She raised her hand to the knocker – a curious bird-shaped one, in bronze – then changed her mind and rang the bell instead. Awful if Felix didn’t hear and left her standing on the doorstep.
‘Maria, you look sensational!’
If only she didn’t blush – additional proof that she was still stuck in adolescence. He looked different from the Felix of the life class, dressed in a smart grey jacket and an open-necked red shirt.
He ushered her into the hall which, although dark and narrow, he had totally transformed. Literally hundreds of picture frames, all different styles and shapes, had been arranged side by side, one above the other – and even one inside another – floor to ceiling, on both walls, yet none of the frames held a painting.
‘It’s a sort of joke,’ he explained, as he watched her absorbing the display. ‘I mean, why bother painting anything at all, when an empty frame looks good in its own right?’
‘And they do look good – amazingly so. Are some of them quite old?’
‘Yes, a few date back to God knows when! Sometimes, I just pick one off the wall because it happens to be the perfect size or shape for a painting I’ve completed. But, look, come upstairs and let’s have a glass of wine.’
A twinge of panic rippled through her stomach. If she drank too much, she might lose control. ‘No, let me see this room first,’ she said, boldly venturing through the open door on the left. ‘Oh – it’s like an Aladdin’s cave! Where did you find all these fantastic things?’
‘Mostly on my travels. The textiles come from Egypt and this wrought-iron lamp from Turkey, and that maquette over there I bought from a Dutch sculptor when I was teaching in Maastricht. It’s actually his mother, but it’s so expressionistic, the figure and the chair are fused into one shape. And those wooden masks are African, of course.’
Maria nodded, hoping he wouldn’t quiz her about her own travels – remarkable only for their absence.
‘I love searching bazaars and markets and hunting down something really special. Although I must admit I often have to sort through loads of tat before I find a treasure. See this,’ he said, gesturing to a glass case on the shelf, which held a desiccated brown object she couldn’t quite make out in the dim light of the basement. ‘It’s one of my best finds – a shrunken human head from Papua New Guinea, which I picked up in a Parisian flea market a good thirty years ago.’
‘It looks far too small to be human,’ Maria exclaimed, half-fascinated, half-repelled.
‘Well, most so-called human heads turn out to be fakes, but this one’s probably genuine.’ He removed the glass cover and ushered Maria closer to the shelf. ‘You see, I know a bit about the shrinking process and it appears that all the different steps have been taken with this chap. What they do is remove the skull and brain, sew the eyelids shut, and keep boiling and reboiling the remaining skin and flesh, until it gets smaller and smaller. Then they dry it and reshape it and coat the skin with ash.’
Maria suppressed a shudder as she stared at the shrivelled head; still recognizably human, despite its diminutive size and distorted features.
Felix caressed its fringe of coarse black hair. ‘It’s odd to think I share my flat with a fellow human being who lived aeons ago, in a completely different culture. Sometimes, I even sense his presence, however strange that sounds.’
The pained and almost pleading expression on the unfortunate man’s face made Maria feel uneasy, so she turned away and began looking at the paintings on the opposite side of the room. ‘Is this your work?’ she asked.
‘Well, yes, but very ancient stuff. My more recent work is upstairs in the studio.’
Despite his dismissive tone, she studied one of the canvases with close and careful attention, admiring the swirls of black and scarlet, overlaying a deep ochre ground. ‘It has such energy,’ she enthused, ‘as if all the colours are flying out of the frame!’
‘I did it years and years ago,’ he gave a casual shrug, ‘when I was more into abstraction.’
She scrutinized another painting, in which a female figure’s lips and brows seemed to have been rendered in 3D. ‘Is that some sort of textile?’ she asked, indicating the mouth.
‘They’re actually those miniature trees that architects use in their plans. I cut them even smaller, then painted them brown for the eyebrows and red for the lips, to give a sort of textured effect. But, look, don’t waste your time on these. I’d prefer you to see what I hope is my better work – although, I have to say, I’m dying for a drink. I’ve had a pretty hairy day, to be honest, so I’d really like to sit down and relax. I can show you my studio later, if that’s all right with you?’
