Sculptress

by Minette Walters

  “I see you live in London. Have you ever thought about buying a second property on the south coast, Mrs. Leigh? We have a lot of authors down here. They like to escape to the peace and quiet of the country.”

  Her mouth twitched.

  “Miss Leigh. And I don’t even own a first property. I live in rented accommodation.”

  He spun his chair and pulled out a drawer in the filing cabinet behind him.

  “Then let me suggest a mutually beneficial arrangement.” His fingers ran nimbly through the files, selecting a succession of printed pages.

  “You read these while I search out that information for you. If a customer comes into the shop, offer them a seat and call for me. Ditto, if the phone rings.” He nodded to a back door.

  “I’ll leave that open. Just call “Matt” and I’ll hear you. Fair?”

  “I’m happy if you are,” she said, ‘but I’m not planning on buying anything.”

  “That’s fine.” He walked across to the door.

  “Mind you, there’s one property there that would fit you like a glove.

  It’s called Bayview, but don’t be put off by the name. I shan’t be long.”

  Roz fingered through the pages reluctantly as if just touching them might induce her to part with her money. He had the soft insidiousness of an insurance salesman. Anyway, she told herself with some amusement, she couldn’t possibly live in a house called Bayview. It conjured up too many images of net curtained guest-houses with beak-nosed landladies in nylon overalls and lacklustre signs saying VACANCIES propped against the downstairs windows.

  She came to it finally at the bottom of the pile and the reality, of course, was very different. A small whitewashed coast guard cottage, the last of a group of four, perched on a diff near Swanage on the Isle of Purbeck. Two up, two down.

  Unpretentious. Charming. Beside the sea. She looked at the price.

  “Well?” asked Matt, returning a few minutes later with a folder under one arm.

  “What do you think?”

  “Assuming I could afford it, which I can’t, I think I’d freeze to death in the winter from winds lashing in off the sea and be driven mad in the summer by streams of tourists wandering along the coastal path.

  According to your blurb it passes only a matter of yards from the fence. And that’s ignoring the fact that I’d be rubbing shoulders with the inhabitants of the other three cottages, day in, day out, plus the frightening prospect of knowing that sooner or later the cliff will slip and take my very expensive cottage with it.”

  He chuckled good-humouredly.

  “I knew you’d like it. I’d have bought it myself if it wasn’t too far to travel each day. The cottage at the other end has a retired couple in it in their seventies and the two in the middle are weekend cottages. They are situated in the middle of a small headland, well away from the cliff edges, and, frankly, the bricks will crumble long before the foundations do. As for the wind and the tourists, well, it’s to the east of Swanage so it’s sheltered from the prevailing winds, and the sort of tourists who walk that coastal path are not the sort to disturb your peace, simply because there is no public access beside these cottages. The nearest one is four miles away and you don’t get noisy children or drunken lager louts tackling that sort of hike for the fun of it. Which leaves’ his boyish face split into a carefree smile ‘the problem of cost.”

  Roz giggled.

  “Don’t tell me. The owners are so desperate to get rid of it they’re prepared to give it away.”

  “As a matter of fact, yes. Liquidity problems with their business and this is only a weekend retreat. They’ll take a twenty-thousand reduction if someone can come up with cash.

  Can you?”

  Roz closed her eyes and thought of her fifty per cent share of the proceeds of divorce, sitting on deposit. Yes, she thought, I can.

  “This is absurd,” she said impatiently.

  “I didn’t come in to buy anything. I’ll hate it. It’ll be far too small. And why on earth have you got it on your books? It’s miles away.”

  “We have a reciprocal arrangement with our other branches.”

  He had hooked his fish. Now he let her swim a little.

  “Let’s see what this file can tell us.” He drew it forward and opened it.

  “Twenty, Leven Road. Owners: Mr. and Mrs. Clarke. Instructions: quick sale wanted; carpets and curtains included in asking price.

  Bought by Mr. and Mrs. Blair.

  Completion date: twenty-fifth Feb.” eighty-nine.” He looked surprised “They didn’t pay very much for it.”

  “It was vacant for a year,” said Roz, ‘which would probably explain the low price. Does it give a forwarding address for the Clarkes?”

  He read on: “It says here: “Vendors have asked Peterson’s not to divulge any information about their new whereabouts.” I wonder why.”

  “They fell out with their neighbours,” said Roz, economical as ever with the truth.

  “But they must have given a forwarding address,” she remarked reasonably, ‘or they wouldn’t have asked for it to be withheld.”

  He turned over several pages then carefully closed the file, leaving his finger to mark a place.

  “We’re talking professional ethics here, Miss Leigh. I am employed by Peterson’s, and Peterson’s were asked to respect the Clarkes’ confidence. It would be very wrong to abuse a client’s trust.”

  Roz thought for a moment.

  “Is there anything from Peterson’s in writing saying they agreed to honour the Clarkes’ request?”

  “No.”

  “Then I don’t see that you’re bound by anything. Confidences cannot be inherited. If they could, they would no longer be confidences.”

  He smiled.

  “That’s a very fine distinction.”

  “Yes.” She picked up the details of Bayview.

