update August 19th 2011

now called Cheats and Liars

edited first chapter

Brian Llewelyn, the Greatest Living Artist in Wales has everything: money, fame and a great sex life, so why is he so miserable?

 

C H E A T S   A N D   L I A R S
by Derec Jones

You know I am a liar.

I am a fraud. I am the oaf who swaggers and spits, scratches and scrawls all over your life.

Now – I give you this. I give you this ageing arsehole, with his squiggles and blobs and his fat-faced bluster on the thumping stupidity of the human gene pool. I give you my love.

Damn you!

* * *

O N E

“Are you ready?”
I’m in the kitchen snaffling a crumpet dripping with raspberry jam. Of course I’m not ready. I am never ready. I am a work in progress.
“Come on, you don’t want to be late for your own exhibition.”
I gulp, a crumb of crumpet sticks in my throat. I cough and the crumb dislodges, jam stained spittle dribbles over my lip.
“Look at you.” She tuts and picks up a damp dishcloth.
After she rubs the goo from my mouth and from the lapel of the blue linen jacket I follow her meekly to the car.
“I’m driving,” she says.
I shrug. She is right. I will need to drink so that I can stomach the unspeakable pricks. Every year I bare my arse and they come like slime to a stagnant pond, for I have no talent and they have no taste. This is not my life; this is some jerk spewing on cotton canvas and picking the overfull pockets of the privileged. This should never be. The gentle boy in me is lost, drowned by circumstance and weakness; he would feel sad to look through these eyes now, to see my betrayal with its parade of pseudosmilers and its fake humility. I am a hollow husk, devoid of depth, I am dead.

I strut into the exhibition hall, late, of course. Lucy is at my side; they are here, appropriate reverent expressions turned towards me.
I perform for a while, nodding at the enemy, parrying with my glass. Sex is here, and though the taste of it has become bland to me, I smell it out. There is a woman here; she has hovered on the edge of my awareness for years. I think I know her name but can’t bring it to mind. She is petite and blonde with a sharp nose and a delicate femininity. Five years ago I might have loved her for a season; we would have fucked in the orange light of autumn afternoons, sprawled on the bed in my studio, the smell of oil paints and fresh sweat sucking the passion from us. Ah, I spit at the memories of myself. But I must play.
The name comes. The reckless genie has long since dominated and I allow it to speak.
“Kate?”
She smiles and her face reddens.
Another possibility beckons, I follow.
“You are very beautiful. I would like to paint you.”
My paintings are on the walls all around. She will not look at me; her gaze hops and rests for a second on each one.
A quiet voice says: “Thank you.”
“I will pay.”
She glares at me; sharp cobalt eyes and cheeks still blushed with pink. She would indeed make a good subject though my skills are not up to the job, I would make a show of the painting process and blur her beauty into a mess of colour and form – and the painting would sell because somewhere in that mess would be a hint of her, and that would be enough. I don’t know if I am an artist, but the world thinks so.
“I always pay my posers.” I smile. It’s all part of the game. “It’s a serious offer – it is my job.”
“I do like your work,” she says. What else could she say?

My darling Lucy comes to me. I see the sigh in her eyes.
“Come on,” she says.
I follow. Tony is standing on a chair behind the drinks table. He taps the bottle like a pro.
“Simmer down cowpokes.”
He’s wearing a bloody hat too; a puerile nod to the centrepiece painting that had given its name to the exhibition – Arizona. Arizona my arse. I’d been trying to paint a pair of breast-like hills from a too-dark photograph I took in North Wales with Lucy’s phone. I blew it up on my laptop and reverse printed it out in pieces on A4 paper, then I sellotaped the pieces together.
The result was a pixellated blur of a dark landscape. I traced the major contours with a small brush loaded with a thick line of ochre and squashed the paper against the canvas so that it left an outline. I spent a couple of days titivating it and over that time it lightened progressively and the mounds became more angular. I stepped back to examine it and the thought Arizona Hills came to me. I’ve never been to Arizona and had no intention of making it look like Arizona.
I left it for a couple of days and then added a few lamp-black lines to give it some definition. Is that an artistic process? Does that make me an artist? I don’t know.
“Fucking pratt.” I mumble.
Lucy and everyone else within two metres of where I’m standing at the back of the room hear me. Lucy nudges me.
“Shut up. Without Tony you would never sell any paintings, no matter how good you are.”
“That’s the bloody problem . . .”
“Ssh!”
“Can’t you see? It is his fault.” I whisper.
Lucy shakes her head. “Shut up.” She says with a fake laugh for the audience.
I succumb to her wishes. She is right, except I am not good.

