‘Bernice, I had no idea. I’m really sorry.’ Grace would have tried to pat Bernice’s hand or even put an arm around her but she looked volatile, like she might swat her away as Esther had done.
Bernice got up and retrieved the magazine, before chucking it again, this time on to Esther’s desk. ‘He’ll be back soon,’ she said, ‘I better get on.’ Just for a second she caught Grace’s eye and Grace saw despair.
Bernice sat back down and hung her head but when Grace tentatively touched her on the shoulder, she said, ‘No, don’t. Don’t be kind. Just keep an eye on the door.’
Grace went to the window, each one of Bernice’s sobs feeling like the pull back and then forward of a saw.
‘Please, Bernice, is there anything I can do to help?’ she asked when the sobbing had stopped, thinking as she asked what a very stupid question that was.
Bernice opened her drawer and wiped her eyes on some of the fabric samples she still had in there. She took in a few deep breaths and widened and then scrunched up her eyes.
‘How do I look?’ she said
‘As if you’ve been crying.’
Bernice nodded and picked up her handbag and took out a mirror, some make-up wipes and a mascara wand and laid them on her desk.
‘I’ll tell him I jabbed myself in my eye while I was freshening up my mascara. Then I had to take it all off.’ She picked up a wipe and dragged it back and forth over her eye until it was a smudgy mess. She turned her face to Grace. ‘Look believable?’
‘Kind of.’
‘“Kind of” is always enough for Sol.’
Grace came away from the window and sat down again. ‘Bernice, are you sure there’s nothing I can get you? Do?’
‘You can make damn sure that you want all that routine and stability, ’cos otherwise one day, Grace, you might wake up in bed with someone and you’ll know in your bones you’ve picked the wrong man and the wrong life and all the pair of you can talk about is stuff that bores your bloody backside off because he doesn’t have the language to talk to you about the things you really yearn to talk about, the things you really yearn to do – like lying in the desert at night and looking up at the stars, or feeling the ground spin under your feet as you whirl round and round just for the joy of being alive.’ Grace knew that if Bernice had not run out of breath at that point she would have kept right on listing things. ‘You’ll discover, Grace, that he’ll be here …’ Bernice put out one hand, ‘and you’ll be here.’ The other hand she put out was a good distance away from the first one. ‘Blond Boy might be young, and God knows he’s made some mistakes, but he opened the cage a bit, didn’t he?’
They heard the street door open and Grace knew Bernice wanted her to go.
‘Here you are,’ Sol said, coming back in. ‘Oh, love, what have you done?’
Bernice was again rubbing her eye with the make-up wipe.
‘Jabbed myself in the eye.’ She clicked her tongue. ‘Hurt like hell, made it water. I’m taking it all off now.’
‘Poor you. Never mind, grubs up.’ He put a plastic-wrapped sandwich on Bernice’s desk, ‘Cheese and pickle and …’ He reached into his carrier bag with a flourish and pulled out a pot. ‘Special treat: caramel trifle. 2 for 1 deal.’
‘Lovely.’ Bernice’s smile was wide and generous and only Grace knew it was a great big stinking lie. She got up and said she’d see them later and left the office, and the building, her legs feeling shaky underneath her.
She walked slowly at first, not sure her legs were up to anything quicker, but the more she thought of people living shut-down lives, having to pretend and play a part, she speeded up. Alistair, how long had he had to do it? Gilbert? Vi too? And now Bernice. Esther losing all control suddenly seemed preferable.
She pictured Bernice again, sitting there with her smudged and distraught racoon eyes. Living with someone you didn’t love, letting someone go who you did, was there a difference? Think Grace, think.
Would that be what a life with Mark held? Or could it be worse? She thought of Violet and Gilbert’s sterile and ordered house. Routines. Right ways and wrong ways of doing things.
She was walking fast enough to make people scoot out of her way and found herself cutting along the bottom of Shaftesbury Avenue and down towards the National Gallery.
Samuel was in the Peter Paul Rubens room. She called him over.
‘Hey, Grace. You OK? Haven’t seen you for a while. Gilbert said you’d had a knock on the head.’ He was looking at her head, his brown eyes all concern.
‘It’s Gilbert I want to talk about,’ she said and realised she was out of breath. ‘Sorry, been rushing. You like him, don’t you?’
