Dream on, he told himself. In the first two months alone they had lost the services of their milkman (greeting Marla with ‘good morning’ he was told that it had been until he showed up), been banned from the newsagent (‘thank you’ Mr Ali had told Marla when she’d bought a pint of milk in the absence of the departed milk man; ‘at these prices, you should say it twice’ she’d replied), and alienated the neighbours on both sides of the Notting Hill mews house where Marla still lived. The last straw had come one evening in Kensington Place. When waiting for their table at the bar in front, Billings had found himself the recipient of a straight right hand, delivered after Marla had called its owner a ‘douche bag’.
Now they were separated, except that Marla seemed disinclined to accept the fact. If she’d had less money he would have felt more sorry for her. But she had kept the Notting Hill house, she had kept the furniture and pictures (the small Pasmore still caused an ache), and she had kept all the books except his core of working reference books. She had kept everything – except him, and even ‘him’ she seemed unwilling to let go.
Billings finished his whisky and poured himself an extremely large glass of New Zealand sauvignon (nourishment he told himself), put on an Ella Fitzgerald tape, and was half asleep in his rented armchair when the phone rang.
It was McBain. ‘They are trying to resurrect Pop Art, you’ll be happy to know, and I am determined to stop it in its tracks.’
‘Glad to hear it. I was going to ring you actually. You used to be a politics writer – tell me about Harry Lester.’
‘Good God, why?’
‘His wife came into the gallery – in fact she’s come in several times. She bought a painting for six grand.’ He decided not to mention her overly-protective bodyguards. There was something surreal and humiliating about the episode which made him reluctant to recount it.
‘Well, she’s good for it, don’t worry. The cheque won’t come back.’
‘Inherited?’
‘Hardly. She’s a management consultant, has her own company. Does very well, I understand – well enough to have allowed Harry to concentrate on politics since he was a mere slip of a boy.’
‘And she’s interested in art?’
‘I would have thought in a trendy kind of way. Fits with the image.’
‘Image?’
‘Of the new party. You know, forget about mushy peas and “dad’s down pit”; this is the swinging Labour party. Of architects and novelists and pop stars. And artists. Damien Hirst, Emma Sargeant, Leo de La Fruiti.’
‘Leo de La Fruiti?’
‘Well, you know what I mean. Any name like that, provided it isn’t Alf, or Arthur, or Leonard.’
‘I see. Anything else I should know about Mrs Lester.’
‘Little is known; I’m told she likes to keep it that way. Keen on her privacy is the leader’s wife. She’s prettier in person than on the box, in a lightly dizzy kind of way. Not that she’s meant to be dizzy – you can’t run a business the size of hers without keeping a pretty good eye on the main chance. But you’ve seen her yourself.’
‘Happily married?’
‘I’d have thought so. No scuttlebutt to the contrary. But why? Did she act otherwise?’
‘A little bit,’ said Billings, beginning, despite the visual anonymity of a telephone conversation, to blush slightly.
‘With you, huh? Golly. Don’t let Marla know, or we might have the first assassination attempt on a Prime Minister’s spouse.’
‘I wasn’t saying that,’ Billings protested.
‘All right. Whatever you say. But I can’t believe Holly Lester plays around. There’s too much at stake. And if she does I’d be pretty careful if I were you. This isn’t old Labour – strong tea, Methodist prayers and working class decency. This lot play to win.’
‘Harry Lester must be the fifth leader since the Tories got in. I can’t believe he’ll be the first to hold power.’
‘I wouldn’t count on that. Life’s changed over here, my boy. It may be all on account of the Tories, but don’t expect your average voter to thank them for that. They always say revolutions occur after the first change is introduced. And if there’s one thing Harry Lester has made clear, it’s that there won’t be any going back. Old Labour’s now old hat. Anyway, it’s the kids’ bath time – got to run. I’ll come by the gallery soon.’
