Chapter 3 Ed #2
"I was eighteen, okay? And I thought I was being exceptionally clever."
I can't help but laugh. "It's not unclever."
"It had one bidder."
"Your mum?" I say through a grin.
She offers a wry smile back. "At the end of the night, after she handed over the cash, she gave the painting back to me so I could 'sell it and make some money', she said.
I raised twenty pounds pity cash and my mother couldn't even hold up her end of the maternal bargain and pretend to like something her child made.
The bloody thing's gathering dust in the attic. "
"Well, at least you're consistent in your artistic vision. Aggressive and provocative."
After a pause, Bess says, "Lutek's scared of my art. He says I have a very angry vagina."
I can't help myself. "You know there are creams for that?"
She frowns and flicks her eyes to my face, which I'm sure is radiating the self-satisfied smugness of all jokesters who think they've delivered a tiny bit of genius with their wit. Because that is exactly what I've done.
Bess breaks after two seconds of trying to stare me down. She always breaks with me. My job in the relationship is to hold her actions and words to account, because she needs the ballast, and to make her laugh.
Making her laugh produces more serotonin than an hour's cardio with a chocolate bar chaser.
I say, "You sold that painting last year. That one with the flower that almost didn't look like a giant vulva. That's not nothing."
"Oh yeah. I did, didn't I?"
While the painting was of a flower, given it was pink and given her history of creating feminist art, it was somewhat confusing to most people. She insists it genuinely wasn't meant to be symbolic. I believe her. It was...is a beautiful painting.
"Okay, in my entire artistic career, I've made four hundred pounds."
"Five thousand, four hundred pounds. If today's video does actually constitute art."
"It's creative. Ergo it counts."
I take another sip and say through the crunch of an ice cube, "You know what it makes you now, though?"
She says, "An influencer," at the same time I do, but her tone is more reverent and mine is more like what someone would use after they've been spoon fed a teaspoon of earwax, because influencing is about hustling people out of money they don't have through narcissistic-driven propaganda.
"Look," she says. "My job has always been to facilitate the purchase of other people's art. This is no different."
"Apart from the fact you actually believe in the artwork of your peers.”
“I believe in the books. Mostly.” A breeze threatens to unseat the packet of crisps and Bess anchors it with the binoculars.
“I hope you made sure there were no identifying features in the video?"
"Yes. All Port Derrum signage has been blurred out, don't worry."
"Good. I wouldn't want a ring from my manager about any unofficial library promotional material. Councils can be a bit touchy about that."
"I might be willing to post my deepest and darkest thoughts about romance to the social media masses, but I do have standards about protecting you." She offers me a lopsided smile. “I wouldn’t want you to get into trouble for allowing me to film in the library.”
Allow her. Bess doesn’t ask for permission to do, well, most things – this particular thing being no exception.
“So, are you going to change the name of your TikTok channel now that you’re actually promoting romance?”
“No. My viewers know I believe in fictional romance, and that the channel name relates to romance in the real world.”
She’s being contrary. Stubborn. And absolutely, typically Bess.
“But do they? You have a whole lot of new followers now.” Bess’ TikTok channel, ‘Romance is Dead’, is dedicated to calling out the lack of romantic behaviour in males of her – our – generation.
Up until her return flight from Scotland, she's been largely ignored.
And when I say largely, I mean spectacularly. As in one long digital flatline.
Now she’s an accidental BookTok sensation, her messaging might be received as a little mixed.
“I’ll…just have to make sure they do.”
Before I can gather any kind of smug response about her last sentence being an indication of her knowing I’m right, she says, "The Odour honoured us with his presence today."
Ah. This is probably why I have been called to a G'n'T debrief, despite the high chance of me taking her to task, or as much to task as I ever can, over her wielding a pump action water pistol in my library.
I have mentioned to Bess that turning your co-owner's first name into a mockery of the way he smells, aftershave or no, is not a respectful or healthy way to approach a business relationship. But I have also met the man. So I only mentioned it the once. "Oh?"
"I'm surprised you didn't hear the slap of flesh on pavement from all the swooning in his wake." Bess rolls her lovely eyes.
"And what grievous offence did he commit today?"
