Green Grass Read online

  ‘It’s easy, Mum,’ Fred had told her patiently when the family were discussing it over supper. ‘You have to remember “spring forward and fall back”. I remember it because of leaves falling.’

  This installation has caused consternation among the officers of the Royal Parks Committee, and Laura had to ask the Arts Council to use their influence in making sure the necessary permissions were granted in time. With less than a month to go until the equinox, she finally summoned the courage to ring them yesterday.

  ‘Oh yes, Inigo Miller. I daresay we can persuade Royal Parks to relax restrictions for him – think of the publicity it will generate.’ Laura was secretly irritated that it should be so easy for Inigo. He is on a roll at the moment, and is hotly tipped to win the Artist of the Year award next month. This accolade takes the form of a large purple sash and a small cheque, and is only given very occasionally. The last time was seven years ago, when it was awarded to Glynn Flynn, the artist famous for growing grass seed and mould over everyday items.

  Inigo has been a favourite of not only the Arts Council, but more unusually, the public, ever since his signature Möbius strip was used as the central motif in the Regent Street Christmas lights two years ago. The lights that year were turned on by a beautiful, aging opera diva who, holding hands with Inigo, sang ‘White Christmas’ over microphones placed all the way up Regent Street. Inigo, who adores opera, and also soppy musicals, wept with the emotion of it all, and Laura had to bite her cheek very hard not to get overpowering giggles. Anyway, the exercise ensured that he became a household name, and the art establishment, fearful that he might defect to America, are still anxious to please him. Laura can afford to skive for a bit longer.

  A beam of sunlight dazzles through the windscreen, and instead of following the hill down through South End Green towards the studio and its array of possibilities for her day, Laura parks the car on a street of redbrick terraced houses, curved so they seem articulated like a child’s toy train, and walks between stout black bollards and on to Hampstead Heath. Another world. Here birds chirp as they flit from tree to shrub and the grass is vivid green and sparkling wet where the sun has transformed early morning frost crystals to winter dew. Laura closes her eyes and breathes in deeply. Increasingly and now without even trying to find an excuse, she is drawn to the Heath and the blast of outdoor life it offers. Today she strides towards the Men’s pond where even though it is February, the sound of jocose bathing is brash above the birdsong. She pauses when the pond comes into view, enjoying the spectacle of a young man with a soft white body, poised on the jetty, one toe in the shallows like a classical statue.

  ‘Come on in, Paul, you wimp,’ yells his heartier friend, crossing the water with a few flashy strokes of front crawl then emerging, streaked mud grey across pink red flesh. Watching from a distance great enough, she hopes, to escape classification as a filthy pervert, Laura cranes to hear the conversation, as the Greek statue and the hearty swimmer argue cheerfully.

  ‘I hate this,’ moans the statue.

  ‘It’s character building,’ urges the swimmer. ‘Come on, it’ll get rid of your hangover.’ He splashes back into the water, and a boxer dog who has been sniffing around the edge of the pond leaps in with him. They cavort noisily, sending silver spray feathering across the pond. The Greek statue teeters, his calves flexing to hold his balance, his back alabaster pale in the sunlight above incongruous glamour trunks decorated with pictures of Marilyn Monroe. Laura walks on, grinning broadly to herself, Inigo forgotten.

  A Labrador bounces towards her, beaming goodwill and enthusiasm, its breath a vapour cloud in the cold air. It is one of a trio she sees most days on the Heath, pursued by the day-dreaming figure of their fair and ethereal walker. Laura bends to pat the dog. Given that Inigo shows no sign of relenting on the subject of dog acquisition, she wonders whether she should take up professional dog walking. An outdoor career with canines is appealing, particularly today when the Heath is alive with image and incident. If Laura became a dog walker, her walks would have a purpose to them, instead of being no more than time borrowed from her working day. Her walks would in fact be her working day.

