The Lover

by Amanda Brookfield

  Renewing her vigilance over the relationship somehow led to Daisy being more attentive over the domestic details of their life as well. Instead of succumbing to the lure of slobbishness to which she had always been prone, she began to make more of an effort over the flat, keeping it tidy and spotless as Claude liked, stacking daily debris into orderly piles and straightening the bedcovers before he got in from work. She even bought a cook book and tried a few new recipes, using her artistic skills to recreate the sumptuous pictures next to the instructions, arranging the colours and curling the garnishes to make each plate resemble a painting. Of painting itself, she did less and less. Working at the gallery was making her realise both the limitations of her own talent and the fact that she had skills in other areas. Customers liked the quaintness of her accent, the way she made suggestions without appearing pushy. One gentleman the other day had even asked for her by name. He had bought such an expensive work that Marcel had added a bonus envelope to her weekly pay packet. This modest success had taken the edge off Daisy’s desire to spend her free afternoons cooped up in the small attic room designated as her studio. It had also helped her see that a measly square skylight of a window, filtering what little illumination lay in the steely Parisian winter sky, did nothing to enhance either her imagination or the bright ridges and ripples into which she liked to work the oils.

  Although inevitably wary of yet sharing such opinions with Claude, a part of Daisy longed to tell her mother. The moment their telephone conversation started however, she remembered the new distance between them. Their exchange of comments felt like a negotiated instead of a natural process, bearing testimony to the fact that they had not seen each other for almost half a year. Understanding the reasons for this did not prevent Daisy from minding very deeply. Prior to losing her father, it would never have occurred to her that grief could drive those affected further apart instead of pulling them together; that it could make her go through all that she had without telling a soul.

  Chapter Seventeen

  With the James Harcourt fiasco safely behind her, Frances was aware of another, hugely positive shift in her perspective. Looking back on the episode in the days immediately afterwards, she even felt as if she had been subconsciously propelling herself towards some sort of crisis, that the dramatic crash with the hapless cyclist had burst a bubble of insanity and restored another vital connection to real life. On work mornings she now threw herself out of bed with genuine eagerness, grateful for the easy focus it gave to the day. Back at home, instead of worrying about Joseph she began concentrating on restoring proper order to the domestic arena of her own life, applying herself to the long postponed chore of serious housework.

  On the Friday morning of the week after the accident, Frances decided it was time to shift her rigorous cleaning programme to the kitchen. Kicking off her shoes and rolling up her sleeves, she set to work, humming quietly to herself and musing upon her circumstances with an objectivity which she would have once believed impossible. Wiping the mop across the patterned jigsaw of floor tiles, it occurred to her suddenly that getting over Paul was and would continue to be a haphazard process of many parts; not a linear thing at all, but a great hopeless zigzag. Every little thing she did was a part of it, she mused, turning her attentions to the oven, spraying the greasy interior liberally with white foam and then closing the door to stop the fumes stinging her eyes.

  She had just tied her hair out of the way with an elastic band and filled the washing-up bowl in preparation for a final assault on the grill pan, when the doorbell rang. Annoyed to be interrupted at so critical a juncture in operations, she tugged her front door open with a sigh of impatience.

  ‘Sorry to bother you.’

  ‘Oh goodness, it’s you,’ Frances exclaimed, raising her hand to her mouth in surprise and then quickly dropping it in distaste at the realisation that she was still wearing rubber gloves.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind my coming in person. I was going to post the bill for damages, but then…well, to be frank, I felt I was rather…how shall I put it…abrasive on the night of our little fracas, and that perhaps I had not thanked you properly for ferrying me home. And it occurred to me that almost killing someone must be just as bad as almost being killed, in terms of the shock factor and so on. And I do have drawers full of fluorescent armbands and anklets which I never wear because I can’t be bothered, because they look naff and are a pain to put on, especially if you’re always late, which I tend to be. Sorry, this is obviously a bad time. I’ll hand over my envelope and be gone. Not too bad a total, I think you’ll find. There’s a man at my local garage who’s great for all this sort of thing, not one of your usual rip-off merchants by any means.’ Daniel held out the envelope containing Joe’s estimate of seventy-three pounds and forty-eight pence, but then hesitated at the sight of the pink gloves, each finger stained a gingery brown.

