As it was, I felt I was walking on clouds, on a high, dizzy with the euphoria of being in love.
I finished work at around five, then drove back to Patrick’s, stopping to get basic things for our dinner from a corner shop.
I felt the future I’d been hoping for that night on the way down to Aunty May’s open up before me. In spite of, no, because of the unthinkable thing I’d done that night.
It was all OK though, because it was meant.
‘No! No!’
‘What is it?”
I’d woken up in a sheen of sweat. It was night, though never completely dark in Patrick’s apartment, with the lights of the city shining outside our window.
I’d been dreaming, reliving the thump on the car. In my dream, Patrick’s leg had been sliced off below the knee and was flying through the air to lie on the verge in its black leather Converse trainer. I was out of the car, trying desperately to hold the severed leg in my hands and to fix it back onto Patrick’s bloodied stump as he stood laughing down at me, leaning against the car as if nothing had happened, as if he was completely unaware that his leg had been sliced in half by my careless driving.
‘What’s up, Ellie? You cried out in your sleep?’
The real Patrick was leaning up on one elbow, looking at me with concern, his face lit by the neon lights of the city outside.
‘Bad dream.’
‘You shouted out.’
‘It was horrid.’ I buried my face in his chest and he put his hand in my hair.
‘Ssshhhh,’ he said. ‘Everything’s alright.’
I lay and tried to rationalise, remind myself there was no conclusive evidence that I had hit him. And that even if I had I was doing all I could to atone.
And he kissed me and we spent the rest of the night clawing at each other as if we couldn’t bear the fact there was skin and flesh between us, as if we wanted to crawl inside each other’s souls.
Often, over the first few days after I started working at the studio, Patrick would call me, unable to wait until I got back. Always when I saw his name flash onto my phone, my stomach somersaulted.
‘Come now,’ he would say, and I did, I dropped everything and went to him.
One day, as I was clearing up the studio he called and said, ‘I want to take you to Oblix.’
‘Oblix?’
‘It’s the restaurant at the top of the Shard. You won’t get better than that. There’s nothing to eat in the flat. So let’s go somewhere we can eat haute cuisine and drink good champagne.’
‘Wow. Isn’t that expensive?’
‘Ellie, money is the least of my worries. Come home immediately and get changed.’
And I did.
We must have given off some kind of aura, because everywhere we went people smiled at us, chatted to us, as if they wanted a little bit of what we had and were curious to get to know how we’d achieved it. Love is a very infectious thing.
‘Let me get the door for you,’ the taxi driver might say, leaping from his driving seat, coming round to help Patrick in. Or waiters brought us coffees and digestivos at the end of meals, saying ‘On the house’ with a smile.
In the more up-market restaurants waiters moved discreetly between tables holding ice buckets with white starched cloths over their arms. Patrick knew exactly which wines to order for each course, conversing quietly with the sommelier about grapes and chateaux and vintages and then plumping for something extortionate, as if money was no object.
Which it didn’t appear to be.
‘We’ll have the Meursault with the starter and a bottle of Nuits Saint Georges with the main. And perhaps a Marsala with the dessert.’
He thought nothing of paying huge amounts for wine we didn’t even finish.
Or he’d order bottles of vintage champagne, and if it wasn’t chilled properly he’d send it back. Sometimes I felt embarrassed at his total confidence bordering on arrogance with the waiters, but he thought nothing of demanding the best service, and the waiters never seemed to mind. They seemed to like being in our orbit.
‘We’re paying for it. It’s what they expect, Ellie.’
I ate things I’d never eaten before. Lobster, and langoustine. Monkfish and panna cotta and minimalist meals where everything was almost too pretty to put in your mouth. Patrick would press me to try things, urging me to change my mind if I did as I was used to and plumped for the cheapest thing on the menu.
‘You don’t want to go for that. Look, this will be good, the halibut with the truffle sauce.’
Sugar cages and crystallised flowers and purees and jus.
I wasn’t really all that interested in the food. I was only waiting for the meals to finish so we could sit up close to one another in the taxi, or sometimes on what Patrick called his ‘plebby days’ on the Tube, and travel back to his apartment with him.
Patrick was introducing me to a whole other side of life I had never experienced before in my previous role as struggling artist and teacher. He pointed out that the most expensive restaurants also had art on their walls and suggested I collect their cards so I could invite them to my next exhibition, or make proposals for commissions to them. He knew about business and applied his knowledge to my art so that I felt it was something valuable, marketable as well as cultured.
The days passed in a blur, working, eating at good restaurants, lying with Patrick on his massive bed in his apartment, stroking his lovely, toned body. I marvelled at his bone structure, at his arm muscles, at the dips and rises in his back. I couldn’t get enough of the smell of him.
And he made me laugh.
We were on our way to another meal in Knightsbridge on the Piccadilly Line. ‘Have you noticed,’ Patrick asked, his arm around me, so I was clamped to him, and never wanted to move away, ‘how the Tube announcements get more refined the further west you go? She starts to say “alight” instead of “get off” and weather is suddenly “inclement” instead of “bad”.’
