He was still holding her hand, still looking up at her, ‘Where’s your coffee? I thought you’d join us? Come on, take a break.’
All that enthusiasm. She felt the skin of his hand against hers, the beat of the music. She had to get away.
‘Sorry,’ she said, slipping her hand from his. ‘That’s really kind, but I’ve got to nip out … and I won’t be back before my tour.’ Had she pitched it right? Not come across as too stroppy or sulky? ‘I’ll leave the answerphone on – I can pick up any messages later, so you needn’t do anything much … unless a client comes in, of course.’ She couldn’t help her eyes straying to the mess on the table.
‘Hey, no problem,’ Tate said, standing up. ‘I’ve got it covered.’
There was a lot of disbelieving laughter from the others.
‘Ignore them,’ he said, ‘I’m not going to ruin the business while you’re away. What is it this afternoon? Your tour?’
‘Rubens,’ she said, backing away from him to go and get her coat.
He winked. ‘Try not to put anyone in a coma this time.’
Determination and a false smile saw her through the business of getting on her coat, setting the answerphone, going back through reception and giving a cheery, ‘See you later, have fun,’ and then she was out on the stairs and heading for the windowsill.
She tried to zone out the beat of the music and hoped they were still all sitting round that table when Alistair came back and he could see what a mistake he’d made. Tate had no respect for anything; he was lazy too, by the looks of it. She caught herself and tried to stop seething by looking out at the mass of rooftops and glimpses of street.
She heard the outside door downstairs slam and the slow upward progress of footsteps. Gilbert. Sure enough, his head and shoulders and then the rest of him came into view. She was reminded of the Chinese woman in her office.
‘Locked out?’ he asked.
‘No, just taking a breather – I’m going to have an early lunch. Have you popped by for anything?’ As she spoke, a buried ‘must do’ from her list resurfaced. ‘Oh, Gilbert, I’m sorry, I meant to call you, tell you Alistair had posted your cheque out. You’ve had a wasted journey.’
That was Tate’s fault, disordering everything, changing the routines. She had to concentrate harder or everything would fall to pieces again.
‘No matter.’ Gilbert lowered himself next to her on the windowsill. ‘I’ve just had a quick canter through the Great Plague and the Fire of London so thought I’d look in on the off-chance. How are the parents?’
She made a face, but his attention was on the Picture London door. ‘Can I hear music?’
‘Tate’s entertaining people.’
‘A tête-à-tête?’
‘Very good.’
‘Thank you. So, what do you make of him?’
‘Seems nice enough.’
‘Yes. despite an unfathomable enthusiasm for video art.’ He caught her enquiring look. ‘He “does” video installations; that’s what the gallery in New York specialised in. Now he wants to see the world, earn some money and perhaps get some sponsorship for a big video installation project he’s come up with.’ Gilbert shrugged. ‘I thought most of those things were shot in someone’s front room, but they’re quite costly to make and stage, evidently. Had a good chat about it Friday evening. I imagined he’d have told you?’
‘We haven’t really had time to talk.’
‘No? Well, play your cards right and he might give you a walk-on part. I told him I’d do anything short of appearing naked or wearing a lobster on my head.’ Gilbert’s laugh and the way he was still looking towards the black door told Grace he wanted to be on the other side of it.
‘I’ll see you,’ she said standing up, ‘maybe a coffee later in the week?’
He nodded but he was still looking at the door. ‘Yes, I think Tate’s certainly going to liven things up around here.’
Grace said nothing and went swiftly down the stairs and into the street, not even looking towards Bernice in Far & Away.
CHAPTER 13
Violet leaned forward and reached out with the picker-upper. Not its real name, but she couldn’t bring that to mind at this precise moment. Gilbert was forever telling her what the device was really called, explaining how it was designed to retrieve small things from hard-to-reach places.
Or things you didn’t want to touch. And one had to be so careful with the post – all those hands who had, well, handled it.