  ‘Hang on a minute.’ Frances fought to free her hands, her fingers sticking inside the rubber. Aware suddenly of her hair sprouting from its ugly brown rubber band and of her bare feet, she blushed, sure she must look like one of those women who had begun to let herself go and not even realised it. ‘That’s better.’ She wrenched the rubber gloves off at last. ‘And you’re all right, are you? I felt so awful…’

  ‘I’m fine.’ He waited while she opened the envelope.

  ‘That seems very reasonable, as you say. I’ll write you a cheque now. Would you like to come in a moment?’

  ‘That’s very kind. I’ll just lock my car.’

  ‘There’s no need,’ she began, breaking off in dismay at the heaviness of the limp with which he dragged himself back to the dusty grey Ford parked in front of her garage, pulling the leg after him like some stoical war veteran. ‘But you’re in a dreadful way,’ she gasped, ‘tell me you’ve seen a doctor…’

  He spun round with a gleeful laugh and trotted back to the doorstep. ‘Just kidding. Couldn’t resist it. I really am fine. In fact my shoulder hurts more than my ankle now.’

  ‘That was extremely unkind,’ Frances muttered, smiling in spite of herself as she pushed the door shut behind them and set off in search of her handbag. Having expected her visitor to stay hovering in the hallway, she was faintly bemused to find him following her into the kitchen and then the sitting room. ‘I know it’s somewhere round here. I used it for the milkman this morning. I’ll just check upstairs. Hang on.’ She raced up to the landing, taking two steps at a time, half expecting to hear the thud of his feet behind her. But when she returned, triumphantly waving her cheque book, he was studying a Christmas card, a late delivery from half-forgotten friends in Canada, full of well wishes for Paul and the children.

  ‘My friend Luca Signorelli,’ he said, tapping the religious scene depicted on the front of the card. ‘One of the more neglected geniuses of the Renaissance. I’ve just started a sabbatical with the aim of restoring the poor guy to his rightful status. Great at male musculature and virgins – I mean look at the expression on this one’s face – clearly fed-up with breast feeding, not to mention all the pomp of having unwittingly given birth to the saviour of mankind.’ He chuckled quietly and returned the card to its place on the hall table.

  ‘So you’re writing a book about him?’ enquired Frances, peering at the card with new eyes.

  ‘No, nothing so grand. I’ve only got six months. It’s more of an extended paper, one of those treatises that might elicit a few appreciative grunts from fellow academics but will set no fires alight in the rest of the world. An excuse to have a break more than anything.’

  ‘Daniel Groves, wasn’t it?’ she asked, folding out her cheque book and beginning to write. ‘I’ve rounded it up to eighty, I hope that’s OK.’ She blew on the wet ink and handed it to him.

  ‘That’s great, thanks.’ He took the cheque, exclaiming, ‘Wow, what immaculate writing – mine is hieroglyphics in comparison,’ before slipping it into the back pocket of his jeans.

  Frances laughed too, overwhelmed with fre
sh gratitude at not having killed such a personable young man. ‘I’m just glad you’re all right,’ she murmured, opening the door and curling her toes into the pile of the carpet at the blast of cold air on her bare legs.

  He didn’t go at once, but hesitated, masking one hand across his mouth with a frown. ‘Funny really…I mean, I wanted all this free time so badly and now that it’s come I feel a little at a loss as to what to do with it. I keep putting Signorelli off, but not doing anything constructive instead.’

  ‘I know the feeling.’

  ‘Do you?’ He looked genuinely interested.

