by Freya North
‘No thanks,’ she said politely because she felt he shouldn’t have to get up again.
‘They’re Belgian,’ he tempted, ‘slathered in milk chocolate.’
‘Go on then,’ Fen accepted. James leant back on his chair at a precarious angle, stretched further to open a low cupboard and retrieved a box of biscuits. They looked luxurious. Only Fen didn’t take one just then. Her hands remained in her lap. This was so that she could have a surreptitious glance from left to right. For James, though, it was a warning bell that maybe his dream had been prophetic in some weird way. His hands might have been rather dirty when they first met, but he hadn’t had a chance to assess her hands at all. Scaly? Bitten nails?
‘Delicious!’ James said, his mouth full, munching contentedly on a second biscuit before the first had reached his gullet. ‘Go on!’
Fen reached for the biscuits. ‘I had kippers for breakfast,’ she told James, as if it was a guilty secret, ‘with hash browns and baked beans. Only Django had run out of conventional baked beans so he heated up a tin of kidney beans and added tomato ketchup and a dash of Henderson’s Relish.’
Momentarily, James couldn’t care what Fen had eaten for breakfast. He was simply pleased to see that her hands were pretty, that her nails were neat and that her skin was pink and even. ‘Henderson’s Relish?’ he said. ‘I thought we’d kept that secret from you southerners.’
‘I am not,’ Fen remonstrated, ‘a southerner. I’ve spent more of my life in Derbyshire than I have anywhere else.’
‘I forgot,’ James said, glad that she’d reminded him. ‘I’m the fraud,’ he confided, ‘I spent my first thirty-five years down south. I’ve only been here fourteen.’
God, he’s almost fifty!
‘Is your mother a Derbyshire lass then?’ James asked, interrupting any thoughts Fen was beginning to have on people not looking their age and age being all in the mind and she’d never met anyone who was twenty years older than her yet to whom she was undeniably attracted. Whoa, Fen!
‘No. Sutton Coldfield originally,’ Fen said, ‘but she ran off with a cowboy from Denver when I was small and my dad brought my sisters and me from Battersea to Derbyshire to live with him and his brother Django.’
‘I see,’ said James, who thought Fen must have a very active imagination, ‘and they still live over at Farleymoor?’
‘Well, actually my dad died when I was little,’ Fen shrugged, ‘so it’s just Django – who is the best mother and father a girl could have.’
James didn’t know what to say to that. He thought perhaps that such childhood trauma had made her bulimic if her inroad into his biscuits were anything to go by. She was already on her third and they were very rich. And of course she’d had kippers and hash browns and some hideous-sounding bean concoction for breakfast. Must be bulimic. Shame. He’d read about how so many young women were unhinged nowadays. Oh God! did that make him sound old. Her hands were lovely though. And her laugh wasn’t that horrendous cackle of his dream but a demure little chuckle. And she was far from dowdy – ‘nicely put together’ being the phrase occurring to James. And she wasn’t scared of his dogs and they seemed to really like her.
‘Could I see Julius now,’ Fen asked, ‘please?’
‘Of course,’ James smiled, wondering how old she was.
Twenty-five? Ish? I had a twenty-three-year old a couple of years ago.
James!
‘Can I use your loo?’ Fen asked.
Oh dear, she is bulimic.
James! For God’s sake don’t hover outside the loo. It’s intrusive. And it’s worrying.
Ah – she’s only peeing.
‘You’re probably the envy of your friends,’ James said to Fen, who was surprised to find him loitering quite so near the toilet.
‘Actually,’ Fen said, ‘their business trips often take them to Europe rather than Derbyshire. New York, even. And their pay is much better than mine. But many of them deal in dull figures. Whereas the figures I deal with are bronze or marble and absolutely gorgeous.’
‘I meant,’ James said, ‘that you can eat and eat but stay slim.’
Fen regarded him as if he were a little peculiar. What an odd thing to say. The comment had suddenly set him apart from her generation. ‘In my day—’ he might say. ‘I remember when—’
Fen was just a little disappointed. And then relieved.
For God’s sake, I’m here to represent Trust Art. Let’s see the Fetherstones.