He led her up to the ground-floor sitting-room – unlike any room she had ever seen, with its wooden shutters and panels of rough brick, set between plain whitewashed walls and, again, a wealth of objects arrayed on every side. The room was small, in fact, and the remaining three floors of the house belonged to another tenant, so he had told her at the class, yet the impression was one of expansiveness, largesse. Amy and Hugo’s house might be markedly grander, but considerations of fashion and ‘good taste’ dictated its general style, rather than springing from an original mind, as here.
‘Do sit down.’ He gestured to the sofa, itself draped with some exotic fabric, presumably from another of his trips. ‘And I’ll open a bottle of wine.’
‘Lovely,’ she said, vowing to restrict herself to just one glass.
He returned with two pewter goblets and set hers down on a small table beside the sofa, then seated himself, rather too close, she felt. All at once, the images of his naked body, conjured up earlier today, began returning in a fevered rush, increasing her apprehension.
‘Well, here’s to your work.’ He smiled, touching his goblet to hers.
‘It’s hardly “work”, as yet,’ she said, struggling to censor the images and adopt a detached and distant tone. ‘I’m shamefully out of practice.’
‘So you keep telling me, Maria, but that makes me all the more impressed by what you’ve done so far. No, don’t contradict me – I’ve been teaching for donkey’s years and I know talent when I see it. Some of my other students have been slaving away for decades, but they lack that vital spark that marks them out as special. They also lack your total commitment. I noticed that at the very first class. You seemed to be drinking in everything I said, as if you just couldn’t get enough of it. In fact, you reminded me of a starving woman suddenly offered food.’
She gave a nervous laugh. ‘I’m afraid I’m a hungry sort of person altogether. Even as a child, I was greedy for all sorts of things. At my convent school, they came down really hard on that and insisted I learn strict self-control. They kept stressing that greed is one of the worst of sins, because it meant I was selfish and acquisitive.’
‘Greed is wonderful,’ he contradicted. ‘It goes along with exuberance and enthusiasm. Blasé, cynical people are very rarely greedy, because nothing seems worth their while. And, anyway, it’s built into our DNA, to help us humans find the best food and shelter – not to mention the best mates! And, as artists, it’s one of our duties to be greedy for success – which you are, Maria. I can see that very clearly.’
He flung his arm along the sofa-back; his hand a provocative hairs-breadth from her neck. ‘If you really want to know, what first attracted me about you was your total engagement with every aspect of the class – Leo’s studio, the model, the other students, the view from the window, even that board I gave you, for heaven’s sake! I found myself intrigued by your famished desire to cram in even….’
The rest of the sentence was blurring. She was still focused on his earlier words: ‘What first attracted me about you….’ So she hadn’t imagined his interest, but how on earth would she handle it? She might be out of practice as an artist, but when it came to real relationships with men – as against mere fantasy and longing – she was almost a non-starter. Silas had been life-changing, but only a one-off – a single, shameful lapse – and
, since her return to the Church, she had maintained a strictly celibate life. However incredible that might seem to her less devout and more promiscuous friends, she had seen it as her basic religious duty, and also a private atonement for the pain she had caused her mother and the stigma laid on Amy. And although nowadays, with her faith so weak and wobbly, there was less need for sexual abstinence, she’d had no chance to change her habits, since at her age lovers were conspicuous by their absence.
The arm along the sofa-back was moving down to encircle her shoulders and began pressing insistently close. ‘In fact, I’ve been asking myself continually what it would be like to kiss you. Would you show the same enthusiasm, I wonder?’
Warning voices in her head, long entrenched since childhood, were giving her advice: ‘Leave immediately! Don’t consider such a thing. Show him you have standards.’ And Hanna’s voice was admonishing, ‘He’s simply taking advantage of you. Don’t risk your eternal soul.’ And, added to those, her own diffident self was reminding her that encouragement at this stage might well mean that, at some point in the future, she would have to reveal her body and, since it was a mature and far from slender body, risk rejection in the process.