  Frances, aware of the damp January wind ventilating her hallway, shifted her weight uncomfortably. ‘Oh you know, just that thing of being full of good New Year intentions and not getting to any of them.’

  ‘Except scrubbing your oven.’ His face broke into a grin. ‘I noticed in the kitchen,’ he explained, seeing the look of surprise on her face.

  ‘Oh that.’

  ‘You’ll feel so virtuous you’ll be able to laze for the rest of the day with a clear conscience.’ He smiled and held out his hand. ‘Nice to meet you in more pleasant circumstances.’

  Frances quickly accepted the handshake, muttering similar pleasantries. ‘And good luck with Signorelli,’ she called as an afterthought, waiting half in and half out of the door until his car had disappeared up the road.

  Daniel Groves was right, cleaning did generate a sense of virtue. But instead of using it as a pretext for slothdom, Frances found herself digging out her drawing board and box of pencils. Taking a stool from the kitchen and wrapping herself up warmly, she set up camp at the lowest point of the garden, where the river was a silver snake through the trees. In the foreground the ploughed mud of the field was still furred with frost, like gusts of icing sugar on a vast chocolate cake. Overhead the sun was no more than a flat white disc behind a screen of cloud, feeble but as distinct in outline as a large coin.

  The slow, creeping realisation that she felt inspired, was like a warmth inside, compensating for the chill in her half-gloved fingers and assisting in the necessary stoicism of ignoring the aching numbness in her toes. What she drew wasn’t very good. The trees were out of proportion and stiff, the river a lifeless band, the fields lumpy and dull. What mattered, Frances knew, was that sitting, icy on a stool with a pencil, was something she had chosen to do, something she had wanted to do, not to fill time, not for someone else, not out of any preconception about how it might be profitable to pass the day, but because an inner impulse had led her there. An impulse connected to a freedom she had not known – had chosen not to know – for years and years.

  Packing away her things an hour later, she thought of James Harcourt and shook her head in wonder at how close she had come to doing the wrong thing. How naïve to imagine there could be anything like a simple replacement for Paul; that there could be any replacement at all. Having put the kettle on for tea, she whisked up an ancient favourite recipe for biscuits, liberally picking at the mixture as she went along. She ate two of the biscuits while they were still warm, sipping a second cup of tea and composing a letter to the friends in Canada.

  ‘Dear Paul died in the summer,’ she wrote, truly accepting it in her heart for the first time.

  Chapter Eighteen

  England’s performance in the West Indies made for poor accompaniment to the travails of Signorelli, especially when relayed through a shortwave radio with a tendency towards volume vacillation at crucial moments. When the team’s batting collapse began to mirror Daniel’s own sense of hopelessness over what had once seemed the simple task of combining scholarship with a genuine passion, he snapped shut the lid of his laptop and strode impatiently to the window. Gingerly he peered out at the half-hearted drizzle, which seemed to have gone on for days, wondering if he possessed the resolve to launch himself into it. Reaching his hands above his head, he rose up onto the balls of his feet and balanced for a few moments, stretching his back and testing the sensations in his left ankle. Though not exactly painful, it still felt very weak. It would have to be the bicycle, or nothing, he decided, returning to the flats of his feet and sighing heavily. Traipsing upstairs, he rummaged in several hopelessly over-stuffed drawers before eventually unearthing two yellow armbands and a vest with velcro tags that fastened round the waist.

  Prior to setting off, he tested the brakes and the lights, which had been attended to in conjunction with the bicycle’s other more obvious ailments. A scoot round the block, Daniel told himself, pedalling cautiously at first and then speeding up at the happy discovery that his bad ankle felt fine. After a few moments even the drizzle began to feel refreshing. He sailed past the post office and then instead of turning back down by the Coach and Horses, headed on out of Farley, down the pleasantly wide lane which had recently been treated to a fresh coat of tarmac. His wheels made a smooth whizzing sound on the wet ground.

