Travelling out to Ilford. Don’t want to drive too far out of the city on a Friday. The crew barely ever make it home before eleven o’clock at night. Usually tired and hyped up all at the very same time. They don’t all make money. Some, bless them, do their very best but they couldn't give away the Mona Lisa. A ‘Gioconda’ smile that carries no weight … Dominic and Tunisian Phillipe have disappeared. This time it seems for good. They didn’t vanish on prop again, just never showed up at the Hollywood Road office this week. Maybe all the accidents, deaths and near misses scared them off. More likely, Dominic’s unerring belief that she would sell well and succeed must have been severely shaken, after blanking for five successive nights in a row. Losing valuable face in young Phillipe’s eyes. Older women can become anxious with a younger lover if their facial creams wear off. Their charms begin to fade and their sexual power wanes … Sales hopefuls come and go like the tides. Today the crew is made up of Eric, Carole Bishop, Tom, and a new recruit Sandy, a young Australian girl all the way from Melbourne. She settles in immediately. Offers to roll a spliff and we haven't even gone past Pimlico on the Embankment yet …
It rains heavily. May showers from out of nowhere. Too wet, for the moment, to put the crew members out to check the residential streets of Ilford. Nothing for it. Settling for the first cafe we can find. Not everywhere we eat and drink is necessarily somewhere Scott would select out of choice. Sometimes you just have to make do with what you can find. Sandy is quite attractive with a bubbly personality and never stops talking in that lightish, Melbourne accent. She’s funny, so she’s making the rest of the crew really laugh. Carole Bishop has already taken a shine to her. It seems like she is attracted to Sandy. Only the other morning, Scott went to pick up Carole Bishop at Elgin Avenue and found her and earth mother Martha in bed together. He made them both a cup of tea and discussed washed-out Linda. It appears that good-hearted Martha gave her many chances in the Soul Kitchen. But afraid to say, washed-out Linda just wasn’t up to the task. She wouldn’t or couldn’t concentrate. Would accidentally spill tea over folks. Not wash the dishes up properly. She would go missing at vital moments; then if an attractive guy on his own came into the Soul Kitchen, she would immediately serve him his order and then go and sit with him. Attempt to make friends. Rub shoulders, come on strong. Just the way she did with Scott really. It’s sad. Scott has a soft spot for her. It can’t be easy being sexually abused as a child. You might well spend the whole of your life trying to overcome it. Attempt to blank it out, but distressing moments have a habit of resurfacing in clever disguises in dreams. Teasing out the memories of bitter experiences you want to forget. The world is full of unhappy scarred children walking around as adults. It’s a frightening thought. Still, Scott laughed with Martha and Carole Bishop and they kissed as he sat on their bed. Sort of declaring themselves to him. Which is great! Heh, whatever turns people on. All that Scott knows is that Carole Bishop looks five years younger. Has started to smile and laugh again and is selling well …
Egg and chips with peas. Lumpy white bread and butter. Tea that tastes stewed. Only Sandy’s latest funny story makes it palatable. She seems to have a fund of them … Eventually the heavy showers stop and the sun bursts out in a clear blue sky. Like a different day is suddenly being presented to you … A very good moment to get out of this horrible little greasy spoon cafe, where the owners and the local regulars clearly don’t like the look of Scott and the crew. Long-haired freaks and hippie girls aren’t to their taste. Gales of uproarious laughter are not their cup of tea. Scott’s reminded of the title of a play by Arnold Wesker, Chips with Everything ... Setting the crew out on the streets after a brief check of the prop. Too close into the city of Ilford to find any real new, semi-detached houses. Just put them out on the best streets you can find. Tell them they may have to knock on more doors than usual. Don’t give up if fifty doors don’t let you in. It could always be the next one. So much of sales is a numbers game …
They have time to kill before seven o’clock. A gorgeous evening now. Getting Eric our resident artist from ‘The land of the long white cloud’ to talk about art. What excites him. The art exhibitions he’s been to recently. Scott’s got him to talk about Gustav Klimt. Discussing in raptures Der Kuss. Sandy wanting to know what it means. Detail. All the crew, even Tom, seem to want to impress bubbly Sandy. No stopping Eric, and the early evening shifts on by under that radiant evening sunshine drying up the streets … How Gustav Klimt was so influenced by Art Nouveau. Many European countries in the 1890s developing their own Art Nouveau movements. Gustav Klimt, an Austrian by birth, founding the Vienna Sezession around 1897 according to Eric. When he discusses art, his eyes take on aspects of fire. As he talks, his speech gets quicker and quicker. Excitement and boundless pleasure taking over … Time to go … Eric, Tom, Carole