Ruby Red by Linzi Glass

Author:Linzi Glass
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141918532
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2007-08-24T04:00:00+00:00

Mother was about to go over the introduction of Julian at the opening. He was to step out at an appointed time from a side gallery into the Gallery Grande, but her instructions were interrupted by the sound of heavy-soled boots trampling across the quiet gallery floor. The footsteps stopped for a moment before continuing. Then a man’s voice echoed through the gallery.

‘Is anybody here?’ he bellowed.

Mother sighed. ‘Not now, whoever you are…’ she said under her breath.

‘I’ll go.’ I rose from the plush couch and headed in the direction of the man’s voice.

I found him in the small first gallery. His back was turned away from me as I approached. He was staring at an abstract painting of a tap dripping water. The artist, a well-known eccentric who took inanimate objects and transformed them into sexual parts of the body, had developed a huge following and Mother always carried a few of his works in the gallery.

‘Is this what I think it is…?’ he asked, without turning round as I approached.

He was a tall man with broad shoulders and wore a light khaki suit.

I had learned from Mother never to explain what a particular painting meant, but rather to draw the interpretation out of the patron so that he or she felt engaged and competent in their own assessment and understanding of what they were looking at. Art was, Mother always said, purely subjective.

‘What do you think it is, sir?’ I asked politely. He turned and looked at me. Dull grey eyes and short black hair that looked stark against his pasty white face. He had an upturned nose set over a thin mouth.

‘You look a bit young to be working here,’ he said accusingly.

‘My mother owns the gallery.’

‘And she lets you look at filth like this!’ He wagged his finger at the wall.

‘It’s a tap,’ I said.

‘Like bloody hell it is. It’s a man’s private parts hanging out there for everyone to see.’ He snorted.

I felt the familiar accordion-like squeezing in my stomach and bit down hard on my lower lip. ‘Is there something in particular I can help you with, sir?’ I said in a polite but firm manner.

‘No, just looking, just looking around.’ He clasped his hands behind his back and began moving through the gallery, stopping at each painting, squinting, then stepping close up to them. Sometimes he sniffed the air around him or scratched the back of his neck before moving on to the next painting. I followed at a respectable distance behind him. I wished that Mother or Dashel would come to my rescue but neither appeared. Mother often left me to deal with visitors to the gallery and I had even made a sale or two of my own in the past.

‘Very interesting, yes…’ he said, scraping his heavy boots across the spotless floor and leaving dark-soled imprints. ‘Lots of black artists show here, am I right?’ He stopped in front of a canvas of a boy standing beside a rickety bike, his tattered clothes blending into the rubble and smokestacks of the township behind him.

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