Tony’s speech finishes, he is still a pratt but he does know his game. Without him, I suppose, I would still be a moderately successful artist, selling the odd canvas, existing on handouts from the Arts Council and lecturing batch after batch of fresh deluded bastards in art schools – like buns they come, pimpled with currants and full of stodgy crap. It’s simple you clods, if you want to be an artist then do some fucking art. Paint, draw, sculpt, assemble your mundane multimedia collages or whatever pickles your gherkin. You do not need a B fucking A to do art – just do it.
I guess I am lucky, except I have this demon in my head. I have to keep it fed by curmudgeonly schmoozing with the purchasing class. I disgust myself with my toadying.
I wander around the gallery, glugging fancily-labelled cheap wine until my consciousness descends to a state of merry apathy. Maybe now that I have given myself a temporary lobotomy I can communicate with the monkeys at their level. What a terrible mixture of sharp pain and muzzy pleasure this human physiology is. Why should I care? This is me; this is what I have become.
A long-legged, dark-haired beauty accosts me with a shy nervous smile. I wonder if she is rich enough to invest in a rectangle of my daubs.
I smile back at her and make a wobbly approach.
“Hello.” I say.
“They are nice.” She mumbles with a blush.
Nice? What sort of a word is nice? A cup of tea after a walk in the park is nice; a quiet half-hour on a verdant riverbank in summer is nice. My paintings are not nice. They are works of art that penetrate the soul – is that nice?
“Nice?” I say.
“Well, I mean, um – striking, colourful, the composition is endless, if you see what I mean.”
Yes! I do see what she means. Now I am interested. This is one of the qualities I see in my best work. I strive for it when I remember to. I want the eye to flow around the painting, resting here on a cadmium tone, there on a splash of flat zinc white; then to recognise a momentary pattern that dissolves when it is approached. I want that eye to dance over the surface of the painting, drop into contours of viridian and russet and bounce to the emerald peaks. I want it to devour the endless motion, the energy that floods from the heart of the universe.
I nod and smile. She shuffles closer and we stand and stare at what would be described by some, including a certain ignorant art critic as an orange mess. This one has that endless motion. When it was finished I sat mesmerized as I explored its glowing composition, scrutinised it for hours without finding any way to improve it.
“There,” she points at the bottom right of the rectangle with a long finger that would be delicate if the nail was not chewed to the quick. She is a lovely feminine specimen. Maybe a few years ago . . .
“The tail of that white oval curves up towards that white splash.” She moves her finger to point at the top left. “And then, that splash itself leads to another patch of white in the centre . . . sorry, I’m babbling.”
I laugh. “No, you’re making sense,” I say. “What do you do?”
“Nothing special,” she says, “just work behind the bar in the Chapter Arts Centre. Do you know it?”
“Yes. I do.” I nod, already losing interest. “You’re very perceptive.” I smile.
She blushes again.
“I do other things as well. Some counselling, I help people with their lives.”
“Oh yes.” I say with feigned interest.
I am saved from my middle-aged folly by Tony and Lucy, who both appear at once. Lucy tugs my sleeve and looks the woman in the eye pointedly.
“Come on Brian, you old bugger,” Tony beckons. “Sorry,” he says to the woman. He turns to me. “Come and meet Mr Richard Large. It will be worth your while.”
The woman touches me on the arm and slips her card into my hand. I nod acknowledgement.
I shrug and follow him.
Richard Large is a plump forty something in a black blazer and an open-necked red shirt. He grabs my hand and squeezes it harder than is respectful.
“You can call me Rich,” he laughs, “I’m Rich – ha ha!”
I already dislike the twat. I take a breath and force a smile.
“Rich,” says Tony, “is setting up his corporate headquarters here in Cardiff.”
“Yes,” says the twat, “we need stuff on the walls – that’s what you do isn’t it? And you do it well according to my sources – you are the maker of stuff to put on walls.” He laughs again.
I keep the forced smile and nod.
“I like what I’m seeing here, but want to see more of your stuff.” He says through his mealy lips. “Is that possible? Do you have more?”
Of course I have more, though I’m not sure I want to exchange it for this slug’s slime.
“I am a bit busy at the moment.”
“Not now, not now, I’m busy myself. Perhaps we can arrange something. I’d like to see your studio?”
“It’s not that kind of studio, and anyway, Tony here deals with all that.”
“And I will Brian – I will. Leave it to Uncle Tony, I promise we won’t disturb your artistic flow, we wouldn’t want to do that – shooting ourselves in the foot we’d be.” He makes his hand into the shape of a pistol and points at his feet. “Kapow.”
Richie Rich laughs and slaps Tony on the back. “You’ve got a good one there Brian.”
I grunt.
Lucy nudges me.
“Yes – all right. We’ll sort something out.”
“Good, good. Let’s make it soon.” Rich the Prick drifts away.
Tony calls after him. “I’ll be in touch.”
“OK Brian, nice one.” He says to me.
I glare at him and shake my head.
“Oh stop being such a prima donna. Who do you think pays the fucking rent?” He touches Lucy on the shoulder. ‘Scuse the Anglo-Saxon my love.”

