Lust Or No Harm Done (32 page)

'Take the cheque,' said Michael, playing father. Philip reluctantly took it.

'Take the chairs, too.'

Philip shook his head no. 'That's all right.'

'Phil. Take something. You're setting up house. You'll need them.'

Henry said quietly, 'He's right, Phil.'

The logistics of loading chairs, desk, paintings and chests full of porcelain gave them all something else to think about. They spent half an hour outside in the street, trying to find ways to tie everything up so it wouldn't shift or fall. Henry hated vans, but he nipped like a monkey around the furniture, tying and securing. Henry was practical.

'Well,' said Phil. 'I think that's everything.'

'If I find anything else, I'll bring it round.'

'Oh, I nearly forgot.' Philip took out an old Tesco receipt and wrote his new address on it. It was out near South Quay on the Docklands Light Railway. Michael had never even heard of South Quay.

They shook hands outside on the street. Philip's eyes focused into Michael's wistfully. 'Thanks,' he said in a whisper.

Michael watched the van go and waved as if they were weekend guests taking leave.

'Well. That really is that,' he said aloud to himself.

Upstairs in the flat, there was a pale patch on the study wall where a picture had been. Some of the drawers were empty. Now that Philip's desk was gone, there was space in the small room for a bed again. Those were the only signs of Philip's final departure.

How could the flat be even more silent this time?

Easy. It's less full. Philip really, really has gone.

Michael sat on the sofa and sipped a sherry, like his mother always did.

So come on, Michael, he said to himself, with his mother's voice. Do you want him back, or not? And if you don't, why on earth are you sitting around feeling sorry for yourself? You've got to decide, love. You don't want someone real, you don't want someone made up. Well, love, there's nothing in between.

So what do you want, Michael?

Love. Again, that's what I want. Love.

You are a person?

Michael had all the discomfort of being a teacher's child. When he was nine, he and his mother even went to the same primary school.

Every morning there would be a harassed routine of cornflakes and bathrooms and shoelaces. His Mum couldn't afford a car, so they took the bus and walked into the playground together.

Michael was in some danger of being bullied when he was smaller. Once, a gang of older boys surrounded him and started pushing him. Michael looked up and saw his mother turn and walk back into the school, clasping her hands in front of her. Michael understood and was even grateful: he would have to cope with this himself. So he pushed back.

Michael's good grades were regarded with suspicion. His minor misbehaviours were abruptly punished to avoid any accusation of favouritism. One teacher, Mrs Podryska, who didn't like his mother, was not about to do Michael any favours. 'And did you do this homework yourself, Michael?' she asked in a loud, clear voice in front of the rest of the class. Michael still remembered Mrs Podryska's pleased little smile.

Saturdays were spent on domestic chores. His mother would hum to herself all morning, polishing furniture and asking Michael to give her a hand with the vacuuming. After that she would take Michael with her to the supermarket to help carry the bags. Then Michael would have his homework to do, and she would sit through it with him. 'Come on now, Michael, you know how to divide numbers. And no, you don't use your calculator, you use your head.' Blanched with exhaustion, she might watch the television, or talk to her sister or her mum on the telephone.

On Sunday, after breakfast, they would go and visit Granny Hobart. Gran lived in a self-contained flat for old people in Royston where Michael could watch the TV quietly and again help with the washing-up. Sometimes, for a treat, they would go to the cinema together, at 3.00 pm. Again they would take the bus, and it would be full of giggling gangs of independent kids who had escaped their mums.

The quiet time for both of them was Sunday morning. On Sunday morning they had a big breakfast together: bacon and eggs and toast and jam. They would go through the Sunday papers, scrunching toast.

That was how, at nine years old, Michael first saw a photograph of Pablo Picasso.

By tradition, Michael saw the colour supplement first. He turned a page, and there was a picture of an old man in tight briefs. The old man had planted his fists high on either side of his chest, which was puffed out as if he were a muscleman. He stood on a beach and in the background people wore funny masks, all bright colours. The old man's head looked like a bullet, the eyes were dark and staring, merry and challenging at the same time, as if he would head-butt you for a joke.

