The Late Hector Kipling

A Novel

David Thewlis

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN: 9781416541226
• eBook ISBN: 9781416554264
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

Hector Kipling is a famous artist. But Hector is not as famous as his best friend, Lenny Snook. And as they are standing in the Tate Gallery one afternoon, Hector's life begins to unravel. For a painter, this existential crisis is the place from which great art is born. If the painter happens to be a forty-three-year-old man with a girlfriend away from home, it is the recipe for disaster. Soon it's all Hector can do to keep it together -- between his therapist who shows up drunk at a party and introduces herself to his parents, an irresistible young female poet with a terrifying taste for S&M, and a deranged stalker with an oil-and-canvas-inspired vendetta, just trying to cope is enough to make a man cry. As the events in his life threaten to drive him toward full-blown dementia, Hector finds himself in a bizarre and murderous pursuit of a man threatening to kill him in return, spiraling into a hysterically surreal Hitchcocklike thriller -- the story of how a man can become desperate enough to shoot his way out of a midlife crisis. At turns warm, witty, and joyfully absurd, David Thewlis's wicked comedy marks the debut of a savagely funny and observant literary talent.

1

TATE MODERN, LONDON

“So New York was a success?” I say.

“New York?”

“You said the other night that it was a big success and everyone loved you.”

“Oh, it was a bit special,” says Lenny, and pulls his coat around him. He’s come out in a long red leather coat—jacket—maybe it’s a jacket. Whatever it is, it’s got a belt, and he looks a fool. “New York’s always amazing, though, isn’t it?”

“I’ve always thought so,” I say, and think about administering a brutal volley of spiteful little kicks to his pompous, self-satisfied shins.

“It gets better every year.”

“Doesn’t it?”

“I mean, people say that it’s not what it used to be, but you know what, Hec?”

“What, Lenny?”

“I regard that as a tautology.”

“Well, not really. A tautology is—”

“I mean, what is?”

“What is what?” and I’m limbering up for that first important kick.

“What is not what it used to be, if you’re gonna look at it like that? I mean, really, if you think about it?”

“Hmmm.”

“I mean, you could say that about the potato, or the Pantheon, and I’m sure there’re lots of people who do; but you could say it about the moon—‘It’s not what it used to be’—well, yeah, I suppose, by definition, but you know what? Fuck off! The moon’s not what it used to be? Fuck that right off.”

“Tautology, though, is when—”

“So when people say that about New York, it’s just—”

“Fuck off.”

“Exactly.”

“So it was good, then?”

“Better than ever.”

“Good, I’m glad.”

“I mean, there was this show, in Chelsea, couple of galleries down from the Gagosian: new lad, early twenties, first exhibition—fucking phenomenal.”

“What was it?”

“Minimalist. Genius, Hec.”

“Genius?”

“Total genius.”

“Like what, then? What’d he done?”

“He’d flooded the entire space with broken eggs. The walls, the ceiling. Twelve thousand broken eggs. They gave you a pair of galoshes to walk round it. The floor was a-fucking-wash with smashed-up fucking egg.”

“And that’s minimalist?”

“Well isn’t it?”

“Sounds excessive.”

“It’s definitely minimalist, Hec. Twelve thousand broken egg whites and yolks, all squished up all over the fucking place. He called it Miscarriage er…”

“Miscarriage?”

“Miscarriage of Just This.”

“Fuck!”

“Exactly! And the smell!”

“The Gagosian?”

“Couple of doors down.”

“Eggs?”

“Eggs, Hec, eggs.”

“You’re right, Lenny…”

“Miscarriage of Just This.”

“…Fucking genius.”

Suddenly Lenny stops in his tracks, arrested by the sight of Lichtenstein’s Whaam! He takes a step or two back and begins to nod his head, like a novelty dog. “Lichtenstein was forty when he painted this.”

“So what,” I say, “it’s dung.”

Lenny doesn’t comment upon whether he thinks it’s dung, he just stands there squinting at it, through his tinted specs, as though some other thing is hidden beneath, or above, or just to the side of the only thing that it is—which is tired.

I’ll tell you what: Lenny’s father died when Lenny was twelve. He was torn to slivers at an air show in Lossimouth. A faulty red helicopter burst into flames, split in half, dropped from the sky, and landed on his umbrella; and I’ll tell you what: I hope Lenny isn’t trying to tell me that this reminds him of it.

“Whaam!” he says, and nods. He takes off his silly little blue-tinted specs, and swings them around on his finger. Girls look at him. Women look at him. Middle-aged women, old women, a few men. I look at him, and to say that he’s getting on my nerves doesn’t do it justice; he’s finding footholds on every fucking synapse. Standing there like a rock star in his long red leather coat. The bald get.

We pass through a room of Modiglianis. I’m looking at the skirting board, Lenny’s looking at the lights. Modigliani can bog off. And Giacometti, he’s in there too with his horrible little thin things. Next thing you know, we’re in a dingy little side gallery riddled with huge and gloomy maroon abstracts. I begin to huff and tut, and eventually, and not before time, Lenny asks me what the problem is.

