The Late Hector Kipling (3 page)

‘Doesn’t like chicken?’

‘No.’

‘I thought everyone liked chicken. I mean I can understand avoiding it if you’re set against it, like you are, but if you’re allowed it and then just not liking it, well ... I can’t imagine.’

‘Well, there you go, Mum.’

‘Do they not have chickens in Greece?’

‘Of course they have chickens in Greece.’

‘Well, I don’t know,’ says Mum, ’I’ve never been to Greece, have I?’ She looks over at my dad and raises her voice. ‘Never been out of the sodding country’

‘Well, there you go, Mum.’ And suddenly I’m watching the rugby as well, even though I can’t stand it ever since I got that stud in my head at school.

‘Does she want some sausage?’

‘Mum!’ I finally do it. I’ve only been here four hours and already I’ve snapped at her.

‘Ooh, you’ve changed,’ she says, snatches back her oven glove and strides off back to the kitchen muttering, ‘I’ll do you both your rotten risotto, then,’ as she goes.

Sparky, my parents’ asthmatic, neurotic Yorkshire terrier, emerges from beneath the bureau and takes up two minutes yelping and squeaking like the sorry fucked-up mess of fluff that he is. He takes up a position on my left shoulder and stares at me with his awful leaking, rheumy brown eyes. I can smell his rank terrier breath coming at me in short stinking bursts. Ridiculous fucking specimen.

I take two big swigs on my beer and look at my dad. He’s in profile to me. It seems like he’s always been in profile to me. He’s allergic to the settee, he says, based on nothing, and so his nose is permanently clogged, his mouth permanently open with his tongue lolling out on his lower lip. He’s down on his knees by the television.

‘What are you doing, Dad?’ I say, and flick Sparky off my shoulder onto the floor.

‘Eh?’ He’s not sure whether I’ve just said something to him or if something somewhere just made a noise. He doesn’t even look at me at first, he looks towards the bookcase, like a book might have fallen down, but there are no books. We call it the bookcase but it’s filled up with little ceramic grenadiers and photographs in frames. It’s got fuck-all to do with books.

‘Dad,’ I shout, ‘it’s me,’ and he looks over. ‘I said what’s that you’re doing?’

He pushes himself up and sits on the edge of his chair. He smiles and shakes his head. I love my dad. ‘Oh, it’s a bloody nuisance, Hector,’ he says, and he’s looking down at what he’s got in his hands.

‘What is it?’ I say.

He gives out a little laugh, smiles and shakes his head again. ‘Oh, it’s a silly bloody hearing aid thing they’ve given me.’ He holds it up so I can see. ‘It’s got this Velcro on it and it’s supposed to stick to the telly, but I’m buggered if I can get it to fasten.’ He goes back onto his knees
and starts giving it another go. He’s stuck one piece of Velcro to the edge of the speaker and he’s trying to make the other piece, attached to the aid, cling on. He’s having no luck. The less luck he has, the more he tries to hold it there. And the more it drops off the more he shakes his head and sighs. I love my dad.

‘Here, let’s have a look,’ I say, and I move onto the corner of the settee so I can see what’s going on.

‘It’s so I can hear the television better without having it up too loud for your mum.’

I take it from him and he sits back down. I get on my knees and try to see if I can manage it. After a few attempts I hold both pieces of Velcro up to the light. ‘Dad,’ I say, ‘you’ve got the same two bits here.’

‘What?’ he says.

‘These two pieces of Velcro; they’re the same sort.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, Velcro, Dad. You know Velcro? You know how it works?’

‘I can’t say I do, if I’m honest with you.’

And suddenly I feel strange. I feel sad. Really sad. I don’t know why at first. ‘Well, it’s like hooks and eyes.’

‘Aye?’

‘Or like male and female in electrics.’

‘Is it?’ and he leans in close for a demonstration. I hold up both pieces against the screen so he can see.

‘You’ve got little hooks,’ I say, ‘and you’ve got little eyes. Little loops. Now what you’ve got here is just a lot of little loops.’

‘I see.’

‘You’ve got no hooks.’

‘Well, that’s what they’ve given me.’

‘Well, it won’t work like this.’

‘There’s been a cock-up,’ he says. He takes the two pieces back and tries to stick them together, giving up almost straight away to show me that he’s understood. ‘Well, that’s no good,’ he says, ‘just giving us loops.’

Then I realize why I feel so sad. My dad, who could build you a car, or rewire a house or plumb up your whole kitchen, doesn’t know how Velcro works.

