How to Be Good (33 page)

'Put it this way,' she said. 'I'd have been stuffed if they hadn't. I'd have been stuck with a portrait of Jesus made out of breasts, and what use is that to anyone? It's Dave, isn't it? Well, Dave. Art is about provocation. Getting a reaction from people. And I've done it. I'm an artist.'

I remembered the party, when she thanked me, and I asked her why she'd done that if all she wanted was for someone to smash it up. But she didn't remember thanking me. So I said, you must remember, last night, at the party. When I took your photo, and you came over and kissed me on the cheek and said 'Thank you'. And she shrugged, and said, 'Oh, yeah. I was thanking you for the photo, I think.' Like it wasn't a big deal. Which it clearly wasn't, I can see now. I suppose if you're an artist, it doesn't mean anything, kissing someone on the cheek. They do it all the time. 'Twenty Marlboro Lights, please.' Kiss. 'Leicester Square, please.' Mmmmwa. It doesn't mean, oh thank you for the important and dangerous job you're doing, obviously. Silly cow. I should have just stood there. I shouldn't have gone out with the smelly nutter with the egg. Because, if you think about it  . . . The only reason it got smashed up was because I cared about it too much. I could have just stood there, stopped the egg, got rid of the nutter; but he'd got on my nerves, he'd tried to damage my picture –
my
picture – and I wanted to make sure he left the building, maybe give him a couple of digs at the same time. Which is why I wasn't in the room when it got broken. So. She wouldn't understand this, but she needed me for her film as much as she needed them.

 

When I went home last night, I felt stupid. I felt like I look, if you like: a six-foot-two, fifteen-stone bouncer with a shaved head who doesn't know anything about art. I'd spent two days thinking something was, you know, beautiful, and worth protecting, and all the time it was a piece of shit, stuck on the wall because some bird thought it would be a laugh if someone smashed it to pieces. So everyone's a prat, aren't they? The nutters are prats for doing what they were supposed to do, and I was a prat for trying to stop them  . . . The only one who isn't a prat is Martha. She's watching us and having a laugh. Well, fuck her.

Except maybe she isn't as clever as she thought she was. Because the film's showing now, up the corridor, and no one looks at it. It's too long, so most of the time nothing's happening, and you can't see very much anyway – they cocked up the angle of the camera, so you see the painting coming off the wall, but you don't see anyone jump on it. And it's not beautiful. It's just a CCTV film, like you see in a petrol station when you're waiting to get served. And that's what you get instead of the face of Christ in his agony. So who's the prat, eh Martha?

I've got an onion now. A fucking onion. And some other stuff, beds, and tents and shit, because I'm not in a room by myself any more; the CCTV film isn't controversial, so they don't need anyone to keep an eye on it. But my chair's by the onion, and it bores me shitless, because there's nothing to think about onions, is there? So I don't. I just sit here and think about what I'd like to do, apart from be Tiger Woods or Richard Branson.

About this story

 

This short story originally appeared in
Speaking with the Angel
, a collection of stories from authors including Zadie Smith, Roddy Doyle, Helen Fielding, Dave Eggers and Robert Harris. It was published in Penguin Books in 2000 and copies are available at bookshops or from
www.penguin.co.uk.

 

Proceeds from the sale of Speaking with the Angel go to the TreeHouse Trust, a very special school for children with autism or related communication disorders. Set up in 1997, it offers a pioneering approach to the education of these children and is the first school in the UK to adopt a highly effective educational method known as Applied Behaviour Analysis, which has substantial research proving its excellence. TreeHouse is a centre of excellence offering a model to others wishing to establish similar schools.

 

If you would like to know more about the work of the TreeHouse Trust, please visit their website which is at
www.treehouse.org.uk
.

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