I hope this gives you some pleasure.
Best wishes,
Philip
In the Name of Art
Nobody liked the graffiti. It had begun as a small daub of unintelligible lettering – an obscure symbol on the last corner house but, over the last year and a half, it had spread like a deadly fungus over every available surface: garden wall, garage door, even the lamp posts. The houses with no front gardens to offer protection were most hard hit; below the ground floor windows, around the front doors, the space between the upper and lower windows – anywhere the spray cans could reach. No-one saw the perpetrators; they came in the dead of night working quickly and silently. Only when their next victim left his house the following morning would the evidence of their nocturnal labours be noticed. Residents complained to each other; various neighbourhood schemes were set up but with little effect. People needed to work, and if they needed to work, they needed to sleep. Nobody was prepared to sit up all night, perhaps for an entire week, on the off-chance of observing the night visitors.
Mrs. Jupp lived at number 57. Her house had been particularly targeted. It was once a pale peach colour with pretty plasterwork details around the windows. It now resembled a painter’s palette. The prolific but untalented artists drawn by the cool canvas of the facade, had competed one with the other until it was a dense confusion of juxtaposed letters and symbols, almost obliterating the door and windows themselves. Mrs. Jupp sympathised with her neighbours and they nodded and sympathised with the jumbled mess that was now the front of her house. “Poor thing. Such a sweet old lady – and her house had always looked so pretty!”
The old dear loved her garden – more of a jungle really. She hadn’t her old energy and she had learned to love the weeds as much as the faithful perennials that jostled for space amongst them. There was one part of the garden, however, that she never went. Years before, surveyors had been and declared that the whole place would have to be dug away and re-earthed – all at great expense; something about an old unregistered tin mine that was conjectured to have existed some two hundred years previous. But nothing had ever been followed up and Mrs. Jupp had ceased worrying about it. But there, between the michaelmas daisies and the rockery was a straight oblong of grass that had curious dents in it. She could just as easily reach the rockery via the rhododendrons so she had no cause to step onto it. It was often wet long after the rest of the garden had dried off from the rain and, if she bent her ear close to the ground, she could hear strange popping sounds. For half the night, Mrs. Jupp sat thinking. Her bedroom light, glowing like a luminous peach behind the drapes, burned well into the early hours. The following morning at around 11.00 o’clock she returned from town with several large plastic bags in each hand. For the remainder of the day she kept quietly to herself.
The side of the house was reached by a wooden gate, which lead directly from the street; a huge tract of sprayable wall which composed the entire right lateral of her home and stretched upwards and long-ways – a perfect heaven for any would-be spray handler with itchy fingers.
A little after midnight she crept out of the kitchen and round to the side of the house and there, right by the wooden gate, she placed her first irresistible treasure: a brand new spray can full of luxurious purple dye. A few steps further an identical canister, only orange; and then, a foot away from the michaelmas daisies, a luminous green variety. It was from here that she had thrown, with certain difficulty, some dozen more – all a glorious rich red, mounted up like a funeral pyre over the strangely uneven tract of grass between the daisies and the rockery.
That night, Mrs. Jupp omitted to bolt the gate. In fact, she left it wide open, giving a perfect view of the virgin canvas and there, in the still of the back bedroom, she sat and waited.
To keep herself busy she picked up her knitting – a navy woollen scarf for an undeserving great nephew. Still, it kept her occupied. Click, clack, click, clack,… the needles kept time with the bedside clock. Click, clack, click, clack… She could wait all night if needs be. And then she heard it; an uninvited foot had knocked over the first trophy. There were footsteps, she had no idea how many. The prey were taking the bait. She let go her knitting and peeped just above the sill. There must have been at least half a dozen of them – the whole gang may be. One of them had spotted the final prize. There was no order, no caution. Ah, foolish youth. The daisies were crushed underfoot as eight pairs of legs ran thundering onto the forbidden rectangle. What nocturnal scribe would not have jumped for joy at such a find? – and with the prospect of two hundred square feet of free expression into the bargain.
There were no cries, no shouts, no commotion at all. As silently as they came, they made their final exit. Mrs. Jupp heard a short, low rumble. The house shuddered very slightly and a huge cloud of dust rose up and began drifting over the garden wall. She made her way slowly downstairs and stepped onto the gravel path. The rockery had all but disappeared. A couple of pieces of stone were sticking up through the soft earth and the rhododendron was leaning perilously to one side. The michaelmas daisies would have to be sorted, quite hopeless they were. But that could wait until morning.
During the following few months the street began to put on a fresh face. It was imperceptible at first; a lick of paint here and a lick of paint there. Slowly it began to assume its old charm as the awakening house owners took pride once more in their homes; none so much as dear Mrs. Jupp. There was even a whip round to help her. Her little house had been so disfigured.
“Not peach this time I feel” she was heard to say.
“Something a little bolder… why not a nice bright red? … and, by the way, I’d be terribly grateful if someone could lend a hand with the garden, it’s really needing a good going over?”
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