meeting is hugely impressive. After years in the business, she knows a lot of people, and has asked a lot of favours, but apparently what clinched it is that she and Artsy share the same philosophy: art should be free to be enjoyed by everyone. Which is brilliant.
Saying that, his art isn’t free. On the contrary, his pieces run into tens of hundreds of thousands.
Still, no need to split hairs, I tell myself firmly, as we reach a gate swung wide and off its hinges with the sign ‘Keep Out’ scrawled on it and turn down an unmade road. The cab driver seemed to know exactly where he was going when I asked him to go to ‘Artsy’s house’ (the only address I had), and as I bounce around on the back seat, I see a ramshackle farmhouse ahead of me through the windscreen.
‘This is far as I can go,’ declares the cab driver after a couple of minutes.
‘OK, great, thanks.’ Paying him, I climb out, and as the cab reverses down the lane, I look around me.
When the journalist said remote, he wasn’t wrong. Perched up high and hugging the edge of a cliffside, I’m surrounded by tufty hillocks and wild, unkempt farmland. I can’t see anything for miles, apart from the ocean on one side of me and the farmhouse on the other. I walk towards it. Old and weather-beaten, one of the windows appears to be boarded up, and several chickens are running freely around it. Boldly I knock on the door. Nothing. I knock a second time. Again nothing.
I wonder if he’s forgotten I’m coming. I stare uncertainly at the peeling paint on the door for a moment, unsure about what to do. I can’t call him. Artsy has no phone – landline or mobile. Or email him – no Internet or email address either. Apparently Magda had to go through a long and complicated process in order to contact him, ringing various friends of friends on the island who passed secret messages back and forth, like something out of the French Resistance.
I wait a few minutes longer, but it’s now abundantly clear there’s no one in the house. It’s strange for a recluse, but maybe today he’s not feeling that reclusive. Maybe today he’s gone out. Stepping back from the porch, I hesitate for a moment, unsure of what to do next, then decide to have a look around. Well, I’m here now.
Picking my way through the grass in my new sandals, I walk around the side of the ramshackle bar‰€amshackle‹€ar‰€amsns and outbuildings. There’s an abandoned tractor, a rusty bicycle leaning up against a wall, a drum kit . . . A drum kit? What’s a drum kit doing in the middle of a field? Shielding my eyes from the bright sunshine, I stare at it in astonishment, before being distracted by the sight of a man up ahead digging a vegetable patch.
Maybe he can help. I call over to him, ‘Excuse me. Do you know where I can find Artsy?’
Straightening up, he turns round and, seeing me, strides over. Tall and broad-shouldered, he’s wearing a deerstalker hat, plus-fours and argyle socks, and looks a lot like the bronze statue of Sherlock Holmes that’s outside Baker Street Tube Station. It makes for a bizarre sight. Not helped by the fact he’s got a big bushy beard and is smoking a pipe. While wearing flying goggles.
Taking them off, he peers at me. ‘Who’s looking for him?’ he asks, in a gruff southern drawl.
‘My name’s Lucy Hemmingway. I’m from Number Thirty-Eight, a gallery in New York.’ I realise I’m gabbling.
He throws out his hand, which is the size of a dinner plate. ‘Artsy. Pleased to meet you.’
Of course. It had to be him. Who else would wear such an outfit? ‘Oh . . . hi,’ I stammer. Smiling, I shake his hand. He’s not anything like I imagined, though I’m not sure what I did imagine, as he never allows himself to be photographed.
He hands me a shovel. ‘You can help me dig for potatoes.’
Dig for potatoes? I look down at the earth and try not to think about the new sandals that I wore especially for our meeting. ‘Um . . . thanks.’
Luckily it seems Artsy is not just an artist, he’s also a true gentleman.
‘Here, put these on,’ and smiling, he holds out two plastic bags. ‘For your feet, so they don’t get dirty.’
For the next hour I dig for potatoes with plastic bags tied