Red is for Rubies

by Linda Mitchelmore

  Mist. Lydie hadn’t expected the river to be almost hidden by mist. But she could hear a boat engine throbbing somewhere out there. The sun was up, casting an eerie sort of glow through the cloud and up along the mist-shrouded river. The weather forecast for the day was good – it was already warm – and Lydie thought she would put up the little folding table and take her coffee out there. And then she would scrub the deck and go down to the shop on the corner and buy the pot of agapanthus she’d seen yesterday. Turn this place into a home. And then, perhaps, Grace would be awake and maybe dressed, and in need of coffee and someone to be with.

  Grace tiptoed across the bare boards of her bedroom in the eaves.

  ‘I cannot stay here,’ she said to her reflection in the mirror over the basin. ‘I simply can’t. It was a mistake to come. Not for a minute longer than is absolutely necessary. The second I get a job, I’m off.’

  But that was the problem. All their friends had become Justin’s friends overnight, and Grace had had no option but to take up her mother’s invitation. She hardly had any qualifications – except for A-levels in Art and History of Art – to her name. University or teacher-training just hadn’t appealed back then, but getting a job now wasn’t going to be easy exactly. Not like it had been when she’d met Justin and discovered he owned a restaurant – correction, a chain of restaurants – because back then you didn’t need an NVQ in Basic Hygiene or any of that rubbish, you just learnt on the job until you were front of house and on first name terms with models and people from the BBC and the Jude’s and Sienna’s of this world. But, thirteen years on, things were different, and with the loss of the boyfriend and the loss of the job went the loss of her home and … Oh God, her eyes. Red-rimmed, bloodshot, narrowed slits; Grace’s onyx eyes peered back at her from the speckled, grimy glass.

  ‘You could have got someone to clean it up before we moved in, Mother,’ she grumbled, rubbing the glass with the hem of the nightdress Lydie had lent her, because living with Justin there had never been the need for such a thing as a nightdress. Not even in winter when it was freezing outside.

  First sign of madness, talking to yourself – wasn’t that what everyone said? Well, let them! She felt less lonely hearing even her own voice.

  ‘Is that you, darling?’ Lydie’s voice floated up from the deck below, through the open fanlight window. ‘Coffee’s made if you’d like some.’

  Well, of course, it’s me. Who else would it be up here? And why are you speaking as though I’m a guest, or ill, or minus a few marbles, or all bloody three rolled into one? Grace pressed her lips together until they hurt, to stop the spiteful words from coming out. Ungrateful cow, Justin would have called her. Justin who she had known and loved for almost a third of her life. Is this what rejection did to you? Made you weak and needy and full of spiteful thoughts?

  ‘Okay,’ Grace said, her throat sore and tight from crying, ‘I’ll be down in a minute.’

  Ralph could not stroll. He was not a stroller. And especially not on a beautiful May morning like today. He took long, purposeful, strides; strides which said he was on a mission – although he wasn’t quite sure at that moment what that mission was to get a feel of the place he supposed.

  The top floor of The Gallery looked down on the mist-shrouded river, where deep-hued boat hulls sat here and there, blurred and dark in the greyness. And the sound of masts clack-clacking could be heard as the moored yachts shifted and rolled with the motion of the water. But now, as the mist rose rapidly, the sun almost blinding him, the Dart was a shimmer of watery diamonds. And it was beautiful.

  Just one visit, that was all it had taken to make him want to up sticks, sell his property development company, and move. Lydie had found a million reasons not to, as he’d known she would. It was too far away from Bath where she sold her jewellery in chic little shops. Lydie’s widowed father, Robert, would need care soon, and so on and so on.

  Ralph pushed all these thoughts from his mind as he almost ran along the top of the quay. If he hadn’t been fifty-four years old, and six feet tall, and slightly overweight, and sure he wouldn’t look quite, quite ridiculous to the few people about he might have skipped as a child skips with sheer pleasure at nothing at all.

  Instead he plunged his hands deep into the pockets of his shorts. Lydie had said that almost all the men in Dartmouth wore shorts all summer and it was a sign that one was a local and not a visitor if the shorts were faded and baggy. Ralph wondered how she knew but was afraid to ask. But he had bought shorts on that first visit when he’d come to price the renovation of an old mill and had slipped them into the washing basket on a regular basis, so that the deep terracotta was now a sort of faded raspberry milkshake colour. So sure had he been that he would live here someday, and soon. And forever.

