by Joan Smith
She was increasingly out of sympathy with the late Mr Frick, who appeared to have written out cheques indiscriminately, his taste not so much eclectic as random. To be fair, she was hardly in the mood to appreciate dozens of old masters, most of them unfamiliar to her or in styles she disliked; each time she moved from picture to picture, or stopped to look at a piece of furniture, she could not examine it properly until she had first thrown a nervous glance over her shoulder to see if anyone was showing undue interest in her. It was actually a rather pointless exercise as she had only someone else’s vague description to go on; she spotted several balding, overweight men but none of them was alone, as far as she could tell, or absorbed in anything other than the Goyas and Gainsboroughs. She was left with a restless sensation of anxiety and an unusually clear idea of the kind of people, their ages and class and nationalities, who visited the Frick. She had arrived at the East 70th Street entrance at the same time as a small group of Swedes, mother, father and two teenage children, who were progressing through the gallery at roughly the same pace, their four blonde heads always immediately behind or just ahead. She had passed two American women so often that they had begun to nod like distant friends although their taste was radically different from hers. They were slender, wearing almost identical sleeveless dresses, one with a pastel cashmere cardigan draped over her shoulders — it was at least cool in the Frick, presumably more out of consideration for the pictures than the visitors — and while their ages were hard to judge, their restrained gestures spoke eloquently of inherited wealth.
They were talking in hushed tones when she arrived in the Boucher room, murmuring their admiration in voices so low that Loretta could catch only an occasional word: peerless, ravishing, incomparable. Loretta had turned from the brunette’s upturned face — which bore, she realised, a slight resemblance to Jackie Kennedy -to the first of the four canvases, a dainty female with a rosebud mouth representing Spring. Boucher had painted her on a mossy river bank, her youthful swain plaiting flowers in her hair, and she appeared to be quite unconcerned by the damp rising up through her gold satin frock and knickers — if she was wearing any, which the three fleshy nymphs in the next canvas, Summer, conspicuously were not. Loretta moved towards it and found herself performing an awkward little dance with the New Yorkers as they tried to share out the confined space. Two of the Summer nymphs were naked, sprawling on their discarded petticoats in a way which drew attention to the middle female’s generously proportioned and flamboyantly unclothed posterior; the third was en déshabillé in yards of white gauze whose lack of resemblance to any standard item of female dress made Loretta raise her eyebrows, like Flora Poste quizzically observing some benign but inexplicable bucolic rite in Cold Comfort Farm.
Next door, in the Fragonard room, Loretta had been confronted by an even less restrained exhibition of posturing youths, simpering girls and snogging putti. The Jackie Kennedy lookalike and her friend caught up, immediately exclaiming over the delicacy of flesh tones, the exquisite rendering of the foliage. Loretta idly looked up the history of the paintings in her guide book, learning that they had been commissioned by Mme Du Barry, mistress of Louis XV, for her house near Versailles. Three years later — inexplicably, according to the guide, although Loretta thought the charitable explanation was a belated attack of good taste — Mme Du Barry had sent them back; speculating that they had perhaps distracted Madame from her functions as a royal mistress, minimal as Loretta conjectured those to be, she decided she would rather live with anything, including late 1980s Laura Ashley, than all these garlands, ribbons, parasols, doves, urns and waterfalls. There was even something that looked like — Loretta stood on tiptoe, trying and failing to make out what it really was — a discarded thermos flask, abandoned by one of the frisky putti.
