‘I said no, Anne, and I mean no. For Christ’s sake, can’t you …?’
She slunk back to the garden, sank down on the bench again, pulled off a geranium leaf, tore it into pieces. She removed a second one, twirled it in her fingers. The edge was brown and withered, the centre vivid green. Things dying while they bloomed.
‘Your coat,’ a voice said suddenly, a controlled ironic voice. ‘I’ve also brought a picnic rug, since this is something of a picnic.’ He tossed it on the bench beside her, went back to fetch the food. ‘Sorry I was such an age. That oil-stove takes for ever. Right, shift that table up a bit and I’ll put the tray down there.’
He handed her a plate, a precious-looking antique one with painted birds and flowers; a knife and fork with delicate pearl handles. The figs were quite transformed. He’d arranged them on a silver dish, with their own crenellated glossy leaves spread beneath them like a doily.
‘I’ve squeezed some orange juice. I’m afraid the oranges were rather old and shrivelled – some I had a month ago when I was working on a still-life.’ He passed her a small tumbler, a heavy cut-glass one, which sparkled in the sun. Everything looked elegant, as if he had turned an offbeat breakfast into a minor work of art. She took a sip of juice. It tasted strange – stale and slightly brackish, little flecks of sediment adhering to her tongue. She bit into a fig, to take away the taste, didn’t like that either. It was too sickly-sweet and pulpy, seemed to ooze and slobber in her mouth, as if she’d swallowed something alive but decomposing. The inside looked obscene, pink and swollen seeds dribbling sticky juices.
‘Good?’ he asked, piling several on his own plate.
‘Mm.’
‘Have another. And eat them with the salmon. The two tastes complement each other and the colours look quite stunning.’
She chose the smallest fig, the thinnest slice of salmon, spent as long as possible cutting them in pieces, then pushed them round her plate, made a show of munching bread, wishing there was more of it. ‘The … plates are really lovely.’
‘I got them in an auction twenty years ago.’
‘Did you choose them for the birds?’
‘No. Birds meant nothing then.’ He cut a fig in quarters, and then again in halves, ate with great finesse, laying down his knife and fork between each small but dainty mouthful. ‘Or perhaps I’m wrong. Now I come to think of it, I’ve always been a bit obsessed with birds. In fact, as a kid, I was terrified of feathers – not ghosts or creepy-crawlies, but harmless bloody feathers.’ He dabbed his mouth with a napkin, removed a smear of juice. ‘Yet I always wanted to fly. There was this high brick wall at school. It was strictly out of bounds, to tell the truth, but I must have climbed it almost every day. I’d stand right on the top and jump into the air, expecting to take off. I broke my ankle once, and my knees were so damn scarred they looked like patchwork. It’s funny, though, it’s never left me, that longing to wing off.’ They both looked up instinctively as a plover suddenly flapped up from the grass and seemed to vault into the sky, soaring higher, higher, until it was a dot, a speck, and gone.
Jane shaded her eyes to protect them from the sun, kept gazing up at the gold-fringed rags of cloud. She longed to fly herself, though she’d never even realised it till now. It was as if he’d put it into words for her, that yearning to escape, to rise above the ordinary, leap into another higher sphere. Perhaps they should climb up on the barn together and jump off into space – not fall and break their ankles, but pierce the clouds like plovers.
‘Are you all right? You’ve eaten almost nothing.’
She crammed salmon in her mouth, wincing at the taste – raw fish tinged with paraffin. ‘I never eat much breakfast.’
‘This is lunch.’
‘But it’s only eight o’clock.’
‘Yes, but we’ve both been up for hours. What happened to you, by the way? You never quite explained why you were sheltering in St Mark’s. Was your roof blown in, or …?’
‘Yes.’
‘Christ! Poor kid. What are you going to do? D’you live alone, or with your parents?’
‘No.’
‘No what?’
‘No parents.’
‘What d’you mean, ‘‘no parents’’?’
‘They’re … dead.’
He put his knife and fork down, seemed to shrink away from her. ‘What, killed last night? Surely you can’t …’
‘No, killed last month.’
‘But that’s terrible. What happened?’
‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘Okay, I understand.’ He pushed his plate away, a frown-line cutting deep between his eyebrows. ‘I’m sorry, though, I’ve been rambling on about everything and anything, and you must be feeling devastated.’
‘It’s all right. I’ve … recovered. We weren’t that close, in fact.’
‘One’s always close to parents. Dangerously close.’
‘Are your parents still alive?’ His parents were much safer.
‘My father is. He’s eighty-six. And still thinks he’s Lord Byron.’
She smiled. ‘Is he an artist too?’
‘No. A patent officer.’
‘What’s that?’
‘You’d have to ask him. I’ve never been quite sure myself. Hell! I’m getting cold, are you?’
‘Yes, frozen.’ She was actually quite warm now, snugged inside her duffel-coat, with the tartan rug spread across her knees. But if they went inside she’d be excused from fish and figs, perhaps excused from questions. ‘Anyway, I ought to get a move on.’ Christopher forked in a last mouthful of smoked salmon, then stacked the plates, returned them to the tray. ‘I’ve got a meeting with the glaziers at ten, and the roads will be impossible. This client’s a real pain, always fussing over something. He’s worried now about how we’ll fix the panels, though we’ve been over it a good three times already. He’s built this huge indoor conservatory – well, more a leisure-centre, with a pool and a jacuzzi, and exercise-machines, and a whole jungle of exotic plants.’
‘You mean, your red birds are for him?’
‘Yes. He suggested fish, at first, but fish were too damned obvious. And I’ve been longing for an excuse to do some birds – something on a decent scale, for once – and he wanted a whole wall of glass, so I just had to push for birds.’
She ground a piece of broken flowerpot underneath her heel, heard it crush to dust. Those birds were very special, shouldn’t be entrusted to some fussy fat-cat health-freak. She could see the client in her mind – an overweight and balding prat, determined to be fit, sweating on his exercise-bike in a vulgar satin tracksuit, with brand names on his chest and shoes, and a comic baseball cap.
‘I’ve done another separate panel – a sort of variation on a theme. It’s for a stained-glass exhibition they’re holding at the RIBA next month – an important international one.’
Jane replaced her tumbler on the tray. More initials which meant nothing. ‘What, birds again, you mean?’
‘Just one this time – and trapped inside a room.’
She grimaced. ‘I hate it when they’re trapped – the way they flap and panic, see the trees outside the window, and imagine they’re flying off to freedom and fresh air, instead of smashing into glass.’
‘That’s exactly what attracted me – the sense of movement, yet confinement.’
Jane stood up, pushed the rug aside. ‘Would you let me see it?’
‘I’m afraid it’s stored away, packed up in a crate, ready for its journey up to London. I did it several months ago, as a trial-run for the leisure-centre. The bird’s the same species, you might say, but there’s much more of a feeling of an enclosed and claustrophobic space.’ He cupped his hands together, as if they, too, trapped a bird. ‘Right – you ready? I’ll drop you on the way. No – hell! – I’d quite forgotten. I can’t drop you at a roofless house. Look, you’d better ring the police or something, or get on to the social services. You need help, you know, with no parents
and no home. Haven’t you got friends, or a grandma or an aunt or …? Here, use my phone. It’s portable, so it should be working still.’
‘No, really. It’s all right.’
‘But you said your …’
‘It’s not that bad. Only a section of the roof’s gone – quite a small bit, actually.’ She was shattered by the ease with which these lies were tripping out – a new and instant talent, which seemed to come quite naturally, though it was bound to lead to trouble. If he drove her to the village she had mentioned, she’d have to point him out her house – one with just a bit of roof gone, and impoverished enough for a girl without a job. And if he knew the village well, then any house she picked on might belong to friends of his, land her in more tangles, reveal her as a sham. She trailed him to the kitchen, tried to play for time, moved over to the sink so that she could start washing up the plates.
‘No, leave that,’ he protested. ‘There’s no hot water anyway.’
She mooched back to the garden, brought in the picnic rug, folded it, refolded it. ‘Where does your client live?’ she asked at last.
‘A mile or two from Lewes. Why?’