They went back into the hallway, which seemed quite warm now that Fen could take in a worn kilim, the grandfather clock, a console table heaped with magazines and papers and gloves and dogs’ leads, carpeted stairs up, a door to the back leading God knows where. James led her into the sitting-room she’d spied from the outside, where she’d imagined James as a wizened old man sitting waiting for her but deaf to her call.
And the three Fetherstones were directly in front of her. James had propped the two oil sketches, so that their sides touched, to the left of the fireplace. The bronze was to the right. Fen was speechless, her head turning from the oils to the bronze, back and forth, as if she was watching a tennis match.
‘Blimey, Mr Caulfield,’ she said, not taking her eyes from the works though she turned her cheek slightly.
‘Nice,’ said James, ‘aren’t they?’ He watched her absorbing every detail. ‘Go up close, Miss McCabe – have a sniff and a feel.’
Fen went to the fireplace and sat down between the oils and the bronze. She removed her shoes and curled her legs around her. Which should she touch first? Her right hand reached for the bronze and her left hand found the boards. Holding on to Adam’s head in bronze, she carefully pulled the oil sketches to her and placed them, one at a time, in her lap. The paint, though used thinly, had such exuberance of application.
‘It’s amazing,’ she said quietly, tilting her head back a fraction to indicate that she was talking to James and not herself, ‘he took such delight in the physical handling of media – whether painting or sculpting – sometimes you feel that the subject matter was almost a coincidence, a fluke. Like he was so enthralled with the actual material, then wow! look! what a bonus – I just painted or modelled Eve!’
James had never noticed. But now he did. ‘Exactly,’ he conferred as if it were a long-held theorem of his own.
‘Yes!’ Fen exclaimed, turning right round to beam at James, ‘Yes!’ She turned back to Adam, to Eve, to the two of them together. She ran her hands – fingertips, knuckles, palms, the backs – over all the surfaces that her eyes were dancing over too. She held the oils very very close to her face, loving it that she was allowed to let her nose touch the surfaces, her cheek too. Oh Adam! Julius! She explored the bronze figures, fingering every curve, delving into every space, sensing every twist and dip, delighting in the movement and the stillness, the solidity and the weightlessness, much like foreplay. Clutching the oil sketch of Adam against her, she turned her torso to James.
‘Mr Caulfield, are you very very broke?’ she asked, one arm holding Adam tight against her, the other encircling the bronze, the sketch of Eve in her lap. ‘It’s a travesty,’ she proclaimed, ‘to choose these to sell to raise funds.’
‘They’re really the only items I own of any value,’ James told her bluntly. ‘The grandfather clock wouldn’t pay for the reroofing. And anyway, it has a purpose, a function.’
‘So does art!’ Fen retorted, ‘Jesus, if they were mine, I’d rather sell my soul as well as my body.’
What on earth was James meant to say to that? He thought her histrionics rather amusing, but he wouldn’t let it show, let alone say so.
‘Are you sure there’s nothing else of value here?’ Fen enquired, glancing around the room as if James might have overlooked some large solid silver tureen or nondescript but authentic eighteenth-century landscape that Americans are always delighted to pay inflated prices for. She saw, however, that though the furniture was nice and the bookcase was heaving and there was a crysta
l decanter of whisky, there was indeed a deficit of silverware or landscape paintings. ‘Couldn’t you, I don’t know, move?’
But if you’d found a place like Keeper’s Dwelling, in an area outstandingly beautiful, would you move, Fen?
James, actually, felt a little awkward now. No, not just awkward, uncouth even. Like he was being deplorably mercenary, or committing a crime against the most basic standards of aesthetics and worth.
‘How badly does the roof leak?’ Fen persisted.
‘I’ll show you,’ said James, offering his hand to assist Fen to her feet, her left thigh having gone to sleep. She held on to his arm, giggling with the sensation as the blood revived her limb. She limped behind him and he took her upstairs. Three large stained patches were pointed out to her, two on the bedroom ceiling, one in the hallway. ‘It’s only a patch job,’ James explained. ‘By this winter, if it isn’t fixed, I’ll be watching stars from my bed.’
