The Late Hector Kipling Read Free

as Zorba and Anthony Quinn as Gauguin. But anyway, all that stopped when I fell in love with Eleni, who’s from Crete, and the whole thing became a bit distasteful. The point is that there was always the Agreement and right now all I can hear is the pulse of a santuri and the stamping of boots around a bonfire.
    ‘You paint against beauty,’ continues Lenny, oblivious, ‘because you know that beauty is the point. If you really thought that beauty wasn’t the point then you’d paint in favour of beauty, not in opposition to it.’
    ‘Fuck off, Lenny,’ I say.
    He shrugs his shiny red shoulders and runs his hand across his scalp in a manner so reminiscent of Brando’s Mr Kurtz that it’s difficult not to take it as a reference. ‘Well...’ he says.
    I’ve known Lenny since I was seventeen, and he was going bald even then. But Lenny being Lenny it’s never been a problem cos he’s got the head for it and it suits him cos he’s a handsome fucker. He was handsome back then and he’s handsome now. More handsome now than then. And he’ll carry on being handsome. The older he gets the more handsome he becomes. He’ll be handsome in middle age and he’ll be a handsome pensioner. An ’exquisite corpse’. Bald and handsome. All the more handsome for being bald. All the more bald for being handsome. Whatever that means. It’s a pain in the arse.
    ‘Sorry’
    ‘What?’ says Lenny.
    ‘Sorry,’ I say, ‘sorry for saying fuck off.’
    He looks at me. And then he looks off to the side of me.
    ‘It’s OK.’ I’ve been in therapy for the past three months and so far she’s taught me to apologize.
    ‘And sorry for crying.’

    ‘You’ve always been very emotional,’ says Lenny and stands.
    I stand too. ‘You say that like it’s a criticism.’
    ‘No,’ he says, ‘no I don’t,’ and wanders out through the door. We’re back in the lobby. He reaches into his pocket and drops a coin into the donations box. A gaggle of Japanese schoolgirls waddle over and beg him to sign their gallery maps. He pulls out a gold fountain pen and gets down to it. Twelve in all. I try to catch his eye so that we can smirk at each other, but he’s having none of it. Smirking, it seems, is a thing of the past. He’s got his head down and he’s asking them their names.
    Outside the sky has darkened into a blurred and sooty purple. The river is salted with seagulls. I love seagulls. They remind me of home.
    ‘I love seagulls,’ I say, ‘they remind me of Blackpool.’
    ‘Being told not to pick up dirty feathers off the tram tracks, that’s what they remind me of,’ he says and lights a fag.
    We’re almost at the bottom of the steps when this young French couple ask if they can have their photograph taken with Lenny. They ‘appreciated’ his show in Marseilles and would love to have their photograph taken with him. Lenny goes all bashful in his red leather coat-jacket, china-blue buttons, puts his arms around their shoulders and indicates that they should hand the camera to me.
    I take it. That’s what I do.
    It’s been raining all day and the river sits nicely with the puddled embankment. The couple embrace. Terrible teeth the two of them. And there’s Lenny peeping over the top. The girl’s gone mad and grabbed his hand.
    I frame them out. That’s what I do. I crop the river and the top half of their bodies. I take them from the waist down, their silly French shoes on tiptoe and Lenny in his Californian Docs, and some scabby pigeon pecking at a bus ticket. That’s what they’ll get when they pick up their prints.
    I pass them back their camera and smile. They return the smile and almost bow.

    On we go. Lenny removes his specs and dries them on a scrap of pink velvet. He replaces them with august ceremony and stares out across the river.
    ‘St Paul’s,’ he whispers, ‘sublime.’
    How come he needs these specs to look at paintings and to walk around the streets in? OK, so sometimes he takes them off to