Thieving Fear

FIVE

'Yo Yorkshire! That was Bradford band Benign Lumps with their new single "Crutches", and this is Sabyasachi Chatterjee with the Sabya Show on Moorland Radio. In the studio with me I have Rory Lucas, Yorkshire's most controversial artist. Rory's sculpture Can Do has been on the airwaves lately, and that's why we have him here today to discuss his work and any other arty topics you want to phone about. Was that a face, Rory? Don't you like me calling it a sculpture?'

Rory hadn't been aware of betraying a reaction. 'I don't care what anybody calls it so long as they look for themselves.'

The presenter ducked to a clipboard, giving Rory more of a view of his slick black precisely parted hair. 'You haven't always gone in for this style of work, have you?'

'I've not just piled up litter on the moor, you mean, Sabyasachi.'

'Call me Sabya.' At the hint of conflict his eyes gleamed with anticipation, though his voice stayed suave. 'You were top of your art class at school, weren't you?'

Rory might have borne this kind of regressively nostalgic comment from Betty or Albert, but not from a radio host. 'I did what they wanted,' he said.

'We all have to start by toeing the line if we want to get anywhere, don't we? That's what I tell my daughters. So then you went to art school.'

'Down to London where they think the world is.'

'Quite a lot of art is, isn't it?'

'It's everywhere. It's even here.'

A smile that might have been wryly appreciative flickered across Sabyasachi's full lips. 'I go down to see the exhibitions. I've got family in Brick Lane,' he said. 'Now here are the Refreshing Tissues from Leeds with their latest single.'

As he set the disc off he raised a mobile phone. For all Rory knew the impassioned conversation might have been about him, since he couldn't recognise a word. His incomprehension made him feel enclosed, not just within the fat white walls but inside his head. 'Yo Yorkshire,' Sabyasachi said as the song ended with a flourish of guitars. 'Refreshing Tissues with their single "Left Behind". My guest this afternoon –'

'We are the shadows on the land,' Rory couldn't wait to say, quoting the refrain of the song. 'That goes for art too.'

'Don't they say art's longer than life?'

'You mean it's older. Old paintings, you can't see how they really were. Even if they're restored, that's not how they were to begin with. Everything changes, you as well. We don't need art, we just need to look and listen and feel and get a sense of how we really are.'

'Careful or you'll be talking yourself out of a job.'

'It's not a job, it's what I am. It doesn't have to be a job as well.'

'You mean you don't need to earn a living while Yorkshire Arts is giving you a grant.'

'As long as they're offering I'd be a fool not to take it.'

'Plenty for our listeners to talk to you about. So the year after you left art school your first exhibition got good reviews, but here's a caller. Rory, you need to put your headphones on.'

They felt like earmuffs, even when they acquired Sabyasachi's voice. Rather than bringing it closer, they surrounded Rory's ears with an aloof version of it. 'Hello Mike from Batley. What do you want to say to Rory Lucas?'

The caller sounded even more muffled. 'Are you having a joke on us all, Mr Lucas?'

'I –' Rory swallowed hard, but that didn't render his own voice any less remote. Feeling both cut off from it and confined by it was so much of an obstruction that he hardly knew what he said to overcome his inhibited silence. 'Life's a bit of a joke.'

'I'll wager it looks that way to somebody that's being paid to do the kind of thing you're doing.'

Rory struggled to outdistance the hindrance of his dislocated voice. 'You'll have been to look, then.'

'I don't need to see it to know it's rubbish.'

'No, that's what it was.' The retort seemed to lose force by surrounding Rory at a distance. 'That's what it was,' he had to repeat, 'before I recycled it.'

'There's bins for that. You'd be better off if you got a job emptying them, and a lot more important, us taxpayers would say.'

'No you wouldn't. The money would just be spent somewhere else you'd probably moan about by the sound of you.'

'Thank you, Mike. Mike from Batley,' Sabyasachi said and mouthed 'No need to shout.'

Rory had been trying to project some strength into his oppressively detached voice. 'Do I have to wear these?' he complained mutely. 'Can't you put it through the speakers?'

