‘I don’t know what else I can do to make you believe me,’ she said bleakly. ‘I just want to hold you and kiss you and say I am so, so sorry for all that time I wasted being defensive and snotty.’
She felt she was losing him.
‘Please Tate, talk to me. How can I convince you it was the real me in that taxi, in that bed?’
‘Easy.’ His stare was direct and challenging. ‘You can tell me about Bill because I sure as hell wanna slug him, but I don’t know what for.’
The word ‘Bill’ felt like another thump to her head. ‘Bill?’ she squawked and then tried in a flurry to think this through. He knew about Bill. But what did he know?
‘Yeah, Bill,’ Tate said more forcefully. ‘Bill Jackson, the painter. Is there another Bill you lived with?’
Ah, so he knew that.
‘How … how did you find out about Bill?’
‘Had a visit from your mum and dad ’bout an hour ago and boy, have to say all bets are off about which one of them is more nuts than the other. Your dad told you his theory about Jack the Ripper? Man!’
She heard only snatches of what he was saying. Why, why had her parents suddenly decided to be interested in anyone but themselves?
Tate must have guessed she wasn’t listening because he said, ‘You in there?’
‘They told you?’
‘Yup. Your dad said he knew he’d loused things up, wanted to put it right. Fliss said you came back from Spain with a broken heart, hadn’t been the same since. Kept playing it safe – work, life. Men.’
The one time she’d have liked them to display their usual self-absorption and they’d gone and—
‘Grace.’
The hard edges of that ‘Grace’ made her panic. How should she play this? He was going to ask her to tell him everything.
‘Thing is, it was those damn signs again,’ he was saying, ‘you were sending them out, I wasn’t reading them. You looking queasy in front of Bill Jackson’s painting; all that jabbering about checks and bills before you clonked your head.’ He stopped. ‘So, you gonna tell me now or am I gonna have to tip you upside down and shake you to get it all out?’
The expression on his face showed he probably would.
‘I … this is hard …’
‘Come on, I’ve gotta hear it from you.’
‘All right, all right,’ she said, struggling to think how to get everything in a believable order. ‘Look, I met Bill when I was eighteen, just before my A-levels. I was on a school trip to a gallery. He was mooching about in there looking like a tramp, a beautiful tramp with a great shock of blond hair, these tatty blue overalls, fingers covered in silver rings.’
She saw Tate glance at the ring on his thumb and frown. It made her feel hesitant about going on, but on she went.
‘One look and it was all the clichés – like being struck by lightning, the whole world falling away, you name it.’ She glanced at him to see if he was still frowning. ‘I mean, with a mum like mine and older sisters who were already passion junkies, it was bound to happen. I was ripe for the coup de foudre. Ripe for starring in my own heartbreaking love story. He was the call of my wild. So … I left the gallery with him, left school, left home. Rang Mum to tell her and you’d have thought I’d just got into the best university.’
‘Great parenting.’
She loved him more for saying that and tried to put it all in a smile. He did a kind of grimacy thing back but his frown had, at least, gone.
‘Yes, some of Felicity’s finest mothering skills came into play. Practically whooped with delight when I told her we were off to Spain. I was eighteen, Bill was forty.’ She shook her head. ‘Anyway, we went to Spain, Bill had rented a big, slightly dilapidated villa in San Sebastián. He loved the resort: great food, great location and respectable enough for him to have something to rebel against.’ She knew Tate understood that.
She shrugged. ‘It was wonderful for about a year and a half. We’d get up late in the afternoon and I’d swim and lie in the sun while he painted. We’d smoke a bit, drink a lot, he’d paint some more, we’d go out till early morning. We got in with a good crowd – lively. They were all nationalities – other artists, writers, musicians, a few Australians doing the Europe tour. Bill’s son lived in a flat in the town too for a couple of months. Just passing through. He was a sculptor, though not a very good one. Anyway, what more can I say? It seemed like a fairy tale – I was Bill’s lover, his muse, he couldn’t get enough of me.’
‘You can hurry this bit along,’ Tate said gruffly.