and Sandy have all been put out. Dropped off at the end of promising looking streets … Scott never waits himself. If you delay you hesitate. Roll that extra spliff which will take up another twenty minutes of your time once you’ve smoked it … Remembering that as you drove through what passes for the centre of Ilford, you saw that the local Gaumont cinema was showing Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show with Jeff Bridges, Ben Johnson and an actress called Cybill Shepherd. Very, very tempting … Go and sit in little Ilford Park along by the river Roding and Lavender Mount antiquity. Dangerous! You could while away hours like this. Lapping up the early evening sunshine and just watching everyone enjoying their lives. That brief sense of freedom of a Friday evening. Families, couples, young gangs, people playing impromptu games of sport. A few folks just goofing around. Some boys and a man flying kites in the blue, blue sky. Bodies running, stretching, laughing, joking, lovers’ tiffs and passionate kisses. Stolen in plain view and nobody cares …
Before you know it, nine o’clock has crept around. It’s hinting at getting dark soon. It’s too late to start now. Delay until nine-thirty to pretend to start the rounds for the pick-ups. That is why you must never hesitate for one second. It’s easy to forget that this can be a soul-destroying job. Very tough. Even when you are pretending to be a young, penniless artist, part of an experimental artistic commune in West London. Never let go of the objective for a second, otherwise you are lost. Shredded time becomes wounded time. Even someone like Scott, who’s a natural at it, gets butterflies in his stomach on the doorstep. Your feet can feel like lead weights walking up a pathway to a house front door. You're having to work. Cold-calling, and all the rest of the world on a sunlit Friday evening seems to be having the hell of a good time … Scott stayed in little Ilford park until gone eight o’ clock. Dug his fingernails hard into the palms of his hands and got himself up and moving again. Driving casually around streets and finally settling on Elstree Gardens off Ilford Lane. Parking the Paris Green Cortina just around the corner in the next street. Try and avoid parking the car under a streetlamp. Suspicious residents can telephone the police, reporting you as a suspected burglar.
‘Well, I saw him quite clearly from my upstairs window constable. He was acting in a very suspicious and furtive manner!’
Scott trying to hug the red and black-edged art folder for comfort, but it’s too large to be carried that way. The weather has shifted yet again today. The sun has disappeared abruptly behind nebulous clouds, and lights are starting to spring on everywhere in the descending gloom. Only the street cats with their glinting eyes beckon you. Scott talking to them. Saying good evening with a purr and a polite nod … Knocking on some ten houses. People don’t seem to like to answer their doors in Ilford tonight. At least not in Elstree Gardens. Faces appear at windows as the doorbell rings and their heads shake and they shoo Scott away with a wave of a hand. Too busy to answer the front door tonight! Forty minutes gone by and Scott is still out in the cold. That’s what you get for hesitating at seven-thirty and going and sitting in little Ilford park … Walking slowly up a concrete paved pathway. An attractive effect of reddish-brown and white alternative paving stones. There is the sound of music playing and as Scott approaches the black front door with the shiny silver knocker and bell chimes, he can’t help but notice the candles burning in the front lounge window. He knows how many there will be but he counts them all the same. Seven candles flickering in a window on a Friday night has a religious connotation to Scott. Out of respect he is half-minded to step back and move on to another house. But hell, the cry of all salespeople through the ages rings out in his head.
‘They can only say no!’
The door chimes play a tinny version of Fleur de Lys and Scott is about to leave with those seven candles flickering and other music softly playing, when Holy Moly! The black door with the silver knocker opens and the most beautiful woman Scott has ever seen in his life is smiling at him. She looks at the art folder lodged under his arm. Her appearance is just like that of an eighteen-year-old, stunning version of the actress Ali MacGraw.
‘I’m guessing you’re an artist trying to sell your work. Why don’t you come in before it rains again?’ Scott is only too pleased to enter the hallway.
‘I’m Esther, by the way.’ She leads him along the plush, fluffy cream carpet, to a room on the right at the end of the hallway. They pass what must be a dining room/lounge on their left, where the music is coming from and the sound of voices talking and laughing softly … Scott finds himself sat in a mock Queen Anne chair. The walls are decorated with oatmeal-coloured silk wallpaper. Another plush, fluffy carpet, dark red. Coloured prints on the walls. A large radiogram in reddish-brown mahogany. And one of those semi-circular little bars over in the far corner to Scott’s left … Very 1950s … Esther smiles and the Greeks immediately launch their ships.