'It doesn't work like that,' Sabyasachi not just mimed but grimaced before saying, 'Here's Eunice from Holmfirth. You're on the air, Eunice.'

'What's his name, this vandal you're giving all the publicity?'

'Rory Lucas is my guest today. Did you have –'

Rory tried to fend off their dulled voices with his own. 'Do you know what vandal means?'

'People like you and the people you're attracting that vandalise our landscape.'

'Isn't that you if you've been to look?'

'Don't you dare say I find it attractive,' the caller said with a kind of stifled shrillness. 'We aren't given any choice when we're on the motorway. We have to see that rubbish heap and what people did to it.'

'What's that?' Rory was jolted into demanding.

'Don't you know? I thought you said you had to look for yourself.'

'Fine, don't tell me. I'll see later.' Rory felt hemmed in by his own muffled petulance. 'Whatever's happened, it's change,' he made the effort to declare. 'That's life.'

'You just said it was a joke. Don't you care about anything?' the caller said and transformed the question into a statement with the full stop of an emphatic plastic click.

'Eunice? We seem to have lost Eunice from Holmfirth,' Sabyasachi told anyone who ought to know. 'Here's Brenda from Bingley instead.'

There barely seemed to be: just a mumble buried in the headphones. As Rory reached to adjust them Sabyasachi mouthed 'Don't take those off.'

'I can't hear.'

'Brenda says you didn't answer.'

'That's because I didn't hear.' Rory yanked the headphones lower on his ears and felt more shut in than ever. 'Didn't answer what?' he supposed he had to learn.

'What you were asked,' a flat distant female voice said.

'I told you I couldn't hear you.'

'I didn't ask you anything.' As Rory decided she'd lost any right to politeness she added 'Eunice from Holmfirth did.'

'She rang off.'

'I'm sure we'd all still like to hear what you care about,' Sabyasachi said.

'Plenty.' Rory might have been more specific if he hadn't needed to say 'What?'

'Not books, Brenda said. You don't destroy them if you care about them,' the presenter added, possibly quoting the caller. 'You'll be thinking of his piece called Read, or was it Read?'

'It was both. Pronounce it how you like, and I didn't destroy anything.'

'Hold on for a minute, Brenda,' Sabyasachi said as a technician wearing a grey wool cap over her ears removed Rory's headphones and donned them. 'Hearing me?' the presenter said.

'Like you're in my head. Nothing up with these.'

As she boxed Rory in with the headphones Sabyasachi said 'Just fixing a glitch, Brenda. He's all yours.'

'Sounds pretty destructive to me, drowning War and Peace in an aquarium.'

If anything her voice seemed to have receded, inflaming Rory's frustration. 'Did you see it for yourself? Some people said it changed how they thought about books.'

'I wouldn't waste my time, but my sister saw your other silly business with the wheelchair.'

'That would be Age,' Sabyasachi supplied.

'Age isn't that senseless, and if it ever is he oughtn't to be making fun. Another fish tank with a wheelchair going rusty in the water.'

'It was the most talked-about piece in the exhibition,' Rory felt defensive for saying.

'I'll bet you couldn't broadcast what they said. You don't like criticism much, do you? Shouldn't it make you look again like you keep telling the rest of us to?'

'I do it all the time.' After a pause clogged with silence Rory said 'Is she still there?'

'I think you scared her off.' Sabyasachi patted the air, though Rory hadn't been conscious of shouting. 'Next up is Hugh from Huddersfield,' the presenter said. 'Have you a question for Rory Lucas, Hugh?'

'Where do you get your ideas?'

The voice was so faint that Rory wasn't sure he'd identified it. The invisibility of the caller made him feel as if the failure of one sense had robbed him of another. The sight of the pale boxy room didn't improve matters, nor did Sabyasachi's professionally expectant face. Rory tried closing his eyes, but not for long. 'Wherever other people don't,' he retorted while his lids sprang open as if he were fleeing a nightmare.

'Can't you say where, Rory?' It was indeed his brother, who appeared to think he could help by adding 'Your thing with the tins, didn't you get that from someone working in a supermarket?'

Rory was distracted by the notion that straining his ears had brought him more than Hugh. 'I'm taking all the blame,' he said.