‘Even in winter it was beautiful: the beach deserted and the skies stormy and us wrapped in layers of clothes and blankets in the villa. And then suddenly it wasn’t so good. Flipped from feeling like bliss to being like barbed wire.’
She remembered the month they went from Bill reaching out while he was painting to make sure she was still there to finding a woman asleep on the sofa in his studio wearing only his coat.
Tate sat forward in his chair. ‘Stop thinking about it and get it out, Grace. Come on, the quicker you say it the easier it will be.’
She thought how young he was. How lovely to be so certain, so glib.
‘Bill started bringing other women to the villa; some I knew, and others I didn’t. If I got upset, he said I was being small-minded, bourgeois. He said I was still the one … just not the one and only.’
‘Dickhead,’ Tate said with feeling.
‘No, he was just being Bill – passionate to the point of making you feel like you were burning and then leaving you charred and broken to go off and find someone else to incinerate. I loved him so much; this wasn’t how my love affair was meant to go.’
She was surprised to hear herself laugh. ‘He had me wound round his little finger. Makes me sick now how grateful I used to be when he came back to me still smelling of someone else. My heart was his and he knew it.’
‘I’m not warming to Bill. How long did he dick around?’
‘Long enough to make me sick with myself, him, everything.’ She stopped talking as she tried to think how to finish her story about her and Bill because she couldn’t go on to the place their relationship had really died. If she did, he’d be up and out of his chair and gone. He wouldn’t look at her in the same way as he’d looked at her on that bed.
‘What happened in the end?’ he said.
‘I had enough,’ she said slowly. ‘We called it a day. I came home. I went to college, resumed my A-levels, got a place at Edinburgh to do History of Art, got the job with Picture London.’ She wished she’d paced that last bit better – it sounded as if she were reading from a list. Tate obviously thought so too.
‘Just like that,’ he said.
‘Yes.’
‘So, when did he burn the paintings?’
‘What?’
He shook his head; she could tell he was losing patience. ‘Did a bit of googling when your mum and dad had gone. Bill Jackson was in Spain for two years, and the woman in the gallery said he burned his paintings when he was in Spain. The explanation by that painting said he did it during a particularly turbulent period in his life. So I’m guessing you were either there or he did it because of you.’
‘We had an argument, he got really drunk, that’s how it happened.’
He leaned back again and studied her, and under the pressure of having those green eyes on her, all those mannerisms that showed she was lying leaked out.
‘Don’t treat me like an idiot, Grace,’ he said. ‘This story you’re giving me, it’s not the full one, is it? Lots of bits missing. Know how I know? ’Cos it’s nine years down the line and you’re still carrying this love affair around. See, Fliss might think that having your heart broken is enough to explain all this …’ he waved his hand at her, at the desk, at the office. ‘But I don’t buy that. This is more than a broken heart. This is something that’s left you so guarded it’s making you wall yourself up. Isn’t that the phrase? You’re hemming yourself in, brick by brick.
You’re even going around acting like an unpaid slave in a business you could run twenty times better than Al. Why is that, unless your self-confidence has taken such a kicking you can’t see how fucking brilliant you are? Or you’ve got so badly broken, you think the slightest bit of pressure’s gonna bust you apart again?’
At that moment Grace felt the two conflicting emotions of gratitude that he understood her so completely and horror that her deepest fears had been uncovered.
‘I like my job,’ she said pathetically.
He snorted. ‘Yeah? Well, that’s great. Another big lie, but hey, I’m pleased for you.’ His tone grew harsher. ‘See, if I keep getting these lies, if you won’t tell me what happened, my mind’s starting to think all kinds of things. Not just about what might have happened, but how you feel about me.’
‘Tate—’
‘You’ve already proved you didn’t trust me with your dad’s wardrobe act, but hey, I can’t blame you for jumping to conclusions. You know hardly anything about me and, well, if I didn’t exactly lie, I didn’t tell people everything – about Sergei, the flat, what I painted. But not trusting me with something from your past is different. What do you think I’m gonna do, sell it? Or are you holding yourself back ’cos you think I might be like Bill?’
