Fen

‘Julius Fetherstone,’ Fen started, assessing that Judith’s cough had subsided and that the audience of around twenty was all above the age of consent, before stretching her arm above her, stroking the male’s cheek before placing her hand over that of the female, ‘was obsessed with sex.’

Fen slid from the lap of the sculpture and, with her hand on the male’s hand which, it transpired, was indeed lolling over his cock, she ran her fingertips up his arm while she continued. ‘Fetherstone seemed to delight in the paradox of capturing in stone, or bronze, and in a frozen moment, all the heat, the moisture, the movement and, most of all, the internal sensation of the sex act.’ She brushed the cheek of the man with the back of her hand and then rested her head gently on his shoulder, draping her arm down over his chest. The women in the audience wanted to be where Fen was, wanting to touch and clasp and grapple with the awesome sculpture. Many of the men in the audience, however, just wanted to touch Fen. Apart from Otter who was transfixed by the male sculpture. And by a rather athletic-looking tourist a few yards away.

‘This work is called Hunger,’ Fen said, standing back from it though it meant her all but pressing herself against two young women listening. She gazed at the stone and then faced her audience. She made eye contact with all of them, with Otter and Matt and James and Judith. But she did not glance away, or give a blink of discomfort or recognition. Fen McCabe, art historian, was rather different from Fen McCabe, archivist. Or was this merely the spell of Fetherstone’s works? ‘It’s called Hunger,’ she repeated, standing much closer to her audience than to the sculpture, ‘but the couple themselves seem quite sated, don’t you think?’ The audience bar James was staring at the sculpture. ‘Don’t you think?’ It was a question. James wanted to answer but could not establish eye contact and didn’t really want to raise his hand. Anyway, the lecturer was staring directly, almost at point-blank range, at the two young women near to her. ‘Don’t you think?’

‘Definitely,’ one whispered. The other could only nod. They were both flushed. Not from humiliation or embarrassment. But from the effect the mass of copulatory stone had on them.

‘Fetherstone worked on the theme of sexual abandon from 1889. His great treatise – titled Abandon – now exists in four supreme bronzes. Though the whereabouts of the marble Abandon – staggering even in the few photos we have of it – remains a mystery. Just look at them,’ Fen implored, turning back to the sculpture, ‘just look at them.’ She gave her audience a tantalizing few seconds of silence. ‘Now, this portrait bust of Jacques Lemond,’ she said, moving to a plinth nearby, ‘is not just conventional in conception, it was staid and boring even for the time in which it was executed.’ Fen McCabe had cast the spell and then broken it. The audience had to follow her dutifully to another work, a rather uninspiring, if well executed, head and shoulders. But Fen was manipulating her audience. Her talk ended ten minutes later, having utilized a cross-reference with Maillol and a look at the two oil sketches by Fetherstone (which James was most pleased to deduce were inferior to his in execution and subject matter). She’d answered the obligatory questions (having anticipated, by the look of her audience, what they were to be) and then she’d left the gallery. Briskly. Perhaps to have a sandwich or something. Buy an Evening Standard. Cosmo, maybe. She knew well what would be going on in the sculpture hall. Most of the audience would remain. She’d observed their reaction to her lecture, to Hunger, to sculpture, on several occasions. They’d potter about half glancing at other works. Some would linger at Rodin’s The Kiss. But all would gravitate back to Hunger, however long it took. To circumnavigate. For a deeper look. To feed their hunger.

Judith had left noisily midway through the Q&A. Matt left the gallery unseen, leaving Otter to chat up the athletic young tourist. Matt’s semi hard-on disconcerted him.

It’s not just the look of her. Not the sculptures, for Christ’s sake. I think it’s that she’s so damned passionate. I don’t know!

James took a taxi to New Bond Street. There was a stirring in his trousers too. But he rationalized that he was turned on by the thought of the money his own Fetherstones might generate. Or by art, of course. Not by F. McCabe. No no no. He peered into his rucksack. Adam and Eve were still at it. Again. Leave them to it. Recall the content of the lecture so he was well armed to rebuff any bluff from the auctioneers. What did she say? That F. McCabe? She called him Julius. What does F stand for? Fiona? Frederika? Frederika probably. Freddie to her friends. Something like that. What had she spoken of? James couldn’t remember. He chastised his age as the culprit. But how come he could remember everything about her? Down to her having just the one dimple when she smiled which increased to two when she laughed.

