About Last Night . . .

by Catherine Alliott

  ‘And wear your hair up,’ she commanded, holding it up at the back. ‘It’s less like a doormat then.’

  ‘A door …’

  Stung, I hastened into Ludlow the following day and had my hair cut, highlighted and blow-dried, then, in a sweet little boutique down the road, happened upon a simple grey silky shift dress which was neither mutton dressed as lamb nor mother of the bride.

  Minna raised her eyebrows when I brought it home and said something about Prison Break, but I felt more comfortable in it.

  Sitting here, though, looking at Felix’s wafer-thin, collarless, dusty pink Indian tunic – think Imran Khan – I wished I’d added the denim jacket. He was bohemian. An artist. Or an artistic judge anyway, I wasn’t sure which, but then, I didn’t need to know everything yet, did I? I wasn’t at an interview.

  ‘How was Venice?’ I asked with a dazzling smile when the waiter had withdrawn, determined there wouldn’t be an embarrassing silence to kick off with.

  ‘Venice was good.’ He turned his full attention on me, leaning in and folding his arms on the table. ‘Very good. Warm, like this, and absolutely stunning. Venice at its best, in fact. And in terms of art, it was thrilling.’ His face lit up suddenly, with a brilliant, blowtorch smile. God, those eyes. ‘Sebastian Malpass shone, of course, but then you probably saw his installation in the papers, a very deserved winner.’

  I hadn’t. Hadn’t realized the news would cover it, which was annoying, and I didn’t always manage to read a paper, but I’d done so much research otherwise I wasn’t going to let that stop me. I knew the sort of thing it would be.

  ‘Yes, I thought it was sensational. Particularly in terms of conceptual interaction. Phenomenal impact.’

  His eyes widened. ‘You got that? So many people didn’t.’

  ‘It was the first thing that struck me when I saw it. The, um … conceptual interaction going on.’

  ‘How intriguing.’ He leaned forward eagerly. ‘You’re the first non-artist I’ve spoken to who understood. What convinced you?’

  My mouth dried a bit. ‘Well, um … the, sense of scale?’ I hazarded. ‘And … grandeur.’ All of these installations, I’d noticed, were enormous: most didn’t fit in galleries, no wonder they were out in the fields. Felix’s eyes were narrowing and not necessarily in a good way. He frowned. ‘But not, if you see what I mean,’ I said quickly. ‘Not grandeur at all. In fact, the sense of …’ I swallowed. ‘I’m not quite sure how to express it …’

  ‘Nothingness?’

  ‘Exactly! Nothingness,’ I agreed happily. ‘It wasn’t really about anything at all, was it?’

  That frown again. ‘Well, I’m not sure I’d say that—’

  ‘Or everything,’ I interrupted, feeling a bit sweaty. ‘Maybe, in fact, it was about everything? How did you interpret it?’ The waiter brought a bottle of white wine and poured it. I took a huge gulp. Half a glass disappeared. ‘I mean, when you first walked in, what was your first impression?’ Good, Molly, much better. Inspired, in fact.

  ‘Well, initially I thought a pea in a vast white room lined with egg boxes was novel but not entirely original – Maurice Chappelle did something similar in Copenhagen, if you remember.’

  ‘Yes, of course. And Mae West used peas too,’ I added brightly, recalling a picture I’d seen in my book of loads of peas in a pile at Tate Modern.

  ‘You mean May Weston?’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘Really? I don’t recall.’ He looked confused.

  Crikey, quite famous. All those peas in a great big – suddenly it dawned. Damn. Wrong artist. Not May Weston at all, Ai Weiwei, and it was sunflower seeds, thousands of porcelain ones. ‘But – but maybe this was an allegory?’ I said quickly. ‘Just the one pea, so – a bit like the princess and the pea? All those mattresses and amazingly she still felt it? Perhaps it was all about heightened sensitivity and how we’re never sensitive enough to each other’s feelings? Too self-obsessed and shut off from one another. Not enough – conceptual interaction.’ Brilliant. Bloody fucking brilliant, Moll. I sat back, delighted.

  ‘N-no,’ he said slowly, shaking his head. ‘I think the opposite, actually. I think territorial. So thinking selfishly.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I see.’ I nodded, leaning in. What? I licked my lips. ‘You mean … the idea of a tiny pea taking up so much space? In one’s head?’