‘Could you drop me there instead? I’ve got a … friend in Lewes, who’ll probably put me up.’
‘If her house isn’t roofless. Or is the friend a him?’
She was blushing once again, though she had no idea why. Most girls had a boyfriend. She’d read in a survey in a women’s magazine that the average number of sexual partners for girls of her own age was seven and a half. She hadn’t even had the half, unless you could count Ian. ‘No, her,’ she said. ‘Jane.’
‘My mother was called Jane.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes.’ He grimaced. ‘Right, I’ll just give Adrian a buzz, to make sure his precious leisure-centre is still standing in one piece. Got your things?’
She nodded, hadn’t any things, except her tatty duffel-bag, still slung across her shoulder. Most of what she owned was three hundred and fifty miles away. Was the Shrepton house still standing in one piece? Should she phone to check, disguise her voice, pretend to be a stranger?
The artist reappeared, with a folder and a holdall, and easing on a pair of grey suede gloves. ‘Okay, Rose, we’re off. Or d’ you want to ring your friend before we leave, tell her that you’re coming?’
‘No,’ she answered slowly, turning back for one last look at his frenzied headstrong birds. ‘Jane’s always liked surprises.’
Chapter Four
‘You’re his daughter, aren’t you?’
‘No.’
‘I’m sorry. I thought he said … Look, do sit down, and do excuse the mess. It’s like a fridge in here. That’s the worst of being all-electric. The heating’s off, the fax is off, the computer and the copier are phut, and I can’t even offer you a cup of tea or coffee.’
‘It’s okay, I’ve got champagne.’ Jane sipped it gingerly. She’d only had it once or twice before, at special birthday parties, and this brand was much drier, seemed to have more bubbles, which tickled up her nose, exploded down her throat.
‘Lucky thing! No one offered me any. Are they celebrating something?’
Jane shrugged, then shook her head, was totally confused. She’d met half a dozen people in just the last ten minutes, muddled all their names. Sally, was it, the girl now looking after her? She glanced up at the blonded hair, the purple varnished nails, the tight black silky skirt, rucked right above her knees; then down at her own stained and grubby tracksuit. Charitable of Sally to mistake her for an artist’s daughter, rather than a tramp. Christopher hadn’t introduced her beyond a muttered ‘Rose’. It was his client, Adrian, who had taken her coat, offered her champagne, attached names to all the faces – balding fatso Adrian, whom she’d pictured in his sports gear, dripping sweat and wealth, and who’d turned out to be a skinny, rather solemn man, still only in his twenties, dressed utterly conventionally in grey trousers and white shirt, and looking almost shabby. She was astonished to be sitting there at all, in a seventeenth-century manor house with a dozen acres of landscaped grounds and an Aston Martin in the stables.
Just half a mile from Lewes, she’d suddenly blurted out that her friend had moved away – she’d only just remembered – stupid of her, crazy, but … Her fear had built throughout the drive, fear of being dropped off in a strange and lonely town. She had lost her former courage, as if an hour or two of normal conversation and one shared (uneaten) meal had made her realise how much she had missed company, how scared she was of soldiering on alone. Knives and forks and napkins had sapped her resolution – the sight of chairs and tables, cooker, fridge and phone. How could she return to an orange-box, a camping spoon, the slap of waves on shingle? The artist had seemed peeved, driven on in silence after one coldly curt remark. ‘Well, you’ll have to come with me, then. It’s too late to take you back, with the roads as bad as this.’ Jane put her glass down, wincing as she remembered his sharp tone.
‘Want a magazine?’ Sally tossed her Cosmopolitan. ‘Read your stars or something. I must make three quick calls.’
Jane turned to the horoscopes, scanned the page for Libra. ‘With the sun passing through your own birth-sign until the middle of the month, you will be very much preoccupied with intensely personal issues, and with contemplating changes which …’
‘Shit! The battery’s run down. That’s our last phone gone, which means no work today at all. Perhaps I shouldn’t even have bothered coming in.’
‘What is your job exactly?’ Jane glanced down at her mother’s stars – turmoil forecast, loss.
‘I’m Adrian’s P.A.’