  Ralph fingered the digital camera in his pocket. Could he risk a quick shot of the early morning river? And the Upper Ferry just starting up, hauling itself along its chains to the bank on the other side. Already it was full of cars. Snap, snap, snap. Ralph had plans to re-design the website for The Gallery, or at least get someone to do it for him. Put his own slant on things.

  The smell of bacon cooking in the open air drifted up from a yacht moored close to the wall, and Ralph remembered why he had come out – to take photos of The Gallery from every possible viewpoint and to choose a colour for its repainting – Aegean blue was still top of that list.

  Seats all along the length of the quay from the Upper Ferry to the Lower Ferry tempted him. But Ralph was not a sitter. Oh, just long enough for a meal or a drink or a decent discussion about something, but not simply to sit idle doing nothing, thinking about nothing, as two old men seemed to be doing now; eyes closed, heads turned to the warmth of a new day.

  ‘Morning!’ Ralph said, cheerily as he passed the two men.

  ‘Stoopid bugger,’ he heard one of the men say, ‘’course it’s bleddy morning. I can see that with me eyes shut.’

  And the two men cackled like witches.

  Local humour, I suppose, Ralph told himself. He was going to fit in. He had the shorts, the boat shoes, and was now a local shopkeeper. No problem. And he hoped Lydie would learn to love it here as much as he did already. Ralph’s heart lurched as it always did when he thought of Lydie and wasn’t with her, couldn’t see her. The feeling that Lydie might not be there one day had never left him. From the day they’d married in St. Peter’s that feeling had arrived, lodged itself and not budged. Of their large, eclectic mix of friends, family and business acquaintances, Ralph and Lydie were almost the only two still on first marriages. Ralph knew he had been Lydie’s one small act of rebellion in her life. Her ‘bit of rough’. Doctors didn’t want their daughters marrying builders with council estate accents, did they? Ralph chuckled to himself. Well, Robert might have been well and truly hoodwinked into not noticing the morning sickness, the rapid loss of weight to begin with, the mood swings. But Ralph had noticed. And he’d also noticed that when Grace had arrived she had been rudely healthy for a baby born supposedly at seven months. But he hadn’t rocked any boats then by asking questions, and he wasn’t rocking any boats now. One of them had been a virgin on their wedding day and it hadn’t been Lydie. And from the day they’d married, Lydie had never held back in her love-making, although he wasn’t so big a fool as not to not notice that while she could give him her body, there was some little part of her soul she was holding back.

  Lydie had given him the one thing he’d only ever wanted, though – a stable family life. To ask more of her would have been too much. Why stress about things as Grace was stressing now? She’d see Justin’s betrayal for the blessing it was in time – sooner rather than later he hoped, if all this weeping and snapping and chucking away of good tea and food was anything to go by.

  Ralph strode on back to The Gallery. Four or five shots of the front of his new home and business and he would go on up the stairs and see if there was any coffee going.

  The street outside The Gallery was narrow a
nd Ralph had to press his back up against the shop window on the opposite side to get enough of the building in the frame. Even then he had to take two shots each time to get everything in.

  The buildings either side of The Gallery had peeling paint and sash windows that badly needed straightening. Ralph could barely stop himself from making a quote in his head for the job.

  ‘Hmm,’ he said aloud and then jumped when a voice beside him said, ‘Terrible, isn’t it?’

  ‘Sorry?’ Ralph said. He turned to see a woman of about sixty-five or so, dressed in a pleated skirt, jumper and pearls.

  ‘Margot Bartlett. Town councillor. Pleased to meet you.’ She thrust a hand out towards Ralph. ‘You must be Mr Marshall. New gallery owner.’

  ‘That’s me,’ Ralph said. He wondered how this woman could be so sure of his identity but wasn’t going to ask. He had a gut feeling she would tell him anything he needed to know.

  ‘No nudes in the front window,’ Margot said. ‘Out the back is the place for them. Previous owners knew the score. So you’ll not rock any boats.’