She had left the New Yorkers in silent rapture in the Fragonard room but now they had caught up, stationing themselves in front of the Italian marble bust which had attracted Loretta’s attention. It took her a moment to realise, from their rapid hand movements and facial expressions, that they were disagreeing — sotto voce of course, but she only had to move a couple of steps closer to hear what they were saying. The dispute seemed to be about style, whether the bust was ‘classical’ or ‘archaic’, but it was sufficiently heated to have brought two bright spots of colour to the blonde’s powdery cheeks. Loretta wondered what they were really arguing about, what deep and unacknowledged rift in their friendship had been displaced on to this trivial subject, and was fascinated by the speed with which the dispute died down. It was the brunette who gave way, lifting her hand and flaring the fingers as if by doing so she was literally dropping the subject, and a moment later they walked away. Loretta followed at a safe distance, overtaking the Swedes again and noting that they seemed to have fallen into conversation with a French couple. In the west gallery, which turned out to be by far the largest room in the house, Loretta paused just inside the door, overwhelmed by its size and the sheer number of paintings. It reminded her of the National Gallery in London and she puzzled over Mr and Mrs Frick’s decision to build and live in a house which so closely resembled a public institution. She drifted towards the small enamel room at the far end, unable to imagine anyone holding a normal domestic conversation about holidays or what to have for dinner in the presence of all these Constables and Turners.
Ten minutes later she decided she had had enough and went through the oval room into the central courtyard she had glimpsed through the long windows in the living hall. There was a pond with a fountain surrounded by small shrubs, a formal arrangement which made her think of Italy, and for the first time she was able to imagine the house as it might have been in 1910 or 1920. Presumably Mrs Frick had been a socialite, using it as a setting for smart parties: women in dresses by Worth and Callot Soeurs, the men with slick-backed hair, darkly elegant in tail coats and patent leather shoes. Loretta walked the length of the courtyard, politely stepping to one side to allow some Germans to pass, looked back over her shoulder to see if there was room for a small orchestra, a string quartet perhaps or a jazz band . . .
She froze. He was in the far corner, in a doorway, not the one she had come through, his receding hair covered by a baseball cap. A map was open in his beefy hands and Loretta pirouetted silently on the spot, as though he might hear her even at this distance. At first she wasn’t absolutely sure, the body shape was right but his face was hidden; in any case, it had been dark in the theatre and his voice was the thing she remembered most. She took a couple of steps towards him and he lifted his head, recognised her and flushed a dull red. The colour rose from his neck just as it had when she turned down his invitation to go for a drink after the play, and the next thing she knew he was trying to fold the map, giving up almost immediately and stuffing it in his jacket pocket. He turned on his heel and she plunged after him, elbowing her way through a voluble group of Italian teenagers, ‘Excuse me, excuse me,’ recalling with horror how much she had told him about herself, where she lived in England, what she did, even where she was staying in New York. She had had a bad feeling about him right from the start, when he was telling her about his intended visit to Oxford, but he had bought Toni’s ticket and she had wanted to be polite —
She came to an abrupt halt in an unfamiliar room and in the few seconds it took her eyes to adjust to the low light saw that she had caught up with him. Furious, she advanced.
‘What d’you think you’re doing, following me like this? How dare you? I’m going to –’
His face worked, he was almost as agitated as she was, and he began to bluster.
‘Lady, you got the wrong guy. I never saw you in my life.’
‘What? It was you, yesterday at the Met, I told you I was going, I knew someone –’ She stopped, panting for breath, with no idea what to do next. ‘The theatre, you had the seat next to me, I sold you the ticket. . .’ A pleading note entered her voice, the room was filling up and she just wanted him to admit it. ‘This morning, in the book
shop, you followed me there as well but someone saw you, she scared you off –’
She faltered and he took advantage of her confusion, spreading his arms wide and appealing to the crowd: ‘Like I said, I never saw her before.’
‘He’s lying! He’s been following me everywhere – ’
‘Following you?’ He pointed to his head, sensing that the onlookers had not made up their mind whose side to take, and made a twisting motion. ‘I mean, this is loony-tunes time.’ Someone behind Loretta giggled and she saw him relax a fraction. ‘You hear about the crazies in New York but you don’t expect. . . This’s something to tell the folks back in Ohio.’
