White Ice

by Celia Brayfield

  ‘Do you think he’s right?’ she asked as they emerged from the crush of the market half an hour later, carrying her parcels between them. ‘Have I really got a lucky face?’

  ‘How ridiculous! You’ll be believing in gypsy curses next.’ Marie tucked the package containing the suit under her arm and they set off for Theatre Street at a brisk pace. ‘My sister always said that for a dancer, working hard was all the luck you needed.’

  ‘Oh. Well, Tamara Platonova, what do you think?’

  The older girl hated to be unkind. ‘You must have something – Minna and Samuel never trusted anyone else like that.’

  For hours the sun had been making heroic efforts to pierce the cloud and at last succeeded in sending a few weak rays down to the Nevsky Prospekt. The wide pavements were crowded with people going about their affairs, and the roadway rumbled with vehicles. Here and there the snow was already melted through to the cobbles. There was a smell of spring in the air. Lydia tried to envisage the avenue as she had seen it on the day of the massacre, but already her memory was weak and the gory details which had obsessed her a few weeks earlier were gone.

  ‘I’m so happy,’ she said suddenly. ‘I must be lucky, I feel it – I was in despair and then everything just changed! Oh, I wish I could run but there are too many people!’ She flung her arms round Tata’s shoulders and kissed her, then turned to Marie. ‘Thank you for being my friends! Thank you for coming shopping with me! No more school! No more toads! Everything’s going to be wonderful for all of us, I just know it!’

  5. London, 1969

  ‘I had a letter from the James A. Templeman collection the other day.’ Hugh Berrisford paused, his hand hovering over the slices of beef, graduated from raw to burnt, on the serving dish which the maid held at his elbow. ‘They had the gall to send a list of works which they said they would be interested in purchasing. A list. Would you believe it?’

  Six faces around the dining table were turned towards him, ready to believe anything. On his right sat Cheri Tuttlingen, her flawless teeth bared in amusement. She had round, soft, shiny cheeks like newly risen dough. Through a thin and much extended web of blood ties she had claimed the maiden name of Guggenheim, which had seemed an excellent reason to open a gallery within a nightingale’s song of Berkeley Square, which had then licensed her to go shopping for art’s sake. People in New York had told her that Hugh Berrisford was the best man to see – amusing, deliciously British but not dusty like some of them.

  ‘It was like a shopping list.’ Hugh poured a precise puddle of gravy beside his meat to demonstrate his distaste. So much for those who could even mention art and commerce in the same breath. Cheri’s smile faded. ‘Terracotta figures from the frieze of Civitalba depicting the intervention of Apollo in the attack on Delphi, circa AD 190. Marble figures from the acropolis of Pergamum, circa 200 BC, or Roman copies thereof. Etruscan figure rose vases, fourth century, depicting Romans and barbarians in combat…’

  Hugh paused to allow his guests to digest the story so far. Cheri’s husband, described by Fortune magazine as one of the ten most dynamic men in the world, sat beside Olivia. She had wiped her fingertips elegantly across his crutch as he stood aside to let her pass through the dining room doorway and now, being satisfied as to the potential dimensions of his cock, she was curious to see if Fortune’s assessment would prove correct. Donald Tuttlingen had made his money in haulage, doubled it in hotels and lost part of it in Hollywood. He sat with his body tipped eagerly forward, checking the details of the Berrisfords’ covetable lifestyle and enjoying the anticipatory swell in his underpants. If paintings kept his wife happy she could have as many as she wanted.

  ‘Do you get letters like that very often?’ Lovat had eaten rapidly, his brows pinched in concentration as he listened to his father-in-law.

  ‘No, I’m happy to say. People often ask us if we can track down something they’re particularly interested in, but this was something different. Specific works, most of them well known and already in private hands… the aroma of rodent was overpowering.’

  A murmur of amusement confirmed his audience’s appreciation. Lovat prompted him to finish the story. ‘So, how did you handle it?’

