Turton Pym scrubs the russet paint from his fingertips under the tap, watching it vortex pinkly in the concrete trough. He sighs. Shit. He had been rather proud of this wan russet, having mixed it himself from two parts lactescent oil and one part geranium and a shallow finger-dip of Indian ink. It was the exact hue of our drunken prime minister’s face as captured by New Idea at Carols by Candlelight, and with it he had begun to paint the man. It was to be his entry in the Archibald Prize. But the russet jowls of the PM’s face reminded Turton of the showgirl’s inflamed buttock that he’d had the pleasure of spanking at the Far Arts Ball a month ago. Whereupon the face of Turton’s prime minister quickly and inevitably transmogrified into the bare buttock of the showgirl, and then her other bare buttock, and with just a dash of plum to deepen its importance, her labia. By the time his palette had run dry he had an upended ballerina and an erection and was cursing his lack of artistic focus. Jesus wept. If it wasn’t one appetite intervening between him and his art, it was another.

An artist needs to reach a certain dreamlike state in which to paint well. And it is in this dreamlike state that Turton is most vulnerable to his appetites; it is then that they take control of him and hijack his prime ministers. This is the seventh prime minister in a month that has broken from its carapace of drunkenness and lechery and become a showgirl’s parts. Another metamorphosised into the rampant tool of a goat, which shook Turton so much he splashed it with turpentine, slashed it to nothingness and, slumping into an armchair and wondering what it really said about an artist that his prime ministers were turning into goats’ tools, burst into tears.

God, shit, if bloody Whiteley painted, say, a regatta, it stayed a regatta. All Kevlar spars and sun on the hundred smiles of the waves and the curve of the world. As soon as a sunburnt sailor was attempted, it didn’t become excited womanly privates. Whiteley hadn’t lost all discipline and his mind didn’t slip sideways under the leverage of his appetites. Turton takes hold of his head by his sideboards and shakes it. ‘Jesus wept.’

Harry finds him in the washroom, shaking his head as if it were a stopped clock, and says to him, ‘Easy, Turton, easy. What’s wrong?’ Harry knows enough about artists to realise they are serial melodramatics whose collapses are staged within the proximity of a peer, so that he or she may bear witness and race to the rescue and praise their work beyond all truth. So upon seeing Turton in this state of distress he feels a thrill of pride that his tutor thinks enough of him to have staged this collapse for him.

Turton stares down at the russet paint in the basin. ‘I’ve lost control of my work,’ he admits softly.

‘But … “Let your painting become.” You’re always saying it.’

‘Yes. But vulva? Buttocks? Breasts? That’s all it becomes. I’m trying to paint our prime minister and I end up with vaginas.’ Turton’s breath is tight and his voice panicky.

‘Metaphor,’ Harry suggests.

‘The Archibald doesn’t accept metaphor.’

Turton begins to cry and Harry sits beside him and puts an arm around him and rolls and lights a joint, holding it for him to drag. He is pleased to find his tutor so distressed because he has a favour to ask and he figures if he comforts Turton through this episode, it is unlikely to be refused.

Hope is a hard habit to break and Turton, at fifty-eight, is going through the final throes of addiction to it. Harry settles his fears by telling him that mutinous creativity from within is what they are all striving for; ideas and moods that can’t be contained or controlled bursting from below deck with daggers in their teeth and their hackles risen, and it sounds to Harry as if he, Turton, has finally found mutinous creativity from within. He congratulates him. And if a dinky little prescription comp like the Archibald can’t accommodate mutinous creativity, then fuck them. Privately, Harry thinks that any man this old painting this much pussy can’t be getting enough and needs to buy himself a woman once in a while.

After they have sat and smoked a while and Harry judges that Turton is somewhat reassured but still comparatively weak, he feels it’s the perfect moment to ask his favour, and rushes it at him in such a torrent of information that it can hardly be identified as a question, or protested against.

‘Turton, a small favour to ask, on account of I let the cat out of the bag re our secret excursions into the gallery to this woman I’m seeing, even though she’s way too old for me – she’s beautiful, you want me to tell you how beautiful? One guy she dumped threw himself to bears in the Paris zoo but it was winter and they were all asleep and so he dusted himself off and threw himself to the lions instead. Killed. In the news papers. Sort of woman we’re talking about. Bears then lions. No joke. And anyway she’s a great, great lover of art. You know my exhibition? All sold out? It was her. She bought them all. Must have buckets of cash. And she wants to come along one night and visit the Weeping Woman with us.’

‘Bears then lions?’ Turton releases his sideboards and pouts in contemplation of this woman’s beauty, until his face clouds with scepticism. ‘Maybe the bears and lions say more about the victim’s romantic nature than about her beauty. Men have thrown themselves to lions for pigs.’

‘No. When you see her you’ll know. I’d do it myself.’

‘When I see her I will be similarly affected? Is this your idea? This woman’s beauty will be a passport into the gallery, even though my career might be ended, my reputation rogered in the tabloids and me carted off to chokey.’

Turton’s face hardens and he takes hold of his shirt collar, sucking air with which to deliver judgement. ‘I may be an old fool bewitched by vulva, Harry. But I haven’t sunk so low as to throw myself to lions for some flibbertigibbet who bought your paintings.’

‘Turton …’

‘No, Harry. You’ve breached a trust, telling her of our excursions. You’ve jeopardised my tenure. I won’t jeopardise it further by allowing her to come along.’