Yet, above all the cacophony, another voice – a voice she didn’t recognize, brazen, wild and, yes, ravenously hungry – was already giving him his answer.
‘Well, why don’t you try and see?’
Chapter 10
MARIA GAZED, ENTHRALLED, at the fuzzy black-and-white shapes on the monitor.
‘Those are the heart valves,’ Sue, the ultrasonographer, explained, ‘and you can see they’re opening and closing exactly as they should. In fact, the heart looks fine altogether.’
Maria exchanged a smile with Amy, who was lying on her back on the couch, her naked belly exposed. As she glanced at its gently swelling curve, then back to the amazing images on-screen, Maria felt secretly glad that Hugo had left, late last night, for a lightning trip to Dubai, so that it was she who was here with her daughter, bonded in so intimate a way. He had, of course, accompanied Amy to her first scan, but this second, twenty-week one was actually more important, since all the structures of the developing foetus were now clearly visible, making it easier to detect any abnormalities.
So far, there had been none, thank God: head, brain, eyes, lips, spine, heart all given the OK. But although Amy seemed supremely confident about every aspect of the pregnancy, she herself was worryingly aware of the high incidence of stillbirths and intrauterine deaths, especially in older mothers. So, as Sue continued checking, first, the foetal lungs and diaphragm, then the stomach and abdominal wall, Maria realized she was holding her breath. One anomaly and the baby’s whole life and future could be threatened.
‘All fine,’ Sue declared, moving the transducer slightly lower. ‘And the kidneys look perfectly normal,’ she added. ‘The urine’s flowing freely into the bladder – again exactly as it should. You may not realize, Amy, that for the last few months your baby’s been doing a secret little pee every half an hour.’
Amy laughed. ‘Good for him – or her!’
‘Well, if you want to know the gender, we can probably tell you at this stage.’
‘No,’ Amy put in, quickly. ‘We’d prefer it to be a surprise.’
Maria knew that Hugo was hoping for a boy, whereas her daughter hadn’t stated any preference. She herself had maintained a tactful silence about her fervent wish for a girl. That wish was even stronger since Amy had told her, earlier this morning, that if the baby were a girl, she would be christened not just Hannah but Hannah Maria. The news had touched her deeply; even made her feel that, in some mysterious fashion, both she and her mother would live again, in and through this child – and live richer lives, in every sense. Amy had also confided that she and Hugo planned on having a second child, which had delighted her still more. Neither she nor Hanna had managed more than one – nor Theresia, either – so Amy and Hugo’s eventual family would break the unhappy pattern of only children and absent fathers.
‘The placenta’s in a good position,’ Sue confirmed, as she continued with the scan, ‘well away from the cervix. And there’s sufficient amniotic fluid for the baby to move freely. Everything looks fine, in short – no anomalies at all, not at this stage, anyway. I’ll just take a few more measurements and then you’re done and dusted, Amy.’
While her daughter was getting dressed, Maria returned to the waiting-room, where she was surrounded by women in various stages of pregnancy. Despite the inappropriate environment, she took the chance to luxuriate in the Kiss again, as she’d been doing almost every minute during the last nine heady days. Not only did it merit a capital letter, it deserved a place in the Guinness Book of Records as the most electrifying Kiss in history – and that despite her initial fear that she would be unable to respond. Yet, for all the aching length of time since anyone had kissed her, her lips and mouth and tongue had instantly quickened into life. And the effect had lasted hours. Too fired up even to think of going home, she had walked for miles – walked rapturously and blindly – reliving every tiniest sensation; his tongue still probing hers; his hands still on her breasts ….
‘Right, Mum, all done.’