  ‘No, I mean the concept of a urination being territorial. Claiming ground. In war zones. In Syria.’

  Oh, that sort of pee. Blimey. I was exhausted. And rather repulsed. Was it fake? I sincerely hoped so. Lemonade or something. Well, let’s face it, that could be interpreted as anything, couldn’t it? Someone who’d been a bit desperate taking a leak, a dog raising its leg – what were these people on? Talk about the Emperor’s New Clothes. I drained my glass and wondered if we could move on, hopefully to safer ground.

  ‘But you’re more of a traditional artist, aren’t you, Felix? Your father mentioned paint, so …’

  He laughed. ‘He’s harking back to the good old days, which he liked, although to be fair, I’m still not afraid to get a canvas out. It’s more commercial. Paint sells and I’ve got to make a living. Political commentary, though, is something I prefer to be involved in; it’s what everyone’s doing these days, but it’s obviously harder to get punters to buy. At the moment I’ve got seventeen alarm clocks going off in a freezer. I’ve set them to go off on the hour at five-minute intervals as part of a commentary on the government’s blurring of the lines in the Nigerian atrocities – muffled, cushioned wealth at the helm, obviously, but with insistent subjugation.’

  ‘Yes, I see.’ I didn’t, really. And he was right, not a hope in Hades of selling that. Who’d want that racket going off in the middle of dinner?

  ‘But enough about me.’ He picked up his wine glass and gave me a twinkly smile over the rim. ‘Tell me, Molly, what do you do? Do you work?’

  ‘I did,’ I said carefully, opting for scallops and a salad when the waiter came and went, not wanting to look greedy. ‘In PR. And I still do, but not in an office. In fact I work harder than I ever did in London, but it’s all odds and ends. I have a soap business – tiny, but I do OK at country fairs, that type of thing – and I have a mail order underwear business. And I buy and sell horses. And I’m a farmer.’

  ‘Oh, cool.’

  ‘Really? Which bit?’

  ‘Well, all of it, but farming in particular. Agriculture is the only tangible interaction we have left with the natural world, otherwise we’re just spectators. People can ponce around making art out of gardens, of course, but the real meaning is in the toil of sweating in the soil. And production, naturally.’

  ‘I’ll second that.’ I grinned, on firmer ground for the first time since I’d put my bottom on the chair.

  He put his head quizzically on one side. ‘And yet you want to give it all up. Move to London. Why is that?’ The green eyes were faintly flecked with gold, I noticed, and they were kind.

  ‘I told you, it’s too much like hard work. It’s much harder than any office job in London. People like you, Felix, purists in the city, romanticize it, but it can be bloody grim. All slopping buckets and mud up to your knees and acres of emptiness and a Land Rover that breaks down and machinery that doesn’t work. It’s remote and it’s lonely and it’s through gritted teeth most days. And at the end of the day, you think you’re going to be baking cookies at the Aga but you don’t. You just slide your bottom down it and sit on the floor and smoke and get depressed.’

  He looked startled and I realized this was not necessarily the most seductive of portraits. I rallied, shoring up a winning smile.

  ‘The thing is, I want to get back to poncing around in a garden like most people do. Hopefully just a roof terrace, actually. Something small at any rate.’ I reached for my wine glass and went on casually, ‘I noticed Cuthbert’s has a rather sweet space at the back?’

  Lucy was wrong. I could be steely. And I sensed why Feli
x was advocating the rural life. As long as I didn’t look at his eyes, or his tanned neck with a hint of chest, I’d be fine. Absolutely fine.

  ‘Yes,’ he said carefully. ‘A very sweet garden. Which they both loved. Dad was – is – an extremely keen gardener and did most of the work. He designed it, you know. He’s pretty talented like that. It took him about two years.’

  ‘Right.’ I swallowed. The scallops arrived. Suddenly I wasn’t terribly hungry.

  ‘His great love is amaryllis. Well, you’ll see why when they come up later in the summer. He always planted ten more each year to accommodate the natural decline. That and lily of the valley. I hope you’ll keep the garden up?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I … definitely will.’ I chewed hard on a scallop. ‘But he’ll be very happy with you, won’t he, Felix?’ I said anxiously. ‘Surely at his great age, and not so well these days, it’ll be nice to know he’s not on his own?’

