Lilith
‘What the fuck am I doing here?’ I paced the floor of the make-up room, counting down the minutes to my appearance like a condemned woman.
Hilary Silverman, my long-suffering agent, poured herself a lukewarm coffee and gave her best calming smile. ‘Delivering a compromise. Well, your particularly diluted version of a compromise, anyway.’
‘I’m leaving.’
Hilary’s eyes widened in alarm. ‘You can’t!’
‘I think you’ll find I bloody well can.’
‘All right, all right, you can. Okay, so let me rephrase that.’ Hilary positioned her considerable backside on a grubby sofa and patted the seat next to her. I begrudgingly sat down. ‘I would very much prefer it if you didn’t leave, on the basis that it’s the only sodding way I can get you to do any publicity for your own exhibition, before you bugger off back to your lair.’
‘I’ve got work waiting back in Spain.’ I took a sip of chamomile tea that tasted like floor-sweepings, and Hilary shook her head.
‘Y’know, I’d forgotten just how unutterably bloody-minded you can be when you feel threatened.’
‘I don’t feel “threatened”. I feel pissed off, cold, and ever so slightly manipulated. And what the fuck does someone like Johnny Buckle want with me?’
Hilary removed a silver bangle the size of a drainpipe and began rolling it in her hands as a talisman against stroppy artists. ‘He wants to move upmarket apparently, hence the ‘Young, British and Talented’ theme for tonight. His show’s taken a lot of stick in the press for being too tabloid, even for the Saturday night late slot. Something to do with staging a live wedding ceremony between some inadequate little man and his poodle.’
‘Oh God, I read about that. And I’m meant to go out there and make small talk with this cretin?’
‘His people have promised he’ll talk about your work, nothing more. Maybe a bit about the charity - ’
‘No.’
‘All right, so no charity stuff. Pity, might go a little way to countering the whole ‘Ice Princess’ business. Maybe the tiniest mention of Daniel?’
‘No!’ The mere thought of my younger brother’s name being dragged into this circus made me feel sick.
Hilary gave a weary sigh of defeat. ‘You can’t blame a girl for trying. But try and mention your work, huh? And, please God, your exhibition. You know, the one where I do all the work to flog one or two of your amateur scribblings, and you get all the glory?’
‘Okay, I get your point. I’ll try and behave. Ten minutes. How hard can it be?’ I begrudgingly took my place in the make-up chair.
‘Good girl.’ My agent took my hand and gave it a pat. ‘Just try to keep calm, darling. That’ll do me.’
‘Hi, I’m Jarred and I’ll be applying your slap for tonight.’ A young man in a tight neon-green t-shirt and black leather trousers sidled up and began to apply powder to my nose. ‘Nice to find a complexion that isn’t like the dark side of the moon. Five minutes ‘til showtime, sweetie.’ He gave me a sympathetic smile that did nothing to ease my apprehension. ‘God, that dress is to die for. Vintage?’
‘Nineteen fifty two Dior.’
‘You know, my other half couldn’t believe we’d got you for tonight. You’re his heroine – says you’re the Grace Kelly of the Twenty-First Century.’ He glanced up from his work. ‘Uh oh, stand by your beds girls, here comes his majesty.’
There was a sudden flurry of activity on the other side of the room, and Johnny Buckle, orbited by half-a-dozen minions, graced us with his presence.
‘Now then, Lil. Very nice to meet you in the flesh. Nice frock – does wonders for your boobs. What you can’t get in your mouth, you only waste, eh?’ He leant down and, without invitation, kissed me hard on both cheeks. Sixteen and a half stones of goateed faux-Northern macho bullshit with the remains of last night’s curry still on his breath invaded the space my closest friends would baulk at, and it took all my self-control not to recoil.
‘You -’ Johnny pointed at a young girl clutching a clipboard to her chest. ‘Do something useful for a fucking change and find me a beer, will you?’ She scuttled out of the door and he turned to me. ‘Fancy one, Lil?’
‘Lilith. And no, thank you.’
‘Ooh, get you with that posh accent. Instant hard-on or what? Right, this is how it’s going to go tonight. I’ve got to make like I’m interested with some wanker that cooks stuff first, then we’ll get you on – nice build-up so they love you before you even park your arse on the chair, and then we’ll have a natter about your paintings – loved the one with that bird giving her fella a blow-job by the way – and that’ll be the show over for another week.’ He glanced in the vast mirror hung over the sofa and picked something green from his teeth with a fingernail. ‘Then what say you and I disappear into the night and find somewhere quiet to grab a bite to eat? See what comes up, eh?’
‘I’m terribly sorry. I’ve got a taxi booked to the airport as soon as I finish the interview.’
‘Pity. Tell you what, I bet I could give you some inspiration for those mucky drawings that you do.’
I summoned a polite smile. ‘I’m sure you could.’
Johnny touched his earpiece. ‘Got to interrupt you there, darlin’. Some tart in the control room’s telling me we’re live in two.’ He patted me on the shoulder with enough force to make me wince. ‘Right, here we go. See you in the bear-pit, Lil.’ He strode onto the studio floor to a groundswell of cheers and squeals from an audience that sounded like it had been imported from Bedlam.
‘Could I give you a bit of advice?’ Jarred whispered in my ear. ‘Let him win. He’s an oaf, but he can be dangerous, believe me. Just smile nicely then get pissed once you’re safely back at home.’
‘Well, I suppose I’d better go and find my seat.’ Hilary stood and rearranged her voluminous batik-dyed skirt. ‘I’ll be in the front row – if it all ends in tears, at least you’ll know where to find me.’