  Having always prized the cerebral above the physical, Laura is surprised to find such a strong instinct for fresh air within herself. She thinks of the teetering Greek statue, and the hearty swimmer playing with his dog in the ice-cold winter water, and finds herself longing to go back to the pond and push the statue into the water. The glamour trunks would be ruined, of course. A snort of laughter wells up and out, and Laura stops in her tracks, leaning on a tree to laugh. Wiping her eyes she begins to walk back across towards South End Green and her car, smiling and nodding when she passes the ethereal blonde, now throwing a pink ball to her three Labradors. Dog walkers are friendly, they appear to have untrammelled lives, and this attracts Laura. To find pleasure in the gloss on a dog’s coat, or to laugh as it rushes up to you with a stick to throw, are easy versions of happiness, and Laura responds gladly.

  Back in the car, with five messages listed on her mobile phone, and all of them from Inigo, she stops smiling and punches in the studio number. Sometimes Inigo’s search for truth and purity is too much like hard work.

  Chapter 3

  The promise of the morning has given way to spitting rain by the time Laura reaches Whitechapel, and clouds like bruises hang low across the street, vying with the watery February sun to create a vivid 1950s film-set light. Laura hums ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ and parks outside the tombstone shop, noticing as she does so that they have changed their window display to include an arresting slab of skewbald marble and next to it a small, pig-shaped stone bearing the words:

  With our deepest sympathies the grandchildren

  Wondering what, if any, phrase, might have sounded less incongruous with a pig-shaped headstone, Laura crosses the road to the building which houses the studio. The entrance is obscured by scaffolding and today by a large white van into which dusty-booted men are piling the contents of the studio above Inigo’s. Out comes a purple velvet sofa, a mannequin wearing nothing but a tutu, and a giant pink mule. Could any of the passers-by guess the nature of the business run from the studio by its office furnishing? Laura doubts it. None of the passers-by ever raise their heads from contemplation of the pavement, let alone look up high enough to see what is going on around them. As if to prove her point, two youths pass, both walking fast, one with his hands in his pockets, the other speaking into a mobile phone; both have their heads down and their eyes on the toes of their white trainers, blind to what lies ahead of them. Naturally, they walk straight into the purple velvet sofa.

  Laura shrugs herself into the warm shell of her coat, hugely enjoying the street tableau this morning. The youths hardly miss a stride; they bounce off the sofa and walk on, with not a flicker of a glance up, no apology, no communication, not even a small, complicit laugh. The second one’s phone rings as he passes Laura, so close that she can smell the musky waft of his aftershave mixed with tobacco. He answers it, and continues down the street beside his friend, both talking to people somewhere else, both unheeding of where they are, living internal lives.

  Laura’s own phone rings as she ascends the stairs. It is Inigo.

  ‘Where are you? We’ve got trouble with the press in New York.’

  ‘I’m on my way up the stairs.’

  ‘Good. I’ll see you in a minute.’

  Wishing away the sinking sensation in her stomach, Laura opens the door. She is in the studio in time to see Inigo utter these words and to hear him in stereo, although it is not easy to hear him at all as a lachrymose singer is wailing through a Bartok aria at full volume on the sound system.

  ‘Here I am,’ Laura mouths, hanging her coat behind the door and advancing towards him; he hardly pauses to greet her, but continues to pace up and down in the centre of the room. He is in a state, Laura notes apprehensively.

  Inigo has a single bicycle wheel in one hand, and he is playing with it as he wa
lks restlessly to and fro, bouncing the wheel down to the floor and up again, spinning it over and over so the spokes catch the light and glitter, blurring together to form a flat disc of liquid silver. Inigo collects the separate components of bicycles: wheels, saddles, frames, handle bars and gear mechanisms, and keeps them on permanent display leaning against the walls of his studio. Occasionally, in summertime, he picks out the necessary combination of these items and puts together a bike to ride between home and work, but a constant quest for perfectionism, spurred by the perusal of various bicycle magazines and websites, makes it difficult for him to stick with any single combination.

