Red is for Rubies

by Linda Mitchelmore

  ‘Could be,’ Jonty said. ‘I’m a useless businessman.’

  ‘But a brilliant potter. How much?’

  ‘Twenty grand is probably over the top, so how about ten grand? Fifteen?’

  ‘You’ll never leave me will you, Jonty?’

  This was emotional blackmail and they both knew it. Becca put the sandwich she’d been picking at back on the plate.

  ‘Not if you finish what’s on your plate.’

  Blackmail could work both ways – and he badly needed an injection of funds into RED. Jonty knew Drew needed a job as much for his well-being as for the cash, now he had Amy to bring up on his own. With a bit of help from his mother Drew was managing, but he needed paying. And Drew was a damned good artist. The ideas he’d had for Celtic images on tableware was proving a success. If only Tess hadn’t left so suddenly they wouldn’t be this far behind with decorating and firing. And selling, of course. And Drew understood about Becca – how needy she was, how time-consuming. How, sometimes, Becca’s mood influenced Jonty’s. No, not sometimes, most of the bloody time if Jonty was honest. Even though Jonty hadn’t told Drew the reasons for that neediness, he had a feeling Drew realised just how near the brink Becca was. How near a different sort of brink Jonty was himself.

  ‘All of it?’ Becca asked.

  ‘Every crumb.’

  Becca began to eat, helping the food down with generous slugs of wine.

  ‘Good girl,’ Jonty said. He wondered if he ought to go downstairs and help Drew out with whoever it was that had just slammed the door of the studio behind her. But Becca was eating and he was a little nearer a loan.

  ‘Are you the boss?’ a woman’s voice said behind Drew, and very close to his ear, making him jump. The clay-mixing machine was going, the cooling fan was blowing, and he hadn’t heard anyone come in.

  He almost dropped the large dish he’d just lifted from the wheel. It was wet and slippery and he was doing his damnedest not to press too hard with his fingertips and make marks which would need smoothing out. He just didn’t have the time. He’d already worked like two men trying to make up for when he’d been at the hospital with Amy. So far, Amy was meeting all the criteria which would mean she might be offered a cochlear implant soon. He couldn’t wait for the day. From what he’d read on the subject it would be life-affirming for her. And him.

  ‘No. I’m Drew.’ Drew placed the dish down carefully on a wooden board. He wiped his wet hands down the sides of his jeans. ‘Excuse me if I don’t shake hands.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Drew.’

  ‘Not Mr Drew, just Drew. Drew is my Christian name. Not short for anything.’

  ‘Right.’

  The woman gave him a bored sort of half-smile. This is all such a waste of my time, the half-smile said.

  Despite himself Drew felt drawn to her onyx eyes, the fair hair which hung, sleek and shiny, on either side of her beautiful, but sad, face. This woman looked similar to how Mel had once looked. Don’t make the same mistake twice, mate, he told himself.

  ‘I am in the right place?’ she asked. ‘RED? Shoji Hamada was a notable potter. Glaze trailing is a type of pottery decoration. Not too difficult to find the information if one has access to a computer, but I knew it anyway. I’ve spent the past ten years of my life working eighteen hour days. And I mean working. I have A-levels in Art and History of Art. And …’

  Oh no, she’s going to cry. Just what I need, Drew thought. Amy had cried most of the night. Since her illness, and losing her hearing, she seemed to have forgotten which was night and which was day and she couldn’t understand what Drew was saying when he explained which was which anyway – and that three o’ clock in the morning wasn’t the time to be bashing the living daylights out of My Little Pony. He rubbed his eyes, hoping that by some miracle the fatigue would go if he did. Perhaps if he rubbed hard enough, when he looked up this woman would be smiling at him and would have magically morphed into the perfect potter’s assistant.

  ‘In the right place?’ Drew said. ‘I ask myself that sometimes.’ Shouldn’t you be halfway up a mountain sketching with a bottle of something to hand and a hunk of cheese, Drew? ‘And you are?’

  ‘Grace Marshall. And don’t even think about calling me Gracie.’

  I wouldn’t dream of it, Grace,’ Drew said. He crossed himself theatrically.

  ‘Just so you know,’ Grace laughed, but it sounded forced. ‘And I need a job. Badly. Now. What do I have to do?’