Through the ceiling I hear footsteps and it must be Eleni getting up. She’s been asleep for nearly three hours, and she had a nap on the train. She didn’t sleep last night, though. Nightmares. Her mother walled into the nave of a church. Just a pair of eyes peeping through a slit in the bricks, apparently. Eleni with a candle. And then it starts to rain. She woke up in a sweat. It was a cold night, but she woke up in a sweat. She got up at one point and I could hear her playing Gershwin on the piano. We only just made the train, she was so wiped out. I love Eleni. I loved the journey. She made me laugh for the first half-hour and then she put her head on my shoulder and slept till Warrington.

‘I think Eleni’s emerging,’ shouts my mother. I can hear lots of hot fat sizzling, taps running, the clatter of plates and pans. I decide to go through to the kitchen.

It’s a nice kitchen. Small, but uncluttered and functional. My mum has got it together in the kitchen. I have only vague memories of ever seeing anything stacked on the draining board. It seemed that everything was always washed up and put away back in its cupboard even before the food was served.

‘That’s lucky,’ says my mum, ‘cos this risotto’s nearly ready.’

‘It smells nice.’

‘I’ve got some parsley. Do you want parsley on it, or shall I not bother?’

‘Don’t bother, Mum.’

We hear the toilet flush and then footsteps on the stairs. The door’s pushed open and Eleni’s rubbing her eyes. Her hair’s all messed up and her dress is creased.

‘Well well,’ says my mother, ‘look who’s here.’ She says it with wry, forgiving affection. She wants some chat and she can chat to Eleni and they make each other laugh. She loves Eleni. She hated Sheba, but she
loves Eleni. Even though Eleni’s Greek and struggles with her accent, they can blabber away for whole nights. ‘We don’t see you both enough,’ said my mum on the phone the other night, so we cleared the weekend and jumped on the train.

‘Did you have a sleep? Did you have a little nap, lass?’ says Mum, going at her with a big spoon spotted with steaming rice.

Eleni blinks her eyes, looks around and smiles. ‘Oh, hello,’ she says, as though she’s only just woken up that very moment. Sheba used to get up in a foul temper. Sheba never woke up and said, ‘Oh, hello.’ I used to dread her going to sleep.

‘Hello, madam, wakey wakey,’ says Mum.

I walk over to Eleni and put my arms around her. I kiss her on the top of the head. Her body’s all warm and she smells of sleep. I want to fuck her.

Here’s how we met: in 2004 I was living in flat 65, Pomfret House, Box Street, Bow. Eleni Marianos lived in number 67. I would often hear her piano through the door. We’d pass in the hall sometimes and say hello and blush and shuffle and drop things. In number 66 lived Mr Godfrey Bolton, an elderly, shifty-looking fella who, faced with the threat of a prison sentence regarding a violent attack upon a racehorse, one day saw fit to hang himself. The chair, falling against a candle that Mr Bolton had put on the bedside table (to illuminate his brief note?), caused a small fire to break out. Detecting the fire at an early stage, I burst out of my door, only to be met by Eleni Marianos bursting out of hers. Whereupon, with little discussion, we set about bursting through Mr Bolton’s. Having put out the fire with my dressing gown (leaving me naked), we stood back and discovered our neighbour suspended from the ceiling by an equestrian bridle. Eight months later we decided to buy his flat and, since by then we were in love, knock it through at both ends to form one big flat. Some of our friends thought all this a little creepy, and said so behind our backs.

‘Photo Finish’ said Godfrey Bolton’s note, and there was a small cross that might have been a kiss or a crucifix, it wasn’t clear. ‘Photo Finish’, signed ‘God Bolton’.

The four of us sat down with our various meals and watched a baffling sequence of soaps back to back. Mum tried to fill me and Eleni in as to what was going on in each one, but the more she explained the more we missed what was going on in the one we were watching, to the point where even Mum became confused and kept fiddling with the volume, as though that would make things clearer. My dad just sat there, taking it all in, tutting and shaking his head at the goings-on on the screen, as though he’d never known such debauchery. Eventually it got to half nine and he announced that he’d taken his tablet and was going upstairs to watch a documentary about Rasputin. Sparky followed.

‘Do you not watch much telly back in London?’ says Mum.

Me and Eleni are curled up on the settee. I’ve got my hand down the back of her skirt but we’re hidden. ‘Not really, Mum, no,’ I say.

‘Me and your dad do nothing else.’

‘Are you watching this?’ I say, nodding at
Celebrity Fit Club.

‘This?’ she says, sniffing. ‘I’m not bothered about this. They’ll still be fat in a month.’

‘There’s a programme on Channel 4 about Tracey Emin,’ I say. Eleni pushes her arse back against my thighs and purrs like she might go to sleep.

