The Reunion

by Gould, R J

  “What about Saturday evening?”

  “Great, I’ll see you then.” He was squeaking not speaking. While wondering what to say next, Bridget ended the dialogue with a curt ‘bye’ and put the phone down. He listened to the ringing tone for a while.

  It would be a mammoth under-exaggeration to state that the conversation hadn’t gone particularly well. Even the word ‘disaster’ wasn’t strong enough. He’d completely misjudged the capacity for humour and as a result had in all likelihood antagonised Bridget beyond redemption.

  Drinking two thirds of a bottle of Soave helped him sleep.

  He woke up convinced that his immature one-liner had ruined everything with Bridget. A second thought was laden with disloyalty and deceit – he needed to foster the relationship with his first reserve just in case. He was becoming a rake, a cad. He’d reached an appalling layer of Jabulani’s onion.

  Ashamed of this thought, nevertheless he was particularly nice to Mary that week. He complimented her on her dress sense, made her coffee, brought in a packet of Waitrose luxury Belgian chocolate biscuits, and worked hard to get all the budget sums right. Mary responded with plenty of smiles and some platonic physical contact that seemed anything but platonic. It’s amazing what message a hand placed on an arm can give, especially when the hand lingers and caresses.

  Following the confused week of mixed messages that flowed between him and Mary, David was relieved when Saturday evening arrived and he could set off to see Bridget. He was torn between whether to plan what to say or be spontaneous. Since his usual approach of planning had failed so miserably during the telephone conversation, he opted for playing it by ear though starting with an apology. He’d follow this by being friendly, but not too close until he could assess Bridget’s mood. And in the unlikely event of her being forgiving, he’d discuss the café.

  Bridget greeted him at her front door with a warm smile followed by a kiss, a quick one but still worth savouring. Then she took hold of his hand and led him into the lounge. He sat. She remained standing, looking down at him.

  “A big apology David, I was dreadfully curt the other night. I’d been working twelve-hour days with my boss and the sodding artist driving me mad. I was exhausted and then I got home and discovered Kay was ill. I had to be at work the next day and had no idea who’d be able to look after her. In the end Andy skipped school to assist.”

  “Don’t even dream of apologising, that has to come from me. I was an absolute idiot saying what I did and I’m desperately sorry.”

  “Thank you, I appreciate that. So we’re both sorry then.”

  “I don’t want to lose you.”

  She sat next to him. “Well, you haven’t got me yet, have you?” She leaned across and they kissed, a longer exchange than the one at the door. She poured out two glasses of wine then sat back, a little apart from David.

  “We shouldn’t be doing this kissing, should we?”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you need to tell me what you think about Roland’s murder.”

  “Bridget, I’ve thought a lot about that. Were you right to do it, were you wrong?”

  She interrupted. “That’s easy to answer. Murder is wrong.”

  “Yes, I agree. I started thinking of different grades of murder, but came to the conclusion that was ridiculous. I don’t know the details of how badly Roland treated you, but what’s done is done and I want to help you move on.”

  Bridget smiled. “And then you’ll be able to tick off the objectives on your bloody list.”

  “Yes, you’ve sussed me out, that’s the only reason. Actually I’ve made another list.”

  “Shut up!”

  David started talking about the café as he handed her a piece of paper.

  “You really have got another list. I thought you were joking.”

  “This one will help, it’s the key decisions I’ll need to make.”

  Bridget came up with practical questions related to money. How would he get the finance to set up?

  “I might offer the house as collateral,” he suggested.

  “Are you able to do that if Jane is a co-owner?”

  “I’m not sure, I’ll need to discuss that at the bank.”

  Bridget poured herself another glass of wine. “More?”

  “I’m not staying tonight am I?”

  “No, best not with Kay at home and unwell.”

  “Then I’d better abstain.”