‘Ohio?’ Loretta pounced on the detail. ‘That’s what you said on Friday, in the interval, The Sisters Rosensweig, you come from Ohio and you’re married and you have a daughter . . .’
He flushed again and his eyes glittered. ‘This really is Fantasy Island. I wasn’t in no theatre last night, I went to see True Lies. You seen it?’ he asked someone in the crowd, spotting a sympathetic face. ‘You oughta go, it’s a great movie.’
Loretta put her hand up to her head. ‘I meant Thursday.’
‘First she says Friday, then she says Thursday. I mean, all I’m doing is standing here waiting for my girlfriend, she went to find the ladies’ room –’
‘Your girlfriend?’
‘What’s so weird about that, guy having a girlfriend?’ Suddenly his expression changed, fear and cunning playing tag across his face as he focused on something or someone behind Loretta. ‘Here she is now. You find the bathroom, hon?’
‘Sure, Eric’ A blonde in a mini-skirt pushed past, lifting her pinched face interrogatively when she reached his side. ‘What’s going on? Who’re all these people?’
‘What’s going on is, the lady here’ — he indicated Loretta —‘made a mistake, she thought I was some guy she knew, some guy who stood her up –’
Loretta exclaimed: ‘What?’
‘Like I said, it’s OK, no need for you to worry. I never saw her before.’
People were beginning to drift away, sensing that the scene was over. Loretta swallowed, knowing she’d been outmanoeuvred. She started at a light touch on her left arm, turning to see the woman who looked like Jackie Kennedy, the one who had admired the Fragonards. She said quietly: ‘Are you all right? Can I help?’
Loretta shook her head, embarrassed and upset. She let out a long shuddering breath. ‘I made a. . . I thought I recognised ...’ She stopped, certain she hadn’t been mistaken but with no idea what was really going on. ‘I thought I knew him,’ she said, flapping her hand listlessly in the direction of the man in the baseball cap.
‘Let’s go,’ she heard him say to the girl. ‘You wanna visit the shop?’
Loretta watched their retreating backs, puzzling over the blonde’s identity; she could give him twenty years, and if she really was his girlfriend, why would he bother following a woman he’d met briefly at the theatre?
‘You want to sit down?’
The dark-haired woman was still regarding her with concern. Loretta shook her head, just wanting to leave: ‘Thanks, no, I’ll be all right.’
The woman rejoined her friend. A thought occurred to Loretta, a faint hope of throwing some light on the mystery: the black porter would soon be back on duty at Toni’s apartment block, if she described the man in the baseball cap — Eric, he seemed to be called — the porter might at least be able to tell her whether he remotely resembled the would-be intruder at the flats. Some of her energy came back at the prospect of having something practical to do and she hurried to the cloakroom where she’d left her bag.
She had been in the air-conditioned gallery long enough to have forgotten the heat and as she pushed open the swing doors she experienced a disconcerting illusion of reversal, as though she was entering a ludicrously overheated building rather than stepping outside. The late afternoon air was an overpowering mixture of humidity and car fumes, so tangibly dirty that Loretta was reluctant to inhale it. Trying to limit herself to short, shallow breaths, she hurried down the path to East 70th Street, hoping she had left the air-conditioning turned on in Toni’s flat.
Eight
‘So what do I say, congratulations I guess. I mean, I was kind of. surprised when Don brought up the mail this morning and said you wrote me a letter but... not as surprised as when I opened it.’ The woman hesitated, so absorbed in what she was saying that she seemed to have forgotten she was speaking into an answering-machine. ‘You know, I really hadn’t an idea you were planning this, it must have been all set up when I saw you last week and you didn’t say a word... Hon, are you sure you — hell, I didn’t mean to say ... When are you back in town? Call me, OK? It doesn’t matter what time.’
