The bids moved up until they sat at £52 000.
‘Are you out?’ The auctioneer peered down the room in Jon’s direction. The paddle remained resolutely on his lap, his fingers flexing around the handle.
‘Any more bids?’ Another glance about the room, the gavel raised. ‘I will sell it then, at £52 000.’ The gavel dropped.
‘Sold!’
The assistant moved forward and removed Sticks from the wall, the AV screens went blank and within seconds, the painting was gone.
Jon felt sick. He closed his eyes for a moment, fighting the nausea, trying to work out whether he was relieved or distressed. Beside him, Charlie watched but thankfully said nothing. He didn’t think he could explain what had just happened. ‘Seen enough?’ he asked.
She nodded and they stood and inched past the spectators in their row. They were out of the auction room in moments, away from that stifling atmosphere that had made him temporarily insane.
He’d wanted to buy Sticks, wanted to bid and bid until he won it. But it would hardly help Jeremy if he were to turn up and ask for a loan for a lazy fifty thousand to buy back a family painting.
Now it was gone, and that was probably a good thing. Over the years he’d forgotten how much he’d wanted to touch it as a small boy. That compulsion had come crashing back the minute he’d seen it in the viewing room. But together with the compulsion was revulsion at the truth he’d learned as a child and could never forget.
Now he’d never touch Sticks. It would sit on the wall of someone else’s sitting room or study, quietly part of the small and large dramas unfolding in their lives, as it had been a part of his own.
But he’d wanted it. By God, he had wanted it.
He glanced at Charlie and could tell she was confused. Her mouth was shut, lips slightly raised on one side, trying no doubt to work out what the hell had just happened.
He wished he knew.
‘You could have got stuck with it,’ she said.
‘Would that have been such a bad thing?’
She gave an expressive grimace. ‘I’m presuming that the need to cough up £53 000 on the spot —’
‘Plus the buyer’s premium,’ he added. In for a penny.
‘Plus the buyer’s premium, would have caused a considerable amount of pain. What was it Barker said? You don’t have a cracker.’
He laughed then, because it was true. ‘Not a cracker’ was probably overdoing it a bit for Caro’s benefit, but the simple truth was that he wouldn’t have been able to pay. It would have been a major embarrassment to him and to the family. That was the only thing that had stopped him from shoving the bidder’s paddle in the air again and again.
It was gone, finished. The relief would, he hoped, kick in later.
He turned to Charlie and took her hand. ‘Since I’ve saved all that money, I think we should go to dinner.’
They went to Gordon Ramsay’s Maze. The food was incredible, the wine delicious, and Charlie had to pinch herself. She was sitting in a fabulous London restaurant with Jon, and had just seen Cliff’s work auctioned at Sotheby’s.
He’d relaxed a little on the walk from the auction, holding her close to his side and pointing out the luxury shops in the restored Georgian buildings along New Bond Street. It felt as though they were a regular couple on their way out to dinner, instead of an oddly matched man and woman from opposite ends of the globe, brought together by a painting.
They’d sat at the bar, flirted and chatted about the wedding, and when they’d gone to a table they’d ordered more wine and a series of plates to share.
It was somehow more intimate, taking food from the same plate, the almost-clash of forks as they went for the same morsel, the insistence on the other having the last bite.
‘You really wanted it, didn’t you?’ Charlie speared a scallop and raised it to her lips. Jon’s eyes narrowed and darkened, following the passage of the fork to her mouth.
Something in Jon was drawn to the painting. During the auction, she’d noticed the fine beads of perspiration on his forehead, the clenched jaw and focused eyes.
‘Yes. No.’ He stared at the plate as though the answer to all life’s mysteries might be found in a few scallops and a pool of beurre blanc sauce.
She dipped her head and tried to catch his eye. ‘Yes, no? Which is it?’
‘It’s complicated.’ His gaze lifted, swept past her and fixed on something behind her.