Fen conceded that reroofing was essential, at the same time taking a surreptitious look around the bedroom with great interest and absorbing the tiniest of details. A nicely made double bed. Bet he has a cleaner. Sash windows, heavy cream curtains billowing to the floor. Must be a girlfriend’s touch. Carpet slightly worn but well hoovered. A very distant smell of dog. A bone of contention no doubt for the cleaner and girlfriend. Tinted engravings, probably 1920s, most likely of Derbyshire, framed. Four botanical prints, also framed. Camelia. Magnolia. Dog Rose. Field Poppy.
But it was the photos atop the chest of drawers which she found most alluring.
‘Who’s this?’ Fen asked.
‘The only girlfriend I split up with amicably,’ James replied.
‘When was that?’ Fen asked.
‘When we were twenty-two,’ James replied, realizing that such an age was well over half his life away and yet for Fen, probably so recent it didn’t yet qualify as a memory.
‘What was her name?’ Fen persisted.
‘Anna,’ said James.
‘Where is she now?’ Fen asked.
‘Australia, married, four children, a sheep farm,’ James replied.
‘Do you live alone?’ Fen asked, turning towards him and regarding him directly.
James frowned momentarily. ‘Why do you ask?’
Fen turned away. She wasn’t sure why she had asked. Nor why she was genuinely interested in this man. ‘I thought maybe if you had a very rich lover, she would fix your roof,’ suggested Fen limply.
‘I don’t have a lover, rich or otherwise,’ James told her, wondering why he had – and why he didn’t.
‘Who’s this?’ Fen asked, looking at a photograph of a dark-haired woman with perfect lips and undeniable sadness to her eyes.
‘My mother,’ said James.
‘Was she from Derbyshire?’ Fen asked.
‘Italy, originally,’ James said.
‘And who’s this?’ Fen asked, scrutinizing a photo so old, so small, so faded, that it may not have been a photo at all.
‘My great, great-grandmother,’ said James. ‘Come on back downstairs.’
Fen looked at the photo a little longer. The lady looked familiar.
‘So,’ said James, back in the sitting-room, in the armchair, while Fen sat on the floor with art on her lap and in her hands, ‘who will give Adam and Eve the best home?’
‘The best home or the best price?’ Fen asked. ‘I’d give them the best home – but I could only pay you about £70 a month for the next millennium!’
‘The best home,’ said James. ‘Margot Fitzmontague-Le Patrick-Whatever valued the oils at thirty, the bronze at forty.’
‘Thousand,’ Fen said sadly.
‘Of course,’ James said kindly.
‘But why sell all three?’ Fen persisted. ‘The roof can’t cost that much.’
James looked at the Fetherstones and Fen thoughtfully. ‘It would be a travesty to separate them. Look at them! They belong together. They must stay together.’
Fen looked at the pieces. It was true.
‘We have to find an establishment that wants them and can plead a good case for Trust Art to assist purchase with a grant,’ Fen said, racking her brains.
‘And you could do that for me?’ said James.
‘I’ll do it for Julius,’ Fen said with a grin.
‘Would you like some lunch?’ James asked.
‘My goodness,’ Fen exclaimed, ‘it’s almost one o’clock. I think I ought to catch a train home.’
‘Why?’ James asked. ‘Do you need to go in to work?’
‘They’re not expecting me,’ Fen pondered, ‘but being the New Girl, I could do with any Brownie points to be had.’
‘It’s the Sheffield train,’ James reasoned, ‘they’re pretty frequent.’
‘Just a sandwich then,’ said Fen. ‘I had a British Rail sandwich on my way up yesterday. It was very very nasty.’
‘Simply cheese and pickle here,’ said James, hoping that there was still some pickle, ‘if that’s OK.’
‘Sounds lovely,’ said Fen.
‘Glass of wine?’ James offered.
Fen faltered. ‘I oughtn’t to – I’m working.’
‘Chill out!’ James teased. Fen laughed. James looked confused. Fen didn’t want to tell him that the phrase sounded funny coming from his lips.
The wine was lovely. But even without it, she would have felt at ease. Strangely, though James didn’t bother with small talk, Fen still found him engaging. Plus, she liked the creases around his eyes, they spoke of a person who had smiled for many years – decades, she realized. He seemed wholly different – alluringly in between a contemporary and a grown-up. Conversation flowed naturally, not necessitating polite questions and answers though they did ask each other many things, but only because they were genuinely interested in the replies.