  For a short while they sat in silence, nestled together on the sofa. Having her lying against him was such a relief bearing in mind his earlier anxiety. But she was so still that David wondered whether she’d fallen asleep. Then she sprang up. “This café idea. Might you want a partner?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I’m fed up with my job and wonder whether you’d be interested in taking me on. I think I could help.”

  “Well, of course yes, I’d love that. But what’s up at work? I thought you enjoyed the gallery.”

  The Reunion – R J Gould

  Chapter 30

  Bridget had been thinking of a career change for quite a while though with no idea of what to do instead. Work in the art gallery had become less and less satisfying. She had no interest in what she was selling and she despised a significant number of the customers. Friday’s experience had placed another nail in the coffin. “This isn’t art,” she’d declared as she looked at the new exhibits.

  “Don’t be a dinosaur, Bridget,” her boss Bradley had proclaimed as they regarded the frame housing an opened condom stretching towards a scrappy ink sketch of a vagina. “It evokes the degenerate pursuit of short term self-gratification in the twenty-first century.”

  “You don’t really think that, you can’t.”

  “Actually I read it, it’s how Sean Holloway describes the piece.”

  Bridget had first met Sean when they were setting up the exhibition and he was a pretentious ignoramus. ‘The condom work has to go next to the crushed plastic bottles’ he’d declared. ‘The two materials are in harmony. Surely even you can appreciate that.’

  Sean Holloway was flavour of the month, an artist of working class origin who hadn’t lifted a pencil or paint brush for his first twenty-five years. Then he was arrested for graffiti offences in Sidcup and the art critic in the Sunday Times claimed there was an intense energy in his art. For some reason a minor art college offered him a place based on the newspaper article, perhaps attracted by the lure of publicity. They kicked him out after less than a month, hinting that he was a talentless no-hoper. Despite that rejection he started to sell and the bandwagon rolled.

  “He can’t draw, he’s useless,” Bridget persisted. “Abstract artists must go through the discipline of drawing. You know that, Bradley.”

  “It doesn’t matter what we think, we’re a business. I got these works for a great price and I bet we sell them before the end of the month.”

  Bradley was wrong thinking they would sell within a month if the first day was anything to go by. At that rate they’d be gone within a week. And good riddance!

  At just after 1.00 pm on Friday, the opening day of the sale, a young couple had come in. He was dressed in a pin stripe suit with powder blue shirt and silver tie. She had on the casual clothes of the young and rich, a pseudo destitute look with skimpy, scruffy jeans and frayed leather jacket. The designer labels gave the game away.

  “I’ve heard you’ve got some Holloways in. Let me see them,” the man asked with something approaching a Cockney accent. Bridget took an instant dislike to him and had a strong urge to tell him off for not adding ‘please’. She led them to the ten or so exhibits on display. His first sighting was the condom artwork and he roared raucously.

  “Bugger me; come ‘ere doll. Look at this!”

  Bridget, who was not a snob, cringed at the ‘ere. Was it the remnant of a past at odds with his new found City wealth or the attempt of a posho to be seen as one of the lads? Doll was manicuring her nails. She looked across
. “Blimey.”

  “Fuck me, and this one,” City boy exclaimed, looking at a diaphragm surrounded by speckles of red and to its right, a poorly drawn cartoon of an erect black penis. “These are great,” he exclaimed. “Aren’t they?” he ordered rather than asked his girlfriend.

  The young woman glanced up again, irritated by the disturbance. “If you like them,” she muttered as she lifted a lipstick out her handbag, “get them.”

  “How much are these things?” he asked Bridget. The prices were listed along with the titles and artist’s name underneath the works. Perhaps he was illiterate; she couldn’t bear the man. She pointed at the labels before summoning enough false enthusiasm to speak. “Have you seen this sculpture, sir?” She had directed him to the bottles. “If you decide on the condom you must get this – the two materials are in perfect harmony.”

  “Yeah, I see what you mean, they are kind of similar. Bit pricey though,” he added, having taken the trouble to read the large print labels. They were £24,000 each. “Would you do a deal if I bought both?”