  Ralph, who up until that moment hadn’t given nudes or the placing of them in his gallery much thought said, ‘I most certainly will!’

  ‘Look, Mr Marshall …’

  ‘Ralph.’

  ‘As I said, Mr Marshall, we – and I’m talking about my fellow councillors here – have worked long and hard to get the drinking of alcohol banned from the streets, and notices put up for the non-feeding of seagulls, and the wearing of clothes which cover flesh in our pubs and restaurants, so we won’t want to start all over again if you display dirty pictures to the street.’

  ‘Good God, Margot, that was a lot to take in.’ Ralph laughed his deep, rich laugh. ‘You seem to know more about how I’m going to run my business than I’ve even thought about yet!’

  ‘Miss Bartlett.’

  ‘Shall we go back to the beginning? What was terrible?’

  ‘The state of some of these buildings.’

  ‘Ah, so we agree on something. I was just thinking the same, hence the camera here. Now, I have Aegean blue down for the walls and maybe navy for the woodwork. No nudes for the moment.’ Ralph laughed, his shoulders shaking with mirth. Margot Bartlett was cheering him no end. And he needed a bit of cheering after lying awake, listening to poor Gracie sobbing through the night.

  ‘I most certainly was not joking about the placing of pictures of naked women in shop windows.’

  ‘Or men.’

  ‘Men?’

  ‘Equality,’ Ralph said.

  ‘Equality?’

  ‘Yes, Margot. Equality. Both sexes like to get their bits out on occasion. Now you’ve put the idea of nudes in the front window to me, I’m thinking, perhaps, something full frontal, life-size.’ Ralph noticed that his builder’s Bristol accent had somehow crept back into his voice, despite over thirty years of doing his best to lose it. And the builder’s humour was still there, too. Thank goodness. If this place was full of Margot Bartletts he was going to need it.

  ‘I don’t suppose you know of any artists who specialise in nudes, do you?’

  No, of course she didn’t – if the look she’d just given him at his question was anything to go by.

  ‘As it happens, I do. Marianne Knight-Taylor.’ Margot Bartlett looked well pleased with her instant answer.

  ‘Name rings a bell,’ Ralph said. ‘I do believe she might have been at my gallery launch evening.’

  ‘Yes, well. We can all make mistakes,’ Margot sniffed. ‘But you’ll be well advised to stay out of her clutches. Just as you’ll be well advised to not even think about using Aegean blue for walls and navy blue for woodwork. Listed buildings.’

  ‘It may surprise you to know, Margot, that I know all there is to know about listed buildings.’

  ‘I will remind you once again and for the last time – it is Miss Bartlett. And I doubt it. Good day, Mr Marshall.’

  ‘’Bye Margot.’

  ‘Ah, there you are,’ Lydie said. Ralph almost exploded into the kitchen, kicking off his shoes, a silly grin creasing up his sun-tanned face. He was still humming tunelessly. ‘The coffee’s gone a bit cold, I’ll make some more. And anyway, what’s so funny?’

  ‘I think I’ve just made my first enemy.’

  ‘Great,’ Grace said, sarcastically. ‘Just what we all need.’

  Chapter Two

  ‘Just one more week, Tess. Please.’ Jonty struggled to replace his anger with pleading. ‘My livelihood depends on this.’

  ‘As if! Get Becca to flog a few rubies. Easy-peasy. Problem solved.’

  ‘I’ll never find another painter as good as you.’

  Make Tess feel she was indispensable; that was the thing. If Tess left now then Jonty would never get the kiln packed on his own in time. His studio, RED, would be in trouble. Serious trouble.

  Another lost sale. Jonty replaced the phone into its handset. The thing was filthy and covered in clay dust and it was a miracle it worked at all really. He wished it didn’t. And all because Tess had suddenly decided, on a whim, to go off with some chap she’d met at the fair in Torquay. He hadn’t even bothered to ask where. Just one piddling week was all he’d asked of her. She was a damned good painter and he was going to find it next to impossible to replace her. If he hadn’t known better he might have stood there and wept at the loss of Tess’s ability to some low-life with a drug problem from the fair. He was fond of Tess but she was only twenty and not up for caring and advice and concern from anyone older than she was. And especially not from bosses. With both hands, Jonty pushed his long, floppy, fringe back. For a few seconds it stayed where his fingers had placed it, but then the weight of his thick fair hair made it flop back again. He found a length of shoelace in his pocket and pulled the shoulder-length, dust-covered locks back into a ponytail of sorts at the nape of his neck.

