The Outside Of Everything

Chapter 4
The Gallery

None of us were oil paintings. But one of us was easier on the eye than the rest. We called him The Fair One, the fairest of us all. And he had a sister. A real looker. A smart cookie. Brighter than the rest of us put together. We worshipped her. She saved our bacon many a time, though heaven only knows why she bothered. She could have had anyone in the land eating out of her hand, but she would rather hang out with a bunch of ne’er-do-wells like us. Nowt as strange as folk, as they say round our way.

She was crazier than us but you’d never have guessed. She was something in the City. Had a really good job with one of the Japanese banking organisations. Scary people by the sound of it. Inscrutably polite and incredibly ruthless. That appealed to her. Pin stripe disguises and courtly manners. Rigorous routine and uncompromising standards. She loved it. She even took up some of the least known forms of tai chi and related martial arts which she delighted in passing on us, her devoted disciples.

Having very well connected knight errants falling at her feet meant that she was never short of invitations to some spectacularly swanky dos. And of course for the sake of form she would take along her dear brother to act as chaperone. There was something else behind this too. Way back when if you were one of the gainfully unemployed then one way of getting by with the minimum of hassle was by signing up for something like the Enterprise Allowance Scheme, whereby if you could demonstrate some sort of pipedream the Government would then throw a bit of money your way and leave you in peace to wend your way through those troublesome times. The powers-that-be genuinely thought that everyone wanted to be an entrepreneur, so who were we to disillusion them?
So The Fair One thought it would be a bit of a hoot to enlist as a photographer and artist, and turned in a virtuoso performance with the lady down the Job Centre who was positively drooling as she completed the necessary paperwork and burbled on about her own abandoned ambitions of being a bit of a Bailey or Beaton. Probably just as well she did most of the talking as what The Fair One knew about photography could be written on his folded back shirt cuff. Mind you shortly afterwards he did pick up a rather nice model of one of those old Polaroid instant contraptions which were all the rage for a few weeks way back when. That of course was from our short-lived charity shop, where his sister also picked him out a rather fetching evening suit, which made him look deliciously decadent in an innocent Isherwood way.

And that suit came in incredibly handy when he accompanied Soul Sister Number One to some of the swankier parties in the better post codes of old London town. He never had much to say for himself, but a discreet smile and a knowing wink meant he could get away with murder. Apparently people thought he was something to do with the Tatler, or that he was some harmless eccentric having a bit of aimless fun with his museum piece. Ah the dangers of judging a book by its covers.

I mentioned that our boy’s sister was an absolute angel. And of course the spoiled sons of our upper classes being ignorant and crass could not resist cosying up and coming on strong when they saw her in a little black number with the inevitable single string of pearls that became her trademark. She would string the oafs along for so long, until her boredom threshold was finally crossed and this fantastically wistful yet dangerous look came into her eyes, and then she would strike. And as if on some pre-determined signal The Fair One would be there to snap when she snapped, and preserve the scene for posterity. One bounder blinded by red wine, whining what d’you wanna do that for? One was only having a little bit of fun. Look, you won’t tell my fiancée will you now?

And by then The Fair One would have disappeared, having pocketed his Polaroid. One more for his collection. One more mug shot. Red wine dripping like blood from aristocratic features. We loved them. There was a certain chivalric code caught up in there somewhere. Doing the right thing, protecting the family honour, and all that. The Polaroids were all pinned up in our lair, and as the party season wore on so the snaps developed. Quite a gallery.
And it was Soul Sister Number One who came up with the idea of going to a gallery. You’re meant to be an artist, she said to her sibling, so why not make a name for yourself? Seemed a bit radical we thought, but she offered to do all the legwork so that made it all a bit more palatable. Of course with connections like hers she knew to whom to speak. So we left her to it, and went back to our Shena Mackay books. And then before we knew it, some chancer with a gallery just south of Waterloo wanted to use the display in a new exhibition he was staging on Class War. Don’t ask me how she got involved with someone of his ilk, though I suspected he was one of those cats that would get a kick out of being in one of those Polaroids, if you know what I mean. Nevertheless his word was good, and before you could say Mark Gertler our boy was making waves within certain circles of the edgier artistic world.
Pretty soon our boy wonder’s masterpiece was being shown somewhere up west. The sister, bless her, had connections don’t you know, and she was having a whale of a time. The only thing was The Fair One was exceedingly reluctant to step into the limelight. He told us, as we were tucking in to a plate of ginger snaps, that he was incredibly uncomfortable at the liberal elite getting off on these shots of abused aristos. He thought there was something creepy about it all. I suspect that was why when it was displayed he went for the name Shot By Both Sides, which was a nice touch. On this one occasion, after all, we could hardly hand out our The Outside of Everything cards could we? There’s advertising, there’s cheek, and there’s stupidity.

The work of art eventually went for a small fortune, much to the delight of Soul Sister Number One who did a grand job of getting tongues wagging and bids rising. Much to her chagrin though The Fair One thought better of a life in the arts and retired from the party scene gracefully, handing over the bulk of the proceeds to a local nursery school threatened with closure. I’m not sure they ever saw the irony of a bottle of the best claret being presented at the reopening.