Warhol's Prophecy

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.’

42

FOR LONG SECONDS she stood in silence, looking first at the picture-covered walls and then at Walker.

‘You told me earlier you’d done work for both record companies and publishers,’ she said.

‘I have. I’ve submitted work, but they’ve always rejected it,’ he admitted.

‘But, Adam, this stuff is brilliant. I know some of it’s a bit controversial, but it’s great.’

‘I wish everyone else agreed with you.’ He lowered his gaze. ‘I should have come clean. I shouldn’t have lied, but I didn’t want you to think I was a failure. I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be. You’re not a failure when you can produce work like this.’ She turned and made an expansive gesture with her hand, designed to encompass the contents of the room.

‘I’m a failure until someone pays me for my work.’

‘But if you haven’t sold any paintings, how do you survive? How do you manage to live here and support yourself?’

‘There’s no mortgage on the house, and I’ve got money in the bank. When my grandmother died, she left me some money. It’s been in a trust fund since I was a child. It keeps me going if I’m careful: the interest is enough to pay for my expenses every month. I just paint every day. I love it. I still submit things to publishers and record companies, and the rejections still keep coming back. But, you never know, one day I might crack it. Perhaps with your help.’

She nodded.

He moved towards one of the sheet-covered canvases, took hold of one corner of the material and gently pulled it free.

‘I did this for you,’ he said quietly.

Hailey stepped forward, eyes widening.

‘Adam, it’s beautiful,’ she whispered.

The painting was of Becky.

Hailey reached out to touch the image. It was perfect. As if her daughter had sat for hours while Walker painstakingly fashioned this portrait.

‘From memory,’ Hailey murmured, still awestruck by the painting.

‘It’s what she was wearing the day she got lost,’ he reminded her. ‘The day I found her.’

Hailey nodded, her eyes drawn particularly to the bright red coat. It was virtually luminous in its brilliance.

‘I hope you don’t mind,’ he said, almost apologetically. ‘I wanted you to have it.’

‘Thank you,’ she murmured, turning towards him.

He smiled. ‘At least someone likes my work. I hope Becky likes it too.’

‘She’ll love it,’ Hailey told him, reaching out to gently brush his cheek with her hand.

As she did so, she stepped forward.

He leant towards her and their lips brushed.

She closed her eyes as they kissed more passionately. Hailey pushed her tongue past the hard white edges of his teeth and stirred the warmth within.

He responded with surprising tenderness, drawing her closer to him, into his arms, kissing her deeply.

When they finally parted, she was breathing heavily, gazing up into his eyes.