As Amy breezed back in, she rocketed from Felix’s embrace, experiencing an undertow of guilt. No way could she tell her daughter that she was entangled with a man – a man she hardly knew, a man she was seeing again tonight, when things might go still further. It would seem totally inappropriate for someone of her age; someone about to be a grandmother.
‘I suggest we take a taxi,’ Amy said, buttoning up her jacket, ‘and scoot along to Sloane Square. There’s this new baby shop just opened, so I thought we’d have a look at it and maybe buy a few things.’
‘But shouldn’t you be resting after the scan?’
‘Whatever for? It’s just a routine check-up. Damn! I’ve broken a nail. Hold on a sec while I file it smooth.’
‘Sit down to do it.’ Maria patted the adjoining chair. ‘You need to take the weight off your feet. But it’s fantastic, isn’t it, that the scan was so reassuring?’
‘I’d say! And Hugo’s delighted, too. I gave him a quick ring just now.’
‘Lord, how are things going? It must be pretty tense.’
‘Well, of course, he’d no idea when all this first cropped up it would ever involve a court case. He just assumed they’d sort things out in an informal sort of way. But the client’s breathing fire and has now issued writs against the main contractor, the sub-contractor and the consultancy firm that originally appointed Hugo to take charge. Apparently, this particular client is a notoriously bad payer, so I suspect it’s just a ruse on his part, to avoid handing over the final whack of the total cost. Also, Hugo says the wretched guy tends to issue court proceedings on the flimsiest of grounds, so it seems they’re up against a rather tricky character.’
‘I’m sorry to be thick, darling, but I still don’t understand quite what’s going on. I know about the basic problem, but how is Hugo implicated?’
‘Well, as project manager, the client blames him for any fault that develops. And it appears they used an inferior coating to protect all that fancy steel cladding on the hotel’s exterior. In Dubai, steel corrodes very rapidly, because most of the buildings face the sea and there’s masses of salt in the air, so it needs a high-grade protective coating. It’s actually called pvfd – poly vinyl fluoride – but forget the technicalities. The crux of the matter is that the paint’s beginning to peel and the steel’s already rusting. It’s meant to last a good twenty years but, from the looks of things, it won’t last more than a couple. The client’s claiming they deliberately used an inferior coating to save on costs and ratchet up their profits.’
‘But surely Hugo wouldn’t do a thing like that?’
‘No, ’course not. But corruption’s rife over there, so a suspicious Arab client might smell a whiff of it, even when there’s not the slightest cause. Or he may just be indulging in brinkmanship – d
oing everything he can to get his outstanding payments reduced. And, as far as I can gather, the contractors were rather rushed to complete the project on schedule and may have failed to check the detailed spec. I seem to remember Hugo saying he passed it over to an assistant, and – who knows? – perhaps the fellow just didn’t have the necessary experience.’
‘Gosh, what a ghastly mess!’
‘Yes, and I suspect it’ll drag on quite a while yet. I mean, this is only the initial meeting, when all the experts get together and exchange opinions and facts. But there’s still a chance they’ll manage to settle out of court, so let’s not spoil our day, Mum.’
Maria concurred entirely. However worrying the whole imbroglio might be, the all-important fact at the moment was that the baby had been given the all clear, at least until the next scan.
‘Right, let’s go.’ Amy jumped to her feet, having finished the nail repair.
Proudly, Maria took her arm as they emerged from the antenatal department and sauntered down the corridor. Once they had negotiated the hospital’s huge revolving doors and were outside in the street, Amy darted forward and flagged down an empty cab. An unnecessary extravagance, Maria couldn’t help but think, when three buses were approaching on the opposite side of the road. And, considering the heavy traffic all along the Fulham Road, a taxi would be no quicker than a bus.
‘Enjoy it, for heaven’s sake!’ she heard Kate whisper – a voice often in her head these days, now that she and Kate were closer. So she settled back contentedly while Amy rang the office. A taxi ride for her daughter was invariably a chance to catch up on her calls and she was already deep in discussion with Rebecca, her PA.
An Enormous Yes Page 9