‘I want you to show me all of your work. I have to leave you for a moment. I won’t be long. Smoke if you want to.’ With that, this sensational apparition of a young Ali MacGraw vanishes from the room …
There is a small, low, light-brown coffee table just left of the imitation Queen Anne chair, and next to it is a silver magazine rack on the carpet. It is always interesting to see what newspapers and magazines people take - Scott inspects closely: Here we have a copy of this week’s Jewish Chronicle, last week's New York Tribune, and a slightly torn copy of last Sunday’s News of the World. Or, as Scott’s father used to say, the Screws of the World. Scott is drawn to look at it, and sure enough true to form, there is a picture of the actress Diana Dors on the front page under the emotive headline ‘Diana Dors turned on to sex by football’. Followed underneath by a touched-up photograph of her … ‘Diana Dors confesses to being sexually aroused by football terrace terminology ...’. There's a picture of a car on the front page as well, referencing page six and the new E-type Jaguar, Series III. Sex, football and cars. The order of a Sunday morning …
Esther is suddenly back with Scott again. He finds he has to drop his eyes from her, she is so unbelievably beautiful to look at. A vision of wonder … When she came back into the room, a black cat crept in with her. Esther introduces her as Cleo watching as the cat whisks across the dark red carpet and jumps up onto that half-moon, 1950s-style bar, and sits there in classic Sphinx-mode. Inscrutable … Scott briefly goes throught the story of the experimental artists’ commune in West Kensington. He’s said it out loud so many times it has become real. Then, going through the process required to produce these paintings on velvet. Esther listens intently … As Scott talks on, he realizes it’s not just her beauty that is amazing. That Ali MacGraw look. But she is truly a beautiful person as well. So open, earnest, interested, complimentary. She gives off a radiant aura that seems to spill sunshine across this room. Out come the paintings on velvet. One by one. Scott hasn’t got very far, when a telling force calls out Esther’s name. She quickly makes her apologies to Scott and slips out again. At once, as soon as the door closes, Cleo springs down, all attempt at inscrutable Sphinx image blown. She rushes over to Scott and starts rubbing hard up against his left leg. Purring as loudly as the soft tones of music resonating throughout the house. As if by request, Scott picks Cleo up and places her in his lap, where she fits snugly and promptly curls up … A few minutes elapse, Scott not wanting to stand up or shift around so as not to disturb Cleo, who seems to have fallen asleep. She abruptly springs out from Scott’s lap, scoots across the room and up onto that 1950s style bar. As Esther re-enters the room, Cleo has resumed her Sphinx-like, inscrutable demeanour. Truly cats’ ears …
‘I’m sorry about the interruption Scott. As you've probably guessed, we have special visitors tonight. Very old family friends.’ She could apologize for Hiroshima and Scott would accept it … It is very rare to be in the presence of a young, truly beautiful, intelligent person not possessed of any false side or excessive ego. Scott props up Shredded Time against the legs of the coffee table and Esther leans intently forward. She is wearing a black dress with small sequins sewn around the different hems and cuffs. Scott guesses at velveteen …
‘Tell me about this painting. It interests me greatly. You say you call it Shredded Time. What exactly does it represent?‘
‘Well, as with all paintings, Esther ...’ Scott’s unusual shyness with her is starting to wear off. He felt reticent to talk earlier, which is a bit like the Thames basin drying up …
‘You can read into them whatever you want. That’s the great conception of modern art. Away from just physical, two-dimensional representation. Why copy when we have photography?’ Esther smiles encouragingly and Scott feels his heart flutter …
‘Animals have no sense of time. They only exist in the present. They may remember by smell, can be trained to carry out simple tasks through repetition. But they do not possess a real sense of time. No gorilla has ever made a watch and worn it to tell the time …’ Esther laughs at the wayward analogy. Politeness and communication, two more of her ever-growing list of qualities. Scott is going to have to find some fault with her. Maybe she is cleverly obscuring a false leg …
‘Man invented time. Biblical man. All of us. We provide time by measuring the orbits of the planets and the stars. The movements of the sun, moon and the other planets in our solar system. We construct time and live our lives in the presence of clocks to produce order. In inventing clocks, we have somehow given time to history. A record of events that we suppose happened in that time back then. But time is an illusion. Atheists always declaim that you cannot see God. Well, the very same is true of time. You can see mankind's efforts at trapping it. The ageing process bears witness to the passage of time. But you cannot touch it. No sense can reveal it. In reality, it passes clean through your fingers. Invisible.’
