Guns in the Gallery (7 page)

There was a woman standing next to Bonita whom Carole had been introduced to earlier – to her surprise – as Giles Green's wife, Nikki. She was around forty, tall and slender, with blonde highlights in her hair. In fact, she looked strikingly like a fifteen-year-older version of Chervil Whittaker. Had Giles Green, like so many men, just replaced his spouse with a newer model?

‘Soon to be ex-wife', Chervil had said, but the woman's mother-in-law made no mention of any rift in the marriage when making the introduction. Carole doubted whether Nikki Green's invitation to the Private View had come from her husband. Had Bonita just been stirring things?

And yet there seemed to be no awkwardness between husband and wife, even though Chervil was all over Giles. Maybe they were one of those couples, which Carole read about but rarely encountered, who were genuinely ‘grown-up' about the failure of their marriage.

Like his mother, few of the local contingent at the Private View were very amused by Giles's words. It was all right for them to criticize Fethering – indeed, doing so was one of their most popular pastimes – but woe betide the outsider who voiced the tiniest cavil about the place.

Nor did the locals seem very appreciative of the art on display. As Carole knew from his website, Denzil Willoughby's approach to his work was confrontational. Though too young – and probably not talented enough – to feature in the famous 1997
Sensation
exhibition, the artist followed very firmly in the grubby footprints of Damien Hirst and Tracy Emin. For Willoughby, all art produced before his own was cosy and bourgeois. In the personal statement on his website he derided the ‘mere representational skills' of the Old Masters, the ‘shallowness' of the Impressionists and the ‘glib simplicity' of most contemporary art.

For the Private View – and perhaps for the duration of the exhibition – all of Bonita Green's display tables had been moved through to Spider's workshop. Though the Christmas trees of framing samples kept their place on the back wall, the other paintings, the Gray Czeskys and so on, had given way to Denzil Willoughbys. The only one left on display, Carole noticed with interest, was the slushy snowscape of Piccadilly Circus. She pointed out the oddity to Jude, who was also impressed by the picture's quality.

The Private View's main exhibit, which took over much of the central space in the Cornelian Gallery, was what looked like a real medieval cannon on a wooden stand. Every surface of the metal had been plastered over with newspaper photographs of black teenagers. These, according to the catalogue presented to everyone at the Private View, had all been victims of gun crime in English cities. The piece was called
Bullet-In #7
.

When she and Jude had arrived for the Private View – she would have never entered on her own – Carole had looked at the decorated cannon in quiet disbelief. Then she had read in the catalogue that the work ‘reflected the fragmentation of a disjointed society in which the
machismo
of disaffected youth bigs up the potent phallicism of firearms.' When she saw the price being asked for the work on the sheet that they had been given with their catalogues, she assumed the wrong number of noughts had been printed.

After the first shock, Carole had murmured to Jude, ‘I can't somehow see that in my front room, can you?'

The neighbour had giggled. The thought of
Bullet-In #7
in any Fethering front room was unlikely. The idea of it amidst the paranoid neatness of High Tor attained new levels of incongruity.

‘Still,' Carole went on, ‘full marks for effort, I suppose. Just building a cannon that size must've taken hours.'

‘I don't think so.' Before Carole could stop her, Jude had rapped against the artwork with her knuckles and been rewarded by a hollow sound. ‘Fibreglass. He bought it ready-made.'

‘But where would you buy a ready-made fibreglass cannon?'

‘Prop-maker. Lots of stuff like that gets built for television and movies.'

‘So if Denzil Willoughby didn't even make the cannon, where is the art in what he's done? He's just bought something and put it on show with his name attached.'

‘Ah, no. When he bought it, the cannon didn't have photos of murdered black kids on it.'

‘And is that what makes it a work of art?'

‘Of course it is. Carole, you might come across a fibreglass model of a medieval cannon . . .'

‘It doesn't happen very often to me in Fethering,' said her neighbour sniffily.

‘No, but if you were to come across one, then you might say to yourself, “Oh, look, there's a fibreglass model of a medieval cannon” and think no more about it. You wouldn't have the vision to cover it with pictures of teenage victims of gun crime.'