  ‘Well, I know old Templeman, oil and shipping, mostly oil, known him for years, sold him a few paintings for his Manhattan place, Rubens and not-quite-but-near-enough Rembrandts. I just rang him up and said if I ever heard that the present owner was fed up with the Civitalba frieze or was ditching the Pergamum marbles, he’d be the first to know. But in the meantime I wouldn’t send his little note on to my friend Inspector Sutton of the Fine Art and Antiques Squad in case he was moved to talk to his chums in the FBI and they came riding down on him with all guns blazing.’

  There was a hearty roar of laughter around the room. Olivia had recently decided to line the walls in polished copper sheeting, which reflected the eight diners in exactly the colour of an Etruscan figure rose vase, and distorted their shapes like a fairground hall of mirrors. Bianca found the whole effect revolting. It seemed that evening she had wasted half her life at her parents’long mahogany table listening to her father manoeuvre people into becoming buyers.

  ‘I’m not sure I understand. You mean he was asking for specific statues which weren’t on the market?’ Lovat had recently discovered that naivety, straightforwardly expressed with the merest hint of his Northern accent, could be a great asset. You learned a great deal fast and disarmed your informants. In Hugh’s case, he was flattered by his son-in-law’s interest in his work, balm to his ego after the lifelong disdain of his daughters.

  ‘And were never likely to be on the market, dear boy. Oh yes, it isn’t all sweet golden aestheticism in the world of art, believe me. I don’t think old moneybags had anything to do with it, just some pushy young assistant curator in California. It’s quite common for unscrupulous collectors to express an interest in a major piece which they know full well is already in a museum. What they’re really doing, of course, is asking for a volunteer to nick it.’

  ‘My Ga-a-ad! The shit morals some people have.’ By ‘some people’ the speaker intended the group to understand ‘all Americans’. Lee McGrath, a native New Yorker, was a whizz at the British technique of encrypting sneers in polite company so that the victims never heard the bullet that killed them. The Guardian newspaper paid her handsomely to badmouth her native country in her weekly column, View Across the Pond. The eighth guest at the table was her lover, Remi Ogunsoye, twenty years her junior, whose declared profession was hustling Arts Council sponsorship for the first annual London festival of West African cinema.

  ‘Do you think the art business is more corrupt than any other?’ interjected Lovat, nimbly offering Hugh the opportunity to emphasize his own honesty while impressing upon his prospective customer the rapaciousness of all his competitors. In a year as a Berrisford-by-marriage he had become a skilled player at these events, contrived to be elegant, modern and at the same time cosy; he called them simply family dinners. Bianca referred to them as Mafia weddings.

  ‘Ah well! Every man likes to think there are more sharks in his swimming pool than in the one next door, doesn’t he? My father always told me that there was no such thing as an honest art dealer, but then he was a painter, so you’d expect him to be prejudiced. It’s not all rich men’s conspiracies, but you have to be awake. The thing is, I think, it’s a very small world, we all know each other, and between our specialists we know most of the major works in all our fields. So what you have, I suppose, is honesty among thieves. We have to be able to trust each other somewhere along the line.’ Hugh smiled around the table, pleased with himself for having hit integrity and heritage in a left-and-right. ‘Now, Lovat, how’s life treating you these days?’

  ‘Rough,’ his son-in-law replied. No apology, no self-deprecating shrug, no smile, no bitterness.

  ‘No commissions, is that what you mean?’

  ‘Not since that first one. And to be honest, I’m wondering what to do
to get my work seen. It’s so big.’ He turned courteously to Cheri. ‘I’m a sculptor, I work in light, glass tubes glowing different colours; the last piece I did was sixteen feet long, and the one I’m working on now is nearly the same size. There’ve been a couple of galleries interested, but they haven’t got the space.’

  ‘Why don’t you make something smaller?’ Cheri gave him a glowing smile and tucked a stray swag of backcombed blonde hair behind her ear with her fingertips.

