I slap a cap into her palm and turn to leave the kitchen. I throw, "Grow a fringe," as a parting comment.
Elly returns serve with a "Hello! Fro!" that I should have seen coming.
I return the eggs Benedict to the customer, apologise for the delay, and try to do some good service stuff like asking if there's anything else they need, because I begrudgingly value the profitability of the café part of my business highly. It's the bit that makes most of the money, after all.
The gallery does fine, but most of the general populace have a taste for tea and scones. Not all of them have a taste for the way in which Port Derrum’s often eccentric artistic community chooses to express itself.
“Ah, Bess?” says Lutek on my way back to the gallery. “Can I have a minute?”
I raise my eyebrows at him and walk in behind the café counter.
“Gerard’s asked for studio space in my workshop.” Lutek’s workshop is a shed out the back of the gallery that he rents off me for half of what he might pay elsewhere.
“Do you have space in your workshop for him?” I know very well what’s about to come. Gerard is one of the artists who contributes work to the gallery. He makes stained-glass suncatchers and takes commissions for windows.
“No.”
“But you said ‘yes’ anyway?” One of the things about Lutek is that because he’s exceptionally nice to everyone, all the time, he can’t say “no”. I mean, he’s physically capable of saying “no”, he just can’t bring himself to. “Lutek, the only person you always say ‘yes’ to is me, because I’m your boss and everything I request you to do in relation to your job is therefore reasonable. Even if it isn’t.”
“Right. It’s just that Gerard’s rent is going up and he can’t afford it anymore. He’s found a cheaper place to live, but there’s no space suitable for him to set up a workshop.”
“Agh. This place.” Port Derrum, being in Devon, is a poster child for the cost-of-living crisis. One of the reasons I set up the gallery and café was to protect the local artistic movement after many of them were forced out of town due to no longer being able to afford to live here.
The gallery allows an income for their creative passion, the café provides a living-waged day-or-weekend job for some of them, and the three flats above offer affordable housing for those really in need, like young, solo-mum Elly.
“So you want to split the rent?”
Lutek rubs the back of his neck and smiles apologetically. “Yes. If we can.”
My “Alright” comes out on a sigh. Needs-must scenarios like this one seem to be occurring with more frequency lately. “I’ll draw up some new paperwork.” I give him a clap on his upper arm. “You’re a good man, Lutek.”
Out on the street, two middle-aged white women look through the gallery’s external door, then push it open and step inside. They are tourists, or day trippers. One wears bright white zip-up sneakers and has the distinct look of a pottery buyer.
The other, glancing around and not approaching anything to have a closer look, wears a mauve shirt and has the distinct appearance of a Devonshire tea imbiber who would quite like to bugger off next door at the nearest opportunity.
I glide over to greet them, then head behind the gallery counter so as not to hover, turning the woman in the string bikini on the way.
They peruse the smaller, cheaper creative pieces near the gallery door that have been strategically placed for impulse buying on purchase or pre-exit, like sweets at the supermarket counter.
There is, apparently, a whole psychology behind the placement of goods in such stores to optimise buying potential. It would be irresponsible of me not to try and replicate it, given that the gallery represents a large proportion of Port Derrum's creative community.
The two women wander about, pausing intermittently to look and touch, towards the larger art pieces in the back. They stop at an oil painting that causes most people to halt their slow shuffling and voice an opinion.
The painting – one of mine – is filled, frame to frame, with a garishly-coloured group of women laughing, one of whom wears a white T-shirt with "Mass hysteria" printed across the front. The title of the painting isSmashing the Patriarchy One Punchline at a Time, which is, admittedly a mouthful for a painting title, but I like it and so it has stayed.
It's been hanging for five months. It will hang for another five months if I don't change it out for something else. People don't want to buy protest art. They want quaint depictions of the Devon coastline, or the art created by clients from Jeanette’s art therapy classes.
And that is precisely what they get at The Port Derrum Gallery and what mostly keeps it afloat. My paintings are the sideshow at the back of the exhibition space. An amusing diversion, a conversation point, a brash push in the direction of the art that is pleasant and inoffensive to the eye and which browsers didn't know, until that point, they wanted to buy.
So my art serves its purpose. Not the purpose I intended when I began my artistic journey, but it'sapurpose.
The mauve-shirted woman leans forward and reads the artist's, my name, aloud. Then she says, "Someone get this poor woman a cigarette and a massage."
I stifle a laugh. As far as amateur art criticism goes, this is one of the gentler ones, but is no less entertaining than the disparaging ones. I mentally store it to share with Ed later.
By the time five minutes has elapsed, the woman with the zippered shoes places a ceramic mug on the counter that she would like gift wrapped and I feel a disproportionate amount of smug.
After two years of running the gallery, I can usually spot their partialities a mile off. Unfortunately for me, because I'm the only one working there at any one time, I have no one to say things like, "Told you the man in the cravat would buy the crocheted nipple warmers."