I’m sitting in my studio wondering what piece of work to pick up on, bearing in mind the reactions of the sycophants at the exhibition last night. I am in a contemplative mood, opening myself to any inspiration that may fall from the ether.
Paintings, canvases, oils, colours, portraits . . . more women? No. Men. Great men. So-called great men. Men like, like . . .  Gandhi, Mandela and Lennon. Not plain portraits but  compositions of colour and form representing the essence of what made them great. The Lennon painting will include musical symbols, and references to Yoko and Paul. The dark side of the Beatle’s personality hiding in the shadows.
I need a bit of feedback and although she is not always right, I can depend on Lucy for an honest opinion. She is in the lounge shoving a vacuum cleaner around. I push myself from the chair and move out of the studio. As I approach the lounge the terrible whine of the motor increases and I’m in danger of losing the thread. I lean down and switch the cleaner off at the mains.
Lucy looks up puzzled, becoming annoyed when she sees me in the doorway.
“Put that back on.”
“In a minute. I want to run something past you.”
“Put it back on now.”
Fair enough; she is not receptive right now. I lean down and flick the switch. The whine resumes. I stay in the doorway watching as she works pointlessly, since Jasper does just about enough to keep the place looking respectable. I’m about to retreat to the relative peace of the studio when she switches the machine off and faces me.
“OK,” she says, “get it over with. What is this something you want to talk about?”
“It doesn’t matter.” I can see she’s in one of her moods, best back off.
“It does matter. If it didn’t matter you wouldn’t have asked.”
“OK, all right. It’s like this you see, there are people and there are human beings. Not all people are human beings but all human beings are people. Just because you’re a person doesn’t mean you are a human being. Human beings are more than people – they are like gods. They understand. They are special people.”
Lucy takes a breath. “That’s just Nazi thinking. I suppose you’re putting yourself in the human-being sub-group. You think you are a god don’t you? You are a dangerous person, and, I’m ashamed to say, you are a human being. We, that’s everyone on this planet who inhabits a human form, is a human being. Do you think the things you feel are unique? Do you? Well, do you?”
“Ssh.” I say softly, holding my palm towards her. “I was only saying – that’s all.” This is a bit over the top, even for a moody Lucy, I wonder if there’s something else going on with her.
“Don’t you fucking palm me you arsehole. Why don’t you go and find some tart in town to toss off your ageing ego.” Lucy turns her back on me and switches the vacuum cleaner on.
Oh Jesus, does she think I am still screwing around, if only she knew. Truth is, it’s just not happening any more, perhaps it’s all over, perhaps it’s because I’m not happy with my work, perhaps I’m just shit in all departments. But whatever I am I need her support and here she is, once again sweeping aside the fragile web of my artistic personality. Why can’t she just humour me now and again?
“Fuck you Lucy.”
She switches the machine off and stares at me, her eyes bulging with anger and defiance.
“Did you just tell me to fuck off?”
“No. I did not. But I think I will – fuck off.”
I open the door and walk out.
“Fuck off then,” she shouts, “and don’t bother coming back. And while you’re at it why don’t you go and . . .”
That’s all I hear. I am already halfway along the path, the door slamming shut behind me. This is easy. The club will still be open. She will have regained her brain by the time it closes.
It is good to see another red dot on one of my paintings, a little oil pastel of a green view in Carmarthenshire. The club has turned out to be a good place to display my lesser work, the kind that doesn’t fit a formal exhibition. It’s a good club, in the sense that it attracts the kind of people who can afford to buy the odd work from the country’s Greatest Living Artist – me.
Tony is here, sitting at the bar flirting with the teenage barmaid.
I poke him in the back: “Come on Tony, even I couldn’t justify that.”
“Fuck you. You can just fuck off.” But he is smiling.
“Not you too.” I say.
“Getting a hard time at home old boy? Never mind, Uncle Tony will look after you.”
I’m looking at the painting with the red dot. It could be brighter, the colours look dull in this light, not one of my best.
Tony nudges me: “Hey – come back, you went off on your travels for a bit there.”
“Sorry, yes.” I sit down at a small table with Tony and a pint of decent lager.
“Bloody artists.” He chuckles.
“Another one gone then,” I say, nodding at the dot.
“You’ll see a tidy sum from that little beaut. Not bad after the club’s commission and the gallery’s cut. You are hot boy – smoking.” He clenches his hand like a gun and points his index finger at me. “Kapow,” he says, “smoking!”
“Get off the stage, no one’s clapping.” I grunt.