When she didn’t reply, he pushed his chair back and got to his feet. ‘Oh, that’s it. I get it. I’m like him and so I’m not to be trusted. Well, that’s kind of insulting, Grace. I’m not him, I’m me. The one and only.’ He flung open his arms, but without a smile to round off the gesture it was too bitter.
‘No, no. It’s not about you, it’s about me,’ she blurted out. It came across all whiney and she wasn’t surprised when he shook his head and plonked himself back down in his chair and laughed.
‘That’s it? That’s all I get? Something people say to explain why they wanna split up when they don’t wanna get to grips with the real reason? What the hell does that even mean, Grace?’
She stood and came round the desk. Should she push it, take a step nearer to him? ‘I know you’re not him, Tate, I know that, but you’ve got that same walking-on-the-cracks way of looking at life and that’s what scared me about you … and then in the pub, in the taxi, in the flat I just decided I’d chance it, I’d fall off the edge—’
‘That’s how you see being with me, as falling off the edge?’ He was looking at her as if she’d slapped him.
‘No … yes … please, Tate, that didn’t come out right. I’ve fallen in love with you – really, really fallen. I can’t get enough of you. I want to be with you. These last few days without you have been as if someone’s turned off a light. But, please trust me on this. I don’t want to go back over things I put away a long time ago. Please don’t keep pushing me. I don’t want to keep harking back to the past. Isn’t it enough that I love you in the here and now? That I’m so, so sorry that I didn’t trust you? Isn’t it enough that you’ve fallen for me too – enough to copy the icons? It’s the loveliest thing—’
‘No, it’s not enough.’ He shoved his hands in his pockets as if he was scared he’d touch her otherwise. ‘It’s pretty good, Grace, I’ll give you that, but I want more. I’ve got a right to ask you about what went on with Bill stinkin’ Jackson because whatever he’s done to you has come back to bite me. It’s made you distrust me from the first time we met … all this holding yourself back, all this order, routine, reining yourself in. That girl I saw spinning around in my chair pretending to be a gunfighter, she was real. I could see it in you from day one; she’s the one I fell for. Why’s she hiding, Grace?’
‘I can’t … I can’t tell you. Please, it’s painful—’
His eyes were stormy, his hands out of his pockets again, underlining what he was saying. ‘What, more painful than being arrested, having to call my mom and tell her, thousands of miles away, that I was in trouble? Hearing how sick with worry she was?’
Her head, her chest, her stomach felt as if they were being compacted. She didn’t speak.
‘Tell me, Grace,’ he said harshly. ‘What really happened?’
‘I can’t. I really can’t.’
‘Why? ’Cos it makes you feel vulnerable, like you made me feel vulnerable? Know what it feels like to make love to a woman and then have the police pile in while you’re still naked, still got the scent of her all over your skin?’
She couldn’t even begin to answer that. She was gulping.
‘This is bugging the hell out of me, Grace. If you won’t even meet me halfway …’
She could see he was really trying not to lose his temper. She wondered, if she leaned over and kissed him, could she heal this, make it all go away?
‘Did he hit you?’ he asked suddenly, the anger coming out in the force of his words. ‘Assault you … worse?’
‘No, nothing like that.’
He made a harsh noise as if that had been his best shot and he had nothing left. She could see he was trying to take his hurt and work it into something less sharp, but then his face settled into an expression that made her feel like he’d walked out of the room already and she closed her eyes. She gave a start and opened her eyes when she felt him lay the palm of his hand gently on her face.