Billings put the phone down, none the wiser for this conversation with his best friend. They had met in New York when McBain, flush from his foreign correspondent expense account, first began buying art. Billings had managed quite easily to turn an awkward enthusiasm for poor imitations of the Hudson School into more sensible channels. Such was McBain’s keenness to learn that he rapidly knew as much about the Euston Road School as Billings; soon an amateur enthusiasm became near-professional in its dedication, and began to threaten McBain’s livelihood. After missing a presidential motorcade in favour of a Corot exhibition at the Met, McBain had been on the verge of being sacked by his editors, when he had decided to return to London. This was two years before, and by the time Billings came back six months later, McBain had somehow managed to re-emerge as the art columnist for London’s leading (because only) evening newspaper. His column appeared under the pseudonym of Daisy Carrera – widely thought in the West End gallery and museum scene to be the name of Henri Matisse’s second mistress, but in fact (as McBain had once drunkenly confessed) the name of Mrs McBain’s third cousin.
The column itself was arch, acerbic, and astonishingly successful thanks to a mix of heavy learning, lightly worn, and ferocious, campaigning opinions. It read like the vitriolic outpourings of a disappointed Italian contessa, lightened by the camp asides of a wholly English confirmed bachelor. Of his professional persona, McBain had said, during the same drunken evening in which he had confessed his nom de plume’s provenance, ‘It gets a little tiring at times.’ As well it might, since its creator was himself a stocky, balding Scotsman, father of three small boys, and the happy husband of a Jewish American psychoanalyst who had effortlessly transferred her practice from 91st and Madison to a small room within spitting distance of the Tavistock Clinic.
But at least McBain was now writing about his passion. We all make sacrifices, Billings thought self-pityingly, just as he carried the odd hopeless abstract painting to finance his love of landscapes, watercolours in particular. Well, partly to finance it, since without his backer he would not be showing much of anything – abstract or not – in a Cork Street setting. To his shame, when he and Marla had first stopped living together two months before, his first concern had been about his backer – not perhaps altogether surprisingly, since the backer was Marla’s father, a very rich insurance executive in Connecticut with a taste for English art. But Billings’s mercenary anxiety proved groundless, since Marla had managed to alienate even her father as well. Calling him a douche bag too had placed the old boy pretty firmly on Billings’s side of the marital divide.
He tried not to think any more about Marla, and found himself instead indulging in a light sexual fantasy about Mrs Harry Lester. What would she be like to sleep with? It had been seven years since he had shared bedclothes with anyone but Marla. He thought of the woman’s smile and encouraging eyes; remembering I have to have you too, he began to think more intimate thoughts as well. But as he slipped into a light doze he heard McBain’s voice in the semi-conscious background – I can’t believe Holly Lester plays around. Neither could Billings, and as his dreams took over from his conscious thoughts, Holly Lester receded, replaced by the entirely unerotic image of Sam the Labrador.
Chapter 3
He took a taxi after lunch to the Primrose Hill address grudgingly supplied by Tara. It was not an area he knew well and stirred only very limited associations. The home of writers, journalists, and a few successful and probably bad artists. Mildly bohemian, but lacking the rough edge of Camden town; middle class, but without the sheer affluence of neighbouring St. John’s Wood.
So he was s
urprised when the taxi driver stopped on Regent’s Park Road in front of an enormous white Regency house. He paid the driver and extricated the canvas wrapped in bubble wrap. Looking around carefully – if a handbag got his face pushed against a wall what would a package this size do? – he saw no sign of Terry the Runt or his companion. He walked towards the front door and as he started up the steps it opened and an immense black woman stood in the doorway. She wore a white cotton dress, not unlike a nurse’s uniform, but it was partly covered by a vast blue blazer that accentuated the extraordinary width of her shoulders.
She looked sharply at the bubble-wrapped picture. ‘I was not expecting a delivery.’
‘Who said it’s for you?’ Though English, Billings had not spent fifteen years in New York for nothing. He added mildly, ‘Is this the Lesters’?’