‘I never noticed before.’
‘They tailor it deliberately to the clientele. The people who clean the tracks – fluffers, they’re called – they say the stuff they sweep up gets more expensive the further west they go. So in the East End it’s all man-made fibres, but beyond Hyde Park Corner it’s cashmere and linen and silk.’
‘Really?’
‘No kidding.’
I laughed. ‘You know such a lot about this city, Patrick. Did you grow up here?’
He stared at me, as if I was losing my mind, and for a second I felt ashamed, as if I’d asked him something that was crossing a line rather than a simple chatty request for banal information about his life.
‘I grew up in Southwold, of course,’ he told me. ‘How do you think I knew your aunt?’
‘What?’
I tried to remember if he’d told me this before, and if so in what context it had come up.
‘Everyone in Southwold knew your aunt,’ he said. ‘With her posse of happy foster children.’
There was a clipped edge to his voice when he said this and I looked at him, but then he smiled. Pulled me to him so hard my mouth was buried in the fabric of his jacket. I pulled away and looked up at him.
‘Don’t look so worried, Ellie – in a small town, everyone knows everyone.’
‘But . . . what do you know about my aunt?’
‘She was famous, Ellie. Or infamous perhaps. The artist with the foster kids. She was always out on the beach or down on the jetties, surrounded by children, picnicking and giving the appearance of the perfect home-maker and surrogate mother. And then of course there was all that business, with the drowning, and her apportioning blame on some poor kid . . . and she ended up – hey . . . I’m not upsetting you, am I?’
I thought of Daisy on the gravestone and the note with ‘A piece of you’ written on it.
‘I don’t know. I don’t want to have my memories tainted. I used to love going to stay with her.’
‘I’m sure you did. That cute house right on t
he beach that everyone wanted to live in! But she ended up in a psychiatric hospital so it didn’t do her all that much good after all. She was accused of stuff, Ellie – neglect, as far as I remember. But hey, stop looking so concerned. It was probably partly village gossip. You only have to be a little bit different in a small community like that and people have it in for you and drive you mad.’
‘Where were you living then, while all this was happening?’ I asked.
‘Put it this way,’ he said. ‘We weren’t all as privileged as you London kids who came down for the weekends.’
‘But . . .’
‘Shhh. Hey, we need to get off. Come on.’ He tugged me out of my seat and we jumped down onto the platform.
Later, when we were back at his apartment, he went to get us glasses of something to drink in bed. I pulled out the leather album I’d noticed tucked into the bottom of his suitcase under the framed photo of his wife when I’d unpacked it. There might be clues about where Patrick had grown up in here. There was little else in the flat that retained any indication of his childhood. Little that indicated anything about Patrick’s life. It was so male, so minimalist.
I opened the album.
‘Birth Book’ was scrawled across the first page in ink.
I began to flick through.
Bingo! Here were old photographs, colours faded, of babies and children – I assumed one of them must be Patrick – and in the background the familiar landscape of Southwold with its groynes along the beach and the lighthouse towering above everything in the town.
So he had grown up there!
I began to turn the pages. There was Patrick in a pram. It was so obviously him, with his shining eyes and his black hair, it made me smile. We were meant to be together! We had probably played together on the sand as kids!
I began to turn the pages further.
And since he had told me he was two years older than me, it was quite likely we had seen each other down there, as children. This was extraordinary. I must tell him!
A shadow fell over me and I looked up to see Patrick in the doorway, his crutch under one arm, holding an ice bucket and glasses on a tray.
‘Patrick, this is amazing . . .’ I began. ‘We probably knew each other as kids!’
‘What do you think you’re looking at?’
I stopped, stunned by the flint in his voice.
‘I wanted to see what you looked like as a little child,’ I said, taken aback.
He dumped the tray down on the table and took the album from me.
‘Don’t EVER look at my things without asking again.’
The next time I looked, the album was gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Louise was waiting at my studio when I arrived the next morning. She had a Styrofoam cup of coffee in her hand and she was sitting on a buoy staring at the men down on the Clippers preparing to carry boatloads of tourists up and down the river. Gulls were hanging around overhead ready to swoop on any unexpected pickings from the slurry that was being ferried onto barges waiting in the mouth of the River Lea.
‘Hey,’ I said. ‘What are you doing here?’
I was still wrung out from the contortions with Patrick. After his outburst, he had apologised profusely, taken me by the hand, asked me to help him to bed where we had made desperate love as if we were both shocked, or wounded, by his outburst and needed to heal each other and console ourselves.
‘I’m so sorry, Ellie. It’s to do with my childhood, I don’t want to be reminded,’ he’d said to me as he worked his tongue down my body.
‘I understand.’
‘I should have burnt those photos, those reminders. I want to leave all the pain back there, not to have it uncovered all over again.’ He reached my navel. ‘Do you understand?’
‘Yes!’ I said. ‘It’s OK. Please don’t stop.’
‘You promise you’ll leave it alone?’
‘Oh yes, Patrick. Yes.’