“Why does Rothko always get his own room?” I say.

“I don’t know, Hector,” say Lenny, “you tell me, why does Rothko always get his own room?”

“It’s not a joke, Lenny, I mean it. Why does Mark Rothko always get his own room?”

“Yeah, Hec, I know.”

Silence. He puts a fist up to his lovely lips and affects a cough. He must think that I’ve finished with him.

“Lenny, it’s not a joke and it’s not rhetorical. I’m just asking you, plain and simple, man to man, as one artist to another, why does Mark fucking Rothko always get his own fucking room?”

“Oh, I see.”

“Well?”

“Er, well…” and he sets about stroking his cheek as though the answer might be written in Braille on his pale and gorgeous chops. “Because he killed himself?”

“No! No, no, no. Van Gogh fucking killed himself, he doesn’t get his own room.”

“Sometimes he does.”

“Only in fucking Amsterdam, or if there’s a retrospective.”

“Everyone gets their own room if they’ve got a retrospective.”

“That’s my point.”

“Well, I don’t know, what the fuck, Hec? Because he’s spiritual?”

I do a little dance. “Spiritual? Because he’s spiritual?” I say, “I’m fucking spiritual, but I don’t get my own fucking room.”

“Maybe if you killed yourself.”

“Maybe if I killed myself?”

“Yeah, Hec,” and he smirks and straightens up his back, like he might have a point, “maybe if you killed yourself.”

“Yeah,” I say and stick out my gut, “or maybe if I killed you.” And I leave it right there.

Before we’d tipped up at the Tate we had stopped off at Trafalgar Square so that Lenny could suitably probe and thoroughly fetishize the Fourth—capital letters—Plinth. It’s not like he’s been commissioned or anything; he was doing a just-in-case kind of recce, I suppose. The sky was fat and black, and Nelson, if you could have got a good look at him all the way up there, looked about as unimpressed as I was. Lenny, bless him, paced, frowned, gurned, fingered his chin, fiddled with his specs, and then, just in case I was missing the point, unfolded his fancy two grand German camera and took a lot of tedious photographs of the space between nothing much and nowhere at all. After two minutes of this posturing fucking nonsense he pulled out a big industrial tape measure and something that looked worryingly like a sextant. I was having fuck all to do with it and wandered off through the filthy rain to scream a little scream against my tongue and gums and stare down the lions.

We move on from the Rothko room, turn a corner, snort at a Leger, howl at a Degas, and that’s when I see it.

I don’t know what it was that made me cry. I don’t think I’ve ever cried in public before, and I know that I’ve never cried at a painting. Apart from my own. But that was in private. And they were tears of despair. Worst of all, the whole fiasco was played out in front of Lenny. I wept in front of Lenny Snook and he shuffled away, well away, to gape at a Matisse, ashamed to be seen with me. I swear to God, I don’t know how all this has come about. Why did I cry? Why did I suddenly buckle like that?

It was quite a spectacle, quite a performance. Some woman (who may or may not have been Eleanor Bron) scuttled across the room to hand me a tissue. I used it up before it had left her hand, and she went into her bag for another. At one point I had to lean against the wall. I’m leaning against the wall (Lenny’s already in the doorway) and I realize I’ve woken up the guard, who asks me to step away from the paintings and make my way to the lobby. In the lobby I’m drawing a small crowd and I’m advised either to leave the building or take myself off to the toilets. I’m in the toilets now, trying to make some sense of it all. I’m having no luck.

Lenny hasn’t come down, I notice. He saw me sobbing in the lobby, I know he did. He was watching me from behind a pillar. My hands were over my face, and I saw him through the slits of my fingers. Then, as I made my way to the stairs, I glimpsed him nipping out front for a fag. I assume it was for a fag; I saw one behind his ear. Either that or he’s just gone and fucked off. It wouldn’t be the first time. He fucked off last Thursday, the night he came back from New York. There were the three of us: me, Lenny and our friend Kirk in a back room at Blacks Club in Soho. Lenny was telling us about how he’d spent an evening with Jeff Koons, getting pissed on Manhattans, puffing Havanas, exchanging ideas. He put on Koons’s voice and at one point he pulled out a Polaroid of him and Jeff snuggled up in some dark booth. Kirk snored and lolled his head. I questioned the word “exchanging.”

“You know, exchanging,” said Lenny, “like sharing. I told him some of my ideas and he told me some of his.”

“Ideas about what?” said Kirk.

“You know…” said Lenny, and me and Kirk couldn’t believe he was going to say it, but he...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Colophon
• Titlepage
• copyright
• dedication
• epigraph
• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
• 6
• 7
• 8
• 9
• 10
• 11
• 12
• 13
• 14
• 15
• 16
• 17
• 18
• 19