Whilst James sat on a rather hard but aesthetically fine mahogany bench outside the Nineteenth Century European department, he wondered if the higher up you were at Calthrop’s was directly proportionate to the number of hyphens in your surname. And whether the number of hyphens to the surname might equate with the number of noughts such an expert might achieve on the sale of works. And how long they were entitled to keep a visitor waiting. Ten minutes and counting. He concentrated hard on two seascapes and thought how he’d really much rather have the Fetherstone oil sketches on his wall than those. Why was he selling them then? Money? Yes. But not because he was greedy. Because he needed to.

‘Mr Caulfield? Margot Fitzpatrick-Montague-Laine – good afternoon,’ an immaculate woman with a warm smile and affably outstretched hand, who looked too ordinary to have hyphens in her name and too young to hold a job of such stature, greeted James and ushered him through to her office, her eyes wide and expectant at the sight of his rucksack. ‘I think it most honest that my colleagues in Nineteenth Century British passed you to me,’ she said. ‘I mean, Fetherstone was British by birth – but he is so quintessentially European.’ She looked at James earnestly. ‘Wouldn’t you agree?’

‘Quintessentially,’ James responded, stressing a different part of the word to imply it was a conclusion he had himself made already, whilst racking his brains to recall anything F. McCabe had said along those lines in her lecture. He couldn’t remember if she had. She’d talked about moisture. And sex. And carnal delirium. And this Nineteenth Century European woman was very attractive and she was talking money and was thus all the more attractive because of it. And because she could enunciate words like ‘quintessentially’ in a most sonorous way.

‘So,’ she was saying with an eyebrow raised almost coquettishly, ‘what do you have for me?’

‘Adam and Eve having a fuck,’ said James without thinking, because he was thinking how much he’d like to have a fuck. With F. McCabe. Or Margot F-M-L. Whoever. It had been a while. He wondered whether to apologize. Or to bite his lip. Or make light of it. Or just ignore it. But seeing her eyes light up, he decided that to show her Adam and Eve having a fuck was a good start.

‘1892,’ he said, by way of introduction to the sculpture. He gave her a few moments to feast her gaze upon it and then brought out the sketch of Eve. ‘1894,’ he said, watching Ms F-M-L hone in on the painting. Then he brought out Adam. ‘1895,’ he said, titillated by seeing how excited Miss Margot was. He didn’t really care whether this was over their monetary or aesthetic value, or a mixture of both. She looked hungry. And it turned him on. ‘What am I bid?’ he jested. She stared at him.

‘We offer the paintings as a pair,’ she suggested in a most conspiratorial voice, as if hatching an illicit plan, leaning close to him with an almost clichéd amount of cleavage on view. ‘It would be a travesty to split them. We put the reserve at around thirty thousand.’ James worked hard not to gulp because he felt she was scrutinizing him to see if he would. Or to see whether he’d noticed her bust. He had. He didn’t gulp. He nodded sagely. ‘The bronze,’ she said, musing, ‘forty thousand is realistic.’ James was sure to tip his head to one side and look out of the window as if considering whether this was the most financially viable route for him to take. ‘I propose we offer them in the July sale. It’s a biggie. Lots of Americans. Fetherstone is growing in popularity over the pond.’

‘Would you care to have lunch with me?’ James asked.

‘I’m hungry,’ Ms M. F-M-L said, licking her lips.

She chose two starters. Asparagus. Predictably. And oysters. Ditto. James tried to tuck into a Caesar salad but anticipated it would all be gone in two mouthfuls. Actually, it was five. He was still hungry. Watching Margot do what she was doing to the asparagus, he didn’t know what he longed for more – her or one of Mrs Brakespeare’s substantial platters of ham and eggs.

‘Will you let me have them?’ she asked, leaning across the table and exhibiting her cleavage again to great effect.

‘No,’ said James.

‘Or, let me just keep them in the department for a while?’ she compromised, her pupils as dark as the espresso in front of her.

‘No,’ said James.

‘Oh go on,’ she purred, ‘just come back to my office – I’m sure I can persuade you somehow.’

‘Roger!’ she calls across the vestibule to a man who comes over. ‘This is James Caulfield. He’s brought in three delightful Fetherstones. They’re in my office. Do come and have a look.’ This offer she extends to two other men they encounter on the way back to her office. James watches her bottom, clad in a tight skirt, swaying seductively as she takes the stairs. He has to thrust his hand deep into his trouser pocket in a bid to conceal his erection. She opens the door to her office and a shaft of light streams in, soaking Adam and Eve who are still having sex. Right there, on her desk.

