Chapter 10 One Fine Day
ONE FINE DAY
MICK
I didn’t belong here. That’d been obvious when I emerged from the tube station and onto streets the size of Aintree Racecourse.
Houses bigger and significantly cleaner than The Cherry Tree loomed behind tall privet hedges.
The closer I got to the gallery, the posher the houses got and the worse I felt.
Everywhere I looked was another sign that I shouldn’t be here. Prim and proper nannies pushing prams or holding the hands of their immaculately dressed charges. Park benches with iron work prettier than my mum’s jewellery and without a lick of graffiti. A distinct lack of dog shit.
The gallery itself was a huge and imposing building flanked with large white columns that wouldn’t look out of place on the set of Jason and the Argonauts.
I tried to stop myself from fidgeting as I looked around for Michael.
I spotted him at the top of the wide stone steps at the front of The Tate.
He waved and smiled, and all of a sudden I felt a little more at ease.
Michael didn’t really belong here either.
He spoke a bit posher than me–that wasn’t exactly difficult–but he wasn’t posh like Eric.
(Eric would fit right in around here; he’d know how to stand and who to nod politely to.)
Michael was just a camp hairdresser, but he acted like he belonged wherever he went.
He was never out of place. It was his confidence, or maybe he just didn’t give a fuck about anybody else’s opinions.
Whatever it was, seeing him made me breathe a little easier.
He wore a very smart grey pinstripe suit and shiny black shoes.
He didn’t look anything like the toffs that lived round here, but he didn’t seem to care.
His plain white shirt and simple blue tie in place of his usual cravat was his way of toning it down. I’d had the same thought and wore a plain brown suit and white shirt. Granted, our suits were a lot tighter than most of the old geezers walking around here, but at a glance, we looked respectable.
“Hello,” he said as I met him at the top of the stairs. He stepped forwards and I thought he was going to hug me like he would at Le Duce, but he thrust out his hand instead. I shook it and pasted on a smile. Shaking hands felt like an odd greeting after what we’d done together.
“You found it alright?” he asked as we shook hands.
I looked at my watch. “Yep, and with time to spare. Fancy round here, ain’t it?”
“Very. This is where the hoi polloi live, but they let poor ordinary folk like us in to have a look at their antiques and artworks. Very benevolent of them, isn’t it?”
“Oh yeah, very kind. I hear they even let some of us into their fancy universities and such.” I grinned.
“Goodness, ordinary men will think they can run the country soon!”
A loud laugh bubbles up from my throat. We’d have to travel a long way from this street before we found someone who was glad Harold Wilson was Prime Minister. He wasn’t quite working class, but he was a lot closer to it than the public school twats that filled the Conservative Party.
“Right, my dear, time for you to become cultured.” He put on a snooty voice.
I snorted. “It’ll take a lot more than one visit to an art gallery to make that happen, but we might as well try.”
We fell into step, side-by-side, and I had the urge to hold his hand. Digging my nails into my palms, I told myself off in my head. Getting arrested was not on the timetable today.
“Let’s get on with it. The sooner I’ve looked at some boring pictures by some dead blokes, the sooner I can get back to my London.”
“That’s the spirit!” Michael winked and elbowed me in the ribs, making me chuckle.
The inside of the building took my breath away.
Vaulted ceilings supported by more ancient looking columns made the place feel a bit intimidating.
Michael led us through the entrance like he knew where he was going.
I expected to be stopped, asked to pay for a ticket–or worse, be thrown out–but nobody batted an eye as we wandered in.
Following Michael, I entered an enormous room with ceilings three storeys high decorated with magnificent plasterwork. Paintings of all sizes, in extravagant gold frames, hung magnificently on the deep green walls.
It was overwhelming, and I didn’t know where to look, so I let Michael lead the way.
He took us to the first painting, looked at it for a few minutes, then turned to me.
Did he expect me to say something about the picture?
It was a ship. It was big. I could tell it was a ship, so that meant it was good, right?
Fucking hell, I couldn’t say that. So I just smiled and nodded.
Well done, Mick, very clever. We walked a few feet to another painting.
It was big as well. And it was another bloody ship.