‘No, I certainly wouldn't.'

‘But Denzil Willoughby did have that vision. Or “concept”, if you prefer.'

‘So rubbish like this is “conceptual art”, is it?'

‘I guess so. Denzil Willoughby thought of the concept of juxtaposing a medieval cannon with images of murdered black teenagers.'

‘And is
that
what makes it a work of art?' Carole repeated.

‘I'm sure he'd say it was.'

‘But what do you think?'

Jude shrugged. ‘If you can say something's a work of art, and get people to hand over money to possess it as a work of art . . . then I guess it's a work of art.'

‘Huh. The day you catch me frittering my money away on something like that, Jude, you have my full permission to have me certified.'

‘If that moment ever comes, I can assure you I will,' said Jude with a twinkle. She looked round at the other exhibits, most of which were actually in frames and hanging from the gallery's walls. ‘Maybe you could see some of these fitting in better in High Tor . . .?'

She had expected this would prompt another ‘Huh', and she wasn't disappointed. The actual frames were the only parts of Denzil Willoughby's smaller works that Fethering residents would have recognized as art. The contents of those frames were startling and ugly. In keeping with the
GUN CULTURE
theme, the images were composed of weaponry parts; a rifle bolt here, a trigger there, the butt of a pistol, a sawn-off shotgun barrel. Mixed with these oddments of metal were more photographs, whose highly coloured violence was too graphic ever to have appeared in newspapers. And the components within the frames were set on misshapen blocks of shiny blood red, a brain-like porridgy white and a brown that reminded Carole of things she didn't want to think about too deeply.

Needless to say, these creations all had titles like
Butt-Naked #3
,
Chamber Pot-Shot #12
and
Telescopic Site-Specific #9
. And the prices on the printed sheet were no less ridiculous than the one quoted for
Bullet-In #7
.

Yet, in his welcome to the Cornelian Gallery Private View, Giles Green kept harping on about the works' ‘investment value'. Carole Seddon was beginning to think that she had somehow stepped into a parallel universe.

When Giles finished his introduction, the applause he received was surprisingly warm. Though the denizens of Fethering had resented his disparagement of their village, they were basically all well-brought-up middle-class people. And Bonita Green was, after all, one of their own. It wouldn't do to appear stand-offish towards her son. Also, the wine and very good nibbles catered by the Crown and Anchor were free. Common politeness in Fethering dictated that the mouths of gift horses were never to be examined too closely.

Giles Green raised his hands to quell the applause. ‘Anyway, you haven't come here this evening to listen to me. I know you'd much rather hear from the creative genius whose stimulating and challenging work is all around us here at the Cornelian Gallery – Denzil Willoughby!'

Though Giles was smartly dressed in one of his City suits, the artist looked, to Carole Seddon's eyes, extremely scruffy. Maybe it went against the creed of his calling, but she thought he could have made a bit of an effort.

Denzil Willoughby was probably fortyish, the same kind of age as Giles Green, though it was hard to tell. He wore a large knitted woollen hat, which even Carole knew would be described as Rastafarian. From the back of it hung down some strands of beige dreadlocks, looking like greasy string from an abandoned parcel. Now, Carole Seddon had never been a great fan of dreadlocks, but if the style was worn by people of Afro-Caribbean background, then fine, that was part of their cultural heritage. Dreadlocks, however, on white Englishmen looked to her ridiculous, ugly and unhygienic. She thanked the Lord that her son had never gone through a rebellious phase during which he had sported dreadlocks. Though when she came to think about it, she realized that Stephen had never gone through a rebellious phase sporting anything.

Completing his ‘artist look', Denzil Willoughby wore a plaid work shirt over a sludge-coloured T-shirt, frayed jeans and scuffed cowboy boots whose disproportionately long toes curled upwards. He spoke in a kind of slack drawl, which did not completely disguise his public-school-educated accent.

