by Freya North
I’m being given the sack, the push, the elbow! I’ve lost my job. I’m unemployed. I won’t be working for Trust Art. I’ll have to go job hunting. I’ll have to buy the Guardian every Monday and Saturday. I’ll have to tell my bank. I’m going to be broke. I’m going to be dismissed.
The shock of it rendered Fen incapable of saying anything other than a mumbled thank you for having me I’ve loved working here; all she could do, really, was leave the director’s office to seek sanctuary in her Archive.
Matt had been awaiting Fen’s appearance in his office, anticipating her effervescence at Rodney’s reaction to the reappearance of Abandon. But she didn’t show. She couldn’t still be down there. He phoned her extension. A very very small voice answered at the other end.
‘Fen?’
‘Matt?’
He went directly to her. As soon as she saw him standing in the doorway, as soon as she clocked the genuine concern on his face, she cast her eyes to her lap and let her tears fall. Quietly, Matt came into the room, shutting the door.
‘Was it a fake?’ he asked. ‘Or stolen?’
‘I didn’t tell them,’ Fen croaked. ‘My job is finished. Unrenewable.’
‘What?’ Matt said, though he heard and understood clearly.
‘They’re letting me go,’ Fen whispered, ‘when the Archive is finished in a fortnight or so.’
Matt was stunned and horrified. Not so much because he felt that Trust Art would be the poorer for the loss of a talent like Fen’s, but because he suddenly thought how dull his days would be without her floating around. Fen would always be in the Archive – surely? Invariably sitting cross-legged with a clutch of documents in her lap, enthusing over pamphlets of some long-forgotten exhibition, marvelling at photographs of artists and patrons, delighting in handwritten letters by people dead for years. Fen was the Archive. The Archive was what Fen did. What would it be without her? An empty room, door mostly closed, contents meticulously and lovingly organized within.
‘I can’t believe it,’ Matt said, squeezing her shoulders though he felt he was in need of comfort himself. ‘It’s appalling that they’d do that to you.’
Fen sniffed snottily. ‘I didn’t tell them about Abandon,’ she said, ‘I forgot.’
Matt phoned her late that night. She’d gone to bed early, having put Julius’s letter back in the shoebox. Her heart lifted to see it was him calling. How she’d love him to be here in person.
‘Just phoning to check you’re OK,’ he said.
‘I am,’ said Fen. ‘I’m just sad – I always knew the Archive was a project to be begun and therefore to be concluded too – but I’m just sad that I’ll be leaving.’
‘Me too,’ said Matt, ‘me too. But listen, you must tell Rodney about the Fetherstone. If Trust Art could handle its placement, there’d be no better man for the job than you.’
‘Do you think so?’ Fen asked.
‘Of course,’ Matt encouraged. ‘Promise me you’ll go and tell Rodney tomorrow.’
‘OK,’ said Fen.
‘And you just watch him leap with unbridled joy and give you a huge thumbs up!’
‘Thanks, Matt,’ said Fen.
‘Night, babe,’ he said.
Why did I phone? I should’ve just gone round there.
I’m so glad he phoned. And I don’t want to sound ungrateful but I sort of wish he’d just turned up on the doorstep.
Easy, you two, one step at a time.
Rodney did indeed bound around his office on hearing of Fen’s discovery. He shook her hand so vigorously it hurt. He slapped her on the back too, hard. And when she left his office, he gave her an ecstatic double thumbs up.
‘Marvellous!’ he exclaimed to himself. ‘Good old Fenella McCabe – she’s an asset to the Trust and now it seems we can keep hold of her.’
There’s just a minor spanner in the works to cause a little last-minute disruption. After all, we can’t have a happy-ever-after immediately. It would all be just a little anticlimactic, just a little too cosy and therefore slightly unsatisfying too.
