by Freya North
ELEVEN
Fen wasn’t quite sure what the score was with personal phone calls. Her job didn’t require much time on the telephone; just the occasional call, made or received, to a gallery or museum. But on this, the last day of her first week at Trust Art, Fen wanted desperately to make a call. Should she ask? Even if the response was laughter? Or a frown of disapproval? Would Bobbie’s switchboard sound the alarm, start flashing in another colour? Would Rodney scurry in and cry, ‘Good Grief! Fenella McCabe – we’re a charity. You are eating into funds that could be spent saving modern art for the nation!’ Was it a good excuse to pop along to Publications and ask Matt to specify the rules and regulations concerning communication equipment at Trust Art? Just an excuse, any, to pop along to Publications?
I’ll be quick. I only need to say a sentence. It’s too good to keep to myself.
Fen phoned Gemma at work, at the TV production company, though she had to hang on for an agonizing few minutes whilst Gemma was located.
‘Guess what!’ Fen whispered.
‘What?’ Gemma whispered back but had to repeat herself due to much background noise in the editing room.
‘Guess who came into work to find a cappuccino waiting on her desk, piping hot?’
‘Blimey, Fen,’ said Gemma, ‘I’d regard that as symbolic as a diamond ring, if I were you.’
Fen told Gemma to piss off and phoned Abi in search of less sarcasm.
‘But did he remember the pain au chocolat?’ was Abi’s response.
Fen told Abi to piss off and phoned her older sister Pip immediately, hoping for less cynicism and a distraction from her sudden concern over the lack of pain au chocolat.
‘Don’t read too much into it,’ said Pip thoughtfully.
Fen wanted to tell her sister to piss off, but knew Pip meant well and spoke from love as much as from experience. So she phoned her younger sister Cat, now craving a response that was neither sarcastic, cynical nor commonsensical.
To Fen’s delight, her sister cooed appreciatively (though privately Cat felt Fen was reading far too much into it) and said things like ‘He sounds gorgeous’ with the inflection in all the right places. Feeling bolstered, Fen had no need to further abuse the Trust’s trust in her use of their phone; she drank and savoured her cappuccino and then felt well equipped to commence her duties for the day. She didn’t feel like a pain au chocolat anyway. She’d had toast with her butter, for breakfast, as always she did, before leaving for work.
TO: [email protected]
FROM: [email protected]
RE: caffeine
dear m, thanks for the essential caffeine injection – i’m whizzing through the files at twice the normal speed. for future reference, one sugar too, please. F McC
It took almost seven minutes, and three full edits, before Fen sent that one.
TO: [email protected]
FROM: [email protected]
RE: caffeine allocation
dear f, and I thought you were sweet enough. M
Matt didn’t send that one.
TO: [email protected]
FROM: [email protected]
RE: caffeine allocation
dear f, not only will I remember sugar, I’ll also make sure it’s not decaff. Must be the frothy topping that’s enabled you to feel so productive this morning. M
‘Oh God,’ Fen groaned quietly, hiding her head behind a sheaf of letters from 1965 between Lord Bessborough and Henry Holden discussing the gift of a Barbara Hepworth Pierced Form, ‘it was decaff, it was decaff.’
TO: [email protected]
FROM: [email protected]
RE: RE: caffeine allocation
dear m, froth had fizzled away by the time I prized off the lid. and the pain au chocolat had mysteriously self-combusted because, though I searched in drawers and in a box marked 1965, there was not a crumb of evidence of its existence. f McC (hungry)
Fen fired that one off without so much as checking it.
TO: [email protected]
FROM: [email protected]
RE: RE: RE: caffeine allocation
head hanging low with shame and remorse. No froth? No sugar? No caffeine? No p au c? Would a sandwich lunch make it up to you? If you haven’t already expired before you’ve made it to 1966? M
Fen actually printed that one off, folded it, slipped it into the back pocket of her jeans and reread it at ridiculously regular intervals during the morning. She also checked her e-mail with alarming regularity but her in-box remained empty.
Mind you, I haven’t responded to his last.
Playing hard to get, Fen McCabe?
No, just playing. It’s fun.