I could still smell him this morning, even though I’d showered, a waft of fresh sweat and almonds catching in the air as I moved. I drew it in. I could still taste the tangy skin of his stump. The dressing had been removed now and I’d licked it, believing somehow that my attention to it would heal it, would take away the harm he had suffered as a child, and the awful injury he was enduring. I would make up for everything, the physical damage to his lovely body on top of any emotional pain he’d gone through. I’d never felt such a strong mix of passion and compassion for anyone before. I wanted to carry on feeling like this, I didn’t want anything to distract me.
But I couldn’t ignore Louise when she’d come all the way over here to see me.
Pepper, spotting her, began to growl.
‘Pepper, Louise is a friend. Stop it!’
‘Blimey,’ said Louise, standing up. ‘He can be quite vicious for a little dog. So you’ve landed yourself a neat little studio. This must be costing you a pretty penny?’
‘Not really,’ I said. ‘It was a favour, from a friend.’
She raised her eyebrows.
‘I came to see how the painting was coming on, for the New York commission.’
‘Right.’
‘Can I see what you’ve done so far?’
She was sipping from her cup, covering her face so it was impossible to see what she was thinking. But she must have known how uncomfortable she was making me. I didn’t like showing people my work until I was confident I’d cracked what I was trying to achieve – she knew this about me from our art college days.
‘I’m not sure, I’m sorry, Louise,’ I said. ‘You know what I’m like, I feel a bit superstitious showing my work before it’s really taken shape.’
‘I’m not going to rip it off if that’s what you think!’
‘I didn’t think you would.’ I wondered if she had any idea of the punch this delivered, the double whammy, the suggestion that I was so arrogant as to think anyone would want to copy my work combined with the stab that it wasn’t worth plagiarising. I tried not to rise to it. ‘It’s not that, it’s a creative thing. You know what it’s like, you need things to germinate, sometimes having comments from other people before you’re ready can throw you off course.’
‘I came halfway across London! I wanted to check it out, see how you were getting on, see if I could help in any way.’
I looked into her face. Her tan had faded and there were dark shadows under her eyes and she wasn’t wearing her usually immaculately applied make-up. Without it she looked older, more tired.
‘Louise, is everything OK? With you and Guy?’
She shrugged.
‘Since you ask, we’re finished.’
‘Oh Louise, I’m sorry.’
She drained her coffee, threw away the cup, sat back down and put her face in her hands.
‘Look.’ She held out her left hand. The beautiful ring had gone. ‘He decided I was too “arty” for him. He bumped into an ex from Oz and they got back together. Just like that. So I’m alone again. And I’m trying to get my work off the ground and it’s hard. Then when I heard you were struggling with the commission, I thought I might be able to help a bit with yours, since it sounds like you’ve been busy and haven’t had as much time as you’d like to . . . Finn said he thought you were stalling a bit. He said you’ve been distracted by the cottage and all that.’
‘Oh, that’s so kind of you!’ I gave her a hug. I’d misjudged her. ‘It’s OK though, really. I’m on track, I think.’
‘Finn said you hadn’t been at home for a while. He’s been round to find you a few times but you’re never there.’
‘Poor Finn,’ I said. ‘I wish he didn’t still worry about me.’
She shrugged. ‘ I guess he still feels a bit protective towards you.’
She said the word ‘protective’ as if it was compensation for something I would prefer him to be feeling. She was wrong. I didn’t want Finn to feel anything for me any more. It was easier if we could have a clean break, hard though this was
proving to be because our lives, our work, our friends had always been so intertwined.
‘Well he’s really no need,’ I said. ‘Honestly. I’m fine.’
‘Anyway, can I see what you’re doing?’
Louise was being nice. But it made me feel awkward. I should have been able to say, thanks so much for your kind thought, Louise, but at the moment I don’t need your help, though it’s lovely to have your offer and I’ll bear it in mind. But I felt there was more to her interest than was apparent. You couldn’t be clear with someone who was being murky with you.
And then she proved my suspicions correct: ‘Chiara said you were traumatised by something that weekend. The weekend we all came down to your cottage. She said she hardly sees you, that you’re avoiding things and you need support to get you through. So I’ve come to see what I can do.’
‘Chiara said?’
Chiara was my most trusted friend. I couldn’t believe she would have told Louise about the anxieties I’d expressed to her on the way back to London in the car.
But how else would Louise have this information?
I capitulated, opened the door of my studio, gestured at her to follow me.
‘Come in. What did Chiara say?’
She followed me.
She stood for some time staring at my canvas. It was the biggest piece of work I had ever done and it had required two trips to bring all my materials down from the flat in the Micra.
I was pleased with it. I’d been building up the layers gradually, concentrating on the paint, on the surfaces. It wouldn’t be anywhere near complete until I’d done several more layers, and worked on those, so what Louise saw now wasn’t representative of the end product I was aiming for. I was glad of this in part – it meant she wasn’t in a position to pass judgement, which might be off-putting, and if she tried, I could brush it off. I steeled myself for her reaction, but she seemed transfixed by the work, and didn’t speak. She walked up and down, viewing it from different perspectives. At last she turned round.
A Trick of the Mind Page 15