Jane was none the wiser. She’d been surprised to find the old brick house doubled as an office, that the downstairs rooms held fax machines, computers, fleets of sleek cream phones, as well as antique furniture, elegant chaises longues, ancient gold-framed portraits on the walls. Even Sally’s modest room was an eccentric mix of new and old – the latest business hardware ranged across an antique desk, with a bow front, lion’s claw legs; two clomping metal filing cabinets dwarfing a graceful bureau with exquisite painted roundels set into its fine-grained polished wood. Sally herself looked somewhat out of place, her fuchsia lipstick and fake Jean Harlow hair too blatant for the sombre panelled walls. The two other men who worked there had also seemed mismatched with their surroundings – one in Levis and a sweatshirt, one in coloured braces, and both obviously disturbing the wigged and powdered worthies who sneered from their gold frames. They and Adrian himself were all well under thirty. How could they have achieved so much so early, or own so many things? In just half a dozen years would she have got as far, be driving a snazzy sports car with her initials on the number-plate, or sitting at a desk with a solar-powered gold-plated miniature oil derrick as her latest office toy? All she wanted at the moment was the loo. Her bladder seemed irritable this morning, constantly nudging her and griping. Sally was repairing a chipped nail, applying base-coat, varnish, Quick-Seal, in swift and skilled succession.
‘Excuse me asking, but could I use your toilet?’
‘’Course. Just wait a tick till this has dried and I’ll take you there myself. Our usual one has flooded, so we’re using Adrian’s, and it’s quite a little trek.’
So he had his private loo. She was surprised to find it small and almost spartan – no gold-plated toilet seats or portraits on the walls. Sally waited in the passage, to show her the way back. The house was spacious, winding, easy to get lost in.
‘Want to see the chapel while we’re here?’ Sally paused outside a panelled door in the stretch of gloomy corridor which led back to the offices.
‘Chapel? In a house?’
‘Yes. Some of these old places had their own private chapels, dating from way back. This one’s got some history, yards of it, apparently, but don’t ask me for the details. I’ve always hated history – all those dreary battles, and kings with the same names, so you muddle all the Georges and the Henrys. Damn! I’ve smudged my
varnish.’ She let go of the door-handle as if it were red-hot, inspected her spoilt nail. ‘Actually, the previous owners turned it into a billiard room, but Adrian changed it back, had it re-whatsited – I can’t think of the word.’ Sally pushed the door, gestured to a tall and dim-lit room, with an intricate carved roof, a simple slab of altar, three rows of plain wood chairs. ‘He comes here every lunch-time, when we’re all out at the pub – I mean, kneels and really prays. Weird, isn’t it? He never drinks, you know, like normal bosses do. I mean, the guy I worked for prior to this could knock back a whole bottle of scotch in an average working day.’
Jane gazed round at the dark oak walls, the frieze of sculpted angels high above them; the wooden floor, well-worn from pious feet. ‘Mind if I go in?’
‘No, help yourself. It gives me the creeps, quite frankly. It’s so dark and sort of dreary.’
Jane liked the gloom, which made it other-worldly, lent an air of grave conspiracy, so she could imagine Christians hiding from their persecutors – heroic Papist martyrs, or brave beleaguered Protestants. She wondered whether Adrian was C of E or Catholic, or some odd sect of his own. He seemed eccentric altogether – splurging a cool million on an ostentatious house, yet praying every lunch-time on his own; ordering stained glass for a leisure-centre, rather than his chapel. These windows were all plain – narrow pointed lancets, screened by funereal evergreens which blocked the light and view. She walked up to the altar, wished she were alone, so she could kneel like Adrian. It must be odd to pray. She had never really tried. It seemed a skill, like poetry, which you admired in other people, but could never hope to quite bring off yourself.
‘So there you are! I’ve been searching everywhere.’
She swung round at the deep male voice, saw the artist at the door, champagne glass in one hand, someone else’s khaki scarf knotted round his neck. He had taken off his coat, at last, looked strangely different without his cashmere armour – less impressive, narrower, yet also somehow younger – his figure almost boyish beneath the ageing face.
Bird Inside Page 5