  ‘Actually I’d like to make them bigger. My idea is to do sculptures that can have some meaning in a city. Ideally I want my work to be something beautiful that everyone can enjoy as they go about their daily lives. They really need to stand outside, and not be dwarfed by buildings.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, I see, so they have to be big, I got it.’ She swayed to one side as the maid cleared the plates. There was only one picture in the dining room, a portrait of a lady in an Empire dress. She might have been the Empress Josephine, the painter might have been Pierre Paul Prud’hon. Hugh had selected it partly as a test of his guests’knowledge of painting, partly because it was discreetly sensual and contributed to the feeling of wellbeing in the room, and partly because he had been able to buy it cheap. It was a work of museum quality, a painting which boldly proclaimed the accomplishment of its creator in every fold of muslin and wisp of auburn hair. People were often moved to touch the dimple in her cheek. She reclined on a lion skin, pretending not to be aware that her honey-coloured breasts were about to spill right out of her inadequate bodice.

  The room was not large. Below the Empress the carved limewood fireplace glowed from reverent applications of oil. The light from the George III candelabras caressed the apples, grapes and pomegranates without revealing any trace of tool marks. Curtains of heavy forest-green silk had been lovingly dressed into even pleats. The mingled scent of cloves and lavender rose from a Chinese porcelain bowl and for a moment, Cheri Tuttlingen thought she heard horses’hooves clip-clopping in the street outside. Eating at ground level was mystically calming to her – in New York she performed no vital function below twenty-seven storeys, unless getting into a car counted as vital. She decided that she never wanted to look at another wall of Mark Rothko sludge in her life. The mere thought of Kandinsky gave her a headache.

  ‘Bianca is also a sculptor,’ Lovat continued, smiling at his wife across the table-centre, a little glass tank containing ten identical red tulips with four-inch stems. Olivia had a penchant for doing aggressively modern flowers to round off the eclectic range of her interiors. ‘She works very, very hard. Her first exhibition is coming up in a few weeks.’

  Bianca automatically dropped her eyes, wishing that Lovat would not always push her and her work forward when they were in company.

  ‘How interesting. What kind of work do you do?’

  Bianca explained as briefly as possible, hating to be put on display. ‘But really, what Lovat’s doing is much more interesting,’ she finished.

  Cheri noted the look of pure adoration which accompanied this conclusion, but Lovat said, ‘Don’t be silly, darling. She’s always putting herself down.’

  ‘Could I perhaps come and see what you’re doing, come around to your studio maybe?’ Cheri briskly demolished her portion of soufflé Grand Marnier without tasting a morsel.

  ‘We’d love you to do that.’ Lovat tasted his thimbleful of Sauternes, noting its qualities for future reference, remembering that it was permissible to call such a drink a pudding wine. ‘Bianca’s studio is in our home, you could see her first and then she could walk you around to my workshop. It’s just around the corner, I’ve found a place in the railway arches. Very Gustave Doré, especially in the winter. We’re in Notting Hill Gate, just across the park.’

  He looked at his wife again. Her left hand was lying on the table beside her plate, fingers folded under the thumb, and he wanted very much to reach across and touch it. She was wearing a dark brown dress with a high tight collar and long cuffed sleeves. Candlelight refined the pure planes of her face. With her limpid eyes and short hair she looked like one of Botticelli’s portraits of young men. He felt as if he would dissolve with the softness of love, but at the same time he knew that if she were not close enough to touch he would be burning up with fear in the company of people who seemed unattainably richer, smarter and more powerful than him.

  For Lovat, the first year of their marriage had been a series of sickening oscillations between private bliss and terror in public.

  The couple had found themselves alarmingly alone. The cheerful, casual crowd of college friends had scattered. Of Lovat’s friends, Joe was the only one left in London, working for a large design group near King’s Cross, and he visited their flat every week, but a friendly and well-behaved supper for the three of them was not the same as the old, long evenings in the pub. Their other regular visitor was Shona Crawford-Pitt, who marched round dutifully as if she were visiting a hospital. She was entertaining and warmly interested in everything they did, but Bianca still considered her to be a social climber and did not really like her.

  They were both struggling to find buyers for their work, both working in their studios alone all day. Neither would admit their loneliness, or the long periods spent in mental limbo when all their ideas seemed too weak to carry out. Bianca longed for her sister Hermione who had been in India for a year. Lovat gave her pep talks, which made her feel even more inadequate than before.