  ‘Except I travel so much – and I live alone, obviously.’

  ‘Oh? Why obviously?’ The wine had emboldened me.

  ‘I’m divorced,’ he said simply. ‘Two kids, but they’re mostly in America with their mum.’

  ‘You must miss them.’

  ‘Yes, but they come across for holidays when they get time off work, and I go there quite a lot too. Actually my son’s working here at the moment. Has been on and off for the last ten years, he flits back and forth.’

  I glanced up. ‘Ten years? You don’t look old enough to—’

  ‘Have grown-up children?’ He laughed. ‘I’m older than you think, Molly.’

  Good. Excellent. Although he clearly wasn’t going to tell me how much older.

  ‘And do you miss her?’ I asked cautiously. ‘Your wife?’

  He considered this. ‘I miss family life. But Emmeline and I came to the end of something many years ago.’

  ‘And you never found anyone else.’

  ‘I never found anyone else.’ He regarded me pensively over his wine glass. ‘You ask a lot of questions, Molly. Most people pussyfoot about.’

  ‘Most people?’

  He inclined his head, conceding this with a small smile. ‘Yes, OK, when I say I haven’t found anyone else, I’ve obviously interviewed.’

  ‘Are you interviewing now?’

  ‘Are you?’

  Things had indeed moved on apace. Here we were, having met only very recently, gazing away at one another over glasses of Chablis in a sunlit courtyard, cherubs tinkling away behind us pouring water from their urns. But I knew I’d felt something when I first saw him. And I’d been round the block enough to know I’d sensed an attraction to me, too. I might be self-deprecating at times in order to protect myself, but I wasn’t so much of a fool as not to notice when I’d got a flicker out of a man. We both had our agendas, of course. I was aware of that. But the more he liked me, the harder he’d find it to implement his, surely? I decided to address it full on since he liked my direct approach. Also I was quite pissed. I put my glass down.

  ‘My daughter, Lucy, who is the most sensible member of our family, says you’ve only asked me here today to make me feel guilty about inheriting a house that your father has lived in with his partner for twenty years.’

  I saw a glimmer of surprise in his eyes: a certain wrong-footing, but he held my gaze.

  ‘And do you?’

  ‘Feel guilty?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A bit, yes. Quite a lot, actually. But I’d be a fool to act on it. I have a crumbling remote farmhouse and a life I’ve come to hate. I’ve got no husband and three children who I want to give a decent start in life, since their father isn’t around to do it for them. And they’re determined to live in this city, where barely anyone can buy their own house any more. Whatever my latent sensibilities and sensitivities are, I can’t let a pair of green eyes and a delightful pink shirt put me off my stride.’

  He looked even more astonished. Then a slow smile developed.

  ‘You like to call a spade a spade, don’t you?’

  I shrugged. ‘I wield one enough. Mostly on the muck heap. I have a lot of time to think.’ I looked at him steadily. ‘We’re both grown-ups, Felix. We can level with each other. I had lunch with you today because I liked the look of you and it’s a long time since I had lunch with a man in a ritzy London restaurant. But if you’re having lunch with me to twist my arm, you’re wasting your time.’

  He played with his scallops, quite a few of which he hadn’t eaten either. Then he put his fork down.

  ‘I was,’ he admitted. ‘That was very much my aim. My agenda, as you put it. To charm the figurative pants off the ingénue up from the country and then to prick her conscience a bit. See what happened. I didn’t expect you to hand over the whole shooting match, but some sort of compromise. I could see you were a nice person just from chatting to you at Dad’s. I thought it might play well.’

  I nodded. ‘And now?’

  He looked at me a long while. Suddenly he sat back in his chair. His mouth twitched then a broad grin broke over his face. He ran a rueful hand through his thick golden hair.

  ‘To be honest you’ve put me off my stride, Molly. You’ve disarmed me. I don’t know what to think. Don’t know what to think at all!’