It was only good for letters. Padded envelopes were hopeless: the claws on the picker-upper did not open that wide. Padded envelopes meant rubber gloves.
Violet manoeuvred the device so that one claw was underneath and one on top of the first envelope on the mat; she then moved the handles of the device together and watched as the envelope was gripped and held tight.
Carefully, she straightened up and, still holding the picker-upper away from her body, one of her arms braced against the other to keep it steady, she tiptoed to the kitchen. Tip-toeing was so much less wearing on the carpet, and as Gilbert positively refused to do it and went about purposely stamping his feet if she asked him, she had to do it for both of them. He was such a boy sometimes.
In the kitchen she put her foot on the pedal of the bin, waited until the lid was fully up and then stopped holding the handles of the picker-upper together so that the claws opened. She watched the envelope fall. Removing her foot from the pedal, the lid of the bin descended into place with a satisfying clank.
It wasn’t the normal rubbish bin, which was out of sight under the sink – this was a special one Gilbert had bought. A special post bin.
She wished it was the rubbish bin and she wished she could put it directly under the letterbox because letting anything into the house was always troublesome. Even letters. Letters invariably meant bad news or bills. She’d tried to explain that to Gilbert last year – was it last year? – when she had put all the letters directly into the recycling and he’d found them and been very cross with her. The kind of cross where he went out a lot and stayed out late and didn’t bother taking his shoes off when he returned.
So now she had the special bin. It was only when he brought it home that they started speaking again.
She headed back to the porch, but stopped just by the television in the sitting room. There was a crumb of something on the carpet. How had that got there? Had Gilbert been eating in this room? He knew he mustn’t eat in this room. Violet sat down on the chair, trying to catch her breath.
‘Deep, slow breaths, Vi,’ she heard Gilbert say in her head, and so she listened to him until she wasn’t breathless any more.
She was in charge, not the dirt. She would simply clear it away.
She went back to the kitchen and detached the sucking-up thing from the wall. The vacuum cleaner – there, she had the words. It was better than the big one, not so heavy, but it just pecked at things – you couldn’t do a good clean. She turned it on and thought it looked like a gun.
‘Bang, bang, crumb,’ she said and advanced on it, placing her feet and her hands like she had seen on the television programme where the policeman was pointing his gun at a suspect on the floor.
She watched with satisfaction as the crumb seemed to cling on to the carpet and then give up the ghost and whoosh up the nozzle. She turned it off and blew across the nozzle, not sure why really. Perhaps there had been another programme, a western, where they had done that.
‘We could have had that crumb,’ the mice said, and she stuck her nose in the air and ignored them. If she thought about something else, they’d shut up. They’d shut up all together when those traps got them. She wished Gilbert hadn’t decided against the poison.
Perhaps he had been worried she’d put it in his tea. She laughed at that and was still giggling as she retrieved the picker-upper and got the second buff-coloured envelope safely from porch mat to post bin. Quite worn out now, she sat down in the sitting room. That was what it was for. Sitting. And wa
tching television. Not eating.
She leaned back in the chair, but not too heavily or it would leave a crinkle in the fabric, a dent in the antimacassar.
She thought about the letters, bringing things into the house – news and demands. If only she and Gilbert could seal up the house and stay here just the two of them – him looking at his paintings and her with her scrapbooks.
‘That’s not possible, Vi,’ Gilbert’s voice said. ‘I don’t want to lock myself away. Besides, what would we eat?’
‘You’re very talkative today.’
‘Must be a nice change from the mice, Vi …’
She had had to agree with that. And she knew Gilbert had to have a life away from her. Sometimes. She’d got used to his work. All the names of all the people he brought back into the house. But every now and again, every once in a while, there was a new name. A name she worried about.
He had come home on Friday smelling of drink and whistling and with no poison – just traps and one or two, frankly, lacklustre guides to China. When she’d asked him why he hadn’t been to the travel agent’s downstairs, he had become very wayward. When she’d asked him why he smelled of drink, he said he’d only had one Chablis and began to behave even worse. When she’d asked him why he was whistling, he’d said nothing.