‘Let me see now,’ she says, ‘how am I going to persuade you to part with them?’ Closing the door with her back, all of a sudden she pulls James towards her and gorges herself on his mouth. She doesn’t sip him down as she did the oysters. She doesn’t tongue him tantalizingly like she did the asparagus. She doesn’t linger over him and take her time. She gobbles him, sucks him, chews and gulps at him. Her hands grab and squeeze and pull at him. Her body is bucking and writhing against his. His face is wet from her mouth. His lips are being bitten both accidentally and on purpose. His hair is being pulled, his shirt tugged, his belt yanked. He isn’t kissing her back – her mouth is in the way. And it’s all so sudden, he hasn’t had the chance to think about it, to object, to stop himself, to participate.

Oh my God! She’s going to give me a blow-job! Oh my God! There’s someone knocking at the door.

It is Roger from downstairs wanting to see the Fetherstones. Anyone there? James’s thudding heart is in his mouth. And Margot has her mouth full. Roger has gone away, thank God.

Oh God, what is she doing?

James raises his eyes to the heavens but they hit the ceiling where fat cherubs are cavorting with whimsical unicorns and baby centaurs. He closes his eyes.

It’s been a while. Not since that girl in Hathersage.

Margot has stopped sucking. Her knees crack as she stands up to face him. James doesn’t know what to say or where to look. He’s desperate not to take leave of his senses but his brain has now taken residence in his balls. Coming is such a priority that it overwhelms any thoughts of intruders or condoms or impropriety or ramifications or repercussions. She hoicks up her skirt and guides him inside her. A few quick thrusts is all it takes.

The relief.

God. Now what? Where to look? What to say?

‘Definitely July,’ Margot is saying, rearranging her clothing, ‘the Americans will be here on a shopping spree.’

‘They’ll be sold to a private collector?’ James asks, zipping himself up, turning away from her and giving Adam and Eve an apologetic look.

‘Undoubtedly,’ she confirms, walking over to her desk.

‘And they’ll leave the country?’ James asks, staring at his Fetherstones as if they’re children about to be committed to boarding-school overseas.

‘I would say so,’ she says, regarding him levelly.

‘Don’t you think that would be a shame?’

‘With the money they could generate?’ she retorts, astutely. ‘It’s not my job to make sure that works of art go to the right home, wherever that may be, just that they achieve the highest amount possible.’

‘Say it’s a bank vault in Los Angeles?’

‘Then it’s a bank vault in Los Angeles that forked out around £70,000 to make space for them.’

James obviously doesn’t like the sound of this.

‘Look,’ she says, too sweetly so that it verges on patronizing, as if she’s lost interest with him, as if his soft side or conscience was not the reason for her having fucked him, ‘if you’re worried about where they’ll go, why not offer them to a national institution via the NACF or Trust Art? We can still be your advisors. You will forfeit the whole premise of an auction, of prices rising alongside salesroom hysteria.’

‘Phone the Tate?’ James asks.

‘Wherever,’ she says, ‘then the gallery will try to raise funds via a grant from, as I said, the NACF or Trust Art. You know who you should contact? Fen McCabe. She works at Trust Art now. She’s a Fetherstone fanatic. We offered her a job which she declined because she said she’d protest every time one was sold to a home of which she might not approve.’

‘Fen,’ James mused.

‘McCabe, short for Fenella, bit of a mouthful,’ said Margot Fitzpatrick-Montague-Laine, ‘we were in the same year at the Courtauld. She was the class swot. Mind you, it gained her the sole double distinction that year.’

James didn’t feel like telling her that he knew exactly who Fen was, that he had just been enthralled by her lecture, by her passion. But he was surprised just how pleased he was to learn her first name. How fortuitous it was that he could contact her. And he was surprised that, suddenly, he felt very hungry again.

‘Think about it,’ Margot said whilst ignoring James, and Adam and Eve, to flip through the documents on her desk, ‘call me.’

TEN

Otter observed Matt trying to settle. He watched him stroke his chin, scrunch his already short scrunched ochre-coloured hair, rummage through sheaves of paper, tap a number on the phone with a pencil but not make the call, take the pencil to his mouth and drum his teeth lightly. With his spectacles now replacing the pencil and hanging off his lips, Matt had his eyes fixed at absolutely nothing going on outside the window. His mind, Otter mused, was not fixed on the job in hand.