The message ended without the caller giving her name and Loretta added ‘woman with friend/lover called Don, wants you to call her’ below the two messages she’d already taken off the machine. They were both from Toni’s friends, one male, one female, and putting the three together it was clear they’d all received notes from Toni in that morning’s post announcing she was getting married. Not at some unspecified time in the future, either, but today, Saturday. The next caller identified herself as Alice and gushed into the answering-machine, thrilled by the news, and Loretta stroked Honey’s head absently as she waited for the arch exclamations of surprise and pleasure to end. She was feeling uncomfortable, remembering how Toni had held up the white Bloomingdale’s dress and inquired anxiously if it was too short, unable to recall whether this had come before or after her own reckless denunciation of marriage and live-in relationships’. She lifted her head and stared unseeingly across the room at the silent, flickering TV screen, and it occurred to her for the first time that Jay’s father had probably officiated at the ceremony. She pulled a face at the prospect of evangelistic excess raised by this thought; they had probably been in church all morning, singing and swaying and clapping, and it was hardly surprising Toni had been too busy to return her calls.
The tape beeped and she was relieved to hear Tracey’s voice, even though it was distracted and irritable.
‘Loretta? Are you there? If you are can you pick up the phone? Damn, I’ve missed you. What are all those beeps, I thought you didn’t know anyone in New York? Listen, I got your message, I was going to ring you back but the lawyer phoned. Can you believe it? After all that coming and going yesterday they pulled the bloody thing. They’ve got these trainees who come in on Saturdays, kids with law degrees, it’s cheaper than having a proper libel lawyer on staff, and this guy knows as much about libel as my — he doesn’t know his arse from his elbow. Anyway.’ He sighed, and abruptly cheered up. ‘Are you doing anything tonight? There’s this restaurant I’ve heard about, down in TriBeCa, it’s a bit of a hike but we can get a taxi. How about you coming here around half seven for a drink? I’ll meet you in the bar downstairs, turn right as you come through the front door. If I don’t hear from you I’ll assume that’s OK.’ He spluttered for a moment, a classic smoker’s cough. ‘Sorry about that. I was just going to say I. . . um, I owe you one for last night.’
Loretta frowned. Kelly Sibon’s drinks party was that evening, at her apartment on the Upper East Side, and she couldn’t possibly leave in time to get to the Gramercy Park Hotel by half past seven. On the other hand, Kelly hadn’t said anything about dinner afterwards and Loretta was keen to see John Tracey again before she went home. Assuming she could get hold of him, or leave another message at his hotel, she should be able to meet him later at the restaurant he had mentioned, wherever it was ... The tape rewound and she sagged on the bed, lifting her hands and covering her face, a gesture which prompted the dog to throw back her head and howl.
‘What’s the matter?’ Loretta demanded, leaning forward and putting her hand under the dog’s chin. Honey returned her gaze, pleading for reassurance. Loretta said: ‘Do you have to be so sensitive? and the dog let out a loud sneeze, showering her with droplets of saliva. Loretta wiped her
hands on the skirt of her dress, glad she had something to change into for Kelly’s party. Across the room, on TV, a succession of adverts flashed past, commercials for breakfast cereal, Toyota cars, Preparation H and a compilation CD of the world’s greatest love songs — a nice juxtaposition, Loretta thought, watching the singers mouthing soundlessly, haemorrhoid cream and romance. She stroked the dog’s head, wondering how Honey would cope with Toni’s pregnancy, which had also been confirmed by the messages on the answering-machine. The calls to and from the gynaecologist’s office suggested it wasn’t going smoothly, and Loretta felt a little sorry for Toni.
A news programme had just begun on TV and she turned up the sound, recognising a familiar backdrop. ‘So, Pete,’ a black reporter with upswept hair was saying, addressing an anchorman back in the studio, ‘as you can see behind me, a police forensics team is now scouring the sports store where two men were held hostage earlier today.’ She half turned, gesturing through the open front door of the shop where a dark figure could be seen moving among the weights machines, placing minute samples into a plastic bag. A diagonal black band appeared in the corner of the screen, superimposed in red with the single word ‘SIEGE!’.