‘Couldn’t agree with you more,’ he said with unruffled equanimity. ‘But wait until you see this particular picture. The public will love it. It’ll become a national icon, just you wait. You think a hardhead like Gil Methven wouldn’t have considered the political implications?’
‘Just as long as it’s not twenty metres wide and made of bullock’s blood and emu feathers,’ I grudgingly allowed. ‘Angelo’s in the hot seat now.’
‘Believe me.’ Eastlake snaffled a couple of fresh glasses off a passing tray and thrust one into my hand. ‘Agnelli will love it. He’ll think he’s Lorenzo bloody Medici. And the public will lap it up.’
Eastlake could afford to be optimistic about the judgment of the people. He’d never have to face it. I didn’t tell him that, though. Instead I let him wheel me around the room and introduce me to more names than I could hope to remember and more glasses of Veuve Clicquot than I could reasonably be expected to digest on an empty stomach.
In due course, I found myself standing alone, contemplating one of the pictures. It was a portrait of the Queen constructed entirely out of different varieties of breakfast cereal. Corn Flake lips, Nutri-Grain ears, Coco Pops hair. I had, I decided, done my duty for the day. It was getting on for 8.30. Time to scout for an out.
I sidled through the nearest door and found myself in an enclosed garden, a green rectangle of lawn bordered by high shrubs, a cool refuge from the clamour inside. A lavender-hued dusk was beginning its descent. The slightly overgrown grass was littered with dead marines and ravaged canape trays. Little clusters of people sprawled about languidly with their shoes kicked off. At the far end of the lawn, near a pile of rusty ironwork from the Turd of a Dog with a Square Arsehole school of sculpture, stood Salina Fleet, Veneer magazine’s spunky visual arts editor.
The palm trees on her mu-mu swayed. Pom-poms brushed her bare thighs. A lipstick-smeared wineglass sat athwart her bosom. All up, she looked a damned sight more edible than the wilting sushi circulating inside. Unfortunately, she was not alone.
Her companion was a male. He was somewhere in his mid-thirties, with lank unkempt hair, heavy-rimmed Roy Orbison glasses and an attempt at sideburns. The sleeves were sheared off his western shirt and he was wearing grimy, paint-speckled jeans. A creative type, no doubt about it. And judging by the intense way he leaned into Selina when he talked-he was doing all the talking-more than a casual acquaintance. He was reading expressively from a tatty piece of paper, as though reciting a poem.
Salina, I noted with some pleasure, didn’t appear to be buying it, whatever it was. My hopes soared. The guy was probably some mendicant artist, putting the hard word on her for a grant or a favourable review. But then she stepped closer and put her hand on his forearm. The gesture was so intimate, her demeanour so affectionate, that I mentally reached for the chalk to scratch myself from the race.
The guy jerked his arm away as if stung. No soft soap for him. He spun on his heels and strode towards the doorway where I was standing. Salina watched his progress across the lawn, less than impressed. She shook her head ruefully and drained her drink.
Here was my chance. The bar table was just through the door. I dived back inside and hit the waiter for a quick two glasses of shampoo. As he wrestled the wire off a fresh bottle, the artist-type came bustling up beside me, his eyes glinting through his spectacles with madcap determination. He slapped his hand down on my shoulder. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, his voice piping with emotion.
Before I could respond, he pushed downwards. Using me for support, he hoicked himself up onto the bar. His tooled leather boots skidded on the wet surface. A loaded tray of empty glasses careened over the edge and hit the floor. They shattered with an almighty crash. Every head in the room turned our way.
‘Shut up, everybody,’ declaimed the weedy cowboy. He brandished his piece of paper at the upturned faces like he was Lenin addressing the Congress of People’s Deputies. ‘And listen. You’re all being conned. This whole edifice is built on a lie.’
He made a gesture so expansive he had trouble arresting its momentum. And when he took a steadying sideways step, it was immediately obvious that he was drunk. Not legless perhaps, but a good three sheets to the wind at the very minimum. His voice was pitched high with nervous exultation at his own boldness. ‘The people behind this place don’t care about art.’
Backs turned dismissively, and the hubbub of conversation resumed. There’s one in every crowd, the murmur said. Just ignore him.
Seeing his audience’s attention begin to slip away, the would-be Demosthenes raised his voice against the resumption of normality. He succeeded only in sounding hysterical. ‘Listen, everybody,’ he pleaded. ‘This is important.’
I almost felt sorry for him, standing there in all his horrible vulnerability, flapping his skinny arms about, his pearls cast before swine, a teenage barman in a clip-on bow tie tugging at his trouser leg. Not sorry enough to forget my mission, though.
Salina Fleet, drawn by the ruckus, was standing in the doorway observing the spectacle with wide-eyed alarm.
Taking advantage of the waiter’s distraction, I filched the still-unopened champagne bottle, grabbed a couple of glasses and began in her direction. ‘You’ll see,’ the cowboy warned. ‘You can’t dismiss me so easily.’
And, as if to prove his point, and to me in particular, he promptly staggered forward and toppled off the table. He landed on top of me.
It isn’t every day I get strafed. I folded like a cheap banana lounge, flat on my backside, glassware skittering, dignity out the window. The demented speech-maker’s face pushed into mine, flushed with humiliation and too much to drink. ‘Sorry, mate,’ he mumbled, scrambling to his feet and rushing for the door. Salina Fleet, seeing him coming, pursed her mouth into a furious slit and folded her arms in an emphatic gesture of disavowal.
The hands of solicitous strangers dragged me to my feet. ‘Watch out!’ squealed someone. ‘Blood!’
My new-found friends all jumped backwards as if jet-propelled. The offending bodily fluid was mine. The stem of a broken wineglass had nicked my forefinger. The cut was small and there wasn’t a lot of blood, but that wasn’t the point. Who knows what fatal contagion I may have been harbouring?
Whipping a cocktail napkin from my pocket, I hermetically sealed the offending digit. The traumatised bystanders cast me nervously apologetic looks. Fiona Lambert arrived, the scandalised hostess. ‘How ghastly,’ she clucked. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Fine,’ I said, bravely displaying my ruby-tinged bandage. ‘Who was that guy, anyway?’
‘Nobody important,’ sniffed Fiona, dismissively. ‘These would-be artists, they’re always complaining about something. Are you sure you’re all right?’
Lloyd Eastlake closed from the other side, trapping me in a social pincer. ‘You okay?’
Nothing was damaged but my prospects. Salina Fleet was nowhere in sight.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ said Eastlake keenly, clamping my biceps. He was quite shaken, a lot more disturbed by the amateur dramatics than I was. He scanned the room as though my inadvertent assailant might be about to launch another attack from the cover of the crowd. ‘People are going across to the Botanical,’ he said.
I’d read about the Botanical Hotel. It was a chichi watering hole and noshery on Domain Road, not far away. Before Fiona Lambert could object, he clamped her arm, too, and marched us out the front door.
Night had fallen over the parkland, filling it with the drone of cicadas and the heady fragrance of damp lawn. A straggling gaggle of exhibition-goers meandered through the trees ahead of us, blending into the twilight in the general direction of Domain Road. To my relief, I could make out the bird-like silhouette of Salina Fleet among them. The tormented artist was nowhere in sight. Perhaps my prospects were salvageable.