Art Lovers Wanted

“I have something I would like to show you. A rare artefact of chilling importance and great mystery.”

“Oh. No. No, thank you. Thanks anyway.”

He had already pushed his chair out and was starting to back away, smiling in a thin but polite kind of way. “Are you sure?” I asked, reedy voice quavering with an unpleasant hint of whine. “I live less than five minutes away?”

            “Nice meeting you,” he said, in a way that implied it hadn’t been, and then he was gone. I threw a beer mat at the wall with very little force and made an unpleasant phlegmy noise in the back of my throat. Chris the barman was looking at me sympathetically, but I also knew that he thought I was insane. 

            “Bad luck on that one, mate. Next time, eh?”

            “I don’t need your pity, Christopher. That gets me nowhere.”

            “Another pint then?”

            “…Yes. A lager this time. But not too cold, or I’ll curse you.”

            “You’re the boss.”

            Perpetually unthreatened by my promises of eternal torment, he disappeared behind the taps and left me alone in my usual booth. My name is Percy Trevelyan Bankhead, Esquire. I am 123 years old, and I look like it. 

            I have stalked the halls of the same flat in London for the last 95 years now. Nestled away in a leafy side street in the vicinity of Regent’s Park, it has progressed in that timeframe from being a ‘modest’ dwelling to ‘princely’, by modern London standards. It is a bright, airy abode, spread across two floors with three bedrooms and high ceilings and furnished with a plethora of pricey pieces ranging from the tasteful to the gaudy to the downright objectionable. The library was as well-stocked as the liquor cabinet, and my neighbours never bothered me. I hated every wretched square foot of it. 

            It was, to my mind, a gilded cage – a spacious prison with excellent transport links and a wide variety of local amenities. I spent the majority of my time there only because the confines of my withered physical form offered little alternative. Many an evening at home was spent on the most stimulating activities I could muster, such as watching inaccurate documentaries on the lives of landed gentry that I had known personally decades previous, or trying to sit in my favourite armchair for long enough that I might will myself to physically sink into it forever and merge our atomic structure. The local tavern was my preferred haunt, but even with its handy proximity the walk there and back was such an ordeal that my visits had to be limited. The purposes of my pub trips were threefold: firstly, to drink, ideally until I am able to cause my own demise but that is, as I’ve sadly discovered, impossible. Secondly, to see walls that I didn’t both own and despise, and thirdly, crucially, to uphold my end of the bargain and find any participants willing to view my artwork. In 92 and a half years, I am still yet to succeed on that front. 

            It was in my thirtieth year that I had the misfortune to kick the wrong vagrant. This was not my first time vagrant-kicking, mind you: my wealthy peers and I would often pass the time by donning our shiniest, sturdiest steel-capped boots and venturing out in to the misty cobbled streets in search of urchins in need of a decent hiding. Conveniently, they were often found begging just outside of the gentleman’s clubs that we would frequent, dressed pitiably and offputtingly in tattered rags and hopeful smiles, and we would offer them a shiny sixpence in exchange for a five-toed salute to the body part of their choice. If they refused, we would usually choose to boot them anyway. It was a game the local constabulary were not keen to endorse, but they could be persuaded to turn a blind eye for financial renumeration.

            Strolling down the Strand in late July, pushing my way through the dregs of a sweaty post-theatre crowd with the dying embers of the sinking sun glinting off the tip of the silver-headed cane I had affected at the time, I came upon a creature rummaging through the refuse behind a favourite drinking establishment of mine. Though alone and thus not without the protective buffer of my usual coterie of men-about-town, I was buoyed by spirits (of both the high and consumable variety) to approach him with my standard offer. 

            This filthy wretch turned to me with a counter. He said to me, through layers of grime and weeks of ineffectual grooming, that he had misplaced a necklace of great value to him, and that he was certain it was out among the discarded ephemera in the fetid alleyway we had the misfortune to be stood in. I scoffed, and queried as to whether he was seriously suggesting that I help him look for it. He had a strange, quizzical look about this face, and a queer sort of smile, and joked that if I continued to wrinkle my nose in such a manner that it was apt to stay looking that way. I had half a mind to slap him about the face for his impertinence, but there was an element to his manner that I found intriguing, despite the protest of my nostrils. 