Samuel scanned the room before shepherding her to a part of it that was less crowded.
‘Is Gilbert all right?’ he asked.
‘He’s fine and I’m sorry if I’ve misinterpreted things and if I’m speaking out of turn, but I’ve … well, I’ve just messed up something and I don’t think I can put it right. I’m too scared to put it right, too petrified of what the truth will do. So I’m going to have to embarrass you and Gilbert instead.’
Samuel suddenly laughed, his teeth a flash of white against his skin, and Grace remembered the way Tate’s hair had blared out against the blue of his coat.
‘You wanna sit down?’ Samuel asked and Grace said she didn’t and she told him about Gilbert. She told him how he and Tony had wanted to live together but Gilbert’s mother had been ill and then died, which would have left Violet on her own, and how Tony had given Gilbert that horrible choice – Violet or him. She told him how Gilbert had felt he could only honourably choose Violet and now he was living this half-life, Violet unaware he was gay and jealous of anyone who she feared might take him away from her.
Samuel listened and said at the end, ‘I have a mother. Eighty-five … still trying to find me a wife.’ He chuckled and it made him seem like a grown-up, taking life’s knocks and still able to see the joke. She wondered how he’d managed to stay that way.
‘Gilbert’s quite shy under all that armour,’ she said and she could tell Samuel understood, but just in case, she added, ‘I shouldn’t have told you any of this, but doing the right thing doesn’t always lead to happiness, does it? And, Samuel? If you do ever get as far as meeting Violet, take her some of those gloves, the ones you use for handling precious paintings.’ She had another thought ‘And some of those blue plastic overshoes. She’d love those.’
Outside the gallery she saw that the drizzle had stopped and she peered up at Nelson, and with something that felt like a cramp in her chest she remembered Emma Hamilton and the baby she and Nelson had had and kept a secret.
She began to walk back the way she had come, thinking of what Bernice had said and of a life filled with home-decorating superstores, worrying about whether to swap energy providers, or where to find the cheapest parking. She could not imagine Tate doing any of those things, but she could imagine him arriving in Paris later that evening and going to a bar, doing that weird handshake, kissing the women, making friends, bounding along down the avenues and boulevards eager to try and sample and meet and share. All that energy fizzing away over the Channel. Without her.
She reached for her mobile. ‘Please, please answer,’ she said, the street around her feeling oppressively small with all her anxiety bouncing off the walls of the buildings. She could barely keep her feet still, wasn’t sure she’d even be able to hear when he answered, let alone speak.
‘Hi, not here right now. Leave a message,’ Tate’s voice said.
A message? What to say, what to say?
‘Tate, it’s Grace. I’m sorry. I’m scared, so scared, but I want to tell you … everything. Please … look, I’m going to come to the airport … I know, I know, it’s a cliché, but I don’t care. I’m going to come and if you’ve already gone … perhaps I’ll just get on a plane and come out to Paris … except I don’t have my passport. Oh sod that, that’s a detail. That’s Grace talking. I mean
the sensible one. Look, I need to talk to you and please, please try to understand that I was young and … No, I need to see your eyes when I tell you this. I have to go, get a taxi.’ She stopped talking and finished the call.
She was wasting time. But where was she heading? She didn’t know if it was Heathrow or Gatwick. She rang Tate again. Got his voicemail service again. ‘I don’t know where to come,’ she cried, ‘I’m, I’m going to guess it’s Heathrow. I’m going to Heathrow.’
She finished the call and walked to the edge of the kerb to try to flag down a taxi, but she was in the wrong place, the traffic was against her, buses blocking the flow. She moved further down. No go. She crossed the road. She knew she was pacing the pavement, back and forth, back and forth.
‘Just stop,’ she screamed at a taxi as it went past, a fare already sitting in the back. More cars, buses, a motorcycle. ‘A taxi!’ she screamed at the road. ‘All I want is one sodding taxi!’
She saw a couple give her a wide berth on the pavement and then her phone was ringing. She snatched at it, fumbled with it, dropped it and picked it up, jabbing at the answer button.
Tate’s voice in her ear. She heard London fall away from her. What was he saying? Was he saying something nice? No, he was saying it wasn’t going to work. Just like that, flat. She sat down on the pavement, not because she intended to, but because her legs did.
