“Peter, let me introduce Marcia to you.”  George, the gallery owner, descended on Peter like a tax demand.  “Marcia, this is our brightest new talent, Peter Wainwright.  Peter, Marcia is the arts correspondent for the Guardian.”

“One of the correspondents,” corrected Marcia, holding out her hand.  Behind her George silently mouthed, “Be nice!”

Peter shook her hand.  “George tells me I have to grovel to you if I’m to make him any money.”  George groaned in despair and walked off in pursuit of another martini.

“Oh, you don’t have to grovel, Peter.  Your work speaks for itself.  I have to say that I am genuinely impressed.  For a first showing this is very assertive stuff.”

“Thank you.  How many pieces are you buying?”

“Oh, God forbid!  I mean, it is very good, but it’s a tad too dark for my living room,” she added, hastily.

Peter laughed.  “Relax, I’m just messing with you.  I’m not sure I’d want it in my living room either.  In fact, I know I wouldn’t.  I paint my nightmares, precisely because I don’t want to live with them.”

“Yes, I was going to ask you about that.  What’s this fixation about clowns?  Are they really from your nightmares?”

“Sort of.  I mean, I don’t wake up screaming about them.  But I have a genuine phobia of them.  Nasty, creepy things.  I was the only kid in the village that hated the circus coming to town.”

“Really?  Why’s that?”

“It’s their makeup.  Take him, for example.”  Peter indicated the clown portrait hanging on the wall.  “What’s he feeling?”

“I have to say that he’s one of the saddest clowns I’ve seen.”

“Yes, that’s it exactly.  Look closely and he’s weeping, no tears, but you can see that’s what he’s doing.  But unfocus, and his makeup is laughing.  Two-faced buggers!  Never trust a clown.  You never know where you are with a clown.”

“I’ll… bear that in mind.  Should I ever have to relate to one.”

They moved onto the next picture: Clown with Dog.

“Your technique with a palette knife is extraordinary.  Where did you learn that?”

Peter shook his head.  “I don’t use a palette knife.  Not for most of it, anyway.  A knife is too sharp.  Not literally, I mean, the lines it gives are too straight, too clean.  Most clowns are… I don’t know… rounder, softer.  I want to blur their real expression with their make-up expression.  Sorry, I’m not explaining this very well.”

“On the contrary, I can see what you mean in the texture of the paint.  So what do you use?”

Peter smiled, embarrassed.  “A spoon.  No, don’t laugh.”

Marcia shook her head, looking at the painting.  “I wasn’t going to.  It obviously works.  A truly original technique.  I like it very much.”

They moved on to the final painting, a large canvas given pride of place on the wall.

“Now this,” said Marcia, pointing, “is magnificent.  It takes a lot of balls to paint something this big, and you’ve got such an amazing expression on the donkey with such a simplicity of strokes.  You can just feel the menace emanating from the canvas.  What’s the story behind this one?”

Peter looked at Clown with Donkey nervously.  “This was the bad boy that started it all off, I think.  I must have been tiny, four or five, when I saw them.  My first memory of clowns.  I can smell the sawdust, feel the heat off the lights.  And there were these two, donkey and clown.  The clowns were doing all this business, you know, slapstick with pies and wallpaper paste and stuff.  All made-up smiles and horrible acts of viciousness to each other.  And the donkey was all part of it somehow.  I couldn’t make head nor tail of what was going on, but the donkey understood it all.  It knew what it had to do, and when.  It was like all these clowns were worshipping this donkey from hell.”

Peter laughed awkwardly, breaking the maudlin spell.  “So that’s why I’m asking an outrageous price for it.  It’s to pay for my therapy.”

Marcia smiled.  “It’s worth every penny.  Let’s hope you don’t get cured too early.  I want to see more of your work in years to come.”  She reached into her clutch purse and fished out a business card.  “I want to know about your next exhibition.  Call me.  And get the Guardian on Thursday.  That’s when the Arts supplement comes out.”  She winked at him.  “There may well be a little mention in my column.”

On Wednesday Peter was on tenterhooks.  In the evening he went drinking with a few friends, then they took a cab into the West End around midnight to buy the next day’s Guardian.  Peter clumsily tore through the paper, looking for Marcia’s by-line.  And there it was: earning a headline all to itself.

A MULE AND ITS FUNNY ARE SPOON-ARTED