'But didn't you say putting tins on the shelves was a kind of art too?'

Rory couldn't judge whether Hugh aimed to make his brother's work more accessible and populist or was hoping for some kind of acknowledgment. 'That's the truth,' he said.

'Then do you think –' Hugh seemed distracted, perhaps by an ill-defined sound. 'Do you think your things you've been talking about could be about the family?'

'You'll have to tell me how.' This was meant to dismiss the idea rather than invite an explanation, and Rory didn't wait for one. 'Are you at work?'

'No, at the house. Why?'

'I thought someone was calling you.'

'Weren't they saying our name at your end?'

Rory felt bound to say to Sabyasachi 'In case you're wondering, we're brothers.'

'Nothing wrong with family. Hugh, how are you saying Rory's work is about them? Is that including you?'

'I –' Hugh faltered, perhaps from embarrassment. 'I'm at Frugo,' he admitted, 'and our cousin looks after old people and the other one does publishing.'

'Tins and age and books,' the presenter said. 'Well, Rory, it sounds as if you secretly care about something.'

Rory didn't want to claim this as a reason to appreciate his work. 'Are you still hearing that, Hugh?'

'I can't,' Sabyasachi said. 'Have you any more insights for us, Hugh?'

'He's always been artistic.' Hugh's voice had begun to fall short of its intentions before he said 'Rory, I think I still can.'

'We'll need to say goodbye if you've got a crossed line.'

'Hold on,' Rory said and cupped his hands over the headphones. 'Do you want me to come and see you, Hugh?'

'No, you stay there. It's publicity.'

'When I'm done, I mean. You don't sound quite right to me.'

'Nothing's up at all. You ought to find out what they've done to your thing with the tins.'

'If you aren't talking about his work there are callers who want to.'

'I'll come and visit soon and we can go out for a meal or a drink,' Hugh said and was gone.

'Hugh there from Huddersfield speaking up for the family, and now we have Alf from Netherthong. What's your point, Alf?'

Rory watched more than heard Sabyasachi say all this. If there was another voice in the headphones, it sounded buried deep. Only the presenter's expectant look told Rory the caller had finished. 'What did he say?' he was reduced to asking.

Sabyasachi gazed at him before murmuring or mouthing 'You had to get your brother to come to your defence.'

'That's bollocks. I didn't know he was ringing up.'

Sabyasachi patted the air again as if cuffing a child, which left Rory's senses feeling even less reliable. 'Thanks, Alf, and now it's Daphne from Heckmondwike.'

Any voice was so muted that Rory couldn't even identify it as female. Perhaps he was hearing less than a voice inside his head – nothing but the echo of his name. When he grew aware of the presenter's waiting gaze he had no idea how loud he demanded 'What is it this time?'

'You don't seem to want to hear anything you don't like.'

'You're saying that or she is?' When Sabyasachi raised his eyebrows and his upturned hands Rory said 'It's bollocks either way.'

The presenter used both hands to tamp the air down. 'Be as lively as you like, but can you keep an eye on the language?'

The prospect of being restricted still further made Rory's brain feel shrunken. He snatched off the headphones but refrained from slamming them on the ledge in front of him. 'I talk how I talk, like I work how I work.'

'Daphne says that's almost a poem. Maybe you should try your hand at that.'

'Everyone should. Everyone's an artist. You just need to open up your senses.'

Sabyasachi touched his left headphone, apparently to indicate that he was reciting the call. 'In that case why do we need you.'

'You don't,' Rory said and walked out of the studio.

'A final bit of controversy there from concept artist Rory Lucas,' Sabyasachi said through the speaker above the receptionist, who gave Rory a pink smile bordering on straight-lipped. 'Yo Yorkshire! This is the Sabya Show every weekday afternoon on Moorland Radio. My next guest will be Prue Walker, great-grandmother and founder of Wrinkles Against Racism . . .'

As Rory left the concrete building, which was so featureless it might almost have been designed to deny perception any hold, he saw the Frugo supermarket across the business park. If Hugh had been at work Rory could have looked in on him. Perhaps he'd found a girl at last, hence his reluctance to be visited. Unlike Rory, he hadn't discovered that he didn't need them.

