45.

□ We walked from the side door of the house into a gloriously cold and bright Aberdeen day. Up on Rubislaw Den, where Mr Sharma’s massive house was, the stillness was as unreal as any of my dreams. At the side of the house, and amid the comic opulence of the bins, was an estate car that seemed huge next to the three of us. Paul Raytheon produced the keys and we all climbed in. The three of us drove away from Paul Raytheon’s house towards Deeside.

The back seat of Paul Raytheon’s car was filled with books. Paul Raytheon instructed that I do my best with them and I shovelled some on to the floor — but the books lay deep. Finally, I sat on top of the books and made myself comfortable, like a cat, shifting about until a nest had been made.

We drove along the North Deeside Road and past the Myrtle Gallery, and I stared out of the back window of the car, eyes open in a mad plea for light. When we cut back towards the town, we drove through a wide-open waste of grey-belt housing, and then we were free and in the country — enough to make me feel like I was leaving forever.

“Why do artists hurt?” asked Paul Raytheon. “All that pain, man. You can see it in so much of what they make.”

“I don’t know,” I said.

Liska had felt a lot of pain in her life, but her pictures didn’t show it.

“Crudely stated,” said Flo, “a higher class of people than artists — generally and historically, their patrons — cling to all the money for aesthetic or political reasons. Respect is only feigned for human equality and respect for artists is non-existent. That’s grounds for pain.”

“Why did you become an artist, Guy?” asked Paul.

“I didn’t become one,” I said. “I was made that way, so that’s why I never got a job.”

“Either way,” said Flo, “you become a slave of something. In the case of an artist, a system of patronage which means you still have to please the people with the purse-strings.”

cf. Ken Currie : Young Glasgow Communists (1986) Oil on canvas — the very last year, coincidentally, that Communism was ever mentioned.

I dug my feet around the back of the car, unsure of what to do about the books. Paul Raytheon had thrown his bags on top of this, making the books shift and slide.

“I picked them up from a house sale,” he said. He shoved with his hand because some books had spilled into the front and were obstructing his use of the gears. “A house clearance,” he said. “Somebody’s entire collection. He died and his dog found him. Daschund. The Penguin Classics. Every single stomach-churning one of them. People build houses from this shit. They annex themselves to paperbacks as a surrogate spirituality.”

“You go to a lot of house clearances?” I said.

“Yes I do,” was the answer.

Despite all being paperbacks, there could have been nothing more uncomfortable for me to sit on than those books.

“These texts are a nightmare,” I said trying to push a space in them.

“Artists feel the need to make a living,” said Paul Raytheon, catching me in his rear view mirror. “It’s not their fault that they’re obliged to turn economic. You do what you can and if you can’t sell your pictures you need another source of income.”

“Have you sold any pictures?” I asked him and he stiffened.

“Way in the past,” said Paul Raytheon. “I did sell pictures once. But not for a year now, and never again. I sell books and I enjoy it.”

Flo agreed. “Our artwork is not for sale,” she said. “It’s not even to be seen. Sometimes we just conceive it, and don’t even make it.”

I was impressed. Liska’s rules had been interpreted into the amusing rascality of not painting at all. Ironically, Liska’s message appealed most of all to those who wanted to be artists but weren’t sure if that involved them doing anything constructive. It was clear that in our era of hefty price tags, celebrity patronage and art being defined afresh each month, Liska had been on to something.

The car pulled off a roundabout and joined a row of vehicles forming a sociable line that led west towards a constantly changing horizon. I caught the side of Paul Raytheon’s face, the trim beard, the expression conceited. The car banged over a dead pheasant on the road and I elbowed more books to the floor.

We drove further into Aberdeenshire and I prepared for the attack. I wondered how I would feel when I saw Liska’s pictures.

Most likely, jealous, I thought.

How would I cope with a photograph of Liska’s goldy-locks?

Liska moved from a breech in the rock and droplets floated in the black. Weeds sighed and the sand ran with crabs. I thought: Why didn’t I jump with you when I had the chance?