‘I'm not going to say much,' he said, ‘because most talk about art is crap, and particularly when the person talking about it is the artist. Any statements that need to be made are made by my work. If you look at my work and get it, that's cool. If you don't get it, tough shit. Whatever you do, don't ask me to explain it to you. The world out there's a shit-hole, and art can't duck that. I don't duck it. I confront it, and my art is the expression of that confrontation. And if people don't like my work, I'm not bothered. It's just what I do.'

He paused and reached into the top pocket of his shirt to produce a crumpled pack of cigarettes and a green plastic lighter. Before the horrified eyes of Fethering, he proceeded, in a leisurely fashion, to light up.

‘I'm sorry,' Bonita Green could not help herself from saying, ‘but I'm afraid this is a non-smoking venue.'

‘Sure,' said Denzil Willoughby, taking a long drag from his cigarette. ‘Everywhere's a non-smoking venue these days.'

‘But that means,' the gallery-owner insisted, ‘that you shouldn't smoke in here.'

‘No,' countered the dreadlocked one. ‘It means that ordinary people shouldn't smoke in here. One of the important things that anyone with any knowledge of the art world will tell you is that there are no rules for artists.'

‘Yes, there are!' The voice that took issue with him was full of fury and alcohol. ‘Calling yourself an artist doesn't mean you can evade all human responsibilities.'

The voice was Fennel Whittaker's. Jude looked across anxiously at the girl as she swayed closer to Denzil Willoughby. Carole saw the quick worried look exchanged between Fennel's parents, and the expression of pure fury on the face of her sister Chervil.

‘There's no responsibility in telling someone you love them, is there?' the drunken girl went on. ‘We've all done that in our time, haven't we? We splash the word “love” around like it was water, don't we? On tap, easily available, doesn't cost anything. Doesn't do anyone any harm. We've all told people we loved them when we didn't, thought we loved people, then found out we were wrong. We've all—'

‘Shut up, Fen!' It was Chervil, who had suddenly interposed herself between her sister and the bemused artist.

‘No, I won't shut up!'

Like the tongue of a snake, Fennel's hand leapt out and slapped hard across Chervil's face. The younger sister recoiled, started to weep hysterically and backed off into the safety of Giles Green's arms.

This was the signal for Ned and Sheena Whittaker, no longer able to pretend they had nothing to do with her, to move towards their daughter. Jude also went to offer comfort, but Fennel burst free of their restraining hands to continue her tirade. And, though she was undoubtedly very drunk, there was nothing maudlin or pathetic about her. She was in fact magnificent in her anger.

‘You used me, Denzil! Pretended you cared about me, pretended you rated my painting, when the only thing that mattered to you was my money. And when I stopped handing that out, you dumped me. By text!

‘Well, don't worry. I'll get my revenge on you! The sensitive bloody artist, too caught up in his own creativity to get involved in real life . . . that's how you've always presented yourself, haven't you? Avoid emotional entanglements, so that you can concentrate on your art – huh? Well, you can't avoid everything. People are real! Life's real! Death's real! And anyone who causes the death of another person is responsible for that death. Guilt doesn't go away. Oh, sometimes the guilty person doesn't get branded as guilty in a court of law, but they still know what they've done. And the guilt for causing someone's death will never be forgotten. It will eat away at the perpetrator.' She looked round the gallery dramatically, as if challenging everyone present. ‘You may think you have a secret and it's safe inside you. But no, that secret is corrosive and ultimately it will destroy you. The person who has destroyed someone's life will have to live with that fact forever. He or she will never get away with it, never get off scot-free. As they have ruined a life, so will their own life be ruined!'

Having delivered this almost Old Testament curse, the girl moved very close to the artist and spat the next words out at him.

‘You know what you are, Denzil Willoughby? You're just like your art – full of shit!'

And, with that parting shot, Fennel Whittaker picked up an almost full bottle of red wine and stormed out of the Cornelian Gallery.

EIGHT

N
o one could completely ignore what had happened, but the outburst did not put an end to the Private View. The speeches by Giles Green and Denzil Willoughby had been a kind of natural break in the proceedings, and as soon as Fennel was out of the gallery, Zosia and her staff moved into assiduous glass-filling and canapé-offering mode.