Six lanes of traffic were racing back and forth across the moor under a blue sky and flocks of giant clouds. Rory climbed into the aR tSeVe rYwh eRe van and drove onto the motorway, where drivers peered at the letters stencilled on the sides and rear doors of the vehicle before signifying comprehension with an enlightened grin or an aggravated scowl. As he headed west, sunlight flooded across slopes aglow with heather, and someone else might have fancied it was celebrating his approach. Once the motorway began a protracted descent into a valley he saw Can Do on the horizon.

It looked dully familiar. It never had before, and he tried to see it from the viewpoint of a new spectator. At this distance the jagged mass against the stately clouds resembled the ruins of a castle or of some less identifiable building. Closer, colours formed within the outline, eventually betraying that the bulk was constructed from thousands of tins. The viewer would experience a shift of perspective, having grasped that to be separately visible at that distance the tins must be unusually large. They were the biggest cans of paint Rory could find, and he'd lost count of the number of times he'd loaded the van before driving up on the moor to paint every tin the colour of its contents and glue it into place. He'd done his best to see that the arrangement was completely random, but perhaps that was an impossible task. There was an inadvertent pattern, so simple a child could have produced it. Wasn't childlike desirable? Weren't those the perceptions he believed everybody should recapture? Childish was the word that occurred to him just now, perhaps because he felt dispirited by his introversion. He was driving out of the valley, past a herd of sluggish trucks, before he observed that someone had sprayed paint over his work.

Wasn't this a kind of life? The trouble was that when he drove off the motorway, along the road that passed by Can Do, his mind felt as distanced as ever. He parked as close as the road would take him and stepped down from the van. The turf and especially the heather must be springy underfoot, but the sight of the graffiti was dulling his senses. The scrawl didn't even include words, let alone any meaningful image or use of colour. It was the kind of random anonymous doodling that showed up on derelict buildings, a mass of drooling pallid purple loops. Didn't they add to the enigma that Can Do presented to any distant spectator? Might this enliven a few minds? He turned to shade his eyes and peer at the traffic coursing up and down the landscape, but it was pointless to look for signs of interest. He felt as if the graffiti had infected his work with their meaninglessness, unless they were a kind of comment. Perhaps they demonstrated how uninspired and uninspiring his work was, and not just this example. Should he revert to being uninspired in a way that pleased the public? Once he might have painted the landscape, until he'd seen that paintings were as redundant as photographs, pathetic samples of reality if not attempted substitutes for it. Nevertheless he was surveying the moor in case it could entice his perceptions out of the dark undefined place into which they seemed to have sunk, when he thought he heard his name.

He'd turned his mobile phone off at Moorland Radio, and it was still dormant. Nobody was hiding behind Can Do, though more graffiti were. They weren't even visible to traffic, which added to their meaninglessness. He was standing in the shadow of the discoloured piles of metal when the voice repeated 'Rory Lucas.'

Was it just in his head? It seemed muffled enough. As he dodged around the cans, darkness sped across the moor towards him, flattening the heather and the grass. A wind must be up, although he couldn't feel it. His senses had flinched inwards, away from the voice and its implications. His imagination must be playing tricks. He'd stimulated it too much.

A glossy crow sailed up from the undergrowth at the edge of the road and flew straight at him. He was wondering how it could fail to see him – if it took him for part of Can Do – when he realised that it was a plastic bag. Ordinarily he would have appreciated the visual pun, but just now it disturbed him. Was he smoking too much skunk to keep his senses primed? He'd never known the effects to linger the next day. He didn't enjoy hallucinating unless he'd set out to achieve it, still less the useless experience of hearing voices. As the airborne litter subsided in the clutches of a patch of heather he tried to hear the voice again, to prove he could produce it and silence it at will. The effort shrank his consciousness until he lost all awareness of his surroundings, but he wasn't certain that he heard his name in his head. Then he grasped what he was doing – attempting to rouse a hallucination before he had to drive. The notion dismayed him as much as the idea that the voice was lying in wait to take him off guard, and he fled to the van as another flood of shadow rushed towards it. He was glad Hugh hadn't wanted him to visit. He would feel safer at home.