  ‘Do you think Cheri will come and see us?’ he asked as he drove them home in their new dark blue MGB GT. It was November, and a light, icy drizzle was falling invisibly in the night.

  ‘Of course she will.’ Bianca yawned and ran her fingers through her hair.

  ‘How can you be sure?’

  ‘She’s that type. She buys things to own what they mean to her. She’ll buy old paintings from Daddy so she can own stability and continuity and all that, and she’ll buy something from us because we’re young and in love and she wants to own that too.’

  There was a pause. He found her casual insights proof that she was a creature from the smart metropolitan world which he would never be able to inhabit. He suddenly demanded, ‘Do you love me?’

  ‘You’re always asking that.’ She curled round in the seat and leaned on his shoulder. He stroked her knee fondly as he changed gear.

  ‘I’m always wondering. What do you see in me?’

  ‘Everything. You’re real, that’s what I love most about you. You’re not full of shit like all those people. You’re plain and honest about things, you don’t make an entertainment of your life, turning everything that happens into a witty little dinner-party story.’

  ‘You haven’t said that you love me.’

  ‘I love you,’ she breathed the words in his ear and slipped her hand down the open neck of his shirt, causing him to take the corner into Fulham Road wide and skid on the greasy street.

  ‘You just love my body, that’s different.’ His laugh was mildly nervous. Bianca was more passionate than he had ever imagined a woman could be. He had unconsciously expected that in marriage some of the hecticness would vanish from their sex life, but after almost two years together, feelings wilder and deeper than they had believed existed were let loose in their bedroom. Wanting to make him feel secure, she never refused him, or reduced making love to a mere routine of life, but the hungrier she was for his flesh, and the more his desires became needs, the more unsafe he felt.

  ‘Are you complaining?’ She kissed his neck.

  ‘Aha! I knew I was right! I’m just your plaything, your sex toy – and when the batteries run down you’ll toss me aside…’

  She caught the hard edge of grievance in his voice and withdrew, feeling hurt. ‘You’re serious. I can’t believe it.’

  ‘No, of course I’m not.’

  ‘Maybe you ought to have married some frigid cow who has a headache every night.’

  ‘Darling, I was just teasing you, can’t you take a joke?’

  ‘Why do
you always do that, Lovat?’ Wanting him to confess, she put her hand on his on the wheel. He shook it off on the pretext of turning down the stereo.

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Say it’s a joke when it isn’t?’

  ‘Oh come on, Bianca, don’t be paranoid. I was just kidding.’

  The car reached a red light in Holland Park, which was inconvenient since their feelings were running high and the distraction of driving was helping them keep control. Behind them a line of vehicles was forming. After thirty seconds of silence, Bianca suddenly opened the car door.

  ‘I’m going to tell everyone in this traffic jam that I love you – then will you believe me?’

  She was out on the street before he could grab her, and running backwards towards the first vehicle, a taxi whose driver had lowered his window. ‘I love my husband,’ she told him, leaning into the cab.

  ‘Mazeltov,’ he answered with resignation.

  She pulled open the taxi door and told the middle-aged couple inside, ‘I love my husband.’

  ‘So do I,’ the woman rejoined, hugging the man’s arm. ‘Mine not yours, I mean.’

  The next car was occupied by four youths drinking beer. ‘I love my husband,’ she shouted at them. They raised their bottles and cheered.

  ‘I love my husband,’ she screamed up at the bus driver, who looked at her warily, wondering if she was one of those love children always on drugs. She jumped on to the platform of the bus and told the conductress and the three passengers.

  ‘I love my husband,’ she said to the young man of Middle Eastern appearance driving a white Mercedes.

  ‘Lights are changing,’ he warned her, smiling all the same. She darted on to the next car, then jumped on the pavement and ran back towards the head of the jam, skipping and whirling with her arms outstretched, shouting, ‘I love my husband, everybody!’ to the canopy of plane trees above.