The Conservation Society
Valerie and Tony were beside themselves with fury; that day and all weekend people were coming from all over, for the exhibition and later the party,
and Arnold, an old friend fallen on hard times and thus useless to anyone, had only gone and died
on their Grade II listed veranda.
“What shall we do with the body?” asked a bewildered
Valerie to no one in particular, “We can’t cancel”.
“Fuck him, Fuck, fuck fuck fuck”, Tony’s mobile
phone rang “ Hi Ted, Yeah we have
everything's set up, amps, mics ....Andre, Glen Tiles from Squash...Get
here for...well, a jam really, just plug in...okay, Bye, Ted, Bye!, Bye, bye”.
Tony looked murderously at the corpse stretched out
on one of the two raggedy sofas. The veranda, a wrought iron decorative tiled late-Nineteenth-century
affair in the Arts and Crafts tradition, was divided by a central door,
an exit, as it were, leading directly
down a dozen steps to a vast wooded garden; although the Arts and crafts
movement invited nature into living spaces, a fresh corpse was all too real.
Valerie crossed the high-ceilinged stuccoed hallway
to the basement door. She would go downstairs to the basement to make sure the
exhibits; paintings, sculptures were exactly how she had arranged and
rearranged them the evening before; It was eight O’clock in the morning, at 11
a.m. the first of the local residents, who lived within the elevated one mile
radius, would be arriving soon. The Conservation Society was cosily bordered by a chain of cappaccino out-lets, farmers markets, micro-breweries, art galleries and whole-food shops which marked the area beyond as exclusive and whose boundary began and ended at the main roads of Lewisham Way, Crofton Park, Adelaid
Avenue and crowned by a green mound-shaped open expanse; Hilly Fields. The
houses surrounding Hilly Fields were originally built two centuries ago for wealthy
industrialists involved in business at the docks at Greenwich and Deptford and the Port of
London during the zenith of mercantile and maritime trade during the colonial century. The area directly above Greenwich was now colonised by the
middle-classes and known wryly to outsiders as ‘The Conversation Society’ and to those within,- who were currently applying for the status of 'Village' huddled within a metropolis of several million ordinary souls- asThe Conservation Society The guests would begin arriving to view the creative
works in general and scrutinise the house and garden in particular; it was the
first day of The Conservation Society’s Open House Art Week.
Valerie cast a perfectionist’s eye on the art-work
but having shifted and re-shifted paintings, watercolours and sculptures the
previous evening late into the night she resolved that though the triptych oil
entitled ‘shoes’ could possibly be interchanged with the black and white
analogue photograph triptych entitled ‘The Teignmouth from a moving train’ for
balance – she would sit with the mild discomfort of her indecision. She stared
out through the basement window at the view afforded where soon women’s ankles
and men’s brogues, Birkenstocks and chinos would mingle in small groups or
wander about, their owners voices praising the unique wildness of the garden and
eccentric character of the house for Valerie was aware, even if mildly, that the
house and garden were what were really on show, somewhat unfairly, she thought
turning to survey, once again the artistic rendering and collaborative effort
of herself and those she chose to include in her circle of close friends.
As Valerie mounted each of the twelve steps leading
up to the ground floor she mentally reviewed tasks, as yet uncompleted which completed, would each, like mile-stones signally the successful progress on a journey,
underscore a day that went by without mishap. There were things she could
control; There was the party later on in the evening...God knows there were enough of those, she
thought. No, she would hold back on the measures keeping a keen eye on the odd
lush for whom the Open House Art Week was an excuse to get drunk; she would be
generous with her selectivity to those who showed a genuine interest and especially
to those who actually bought a piece
of work and also to those who, through their occupations and connections
gleaned from conversation, showed some potential usefulness, though she did not like to admit to ruthlessness a
keen weather-eye did no harm ; she had already a dozen measures of wine mentally
ear-marked for those whose attention she might want to sustain for longer than
a brief tour of the gallery space. She would stand sentry before the table of
beverages and snacks set up in the furthest left had corner directly in view of
the entrance.