‘So, try me.’ She twirled the handle of her wine glass idly between her fingers, watching the wine swirl around the bowl. Several moments passed before he gave her a small, pained smile then picked up his fork and lifted a tiny carrot to his mouth.
She gave an encouraging gesture and he pointed to his mouth with a sorry-mouth-full sign. So he wasn’t going to talk.
‘You know, there’s always been something odd about your reaction to Cliff’s work. You could barely take your eyes off the mural in Bin. It spooked you in some way.’
He swallowed. ‘I’m not spooked.’
‘Yes, you are.’
The waiter delivered another dish, a rectangular plate of something she barely glanced at. She waited until he had refilled their water and left.
Jon had the distinct look of a man under the pump as he reached for his glass again. ‘No. I’m. Not.’
‘Two paintings by the same artist half a world apart freak you out, and that’s kind of strange. And when that artist is my father, I think I can be excused for wondering why. So tell me, what’s the big deal about the painting?’
‘Nothing.’
Charlie didn’t bother to hide her incredulity. ‘Really? You bid £50 000 on a painting that means nothing to you?’
He flicked his hands and gave her a what-can-I-say look, as if that explained everything.
She dropped her fork on the plate with a clatter. ‘You know what? You don’t want to share anything of yourself, do you? Not the parts that really matter.’
‘I share lots of things.’
‘Surface stuff, yes, but at a certain point one expects people to open up, to give more. I’m not asking for your deepest, darkest secret, just a little beyond cardboard cut-out aristocrat.’ She couldn’t help the touch of bitterness that crept into her voice. ‘But you’re not prepared to do that. I can keep scratching, but all I’ll get is what you present to the world.’
He regarded her through hooded eyes. ‘And the problem with that is, precisely?’
She was wasting her time. Behind that cynical façade he was emotionally locked, maybe shut forever.
‘Thank you for the dinner. And thank you for taking me to Sotheby’s. Even Hartley Hall. I’ve enjoyed it all.’ She carefully folded her napkin as she spoke, as though folding a piece of linen into exact squares along starched lines would calm her. ‘But I think it’s time to say goodbye.’ She reached down to pick up her handbag, then started to stand. The waiter was behind her in seconds, pulling back her chair and giving her no time for second thoughts.
There was nothing for it but to turn and go. Jon sat, his fingers twirling around the stem of his glass, his expression veiled. She wouldn’t cry, not yet. What was the point of crying about something that had never really started?
Watching Charlie leave carved an instant, painful hollow inside Jon. She was at the door, the waiter holding her coat as she struggled to get her arms inside, thrashing one hand several times against the lining before it found the sleeve. It was inelegant, but pure Charlie.
He took another gulp of wine as she said goodnight to the waiter and swung through the door without looking back. For a long moment he continued to look at the empty chair opposite, as if by sheer force of personality, Charlie had left an imprint.
Perhaps he should have told her, unravelled the whole story and laid it out in front of her among the plates and wineglasses. Maybe she could make sense of it for him. But like knitting, the minute one strand was pulled, the rest would come undone. You couldn’t tell one part without exposing it in
its entirety.
There’d be questions, kind looks and probably pity. She might even have reached over and patted his hand. He couldn’t cope with that.
So it had been a pleasant interlude. But maybe he was better off with someone like Caro after all. You knew where you stood with Caro. There were no probing questions, no looks that seemed to see right into your soul. Caro took him at face value and liked what she saw.
Bollocks.
He looked down at the congealing remains of a dish he couldn’t even remember ordering. Until the moment Charlie had kicked the lock off Pandora’s Box, he’d eaten as though in a trance, mesmerised by the shifting light in her eyes, the mobile mouth that smiled so easily.
He was in love with her. He closed his eyes and dropped his head forward. The vision of Charlie came to him: standing in the kitchen at Hartley Hall, holding a handful of micro-herbs aloft and letting them fall with abandon across the plates. Honesty and simplicity were marked in everything she did, and he didn’t have the guts to be honest with her. And because of that she was leaving.
