Red is for Rubies

by Linda Mitchelmore

  ‘Self portraits,’ Ralph managed to say at last. And it was as though he had just made love to Marianne, kissed those breasts, fondled them.

  Marianne turned quickly and her hair brushed Ralph’s cheek; it smelled of oranges and sunlight, and Ralph knew just how that ebony hair would feel laid against his chest. A ripple of something snaked its way up Ralph’s spine and spread out across his shoulders and he shivered.

  ‘I’ve got a couple of customers and Margot Bartlett waiting in my gallery.’

  ‘Ah,’ Marianne said. ‘There speaks a man who, I think, has just thought about being unfaithful for the very first time.’ Her eyes strayed to Ralph’s crotch. ‘But I think you are going to find it a very uncomfortable journey home.’

  Lunch with her father over, Lydie couldn’t wait to get on with her reason for being here – selling her work. She walked briskly across the bridge over the Avon.She had an appointment with the new owner, Maria Gazzani, at Gallery Ag. Lydie glanced at her watch and quickened her step. Gallery Ag, such a pretentious name Lydie thought, to assume that only the educated would know that Ag is the chemical symbol for silver and that the gallery dealt only in silver jewellery.

  In her bag Lydie had the fruits of her labours; horn and bone beads which she had set asymmetrically in silver, bending and pushing the soft metal to make the pie-crust edging. And from ceramic fan-shaped beads in earthy tones of rust and amber, mud-brown and chalky white, she’d made large theatrical rings, each in their own moulding of beaten silver – they were not for the faint-hearted. She was wearing one now as she turned the corner of Chapel Row.

  Grace was forever chiding Lydie for what she called ‘cold calling’, although it wasn’t strictly that. Lydie always phoned ahead, made an appointment. It was like a tease. If this woman was willing to travel hundreds of miles to show her wares then gallery owners might assume they must be worth seeing. This premise hadn’t failed Lydie yet. It worked well for her on the rare occasions she went to London – Bath being almost on a par with London for history and the arts and the architecture.

  Lydie pushed open the heavy glass door of Gallery Ag and stepped inside. A small, young woman with a mane of blond curls stood behind what served for a counter – a sheet of what looked like silver but could have been burnished stainless steel balanced on piers of Bath-stone slabs. Very chi-chi. The girl looked up and gave Lydie the merest flicker of a smile before returning her gaze to a necklace she was holding.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ Lydie said, ‘I’m Lydie Marshall and I have an appointment with Maria Gazzani. Is that you?’

  ‘No. Signora Gazzani is out at the moment. Emergency. She says to take a seat, look around. Okay?’ The girl’s voice was flat, disinterested, truculent.

  Lydie noticed an espresso machine in the corner. ‘Coffee while I wait would be nice,’ she said.

  The girl looked up then, her eyes narrowed darts of something approaching anger. She opened her mouth to speak then obviously thought better of it. Instead she turned towards the low shelf behind her on which stood the espresso machine and began the system of hisses and clicks and clunks which heralded the production of at least a decent cup of coffee while Lydie waited.

  The stuff in this studio was good, Lydie conceded. Very good. Different to how it had been the last time she’d shown her work here. She waited for the less than welcoming assistant to find something to occupy herself with and then Lydie looked quickly at the price tags. Oh yes, good – very good. And with very good prices to match. The samples Lydie had in her bag – all with a one hundred per cent mark-up, still only came to half these prices.

  A whoosh of air as the glass door was thrust open made Lydie turn, almost dropping the exquisite silver and amethyst necklace she had been studying.

  This had to be Maria Gazzani without a doubt. Dark, almost sculpted hair, a very Roman nose and wearing a skirt and long-line top in a colour somewhere between aubergine and ripe-to-bursting bilberries in what Lydie was certain could only be cashmere. The woman came gliding on very high-heeled leather boots towards her.

  ‘Forgive,’ she said, her voice smoky and deep. ‘I am Maria Gazzani. You, I think, are Lydie Marshall.’

  Lydie extended a hand, but much to her amazement Maria Gazzani declined to take it. She simply wove around Lydie as though she was some sort of obstacle on the football field and restarted the espresso machine.

