The Naked Drinking Club by Rhona Cameron Page B

now.’
    ‘Sydney?’ I presumed they had an art school in Sydney.
    ‘Mmm.’ She nodded and smiled. I tried to ignore Nick unravelling a small piece of folded paper, which I knew would be coke. He fumbled around, spilling a little, mopping it up with his finger and sucking it.
    ‘Nick! Come on, eh?’ Hugo gestured to me. I looked up, pretending just to notice.
    ‘No, it’s fine, really, it’s totally all right, go ahead.’ I turned back to Robin, my only real hope.
    ‘So you were saying, you graduated,’ she prompted.
    ‘Yes, I graduated but my trouble was—’
    ‘Kerry?’ Nick offered me the first line. There were six chopped out on a table mat with pictures of different kinds of fish. This surprised me, given that Max had to be picked up from his grandparents.
    I sniffed it up my right nostril, for only the third time in my life. Robin went next.
    ‘You were saying?’ she asked when she’d finished and passed the mat on.
    ‘Yes. You see, my father was actually a famous artist.’ I offered Robin and the others a Benson & Hedges. They all declined in favour of Marlboro and Silk Cut.
    I scanned the area for ideas of my father’s name. I thought about the child called Max, waiting on his mum and dad. Then I thought about
Mad Max
and how it starred Mel Gibson who was Australian, then I put Mad and the ax from Max together and I formed Maddox which sounded like an artist. In fact, there was an artist called Conroy Maddox who was part of a surrealist group of British painters. I remembered him from sixth-year art studies, the one subject that kept me at school for my final year. The discovery of the name excited me and caused my heart to pound as my brain raced for another name which was to be his second, which had to go well with the first but it had be quick; I mustn’t take too long, otherwise I would give myself away.
    On the table was a lighter with a Harley-Davidson on it, and so my father was named.
    ‘Maddox Davidson. He was part of a group of Scottish painters from the sixties. No?’
    ‘No, doesn’t ring any bells.’
    ‘Well, he was very well thought of. Not by me, though.’ I added some criticism of my father for authenticity.
    ‘So it’s in the blood, then?’ asked Nick, grinding his teeth.
    ‘Must be. Unfortunately it’s not the only thing, though.’ I tilted my wine glass to the side. Some of them nodded like the suckers they were becoming. ‘Yep, unfortunately my father died a penniless drunk.’
    ‘Oh no, that’s so sad,’ said the thinner of the two thin girls, the one with the lipstick and the sunglasses.
    ‘Yep, everything we had, all the fortune he’d acquired, the lot, all gone. He was just mad, destructive. He got called Mad Maddox, that’s how Edinburgh knew him.’ I was really pushing it now, surely.
    ‘So when was that, then?’ asked Robin sincerely, pulling her knees up under her chin and wrapping her arms round her legs.
    ‘In my final year at art school. He didn’t even make my graduation show.’ I quickly scanned the group to see if anyone was going to pick me up on ‘show’. I didn’t know if one had an art show or not.
    ‘So you decided to get away and start afresh. I can understand that.’ Hugo spoke slowly, trying tentatively to guess my life story.
    I nodded to encourage him. ‘I was tired of living in my father’s shadow. He was a very powerful character and extremely well thought of on the British art scene. I mean, he was a terrible father, but a great painter.’
    ‘Maddox Henderson,’ muttered Robin.
    ‘Maddox Davidson,’ I corrected her. Nick laid out another batch of lines.
    ‘What sort of stuff did he paint?’
    I should have prepared myself for Robin’s question but I was concentrating on Nick chopping out another six lines. It felt like seconds ago since he was chopping out the last lot. How long would this go on for? How was I going to tie in my father’s death with me being here trying to flog a group of well-educated people