My Husband Next Door

by Catherine Alliott

  CHAPTER THREE

  I first met Sebastian when I was nineteen. I’d dropped out of St Martin’s art school on the basis that all I wanted to do was draw, and they wanted me to work with mixed media – express myself in stones and seaweed and old Coca-Cola cans – and looked startled if I so much as suggested something as bourgeois and predictable as sketching from life with a pencil. Having withdrawn, I stayed in my tiny apartment and drew the pigeons on the window ledge instead; chimney pots, too, with vast restless skies rushing behind them, which seemed to capture my mood. My parents, who’d considered art school dropping out in itself, and nothing like as useful as the Montessori course Ginnie had done, were unaware I didn’t attend classes, so I had a happy, if fairly solitary, time in my studio flat. It belonged to my father’s Aunt Hilda, who lived mostly in Bath, and was in a genteel but dreary mansion block off Cadogan Square. I was on the third floor and below me was a dentist called Mr Sharp, which amused me, and on the floor above, an elderly Russian lady with an enormous white Pyrenean Mountain Dog. Above her was a rather up-and-coming artist called Sebastian Montclair, who was dark and dashing and handsome and had a lot of noisy parties. I’d passed him on the stairs once or twice and he’d flash me a smile, but no more than that: he always seemed in a hurry, leaping to mount the remaining flights, taking the stairs boyishly two at a time.

  To make ends meet I washed brushes for quite a famous portrait painter called Magnus Simpkins, who was a terrible old letch and who, if I wasn’t careful, chased me round tables. Somehow Sebastian discovered I worked for him and as well as flashing me the smile, once said: ‘Still running round after old Magnus?’ to which I’d prosaically answered: ‘Yes.’ It was our only exchange, but I treasured it, wishing I’d had the presence of mind to say: ‘No, actually, he’s running round after me.’ Occasionally I’d pass a beautiful, sleepy-eyed blonde, tripping her way down from the top floor in kitten heels, and she’d give me a contented, bed-sated smile, wrapped in a huge fur.

  Mrs Elgar, the Russian lady, was devoted to her Pyrenean Mountain Dog, Putchkin, and when she went back to Russia that summer for three weeks, she asked me to look after him for her. Putchkin was old and massive and she must have seen me hesitate.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry, Liebling, I know he is old, and if he dies I hold you not in the least responsible. We all go sometime, you know, and he has had a good life.’

  She was a dear old thing and she’d also offered to pay, which clinched the deal, and so Putchkin came down a flight of stairs to live with me. Perhaps it was the shock of moving, or missing his mistress, but at any rate, sure enough, on the fourth morning I awoke to find him dead and stiff in his basket. Horrified, but relieved Mrs Elgar had voiced the possibility, I rang the vet, from a card she’d given me, and told them what had happened. The receptionist said it would cost a shocking twenty pounds for someone to pick him up and have him cremated, but a mere quarter of that if I brought him in myself.

  I gazed at the motionless mound of white hair in the corner. He was huge, but I didn’t have twenty pounds: I barely had five.

  ‘I’ll bring him in,’ I told her.

  Mrs Elgar, I knew, had an enormous ancient leather suitcase on top of her wardrobe, because she’d once shown me her old evening gowns in her bedroom: sparkling, chiffon creations which she’d held against herself and twirled about with, telling me dreamily of balls in St Petersburg. I bounded upstairs with her key, found it, emptied it, brought it back down, and, with a certain amount of difficulty – and snivelling, I was fond of Putchkin – got him inside. I had to sit on the case to shut it, and then heaved it down the three flights of stairs – no lift – then down the front steps and out into the street. It wasn’t far to the tube so I set off, wishing the case had wheels – it was unbelievably heavy – when Sebastian came up beside me.

  ‘Going somewhere?’ he asked in surprise, looking down at the case.

  ‘Oh, er, no, not really,’ I mumbled, marching on, but of course not really marching. It was such an effort and took two hands.

  ‘Here, let me,’ he said, taking the case from me.

  ‘No, no –’

  ‘Yes, yes.’ He laughed. ‘I insist. God, it’s heavy. Where are you headed?’

  ‘Victoria,’ I muttered. ‘But, honestly, don’t worry. I can manage.’