‘It is.’
‘Then could you please tell Mrs Lester that James Billings is here with her painting?’
The door closed in his face and he resisted the temptation to ring the bell. He heard the black woman’s voice, then a garbled reply. When the door swung open he saw the woman again in front of him but was surprised to find no one else nearby. Then he noticed the intercom on the wall.
‘Follow me,’ the woman said curtly. He walked into the hall and followed her into the sitting room. ‘Sitting’ room was right, he decided, since he was faced by a dark sea of wooden chairs, lined in a semi-circle three rows deep.
There were dozens of framed photographs on the walls, most of Harry Lester in a variety of poses with other people – James Callaghan, Michael Foot, some union leader Billings recognized from the Winter of Discontent years before, and a publican pulling a pint for a beaming Harry in his constituency up North. The only art work consisted of two framed posters: a Toulouse Lautrec, and Steinberg’s famous vision of the world from New York transported to Leeds. He was very surprised; where was the flair, the stylishness he associated with Holly Lester?
‘There you are.’ He turned to find Holly in the doorway, dressed smartly in a scarlet blouse, black skirt, stockings, and black pumps. She spoke quickly, almost curtly. So this was business after all. ‘Come upstairs please.’ She turned around smartly and he followed her upstairs to a large room that ran across the front of the house, painted a light Wedgwood blue, ostensibly intended to duplicate the original Regency colour. The room had three sash windows, framed by Colefax and Fowler curtains he recognized from the Interior magazines Marla read. The floor was oak, and decorated with a mix of kilims and small Persian rugs.
Here there were many paintings, mainly nineteenth-century oils, including a Seago and several landscapes he could only identify as Norwich School. The taste was faultless but utterly conventional, as if someone had been given, say, £25,000 and told to do a good job on the walls. Perhaps that was exactly what had happened, if Holly made as much money as the house (and McBain) implied. No snob, Billings saw nothing wrong with this – better to buy pictures as furniture than not buy them at all – but it did leave him baffled by her purchase of the Burgess.
‘What a nice room,’ he said, thinking of its contrast with the pedestrian sitting room downstairs. She seemed to read his thoughts. ‘Downstairs is Harry’s room for meetings. This,’ she said hesitantly, as if recognizing its staid conventions, ‘is where we entertain.’ On a side table he saw two photographs in silver frames, one of the Lesters with Harold Pinter, another with John Mortimer, which suggested the kind of people they had to drinks.
‘Your pictures are good, too,’ he said, picking the adjective carefully, ‘but I can’t quite see where the Burgess will go.’
‘That’s what I thought. But I have another idea. Come with me.’
Moving out into the hallway, they were confronted by a small boy, wearing Oshkosh dungarees. ‘Mummy, what’s that?’ the boy asked, pointing at the bubble wrap. Then he sucked his thumb and stared at Billings.
‘It’s a picture, darling. Something mummy’s just bought. This nice man is here to help mummy put it on the wall.’
A young woman with a pigtail came slowly down the stairs from an upper floor reading a paperback. She looked up languidly, as if from a deep sleep. ‘What’s that?’ she asked, and Holly explained again. ‘We’re just going out to the park,’ the woman said, and began reading her book again as she started down the stairs.
‘Let him have ice cream if he wants, Carrie,’ Holly said, and the woman nodded again without lifting her head.
‘This way,’ said Holly, and marched down the corridor towards the back of the house. Opening a door, she turned to him shyly, and Billings realized he was entering the master bedroom. On the far side of the room, a big brass bed lay between two windows overlooking the garden. Holly went and sat on one side of it; taking this cue, Billings carefully leant the picture against the foot of the bed and sat in a chair across from her.
Now he felt nervous. Looking around, to his astonishment he saw on the walls a Kitaj, an early Hockney, a Henry Moore sketch for his series of paintings of people sleeping in the Underground during the Blitz, and three lithographs by Keith Milow. In his confusion he blurted out, ‘I don’t understand.’