‘I feel like we’re in the Last Chance Saloon here, Grace,’ he said, with a look as if willing her to understand. ‘I can’t be with you if you won’t tell me what this is all about. It’s a huge, great hole in what I know about you, can’t you see that? I mean, I’d tell you everything about me if you just asked – first kiss, things I’d do differently, what I’d look back on my life and say I’m proud of, ashamed of. All the big stuff, I want to share it with you, because meeting you, falling for you, wow, it’s been frustrating and maddening and crap-ass wonderful. I liked how you watched over everyone else – even when you were being snitty, I liked that – Gilb, Al, Vi. Liked it even more when I saw Fliss, saw how you were the mom in that relationship … it rang so many bells with me, Grace. You’re kind and loving and caring and I thought I could trust you. A rock-solid pair of hands. A true heart. ’Cos you know, I’ve had it with flakiness, that casual letting everyone else go and hang because you’ve got to express your innermost self. Sticks right here.’ She thought he was going to point to his throat, but he was pointing to his heart.
‘You made me feel as if someone had turned up the power on all my senses, and I spent a while wondering if it was because I was kicking against you, trying to get a reaction, but it wasn’t, Grace. It was just ’cos I loved you. Seemed like you were someone who might bat for me for a change.’ He smiled and then it was gone. ‘But here you are hiding a big part of yourself away as if you feel I’m too young or stupid to cope with it – whatever it is. And now … now you’re talking about you and me as if I’m gonna demolish you. What way is that to start anything?’
‘Tate, please …’
‘You don’t get it, do you?’ he said, ‘I need to know how he broke your heart so I can mend it properly.’
‘Oh, Tate.’ She reached up and put her hand on his. It was such a wonderful, wonderful thing to say to her and she was so tempted to take a chance. But then the guilt and shame came back. How could she see that handsome, open face change under her words? That would be harder to get over than him walking away.
She was trying to commit to memory how his skin felt when it was no longer going to be on hers.
‘I don’t know how else to reach you,’ he said and he slid his hand out from under hers and it was gone. He was glancing over her shoulder like he was already thinking how he was going to make it to the door. He looked as if he’d just been taught a horrible lesson by life.
She tried to get him to sit down again. ‘Please, Tate, people don’t have to know everything about each other. I love you, I want to be with you and maybe, maybe I’ll tell you it all when—’
‘I don’t want “maybe”, Grace, it’s not enough. I want “yes”, “definitely”, and I want it now. I want all of you. I’ve had years of promises
that get broken; years of feeling second in line behind whatever passion was grabbing Mom at that moment. Whatever guy was grabbing her. Lots of superficial love, you know, lots of “my darling, clever boy”, but none of that helping you see where the big bear traps are hidden, pulling you out when you fall in them.’
He glanced towards the door again and she sensed there was a lot more he wanted to tell her but didn’t have the strength. He was still looking at the door when he said, ‘Listen, I’m heading off to France quicker than I’d planned, as soon as Sergei and his lawyer have sorted out if I’m free to go. I was gonna ask you to come with me. I still want to ask you, but not like this, Grace. Not if you won’t trust me enough to confide in me.’ He suddenly bent forward and gave her a peck on the cheek. ‘I love you, Grace, but I’m not coming round begging again. I’ve done all the running in this, kept on trying even though you kept on knocking me away. This is it. Your turn now. If I’m an edge, if that’s how you see me, well, you gotta jump.’
He started to move away and then stopped, but she could tell from his face it was not a reprieve. His shoulders had dropped and she saw his chest rise and fall as it had done when she watched him sleeping.
‘If you can’t do what I want you to do for us, please, for fuck’s sake, do something for yourself – get yourself a job that doesn’t involve taking out the trash and putting the magazines straight and getting some guy’s ass out of the fire who earns about five times what you earn. If you’re gonna stay here, get Al to face up to what you do and either pay you for it or get another person in to do all that crap.’ He reached up and mussed his hair about. ‘Or … I could help you get some money together, maybe become Al’s partner … I don’t know … or you could go somewhere else – another company, more money. But do yourself a favour: if you’re gonna stay, stop treading water, huh? Because, Grace, someday you’ll just give up and drown under all this handmaiden stuff.’
She remained standing where he had left her and was still there when Alistair came back from lunch. He didn’t say anything, just got her to sit down. She put her head on the desk again and it could have been a replay of the scene before Tate had visited her, except at least then she’d had some hope that she could be with him, and now she didn’t.
Playing Grace Page 32