  12

  The afternoon sailed on. In fact it eased into a gloriously idle, sybaritic golden haze, the like of which I hadn’t experienced for years. Having paid the bill – I tried but he wouldn’t let me share – and since it was such a lovely day, Felix suggested a stroll by the river. We walked for miles, deep in conversation, this comparative stranger and I. Heads bent, smiling down at our feet pacing the pavements, we navigated the street artists and passers-by, parting periodically to accommodate them and glancing occasionally to smile at one another as we made our way under a canopy of blossom along the Embankment. The river glistened beside us, bridges stretched across it proud and invincible – and beautiful, in Albert’s case – and pleasure boats cruised by at a leisurely pace whilst more commercial crafts sped busily past. As we chatted, I found myself telling him about David, and about how his death had left such a hole in my heart and a void in my life. About how you don’t appreciate someone solid and dependable until they’re gone. He told me about Emmeline and how he’d met her when she was modelling in New York. Very young, very naive, thrown in at the deep end in a flat full of much older, more savvy models who took drugs to stay thin, she’d sought refuge one afternoon in the Museum of Modern Art. He’d spotted her huddled in a huge coat staring at a Hockney, and when he’d asked why, she said it reminded her of home. Of Yorkshire. They’d struck up a friendship. Then a relationship. Later a marriage.

  ‘But it wasn’t destined to be,’ he said sadly. ‘I thought once she had a family and a home she’d give up the modelling, but she didn’t. She became even more addicted to it and desperate for work. And of course in that world there’s a law of diminishing returns: there’s always a beautiful, skinny sixteen-year-old coming up on the rails. It made her a bit desperate. She had a lot of work done.’

  ‘On her face?’

  ‘Everywhere, really. Became someone I just didn’t recognize. In so many ways.’

  ‘It’s a cruel world. Lucy thought about it because she was scouted so many times, but luckily she decided against it.’

  ‘Lucy the sensible one?’

  ‘And the beautiful one.’

  ‘Picture?’

  I took out my phone and showed him my screensaver of the three of them. He pointed her out.

  ‘That one. Just like you.’

  I laughed. ‘I should be so lucky. Anyway, she’s a florist now.’

  ‘So men come in to buy flowers for their girlfriends and linger just a little longer than they should?’

  I smiled and pocketed my phone. ‘Perhaps. She has a beautiful shop in Islington and on sunny days she sits outside doing her arrangements – all very rustic, tied up with straw and hessian. There was a piece about her in Country Living last month. I’m ve
ry proud of her.’

  ‘Didn’t do university?’

  ‘No, she had a place at Bristol, but David’s death put her off her stride. She said she couldn’t be getting pissed at freshers’ parties and waking up in strange beds and living a hedonistic life in return for two measly essays a term when there was so much crap going on in the world. She wanted to do something more constructive.’

  ‘Serious-minded.’

  ‘Only by default. She was much more light-hearted when she was little. But yes, she’s always campaigning about something. She was on that Stop the War march last week.’

  Felix smiled down at his feet. We walked on. ‘And the other two?’

  ‘Students, lolling around at home in a totally hedonistic manner with absolutely no qualms about it at all. I think they even eat lying down, like Greek gods. Hopefully they’ll do a bit of revision and some animal husbandry while I’m away but I doubt it.’ I turned to smile. ‘And yours?’

  ‘Octavia’s a lab technician in San Francisco and Daniel’s a sculptor.’

  ‘Ah. One like you then.’

  He shrugged. ‘A bit. More talented, I think. You can see some of his stuff, if you like. We’re quite close to the gallery he’s exhibiting in at the moment.’

  ‘Oh, I’d love to!’

  We’d crossed the river by now and Felix led the way down a quiet, narrow side street which led in turn to another. Many of the old Victorian warehouses around here had been converted into bars and galleries, and he stopped outside one such tall, red-brick affair very near the Tate Modern: looked proudly at the poster by the door. Daniel Carrington was writ large, together with a photograph of his work. I stepped forward to inspect it.

  ‘He’s the real deal,’ I said, impressed.

  Felix glowed. ‘I think so.’

  In we went. We wandered around the exhibits, alone apart from one other couple in the three cavernous rooms with whitewashed brick walls and high, echoing ceilings which made me tread quietly in my clippy-cloppy heels. Daniel’s sculptures took my breath away. Enormous sleek bronze leopards and crouching tigers full of sensitivity and menace were dotted sparingly on plinths around the rooms.