  ‘Oh, well, I’m going to Victoria, too. There’s a gallery in Ebury Street I need to have a look at. I’ll help you.’ And he fell in beside me with his long, easy stride, one hand carrying my case, the other impatiently brushing his longish dark hair out of his eyes. He flashed me another of those devilish smiles.

  ‘Christ, what have you got in here? It weighs a ton.’

  My mouth was devoid of saliva and my tongue seemed much too big for my mouth all of a sudden. We passed an antiquarian bookshop.

  ‘Old books,’ I told him quickly. ‘My – uncle – is a … collector. A dealer.’

  ‘Oh, right. In Victoria?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  He frowned, then his face cleared. ‘Oh, yes, it’s at the far end of Ebury Street, isn’t it? Marlborough Books? It’s practically opposite the gallery.’

  ‘No, no, that’s not it,’ I said, feeling rather hot. ‘He – my uncle – works from home.’ No. No good. He’d want to find the house. ‘From his flat. In a block. A mansion block, with a lift. So that’s good,’ I finished lamely.

  ‘Oh. Right. Well, at least I can get you to the door.’

  And so he did: taking my case on the tube, heading for my fictitious uncle in his book-lined study – kindly and grey, no doubt, with bifocals and elbow patches on his cardigan – chatting away companionably the while, asking me about art school. He wanted to know why I’d left, telling me he’d been to St Martin’s and loved it, and that maybe I should persevere because the second year was better; you got to choose what you wanted to do. Mind you, he said, that was a good ten years ago. Twenty-nine, I calculated quickly in my head. I managed to ask what he was doing now, and he told me landscapes, oh, and some seascapes. And skies. He just loved windy skies. ‘So do I,’ I said, glancing up in delight. And so we travelled on, rattling away on the underground: me, Sebastian, and a dead dog.

  As we got off the tube he told me about an exhibition he was having, saying he was apprehensive. It was the first time he’d had a one-man show and not collaborated, as it were, and he felt the spotlight and the pressure rather keenly: an empty gallery, surrounded by one’s work, waiting for the first person – the first critic – to arrive. I agreed that would be a nerve-wracking moment; but not as nerve-wracking as the one I was experiencing now as we reached the top of Victoria station steps, emerging into the sunlight, and he asked me which way the antiquarian book dealer lived.

  ‘He … lives that way,’ I said, swinging round to point in the opposite direction to Ebury Street, where I knew the gallery to be. ‘But, honestly, I can manage from here, I –’

  It was no good. He was off.

  We walked along, my eyes darting about wildly in search of large mansion blocks, which were thinner on the ground than around Cadogan Square, but, eventually, I spotted one in the distance. Telling him firmly that Uncle Michael was a bit of a recluse and didn’t like strangers, and that anyway it had a lift, and was now literally moments away, I went to take the case from him. At that moment he let it go, which resulted in both of us dropping it. Naturally, the inevitable happened.

  The case was old, with weak fastenings, and as it thudded on the ground it simultaneously sprang open. An awful lot of hairy white dog spilled forth onto the pavement.

  Sebastian stared in horror. I did, too. Putchkin was vast.

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ he said at last, as I stood by, mute and helpless. ‘You’re actually an Arctic explorer and you’re taking a polar bear cub to the zoo?’

  ‘No,’ I said wretchedly. ‘It’s Mrs Elgar’s Pyrenean Mountain Dog. I was too embarrassed to tell you. I’m taking it to the vet.’

  His eyes widened. A fe
w people in the street were turning to stare as they passed.

  He lowered his voice. ‘Well, I hate to tell you, but I think going to the vet is optimistic, now. Had you thought of walking him there on a lead?’

  ‘Oh – no! I didn’t put him in alive,’ I explained, then snorted suddenly, as the idea of squeezing a live Putchkin into a suitcase threatened to overtake me. I had to lean against a wall to regain some composure. ‘I knew he was dead,’ I told him between unattractive wheezes, ‘but it was cheaper. I mean, than having him collected.’

  When my mirth had subsided, I was surprised to find him still there, regarding me with some amusement.

  ‘No Uncle Michael, then. Do you often make up stories like that?’ he asked, his eyes narrowed speculatively.

  ‘All the time,’ I admitted, wiping my eyes. It was a relief to tell the truth. ‘Literally, all the time. I’m frightfully creative.’ I began bundling Putchkin back into the case.