He’d given up waiting for her; she’d left it too late. She felt bombarded by the noise of the traffic and the people, by the smell of petrol and the lights. How was she going to live here now? Go back to that other Grace?
Crashing misery, fear, self-loathing, regret – all the horsemen of her particular apocalypse trampled over her.
‘It’s not going to work?’ she said into the phone. ‘Really? I …’
‘Nope. ’Cos I’m catching the Eurostar – doesn’t go from Heathrow. I mean, it’s fast, but it’s never gonna achieve take-off.’ There was a pause. ‘Where are you, Gracie?’
She felt the horsemen wheel away as she registered that ‘Gracie’.
‘I’m sitting on the pavement.’
There was a laugh. ‘That the best way to get to Heathrow? Which pavement exactly? Wanna narrow it down? Lot in London.’
She looked at the street sign because she couldn’t remember where she was. ‘Start of Pall Mall.’
‘Advance to Pall Mall, eh?’ She heard him talking to someone. ‘OK, driver says can be there in about fifteen minutes.’
‘Driver?’
‘In a taxi, Gracie, on my way to St Pancras. Just caught me. Sit tight, I’m comin’ to get you.’
CHAPTER 35
By the time the taxi pulled up at the kerb Grace had passed through hope many times and each time it seemed fainter, the outlines less believable. When Tate stepped out on to the pavement, she thought that it was too cruel seeing him again like this, before joy took over in the form of breathy little voices saying, Look how his lips are, remember? and, Of course, his eyes are that shade of green. The only shade of green they could possibly be.
He smiled and it almost knocked her to the kerb before she told herself everything was up in the air as of this moment; that wonderful smile might still slip away from her. She took a step backwards and to the side as he approached and he copied her so that they still ended up face to face.
‘I need to get in the cab in twenty minutes, a half hour at a stretch,’ he said. ‘So, we can use that time like bees doing a hive dance, or you can start talking.’
‘I need to sit down.’
‘Again?’ He laughed. ‘OK.’
She headed towards the doorstep of the nearest building. She could hear the taxi still idling, traffic passing, the city carrying on as normal. She focused on the two scuffed biker boots. Scanning up the purple and black checked trousers, past the silver ring to the sleeves of the greatcoat, she arrived at a chunky black jumper. Another few angles of tilt and she was past the hair to the eyes.
‘Time’s wasting,’ he said and sat down on the pavement in front of her, crossing his legs. He was all tease and cheek. She could tell he thought this was going to be resolved lickety-split.
‘Come on, Gracie. Spill. God I’ve missed you. Missed those eyes, brown, deep, sooooo sexy. Here, would it help if I held your hand?’ He reached for it and she pulled away and tucked both her hands under her legs. She didn’t want to put her hand in his and then feel him withdraw it sharply later.
His face didn’t look so cheeky now; a little tense around his mouth and eyes, but his tone was still upbeat.
‘Gracie, come on. I know it’ll be painful, but once you’ve told me, it’s gone.’
‘Painful and then you’ll be gone.’
‘Doubt it. Go on.’
This is what she’d been running from, not just when he tried to make her tell him in the office, but way back since that day in Spain in the upstairs bathroom.
‘All right,’ she said, feeling the cold from the stone she was sitting on start to creep upwards. ‘When Bill started sleeping with other women, I fell apart. Big time. I was drinking heavily, smoking dope a lot of the time. Just lying by the pool, becoming more and more needy. I got worse. Soon I wasn’t just drinking heavily; I was turning into a drunk. Long hours with my good friend Rioja – nice general anaesthetic but means you spend a lot of time with your head down the toilet.’
‘Poor Gracie. No wonder you came home in such a state.’ He reached over and pulled one of her hands free. ‘Jeez, you’re cold.’ He blew on her fingers and it felt wonderful and torturous, because any minute now she was certain he was going to drop that hand.
She laughed bitterly. ‘Bill used to point me out to his latest love as I lay sparked out by the pool. I was flaky, Tate. Really flaky. Remember how you said I was a “safe pair of hands”? Well, I wasn’t.’