In a quirk of symmetry, the potential disruption at the close of the story comes in the same form as it did at the start of this tale – in the sharp-suited guise of Judith St John. Judith didn’t particularly like Julius Fetherstone. Nor was she particularly taken with Matthew Holden. She didn’t like Fen McCabe at all – mainly because everybody else did, plus she found Fen’s femininity somewhat cloying. The trouble with people like Judith, who find it easier and more pleasurable to dislike rather than like, is that they really don’t care if they themselves are disliked. Judith wasn’t sly or cruel, she didn’t want to ruin Fen’s life or consciously cause her unhappiness. However, Fen had something Judith wanted and Judith simply couldn’t see why Fen should have it if she herself could have it instead. And if, in the process, Trust Art would benefit, surely that was all the more reason to pursue something that was ultimately for the best.
Fen’s salary as archivist had been provided by Lady Helena Minchey – widow of the Sir Michael who, along with Henry Holden, was surely one of the greatest benefactors of the visual arts. Lady Helena ruled her late husband’s charitable trust meticulously and constructively. Whereas Sir Michael would have bestowed thousands of pounds on any impoverished artist, Lady Helena maximized funds available by demanding detailed presentations and documents from applicants. This scared away individuals who thought that merely holding out a begging bowl would be enough. She had ensured that Trust Art had taken her to lunch twice, plus produced a ten-page paper to justify the donation from the Minchey Foundation to fund the Archive.
Now she was back in the offices in John Islip Street, being nattered to by Bobbie whilst awaiting Judith and Rodney and lunch at St John’s, Smith Square. Bobbie didn’t care for airs and graces. If someone was wearing a suit from Marks & Spencer that was the same as her sister’s, she’d remark on the fact.
‘It’s not from Marks & Spencer,’ Lady Helena all but hissed.
‘It is too,’ Bobbie remarked, ‘and your hem’s down at the back.’
‘This is Daks!’ Lady Helena declared, appalled that her hem was down at the back.
‘Whatever you say, ducks,’ said Bobbie, who then thought that Lady Helena would be interested in her sister’s husband’s gout and thus proceeded to tell her all about it.
Rodney put the case to Lady Helena for a continued salary for Fen McCabe.
‘The thing is,’ he said, ‘she’s discovered Abandon by Julius Fetherstone.’
Lady Helena looked up from her pavlova sharply. ‘Where is it?’ she asked.
‘In a shed in the country,’ Rodney elaborated, because for a Surrey boy, anywhere rural and north of Watford was simply ‘country’.
‘Good God!’ Lady Helena exclaimed. ‘Is it all above board? Is it stolen?’
‘There’s a letter of authenticity from Fetherstone,’ Rodney said, ‘which specifies to whom he bequeaths the sculpture.’
‘Who?’ Lady Helena demands. ‘Who has it?’
‘It’s a very, very sensitive issue,’ Rodney says honestly and with no manufactured ambiguity. ‘The chappy wishes to remain anonymous.’
Lady Helena nods. ‘But what do you want from me?’ she asks.
‘Lolly!’ Rodney cries. ‘Dosh! The placing of this work will have to be sensitively handled – we can’t just give it to the first institution which offers it a home. The publicity surrounding it needs to be carefully handled. There will be scholars and sceptics to entertain, too. The process itself – from the shed to a gallery – could take half a year or so. Anyway, Fen McCabe discovered the work so I feel we should set her up to see it to completion. She’s done magnificently with the Archive!’
‘Granted,’ Lady Helena agreed, ‘OK. I think it’s a worthy enough cause. If I do sponsor the role, I would like to be privileged to all this guarded information – just for my own amusement.’
‘Of course,’ Rodney nodded. ‘Oops! Little boys’ room, I rather think
!’ And he disappeared off to the loo.
‘You’re frightfully quiet,’ Lady Helena remarked to Judith.
‘I’m just thinking,’ Judith said. ‘Do you mind if I think out loud?’
‘Please,’ said Lady Helena.
So Judith delivered the theory she’d formulated and honed all evening the night before. ‘However exciting this project, I’m not entirely sure that it warrants a full-time position within the Trust,’ she told Lady Helena, ‘or even a part-time position. Yes, Fenella found the work – but the job would be about coordination, in the main.’
By the time Rodney had returned from the toilets, settling the bill on the way, Lady Helena was looking very pleased and Judith was looking decidedly flushed.
‘Golly, Judith,’ Rodney said, ‘have you had a little too much wine?’