She looked concerned. ‘Is something wrong?’
‘Sorry, I always tend to look at people’s pictures first. It’s not that it tells me a lot about them or anything like that; it’s just my natural inclination, as a dealer.’
‘And?’
‘Well, how can I put this? Downstairs, you have a series of what you might call working photographs; in the drawing room upstairs you have very traditional paintings; and in here you have most of Twentieth-century British art represented.’
She laughed. ‘I see. Actually, it’s simple. Downstairs is a working room – no frills. Upstairs is for formal entertaining – for the likes of Mr Pinter et al. And this room – this room is mine.’
Mine, he noticed, not ours. He was not sure what to say next, when a shouting child’s voice suddenly echoed through the room – ‘No!’ He was startled, especially since he could see no child in the room. Holly laughed again, and pointed at her night side table, where Billings saw an intercom – one of those portable systems which friends of his with babies spent all their time disconnecting, reconnecting, finding batteries for.
‘I’m afraid the nanny’s hopeless. Australian, but very intellectual.’
‘A contradiction in terms?’
She giggled.
‘So she’s the nanny. And the woman who answered the door is the daily?’
‘The daily? Oh, you think because she’s large and black and wearing white, she must be the daily.’
It was said lightly but with a point, and showed the first acerbic edge to her character. He thought for a moment. ‘Yes.’ Any other answer seemed inconceivable.
She giggled again. ‘At least you’re honest. If not very PC.’
‘I left New York partly to get away from Political Correctness. Only to find it gaining ground fast over here.’
‘Is that troubling? Are you racist?’ Again, there was a hint of steel.
‘Not in the slightest.’
‘Anti-Semitic then?’
‘Less than many of my middle class contemporaries.’
‘Public school contemporaries?’
‘I’m afraid so. No longer acceptable, I’m sure, but public school nonetheless.’
She scoffed. ‘My husband’s public school. Oxbridge too?’
‘London actually. And then the Warburg.’
‘At least it wasn’t the army.’
‘No, though my father retired a Brigadier. Why, are you prejudiced?’ It was his turn to laugh, and then the intercom squawked again, this time unintelligibly.
‘Have you got children?’ Holly asked.
He shook his head.
‘Still single then?’
‘I’m single again, actually. My wife and I are separated.’
She looked pleased at this news, but said ‘I’m sorry’ nonetheless.
‘W
ho said I am?’ he asked, and she giggled.
She kicked off her shoes, drew up her legs onto the bedspread, and held both ankles with her hand. They were splendid legs, he decided, wondering just what he was doing in the bedroom of the leader of the Labour party. ‘So,’ she said, ‘I suppose you’re back on the sexual warpath.’ She looked at him with a teasing smile.
Downstairs and with the nanny, she had seemed so matter-of-fact that he had not dared to entertain any fantasies about why he was here. Now he could not help himself. ‘Actually, I don’t meet many people these days. I lead a pretty quiet life.’
She smiled knowingly. ‘Surely you meet the odd female customer. I should think they’d be very keen. You’re very good-looking.’
Billings knew this was an irresistible form of flattery intended to please him. It did, and he felt a warm blush start to glow in his cheeks.
‘Have I embarrassed you?’ Holly asked, again teasingly. ‘I bet all the girls say that, don’t they?’
He found himself suddenly unable to respond. When he had met Marla seven years before, she had been forthright about her interest in him, while he in English fashion, had dillied and dallied. If he remembered correctly, Marla had finally had to ask him out. But her style was what Americans would have called ‘up front’. There was none of the sexual coquetry Holly was exuding, which made him feel about twelve years old.
‘I have embarrassed you,’ Holly declared, and swung her feet onto the floor and stood up. ‘So where should we put the Burgess?’
‘There?’ asked Billings, pointing to the far wall where there was an empty space with a lonely-looking picture hook stuck in the plaster. ‘Isn’t that what you had in mind?’
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