  ‘I do not have much time,’ Maria Gazzani said without looking around at Lydie.

  ‘Okay. Fine,’ Lydie said. She reached in her bag for the jewellery roll which held her designs. Walking towards the thick glass counter she unravelled the jewellery roll and began to unclasp the necklaces.

  ‘This is all?’ Maria Gazzani asked, spinning round to face Lydie, her fingers clasped elegantly around the tiny espresso cup.

  ‘No. I have a box with rings.’ Lydie was dismayed to see the woman turn away, as though she – Lydie – had already been dismissed. ‘Wait, I have the box here.’

  Had she come all this way simply to be almost ignored? Lydie opened the box and began to lay the rings out carefully on the square of rust-coloured velvet she knew showed them off at their best.

  Maria Gazzani put down her cup of coffee. She picked up a ring, turned it to the light, replaced it on the velvet. She did the same thing three times more. The necklaces she simply pushed this way and that where they lay with a finger.

  ‘I don’t think so Mrs Marshall,’ she said. ‘Not quite … what is the phrase? Cutting edge? Far too old-fashioned for Gallery Ag. Now, if that is all, I have a private view for a very up and coming designer to arrange for tonight.’ She then said something to her assistant in what Lydie assumed was Italian and the girl rushed to the door to turn the beaten silver sign from OPEN to CLOSED.

  It was as if Lydie no longer existed. She was on the point of mentioning that a very well-known film star had had her photo taken in a nightclub wearing one of her rings, but somehow the words wouldn’t form.

  Never – if she didn’t count the time, long ago now, when Jonty had rejected both her and their unborn baby – had Lydie faced such contemptuous rejection. Ralph always fell over backwards in his need to please – she’d had to stop even mentioning things she might like because the ‘mights’ turned to parcels wrapped exquisitely at Liberty or Harrods. He denied her nothing. And her father was lavish in his present buying, still eager to prove he could provide for his daughter better than her husband could.

  And besides, she had worked damned hard on this collection and knew it was good. But, as Lydie re-rolled her necklaces and snapped shut the lid of her ring box she felt diminished in size and worth. She knew, if she didn’t get out – and fast – she would become very undignified and resort to tears.

  Jonty’s face, his liquid cornflower eyes and that floppy fringe of his swam in Lydie’s mind. Rejection, yo-yo-like, was coming back to haunt her. However hard she had worked at her marriage and her jewellery business, she hadn’t been able to let Jonty’s rejection of her go. And it bloody hurt, like livid scratches on her heart.

  Chapter Eight

  ‘Mr Penhaligon, I’m sorry but Amy has no residual hearing. We’ve done every possible test and they are conclusive. I …’

  ‘Everything? There’s nothing you might have missed? Could it be psychological? She’s simply not wanting to hear?’

  Drew knew he was the proverbial man clutching at the proverbial straws but he had to ask. He reached for Amy where the nurse had placed her in one of those plastic crib things in which newborn babies are placed, except Amy wasn’t a newborn baby. He was weeping now, noisily and copiously, but he didn’t give a damn how it looked to the doctor or the nurse. Amy was his child and he would weep for her loss. And he would die before he gave up fighting for her.

  Jonty picked up the phone at the first ring.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘Jonts, it’s Drew. I’ve been ringing Mum but got no answer. The girl who’s just come in about the job told me there’s
been an accident on the Harbertonford road so I’m going to have to go. Something might have happened to Amy. Or my mother. That Che bloke was a waste of space. Stank of weed. But this girl’s good, Jonts. I’ve got her doing mug decoration but I’m going to have to leave her to it …’

  ‘Calm down, Drew, for God’s sake. What are you going to be like when Amy’s dating?’

  ‘I’ll forget you said that. Amy’s not likely to date now, is she?’

  ‘Why ever not? She’s only deaf. Think a bit more positive, man.’

  ‘You can be a right pain at times. Can I go or not?’

  ‘Not really.’ Jonty tried not to feel guilty that he’d left Drew working on his own while he’d been shopping for Becca, doing lunch, searching through every damned newspaper he could get his hands on to see what Becca had found out about Hugh this time that she could blackmail him over. ‘But if you really must, then …’

  ‘Great. Thanks.’

