Hornblower had befriended several faded members of the glitterati who hung around the Toni Duffer Gallery, all of whom had acquired Guelph and Chibelline pictures on the never never. We found the pop singer Bernard Barge in an overpriced restaurant. Having acquired several Guelph and Chibelline pictures, Barge had a standing invitation to visit their Fournier Street studios. Bernard wrung the promise of a date out of Hannah in return for introducing her to his artist chums. As a precaution against the possibility of jealousy, Hornblower told the former pop star that I was her art mad brother. Having accompanied us to the East End in a cab and introduced us to Guelph and Chibelline, Barge made his excuses and left. The one time Poxy Music frontman rarely visited his art bore friends after mid-morning, because by early afternoon they'd be blind drunk. Many of my readers will perhaps recall that Guelph and Chibelline made their initial reputation as 'the singing pissheads,' a pair of performance artistés who'd get up onto tables in pubs and in an inebriated state murder music hall classics such as Underneath The Arches. People thought Guelph and Chibelline were clowns, and encouraged them, their rise to fame and fortune had remarkable parallels with the career of Adolf Hitler.
'Our friend Whitebait is on her way round,' Guelph informed us.
'What,' I put in, 'you mean Roseanne Whitebait, the twit who became famous by appropriating Ross MacDonald and Joseph Campbell's idea of making plaster castes of rocks and calling the result fruitless labour?'
'The very same person,' Chibelline assured me, 'and don't be so critical, one cannot expect women to have original ideas, they are after all the second sex.'
'Would you like to hear some selections from our boxed CD set of Hitler speeches,' Guelph enquired.
'We'd be delighted,' Hannah lied.
While Guelph organised the entertainment, Chibelline poured the drinks. A half finished Wyndham Lewis fake was lying on the floor, next to an English language translation of Hitler's Mein Kampf. I picked up the drawing and admired the skilful imitation of the Vorticist style, then handed it to Hornblower who gave the sketch the once over before putting it back down on the floor.
'We can only do them when we're drunk,' Chibelline slurred, 'Wyndham had decent politics but his perception of the world was clearly tinged with insanity. The modernist culture, still unaware of the connectedness of the Aryan peoples and thinking in terms of left and right, has not understood Wyndham's political vision, just as it has not understood Blake. Like Guelph and myself, both Lewis and Blake offered the British People a regional variation on the Nazi dream of a third way beyond capitalism and communism.'
'Yes, yes,' Guelph chirped excitedly, 'we're looking forward to a new era when all the People of the world will recognise their particularity. Only then will Europe and the Third World be able to unite against the decadence of the West, that is to say against America. It is only by accepting difference that we can protect the purity and diversity of the many beautiful cultures in the world. It was the genius of Adolf Hitler to recognise this, which is why he was opposed to the rootless cosmopolitanism of New York and Hollywood. Let the regions blossom and the immigrants return to a homeland of their own, then we truly can have a Europe of the Peoples, a Europe of a Hundred Flags!'
'You see,' Chibelline screamed, as he jumped to his feet and raised his right arm in a Nazi salute, 'that's why we call ourselves Guelph and Chibelline, because we oppose the old hatreds and bring together everything that is beautiful and pure. Thanks to our Art, the Life of the People is wonderfully enhanced by the twin forces of Empire and Religion working hand in hand!'
'But,' I hissed, 'I see a problem here.'
'Oh no,' Guelph snapped, 'not the hoary old objection about the Hansa, we demolished that stupidity years ago. What we've got to do is return to the roots. Anglo-American society is a bizarre Calvinist deviation from the European norm. It was a tragedy when the Gresham family chased the Hanseatic League from Britain, subsequently establishing their Rosicrucian Invisible College, and a front operation in the form of the Royal Society. What we say is no more brothers wars. The British people have got to recognise that ultimately they are of German extraction, once we are fully reconciled with our cousins across the sea, Europe can be Great once again!'
'Up the Patriarchy!' Chibelline yelled.
'Death to Cunt Lickers!' Guelph roared.
'We like very much to be Artists, we like very much to be Nazis!' they chanted in unison. 'Ours is an Art of the People, and we are the Great Leader who will abolish the decadence of abstract painting, bringing beauty into the lives of ordinary men. We unite the Worker, the Peasant and the Solider, so that they can march happily into the Great National Socialist Future!'
Rather than constituting a single a 'Great Leader,' I might have imagined these two idiots becoming a hydra-headed monster if they hadn't been such buffoons. Besides, my objection to what they did had nothing to do with the Hanseatic League, which I've long considered as vile as that famous 'hammer of the Hansa,' the Gresham family. What I object to is a dominant culture that imposes itself on society as a mark of the alleged superiority of the ruling class. When all is said and done, institutional culture simply provides one more rhetorical 'justification' for the murderous activities of our masters.
'My problem,' I explained, 'has nothing to do with the Hansa. What I want to know is what contingency plans you have if one of you dies, because as far as I can see, if that were to happen, then the surviving partner would no longer have a career on the gallery circuit!'
'Guelph,' Chibelline howled, 'what am I to do if you die?'
'I'm not going to die!' Guelph exclaimed. 'I'm immortal!'
'Why don't you try a test to see whether he's lying,' I said as I kicked a carving knife that was lying on the floor at Chibelline.
'That's a good idea!' the inebriated twit replied as he picked up the blade and plunged it into Guelph's heart.
'It looks like your career in the art world has gone kaput,' Hannah spat at Chibelline as Guelph dropped down dead.
'Oh no!' the pisshead wailed as he plunged the knife into his own chest. 'I wouldn't have killed him if I'd been sober, but then I've been drunk for the past thirty years!'