Michael, even at nine, was forced to acknowledge that something happened when he looked at that photograph. He skimmed the rest of the magazine but kept turning back to it surreptitiously. Michael knew it was somehow wrong that it was a man, and somehow even worse that it was an old man: but he wanted to keep the picture.

His Mum stood up abruptly from the table. 'You won't forget to wash up now, will you love.' Michael's breath went icy. Mum usually took the supplement into the toilet with her.

'I'm still reading this, Mum,' he said.

She wasn't bothered. 'I'll take the Arts instead.' When she was out of the room, Michael quietly tore the page out of the magazine. He didn't want his mother to know it even existed.

For the next few weeks, while his mother did the laundry, or rang up about the broken Hoover, or shouted at him to get ready for school, Michael hid in his room and looked at his secret photograph. It was embarrassing, something you couldn't talk about. Michael wanted to dance on that beach, be part of the parade with umbrellas and people in masks. He wanted to be enveloped and hugged in those brown arms. He wanted to see what was inside the briefs.

Michael was not the only one. Many people lusted after Pablo Picasso, even at a time of life when most men are age-spotted ghosts of their former sexual selves. How can a photograph convey that? It was as if it were something that wafted around Picasso, a miasma of power that seeped even onto film. Michael at nine would look at the photograph, and duck away coyly. Coyly, he would look again.

At nine, his father's absence was like a grey mist everywhere. Michael eyed men in the street: is my father like him? A big breezy Romford guy would stroll past wearing a football scarf and Michael would think: I'd like to have him for a father.

Michael wanted to sit on Picasso's lap, and snuggle up against that old chest and be held in those arms, and feel those bare legs under him.

Sitting on his bed before school looking at the photograph, Michael realized: this is how men look at photos of women. This is how girls look at pictures of Bobby Sherman or the Monkees. I feel about men the way I'm supposed to feel about women. I'm the wrong way round. I'm queer.

This was a shocking thing to realize at nine in 1969. You could be called Big Girl's Blouse or Poof. Everyone knew what poofs were and they were horrible, and everybody laughed at them all the time. And he was one of them. He was a poof. That scared him. He was what he was not supposed to be, and Michael was otherwise a good little boy. He put the photograph away and then somehow, without meaning to, lost it.

Michael forgot about Picasso. The next year he went to California and he found his dream beach and his dream father. A-levels and university left him little time for art.

It was Mark, the rugby-playing art dealer, who finally kick-started Michael's interest in Picasso. 'I once popped in to a little exhibition of his work in the Camargue,' Mark told him. 'It was seeing them all together, actually, that did it for me. There was one whole wall of them, painting after painting in the most beautiful colours, and you began to realize the fantastic productivity of the man.'

Late in life, Michael read the biographies, and those demanding, sullen eyes began to work their way into him. The young Picasso was not handsome. Unlike the unambitious, famous people are often not more beautiful in youth. The young Picasso had a fat face, flat greasy hair and a double chin. His expression was disgruntled, and he was bundled in scarves against the cold. He looked older than he would in his forties.

In his forties, Picasso posed as a boxer. His short arms and legs were rounded enough to imitate muscles. He wore baggy briefs that revealed his thighs and chest. The cloth was jammed up into his crotch, as if to show off his dick. Which was surprising as objectively speaking, he had hardly any dick at all. His body at forty, when most men are grizzling all over with greying fur, was as smooth as a girl's. His expression was serious, and his eyes obviously black.

Thirty years later, Michael sat and sipped his mother's sherry. From nowhere, like a bubble rising up from the floor of the sea came a single word.

Picasso.

Before he had time to ask, the air of his flat welled up in ripples like muddy water.

In Michael's sitting room was the most sexually powerful man of his time.

Picasso was tiny, with a round, demanding face, blunt nose and black eyes that seemed to pop out of his head. He was already balding, which in his case simply confirmed his masculine state. A thick woollen jacket was thrown over both shoulders, and the sleeves were left empty. The effect was curiously feminine.

Picasso ignored Michael. He sauntered in a semi-circle around the sitting room, his face curdling with bored disapproval. He sucked on a cigarette, then blew out the smoke.

'Personne ne vit la,'
he said.

