Theodore Pinkerton's willingness to make an investment without getting much in the way of a return has allowed the Port Derrum creative community to thrive when it might otherwise have died.
It's very difficult not to respect him for that – regardless of objections to the inflated way he presents himself – and to admire Bess for making it happen because of the love she has for her artistic fraternity.
There is one question I've never asked, though. "How do you even meet someone like that? A gentrified person who's happy to throw money at you?"
Bess sighs. "He's a second cousin twice removed, or something, of a university friend of mine – Olympia Fulton. She hooked us up."
"Is she also from the realms of stratospheric wealth?"
"As nobby as they come. But where he's a total arse, she puts the 'fab' in 'I'd die for her'. How they're related, I don't know."
"They don't sound very related." I study Bess' profile. I don't need to study it. I know it intimately after a year of observation, but I find it increasingly difficult not to look at her whenever I'm around her. She has a little mole in the hollow of her cheek. I fight the urge to run my finger underneath her cheekbone, feel the tiny soft swell of that mole. "Why didn't you askherfor the money?"
Bess raises a pointer finger and gives it a single shake. "Never buy property with your friends. Quickest way to become unfriends." Then she sits up straight and leans towards me with her eyes narrowed. "You know what he did today? He tried to get me to sell some painting done by, and I quote, a 'wife in waiting' of an investment banker – or some shit – he's trying to impress or buy favour with. Why he has to is beyond me. He has everything already. All of it." She sweeps an arm in the direction of "everything" and slumps back into the sun lounger. "God!"
"Would you like me to offer an adroit comment about the assumptive behaviours of the entitled? Or...cluck in sympathy? Hug?" I proffer the last option with maximum irony and absolutely no delusions of hope. Bess is not a toucher, least of all a hugger.
"No. I'm done now."
I'm not. It's very difficult not to be cynical about extreme white privilege when you come from a brown working-class family. "Bess?"
"Yes, Ed?"
"You're not worried he's a liability?"
She side-eyes me with an amused twist to her lips. "Theo? He might be a complete and utter twonk, but he's totally harmless and I have a lot to be grateful to him for. I just wish hewasn'ta complete and utter twonk, so I don't have to be begrudging about my gratitude."
Two sparrows, a male and female land on the table and eye the packet of crisps.
Keeping her eyes on them, Bess pulls out her phone and swipes the screen. In the big wide world of social media exposure the plane video has thrown open for her, I'm guessing no opportunity can be wasted.
While the male turns his head from side to side, weighing up his chances of stealing some food, she pulls a hanky out of her pocket, dips it in her drink, then, unfathomably, wipes away her eye makeup with the confidence of someone with an extremely steady hand – all while keeping her camera trained on the birds.
The sparrow hops forward and retrieves a crumb, then hops back to his companion and feeds it to her.
Bess swivels her phone around to face her.
"Hi romance lovers. As you all know, I live for fictional romance in books because in real life, romance is a dying art. Or it is in the human realm at least. In the animal kingdom, males have to make all the effort to get the attention of the females. Think of a peacock, or fireflies with their flashing lights. Even male pufferfish make an effort to attract a mate, building circular sand sculptures to protect future eggs. Best circle wins the girl.
"What do human males do? Nothing. Worse than nothing. They think complimenting their little moustaches with a scraggly mullet makes women swoon. All it does is make them look like paedophiles that have been teleported in from the 1980s."
I stifle my groan. Not because I disagree with the paedophile comment, but because she's, yet again, conveniently tarring all men with the same convenient brush. The untruth of it is...wild. And unintelligent. She is being wildly unintelligent.
"Women, on the other hand, are gorgeous. We take every effort to make ourselves look nice, to look attractive. Why? Why on earth do we do that when men make no attempt to reciprocate?" She holds up a finger. "You know what I say? Don't swoon, don't flirt, don't even look at them. They're not worthy of our attention. Let's take a leaf out of their book and not bother to make any effort either."
She ends the video and does things with her thumbs, which presumably means she's posting it to her TikTok channel.
Then she places the phone on the table, locates her liquid eye liner and compact mirror in her bag and carefully redefines her lovely eyes with her trademark winged flick at the edges.
"Some effort you're not making."
"What? I'm doing it formybenefit, not yours or any other man. TikTok viewers want real people, authenticity, not humans augmented with filters and the lie of a makeup face mask."
"But it's not real is it? You actually aren't being authentic on your videos, because everyday-life Bess wears 1950s eye liner."
"I take your point." She finishes her second eye and tucks everything back in her bag. "And I'm going to conveniently ignore it."
I laugh. It is as much born of defeat than amusement. Nothing I can say, nothing Ihavesaid, will dissuade Beth from her crusade.
