The Late Hector Kipling by David Thewlis Read Free Book Online Page B

here, and your right hand here. Now press them all down together at the same time,’ and she takes my fingers in hers and settles each on its respective key. She squeezes my wrist and gives me the rhythm. ‘That’s called E flat diminished,’ she says, ‘and your left hand is playing two E flats an octave apart. Now just look at the screen and keep pressing them down. I’ll do the pedals.’
    I do as I’m told. There’s a woman on the TV making a cup of tea. She pulls out the teabag, spoons in the sugar, pours in the milk and then, for no apparent reason, hurls the whole lot across the room. It cuts to a shot of the tea snaking across the linoleum, disappearing beneath thefridge. Eleni rearranges my fingers and sets me off again. Brittle diminisheds repeat over and over as the woman pulls onto her head a yellow polythene bag with ‘C’est Ça!’ written on it. Then F diminished over and over again, and then I’m moved to a C ninth and we can see the shape of the woman’s face through the polythene. ‘And now F,’ says Eleni, shifting me out of the way and doing it herself.
    ‘What’s this film about?’ I say.
    ‘It’s about a man and a woman,’ says Eleni, playing off key now and again, a bit like Les Dawson, but a lot more chilling than Les. ‘One night at the start of the film they run over a cat and kill it. The man has been drinking and his response to the death of the cat is so . . . musketeer . . .’
    ‘Musketeer?’
    ‘What is that word you told me that means carefree, like a soldier?’
    ‘Cavalier,’ I say. I love Eleni.
    ‘Yes, the man is so cavalier that the woman punches him in the face with the cat. They separate after that night and the rest of the film is about how they both cope with the separation. He drinks more than ever and sleeps on prostitutes and she is trying to learn French from a tape because she has become totally obsessed with a waiter who can only say, “Here is your bill. Service is not included.” She also tries to kill herself a lot – as we see,’ says Eleni, as the woman cuts into the bag with a pair of scissors. ‘It’s called Dead Space. It’s a comedy.’

    Later that day it’s time for Eleni to indulge me a little by helping me to manoeuvre my life’s work from the flat down into the street. I’m struggling with the winch. I’m stripped to the waist, sweat pouring off my chest, lowering a painting down into the street. Eleni’s standing by the truck with her arms aloft, waiting to receive my painting of a big green face dangling in mid-air, big as a cathedral door, swaddled in bubble wrap, the big ugly face peeping through. Big ugly eyes staring out towards the canal, swaying in the breeze. It must seem quite aspectacle to that old dear who’s stopped in her tracks to take it all in. Shopping by her side. Little dog sniffing at a lolly wrapper. Perhaps she’s noticed that it’s me hanging out there. Perhaps she’s registered the big green ugly face and then looked up at me, and seen that it’s my face. And I don’t know why but it makes me feel very proud in a way, even if it’s proud only in front of this crooked little pensioner down in the street. It’s a quiet street and hardly anyone ever comes along. She’s just stood there, looking up. In awe. I think I can say in awe. Either that or she’s simple and she doesn’t know where she is.
    ‘Two more feet,’ yells Eleni, ‘two more feet and I got it.’
    I’ve agreed with Myers, who runs the Doodlebug Gallery in Bethnal Green, that I’ll take care of the transport and we’ve hired a little truck. I’m not even sure that it’s going to fit, but Eleni says that even if it hangs over the edges, as long as it’s covered and well secured then everything will be good. That’s how she says it: ‘Everything will be good,’ her thick Cretan accent making it all sound easy as pie.
    I begin to shake with the effort and the winch groans. Looking down I can see that Eleni has just about