  ‘Before you go, what’s this Grace Marshall like? Any good?’

  ‘Haughty. Sniffed a bit when I handed her Tess’s old overalls, but I’ve just had a quick look and she’s making a more than decent job of a fuchsia plate so …’

  ‘We might have to put up with a bit of froideur?’

  ‘Look, can I go? I’ll be back asap.’

  ‘Okay. Don’t rush.’

  Jonty knew he sounded like some old mother hen telling Drew not to rush but he was fond of the guy, and a little in awe of him. He couldn’t begin to understand how he was going to bring up a deaf child by himself.

  Jonty still had the phone in his hand as he heard Drew’s diesel Peugeot rumble into life. He’d settle Becca then he’d go down and see how Grace Marshall was getting on and if she was going to cut the mustard.

  Drew was driving far too fast. There had been talk of putting speed cameras on this road but it hadn’t happened yet, thank God. Rounding a bend he saw in the middle distance a tractor with a scrap of red material tied to the end of a stick poking up in the air. Shit. Cows on the road. Huge, fat Red Devons lumbering and joshing one another into the hedge were being moved from one field to another. It was going to take forever to get home now.

  Drew decided to take advantage of the enforced wait and try ringing his mother on his mobile. He punched in the numbers. No response. He thought about doing a three-point turn, retracing his route and then taking the Keys Englebourne road. But what was the point? That was a farm and there would no doubt be cows there too splatting the road with their steaming droppings.

  Drew was halfway down his mobile’s contacts list when the cows turned into a field, the tractor turning in sharply after them and the road was clear again.

  Amy. Amy was the focus of everything he did these days. Or didn’t do. Like dating. His mother was forever on at him to find another wife so that Amy would have a mother to take care of her if anything should happen to her grandmother. Fat chance. Who was going to take on a child-obsessed thirty-two year old?

  He changed up into second, then third, then top gear and headed for his mother’s cottage and Amy – God willing.

  ‘Mum? Mum?’ Drew yelled into the stillness of his mother’s cottage. There was evidence on the table of a half-finished meal. And scraps of paper with Amy’s crayoned artistic efforts. The lids on the Aga were down and the cat was asleep on the old tea cosy his mother put there for its comfort. But no mother. And no daughter.

  He’d seen evidence that there had been an accident with chalked marks on the road by the church, but there had been no scrunched up car or lorry– maybe whatever it was that had caused the accident had already been towed away. But that girl – Grace Marshall – had only just arrived so it couldn’t have been that long ago, it wasn’t far from Harbertonford to Totnes.

  Drew unlocked the back door, raced down the garden and peered over the high hedge. He almost collapsed with relief. There they were – his mother and Amy hand in hand, their backs to him, walking beside the stream towards the green lane which made a not too far circular walk for both of them. He knew it was them even though they were quite a way off now. He could hear his mother talking loudly, slowly at Amy, even though he couldn’t make out the words. Always at Amy rather than to her; it was as though his mother had a wider audience to whom she was addressing her narrative now that Amy could no longer hear.

  But how Drew was ever going to manage without his mother’s help with Amy now he didn’t know. Drew crept back to the kitchen, hoping the neighbours hadn’t seen him. No need to tell his mother he’d panicked and come racing home. He locked the back door, walked carefully through to the front and left. He would drive much more slowly and sensibly on the return journey, for what the hell would Amy’s life be like without at least one parent?

  Becca was slowly turning the pages of the newspaper, scanning rapidly for any reference to Hugh. She had the headline neatly cut out and sitting on the top of her cuttings pile. Becca knew that Jonty knew about the cuttings pile and she also knew he wished she didn’t keep a cuttings pile. ‘Shall we put this lot in the log-burner?’ he said far too jauntily and far too often to fool Becca that he wasn’t worried about the significance of the cuttings pile.

  Becca ran a finger slowly down the end column of page six. There might be a snippet she’d missed. Her fingertips were bluish-black with newsprint but she didn’t care. She couldn’t afford to miss a thing.