Tate. An American. Modern art. Those were the three facts she knew about him. Four really: she knew he was a man.
She picked up the television remote. Things came into your house through the television, but she didn’t mind that. They were like ghosts – touched nothing, left nothing. But she didn’t know if she was going to mind this Tate. If there would be more whistling from Gilbert. Worrying whistling.
She put down the remote again. She hadn’t liked the idea of Grace at the start and then she had turned out to be nice. Very well behaved. Knew about coasters under glasses and shoes at the door. Grace wasn’t the kind to take Gilbert away from her. She wouldn’t lead him astray by introducing him to other, more dangerous, women either. And that other name, Alistair … well, he was an idiot, everyone knew that, so there was no danger of Gilbert being influenced by him.
But this Tate – he might influence Gilbert. Might take him places he liked better than this place. Introduce him to women who weren’t as nice as Grace. Women who didn’t understand that Gilbert always had to come home to her.
She felt breathless again at that and the only way to stop it was to have a plan. Know your enemy. If Gilbert wouldn’t tell her any more about Tate, perhaps Grace would. It was a while since she had visited.
It would mean a lot of work – plates put out, cups and saucers, bread cut. She’d have to charge the vacuum cleaner up as there would be crumbs – Grace was a neat eater, but there were always crumbs.
‘More for us,’ sang the mice.
‘Do be quiet,’ Violet said and snapped on the television with the remote, letting herself get used to the picture before she turned up the sound. The mice were still discussing the possibility of crumbs. ‘You’re wasting your time,’ she said to them, ‘I cannot be bothered with you today. I have a plan. And there will be no crumbs for you – only for the vacuum cleaner.’
CHAPTER 14
Grace sat in Green Park and watched the first of the leaves spiralling downwards. The temperatures must have been low enough the night before to start the annual ritual of leaf parting with tree. In no time at all there would be rough russet and yellow collars around the base of each trunk, but for now it was just the odd leaf leaping forth into the unknown.
Her tour had finished half an hour ago and had swept away all that pent-up frustration at the way Tate Jefferson, after only one morning, seemed to be taking over the office. It had been a good group – no annoying Baldridges and no blond-haired gatecrasher; just an appreciative couple from Ohio and a family from Brussels. She’d had a pleasant enough conversation with Lilly on the ticket desk and even Norman had seemed animated, chatting on about it being his wife’s thirtieth birthday soon and how he had bought her something he knew she would like this time. He had been smiling like a boy when he spoke. He obviously doted on her.
So all in all a good morning and now there was only a wisp of unease remaining about Tate’s colonisation of her office and her starchy reaction to it. If she was going to cope with this, she had to relax into this role of uninteresting Grace. Nothing he had done threatened her – the chair, the sleeping, the friends, treating her as a waitress. She watched another leaf elegantly pirouetting to the grass. Even those jibes of his weren’t nasty, more teasing. His behaviour in Far & Away, however, had been pretty calculated. And Gilbert … Gilbert who had been eager to go and join in the happy throng upstairs. What was she feeling about that? Jealousy, perhaps, but also a sense of unease that made her wonder again whether she shouldn’t, the very next time she saw him, mention Samuel and that soft look. The kind of soft look Norman had on his face when he talked about his wife.
She watched some more leaves, a woman pushing a boy on a tricycle, some foreign students joking and eating sandwiches. She should stop fretting. It was only possible for Tate to make her feel as if she was staring down at a very steep and slippery path, if she let him. The first morning had been a bit of a baptism of fire; things would get easier. Forgetting to phone Gilbert about his cheque didn’t mean she was losing it again. Everyone forgot things now and again, even, she laughed to herself, the mighty Grace.
She got out her mobile and did a countdown in her head. As she reached one, it rang.
‘Hi there, gorgeous,’ Mark said.
‘Hello, yourself. Punctual as ever. How are things?’