            Upon asking what he could possibly offer me in exchange for my assistance, the runt had the temerity to smirk, and suggested that he knew I would say that. Just as I began to stretch my leg in kicking readiness, the street rat explained his terms. He claimed to be from a long line of travelling artisans with very singular skills – skills that would be sure to intrigue a man of considerable means. Were I to help him find his cheap trinket, he would gladly paint my portrait, and that portrait, he suggested, would keep me at the tender age of thirty forever. I laughed in his ill-proportioned face and made a now-dated comment about the nature of his character but his eyes betrayed no element of deception or swindle. They were deep green, in a sparkling, emerald sort of way at odds with his visage, and one of the most trustworthy pairs I had seen before or since. Seeing an opportunity for some harmless entertainment, and safe in the knowledge that I had friends in the magistrate’s office who could simply throw the vagrant in jail were he to portray me badly, I agreed to his proposal. It took barely five minutes of poking at piles of rubbish with my cane before I snagged the dull, worthless-looking chain of his awful necklace, and we agreed that he would attend at my home a week from that day. 

            I had him brought in through the garden, and he was provided with a set of old shoes by my gardener for the duration. He was, true to his word, a master craftsman: the portrait captured me in a state of resplendent nobility, complete with an excellent recreation of the caddish arched eyebrow that I had made consistent part of my repertoire. I was about to congratulate the man on a job well done, and would probably have compensated him financially to some degree had I been allowed to continue, but the impudent fool cut me off to explain the ‘rules’ of the blasted thing. It transpired that his talk of the painting keeping me eternally youthful was rather more literal than the artistic meaning I had assumed he was going for. I met his revelation with scoffing incredulity that rapidly morphed into giddy glee: immortality! The possibilities for personal gain and wealth expansion were literally endless! I was about ready to dance into the street when the vagrant put his grubby hands on me and told with me great portent of the caveats in place for this bargain. 

            I had been chosen, he told me, because for the portrait to work it required the subject to live a life with a semblance of altruism and kindness, and that there was still time for me to change my ways. If I wanted to remain youthful and in good health, I was to have a new person each month, of their own volition and with no repeats, come to view the painting, and that was how it retained its power. I asked if I could trick someone into viewing it and he said that I appeared to be missing the point. I could not pay for the viewing, nor mislead the viewer as to my intentions: through living decently, and with empathy and charity, they would come to me. 

            I told him, calmly and rationally of course, that I had a very charitable heart and was a beloved staple of parties and galas, and his baseless accusations of miserly behaviour and poor character were laughable at best and slanderous at worst. When I removed my hands from about his neck so that he could offer a retort, he spat out that failure to follow these rules would result in an unnaturally never-ending life filled with all the aches, pains, fatigues and mobility issues that a natural existence would bring. I knew then that he was threatening me, and I gave him the kicking that he had been begging for from the moment I had met him. I sent him scrambling for the door on all fours, dragging himself across my carpet that was worth more than his entire sorry existence, and he left me with these words: “You’re even more of a lost cause than we thought! There’s no good in your reprehensible heart, Bankhead, and I’m certain that you won’t be able to entice a single soul up here! You are privilege and shit incarnate! A reprehensible, soulless leech!”

            I remember them exactly, because they tickled me so much that I had them embroidered on a throw pillow the very next day and displayed it in the living room. Even with it being on display, though, I quickly forgot the vagrant’s warning and suddenly that first month had stretched into four, and not one visitor had attended my home in accordance with his bizarre terms. I invited my so-called friends and compatriots up to view the work, but they always had an excuse – attending the opera, meeting the Swiss ambassador for dinner, receiving a knighthood, that sort of thing. I did not think I had cause for concern. After all, I had my whole life, and everybody else’s, ahead of me. 

            I first attempted to coerce a viewer up with payment around month eleven. I was starting to notice unsightly wrinkles blossoming in the corners of my eyes like spidery cracks in glass, and when I veered from mirror to painting I felt an involuntary burst of excitement. If the fortune told to me was accurate, I could reverse the course of aging, and with nothing but the wit, charm and bonhomie that came to me so naturally. 

            I thrust myself into the night in search of a willing and curious patron of the arts, starting in the nearest tavern. Through the course of the evening I was frustrated to find that no matter how many drinks I bought, for both others and myself, the main interest of the other attendees was just to keep drinking. After hours of no progress and completely pointless small talk I was convinced that there must have been a shortcut or loophole I could find to satisfy the bargain, and thus enquired about the services of a comely lady of the night that had been sat quietly in the corner plying her trade. I presented a handful of banknotes and asked if she would accompany me to my home, not making any mention of my true intentions. 