Jake is in the club. Jake is a cheat.

“You’re lying.” I say.
“I don’t know why I bother.”
“You’ve got form.”
Tony touches his arm. “Don’t listen to him Jake. He’s just winding you up.” He glares at me.
“Fuck you.” I say. “Fuck you both. In fact why don’t you both fuck off.”
I mean it and even though I know they won’t fuck off, I do not care if they do. I know what this is about. I’d like to let Jake know what I know – shock him out of his preposterous posturing as some champion of the arts; get his cheating chops out of the papers. What Jake does is nothing to do with the art; the art is just a convenient vehicle for his fakery.
Tony glares at me again. He’s hoping I won’t allow my anger to take control of my vocal chords. I will not. I am too well programmed for that. I know what it takes to get a commission from this man. I also know I must not know. It’s quite easy after a bit of practice, it’s called deliberate denial, just tell yourself a story enough times and it becomes true.
“A series of six paintings, it’s a commission; we’ve got a good grant.”
Tony nods silently.
“I don’t do commissions.”
“You can have artistic freedom. It’s a lot of money – even for you.”
“I can do what I want?”
“Yes, so long as they fit.”
“What if they don’t?”
“Well I suppose we could always change the design – but there are other factors. Let me show you the plans, and we’ve got a little 3-D model, we are still open to suggestions.”
“OK.” I say despite my misgivings – a guy’s got to work. I hope I don’t regret getting tangled in this snake’s snare.
Tony smiles.

* * *

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