‘Esther! Esther!’ The cry of an older woman’s voice breaks the spell that Scott is attempting to weave. Esther raises her luscious dark eyes, almost black, in mock exclamation. Rises from her kneeling position in front of Shredded Time and disappears again throwing over her shoulder as she goes
‘So rude of me Scott. Would you like a drink?’
‘Yes please, and thanks. I’d love a coffee with sugar and milk please.’ With that, Esther departs and before you can say Pablo Picasso, Cleo has thrown all caution to the wind and leapt into Scott’s lap again. Now staring quizzically, the way that cats love to do, at Shredded Time as if she would like to join in the conversation and add her feline two-pennyworth …
Esther half opens the door, steps back. Must be picking something up off the hallway carpet. Then comes in carrying a tray and bumps the door shut with her bottom. Inscrutable Cleo watches on from atop the bar, having achieved her cat trick yet again.
‘I thought you might like some lemon cake with your coffee.’
‘That’s very kind of you. Thank you.’ Scott drinks his deliciously strong coffee and eats lemon cake with a small fork. Esther has moved Shredded Time and placed it up against another chair.
‘You seemed to be saying before that we all control our own thoughts on time. Believe we are in control which is just an illusion. We shred moments. Tell ourselves little cut-out stories which we carry around with us. Yes?’
‘Well, that’s pretty good, Esther. But it could be anything. We could calculate the time on the planet Pluto right now if we were mathematicians. To the exact second. But it would be man-made time, not Plutonian time … This is delicious cake ...’ Esther smiles and the stars come out from behind the clouds …
‘David Hockney had a very successful exhibition in London around 1963-1964 I think. It was a collection of drawings and paintings based on the poems of the Greek poet Constantine Cavafy. Most of the poems were written across the late 1890s to the middle of the 1920s. He lived and wrote exclusively in Alexandria in Egypt. But heh, you probably know all this. Tea to China …’
‘Go on ...’ If she grins like that again, Scott’s heart will burst.
‘Well, two of his best-known poems, The God Abandons Antony. At midnight, when you hear an invisible procession going by with exquisite music, voices … It must be 30 B.C. … Or Waiting for the Barbarians. What are we waiting for, gathered in the marketplace? The Barbarians are due to arrive today … Except of course they never appear. It could be Rome 300 A.D … These Barbarians could have been a solution … I’m telling you about David Hockney’s painting and drawings from around 1963-64, based on poems written by Constantine Cavafy around 1900. The poems are both set over sixteen hundred years previously. These paintings, drawings and poems evoke images in me that only exist within me! I shred them up like rolling up a parchment or scroll and bring them out over coffee and lemon cake on a Friday night in May 1971. We select a lot of our waking moments of time. But that is an illusion of control which we think we possess …‘
Esther moves Shredded Time. Places it on the floor. A deep man’s voice calls out to her. She answers straight away.
‘I’ll be with you shortly!’
Her raised voice is surprisingly loud and quite masculine. Catches Scott by surprise. Cleo is unmoved.
‘Let me see if I’ve understood a little of what you said … Last summer I went on holiday to St. Ives in Cornwall. I one went there with my best friend Sophia. We’ve both applied to go to Cambridge in the autumn …’
‘I hope you get accepted. What will you read?’
‘History … Thank you … On our second morning in St Ives, we went down near the main harbour, searching for Barbara Hepworth’s studio … We found it, though we were surprised by how ordinary it seemed. We’d been told that Barbara Hepworth did not take kindly to visitors … Nervously I banged on the studio door. No bell or even a letterbox. She came to the door wearing a scarf tied around her head and a dust-splattered blue smock. To my surprise, after studying us for what seemed a long time, she invited us in. Showed us around her famous studio. She said it had once been ‘Les Palais de Dance’ and later, a cinema. Though it looked far too small to my eyes to ever have been either. She indicated the sculpture she was working on, and other work she was preparing. I asked her how she selected her subjects and she said she was torn right now between commissions which paid very well and came to her because of her burgeoning reputation. Ideas and drawings she’d had for years, and sometimes if she was especially fortunate, creative dreams ...’
The male voice calls her again. Louder. She shouts back,
‘In a minute!’ Hurrying up her explanation.