  After that he invited me upstairs quite a lot. I’d walk around his canvas-filled studio in silent wonder, a drink in hand, marvelling at his portraits, his landscapes – skyscapes mostly, as he’d said – vast swathes of grey and white, the sort of thing I longed to do but wouldn’t have the scale of personality to attempt, on huge great boards. Many were unfinished, but just a few were perfect. Absolutely perfect.

  ‘You’re a genius,’ I said, without thinking, when I was crouched in a corner, going through a stack of canvases, and coming across one of a cornfield, so evocative and billowing and powerful it had made me say it.

  He’d laughed, pausing a moment at his easel, paintbrush in hand.

  ‘Hardly. And that was done years ago. I was really charged at the time. It helps, of course.’

  ‘Of course.’ I stared at the painting. ‘Who was she?’

  He looked at me thoughtfully. ‘Someone at art school. Kohl-blackened eyes, long dark hair, very slim figure. Very slim personality, as it turned out, but at the time I thought she was everything I wanted.’ He jerked his head at the painting. ‘As you can see.’

  I could. The galloping clouds, the rush of wind through the corn, everything triumphant and in full flight.

  ‘Celeste is very slim, too,’ I observed. Celeste was the sleepy-eyed blonde I used to pass on the stairs, and whom I still passed, but who these days looked a bit more tear-stained than bed-stained.

  ‘Don’t fish,’ he said, without taking his eyes off his picture.

  ‘I’m not, I’m just saying –’

  ‘You’re just saying I don’t go for much flesh on the bones and the fact that you have a little more than, say, the girl who inspired the cornfield, or Celeste, must surely provoke me to say – oh, but you’re lovely as you are – or some such twaddle.’

  I flushed darkly. ‘Absolutely not. No way was I looking for a compliment!’

  I straightened up and, feeling more than a little foolish, drained my drink and stalked back down to my own floor. I thought I heard him laugh as I went.

  Some weeks later he offered me an easel in the corner of his studio. It was an immense area, taking up the whole of the top floor, with floor-to-ceiling windows. He said that the solitude was what he disliked most about his profession; that up until recently a friend had shared the space; that, years ago, painters had always worked together, as a movement, and that’s what he’d loved about his time at art school, the group classes, the discussion. He said that, in his experience, painters worked better like that. He happened to have one of the best north lights in London and I had an extremely dingy corner of my aunt’s kitchen. Why wouldn’t I want to work up there? Of course I would. But I can’t tell you how quickly I hustled my palette, my paints, and my easel upstairs.

  Funnily enough, Sebastian was right. It became a mutually beneficial arrangement, and as the weeks went by I started producing paintings the like of which I’d never thought myself capable, digging deep and somehow coming up with a reciprocity of scale to suit my grand surroundings and my juxtaposition to this great talent beside me – a modern master, in my view. Sebastian, meanwhile, created what he was kind enough to tell me later were the best paintings of his career. In our respective corners we painted in companionable silence, sometimes pausing for a cigarette and a chat, but otherwise working all day and some of the night. The rest of the night, when I’d disappeared, I knew was reserved for Sebastian gently winding down what remained of his relationship with Celeste.

  ‘She wants to get married,’ he’d said gloomily one morning as he squirted cobalt blue onto his palette, his eyes heavy with fatigue.

  ‘Ah,’ I said sympathetically, not knowing what else to say. I’d want to get married to someone like Sebastian. Who wouldn’t?

  ‘She’s nearly thirty and we’ve been together for four years. So, you know.’ He shrugged.

  I felt desperately grown-up, being treated thus, as if I were an agony aunt. Behind my easel I cocked my head to one side. ‘That’ll be the biological clock,’ I said sagely – not such a hackneyed expression as it is now; indeed in those days rather an edgy one.

  He shot me a look. ‘Everyone thinks it’s just women who want babies,’ he said bitterly, which surprised me, because everybody did.

  ‘Right, well, you know how she feels, then,’ I said lightly, but not feeling light. I picked up my brush.

  ‘Of course. But it’s got to be right, hasn’t it? I just wish she wasn’t so …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Desperate.’

