen, almost sixteen. I was awkward. I had just experienced my teenage growth-spurt and was suddenly taller than most of my friends, self-conscious about my height. My mother owned and ran a small riding stables, and I helped out there, but the girls—competent, horsey, sensible types—intimidated me. At home I wrote bad poetry and painted watercolors, mostly of ponies in fields; at school—there were only boys at my school—I played cricket competently, acted a little, hung around with my friends playing records (the CD was around, but they were expensive and rare, and we had all inherited record players and hi-fis from parents or older siblings). When we didn’t talk about music, or sports, we talked about girls.
Scallie was older than me. So was Rob. They liked having me as part of their gang, but they liked teasing me, too. They acted like I was a kid, and I wasn’t. They had both done it with girls. Actually, that’s not entirely true. They had both done it with the same girl, Caroline Minton, famously free with he favors and always up for it once, as long as the person she was with had a moped.
I did not have a moped. I was not old enough to get one, my mother could not afford one (my father had died when I was small, of an accidental overdose of anaesthetic, when he was in hospital to have a minor operation on an infected toe. To this day, I avoid hospitals). I had seen Caroline Minton at parties, but she terrified me and even had I owned a moped, I would not have wanted my first sexual experience to be with her.
Scallie and Rob also had girlfriends. Scallie’s girlfriend was taller than he was, had huge breasts, and was interested in football, which meant that Scallie had to feign an interest in football, Crystal Palace, while Rob’s girlfriend thought that Rob and she should have things in common, which meant that Rob stopped listening to the mid-80s electropop the rest of us liked and started listening to hippy bands from before we were born, which was bad, and that Rob got to raid her dad’s amazing collection of old TV series on video, which was good.
I had no girlfriend.
Even my mother began to comment on it.
There must have been a place where it came from, the name, the idea: I don’t remember though. I just remember writing “Cassandra” on my exercise books. Then, carefully, not saying anything.
“Who’s Cassandra?” asked Scallie.
“Nobody,” I said.
“She must be somebody. You wrote her name on your maths exercise book.”
“She’s just a girl I met on the skiing holiday.” My mother and I had gone skiing, with my aunt and cousins, the month before, in Austria.
“Are we going to meet her?”
“She’s from Reigate. I expect so. Eventually.”
“Well, I hope so. And you like her?”
I paused, for what I hoped was the right amount of time, and said, “She’s a really good kisser,” then Scallie laughed and Rob wanted to know if this was French kissing, with tongues and everything, and I said, “What do you think?” and by the end of the day, they both believed in her.
My mum was pleased to hear I’d met someone. Her questions—what Cassandra’s parents did, for example—I simply shrugged away.
I went on three “dates” with Cassandra. On each of our dates, I took the train up to London, and took myself to the cinema. It was exciting, in its own way.
I returned from the first trip with more stories of kissing, and of breast-feeling.
Our second date (in reality, spent watching Weird Science on my own in Leicester Square) was, as told to my mum, holding hands together at what she still called “the pictures,” but as told to Rob and Scallie (and over that week, to several other school friends who had heard rumors from sworn-to-secrecy Rob and Scallie, and now needed to find out if it was true), the day I lost my virginity, in Cassandra’s aunt’s flat in London: the aunt was away, Cassandra had a key. I had (for proof) a packet of three condoms missing the one I had thrown away and a strip of four black-and-white photographs I had found on my first trip to London, abandoned in the basket of a photobooth on Victoria Station. The photostrip showed a girl about my age with long straight hair (I could not be certain of the color. Dark blonde? Red? Light brown?) and a friendly, freckly, not unpretty, face. I pocketed it. In art class I did a pencil sketch of the third of the pictures, the one I liked the best, her head half-turned as if calling out to an unseen friend beyond the tiny curtain. She looked sweet, and charming.
I put the drawing up on my bedroom wall, where I could see it from my bed.
After our third date (it was Who Framed Roger Rabbit?) I came back to school with bad news: Cassandra’s family was going to Canada (a place that sounded more convincing to my ears than America), something to do with her father’s job, and I would not see her for a long time. We hadn’t really broken up, but we were being practical: those were the days when transatlantic phone calls were too expensive for teenagers. It was over.
I was sad. Everyone noticed how sad I was. They said they would have loved to have met her, and maybe when she comes back at Christmas? I was confident that by Christmas, she would be forgotten.
She was. By Christmas I was going out with Nikki Blevins and the only evidence that Cassandra had ever been a part of my life was her name, written on a couple of my exercise books, and the pencil drawing of her on my bedroom wall, with Cassandra, February 19th, 1985 written underneath it.
When my mother sold the riding stable in 1989, the drawing was lost in the move. I was at art college at the time, considered my old pencil-drawings as embarrassing as the fact that I had once invented a girlfriend, and did not care.