  ‘Fuck,’ Jonty said. Jonty rarely swore but sometimes the word ‘fuck’ was the only one that would do; it expressed everything he was feeling, cleansed his mind in a way, put a closure on things. He would have to get an advert for Tess’s job in the paper before the weekend. And then he would have to begin the tedious process of seeing girls – it was only ever girls who applied – most of whom couldn’t even hold a paintbrush properly, never mind paint. ‘Fuck,’ Jonty said again and hoped the word would do its stuff this time.

  And where was Drew when he needed him? At the hospital with his daughter Amy. Again. Jonty closed his eyes and thought about Amy for a moment. Was it better to be blind or deaf? The unanswerable question. With his eyes closed he could still hear the machine mixing the clay. He could also hear Becca moving around in the flat over the studio. He heard the scrape of something being dragged across the room.

  He stretched out an arm and his hand found a piece of tableware. He slid his hand across the glazed surface until he found a handle. Then he found the lip and knew it was a jug. Squeezing his eyes shut hard he heard in his head the sound of water being drawn – a gurgle, a splish-splash-splosh sound – filling the jug. The sound reminded him of summer and sunny days and skinny-dipping in the river.

  A tear for Amy escaped and slithered down Jonty’s cheek. No, Jonty would rather be blind than deaf as Amy was.

  Thinking about Amy always made him emotional.Three years old, a curly-haired, strawberry blonde with bluish-green eyes and twig-like limbs since her illness. Still alive after fighting meningitis – but deaf. It could have been worse, Drew had said. She might have lost a limb or limbs, been brain-damaged. Or she might have died. But Amy was not dead. Although she had lost her mother who’d been unable to cope and gone off somewhere. Poor little bugger; Amy seemed to be withdrawing more and more each time Jonty saw her. Jonty never failed to feel admiration for Drew and the way he’d coped, was coping, with the situation. He knew that once Drew was finished at the hospital he’d drop Amy off at the home he shared with his mother. Then he’d be right back at RED and would work well into the night to make up lost time, tiring
himself so that Jonty would have to forcibly pull him away from the potter’s wheel and send him home to his daughter.

  When he thought about Amy, it always led him to thinking about his own child. The one that was out there somewhere. Was it a boy or a girl? Alive and enjoying life, a parent him or herself perhaps. I might even be a grandfather! A smile crept involuntarily to Jonty’s lips then just as quickly slid away again. Or dead? Had it – hard to think of his child as anything but an it – even been born at all? Lydie’s father, a doctor, had gone totally ape when he’d found out. A Mother and Baby Home? Adoption? It might not have even been too late for abortion. Not if you knew people, as Lydie’s father did.

  And that’s what many blokes did back then – loved ‘em and left ‘em.

  Jonty shuddered. It was the not knowing that got to him. The guilt of not being strong enough then to stand up to Lydie’s father, support Lydie. Jonty’s moral fibre had been more fragile then than a melting ice-lolly. He’d thought he still had wild oats to sow, when really he should have been reaping the fruits of his sowing. For all Jonty knew his child might be calling someone else Dad right at this moment. Or not. It was why Jonty kept Drew on, let him have as much time off as he needed to sort out care for Amy; Drew was being the brilliant father Jonty had never been. Guilt and shame was why Jonty’s business was now, with the defection of Tess, deep in cow manure.

  ‘If I just place this chair by the window I will be able to see to read better,’ Becca muttered to herself. The thin fabric of her Indian cotton skirt wrapped itself around her ankles, clinging tightly, as she heaved the chair into position.

  But it went against the grain for Becca to admit she might, just might, need glasses – at least to read with – now. Jonty wore glasses most of the time, perched on the end of his nose, so that when he looked down they almost fell off. But not Becca. No, no, no, Becca was not going to give in and let all the world know her age because she had to wear glasses.