This time Michael spoke. He whispered about the use of colour and light and the brushstrokes.
I didn't have a bloody clue what he was talking about, but he was so clever and passionate I could have listened to him talk about art for hours.
At each new painting, I tried to think of something to say, but this old saying kept bouncing around my head. Tommy had said it once, and it was all I could think of.
“Better to be quiet and thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.”
Michael might have thought I was a bit uneducated because I wasn’t commenting on the artworks, but if I tried to say something about them, he would know for a fact that I was as thick as pig shit.
The paintings were beautiful, even I knew that.
We walked out of the first room into another one just like it.
And then another. And another. The huge paintings of the countryside, or scenes from the Bible, or naked women started blending into each other.
I loved listening to Michael but after a while shame overtook the pleasure and I just wanted to get out of there.
Michael was in his element though, and I wasn’t going to be the twat who spoiled his day.
In the next room, the paintings seemed a bit different.
Colourful, striking paintings of beautiful people, but there was more meaning to them, more emotion.
I found them more interesting than the earlier ones.
As we left that gallery, instead of following the crowd into the next one, Michael guided me up some stairs and into a little tea room.
“Shall we sit for a minute and have a cup of tea?”
“Yes, that sounds bloody perfect.” My feet were killing me, and my stupidity needed a rest.
“Go and sit down and I’ll order.” He pointed at an empty table in the far corner. There were quite a few little tables with flowery tablecloths, but most of them were occupied by old ladies. Every table had two, three, or four posh old biddies around it.
Michael came and sat down, and a few minutes later, a girl in an apron brought over a fancy looking tea set.
“Shall I be Mother?” Michael said, picking up the tea pot.
“If you like.” I nodded.
He picked up the teapot in one hand and then held the lid on with the other.
I took a minute to admire his elegant hands and tried to ignore the memories of them on my body.
They were long and slim, like the rest of him.
It probably helped with his job. I imagined him at work, using those delicate fingers to craft perfect haircuts for all the girls that came into the shop.
I wondered if he ever cut blokes’ hair. The image of the trendy girl sitting in front of him changed to a handsome fella. In my mind, Michael chatted and flirted, running his hands through the man’s hair and smiling at him in the mirror.
Then it wasn’t just any old fella in the chair in front of him; it was me. I could almost feel his hands on me, ruffling through my hair, massaging my scalp. A tremble ran down my spine.
“Are you alright?” Michael’s concerned words brought me back to reality.
“What?”
“You had your eyes closed and you shivered.”
Bloody observant Michael notices everything.
“Yeah, I’m fine. A bit cold.”
“It’s warm in here, though. Are you ill?” He reached across the table and put his hand on my forehead. His warm skin felt wonderful, and I had to brace myself to stop from shuddering again.
“Get off!” I shoved his hand away so he didn’t notice my reaction to his touch, but regretted it when he winced. The look of hurt in his eyes made guilt pour through me.
“Sorry,” I mumbled. “I just don’t think we should touch, people might get the wrong idea,” I whispered.
He glanced around at the white and grey haired women that surrounded us. “I don’t think these ladies even know that men like us exist.”
He poured the tea into the cups before the milk–my mam would be very impressed because that’s the proper way to do that. He remembered how I took my tea, no sugar and a splash of milk which made me feel warm inside before I even drank it.
“What do you think so far?”
He wanted to talk about the art. Of course he did, but I’d been dreading this. I had no bloody idea what to say.
“I liked the last couple of rooms. The people looked more like people, you know?”
Well done, Mick, very clever assessment.
“I do. Those paintings were by the Pre-Raphaelites, and realism was part of their whole ethos. They still painted religious art, or depictions of history and classic literature, but they did it in a way that made it look real. So much so that some people found their work blasphemous.”
“Really?” I couldn’t imagine anything so beautiful being blasphemous.
“Do you remember the picture in the last room, the one that showed Jesus as a small ginger kid?”
“That was Jesus?”
Michael smiled. “Yes, it was supposed to show him as a child, with a loving Mother Mary tending to him while Joseph works on his carpentry.”
“Alright, I understand why people thought it was blasphemous. My mother would be hysterical over it I’m sure.”