  Just one mention of Hugh being anti-abortion and she’d have him. How she’d scrubbed and scrubbed to get that clinic out of her body, out of her head. Sometimes she woke in the night and saw the face of the nurse – an Irish girl with eyes of sapphire and hair as glossily black as a raven’s wing – who’d made her sit up far quicker than Becca was ready to sit up, which made her sick. And then the nurse had been cross about the mess Becca had made. In the darkness and the terror of the night-time the nurse’s spectral face peered down at Becca more regularly than not. Becca always thrashed the darkness, certain she wasn’t dreaming. She never screamed in case Jonty heard her. But she’d screamed and screamed when she’d come round from the anaesthetic.

  ‘For God’s sake, Becca, shut it, will you?’ Hugh had hissed at her. ‘It’s only a sort of surgically aided period for God’s sake.’

  ‘And what do you know about periods?’ Becca had asked before she lost consciousness, only to wake up and find she’d haemorrhaged and was now wombless and her days for having periods and any more babies were over forever.

  Satisfied that no word of Hugh in the newspaper had been missed, Becca walked to the window. Jonty was downstairs talking to someone. She could hear him. She felt safe when she could either see or hear Jonty. And while he was talking to whoever it was he was talking to she was safe. She knew it wasn’t Drew Jonty was talking to because Drew had just left in that noisy old car of his.

  She tiptoed over to the window seat and removed the cushions one by one, placing them in the order in which they would have to be replaced, in a pile to one side. Jonty must never know or he’d make her go to that special doctor – the one who wouldn’t look at her when he was talking to her and who kept asking questions. Things like, had she ever felt life was all too much? Or that she wanted to harm herself? Or someone else? Well, goodness, who didn’t? It was this special doctor who was mad, not her, wasn’t it? Making cups of her hands Becca slid her fingertips under the rim and lifted the seat.

  ‘Darling, Mummy’s really sorry, but sometimes you just have to have a really, really long sleep. While babies are sleeping they’re growing, and you do want to grow to be a big girl, don’t you? There, there, hush, Mummy’s here now.’ Becca whispered. She lifted the lifelike doll from its nest of shawls and towels and hugged it to her. ‘If I can slip out while Jonty’s talking downstairs I’ll go to the Hospice Shop. Jonty thinks I never go anywhere, but sometimes I do. I’ll go to the Hospice Shop and see if there are any new clothes for you. Honestly, Emma, it’s amazing what people throw away. Those beautiful silk socks you’re wearing now were thrown in the
bottom of a box marked “Everything 5p”. But you must be good. I’m going to add your latest photograph to the album. When you’re a big girl you can look through it and remember.’

  Becca kissed the doll’s yellow nylon curls very noisily. Then she re-wrapped her in the shawls and the towels, replaced her in the window seat and closed the lid. With almost photographic memory she placed the cushions in their exact positions on top of the window seat. Jonty never sat in the window. Emma was safe. Becca knew Jonty would take Emma away if he found her. It was why she let him fuss about the cuttings pile.

  Thank goodness Jonty hadn’t stopped her having magazines delivered. Bella and Woman’s Weekly, sometimes Woman’s Own – magazines in which Emma as a baby, as a toddler, appeared most weeks. Of course, she always had the wrong mother but Becca was sure that was because the magazines had to use a model. And besides, if Hugh were to see those magazines with Becca and Emma well …

  Becca knew where Jonty hid the scissors. He’d been locking the knives up for so long now Becca had quite forgotten why she’d had such a fondness for cutting her wrists. But the scissors were different. They were for making memories of Emma. She found the tin which one of Jonty’s painters at the pottery had brought back from Brittany filled with something called tuiles which were only fancy, thin biscuits really and in which Jonty now hid three pairs of scissors. She selected the smallest pair and carefully reduced the pages of that week’s Woman’s Weekly to confetti.

  Becca shuddered as she confined the pictures of teenage girls with body piercings and tattoos and totally inappropriate clothing to the belly of the woodburner. She was going to keep Emma a child for as long as it took this government to pass a law that teenage girls were not allowed to go out looking as though they were soliciting for sex.