He should be thinking about editing that article on Kandinsky and Schönberg? But I rather think he’s thinking about sculpture. But there again, I should be writing the side bars for the Antony Gormley article. And I’m thinking about Jorgen who is twenty-five, Scandinavian and just happened to be listening to the same sculpture lecture at the Tate as I was.

‘How’s the Kandinsky piece shaping up?’ Otter asked Matt, to distract himself from the distraction of the shapely Jorgen. Almost begrudgingly, Matt turned his head, dragging his eyes around, looking slightly baffled. ‘And Schoenberg,’ Otter prompted helpfully. Matt gave him a slow, thoughtful nod backed up by a noncommittal noise from his throat that told Otter that Matt had given the article little attention.

Matt stretched and yawned in a way that was far too considered to be natural. ‘We should ask Fen to write a piece on Fetherstone,’ he said in a tone he was employing to be nonchalant but which was far from it. It was four o’clock and Otter felt ready and entitled to a jolly little gossip about Fen, Jorgen, whomever, but Matt was already walking from the room.

‘To talk articles with Fen,’ Otter said to his computer screen. ‘Go on, lad, ask her out for a drink.’

Matt chastises himself as a soft sod for hovering, even for but a second, outside the door of the Archive. That he can hear her rustling makes him want to ease the door open and observe her unseen. See her on tiptoes wrestling with boxes; see her sitting on the floor, making piles; perhaps standing with her back to one of the shelves, engrossed in some catalogue, or comfortable in her chair, mesmerized by a fan of black-and-white photographs. He doesn’t knock.

She’s sitting on three of the toughened boxes. With her toes turned in. Matt can see down her top.

‘How timely,’ Fen says, who’s had a most productive afternoon and has given little thought to anything but the contents of 1952. ‘Have you ever seen these?’ She offers him a clutch of old photographs. He looks at them and, from his vantage point, he glances down Fen’s top again.

‘It’s my father,’ he says, locking on to her eyes and realizing for the first time that they are blue. ‘Who’s the old chap with the beard?’

‘Matisse!’ Fen all but whispers in deference and excitement.

Matt scrutinizes the photos, sneaks another look at Fen’s breasts. ‘I really enjoyed your lecture,’ he tells her.

She’s blushing! The girl who practically masturbated herself on a stone man – and woman – is blushing.

‘Thanks,’ Fen mumbles, feeling the need to study a Post-it on a box that says ‘Misc’.

Go on, Matt – ask her for a drink after work. Make it casual – a Trust thing; no ulterior motive, a trust thing. Have a little flirt!

‘Maybe you could write a piece on Fetherstone for Art Matters?’ Matt asks.

‘Sure,’ Fen replies briskly, tucking hair neatly behind her ears, back ramrod straight. Archivist. Art historian. Colleague. Art is what matters.

Fen pouted and rested her head on Abi’s shoulder. Abi stroked Fen’s hair, stroked her shoulders, and thought that now was not the time to ask Fen what on earth she was doing wearing her Paul Smith top. Gemma came back from the bar with vodka and Red Bull for each of them.

‘Fen’s sulking,’ Abi said to her, ‘don’t quite know why – here lovey, have a little sippy to help lubricate your vocal chords.’

Fen had more than Abi’s suggested sippy, she practically downed her drink in one. Gemma and Abi regarded her expectantly. ‘First, I go and bloody blush,’ she said.

‘Well,’ Abi started, wondering why the facts should amount to a pout of such proportions. She wasn’t quite sure how to continue so she took a long slug at her drink and filched a fag from Gemma.

‘Then,’ Fen pouts, ‘then I go and get all disappointed that all he wanted was an article from Fen Fen the Fetherstone Fan.’

Gemma and Abi smoke their cigarettes contemplatively.

‘I was primed, ready and willing to say, “Why, I’d love to have a drink with you”,’ Fen said, ‘instead the only sane answer was, “But of course, how many words and when’s the deadline?”.’

‘Yes, but …’ Gemma started. If that had been me, she thought, I’d have suggested discussing word limit over a drink. But it was Fen. And she’s as predictable as I am.

Fen, having finished her drink and having no need for a cigarette (she’d smoked without inhaling as a teenager and inhaled when she was at university, just the once, before throwing up quite spectacularly), was suddenly lucid. ‘No!’ she exclaimed, ‘the point is that I quite wanted him to make a pass.’

‘Cool!’ Abi said. ‘You fancy him.’