"He called my painting of Rapunzel kissing Sleeping Beauty 'Disney-princess lesbian-fantasy' art."
I snort. "Are you really surprised?"
"No. And you know what? If he'd meant 'sexual fantasy for lesbians', I wouldn't have a problem with that. But that is not what he meant."
I am tempted, for the nth time, to ask Bess why on earth she went into partnership with him, but I already know the answer.
When she wanted to offer local artists more security and a reason to stay in Port Derrum, she didn't have the capital to buy the building she wanted to set her business up in.
Mr Pinkerton was interested when no one else was.
He was young and privileged with money to play with.
And despite some objections to his personality, what clinched the deal was him agreeing to a nominal profit margin.
Low rent for the gallery and café business, as well as the flats above.
Theodore Pinkerton's willingness to make an investment without getting much in the way of a return has allowed the Port Derrum creative community to thrive when it might otherwise have died.
It's very difficult not to respect him for that – regardless of objections to the inflated way he presents himself – and to admire Bess for making it happen because of the love she has for her artistic fraternity.
There is one question I've never asked, though. "How do you even meet someone like that? A gentrified person who's happy to throw money at you?"
Bess sighs. "He's a second cousin twice removed, or something, of a university friend of mine – Olympia Fulton. She hooked us up."
"Is she also from the realms of stratospheric wealth?"
"As nobby as they come. But where he's a total arse, she puts the 'fab' in 'I'd die for her'. How they're related, I don't know."
"They don't sound very related." I study Bess' profile.
I don't need to study it. I know it intimately after a year of observation, but I find it increasingly difficult not to look at her whenever I'm around her.
She has a little mole in the hollow of her cheek.
I fight the urge to run my finger underneath her cheekbone, feel the tiny soft swell of that mole. "Why didn't you ask her for the money?"
Bess raises a pointer finger and gives it a single shake.
"Never buy property with your friends. Quickest way to become unfriends.
" Then she sits up straight and leans towards me with her eyes narrowed.
"You know what he did today? He tried to get me to sell some painting done by, and I quote, a 'wife in waiting' of an investment banker – or some shit – he's trying to impress or buy favour with.
Why he has to is beyond me. He has everything already.
All of it." She sweeps an arm in the direction of "everything" and slumps back into the sun lounger. "God!"
"Would you like me to offer an adroit comment about the assumptive behaviours of the entitled? Or...cluck in sympathy? Hug?" I proffer the last option with maximum irony and absolutely no delusions of hope. Bess is not a toucher, least of all a hugger.
"No. I'm done now."
I'm not. It's very difficult not to be cynical about extreme white privilege when you come from a brown working-class family. "Bess?"
"Yes, Ed?"
"You're not worried he's a liability?"
She side-eyes me with an amused twist to her lips. "Theo? He might be a complete and utter twonk, but he's totally harmless and I have a lot to be grateful to him for. I just wish he wasn't a complete and utter twonk, so I don't have to be begrudging about my gratitude."
Two sparrows, a male and female land on the table and eye the packet of crisps.
Keeping her eyes on them, Bess pulls out her phone and swipes the screen. In the big wide world of social media exposure the plane video has thrown open for her, I'm guessing no opportunity can be wasted.
While the male turns his head from side to side, weighing up his chances of stealing some food, she pulls a hanky out of her pocket, dips it in her drink, then, unfathomably, wipes away her eye makeup with the confidence of someone with an extremely steady hand – all while keeping her camera trained on the birds.
The sparrow hops forward and retrieves a crumb, then hops back to his companion and feeds it to her.
Bess swivels her phone around to face her.
"Hi romance lovers. As you all know, I live for fictional romance in books because in real life, romance is a dying art.
Or it is in the human realm at least. In the animal kingdom, males have to make all the effort to get the attention of the females.
Think of a peacock, or fireflies with their flashing lights.
Even male pufferfish make an effort to attract a mate, building circular sand sculptures to protect future eggs. Best circle wins the girl.
"What do human males do? Nothing. Worse than nothing. They think complimenting their little moustaches with a scraggly mullet makes women swoon. All it does is make them look like paedophiles that have been teleported in from the 1980s."