‘God, Rodney,’ Judith sighed.
‘Judith is a fabulous administrator,’ Lady Helena told Rodney. ‘She’s pointed out that the placing of the Fetherstone is well within her capabilities, well within the specifications of her job and will hardly eat into her ongoing responsibilities. So there is no need for a separate individual. Judith has saved the Minchey Foundation funds that could be so usefully applied elsewhere. I am therefore going to make an extra donation to Trust Art this year. Marvellous.’
Rodney listened carefully. He had to agree, Judith’s theory made sense. Damn! He’d have to disappoint Fenella yet again, poor girl.
This hit Fen far harder than the end of her role as archivist. Whereas Matt and Otter wanted to do voodoo on Judith, Fen displayed enormous dignity and generosity.
‘But she’s right,’ she said softly, ‘it makes sense, it saves money – which of course means there’s more money there to save art for the nation. Judith’s just doing her job.’
‘But Julius is yours,’ Otter remonstrated huffily.
‘Hear hear,’ said Matt.
‘You’ll have done all the hard work – over years,’ Otter stressed, ‘for that harridan to reap all the glory.’
‘God, has the woman no pride,’ Matt muttered.
Fen contemplated her baguette of brie and pickle. She placed it in her lap and took a sip of cappuccino. ‘But boys,’ she said, ‘it isn’t about glory and ownership, it’s about the greatest work of late-nineteenth-century figurative sculpture.’ They looked at her. ‘I just want to see it placed in a safe and loving home.’ She shrugged.
‘But you found it,’ Matt protested. ‘Surely you’d like to accompany it?’
‘Of course I would,’ Fen said, ‘but I didn’t find it, Matt, it found me.’
‘What do you mean?’ Matt asks as he walks with Fen back to the Trust offices, Otter having made a detour to the newsagent for a copy of the Evening Standard, ‘about you not finding it? I thought you said it was in a shed in Derbyshire?’
‘It is,’ said Fen, ‘but I was no detective, Matt. The chap who has it came to me. I didn’t really have to do a thing.’
Matt stopped in the middle of the pavement and looked at her. ‘He came to you?’ he verified.
‘Yup,’ Fen said, ‘I handled the transaction with the Tate for his other Fetherstones.’
‘Eden?’ Matt checked.
‘Yes,’ said Fen, ‘so I presume I simply sprung to mind when he decided to reveal Abandon.’
‘Right,’ said Matt thoughtfully, ‘right.’
Later that afternoon, when Otter had gone down to raid Bobbie’s biscuit tin, Matt made a phone call.
‘Hi, Mummy. Hey? Oh, I’m fine, I’m fine. Listen, are you around this weekend? Can I come home? I want to talk to you about something.’
FIFTY
Every woman should have one old love she can imagine going back to … and one who reminds her how far she has come …
Anon
The last day of August was Fen’s last day as archivist for Trust Art. Rodney had organized a send-off on a par with the welcome brigade he’d prepared for her arrival in the spring. A breakfast in the boardroom with brioche and Bollinger. Rodney had made a gushing speech and there’d been cheering – and tears too, from Bobbie and Fen. Otter and Matt were to take her out to lunch. Before then, she spent the morning checking and double-checking that the Archive was in order and could rest until it was needed. She was pleased with her work. It had been fascinating, however dusty and disorganized it had been along the way. She decided to leave her Fetherstone postcards on the pinboard. She had plenty more at home and liked the idea that whoever visited the room could have them to gaze upon should they glance up and catch sight of them.
‘I’ll always be looking for converts,’ Fen said to the postcards. ‘I’d make a great Jehovah’s Witness!’
She sat and swivelled in her chair, checked her e-mails and noted down addresses – electronic and otherwise – of friendly contacts she’d made at galleries and collections over the last few months. It all felt like the last day of the school year. Only she wouldn’t be returning next term. There was a knock on her door. Otter poked his head around.
‘Lunch-time, sweetie?’
‘Great,’ said Fen.
‘Matt can’t make it,’ Otter said, ‘he’s having lunch with Rodney and Judith – very last minute.’ Otter could see disappointment cross Fen’s face. ‘Won’t I do?’ he asked her with a sorry pout.