  “Supposing I said I wanted to view this cottage at three o’clock this afternoon? Could you arrange it for me, using that telephone over there’ she nodded to the furthest desk ‘while I stay here looking through these other house details?”

  “I could, but I’d take it very badly if you failed to keep the appointment.”

  “My word’s my bond,” she assured him.

  “If I say I’m going to do something I always do it.”

  He stood up, letting the file fall open on the desk.

  “Then I’ll phone our Swanage branch,” he told her.

  “You will have to collect the key from them.”

  “Thank you.” She waited until his back was turned, then swung the file round and jotted down the Clarkes’ address on her pad. Salisbury, she noted.

  A few minutes later Matt resumed his seat and gave her a map of Swanage with Peterson’s estate agency marked with a cross.

  “Mr. Richards is expecting you at three o’clock.” With a lazy flick of his hand he closed the Clarkes’ file.

  “I trust you will find your dealings with him as mutually satisfactory as you have found your dealings with me.”

  Roz laughed.

  “And I hope I don’t, or I shall be considerably poorer by this evening.”

  Roz approached the Poacher by the alleyway at the back and knocked on the kitchen door.

  “You’re early,” said Hal, opening it.

  “I know, but I have to be in Swanage by three and if I don’t leave fairly soon I won’t make it. Have you any customers?”

  He gave her a withering smile.

  “I haven’t even bothered to open up.”

  She chose to ignore the sarcasm.

  “Then come with me,” she said.

  “Forget this place for a few hours.”

  He didn’t exactly jump at the invitation.

  “What’s in Swanage?”

  She handed him the details of Bayview.

  “A “des. res.” overlooking the sea. I’ve committed myself to looking at it and I could do with some moral support or I might end up buying the wretc
hed thing.”

  “Then don’t go.”

  “I have to. It’s by way of a quid pro quo,” she said obliquely.

  “Come with me,” she urged, ‘and say no whenever I look like saying yes.

  I’m a sucker for a soft sell and I’ve always wanted to live on a cliff by the sea and own a dog and go beach combing He looked at the price.

  “Can you afford it?” he asked curiously.

  “Just about.”

  “Rich lady,” he said.

  “Writing is obviously very profitable.”

  “Hardly. That was by way of a pay-off.”

  “Pay-off for what?” he asked, his eyes veiled.

  “It’s not important.”

  “Nothing ever is in your life.”

  She shrugged.

  “So you don’t want to come? Ah, well, it was only a thought. I’ll go on my own.” She looked lonely suddenly.

  He glanced behind him towards the restaurant, then abruptly reached his jacket off the back of the door.

  “I’il come,” he told her, ‘but I’m damned if I’ll say no. It sounds like paradise, and the second best piece of advice my mother ever gave me was never get between a woman and what she wants.” He pulled the door to and locked it.

  “And what was the best piece of advice?”

  He dropped a casual arm across her shoulders could she really be as lonely as she looked? The thought saddened him and walked her up the alleyway.

  “That happiness is no laughing matter.”

  She gave a throaty chucide.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means, woman, that the pursuit of happiness deserves weighty consideration. It’s the be-all and end-all of existence.

  Where is the sense in living if you’re not enjoying it?”

  “Earning Brownie points for the great hereafter, suffering being good for the soul and all that.”

  “If you say so,” he said cheerfully.

  “Shall we go in my car?

  It’ll give you a chance to test out your theory.” He led her to an ancient Ford Cortina estate and unlocked the passenger door, pulling it half-open on screaming hinges.

  “What theory?” she asked, squeezing inelegantly through the gap.

  He shut the door.

  “You’il soon find out,” he murmured.

  They arrived with half an hour to spare. Hal drew into a parking space on the sea front and rubbed his hands.

  “Let’s have some fish and chips. We passed a kiosk about a hundred yards back and I’m ravenous. It’s the fresh air that does it.”

  Roz’s head, tortoise-like, emerged from the collar of her jacket, slowly easing its frozen jaw and skewering him with gimlet eyes.

  “Has this heap of junk got an MOT?” she grated.

  “Of course it’s got an MOT.” He slapped the steering-wheel.

  “She’s sound as a bell, just lacks a window or two. You get used to it after a while.”

  “A window or two!” she spluttered.

  “As far as I can see it hasn’t got any windows at all except for the front one. I think I’ve caught pneumonia.”

  “There’s no pleasing some women. You wouldn’t be whingeing like this if I’d whisked you down to the seaside on a beautiful sunny day in an open-topped cabriolet. You’re being snotty-nosed just because it’s a Cortina.” He gave an evil chuckle.

  “And what about suffering being good for the soul? It’s done bugger all for yours, my girl.”

  She thrust the screeching door open as far as it would go and crawled out.

  “For your information, Hawksley, it is not a beautiful sunny day’ she giggled ‘in fact it will probably turn out to be the coldest May day this century. And had this been a convertible, we could have stopped to put the top up. In any case, why aren’t there any windows?”

  He tucked her into the crook of his arm and set off towards the fish and chip kiosk.

  “Someone smashed them,” he said matter of factly.

  “I haven’t bothered to replace them because there’s a good chance it will happen again.”