Of course she had a sandwich lunch with him. Sitting in the gardens of the flats opposite the Trust. Otter came too. But neither Fen nor Matt minded. Fen felt a certain pride that their chemistry should be witnessed and later commented on; Matt just didn’t mind that Otter was there. Otter, who adored Matt and, in just one working week, felt very tenderly towards Fen, nevertheless couldn’t resist a gossip and a little action. That a drama in miniature could be played out before his eyes, under his direction, fed the lascivious and puckish side of his nature. A necessary antidote to his daily grind of correcting punctuation and typos. It was therefore with careful timing and timbre of delivery, that he told Bobbie he would let her into a little secret. But he did so only when he knew Judith St John would be in earshot.
‘Love loiters along the corridors of Trust Art,’ he said in a hushed but knowing voice.
‘Ooh blimey!’ Bobbie exclaimed. ‘Who is it, Otter? I thought you was the only nancy boy here!’
‘I am!’ Otter declared proudly, laying a thin hand on Bobbie’s shoulder, which was padded extravagantly in the receptionist’s enduring homage to Joan Collins.
‘You swinging the other way then?’ Bobbie asked him almost accusatorily. She looked him up and down, hoping whomever he chose, of whichever sexual persuasion, would be someone kind who’d feed the poor duck with meat and at least two veg on a nightly basis.
‘Dearest Bobsleigh,’ said Otter, ‘’tisn’t me at all. But lust lurks, mark my words!’
‘Who?’ Bobbie whispered, eyes so wide that the false eyelashes on her upper lids all but meshed with her eyebrows. ‘Where?’
‘In. The. Archive,’ Otter defined, noticing that Judith’s head was unmistakably tilted though her hands rifled through the pile of post in her pigeon-hole. ‘Our Matthew has his eye on young Fenella. You mark my words.’
‘Ahh!’ Bobbie said, tutting with appreciation and high hopes for the young ’uns.
‘There’ll be all sorts of shenanigans behind the Archive shelving,’ Otter prophesied, noting with satisfaction that Judith, post in hand, was nevertheless standing stock-still. ‘Debauchery amongst the boxes,’ Otter offered as his parting shot, winking at Bobbie and walking past Judith as if she wasn’t there.
Not if I have anything to do with it, thought Judith, smiling somewhat disdainfully at Bobbie, whose only crime on this day was a Dynasty-style suit in a lurid cerise.
Judith had no need to go upstairs, but she swanned past Publications and waltzed into the Archive. ‘We don’t, as a rule, use the Trust phones for personal calls,’ she told Fen, ‘not even if it’s supposedly pre- or post official work hours. We’re a charity.’
‘I am so sorry,’ said Fen, wanting at once to be swallowed by the box on her lap and taken to the safety of 1966 (before she had been even a twinkle in her father’s eye).
‘You weren’t to know,’ said Judith, covering her triumph with a spite-sweet smile, ‘but you do now.’
If he doesn’t want me, he’s not having her. Not that I know if he wants me or not. Haven’t tried that one. Yet.
Judith swanned out of the Archive and into Publications, inviting Matt to the opening of the Rothko exhibition at Tate Modern the following Tuesday evening.
‘Welcome to the end of your first working week,�
� said Matt, who’d found the pretext of a missing hole punch as the excuse to visit the Archive for the second time since lunch. ‘We’re going to the pub for a—’
Fen’s phone silenced him and he soaked up her wide-eyed excitement at its ringing.
‘Archive?’ she said, almost with incredulity, on answering it.
‘Fen McCabe?’
‘Yes?’
I don’t recognize the voice yet he’s Fen-ing and not Fenella-ing me.
‘James Caulfield,’ the voice drawled. ‘I was told to call you by Margot Fitzpatrick-Montague-Laine – I think that’s the right order and the right quota of hyphens – at Calthrop’s. You know, or knew her.’
God! Margot! thought Fen, who really hadn’t thought about Margot Fitzpatrick-Montague-Laine since leaving the Courtauld.
God! Margot, thought James, who had thought of her on occasions when he couldn’t sleep.