He nodded, so sweetly earnest. ‘Yeah, I remember, but you need to cut yourself some slack. You were young, your heart was breaking, you were in a foreign country living with a dickhead.’ He gave up trying to blow on her hand and sandwiched it between both of his. She really wished he hadn’t; it was making it worse, feeling his skin like that, the heat coming off him.
‘The thing is, Tate, when I give in to passion and let my heart rule my head … I lose my way. And when I slide and slip, I really go. Bad things happen.’
‘Like calling me a fuckwit in front of all those people.’
‘No, I’m talking about really bad things. In Spain, because I let myself go, it was horrible and it was all my fault and … ’
‘Hey, hey, take it easy.’ He was up on his knees, hands on her shoulders. ‘Gracie, whatever you did just tell me. You think I’m going to judge you? Or be shocked?’
‘Yes, I think you will. No, don’t say anything, just listen.’ She waited for him to sit back down.
‘In my crazed state, I had a moment of insight – Bill was loads of things, but the main one was competitive. He always had to be the centre of attention, head of the herd. He got so jealous if any other artist got more publicity or a better deal than he did.’
She tried to gauge what Tate might be thinking from his expression but couldn’t. ‘Anyway,’ she went on briskly, ‘I figured that if I slept with another man, he’d get jealous and want me back. I chose his best friend, Patrick, because, I’m ashamed to say, I knew he’d always had a bit of a thing for me. It got a good reaction. Patrick and he fell out and Bill was all over me again.’ She put her hand to her mouth and took it away again. ‘God, this is so hard to tell you, Tate. Using Patrick like that was disgusting.’
‘Second honeymoon last long?’ Tate asked, looking off down the street.
‘Couple of weeks. And when it had cooled again, Bill said I should keep experimenting with new men. We could still get together from time to time, I could stay living in the villa, but really I should follow my instincts from now on.’
‘My instinct at this moment is to tell Bill he’s a turd.’
She reached out and patte
d his knee. ‘Thank you. I should have done that and then left. Instead I hung around – guess I couldn’t face going home and getting all that chest-beating from Mum about turning my back on such a funny, rebellious, maverick genius as Bill. And I still loved him.’ She clicked her tongue. ‘Young idiot.’
‘Not disagreeing with that.’
‘I tried to tell Bill I didn’t want an open anything, but he brushed my objections aside. So I thought I’d show him how wrong he was and how much seeing me with other men would hurt. My behaviour got wilder. I started to work my way through the men we knew – although to be honest, they were starting to avoid me and Bill; they knew a train wreck when they saw one. Then it was strangers I met in bars, on the beach. I’d invite them back to the villa, hoping to get a reaction from Bill. Nothing. He was besotted with a seventeen-year-old Portuguese girl at that time. Said she made him paint better than he ever had.’
Tate said something under his breath that sounded vicious and she hoped it was aimed at Bill.
‘I was still losing large stretches of time to drink and I started experimenting with heavier drugs. Mainly pills, coke.’
‘Heroin?’ He had on his ancient face again.
‘No … well … I smoked it once or twice, but I was too scared of it. Zin, she got into it when she left school. Boy-friend. I saw what it did, how hard she had to struggle to get clear of it … on methadone for a long time.’
‘She’s clean now?’
‘Oh yeah. Completely gone the other way. Her body is a temple. But it took it out of the family. Felicity was a brick, though; the one time I’ve seen her put herself at the back of the queue. Now I’d say her and Zin are the closest of us all.’
She stopped talking as a woman with a small dog on a lead came past. The dog seemed all skin and no hair and when it sniffed at Tate he shooed it away, giving the woman a look that told her to move it along.
‘So, you were sleeping your way through northern Spain …’ Tate said, when the dog had been jerked away.
‘Yes. And now it seemed that everything I did created a kind of chaotic backwash. There was a guy selling necklaces on the beach. We had sex on the sand when the front was deserted, except it wasn’t and someone called the police. I got away without being recognised but the guy got picked up. They sent him back to North Africa. I went with a pickpocket in town, Ramón, who, surprise, surprise, stole all my cash. So I slept with his brother too and when Ramón found out, he stabbed him in the leg. Turned out he was capable of more jealousy than Bill.’ She was starting to feel a bit sick because she could see Tate was having a hard time keeping a neutral look on his face.
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