James was stimulated by Fen. A bright girl, and of course, very pleasing on the eye. In recent years, James has consistently gone for the latter at the expense of the former; a compromise that has become dull. It was only when James said that they ought to go, that it was nearing three o’clock, that it was no problem to drive her to Chesterfield, that Fen thought to ask him how he had come by the Fetherstones.
‘They were passed down through the family,’ he told her whilst regarding his watch. ‘Come on, Miss McCabe, we’ve a train to catch. You don’t object to Barry and Beryl joining us?’
I don’t want to get to Chesterfield just yet.
‘Here we are,’ says James, ‘it’s been a pleasure meeting you. Keep in touch.’
‘Thanks so much,’ says Fen, ‘for lunch and the lift – and calling on me to consult.’
‘You should thank Margot,’ says James.
Fen suddenly remembers student times at the Courtauld. And those parties. ‘Did she make a pass at you?’ Fen asks, wondering why her heartbeat is quickening as she anticipates the reply.
‘Lord, no!’ James lies and laughs. ‘I’m just about old enough to be her father.’
Fen smiles.
He’s right. Of course he is. What was I …?
She shakes his hand and assures him she’ll call soon.
James watches her go. What a lovely day. Different. Refreshing. Rather like Fen herself. Oh well, time left to do a couple of hours for Tammy Sydnope.
SIXTEEN
I expect that woman will be the last thing civilized by man
George Meredith
Fen is standing stock-still in front of the news-stand at St Pancras from which she bought magazines and Maltesers yesterday.
How bizarre. How very unnerving. How really quite worrying. How did I do that? How could I do that?
How did you do what?
Spend practically the whole train journey gazing out of the window wondering what it would be like to go to bed with James Caulfield?
I can’t believe she did that, Otter, hovering by the stairwell, thought to himself. He couldn’t possibly go straight back to Publications. He slipped out of the building, crossed the c
ar park and, via a gate, took refuge in a tiny peaceful courtyard that only bonafide Tate gallery employees were meant to know about.
‘I cannot believe she did that,’ Otter said aloud but discreetly under his breath because two dusty-looking art historians were sitting nearby. He shook his head forlornly. ‘How bloody dare she?’
It was not so much the fact that Judith had had sex with Matt that Otter objected to. It was the fact that she had shared this information with him.
‘Damn her! How dare she take advantage of me!’ Otter was truly experiencing something close to physical pain. He sat on the stone bench; his sticks-and-stalks body so twisted with the pressure of it all that it resembled a mangled coat-hanger.
‘I adore Matt. And I think Fen is quite gorgeous. But bloody Judith had to go and tell me. Me! Of all the people! She goes and tells me.’
Highly perturbed, Otter stood slowly and, stooping, shuffled back to the Trust Art offices.
‘I do not like the woman at all,’ he said quietly, re-entering the building. He stopped at the foot of the stairwell. ‘Damn her! She has provided me with the most fantastic gossip. And it is a huge, burdensome affliction – believe me – that I am so partial to gossip.’
Otter returned to Publications and literally bit his tongue all afternoon whilst trying to focus undivided attention on an appallingly punctuated article on Sir Matthew Smith. It looked, to Matt, as if Otter had chronic mouth ulcers.
Actually, Matt had found it surprisingly easy to go into Trust Art, settle down and work well. He hadn’t avoided leaving Publications for fear of bumping into Judith. He’d been down to Reception a couple of times, had had a brief meeting with Rodney and had gone along his corridor to Accounts, to the photocopying room, to the loo. He simply hadn’t bumped into Judith. And yet she was around. He’d heard her; her confident voice from which she’d carefully banished any trace of identifying accent. Her officious walk. Her laugh; ballsy and ever so slightly insincere.
It was tea-time. Fen hadn’t shown up for work. Fondly, Matt supposed she was still gazing at the Fetherstones in that private collection in Derbyshire. He turned to Otter. But Otter was picking through the article, hunched over his keyboard, bony shoulders and aquiline features compounding the impression of a raggedy vulture. Otter wasn’t talking. Sore Mouth. Or Sir Matthew. Or both.