  She rubbed the end of her nose to restore the circulation.

  “I suppose you’re in hock to loan sharks.”

  “And if I am?”

  She thought of her money on deposit, untouched, going nowhere.

  “I might be able to broker you out of your difficulties,” she suggested tentatively.

  He frowned.

  “Is this charity, Roz, or an offer to negotiate?”

  “It’s not charity,” she assured him.

  “My accountant would have a fit if I offered charity.”

  He dropped his arm abruptly.

  “Why would you want to negotiate on my behalf? You don’t know a damn thing about me.” He sounded angry.

  She shrugged.

  “I know you’re in deep shit, Hawksley. I’m offering to help you out of it. Is that so terrible?” She walked on.

  Hal, a step or two behind, cursed himself roundly. What sort of fool lowered his de fences just because a woman looked lonely? But loneliness, of course, was the one thing guaranteed to strike a chord.

  There must have been times when he hadn’t been lonely but he was damned, at the moment, if he could remember them.

  Roz’s delight in the cottage, masked by an unconvincing smile of bored indifference, announced itself loudly as she stared wide-eyed at the views from the windows, noted the double glazing admitted grudgingly that, yes, she had always liked open fireplaces, and, yes, she was quite surprised by the size of the rooms. She had expected them to be smaller. She poked for several minutes round the patioed garden, said it was a pity there wasn’t a greenhouse, then, rather belatedly, obscured her enthusiasm behind a pair of dark glasses to examine a small rose-covered outhouse which was used by the present owners as a third bedroom, but which might, she supposed, at a pinch, serve as a sort of study-library.

  Hal and Mr. Richards sat on cast-iron chairs in front of the french windows, talking idly about very little and watching her.

  Mr. Richards, thoroughly intimidated by Hal’s brusque one word answers, scented a sale but contained his excitement rather better than Roz.

  He stood up when Roz had finished her inspection and, with a disarming smile, offered her his chair.

  “I should perhaps have mentioned, Miss Leigh, that the present owners will consider selling the furniture with the house assuming, of course, a satisfactory price can be arranged. I understand none of it is more than four years old and the wear and tear has been minimal with weekend occupation only.” He glanced at his watch.

  “Why don’t I give you fifteen minutes to talk it over?

  I’ll go for a stroll along the cliff path.” He vanished tactfully through the french windows and a moment later they heard the front door close.

  Roz took off her glasses and looked at Hal. Her eyes were childlike in their enthusiasm.

  “What do you think? Furniture, too.

  Isn’t it fabulous?”

  His lips twitched involuntarily. Could this be acting? It was damn good if it was.

  “It depends what you want it for.”

  “To live in,” she said.

  “It would be so easy to work here.”

  She looked towards the sea.

  “I’ve always loved the sound of waves.” She turned to him.

  “What do you think? Should I buy it?”

  He was curious.

  “Will my opinion make a difference?”

  “Probably.”

  “Why?”

  “Because common sense tells me it would be a mad thing to do. It’s miles from everyone I know, and it’s expensive for what it is, a pokey little two up, two down. There must be better ways of investing my money.” She studied his set face and wondered why her earlier offer to help had made him so hostile. He was a strange man, she thought. So very approachable as long as she steered clear of talking about the Poacher.

  He looke
d past her towards the cliff-top where Mr. Richards was just visible, sitting on a rock and having a quiet smoke.

  “Buy it,” he said.

  “You can afford it.” His dark face broke into a smile.

  “Live dangerously. Do what you’ve always wanted to do.

  How did John Masefleld put it?

  “I must down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied.” So, live on your cliff by the sea and go beach combing with your dog. As I said, it sounds like paradise.”

  She smiled back, her dark eyes full of humour.

  “But the trouble with paradise was that it was boring, which is why, when the one-eyed trouser-snake appeared, Eve was so damn keen to bite into the apple of knowledge.” He was a different man when he laughed.

  She caught a glimpse of the Hal Hawksley, hail-fellow-well-met, boon companion, who could, were his tables ever full, preside with confident conviviality among them. She threw caution to the winds.

  “I wish you’d let me help you. I’d be lonely here. And where’s the sense in paying a fortune to be lonely on a cliff?”

  His eyes veiled abruptly.

  “You really are free with your money, aren’t you? Exactly what are you suggesting? A buy-out?

  A partnership? What?”

  God, he was prickly! And he had accused her of it once.

  “Does it matter? I’m offering to bail you out of whatever mess you’re in.”

  His eyes narrowed.

  “The only certain thing you know about me, Roz, is that my restaurant is failing. Why would an intelligent woman want to throw good money after bad?”

  Why indeed? She would never be able to explain it to her accountant whose idea of sensible living was minimum risk taking clean balance sheets, and tax advantageous pension plans. How would she even begin?

  “There’s this man, Charles, who reduces me to jelly every time I see him. But he’s a damn good cook and he loves his restaurant and there’s no logical reason why it should be going down the pan. I keep trying to lend him money but he throws it back in my face every time.”

  Charles would have her certified. She swung her bag on to her shoulder.

  “Forget I mentioned it,” she said.