  Desperate. Didn’t he know love had made her desperate? That she didn’t know what to do with herself she was so consumed with wanting him, and wanting to have his babies, and that once he’d said yes she’d go back to being the bubbly, fun, joyous Celeste of old? Didn’t he know that? Why were men so stupid? I didn’t say that, though; wasn’t intensely loyal and supportive of Celeste, because I had my own agenda. Again, I’m not really a girl who has an agenda, but love had done that to me, too. Made me calculating, just as it had made Celeste desperate.

  I became a person who was extremely unavailable, even unreliable: anything, in my immature way, that I felt was the opposite of Celeste. Thus, when latterly I’d gone up every morning early, chatted happily over a cup of coffee as we cleaned our brushes before painting, laughed at stupid jokes, and maybe groaned in despair at yesterday’s offering facing us on the easels, now I took to coming in late, so that Sebastian was already in full flow. The reality was that he didn’t actually notice. So I took to refusing supper invitations at the bistro down the road, where we sometimes ate, under the mistaken impression that it would somehow make him fall in love with me.

  Of course it didn’t: he treated me as the nineteen-year-old art student I was, asking me if I was out with a Nigel, or one of my Sloaney friends. By this time he’d met Ginnie, who was going through a big Hermès scarf and Laura Ashley stage, coming into the studio with Richard, whom she’d now married and who was in the army. Sebastian couldn’t quite believe Richard was real, clicking around in shiny brogues, a brass-buttoned blazer, regimental tie, hands behind his back. There had been a Nigel – a Henry, in fact – an on–off boyfriend from school, whom I’d ditched the moment I’d met Sebastian, but who I now reinvented, agreeing he was taking me out that night, so that it became a running joke.

  ‘Where’s Henry taking you, then?’ Sebastian would ask as I packed up early, leaving him still painting, and as Celeste would appear, looking rather rattled not to find him alone. ‘Somewhere nice?’

  ‘Oh, yes, the Ritz or somewhere, I expect,’ I once said naively and he’d roared, knowing no one ever took anyone anywhere like that unless they were over forty or could charge it to an expense account. Certainly not a couple of nineteen-year-old babies. But I didn’t know why he was laughing and scurried away as Celeste looked at me suspiciously. As I shut the door I heard her say: ‘Why do you let her work with you?’

  I didn’t hear his response as I crept down to my flat. Then I didn’t like to have the television on in case he heard
it and knew I wasn’t at the Ritz at all, which, of course, he knew already.

  On the night of Sebastian’s one-man show in Ebury Street, I thought I’d die of pride. The gallery was lit up like a stage set in the gloomy October night and acted as a beacon in the fog: taxis drew up outside as it hummed with people spilling out onto the pavement, cameras flashed, journalists took notes. There, in the midst of the scrum, was Sebastian: tall and impossibly handsome, his narrow, sensitive face earnest as he talked to the press, his dark hair curling on a navy-blue velvet collar. Celeste hung on his arm in a slinky, gold lamé dress. All over the walls were the fabulous sweeps of colour and drama, the abstracts, the still lifes, the seascapes that documented his life, raw and exposed for everyone to see. They were more breathtaking, as one journalist in The Times put it the next morning, and more brilliant and exciting, than anything this country’s art world had seen for a long time.

  Richard was in Northern Ireland at the time, and not wanting to be alone amongst all Sebastian’s arty friends, I’d persuaded Ginnie to get a babysitter and come with me – but I’d made her ditch her Hermès scarf at the door. Even she had been bowled over by the scale of his talent.

  ‘He’s good, Ella,’ she’d said in grudging wonder, gazing at a rolling vista of hills in purples and mauves, clutching her handbag to her chest almost in self-defence. ‘I almost feel I’m in that glen with him, staring up.’

  ‘I know,’ I’d said, trying not to purr. He wasn’t mine, after all. Not even the tiniest bit.

  Later, though, when Ginnie had gone, and all the press too, when there were only a handful of us, in fact, left in the gallery, he’d come across to me, quietly, just as I was draining my glass and thinking I couldn’t decently, or even indecently, stay any longer, and asked if I’d like to have supper with him.

  I blushed. ‘Aren’t you going to have a party or something?’ I swept my hand around at what must be close friends remaining in the room, all older, of course, one or two of whom had turned and caught my eye in curiosity.