I do not believe I had thought of Cassandra for twenty years.
My mother sold the riding stables, the attached house, and the meadows to a property developer, who built a housing estate where it had once been, and, as part of the deal, gave her a small, detached house at the end of Seton Close. I visit her at least once a fortnight, arriving on Friday night, leaving Sunday morning, a routine as regular as the grandmother clock in the hall.
Mother is concerned that I am happy in life. She has started to mention that various of her friends have eligible daughters. This trip we had an extremely embarrassing conversation that began with her asking if I would like to meet the church organist, a very nice young man of about my age.
“Mother. I’m not gay.”
“There’s nothing wrong with it, dear. All sorts of people do it. They even get married. Well, not proper marriage, but it’s the
same thing.”
“I’m still not gay.”
“I just thought, still not married, and the painting, and the modeling.”
“I’ve had girlfriends, Mummy. You’ve even met some of them.”
“Nothing that ever stuck, dear. I just thought there might be something you wanted to tell me.”
“I’m not gay, Mother. I would tell you if I were.” And then I said, “I snogged Tim Carter at a party when I was at art college but we were drunk and it never went beyond that.”
She pursed her lips. “That’s quite enough of that, young man.” And then, changing the subject, as if to get rid of an unpleasant taste in her mouth, she said, “You’ll never guess who I bumped into in Tesco’s last week.”
“No, I won’t. Who?”
“Your old girlfriend. Your first girlfriend, I should say.”
“Nikki Blevins? Hang on, she’s married, isn’t she? Nikki Woodbridge?”
“The one before her, dear. Cassandra. I was behind her, in the line. I would have been ahead of her, but I forgot that I needed cream for the berries today, so I went back to get it, and she was in front of me, and I knew her face was familiar. At first, I thought she was Joanie Simmond’s youngest, the one with the speech disorder, what we used to call a stammer but apparently you can’t say that anymore, but then I thought, I know where I know that face, it was over your bed for five years, of course I said, ‘It’s not Cassandra, is it?’ and she said, ‘It is,’ and I said, ‘You’ll laugh when I say this, but I’m Stuart Innes’s mum.’ She says, ‘Stuart Innes?’ and her face lit up. Well, she hung around while I was putting my groceries in my shopping bag, and she said she’d already been in touch with your friend Jeremy Porter on Bookface, and they’d been talking about you—”
“You mean Facebook? She was talking to Scallie on Facebook?”
“Yes, dear.”
I drank my tea and wondered who my mother had actually been talking to. I said, “You’re quite sure this was the Cassandra from over my bed?”
“Oh yes, dear. She told me about how you took her to Leicester Square, and how sad she was when they had to move to Canada. They went to Vancouver. I asked her if she ever met my cousin Leslie, he went to Vancouver after the war, but she said she didn’t believe so, and it turns out it’s actually a big sort of a place. I told her about the pencil drawing you did, and she seemed very up-to-date on your activities. She was thrilled when I told her that you were having a gallery opening this week.”
“You told her that?”
“Yes, dear. I thought she’d like to know.” Then my mother said, almost wistfully “She’s very pretty, dear. I think she’s doing something in community theatre.” Then the conversation went over to the retirement of Dr. Dunnings, who had been our GP since before I was born, and how he was the only non-Indian doctor left in his practice and how my mother felt about this.
I lay in bed that night in my small bedroom at my mother’s house and turned over the conversation in my head. I am no longer on Facebook and thought about re-joining to see who Scullie’s friends were, and if this psuedo-Cassandra was one of them, but there were too many people I was happy not to see again, and I let it be, certain that when there was an explanation, it would prove to be a simple one, and I slept.
I have been showing in the Little Gallery in Chelsea for over a decade now. In the old days, I had a quarter of a wall and nothing priced at more than three hundred pounds. Now I get my own show, every October for a month, and it would be fair to say that I only have to sell a dozen paintings to know that my needs, rent, and life are covered for another year. The unsold paintings remain on the gallery walls until they are gone and they are always gone by Christmas.
The couple who own the gallery, Paul and Barry, still call me “the beautiful boy” as they did twelve years ago, which I first exhibited with them, when it might actually have been true. Back then, they wore flowery, open-necked shirts and gold chains; now, in middle age, they wear expensive suits and talk too much for my liking about the stock exchange. Still, I enjoy their company. I see them three times a year in September when they come to my studio to see what I’ve been working on, and select the paintings for the show, at the gallery, hanging and opening in October, and in February, when we settle up.