  “This is an art gallery not a supermarket. We don’t do deals.”

  Bradley was by her side. “Apologies sir, Bridget is having a tough day. We can take 10% off if you purchase both.”

  The deal was done with Bridget loitering in the background and Bradley casting dark looks. She adjourned to the small kitchenette and had her Marks & Spencer avocado and pine nut sandwich, tropical fruit cocktail and cranberry juice. Bradley ignored her when he came in for his own lunch.

  As soon as she stepped back into the gallery another customer came in, an older man with a thick mane of salt and pepper hair. Bridget thought his smile was a leer and kept a physical distance.

  He was another of the pin stripe suit brigade, though not as style conscious as the previous customer. His polka dot tie clashed with the navy and white striped shirt. Why bother purchasing art if you’re devoid of aesthetic taste, she would have liked to have asked him.

  “Rumour has it you’ve acquired some Holloways in this treasure trove.” He had a booming pompous voice. “Oh there they are.”

  He brushed past her and walked across to the Holloway area, now with red stickers on the corners of the sold works. “Two already gone, eh?”

  “Yes, though in my opinion nowhere near the best,” she said, resigned to drumming up sales to boost her commission. They approached an appalling attempt to draw a table on which rested a syringe and a flattened can of Red Bull.

  He examined the information below the work – this one was priced at £31,000. Since it was no more skilfully painted than the others, Bridget could only assume price was set based on size. It was working out at about £50 per square inch – maybe she should point that out to customers to demonstrate value for money!

  “I think they’re awful but they are shooting up in value, eh,” the polka dot man said. He took out a Filofax and turned to a page with jottings. Bridget glanced across and noted dates and prices. March £12,000. July £21,000. December £26,000. “I’ll take it,” he said. “It’ll be up to over forty by the end of summer, eh.”

  And that was that. He took out his cheque book and Parker pen while Bridget contemplated the point of the ‘eh’ when upper class men spoke. Were they taught to use it at school? “Jolly good value, eh,” she jibed as he was writing. She caught Bradley giving her a filthy look. She didn’t care. Three pieces of absolute crap sold in an hour for over £70,000, and a furious boss. “I feel terrible, do you mind if I leave early?” she asked.

  “Good idea if you do,” Bradley replied.

  She put on her coat and walked out without casting an eye on the artistic offerings displayed. The Holloways were at the bottom of the talent list, but there were some close calls for the runner up.

  The Northern Line was down again due to signal failure so she resorted to edging through central London in an overcrowded bus. She was tired, tired of the daily commute, tired of what the West End had to offer, tired of selling poor quality, high-priced so called art to buyers only interested in the shock of the new or the investment potential. Perhaps she was being arrogant to categorise art into good or bad with such authority. Over a hundred years ago many had laughed at the Impressionists and it was left to pioneers to buy their works, quite likely for the same two reasons as her customers. At school she had loved Impressionism but at college she’d been weaned off it by lecturers who considered the movement too mainstream and no longer challenging.

  Today Bridget had to have a shot of Impressionism. She jumped off the bus as it reached Trafalgar Square and spent an hour wandering around the late nineteenth century rooms in the National Gallery. The colour, the movement, the sheer emotion of the works relegated the modern stuff to pretentious insignificance.

  The visit had lifted her spirits, but sitting on a less crowded bus as she continued the journey home, she considered whether she should quit what until now had been her single career. By the time she alighted the decision was final. She needed to find other work, though quickly, what with two children to provide for. But she had no idea what she should do.

  The reaching of a crisis point was perfect timing as far as David was concerned. With trepidation he double-checked her suggestion. “Do you really think your new work could be running a café with me?”

  “Well, I’ve given a tentative yes. It is possible, but I need a lot more detail about how you think it could work.”