  Laura knows better than to think he is making a bike to ride home on today. A wheel has always been a comfort to Inigo. He has one from a mountain bike suspended on wire from the ceiling at the back of the studio, next to a window, and he can spend hours there, looking out of the window, spinning the wheel. A regression therapist once told him that in a past life he was a Flemish weaver sent to Norwich to make silk. While Inigo does not believe in reincarnation, something in him likes the idea of being haunted by ghost memories. However, today Flemish silk weaving is far from his mind, and the bicycle wheel is a tool through which he can express his frustration at the beeping answer machine and flashing computer.

  He turns on Laura, bouncing the tyre in front of him as he speaks. Laura can hear nothing; she shakes her head helplessly. Displeased, Inigo pounces on the remote control and zaps Bartok down a few decibels. He grinds his teeth audibly and continues, ‘I said, the gallery in New York left about ten messages last night, and now I can’t get back to them because it’s too early. D’you remember what time they open there?’

  ‘I think it’s eleven, which isn’t for hours here. What’s happened?’

  Inigo grips the tyre like a steering wheel and moves it round and round in his hands. ‘There’s been a leak to the press about my show and I’ve had three major US newspapers and a magazine call me to talk about it and I’m not ready. I can’t.’

  Inigo also has celebrity status in America, where his work is venerated for being both obscure and eye-catching. He was artist in residence at NYU, when he and Laura were first together, in New York, and his exhibitions in America are always given a great deal of attention. Inigo enjoys this success, but likes to keep a strong front to hide behind. The leaking of information on a show he has not yet hung makes him feel vulnerable and paranoid. Now that someone knows what he is doing, his confidence could ebb until he decides to pull the whole show.

  No one is more aware than Laura that while seeing is believing for Inigo’s audience, believing is seeing for Inigo. This is where the whole thing starts to sag for Laura. It’s the believing bit she’s beginning to have trouble with, but it’s her job to bolster him now, as it always has been. Laura and Inigo’s business partnership grew out of their relationship. Supporting Inigo in whatever direction he chooses to take can be wildly frustrating. Too often, as now with the Park thing, Laura is left wading through swamping bureaucracy while Inigo skims ahead, evolving new ideas which she must make into reality.

  The most extreme example of this was Inigo’s first creation on returning from New York nine years ago. Driving to visit his mother in the comfortable Manchester suburb where he was brought up, he was caught for some time in a traffic jam in Birmingham around Spaghetti Junction. The result of four hours’ contemplation of this concreted web of roads was daring and historic. Inigo suspended seven giant neon Möbius strips from the flyovers, embroiling Laura in more than five hundred hours of negotiations with insurance companies, crane contractors and the Highways and Byways department of the the local council. It won Inigo international renown and brought Laura a very depressing crop of grey hairs. These are dealt with on a monthly basis at a discreet salon on Haverstock Hill and, she supposes, will continue to be treated until she is too senile to care.

  Laura leans against the table, arms folded, trying to keep her voice level and reassuring, when really she wants to shout, ‘Of course you can do the show. You always do, and we always have this conversation first. And I’m sick of it.’

  Instead she says, ‘The new work is looking great, Inigo. Why don’t we talk it all through now and get something on paper to show them. Then they’ll leave you alone.’

  Inigo likes this notion. ‘Good,’ he says, bouncing the rim of the wheel on his palms. ‘And we’ve got time before they open, haven’t we?’

  ‘Plenty,’ soothes Laura, switching on her computer.

  Inigo fiddles with his wheel and paces until twelve, winding himself into hysterics and being no help to Laura at all.

  ‘I might forget what I’m doing, I might forget who I am. I think you should come too. Why don’t we cancel the show and go on holiday? Maybe I should go to New York today. Shall I go to the airport now? Or not?’

  ‘For God’s sake, calm down!’ Laura yells finally. ‘None of this is necessary, everything will be fine. You know that.’

  Inigo nods. ‘You’re right. God, I’m completely exhausted. I think I’ll go and buy lunch. I need to get out.’ Laura nods gratefully. She wants to print out the press release and have Inigo calm again more than she wants the dye for her peacock-blue knickers.