‘It concerns three Fetherstones in my collection,’ he said, clearing his throat and rearranging his semi-hard cock in his trousers.
‘Margot,’ Fen mused. ‘Three Fetherstones! Three?’
At this point, Matt backed out of the room, making a knocking-back-of-a-pint-glass gesture. Fen, though, was too engrossed in the notion of three Fetherstones in a private collection to respond, or even notice really.
‘I need to sell them,’ Mr Caulfield was continuing.
‘Sell them?’ Fen reacted.
‘Yes,’ the man continued, a forlorn edge to his voice which Fen would never have detected to be just slightly manufactured. ‘But, if at all possible, I want them to go to a public museum or gallery. So that the nation can enjoy them as much as I have.’
I want to marry you and have your babies. Whoever you are. You have Fetherstones. And you have a conscience, thought Fen. ‘I see,’ was what she decided to say, though. ‘What are they?’ She tried not to whisper although she felt as though she was about to peep into a box of unknown treasure.
‘Adam and Eve,’ James Caulfield imparted, ‘two oil sketches and a bronze.’
‘Oh my God!’ Fen exclaimed unchecked, unable to see James grin at the other end of the phone.
‘I live in Derbyshire,’ he said.
‘So do I!’ Fen rushed. She could hear James’s question mark. ‘I mean, I was brought up there. I’ve only lived in London for five years,’ she continued by way of an apology, which for some reason made James smile all the more. ‘I come home frequently,’ she furthered, as if establishing a link with Derbyshire as well as a common love for Julius Fetherstone would seal the deal and head to an offer of marriage from this man, to say nothing of an offer from the Tate – Liverpool or London – for his Fetherstones.
‘Would you like to come and see them?’ James proposed. ‘Or should I bring them down to London?’
Fen rushes out of the Archive, beams at Matt (who takes full credit for the smile, not being the type to eavesdrop on phone calls, personal or otherwise) and heads downstairs to Rodney’s office.
‘There are three Fetherstones in Derbyshire!’ Fen announces, having knocked and been told to enter. ‘A chap wants me to look at them. He wants Trust Art to handle their sale. He wants them to go to a public collection. He’s invited me to go next Tuesday.’
Judith St John is also in Rodney’s office.
It is Friday. It is home time. Fen feels her week’s work is complete. And she feels that her news of three Fetherstones in Derbyshire, the vendor’s desire that she should assess them, that Trust Art should handle the transaction, more than vindicates the three or four minutes of personal phone calls that morning.
Rodney claps his hands together, gives Fen the thumbs up with both thumbs and exclaims, ‘Crikey! Super! Go north, young lady!’
Judith seethes behind her slanted smile.
TWELVE
‘Matt?’ Judith St John had bided her time the next Tuesday morning before going to Publications. She’d loitered in Acquisitions, had a banter with Fund-raising (much to their surprise – the fact that she was visiting, let alone bantering) and even paid more than a fleeting visit to Accounts (much to their trepidation – she only ever came to them when annoyed). With a smile fixed on the accountants, her ear was fixated by any sounds coming from the Archive. She heard Fen leave, heard her hum, detected that her footsteps were headed down the corridor. Aha! Towards Publications. Judith left Accounts when they were in mid-sentence. With precision timing, she entered Publications to see Fen already perched jauntily on the edge of Otter’s desk, Matt standing relaxed with his back resting against the wall, Otter rotating slowly in his chair looking like a puppet from Thunderbirds. Judith approved of the way Fen slithered off the desk and looked embarrassed. She liked the way that Matt stayed exactly as he was and regarded her measuredly. She was amused to see how the situation amused Otter too.
‘The private view is at seven,’ Judith told Matt. ‘I’ve booked Vinopolis for dinner after – if that suits?’
‘Sure,’ Matt shrugged.
‘Is that the Rothko exhibition?’ Otter asked.
‘Yes,’ said Judith.
‘I absolutely love Rothko,’ Fen commented, grinning at Matt.
‘I’m afraid I have only a single plus one,’ Judith said very quickly, should Matt affably invite Fen along. She was aware that Fen regarded her. Good.
‘I’m off home to Derbyshire anyway,’ Fen said, realizing there was an attempt to rile her, not quite knowing why that should be.