‘Fine, fine … Look, can’t stop long, lots to do before I pack up and ship out. I’ll be on the flight that gets in at 4.30 – Heathrow, not Gatwick this time. So that means I should be at your place about 7, 7.30.’
‘Right. Lovely … but Mark …’
‘Something wrong?’
‘Probably not … just thought I ought to mention that I have my father staying at the minute. He should be gone by Friday, but he’s had some kind of falling-out with Mum, major one this time—’
‘For God’s sake,’ he said sharply, ‘your Mother! You know, Grace, she really needs to grow up.’
Grace felt the momentary indignation that arises when you hear anyone else voice a criticism of your loved ones, even if you are quite happy to hear it come out of your own mouth.
She heard Mark sigh, imagined the quick flick of his eyes skywards. He was probably regretting having rented out his own flat, a father-free zone in Chiswick.
‘So, when you say he should be gone by Friday, you only mean that you hope he will be? It’s not definite?’ Mark’s tone still sounded aggrieved, causing Grace to say, with as much conviction as she could, ‘I’m sure he’ll be back home by Friday. Really sure. My flat isn’t big enough for me, him and his hobby.’
‘I don’t know, Grace.’ There was silence and then, ‘Look, let’s forget about your flat. Let’s book into a hotel. What’s the name of that nice one, near the park in Kensington? Let’s go there.’
‘Are you sure? It’s quite pricey.’
‘Doesn’t matter. I’ve been working hard, I need a bit of luxury. Besides, it’s only a couple of nights. Book us in there, will you?’ The sharpness in his tone was now replaced by the one he used to show he was in charge of the situation. Grace very much liked that voice of his, confirming as it did her own view that any obstacle could be overcome if you had the determination to do it. Mark laughed. ‘I’ll come straight there from the airport. You can get the bed warmed up before I arrive.’
‘I’ll do my best.’
‘And we’ll have room service … the whole weekend. I want the kind of weekend where we won’t even know what the weather’s doing outside the window. Sound good?’
‘Sounds wonderful.’
Grace heard a phone ring in the background. ‘OK, Grace, I better answer that. You get it booked, yeah? I’ll sort out the money later. See you Frid
ay. Cheers.’
‘Bye, Mark. Safe journey.’
She waited to hear if there were any last endearments brewing, but he had gone. A few minutes later she had booked the hotel and walked back through the park, bending to pick up a leaf on the way and twirl it between her fingers. She hadn’t been lying to Tate when she’d said a posh hotel ticked a lot of boxes for her. Mark understood that, understood her to the exact level she wanted to be understood and no further.
The prospect of Friday and Saturday night with Mark and a bit of luxury was still shimmering away when she dropped the leaf back on the grass and went out into Piccadilly, cutting through the backstreets to return to the office. She passed the end of a curved row of buildings and stopped. It would take hardly any time to build in a small detour. She retraced her steps, walked to a mid-point in the curve and smiled at the wooden doors with their brass, art nouveau handles and door plates. A weird hybrid gallery, this one; started by a father who collected everything from Hogarth to Hockney, the Shillingsworth was now run by the son who was only interested in anything produced after the year 2000. She had seen it on Tate’s list of the galleries he intended to tour.
Pushing open the doors, she walked into the hushed interior, the girl on the desk with her short blond bob and her take on a salwar kameez barely giving her a glance when she paid her entrance fee. Grace headed for the back of the building where the original wall had been removed and replaced by massive sliding glass doors leading to a cobbled courtyard. A large, hunched-over metal figure, with the head of a unicorn and the body of a man, turned slowly in a pillar of water pouring over it from a gold brain. Grace surveyed it through the glass, noticing how the water ran down the body before splashing into a pond full of metal snakes and finally emptying via a small square drain. The explanatory blurb next to the sliding door assured her the sculpture represented man’s higher nature being sublimated by his animal needs and the serpent’s call of sin. Grace didn’t recall the serpent’s call of sin being exactly like that, but the hunched-over nature of the figure was definitely touching a nerve.
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