  ‘Well, first I need to know, or rather the boss does, if you can draw. And paint. But I don’t think you’re dressed for either to be honest. Hang on, there might be an old pair of overalls of Tess’s here somewhere.’

  ‘Everything washes,’ Grace said. ‘Even linen. Especially linen. Where do you want me?’

  Drew gulped. Over the wheel? Up against the wall over there? Anywhere really. Sex was like riding a bicycle, euphemism and all – something you never forgot. But he was going to wobble a bit when he eventually got round to it again, because it had been such a long time since he’d made love. He closed his eyes and swallowed – Please, if there is a God up there, let this woman be able to paint and draw to Jonty’s standards. There were bills needing paying and this woman could be a man-eater or a man-hater for all he cared as long as she could paint and get Jonty out of his financial mess.

  ‘Through here. Mind where you step. It’s been a bit of a day today.’

  Drew found Tess’s old overalls and held them out to Grace Marshall. She pulled a face – a yuck sort of face, the sort of face Amy pulled every time he tried to feed her scrambled egg.

  ‘Sorry I was a bit late, by the way.’

  ‘Only five minutes,’ Drew said, which was stretching a bit but there was no point in antagonising Grace Marshall, was there?

  ‘There was an accident at Harbertonford. I got held up. Okay?’

  Grace Marshall was making it sound as though he’d antagonised her anyway. But hey … who knew what demons of her own she might be battling with?

  But it was far from okay. Drew lived in Harbertonford. With Amy. With his mother. The accident might have involved either of them, or both. Panic was rising in him, unbidden. He was going to have to ring, just to find out either way.

  When Drew didn’t answer Grace said: ‘A bad one. Okay? And you don’t have to be nice to me. I know I’m more than five minutes late.’

  ‘An accident is never okay, is it?’ Drew said in his quiet way. ‘I’ve just got a phone call to make, then I’ll be right back. You can change into the overalls in the loo. Okay?’ Drew’s ‘okay’ was almost inaudible.

  Chapter Seven

  ‘Okay, Ralph, we’ll go if it’s what you really want.’

  ‘But you’d rather not?’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  Ralph reached for Lydie’s hand but she pre-empted him and began flipping rapidly through a magazine, her clenched knuckles sharp, rocky hillocks. And Ralph knew that if he were to push the issue he and Lydie would be closer to a full-blown row than they had ever been in their entire marriage. And he knew he would give in and they would stay in Bath and he would continue to build houses and buy and sell them and Lydie would continue to string beads onto thread and play about with bits of molten silver. But then, he would never know what he was capable of if he didn’t try, would he?

  Ralph thought he might never be able to take another breath ever again when he got to the top of Marianne Knight-Taylor’s drive. He might have arrived at least half an hour earlier had he been able to find someone, anyone, to ask for directions. Margot’s directions had been brief – ‘Take the lane that runs parallel to the right of the river as you come down over the hill. A few twists and turns, goes up a bit, down a bit. You can’t miss it’.

  Only Ralph had missed it but was at last given directions by a rather striking looking woman, wearing a fitted jacket that anyone with even half an eye could tell was expensive, riding a horse. But with a piece of string around her waist? Ralph
knew a thing or two about good tailoring and recognised it when he saw it. He made a mental note to ask Margot about the significance in the country of wearing a piece of string with an exquisitely-tailored jacket to ride a horse.

  And now here he was within yards of Marianne Knight-Taylor’s front door. He put the back of a hand to his left cheek and it felt like glowing coals. His ribs seemed to be jammed up against his lungs when he tried to take a deep breath. There was a sharp little pain underneath his left rib – like a needle being inserted against his will. Now, Ralph Marshall, is not the time to have a heart attack, he told himself. He had been obliged to leave his car in a gateway and walk the last, what seemed like, half a mile up Marianne’s driveway. And for seconds he thought that an ambulance might have trouble navigating the twists and turns of the lane he had just negotiated, taking layers of paint from the offside front wing of his car in the process.

  Marianne’s cottage, if indeed he was in the right place at all, was tiny and built of granite with windows no wider than a single arm span. The air was heavy with a sweet, almost sickly scent which Ralph presumed was coming from whatever it was that had tiny, creamy flowers and was doing its best to obliterate the granite blocks from view completely.