Barry runs the gallery. Paul co-owns it, comes out for the parties, but also works in the wardrobe department of the Royal Opera House. The preview party for this year’s show was on a Friday night. I had spent a nervous couple of days hanging the paintings. Now, my part was done, and there was nothing to do but wait, and hope people liked my art, and not to make a fool of myself. I did as I had done for the previous twelve years, on Barry’s instructions, “Nurse the champagne. Fill up on water. There’s nothing worse for the collector than encountering a drunk artist, unless he’s a famous drunk, and you are not, dear. Be amiable but enigmatic, and when people ask for the story behind the painting, say “my lips are sealed”. But for god’s sake, imply there is one. It’s the story they’re buying.”
I rarely invite people to the preview any longer; some artists do, regarding it as a social event. I do not. While I take my art seriously, as art, and am proud of my work (the latest exhibition was called “People In Landscapes,” which pretty much says it all about my work anyway) I understand that the party exists solely as a commercial event, a come-on for eventual buyers and those who might say the right thing to other eventual buyers. I tell you all this so that you will not be surprised that Barry and Paul manage the guest list to the preview, not I.
The preview begins at 6:30 p.m. I had spent the afternoon hanging paintings, making sure everything looked as good as it could. The only thing that was different about this particular event was how excited Paul looked, like a small boy struggling with the urge to tell you what he had bought you for a birthday present. That, and Barry, who said, while we were hanging, “I think tonight’s show will put you on the map.”
I said, “I think there’s a typo on the Lake District one.” An oversized painting of Windemere at sunset, with two children staring lostly at the viewer from the banks. “It should say three thousand pounds. It says three hundred thousand.”
“Does it?” said Barry, blandly. “My, my.”
It was perplexing, but the first guests had arrived, a little early, and the mystery could wait. A young man invited me to eat a mushroom puff from a silver tray. Then I took my glass of nurse-this-slowly champagne and I prepared to mingle.
All the prices were high, and I doubted that the Little Gallery would be able to sell them at those prices, and I worried about the year ahead.
Barry and Paul took responsibility for moving me around the room, saying, “This is the artist, the beautiful boy who makes all these beautiful things, Stuart Innes,” and I would shake hands, and smile. By the end of the evening I will have met everyone, and Paul and Barry are very good about saying, “Stuart, you remember David, he writes about art for the Telegraph . . . ” and I for my part am good about saying, “Of course, how are you? So glad you could come.”
The room was at its most crowded when a striking red-haired woman to whom I had not yet been introduced began shouting. “Representational bullshit!”
I was in conversation with The Daily Telegraph art critic and we turned. He said, “Friend of yours?” I said, “I don’t think so.”
She was still shouting, although the sounds of the party had now quieted. She shouted, “Nobody’s interested in this shit! Nobody!” Then she reached her hand in to her coat pocket and pulled out a bottle of ink, shouted, “Try selling this now!” and threw ink at Windemere Sunset. It was blue-black ink.
Paul was by her side then, pulling the ink bottle away from her, saying, “That was a three hundred thousand pound painting, young lady.” Barry took her arm, said, “I think the police will want a word with you,” and walked her back in to his office.
She shouted at us as she went, “I’m not afraid! I’m proud! Artists like him, just feeding off
you gullible art buyers. You’re all sheep! Representational crap!”
And then she was gone, and the party people were buzzing, and inspecting the ink-fouled painting and looking at me, and the Telegraph man was asking if I would like to comment and how I felt about seeing a three hundred thousand pound painting destroyed, and I mumbled about how I was proud to be a painter, and said something about the transient nature of art, and he said that he supposed that tonight’s event was an artistic happening in its own right, and we agreed that, artistic happening or not, the woman was not quite right in the head.
Barry reappeared, moving from group to group, explaining that Paul was dealing with the young lady, and that her eventual disposition would be up to me. The guests were still buzzing excitedly as he was ushering people out of the door, apologizing as he did so, agreeing that we lived in exciting times, explaining that he would be open at the regular time tomorrow.
“That went well,” he said, when we were alone in the gallery.
“Well? That was a disaster!”
“Mmm. ‘Stuart Innes, the one who had the three hundred thousand pound painting destroyed.’ I think you need to be forgiving, don’t you? She was a fellow artist, even one with different goals. Sometimes you need a little something to kick you up to the next level.”
We went into the back room.
I said, “Whose idea was this?”
“Ours,” said Paul. He was drinking white wine in the back room with the red-haired woman. “Well, Barry’s mostly. But it needed a good little actress to pull it off, and I found her.” She grinned, modestly: managed to look both abashed and pleased with herself.
“If this doesn’t get you the attention you deserve, beautiful boy,” said Barry, smiling at me, “nothing will. Now you’re important enough to be attacked.”
“The Windemere painting’s ruined,” I pointed out.
Barry glanced at Paul, and they giggled. “It’s already sold, ink-splatters and all, for seventy five thousand pounds,” he said. “It’s like I always say, people think they are buying the art, but really, they’re buying the story.”
The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror Page 43