Michael dragged out his schoolboy French, kicking and screaming.
'Moi, j'habite ici.'

Picasso turned a shameless gaze towards him.
'Vous? Vous etes une personne?'

You? You are a person?

Michael had the power of creation, however, and was growing used to it.
'Oui Je vous ai cree.'

Picasso looked genuinely bored.
'Moi,'
he said and let the word rest a moment.
'Je me suis cree.'

Picasso was still scanning the room. His eyes flickered at Philip's portrait of Michael, as if it gave him an attack of the vapours.

'Mon Dieu,'
Picasso murmured.
'Ca a l'air d'avoir etre frit dans de l'huile d'olive.'
It looks like it's been fried in olive oil. Like an athletic teenager Picasso spun around and flung himself sprawling onto the sofa.
'Du vin, s'il vous plait',
he said, as if to a waiter.

All right, thought Michael. I'm up to this. I'm more than up to this. From nowhere, by magic, he called up a small table with an ashtray, and a glass and a bottle of wine from 60 years ago.

The Angel's mouth made a quick downward turn. Michael had succeeded in giving Pablo Picasso a moment's pause.

Michael told Picasso, 'Please use the ashtray.' Michael pressed his advantage. 'You are a copy of a masterpiece,' he told the Angel. 'I am the student who has copied you.'

Picasso had already recovered. He sniffed and poured himself a glass of wine. He had a private little smile, and his eyes said, be wary, student, I am more than a match for you.

Michael got the preliminaries out of the way. 'Are you willing to make love with a man?'

Picasso flicked ash into the tray. 'I would do so if I wanted to destroy him. Though I am not a destroyer. Unlike you, I am a creator, not a copier. Ultimately, I have no time for destruction.'

'Except perhaps for making sure than no exhibitor would show Gilot's work after she left you?'

Picasso kept smiling undisturbed. 'Is that what she said? Has it occurred to you that she was exhibited only because of me? And perhaps her work is not all that good?'

They were negotiating. 'Might it interest you to find out how I am able to raise the dead?'

Picasso sipped his wine. 'It interests me to be alive again. And relatively young.'

He lowered his gaze at Michael, like a bull lowering his head to charge. He took a contemplative sup from his cigarette, his eyes appraising Michael. Then he ground out the cigarette, stood, walked across the room and grabbed hold of Michael's face. He pushed Michael's lips out of shape, into a parody of a Boucher mouth, and he shook Michael's jaws.

'I fuck you. You never touch me as a woman, ever.'

Picasso relinquished Michael's mouth, but kept a hand hovering as if to slap him.

'That's all the same to me,' said Michael.

The hand was lowered and it unbuttoned the front of Picasso's trousers, and Picasso indicated what he wanted Michael to do. The tiny brown penis was erect, straight up and hard against his belly, as it was almost every time Michael saw it. Michael knelt and swallowed. Picasso kept drinking his wine. The penis was spicy; it reminded Michael of nutmeg, in its colour and scent.

Picasso grew tired of standing. 'It's late, we go to bed now,' said Picasso, patting Michael affectionately on the top of his head.

Picasso claimed Michael's side of the bed and snatched up the newspapers, and began to read, lips moving, eyes burning through them.

'Je ne peux pas lire l'anglais facilement.
Traduisez
,'
he demanded, pushing the papers at Michael.

So Michael found himself reading laboriously through British politics in bad French.

'So there was a socialist revolution in
Britain
?'

'Of a kind. They unelected it thirty-five years later.'

'Tuh. That is why English medicine for warts does not work. They have never had a real revolution. I hate England. The stupidest things about my work are all written in English. My friends translate them for me. I'm tired.'

Without asking, Picasso nipped sideways and turned off the light. Quick as blinking, it was dark, and Picasso had somehow enveloped Michael in his tiny arms, thick short legs. Picasso twisted Michael's head around and kissed him with a passion that bewildered Michael. This was a man who basically preferred women. His breath was heavy and scented with cloves and he sucked in Michael's spittle. Before Michael could quite adjust to being so swept up, he was hoisted onto all fours and found himself, with no preliminaries – cream or tentative, gentle penetration – being fucked.