‘Same if I decide to fire you.’
*****
Too soon, the hollering signalled the end of the first interview with ‘some wanker that cooks stuff’, and it was my turn for the inquisition. I got to my feet before the young runner could lead me to my position, and I briefly wished that I believed in a god to whom I could offer a trite prayer for safe passage.
‘And now, the young woman who’s turning the British art world on its head… Lilith Bresson!’ Johnny’s voice surged into the room, and my stomach lurched and the walls closed in. The distant applause sounded like thunder and I wanted to run and run until I hit the nearest road, or failing that, a particularly solid wall. Instead, I took a deep, steadying breath and stepped out into a barrage of blinding light and noise to be caught in Johnny Buckle’s suffocating embrace.
‘Lil, love! Fantastic to meet you at last! Grab a seat and make yourself comfy.’ More unwelcome kisses, the same rank breath, and I was live in front of three million people.
‘Thank you.’ I smoothed the satin of my dress over my knees and sat on the edge of my seat, determined not to be swallowed by the huge sofa that Johnny used to shrink his guests. At exactly five feet tall, I had no wish to appear smaller still.
My host looked out to address his audience. ‘Now, old Johnny here may not know much about art, but he does know what he likes. None of this crap with pickled giraffes, for a start – what the heck’s all that about anyway? – but when a good looking bird like yourself decides to mix painting with one of the biggest football teams on the planet, well, you’re onto a winner with most of the blokes I know. So let’s just remind our viewers of the piece that’s made your name, shall we?’
The Players’ Triptych flashed up on the monitor in front of me, and I actually managed to smile. Six months on from the final brushstroke and I was still as proud as hell. Three of A.C. Torino’s greatest players stood thirty feet tall, captured fierce in gold and sepia pigments blended with their own blood and sweat, burnished Roman gods guarding the gates of their stadium.
Loved by the fans as much as the critics, the image was now reproduced on t-shirts, mugs, even dogs’ drinking bowls, and thanks to a ruthless deal by Hilary, I took a healthy percentage on anything sold. I was twenty-eight years old and The Players’ Triptych had bought me my freedom.
‘Very nice.’ For one sweet second I thought he might actually want to talk about my work. ‘So. Is it true that Alessandro Bertolli showed you his player’s entrance?’
I could see Hilary in the front row, sitting with her head in her hands. ‘I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about,’ I replied, and watched the leer fade and die as Johnny Buckle fought to recover from my froideur.
‘Very noble of you. Well now, moving on, I always like to do a bit of extra research on our guests.’ Johnny fixed me with a shark’s predatory grin. ‘I’ve heard you’ve got a very clever little party trick, Lil.’
‘I wouldn’t call it that,’ I began, but Johnny had found a new seam.
‘Don’t be coy. I’m sure our audience want to know about your special talent, and I don’t just mean between the sheets, eh?’ He gave me a knowing wink, to more giggling from the horde beyond the studio lights. ‘So why don’t you tell us about this mind-reading?’
‘It’s not mind-reading,’ I explained, feeling the irritation seep into my voice. If Hilary wanted calm, she could come up and do this interview in my place. ‘It’s about noticing the details that most people don’t see then piecing them together in a way that sounds like you’ve got a hotline to the other side. The same stunt so-called psychics pull on the suckers that go to them.’
‘Ooh, sceptic. Thought you’d be into all that stuff, being the artistic type. You know, touchy-feely hocus pocus.’ I waited. Sure enough, he couldn’t resist. ‘So what can you tell us about Johnny Buckle, then?’
He’ll be fine as long as you let him win...
I made my decision; I had to attack before this cretin came anywhere near the rest of my life, or, worse, began to encroach on Daniel’s sanctuary. I appraised my host as if I were meeting him for his first sitting, and switched everything else off. The cameras, lights, audience all disappeared, and I was left alone with Johnny Buckle.
It wasn’t just the body language. It was all of him. His way of talking to his guests and colleagues; the clothes he wore; even this exhibitionist profession he had chosen. Each piece clicked together as I looked on. This was how I found the vulnerability, the hidden picture that my clients loved, but right now it was what I was about to use to nail the bastard.
‘Hell-oo? Is there anybody there? Come on, what dirty little secret can you reveal about good old Johnny Buckle?’
I smiled. ‘Little’s the operative word, isn’t it, Johnny?’ There was a sudden rush of pure pleasure as I saw his grin begin to slip. ‘It must be tough, lying there with your first girlfriend, thinking, this is it, the moment you’ve been waiting for, and she ends up in hysterics when she sees your cock. In fact, all these years later and it can still stop you getting it up, can’t it?’
Sometimes I had to backtrack, or dig deeper, but tonight I knew that I had scored an indescribably satisfying direct hit. I thought Good Old Johnny Buckle was about to have a coronary in front of his adoring viewers.
The studio fell silent, then there was a collective howl of laughter from audience and crew alike, so loud that Johnny struggled to be heard as he yelled, ‘And on that load of bollocks, we’ll be back after the break.’ As the studio lights dimmed he leaned forward so that his florid face was only inches from mine. ‘I’m going to bury you, you fucking bitch,’ he hissed, and stormed off to the sanctuary of his dressing room.
Jarred rushed up to re-powder my nose and cheeks. ‘I brought you a drink.’ He pressed a glass into my hand.
‘I don’t need water, thanks.’
He gave me a conspiratorial smile. ‘It’s vodka, darling. Forget everything I said. We’ve been waiting two years for someone to do that to the fucker.’