On the second step she paused to remind herself get
her friend and fellow artist Adrian Luxdor to be on side but kept at a safe
distance should his natural exuberance be upsetting;. Gay and extremely
mercurial, at times his mischievousness out-weighed his emotional intelligence
though she suspected that behind the camp and foolery he knew exactly what to
say, when to say it and to whom when he chose to, but his manner was so arbitrary as
to make him a liability to be gently control. Valerie enumerated several tasks
and errands she would remember needed urgent attention to send the lovely
Adrian out of the orbit of an art lover who might be easily flustered by the
presence of an artist in full flow.
Where should the booklet listing the art works and their
respective sale price would best be displayed on a table, separate from the drinks
and snacks; there were enough hand-outs for everyone to go away with. She
calculated the number of boxes, a dozen, taking into consideration the estimated footfall during the
week. Yes, more than enough, that was that. She told herself. She moved on to
the fourth step.
The grissini, Italian bread sticks and the dips were
ready and waiting and she would remove them from the fridge adding chives and
parsley where necessary atop the ornate bowls at quarter to eleven. Bowls of
crisps were not too common, were they; they were organic and expensive; she
would leave a packet in full view, maybe not. The baguettes needed slices; not
too thick. The previous day she had halted at the idea of a cheese board though
she had seen several last year during her mid-week rounds at other houses. No,
they had wide open-plan kitchens which the guest passed through to enter
gardens or other rooms, her kitchen, a cluttered galley was not open for public
view. Unlike others in the area who owned their homes Tony and herself lived in
one of seven high-ceilinged flats a result of the mass conversion of grand house
affected in the 1950s to accommodate a growing urban population. They were
lucky that the landlord, who lived half way across London, appearing within
their midst so rarely as to allow the house-holders, all artistes of one form
or another, to feel, not only that they were owners of this charming if
crumbling pile, was a kind of patron of the arts also giving full and free use of a basement the landlord
had overlooked as potential capital.
On step five she panicked she had promised to not
remind herself that after twenty years the landlord was, - she stood there,
her knuckles whitening against the chipped egg-shell paint of the banister, -finalising plans to subdivide the basement, tear down their beloved veranda and
turn the basement into two flats thus ending an era of parties and events such
as the one she was now arranging. “This is the last party we will hold down
here, ever”. She said out loud in the direction of the only indoor toilet
accessible to over two decades of revellers as though it were an animate
object. As a house, no as a community they had fought and won the right to have
the veranda, the exterior at least, listed gaining Grade II status as the last example
of bygone craftsmanship, and early Victorian wrought iron and tile work. The
fight for the right to hold onto to the basement, in the climate of a housing
shortage and property slump had been fruitless. Her heart sank at the thought
that, once converted, strangers would move in. Strangers who would be chosen by
some estate agent, strangers who would be paying the full market rent well
above the protected rents most of the residents enjoyed as a result of a
campaign fought, some years previous by house members in the face of rising
rents, a draconian heating system and rising damp, and spearheaded by environmental
health and the fair rents tribunal, resulting in a fair and low rent for those
tenants of over ten years tenure. These strangers, full-time professionals
would demand a curfew on the noise of rehearsals and general racket of art in
progress going on above their heads; Valerie already hated these strangers with
an intensity that surprised her; she welled up with tears of anger she made no
attempt to hold back. And there was the matter of the body...
The crowd had arrived, a constant flow, swirling downstairs,
nodding at the artwork, earnest conversations, cards exchanged, drinks sipped,
but the art-work played second fiddle to the garden. Valerie felt pride as she
descended the steps into the sunlit grove created by the veranda and the edge
of a small wood. She cast an eye back to the veranda; older locals of The
Conservation Society took up places on the sofas and chatted. Valerie was
pleased, so pleased, in fact that she was only partially aware of Adrian Luxdor
making his way towards a large tree, gathering people as he went; he was looking
up and pointing. Valerie kept panic at bay and coolly moved towards the arty
crowd now gathered beneath the new installation hanging among the oak leaves.
“Is that what I think it is.” Asked Adrian Luxdor in his customary loud and over-dramatic style.
There followed a pause, or rather a gulf into which the afternoon threatened to
plunge; the birds and The Conservation Society fell silent.
“Yes’, said Valerie sweeping around to address her cultured audience below Arnold's body arranged artfully in the tree. “It’s a Dino
and Jake Chapman, an original”.
