Warhol's Prophecy

41

THE ROOM ALSO lay towards the rear of the house. Perhaps twenty feet square, it was in complete darkness. Any light that might have encroached was kept out by a pair of thick velvet curtains.

As Walker flicked on the lights and the two fluorescent tubes in the ceiling sputtered into life, Hailey could smell paint. She could also see that the walls on two sides were covered by illustrations of various kinds, and in assorted styles and mediums.

Paintings, sketches, pencil drawings, even watercolours.

There were a number of empty canvases to her right and, at one end of the room, several others of varying sizes, covered by sheets. There was a desk with a single high-backed chair, the desk surface littered with all the paraphernalia of an artist. Tubes of oil paint, brushes, pencils.

She took a step inside the room and Walker closed the door behind her.

‘Well, this is it,’ he said. ‘It used to be a dining room but it’s my studio now.’ He smiled thinly. ‘That sounds so grand, doesn’t it?’

He walked to the other end of the room and pulled open the velvet curtains, allowing some natural light to flood in.

Hailey looked around, mesmerized by the array of pictures, amazed at their diversity and also at the skill that had gone into creating them.

‘Tell me about them,’ she said quietly, moving towards one painting on the wall. It showed a pair of red, cat-like eyes leering towards the viewer, framing a clenched fist that held a long knife.

‘That one was a book cover,’ Walker said. ‘I forget the name of the book. The one beside it was for a record company.’

It showed a slender, naked woman reclining in the arms of a powerfully muscled creature bearing the head of a goat and looking down at her. She was smiling towards the viewer, the tip of her tongue touching her upper lip.

‘I called that “Animal Passion”,’ said Walker, smiling.

Hailey then noticed that the goat-headed body sported a large erect penis.

‘Did they actually use it?’ she wanted to know, nodding towards the massive erection.

Walker shook his head.

Next was a pencil drawing, about ten by eight, of two beautiful women, both naked, facing each other. The one on the left had her hand on the other’s breast; the one on the right had pushed one index finger between the labia of the other.

‘What about this one?’ Hailey asked.

‘That was for me,’ Walker chuckled.

‘Did someone model for it?’

‘I should be so lucky.’

‘Was it done from memory?’

‘One of the girls was a friend.’

Hailey ran her own index finger over the sketch, then moved to the next one.

This was a painting of a small baby being held aloft by its ankle, dangling over the gaping, tooth-filled mouth of a tiger.

‘Feeding Time,’ said Walker, standing close beside her. ‘Another one for a record company.’

‘Which band used it?’

‘They didn’t tell me. Just said what the album was called, and left it up to me.’

There was another nude: another woman. One arm stretched above her head, nipples painted to appear erect. The eyes were closed as if she was in ecstasy, the legs open. Her other hand rested between them, fingers stirring the carefully painted pubic hair.

‘Another one from memory?’ Hailey asked, her voice catching as she stared at the picture.

It was so detailed, so accurate, it might have been a photo.

Walker nodded.

She was aware of how close he was standing. She could practically feel his breath on her neck, but she made no attempt to move.

You don’t want to move, do you?

Her eyes remained on the painted breasts. Hailey’s own nipples were stiffened points now.

You want his hands on you, don’t you?

There was another large painting towards the end of the room.

This was a crucifixion. Christ was naked, his face upturned to heaven, but the eyes were closed not in agony but in pleasure. He was smiling, despite the nails driven through his wrists and feet, the blood dripping from the wounds.

It took Hailey a second to realize that the Christ figure bore the face of Adam Walker.

Instead of angels, naked women and huge rabid dogs sat around the cross. In places, the dogs were mounting the women, the white foam of their madness dribbling from their open jaws like ejaculate. There were mounds of excrement, both human and canine, around the foot of the cross. One of the women, a statuesque blonde, gripped the penis of Christ and was licking the swollen glans with her tongue. But the tongue itself was that of a snake.

‘That was for my father,’ said Walker flatly. She caught a hint of hostility in his tone.

‘What did he say when he saw it?’ she wanted to know.

‘He’s never seen it. I’ll show him one day, before he dies.’

‘It’s very powerful,’ she told him.

‘They say the best art comes from rage, don’t they?’

He was staring at the painting. Hailey was staring at him.

The knot of muscles at the side of his jaw was pulsing angrily.

‘Perhaps I should thank him for giving me that,’ snapped Walker. ‘It was all he did give me, apart from the scars.’

She looked puzzled.

‘You can’t see them of course,’ he continued bitterly. ‘Mental scars are invisible, but they mark you more deeply than any fucking knife ever could.’

‘What happened?’

‘Does it really matter?’

‘If you don’t want to talk about it—’

He cut her short.

‘No, I’ll talk about it,’ he said. ‘What would you like to know? The beatings? Would you like to know the first time he put me in hospital? I think I was only nine. A hairline fracture of the left tibia. Strange how you remember things like that, isn’t it? He learnt some caution after that. He used a belt instead. Its marks usually faded after a couple of days. And all the time he was hitting me, he’d be telling me how useless I was – how I’d disappointed him. How I’d never amount to anything. If I did badly at school, he hit me. If I was late in, he hit me. He used to claim that if I was a failure before him, then I was a failure before God. That carried on until I was seventeen.’

His eyes were blazing furiously.

‘I’m sorry, Adam.’ Hailey wanted to touch him, to comfort him.

‘Most priests get their calling when they’re young,’ Walker said evenly. ‘In their teens or early twenties. Not him, no. He got his call when he was thirty-eight, when it was time to clear his conscience. When it was time for redemption. Why would God want a cunt like that?’

‘Did he beat your sister and your brother?’ Hailey asked quietly, almost reverentially.

‘I don’t know. We never spoke about it. He always warned us not to speak about it.’

‘I didn’t mean to pry. I really am sorry.’

He smiled. ‘Perhaps the old bastard helped me in some ways. Like I said, the best art comes from rage. He gave me that rage.’

Walker was looking around at some of the other paintings that adorned the room.

‘You learn to deal with it in time,’ he said quietly. ‘You learn to deal with anything eventually. If you get beaten enough times, it gets to the stage where it becomes routine. You think that’s the way it is – that everyone lives like that.’

‘And you still visit him now? Despite what he did?’

‘He’s still my father,’ replied Walker flatly.

Hailey reached out and touched his hand gently.

He smiled at her and gestured around him.

Yet more paintings. More products of a great talent, thought Hailey, astonished by the diversity and power in some of them.

‘I don’t know how Waterhole’s record company would react to some of these,’ she said, studying a painting of a small boy holding a gun, forcing the barrel into the mouth of a besuited bald man who was kneeling before the child as if in prayer.

‘They’ll probably reject them,’ Walker said, ‘just like everyone else has.’

Hailey turned to look at him.

He nodded. ‘No one has ever bought a single one of my paintings. No publisher, no record company, no one. I’m a fraud, Hailey.’