‘Ooh, not her,’ says Mum.

‘We don’t have to watch it,’ I say, ‘I’ve seen it before but Eleni’s not seen it.’

Mum gives in. It’s the mention of Eleni that does it. She loves Eleni. ’Turn it over,’ she says. ‘I’ll watch owt.’

I pick up the remote and Tracey Emin’s sat up on her settee smoking and drinking saying’Fuck this’ and ’Fuck that’, ranting on about her abortion. And then she’s trotting through some park, feeding squirrels,
saying how we all need something small to look after. I steal a glance at Mum and she’s just gazing blankly at the screen as though she’s watching a magic act and trying to work out how they’ve done it. Eventually she pipes up. ‘Good God,’ she says, ’what’s she like?’

‘I know, Mum, she’s a nut,’ though I don’t really mean it.

‘Do you know her?’ says Mum.

‘I’ve met her a few times.’

‘Well, I don’t know,’ says Mum.

Eleni pushes herself up on one elbow. ‘Are you all right there, Connie? You want to lie on the couch?’ She hasn’t quite picked up that we call it a settee.

‘No, no, love. You’re all right on there. You two nestle up. I’m fine where I am.’

Eleni settles back into my arms. I stroke the fringe out of her eyes, look down at her, smile and kiss her on the nose. She smiles back and squeezes her eyes together like a cat. I want to go to bed soon and fuck her, quietly; the way we always have to whenever we come back to Blackpool for a few days.

Tracey’s pointing a video camera around her flat and it’s a right fucking dump. I look over to Mum. Her eyebrows are up and she’s chewing on her knuckles.

‘They want to be doing a documentary on you, Hector. You do better stuff than this.’

‘I expect they will, Mum.’

‘Well, I should think so. I mean, at least you can paint. Look at her. Look at them drawings. They look like they’ve been done by a half-baked monkey.’

‘It’s concept, Connie,’ says Eleni, and because of her accent it doesn’t sound pretentious. It sounds like she was born to utter things like ‘It’s concept, Connie’, like she has no choice, like she should never say anything else. I love Eleni.

‘What do you mean?’ says Mum, not taking her eyes from the screen.

Eleni props herself up again. ‘Well, she’s being honest. She’s making an effort to be as honest as she can be. And she is calling that art.’

‘Well, what do you think about that, Hector?’ says Mum, and I know that she’s really referring to my paintings and how that’s what she thinks of as art. But it’s the same as the conversation about chicken. We’ve been having it for twenty years. She knows very well that I’m happy to call all sorts of things art, even to the detriment of my own paintings. It’s that bit she doesn’t like. She wants me to stand up for what I do; she wants a passionate hero, affirming his patch; and that’s all well and good, but the fact is I’m totally open-minded on the subject. If Marc Quinn wants to freeze his own blood in the shape of his head, or Jake and Dinos want to stick dicks onto kids’ chins, then it’s all fine by me.

‘I like her, Mum,’ I say, as Tracey’s talking about pulling a foetus out of her pants, ‘I think art
should
be honest.’

‘Well, I’m going to bed,’ she says, ‘I think she’s a bloody fruitcake.’

She goes into the kitchen and rattles a few things around, turns off the lights, delivers a careful list of instructions about how to turn off the gas fire and how we’re not to unplug the fish tank, and shuffles off out the door, nodding back to the telly. ‘She’s dirty,’ she says, ‘she’s a dirty bloody lunatic, that lass. I’m lost.’

Me and Eleni watch the rest of it and when it’s over we unplug everything but the fish tank and start kissing. I’ve had a few beers and all I want to do is kiss her for hours. We can hear my dad snoring upstairs and we undress as much as we dare and fuck, right there on the cream settee that my dad, based on nothing, is allergic to.

The next morning, Sunday, we’re awoken by the sound of hammering. Not like someone’s hanging a picture or putting a nail into the floorboards, but intermittent, heavy, laboured hammering, and the sound of falling masonry, as though my dad’s knocking down the fireplace. I pull
on a sweater and yesterday’s underpants and wander downstairs to investigate. And there’s my dad, stripped to the waist, huge grey sledgehammer, knocking down the fireplace.

‘What are you doing, Dad?’ I say.

‘What?’ he says, looking at the television.

‘What are you doing?’

He swings around and sees me. ‘I’m knocking down the fireplace,’ he says and runs the back of his hand across his brow. We’re both stripped to the waist: him from the neck down and me from the feet up. Sparky’s tucked away behind the curtain on the window ledge, choking on the dust and shaking like he’s developed a chronic case of doggy Parkinson’s overnight.