            “Perhaps you would care to take a drink in the library?” I asked her upon arrival, guiding her in that direction with a hand in the small of her back before she had chance to protest.

            “Oh. No, I’d rather we just got down to business if that’s ok, sir. Long night ahead of me,” she protested. “Did you want to do it in the library?”

            “No. Well, we could. That might be fun, actually. But are you sure you wouldn’t like to peruse it beforehand? Admire the copious shelving? Maybe the artworks on display? There is one very beautiful piece in there, nothing like it anywhere else in London.”

            She pondered this for a moment. “Is it funny?”

            “What?”

            “I don’t know too much about art. The comic strips in the paper, I like those though. They make me laugh. Is it something like that?”

            I was struck dumbfounded momentarily, but rallied and sought to seal the deal through the subtle art of misdirection:

            “Yes. Sure.”

            I led her into the library, where she was thoroughly unimpressed with my description of the portrait, though she did have some interesting and rather incisive opinions about the brushwork. It felt like poor form not to make the most of her previous offer, so we made the most of the library’s chaise-lounge before I sent her back out to the street. 

            Two booming knocks shook me from the listless doze of a brutal hangover and, having shuffled painfully to the door, I bent down on creaking knees and hunched over, back aching, to pick up the plain, unassuming envelope that had been dropped through my letterbox. The script was thankfully large enough to read through bleary, bloodshot eyes, and simply read “WE TOLD YOU THAT WOULDN’T WORK.”

            True to their missive, it didn’t. Nothing I had done since had worked, either.

            “Can I get you anything else?”

            I held up a hand to silence bartender Chris and took a sip, leaning my thin wrinkled neck down and lapping at the pint with my anaemic tongue, looking like a particularly grumpy sphynx cat.

            “Could be warmer. But that will suffice. On your way.”

            I glared at the group of permed youths clamouring over by the busted digital slot machine, shoving their youthful ribaldry and rambunctiousness in my sallow, sunken face. They didn’t appreciate their good health yet, their joints that moved smoothly and painlessly. They didn’t know how it felt to have every individual muscle in your body scream at you ceaselessly day after day, night after night. Some day they would go on their last long walk, or ride a bike for the last time, or get their last decent erection. They would watch their bodies fail them, slowly and inexorably, but they would at least have the common sense to die soon afterwards. I looked around the pub at the same sad-sack regulars and assorted lowlives and decided to try again tomorrow. It wasn’t like I had anything else in the diary. 

            The portrait remained, regal and untarnished, hung in the same place it had for almost a whole century. I barely recognised the man in it now. So happy, so handsome and full of joie de vivre. I attempted to spit on the floor to curse the evil vagrant who had warped that beloved, kind and ebullient figure into the gnarled beast I was today, but I couldn’t muster up any moisture and cursed him with a dry cough instead. There were times over the decades, of course, where doubt had set in and I had begun to wonder whether my slide into a more miserly disposition had any bearing on my predicament, but that was preposterous. I was faultless. The blame lay at the vagrant’s filthy feet, and he had a lot to answer for.

            I looked at the fireplace and mused, not for the first time, about how I could end it all. I didn’t have the disposition for suicide and had once resorted to paying a gentleman in financial trouble to shoot me in the head in 2004. The coward came down with a case of cold feet at the crucial moment and pulled his shots, striking me once in the left shoulder and once in the gut for good measure. The doctors told me that my survival was a miracle, but I knew otherwise. It was a tragedy. 

            I reached for a newspaper, and carefully rolled it up into a tube. The journey over to the fireplace was a slow one, but I was determined, and I approached my beautiful portrait with the end of the tube blazing. I couldn’t help but smirk as I held the burning paper to the corner of the canvass and watched it take light. I was going to win. The fire flashed quickly over the oil, eating up the paint and reaching my artistic doppelganger’s left arm, at which point I was surprised to find that my own left arm had also burst into flame. I dropped to the floor gasping, shattering one of the brittle bones in my foot even though I had landed on the heavy rug below. The robe I was wearing was already starting to sear to my skin. I curled my arm into my chest and rolled on the ground feebly until the flames receded, then died. Whimpering, I inspected my sleeve – mostly black now with spots of charred white, and hanging in tatters. Reparable. The fire, which had now spread to the wall below the painting, was more concerning. I bet the vagrant had planned for this too.