Guns in the Gallery

There was a surprisingly large turnout in the Crown and Anchor’s function room that Wednesday evening. Elvis Presley had a wider fan-base in Fethering than Carole might have imagined. And Spider’s performance was certainly unlike anything she had ever seen before.

She wasn’t quite sure what she had been expecting, but what impressed her about the framer was his total seriousness. His routine was like some religious rite, an act of transubstantiation whereby he actually became Elvis Presley. Carole had vaguely anticipated that he might sing, but he didn’t. He simply mimed to The King of Rock ’n’ Roll’s songs. And he did do it brilliantly.

He’d got all the gear too. Carole didn’t know it, but Jude recognized that Spider was wearing a perfect facsimile of the white suit with a sunburst motif that Elvis had worn for his final concert at the Market Square Arena in Indianapolis on 26 June 1977. And the set he performed included many of the songs that had been sung on that iconic occasion. ‘Jailhouse Rock’ was there, ‘Hound Dog’, ‘Teddy Bear, ‘I Can’t Stop Loving You’, along with other classics from the canon: ‘My Way’, ‘Unchained Melody’ and ‘Love Me Tender’.

But Spider had somehow improved on the original. Though he had the physical bulk of the grotesquely bloated Elvis of his later years, the versions he did of the songs, based on the studio recordings, had a musical purity rarely evident onstage at that time. The effect was strangely disconcerting for aficionados of The King, but nonetheless impressive. The Crown and Anchor crowd gave each number an ecstatic reaction and at the end, before his carefully choreographed encores, Spider got a standing ovation.

Clearly every facial tic, every bodily swivel, every hand gesture had been rehearsed in exhaustive detail. Each time the act was performed it would be exactly the same. To Carole and Jude, who had inevitably been preoccupied with such matters, it raised interesting speculations about the nature of art. What Spider did was far from original, and yet it had an integrity of its own. Was a man who duplicated exactly the movements of a long-dead singer any less of an artist than someone who had the idea of sticking photographs of dead black teenagers on to a fibreglass cannon?

The other detail about the evening that surprised them was the involvement of Bonita Green. They had expected her to be there to support her employee, but they didn’t think she’d be part of the act. It was Bonita, however, who controlled the pacing of the show. She was in charge of the CD player from which the Elvis numbers were played. She judged how long the applause after each number should be allowed to continue before she started the next track. She was, in fact, a very efficient stage-manager.

Into both Carole and Jude’s minds came the question as to how close the relationship between gallery-owner and framer actually was. There was between them during the performance a practised ease, but after the final ovation they still seemed very relaxed in each other’s company. Again Spider’s manner was protective, almost proprietorial. Perhaps this was simply the result of the two of them working together in the Cornelian Gallery for so long, but both Carole and Jude suspected there might be something more to it.

After Spider had finished his act, a good convivial atmosphere had built up in the Crown and Anchor. Beneath the beard on Ted Crisp’s face was something that came very close to a beam. Elvis Presley had brought the punters in and the bar takings by the end of the evening would be very healthy. The landlord was clearly thinking that Spider’s routine might become a regular booking.

While Carole queued in the crush at the bar for more Chilean Chardonnay, Jude drifted across to join the congratulatory throng around the star of the evening. Bonita Green, she noticed, sat very close to Spider, almost as if she were acting as his minder.

Among the crowd she was surprised to see Ned Whittaker. She hadn’t noticed him earlier in the evening, but presumably he had been there for the duration. It struck her that she hadn’t actually seen him since the Monday of the previous week when he’d come to Woodside Cottage seeking explanations for his daughter’s death. The millionaire’s face was still very drawn and his eyes were surrounded by dark shadows. He didn’t look as though he had slept much since the loss of Fennel.

Jude wondered why Ned was there. It was of course entirely possible that he was just a big Elvis Presley fan, but it seemed a strange choice of an evening out for someone so clearly still suffering from recent bereavement.

But he seemed pleased to see her; in fact he positively sought her out. ‘Could I have a word, Jude?’

‘Sure.’

He looked uneasily around the crowded pub. ‘I meant somewhere a bit more private. I’ve got the car parked outside. It’ll only take a minute if you . . .?’