‘Of course you will,’ said Fen, giving his waist a squeeze, hoping she hadn’t crushed his hip bones in the process.
They walked along the corridor. ‘Ooh, I am cruel,’ said Otter. ‘I’m bullshitting you something rotten – it’s me who can’t make lunch, not Matt. I met a charming boy at a revolting club over the weekend – and, well, he said he’d love to meet me for lunch.’
Fen was happy for him. And very happy that it meant she had Matt to herself for an hour.
Matt had roast beef and horseradish on rye, Fen had egg, cheese and spinach in a granary bap. They took their lunch to the gardens opposite the Trust building.
‘End of an era,’ Matt mused.
Fen nodded. Her mouthful was suddenly stuck in her throat because of a knot tying itself there. She put her sandwich to one side and took thoughtful sips of her apple juice. Matt was wittering on about work, weather and the weekend. She was only half hearing him. She was staring very intently at each of her palms in turn. He watched her. He didn’t know what she was thinking but he could see that her mind was whirring away. She had very neat hands, but he wasn’t sure quite why her palms so frequently invited such utter scrutinizing. He slipped his hand on top of her left, he placed her right hand on top of his and then held that himself. The best sandwich ever.
Fen panics for a moment.
I need to see my palms!
No, you don’t.
But I do! I do!
No, you don’t.
But I haven’t quite finished my ponderings.
Yes, you have. Go on, Fen.
Fen contemplates their interleaved hands for a moment. She can sense Matt is looking at her.
‘Just because you were in one long-term relationship that went wrong is no reason whatsoever to prevent you from embarking on another,’ Fen blurts. ‘Sorry,’ she says meekly. Matt is silent. But he’s keeping his hands in place. ‘I just feel,’ Fen says, ‘that we were very good together. And I respected the space you wanted. But I don’t any more.’ Matt raises his eyebrows. ‘You see, since we split up, we’ve actually been able to maintain a friendship,’ Fen says, ‘and friendship is the most fundamental basis for a relationship.’ She nods. Then she nods again because she doesn’t really know what to say now.
‘But there has to be sexual attraction, too,’ Matt says, out of the blue.
‘Well,’ Fen mutters, ‘well.’ Then she looks at him directly. ‘I fancy you like crazy, you daft, annoying sod!’
She wishes he’d smile. She cannot gauge his reaction, or how he’s feeling, or whether she should just shut up now and save her dignity. It would be ghastly to be chucked again when already chucked.
‘
I think,’ she says quietly, ‘that for us lot – hitting our thirties – it was impossible to sustain relationships started in our twenties. That’s the decade during which we grow and develop into who we really are – with all the opportunities and experiences laid at our disposal.’
‘Oh, shut up, Fen,’ Matt says. She doesn’t really hear him, nor does she feel him squeeze her hand.
‘And, if I’m honest, I wasn’t entirely sure whether or not I actually wanted you,’ Fen says with honesty that hurts her, ‘and I’m worried that I’ve blown it.’
‘Oh, shut up,’ Matt says again, though again unheard.
‘But I really think that you shouldn’t deny yourself the potential happiness of a relationship just because you’ve been there, done that and it didn’t work out.’
‘I agree,’ says Matt.
‘And the rebound is utter nonsense,’ Fen continues.
‘I agree,’ says Matt.
‘And –’ says Fen. She stops. ‘What did you say?’
‘I’m holding your hands, agreeing with everything you say,’ Matt shrugs. ‘Will you take me back? Will you take me on?’
‘Me?’ Fen says. ‘You? But I feel I should be asking you the same!’
‘Will you?’ Matt asks.
‘Will you?’ Fen asks back.
Hand squeezing is all that’s needed. And a deep kiss, in full view of the other workers taking their lunch, in full view of Judith glancing out of her office window, seals it all.
‘One thing,’ Fen says, as they cross the road to the Trust Art building. ‘If we do the whole love and, in time, the living-together thing – promise me we can still have rude sex. That we don’t have to go for lights out and missionary position just once a week?’