  Ralph closed his eyes for a moment, willing his lungs to refill so he could take the necessary steps to the front door.

  ‘Ah, there you are.’

  A woman’s voice. Musical, melodious. So very, very welcome.

  ‘Just,’ Ralph wheezed.

  ‘Right. Door’s open. I’ll put the baby down and I’ll be with you.’

  Put the baby down? Like a vet does a dog or a cat or – in these parts – a horse or a cow?

  Ralph laughed and the effort threatened to strangle him. Although he loved Grace, babies weren’t his thing. Lydie had shielded him from all the unpleasant bits – the nappies, the sick, the globby baby food – that went with pre-weaned children. And she’d taken Grace to their bedroom to feed, always. Only once had he caught a sight of engorged veins in Lydie’s breast-feeding breasts – blue and bulgy like an old woman’s varicose veins. He’d been afraid to touch Lydie for months and months afterwards.

  At least now, with the baby ‘put down’, he’d be able to look at Marianne as they talked business and not be forced to avert his eyes from her breast with her baby latched on to it.

  Ralph pushed open the door and flopped down into a carver chair with what looked like a horse blanket thrown over the back of it.

  ‘Everyone does that,’ Marianne laughed.

  Ralph looked up and then away again very quickly, but not quick enough that he didn’t catch sight of almost porcelain-white flesh, and tea-rose nipple as Marianne buttoned a man’s shirt over her bra-less breasts.

  ‘Does what?’

  ‘Flops in the chair. It’s why I put it right inside the door. Tea? Coffee? Wine? You have remembered the wine?’

  ‘Tea. Strong. Milk. Two sugars. Please.’ Ralph’s words were coming out in strangled, tortured gasps still. It was a relief that Marianne wasn’t going to sock him one for ogling her breasts. In a one-to-one now he’d never win, didn’t have the breath for it.

  ‘Something to go with it? Cake. Biscuit. Spliff, if that’s your scene?’

  ‘Was once. Not now.’

  Ralph handed over the requested bottle of wine.

  ‘Ah, thanks. So you’re a man of the sixties. One of the ones who wasn’t having so great a time because you actually remember the stuff you did!’

  ‘Something like that,’ Ralph said, although Marianne was a decade out in her reckoning. The truth was he’d shared a joint just the once and had been frightened almost witless and didn’t dare, ever again. In those days, he couldn’t afford to leave his head somewhere else because his poor old mum needed him to protect her from his dad. And even more than that she needed the money Ralph earned to buy food to feed his brothers and sisters, and that money didn’t run to groceries and spliffs.

  ‘Paintings are in there,’ Marianne said, pushing a door open as she walked through to the kitchen to make Ralph’s tea.

  Ralph heaved himself from the chair. The walls had paintings instead of wallpaper and more paintings were stacked on the floor, two on easels, one in the window blocking out what little light there was. Ralph flicked the light switch and it was like lighting up a rainbow, being in a rainbow. How joyous did a person have to be to paint like this?

  Flowers and birds and oversized people filled the canvases. Very little sky, no water. Just this explosion of deep, rich colour filling every millimetre of canvas. No powder blue or baby pink or pale, washed out eau-de-nil. Here, Ralph, thought, was a woman who probably lived colourful, not just painted it.

  ‘I can’t quite believe this,’ Marianne said, coming into the room with a chopping board supporting two pottery mugs and a couple of slabs of dark cake. ‘Ginger. Hope you like it.’

  ‘Lovely,’ Ralph – who hated ginger normally – said. He had a feeling he would enjoy it anyway, that the spiciness would be perfect for sitting amongst these exotic colours with this rather exotic woman. Marianne’s eyes were the deepest blue Ralph had ever seen. Black hair, blue eyes – probably Celtic.

  ‘So, it’s how many you’re buying?’

  ‘Eight. For a restaurant in New York. Or it might be some for the restaurant, some for their yacht.’

  ‘Wherever,’ Marianne laughed. ‘Eight is a good number.’

  Ralph had a feeling if he pursued the linking of the number eight with goodness Marianne would have some mystical reason for it, and he just didn’t have the time to listen. He took a large bite from the ginger cake, tried to swallow it whole with a slug of tea, but the cake lodged in his throat, making him cough. He tried another slug of tea and this time the cake went on down.

