Joseph O'Neill - The Breezes

‘I’ll be there, Mr Breeze,’ Whelan guaranteed. ‘Count on it.’

Today is Sunday. Still no sign of Whelan.

Yesterday morning, while waiting for that joker, I forced myself to go down into the basement workshop. As usual, it was so gloomy that I had to switch on the light, weakly diffused by a naked bulb hanging from the ceiling. I sat down on a box and lit a cigarette and stared at the lifeless shapes of my works in progress. This lasted about a minute. Then I looked up at the barred, dirt-smudged window: dustbins and, looming behind and blotting out the sky, the hedge, dark with new leaves. I groggily bolted back upstairs.

I went to the kitchen and made myself a double-strength cup of coffee. I flicked another cigarette out of the packet. A thin sweat started filming my upper lip. Just a month previously, this telephone conversation had taken place with the gallery owner.

‘How’s it going, John?’ Simon Devonshire said.

‘Great,’ I said. ‘Just great.’

‘So, when do we get to see your stuff? We’re all very excited, you know.’

‘You’ll get it soon,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry, it’s all under control.’

Devonshire laughed and said, ‘It had better be. I’d like the chairs within the next week or two. We need to photograph them for the catalogue.’

The catalogue? ‘The catalogue?’

‘We’re going to have to have a meeting about that,’ Devonshire said, ‘to discuss the philosophy that underpins your work. People will want to know what they’re looking at.’

‘My philosophy.’ I swallowed. ‘Yes, of course,’ I said.

Devonshire laughed again — as far as I could tell, Devonshire was always laughing. He said, ‘Don’t worry, John, we’ll think of something. Leave the theorizing to us. You just concentrate on finishing those pieces and we’ll look after the rest.’

Then, two weeks later, we met for lunch. We sat on a grassy slope by a fountain in a small park in the city centre. I had made up my mind to break the news to him with these words: Simon, there’s something I have to tell you. I have no chairs. I’m sorry, I’ve tried, but there it is: it hasn’t worked out.

It was a hot spring day, nineteen or twenty degrees, and Devonshire was elated. ‘Just look at that,’ he said, gesturing grandly at the sun. ‘And look at those bastards,’ he said, pointing at a brilliant gathering of trees in flower. ‘Extraordinary. Absolutely bloody extraordinary.’

I dutifully looked at the magnolias. There was a forceful charm about Devonshire which made him difficult to resist. Although in his mid-forties and, as a gallery owner of real influence, possessed of a certain amount of absolute power, with his enthusiasm, straw-coloured hair and animated expression he still had an uncorrupted, boyish demeanour. His gold-buttoned blazer discarded on the grass and his cotton shirt flapping out of his jeans, he sat down insouciantly in the sunlight and with a groan of comfort unwrapped a smoked salmon sandwich. He took a giant bite and half of the sandwich disappeared. ‘So, Johnny, I take it that we can pick up the stools this afternoon.’

‘Well, not quite,’ I said. I paused. ‘Simon, there’s something I have to tell you.’ I looked at the tips of my shoes.

‘What is it?’ he said, his mouth still full. ‘What’s the matter?’

I thought I detected a note of personal concern in his voice. I raised my head to speak and looked him in the face. I had made a mistake. There was nothing solicitous in those eyes. There was only pure threat.

Shocked, I fell momentarily silent; nevertheless, looking again at the ground, I forced out what I had to say.

Devonshire said, ‘What do you mean, you won’t be ready for another two to three weeks? The show’s four weeks away. The catalogue needs to be ready next week.’

I was silent. I made a feckless gesture with my hands.

Crumpling wrapping paper in his fist, Devonshire stood up and sat on the ledge of the fountain. Momentarily he just regarded me, wiping his mouth with a paper tissue. Behind him, a team of rusty fishes spurted loops of glistening water into the air. Then he said, ‘One week, Johnny. That’s all I’m giving you.’ He stood up and turned his back to me and tilted up to the sun. ‘Otherwise, my boy, you’re going to compensate me for my loss. Do you understand?’

I did not like the sound of that word — compensate.

Devonshire turned unhurriedly and picked up his jacket. ‘One week,’ he said. ‘Don’t let yourself down, Johnny,’ he said.

That week expired last Monday, the day when I left this message with his assistant: Tell Mr Devonshire the chairs will be ready by next Monday. Guaranteed.

Next Monday is tomorrow; which is why, yesterday morning, after I had finished my coffee and cigarette, I forced myself down the stairs into the basement for a second time. There they were, in the gloom, the five unfinished stools I had started making six months ago — 5 Tripods , they were named. Superficially, they looked fine: five stools, each with wooden seats of a slightly different design, each supported by the same three curved metallic legs. But those legs were the problem. They were unbalanced — so unbalanced that the stools would not stand up. The moment you removed them from the supporting wall, that was it: crash, over they went, in a slow, certain topple. My blunder, of course, was that in my impetuosity I had assembled the chairs without first checking their stability. Stability I had taken for granted.

My task was clear. I had to redesign the legs while nevertheless leaving the chairs’ present structure intact, since it was too late to start wholly afresh. Then I had to drive the chairs over to Devonshire’s. All this within forty-eight hours. That deadline was my trump card. I was counting on time to spur me to action.

Using a model, I desperately experimented with the addition of a fourth leg — a wooden leg, it had to be, because I had run out of stainless steel. Not only did it look terrible, but the glue I used to secure the leg to the seat simply did not hold. Every time I tried to place a weight upon the seat, off came the leg. Never mind, Johnny, I said to myself after the third failure, try again. Stick at it. Persevere. Never say die. I cleaned the wood, reapplied the glue and pressed the parts together once more. I stayed frozen there for minutes, my face reddening with determination. This time it was going to work. This time …

I gently released my grip. After giving the adhesive time to take, I turned the stool up and gingerly stood it on its four legs. So far so good. It stayed up. Then came the moment of truth. I took a thick cabinet-making manual and gently placed it on the seat. I waited. Nothing happened. The chair remained upright. It worked.

I had done it. The stool may have been ugly, but it was a stool; it was better than nothing. All that remained was to affix this fourth leg to the actual chairs, and then I’d be home and dry. Blankly, I lit a cigarette. I couldn’t believe it. After so many fruitless months, the nightmare was over. The show would bomb, of course, but at least it would go on. From a legal point of view, if nothing else, I was in the clear.

I heard a creaking noise. I turned around. It was the model chair, and like a foal doing its unsteady splits, it was slowly collapsing as the wooden leg gave way underneath it. With a thick report the book thudded to the ground, followed by the seat, with a crash. Shit, I shouted. Fucking, bloody, fucking shit.

I flung my cigarette at the wall and heeled it to a crumbling butt. Sweating with anger, an idea occurred to me. I would cut the legs in half and use the extra metal tubing to provide a triangular lateral base. Yes, that was it! I’d chop the suckers in half! Let’s see how they’d like that! But just as I was poised to ignite the blue flame of the blowtorch, I envisaged the end product: crippled, squat, ugly seats that were neither one thing nor the other; stools that fell between two bloody stools. I removed my safety goggles and dropped the cutter. I looked up at the window’s dark rectangle and said out loud, That’s it. To hell with it. I give up.