  Kay calling out brought an abrupt end to their discussion. Bridget went up to see what she wanted. Back downstairs she suggested David should leave so she could change bed linen and pyjamas and make a hot drink for her feverish daughter.

  “Let’s meet up to talk things through as soon as Kay’s better,” he suggested as he stood by the door.

  “Sure, let’s,” she replied from half way up the stairs.

  The Reunion – R J Gould

  Chapter 31

  David’s list of objectives was hidden in his office filing cabinet, tucked away in the middle of an uninviting document called ‘Procedures against care homes following their failure to report the death of a resident’. It was safe there – the cabinet was kept locked and since he was the only one responsible for dealing with such occurrences, no one else would ever need access. Although he knew the list by heart, he took it out for a cursory glance.

  Medium/Long term objectives

  1. Take a cookery course

  2. Quit my job and pack in accountancy

  3. Open an arts café

  4. Have sex with Bridget by 20 February

  5. Have more sex with Bridget by the end of the first week of March

  Only one thing achieved so far, progress could perhaps be classed as ‘satisfactory’ for the rest. He replaced the sheet inside the document between page twenty-six, his house number, and twenty-seven.

  ~

  Rachel and Sam were hovering in the hall as David returned from work on Monday evening.

  “Dad, we’ve got something to tell you. Well, to ask.” Rachel looked concerned and David feared another school incident.

  “Mum’s got tickets for Billy Elliot on Saturday evening and she’s asked if we can stay over – at Jim’s. We don’t know whether to say yes or no. Part of me thinks what’s done is done and we might as well move on. But I don’t want to offend you. Would you mind?”

  David zoomed in on the opportunity this might present. “No, not at all. I think moving on is a sensible idea,” he replied with great generosity.

  Having made certain the children were out of earshot he called Bridget to invite her over for dinner that Saturday. She accepted.

  The next evening, Tuesday, he had a trial run of Saturday’s meal. It was still early days on his Simple Italian Cooking class. The ‘simple’ was proving to be a misnomer and he wasn’t confident he could deliver a Tuscan or Sicilian delight. He decided to revisit what he’d produced on the Learn to Cook – Anyone Can Do It course.

  He began with seasonal vegetable soup and cheese
croutons. Theoretically this should have been followed by pan roasted free range chicken with tarragon and crème fraiche sauce, but in preparation for Bridget he replaced the chicken with quorn. The children were suspicious of this soggy new ingredient and stabbed at it with their forks. David gave it a try before rejecting it as unappetising. After work the next day he scoured the supermarket shelves for a substitute before serving up a near identical meal for his bemused children, but with marinated tofu replacing quorn. The children moaned but he thought it was better. As a reward for resilience he cooked them unadorned chicken on the Thursday.

  ~

  Saturday at last.

  He drove Rachel and Sam to Jim’s house, an attractive semi-detached building on the border between Finchley and Mill Hill. He’d visited many times and it was disconcerting to return now that it was Jane’s home. Out of curiosity rather than need he escorted the children up the path to the front door. Sam rang the bell and Jane answered.

  “Hello everyone.” She looked at David intently. “Thanks for letting them stay here, I appreciate it. Would you like to come in for a coffee?”

  David noticed the small table and above it the painting of a man and woman at the seaside, stretched out on striped canvas deckchairs, munching ice cream cornets. He and Jane had bought the painting in Brighton way back, before the children were born. Until a few days ago both table and painting had been in what was now his house.

  “Thanks, but I need to head on. I’ve got rather a lot to do today.”

  “Anything nice?”

  He didn’t answer.

  Jane continued. “We’re thinking of going ice skating at Somerset House tomorrow afternoon. We’ll bring them back after that.”

  “That’s fine,” David said. He looked across at his children and gave them a reassuring smile. “Have a good time,” he added as he headed off.

  Once home and full of nervous energy, he embarked on worthless garden maintenance considering the bleakness of the early January day. He then took a shower and began to prepare the food.