  One of the most striking features of Signorelli’s religious vision is its lack of obvious personality; each virgin is a beauty in her own right…

  After a few more miles, he realised he was heading towards his parents’ house, more for a place to aim for than because he was feeling genuinely sociable. Christmas had been a sufficient reminder of their less than endearing foibles, his father preferring to appear stupid than admit to being deaf, his mother delivering her set of stock responses to every subject with such unwavering predictability that it often seemed pointless going through the motions of conversation. Even his amiable elder sister wasn’t the same these days, tediously distracted by the demands of young infants and not seeming to mind that her oaf of a husband did nothing at all.

  Acknowledging the fact that not even the blessing of exercise could make up for his disinclination to spend more time with close relatives, Daniel slipped into a lower gear and began to consider turning round. He was fond of his parents of course, having long since forgiven them for being ten years older than those of his peers. Somewhere along the line their existence had undoubtedly contributed to his continuing affiliation to a part of the world that had seen both his birth and most of his education. Apart from a year in Italy, the only serious opportunity to move beyond the cosy confines of southern England had been a promising vacancy at York a couple of years before. But by then Vicky was on the scene, at that stage a finalist biochemist with firm plans to stay on at Sussex for three years of research. With the sudden death of his maternal grandmother releasing sufficient funds to buy the cottage, Daniel had given up the York idea entirely, seriously believing that all the pieces of his life were falling into their allotted place. Remembering the slow process of disillusionment which had followed, the bitter taste of romantic disappointment, he hunched over the handlebars, pedalling so slowly that the bike almost teetered to a stop. After a series of brief unsatisfactory affairs with students and fellow graduates, Vicky, with her formidable intellect and statuesque blonde good looks, really had seemed the answer to his dreams. It took time to discover that it was a hard, mathematical, curiously childish cleverness, about winning arguments rather than understanding them, about being one-up instead of equal. Though the decision to split was mutual, the astonishment of friends and colleagues had contributed to Daniel’s overall sense of failure. Trying to explain that beauty and brains were no defence against emotional immaturity sounded so much like sour grapes that he quickly gave up the effort. Instead, he slipped quietly from their social group, focusing his energies on work and his hopes on the prospect of a prolonged bout of solitude.

  When the rain stopped, Frances took her fold-up stool and ventured outside, not to the bottom of the garden this time but to a corner of the front drive, where the hawthorn draped itself theatrically over the fence and a small troop of suicidal snowdrops had thrust themselves up through the grassy bank. She had not touched her sketchpad since the week before, not wanting to over-test the urge, to scare it away before she had produced anything worthwhile. In addition to which she had been busy, working in Libby’s shop
and continuing with her crusade of spring cleaning. She had progressed as far as the first landing, saving the top floor, where the dust was thickest, till last.

  When the man on the bicycle entered her field of vision she barely looked up. And when he turned into the drive her first assumption was that he was some sort of special delivery postman.

  ‘I thought you might want to witness the fruits of your cheque firsthand,’ Daniel exclaimed, tugging off his helmet and running his fingers back through the wet slope of his fringe. ‘And I needed to get some fresh air,’ he added, in truth as much bemused by his presence in Frances’s drive as Frances herself. Deciding to follow a sign to Leybourne had been an impulse thing, arising mostly from the fact that it made a more pleasing notional destination than his parents’ bungalow in Rothmere. Only in the last few hundred yards of his journey had a sensation of something like anticipation built inside. A sensation that was in no way diminished by the sight of Frances Copeland perched in front of an easel, wearing a vast black mackintosh and a broad-brimmed black hat and with a large box of pencils on her lap.

  Astonished, but fearing it might seem rude to appear so, Frances duly made a show of inspecting the repairs on his bicycle and nodding sagely. ‘Looks great.’

  ‘And I hope you’ve noticed that I bear a close resemblance to a Belisha beacon,’ he said dryly, casting a disparaging gesture at his attire.