‘I asked for her autograph. She said she didn’t like signing them. Went and got me this.’ Esther has stood up and gone over to a display cabinet opposite the 1950s bar and inscrutable Cleo, and produces a stone from a collection of pots, vases, cups and saucers and precious other items. She hands it to Scott. A semi-circular stone almost the size of the palm of his hand. The underside is a dull cream-white with shards of grey poking through. The upside is like the crown of a mushroom and light brown in colour, flecked with grey. If it was lighter in weight you could play ducks and drakes with it. Skimming it across the waters of the Atlantic Ocean washing the coastline of St. Ives. It would flick, skim, skip, out to sea …
‘Barbara Hepworth said she’d found it walking on the smaller beach in St. Ives. It was her special gift to me, that stone is a remembrance, a shredded piece of time like this painting. I shall always carry that hour spent with Barbara Hepworth around with me. But it may change with the years. Whenever I retell what happened. It may well alter in my mind. Our memories shift in time, though the movements can be unreliable. Our idea of time is linear when actually we live in our own form of time-travel every day, way before science fiction stories and the likes of writers such as Robert Heinlein and Philip K. Dick …’
‘Cambridge will definitely accept you.’
The door bursts open. Cleo jumps off the 1950s bar counter and scuttles to a far corner. A very attractive, well-built, black-haired man in his late forties has entered the room. Obviously her father, from the comparative likeness. He quickly appraises the situation. Picks up Scott’s art folder. Glances at the paintings without taking them out. Turns to Esther.
‘Do you like them?’
‘Yes’ she enthusiastically replies. Bless her. The father wants to move on. Get his daughter back to the evening’s entertainment in the other room.
‘How much for the folder?’ he asks ... a stunned salesman can be an amazing sight ...
‘One hundred and twenty pounds ... Yes?’ He produces a roll of banknotes from out of his back pocket and peels off one hundred and twenty pounds in ten-pound bills. Hands them to a mesmerized Scott and leaves without a backward glance. Esther laughs and throws up her hands … Scott just about remembering to take the empty red and black-edged art folder with him. Smiles a thank you and exits smartly whilst trying to remain casual.
Walking slowly down the reddish-brown and white paved pathway. More accurately, walking on air. Cleo has slipped out of the house and comes and rubs up against Scott’s right leg. Her way of saying goodbye. Then she is gone. Stealing off into the night. Scott turns and takes one last backward glance at the seven candles flickering in the window. Can just hear the strains of soft music ... or it might be his imagination … Sitting in the Cortina. It’s only just a quarter past nine. Scott was in that house for less than forty-five minutes and it felt like a lifetime. Selling the entire folder all in one go! You just couldn't make it up. Scott’s never, ever heard of it happening. The whole goddamn art folder full. Rolling a spliff. Esther only really only showed any great interest in Shredded Time, hardly studied the others at all. Thirty points. Bang! Plus, over fifty pounds profit. Thoughts jumbling around, he's manipulating the points for maximum advantage. Opening the car window. The air smells so sweet and fresh. Picking up The Plague, but too excited to read by torchlight. It’s amazing, this air is so fragrant, scented. Right on the edge of a dirty, large metropolis. Scott knows that if he tells anyone they won't believe him. Think he is making it up to impress …
Scott drives around picking up the crew at their allotted location points. They haven’t done that well. Tom has sold one large. Guitar with a broken string leaning against three-legged chair. Carole Bishop has sold one small A cat’s head. Both Eric and Sandy blanked. The crew are half apologetic. Scott brushes off their concerns and excuses with a smile. Hands around a joint.
‘We had a good night folks.’ The crew don’t enquire further. Scott has decided not to tell them. It would be like boasting. He would then have to go into detail. Right now, he doesn't want to talk. Just smile and drive. Heading back into central London feeling euphoric. All those points … Picking up the Embankment Road and bouncing over two lots of sleeping policemen … Heading towards Pimlico. It’s started to rain again. It has just dawned on Scott that it’s not about the paintings. Not even the money. Nothing so venal. It’s not bigger than reality. The realization is that it’s not selling the whole art folder of velvet paintings and making a huge profit. It was the seven candles in the window. Sharing that time with a person as beautiful, exciting and intelligent as Esther. Having Ali MacGraw’s gorgeous, younger sister sat at your feet, while you burble on about Shredded Time. That lovely cat Cleo was like her familiar. That moment in time was very special. Scott will never see Esther again. But he will never forget her. Carry her with him forever. Smiles, laughter, voice, perfume … Black sequined dress. Something of infinite goodness and delight ...