‘Home? Derbyshire?’ Matt responded as if Fen had said Dubai.
‘Yes,’ Fen clarified, ‘to see that man with the Fetherstones.’
I never had Thomas the Tank Engine books, Fen mused whilst browsing in the newsagent in St Pancras, but I remember Ivor the Engine. I remember watching it on television, with Pip and Cat, at a time when Cat was too young to figure out why Pip and I dissolved into giggles every time we impersonated Ivor’s steam sound.
Shitty Poof. Shitty Poof. Shitty Poof.
Oh God! I’m twenty-eight years old, standing in the fabulously Gothic monstrosity that is St Pancras station and I’m thinking about a cartoon steam train that went shitty poof shitty poof shitty poof. I’m an art historian, for God’s sake! I should be comparing the interior of St Pancras with the Gare St-Lazare or Gard du Nord in Paris where Monet was as enraptured by the ephemera of steam as he was by clouds and the fleeting aspects of nature. I should be acknowledging Pugin who said, ‘Stations are the cathedrals of our time.’ Instead, I’m berating myself – no, Django more like – for depriving me of never knowing the Fat Controller. Or Percy. And I’m more interested in that pigeon limping because it has a stump, than in admiring flying buttresses and trefoils in the clerestory. I don’t want to nourish my brain, I want junk food! And a glossy mag. And a throwaway paperback. And I’m excited, unnecessarily so, that the only size of Maltesers is a bumper family pack. Doesn’t matter that the price is extortionate, nor that the quantity is obscene for one girl to consume.
Until Luton, Fen fidgeted. She dipped in and out of her magazine with the regularity that she dipped in and out of her bag of Maltesers. She stared out of the window and gazed, as surreptitiously as she could (which was not as surreptitiously as she thought), at her fellow passengers; giving them pasts, presents and futures, names and proclivities which, for the most part, would flatter them all. Her cheese and ham baguette remained half eaten, not because it was tasteless (in fact, it wasn’t merely tasteless, but tasted very peculiar indeed) but because there were Maltesers and things to observe and the trolley service from which she ordered a liquid masquerading as coffee. She gazed out of the train window and thought about Matt.
How would it be to kiss him? I think he’s a ‘take her in my arms and sink my lips against hers’ kind of mover.
And you’d like that.
Fen?
If I admit to it – oh dear.
Stop looking from hand to hand! What on earth can you see there? And why on earth is the notion of kissing Matt a dilemma?
Jesus, Fen, you’ve only kissed the bloke in your imagination.
I know I know I know.
Stop looking at your bloody hands. You’ll have us thinking that you have an obsessive-compulsive disorder rather than a mannerism that can be amusing and, on occasion, irritating. Most importantly, stop investing everything with such unnecessary significance.
OK. I know. But you don’t understand. I haven’t felt this fabulous zip of attraction for a bloke for ages. I wonder.
Wonder what?
If the frisson is a two-way thing.
What is your gut instinct on it all?
Fen?
Stop grinning inanely out of the window. Stop resting your cheek coyly on your shoulder.
I think so. Oh, I don’t know! I think he’d like to take me in his arms and sink his lips deep against mine! I don’t know. He might just take me out for a few drinks and then suggest we shag. I don’t bloody know!
After Luton, Fen sat very still for a while because she felt a little queasy on account of her stomach becoming a food processor mixing the various incompatible and hastily ingested foodstuffs, coupled with all that flitting of her eyes outside, inside and on print.
But then, despite the wafts of burgers and bad coffee, it was the anticipated scent of Derbyshire which dominated and took her well away from her London life. Back to home, to childhood, to where memories lingered, were vivid and seemed somehow to almost drive her London life into second place, into secondary importance within her scheme of things.
And the train is pulling into Derby and Matt goes from her mind and her aspirations, to be replaced with Julius Fetherstone. Fen McCabe loves being an art historian. Confident. Stimulated. Informed. Assured. It is something she feels she does very well. They’re sending her north, by train, after all. No one else could be better for the job. That’s what Trust Art thinks. And Calthrop’s. And James Caulfield.