‘About time too,’ said Gemma.

‘Could be dangerous,’ Fen muttered.

‘Or the start of something very beautiful,’ Abi jested.

‘A good old flirt is quite good fun,’ Gemma shrugged.

They all nodded. Fen, though, still looked a little perplexed.

‘Another drink?’ she offered, though no answer was needed.

Abi and Gemma spied her at the bar, having a surreptitious look from her left hand to her right. And though this affectation often irritated them, tonight they praised it as they saw that her eyebrows were no longer knitted together in a furrow of discontent. No doubt she’d be ordering doubles all round. A shot for the right hand, a shot for the left.

It’s not just Otter who wants to play a part in bringing Fen and Matt together. And it’s all very well Gemma and Abi encouraging Fen to the hilt. And Jake banging on about the merits of a zipless fuck, the necessity of The Rebound. More fortuitous, though, Fate is set to lend a helping hand too. Just like in the movies. Eyes meeting across a crowded bar and all that.

‘Crown and Goose?’ Jake suggested to the five-a-side team as dusk descended on Regent’s Park. ‘Who’s coming?’

‘Sure,’ Matt said, slightly disgruntled that he was in jogging bottoms and an old rugby shirt while Jake had brought along a change of trousers and a clean top. ‘Are you just vain or merely more organized?’ he asked.

‘I’m always fastidiously prepared for all eventualities,’ Jake countered, slightly irritated that their team-mates were sloping off to wives and partners and a civilized glass of Chardonnay, ‘plus I had lunch with a firm near us so I nipped back home.’ Matt regarded him nervously. Jake smiled and slapped his back. ‘Fear not,’ he assured Matt, ‘there was no bunny boiling on the stove, no messages on the answerphone and the flat was just as we left it.’

‘Three days of silence,’ Matt said. ‘Perhaps she’s genuinely cool about things. Or do you think she’s planning something?’

‘Your wedding?’ Jake glibly suggested. ‘Or your death,’ he tempered, on observing Matt’s horror.

‘Come on,’ Matt said, walking into the Crown and Goose, ‘lager?’

‘Actually,’ says Fen, looking imploringly at the barmaid and darkly at Jake, ‘I was next.’

‘Two pints of Carlsberg,’ Jake ordered, momentarily and conveniently deaf; looking squarely at Fen before turning on the charm for the barmaid. Giving Jake an accidentally-on-purpose jab with her elbow and a look of utter distaste, Fen raised her eyebrows at the barmaid in a ‘Men! Pah!’ kind of way, hoping to appeal to her feminist proclivities or sense of conduct at the very least. The barmaid, however, was silently praising God that the softball season had started early and, though it gave her no satisfaction to blank Fen, it gave her much pleasure to serve Jake, even more so because she had pipped Sonia, who’d worked there longer, to the post. Fen started humming Aretha Franklin’s ‘Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves’ but the irony was lost on the barmaid who was engrossed in Jake’s tip and smile; both disproportionate to the service she had provided.

‘Come on come on!’ Abi implored Fen when she returned with what were definitely doubles, ‘more Matt!’

‘Yes,’ said Gemma, ‘details.’

Fen, all of a sudden slightly sloshed, was happy to oblige. ‘I was chuffed that he came to the lecture. I think he was genuinely interested, his father championing Julius and all.’

‘Oh God, not that bloody bloody sculptor,’ Abi cried, swiping her brow as if a mammoth headache had descended.

‘Come on,’ Gemma nudged, ‘vital statistics.’

‘I told you,’ Fen said, ‘he’s tall. Ish. And good-looking. Ish. And blond.’

‘Ish?’ asked Gemma.

‘Well – dark blond. Ish?’

‘Natural?’ asked Abi.

‘I would hope so,’ said Fen primly.

‘God, for an art historian, your powers of description are terrible,’ Abi teased.

‘Just because he’s flesh and blood and not stone or metal doesn’t excuse you from technicolor detail,’ Gemma added.

‘I’ve only been there four days!’ Fen remonstrated. ‘I just quite fancy him. Not specifically for his looks. Or his personality. He just seems …’ she stopped and her jaw dropped.

‘Just?’ Abi prompted.

‘Seems?’ Gemma pressed.

‘Over there,’ Fen said.

Thank God the bar was noisy enough for the ensuing squeaks of delight and giggles of excitement from Fen’s group to go unheard. Thank God the bar was crowded enough to dissipate the heat from three sets of eyes burning into Matt.