  CONCEPT GALLERY

  FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 10021

  Death Threat by Inigo Miller

  British artist Inigo Miller brings his latest work to New York next month with his extraordinary new show Death Threat.

  The central image in the show is that of a tiny pastry-cutter in the shape of Miller’s trademark the Möbius strip, beneath the shadow of a giant rolling pin. This is a simple installation with strong metaphorical qualities. Miller’s work, increasingly, is concerned with mortality, with identity, with sexuality. Here his penetrating focus encompasses man’s relationship to woman and throws a nod to the issue of domestic harmony in the professional workplace. With this powerful new work, Miller is distilling his thoughts to express the very essence of what it is to be contemporary man. As ever, he pushes the boundaries of expectation further out and he challenges fulfilment.

  The show will include small biscuits made by Miller with the pastry-cutter. They should not be eaten. THEY TRANSCEND FOOD.

  Born in 1960, Miller first discovered the Möbius strip when making paper chains with his grandfather. He was eight then, and it was not for another ten years that he met anyone who understood or even recognised the Möbius strip, originally conceived by the German August Ferdinand Möbius in 1876.

  Miller has been showing with the CONCEPT gallery since he was twenty-one, when his extraordinary degree show at Goldsmiths Art School in London was bought in its entirety by CONCEPT and shipped to New York where an eager public bought every piece within the first hour of opening night.

  Inigo Miller will be happy to answer any journalistic queries by email. You can reach him through his agent at [email protected].

  THIS INFORMATION CONCERNING INIGO MILLER’S NEW SHOW IS EMBARGOED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

  Most pleasing. Laura feels the press release has the necessary qualities of self-importance and absurd epic language to make it plausible to the Americans. The embargo, which Inigo suggested, is a brilliant idea, and a useful smokescreen, as so far nothing of Death Threat exists at all. She faxes a copy to agent Jack, sourly thinking that he should have been the one writing the press release. There is a mumbling beyond the door, and Laura opens it for Inigo, who enters backwards, balancing two Styrofoam cups of soup, a French loaf and a bunch of tulips in his hands, while dangling a paper bag of Turkish Delight from his teeth.

  ‘Mmm, that looks wonderful,’ says Laura.

  There wasn’t much today.’ Inigo puts down the Turkish Delight, rather crestfallen. ‘I thought I could get bagels, but they were closed. The only escape from wet sandwiches was this girl with a soup wagon on the street opposite. It’s Thai chicken. Is that OK for you?’

  This unusual humility and concern for Laura is Inigo’s way of saying thank you for her t
ime and energy spent soothing him this morning. Generally, he is too lost in artistic contemplation to buy lunch, and Laura does it, relishing half an hour out on her own.

  They arrange themselves at a small red table next to the window and sip their soup. The street below is shiny black from recent rain, the removals van has gone, and with it, all traces of the occupants of the upstairs studio.

  ‘Did you see the fancy dressmakers before they left?’ Laura asks Inigo. He nods, not looking up from the spiralling arrangement he is creating from tulip petals and dusty pink and amber squares of Turkish Delight.

  ‘I couldn’t believe it. They’re leaving to move to Somerset.’ From his tone of incredulity, Laura expected a destination a little more obscure, the moon perhaps, or Sao Paulo, but Somerset seems eminently sensible.

  ‘What’s wrong with Somerset?’

  Inigo places a last block of Turkish Delight like a full stop at the end of his spiral; the yellow stamens and black centres of the tulips are as delicate as glass beside the soft dense blocks of muted colour of the sweets. Laura would like to wear the arrangement as a necklace. It is classic Inigo, and she feels a rush of frustrated affection for his childlike restlessness, his need to keep on making things. Even if she could pick it up and put it on, it would lose much by being removed from the red Formica table. Inigo stares at his creation for a long, silent moment, then, his artistic eye sated, he pops a bit of Turkish Delight in his mouth.