  ‘Men aren’t normally in such a hurry to leave,’ Marianne laughed. ‘The last one stayed just long enough to provide me with Darcy.’

  ‘Your son?’

  ‘Daughter. It’s Celtic. Means “girl with dark hair”. As she’s got my hair and my blue eyes and not much of her father, not even a name, I thought it an appropriate name.’

  ‘Smashing,’ Ralph said. That was the second time he’d used the word smashing this morning. It was a word Ralph used when he was totally out of his depth. Had Lydie been here she would have talked names and all things Celtic and babies, but she wasn’t here, so smashing would have to do. And besides, he was learning more about Marianne than he wanted or needed to know.

  Marianne grasped her hair, fashioned it into a ponytail with her hands, then let it fan out again over her shoulders, where it contrasted dramatically with her white shirt. Or more probably a shirt left behind by Darcy’s father, Ralph supposed. And if he wasn’t mistaken Marianne Knight-Taylor was flirting with him quite shamelessly, which was a total waste of her time because as much as Ralph liked being flirted with, and wasn’t averse to a bit of flirting himself, he could never follow through.

  ‘Would you like to load now?’ Marianne asked, leaning across Ralph to put her now empty mug back on the chopping board.

  Why a chopping board? Was there some connection Ralph was supposed to grasp, he wondered. Maybe if Marianne was busy painting and feeding Darcy and having occasional sex with men, then she wouldn’t be bothered with the minutia of bone china cups on trays with a cloth on like his mother insisted on having for rare visitors, like the man from the Welfare.

  Marianne had failed to return to her upright position, and remained brushing Ralph’s arm with one of her soft, pliable breasts.

  ‘Load?’ said Ralph, in a strangled way.

  ‘The paintings,’ Marianne said, finally pulling herself upright.

  ‘Yes. Now would be a good time.’

  ‘Thought so,’ Marianne said. ‘There speaks a man who has never even thought of being unfaithful.’

  ‘This is a very intimate conversation for two people who are only business associates,’ Ralph said. He tweaked the collar of his pink shirt. God, b
ut he was feeling more than a little warm under that collar.

  ‘I didn’t have you down as stuffy, Ralph,’ Marianne said.

  ‘The paintings,’ Ralph said.

  Marianne pointed, silently, six times with a forefinger, then left the room.

  Bugger. Ralph had offended Marianne. Ralph knew an offended woman when he saw her. He picked up two paintings and carried them out to the porch. He would have to go and get the car, try and reverse it up the hill. Then a thought occurred to him – he had nothing in which to wrap them to stop them scratching, spoiling. What a greenhorn he was going to look in front of Marianne. But there was no way out of it, he was going to have to ask if she had some old towels, or sheets or bubblewrap he could use.

  Leaving the paintings propped against the house wall, Ralph went in search of Marianne.

  He found her in the smallest kitchen from which ever came tea and ginger cake. She was standing at a table, a paintbrush in her hand. She’d piled her hair up onto the top of her head with a clawed clasp thing – tortoiseshell. Marianne’s neck was long and white, and he could see her pulse moving rhythmically in and out.

  He walked closer and saw that the painting on which Marianne was so intently working was of a nude. Just head and shoulders but nude. He recognised those breasts – the breast-feeding roundness of them, the tea-rose nipples, a few freckles running down her cleavage. So, Margot had been right. Marianne did paint nudes. For the briefest of seconds, Ralph wondered how Margot knew – but then, Margot seemed to know everything that went on around here.

  Ralph wanted to speak, to ask for some packing for the paintings but found himself dumb.

  What had Marianne said just now? – ‘There speaks a man who has never even thought of being unfaithful?’ Was he thinking about it now? Was he?

  ‘Could you sell this sort of work, do you think?’ Marianne asked. She ran the tip of her paintbrush down the length of her likeness on the canvas. She bit her bottom lip in concentration.

  The teasing, the flirting, had gone from her voice. It was as though Marianne had forgiven Ralph for his rejection of her very obvious advances and there was now a stillness between them, an understanding. Ralph wondered just how old, or young, Marianne might be. Thirty-nine, forty? Younger? Older?