Damn.
He pulled out his wallet and flung a pile of notes on the table, then strode towards the door. He was outside in a moment, pulling on his coat and running down the front steps, looking right and left. Across the road, the low, clipped holly hedge that surrounded Grosvenor Square Garden was frosted with a light snow, the gardens beyond in darkness.
Which way would she have gone? He took a left and crossed the road, quickening his stride. It was so cold his breath burned. She couldn’t be too far ahead, no matter how fast she was walking. He followed the curving path of the hedge until he came to the September 11 memorial and, on instinct, turned in at the gate.
The loggia attached to the memorial was in darkness, but he could just make out the outline of a figure sitting there and frowned. A dangerous place to sit alone at night, Mayfair or not.
He stepped forward. ‘Charlie?’
‘I’m here.’
He moved a step closer. ‘Can we talk?’
‘Of course.’
He took the last step towards her. She looked small, huddled deep into her coat with the multicoloured beanie pulled low over her ears.
He sat down beside her, feeling her warmth. He was chilled to the bone despite his cashmere coat, fear racing along his veins. He leaned forward, resting an elbow on his knee, his fingers tapping at his forehead. How to begin?
As if reading his mind, she reached out and placed a small cold hand over his. He still hadn’t bought her gloves.
‘Just start.’ In the moonlight her face was cool and slightly fey, the blue of her eyes tempered with grey. Only the crazy pompom on her hat moved, the strands vibrating in the breeze.
He took a deep breath and allowed his thoughts to return to that day twenty-four years ago, as he had so many times over the years. Her hand remained on his, and then slowly she pressed it, folding it in her own and holding it tight.
And then he started.
CHAPTER TWELVE
He’d wanted to visit the painting but not just to stand and gaze at it, as he usually did, imagining playing with the pick-up sticks. They looked so real he wanted to touch them, to run his fingers along the thin, glossy ridges of paint. To see if he could actually pick them up.
His father’s study was full of slippery, leather-covered chairs, so if he dragged one across until it was just below the painting and carefully climbed up, surely he could reach it. No one would need to know. He wouldn’t try to lift it down, he just wanted to touch it. Fired with this one burning ambition, he’d waited until the afternoon, until his father was certain to be out about the estate, before he crept along the Long Gallery under the watchful gaze of countless Hartley-Huntley ancestors. He didn’t stop to recite their nicknames as he usually did: Fabulous Fulk, whose name made him sound like an action hero; Ralph with the rabbit teeth; Dotty Dorcas with her in-turned eye and frizzed-out hair.
Jon could still remember it now, how he’d turned into the corridor leading to his father’s study and tiptoed along it in his socks, unconsciously mimicking the good guys in movies. It could have been yesterday. The door to his father’s study stood slightly ajar and lamplight spilled out. He’d frozen. Even at that age he’d known how careful they were with money. Lamps were always switched off when you left a room.
He’d inched closer, waiting to see who was in there. No matter, his plan was in tatters now. His father would never allow him to stand on chairs to paw the family heirlooms. But something pulled him forward despite himself, until he could see a sliver of Sticks hanging on the wall through the opening of the door.
A low murmur of voices reached him but it was just background noise. He heard his brother’s name. And his mother’s. Slowly, he dragged his attention away from the painting as he tried to untangle the voices.
‘Not sure about that one.’ His father’s deep voice made him stop in his tracks.
Another male voice, that of a good friend of his father’s. ‘Why ever not, darling?’
Darling? George was calling his father darling? Something seemed odd, and Jon felt the hallway wobble just a little. Or was that him?
‘Well, seriously, look at him. Jeremy is a nice enough child but by God, he’s dull. Still, that’s all right. When his turn comes he’ll do everything by the book, marry a nice, big-hipped heiress and take care of the place. But Jon,’ here his father stopped to laugh, ‘Jon has a touch of the devil. And where the hell did he get those looks? He certainly doesn’t take after me.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. I’ve always found you —’ The words broke off but there was the sound of a leather chair creaking, movement and low laughter. A dangerous chill raced up Jon’s spine. He could try to look through the crack in the door but an inexplicable nervousness kept him back.
‘Anyway, it doesn’t matter,’ his father said finally. ‘He can’t be mine, you know. Diana and I have not been intimate since before Jeremy’s birth, At least on the surface of it, Jon’s a Hartley-Huntley, and at least he isn’t the eldest.’
Jon could still remember gazing up at a small corner of Sticks, just visible through the crack in the door as the sounds had changed, the laughter becoming moans. He’d stood and listened, all the while turning his father’s words over in his mind. What did it mean, that discussion about how different he looked? And his father had said at least he wasn’t the eldest. It had seemed like an hour but was probably only seconds, before, with tears running down his cheeks, he’d turned and run down the hall and into the Long Gallery, careless of the noise he made as his small legs pumped hard. He’d run past the portraits, all of them seeming to glare at him accusingly.
You’re not one of us. You’re an interloper. An outsider.
As the years had gone by the ghastly conversation had stayed with him, its meaning becoming apparent as he grew older.
He wasn’t his father’s son. He wasn’t really a Hartley-Huntley. He was no one.
He’d never gone near Sticks again.
Jon’s words came slowly and painfully at first and then all in a jumble, as though he were describing a movie running in his head. Charlie could imagine the small boy, secure in his world until that one shattering moment, when everything he believed to be true was lost.
He hadn’t looked at her once while speaking. He’d withdrawn his hand at some point and sat, his hands clasped between his knees, his expression bleak as he stared straight ahead, seeing something she couldn’t.
Charlie listened without interrupting. It didn’t matter what she felt. All that mattered was the little boy who’d learned a painful truth.
And the man he’d become.
She yearned to comfort him but instead let him talk, the words pulled out of a dark place that shadowed his life, a place that harboured the secret he must have thought about every day. Everything that he was, was informed by this tragic knowledge.
He stopped talking and the darkness closed around them. It was oddly warm now, as though
the telling of his story had released a long-stored energy into the atmosphere.
‘So you don’t know who your real father is?’ Charlie asked finally. ‘And you haven’t spoken to your mother about this?’
He shook his head. ‘How could I? Knowing her, she’d have dismissed me out of hand, desperate to keep her secret. If I wanted her to take me seriously, it would mean telling her how I knew. She’d want to know when I’d found out, and who had told me. There’d be all kinds of questions, and once I started I know I’d never be able to pick my way through it to protect her feelings. It would all come out.
‘I’ve never told anyone. Until now.’ He smiled then and reached for her hand. ‘Over the years I’ve wondered who my father was. Countless times. Occasionally, kissing a girl, or more —’ he paused then with a flash of humour, ‘—I’d have a moment of mild panic. What if she were my half-sister?’
Charlie imagined him, growing through puberty and into his teens, negotiating a familiar world in which he felt a fraud. He’d masked his pain in cynicism, building up a brittle, impenetrable shell.
He turned then, his eyes a little too bright, jaw working hard. ‘You know, my mother was never this hard when I was a child. It’s something that has crept on with the years, probably with the money problems and my father’s spending. Sometimes I have to remind myself of that other Diana. But no matter what, how could I even begin to tell her what I heard that day?’
Jon fitted the key in the lock and the door to his flat swung open. Inside, he kicked it closed with a thrust of his foot and it slammed loudly in the still night. Somewhere outside, a dog started barking, a high, yapping sound.
They’d taken a taxi from Grosvenor Square Garden, desire simmering between them while the driver, having heard Charlie’s accent, insisted on pointing out the sights all the way to Covent Garden. It had been a sweet form of torture sitting there in the fuggy cab, with condensation filming the windows. They’d exchanged loaded glances, Jon’s hand stroking her thigh, as the cabbie regaled them with an abridged history of London.
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