It was impossible.
Then, as I pondered the problem, something even less possible happened. With a brilliant light so large and fast that the world seemed split by the noise it should have made, a shooting star slashed down from left to right, leaving a trail of whirling, dying sparks behind it, and in its light I saw someone moving on the fringes of the terrace. The shooting star winked out close above, but now that I had seen the person below, I kept sight of that person and at once knew it to be her, I had not seen her all day although I had heard her voice from time to time elsewhere in the house. I knew it was her because in the faint light of the lamps glowing from the windows, I could see the grace with which this figure moved and it could be no other. She wore pale clothes, a long gown, and she was dancing by herself in the dark. She turned and turned, arms up high and then down low, her face flashing the palest oval of light each time it faced the house, her body swaying one way and then the other to inaudible music which might have come down from the stars solely for her ears.
It lasted only a short time, this entirely secret dance, then a door opened somewhere below me, a voice called and she hurried in.
TEN
Monday, April 9th, 2001
Amy couldn't help watching Don. He didn't notice her glancing down at him from where she crouched on top of her platform. She saw how many times he took his injured hand away from the vibrating sander, moving his remaining fingers to give them some relief. The job was taking longer than it should. As her eyes once again drifted down to the man in overalls crouching, coiled down there on the floor, she began quite unconsciously to compose him into a picture, feeling the pull of the dramatic high perspective. When Amy made a picture in her head, she could break the rules of vision so that a part of her brain stepped outside the usual constraints. Now, the walls came roaring upwards and outwards, funnelling out from this man, twisted in his stance, bent to his job, the visible side of his face tightly drawn in pain and concentration. The picture she made, a cone of pale wooden colours, dragging the eye down to the darkness at its centre, became as clear to her as if she had already painted it.
It carried her down that cone, plunging her all the way into him and as if he had felt something physical, Don glanced up, frowned and turned off the sander.
'Something wrong?' he asked, and he sounded irritated.
'No,' she said. 'I was day-dreaming,' She turned her attention firmly back to the ceiling and he switched the machine back on. Almost immediately she heard a splintering crack and an exclamation. The sander stopped again. She had to look down. The panelling around the walls came to about chest-height and each panel was around three feet wide. Don had been using paint stripper for some of the time, scraping off successive layers of the caked, ancient paint, then sanding what remained carefully back to bare, pale wood. In the time since he had come in, he'd removed only half the paint from one panel and now the central part of that panel was cracked and pushed inward where the pressure of the sander had proved too much for it.
'Sod it,' he said.
She expected him to turn the blame on her, to say that she had distracted him, but he went on staring at the wall as if it held him at gunpoint. Climbing down the ladder, she went to his side, crouching down to feel the edge of the wood.
'It was very thin,' she said, enjoying the chance to be on the same side.
'That's not going to count for anything with the Hawk.'
'Hawk? The foreman?'
'He told me I'd be straight out of here if I couldn't hack it. I was rushing it. Shit.'
She could feel his distress and, being Amy, she had to do something about it.
'Wouldn't someone help? One of the carpenters?'
'A chippy?' He stared at her and even through the dusty goggles, she could see his eyes were wide. 'Why should they? It's not a girls' school, it's a building site. If you fuck up, you carry the can.'
He turned back to the wall, shaking his head, feeling the edges of the panel with the fingers of his right hand. 'If Parrish sees this he'll go ape-shit.'
'I'll go and talk to them, to the chippies.'
"Wilks and the other two won't touch anything without instructions in triplicate. They're no special friends of mine.'
'Can I try?'
He just shrugged.
She opened the door and kind providence brought her Dennis, walking towards her.
'You're just the man I need,' she said.
He beamed at her. 'So what was it made you finally realize? Was it my impressive physique or my devastating intellect?'
She beckoned him into the room, worried someone might overhear.
'Both,' she said. 'Dennis, I've got a problem.'
'Olive oil,' he replied as he came in, 'It always works. Rub it in hard then wrap your whole body in a piece of red flannel.' Then he saw Don and stopped abruptly.
She closed the door behind him.
'I need a friendly chippy,' she said. 'It was all my fault. I distracted Don and he split a panel.'
Then she sensed that the temperature in the room had somehow dropped and the two men were avoiding looking at each other.
'Yeah, all right,' said Dennis. 'I heard Tel downstairs singing. He's the best bet. Anything that stops Tel singing is a definite plus for the rest of mankind.' He sounded flat.
Amy thought back. Tel had been on Don's side in the pub, hadn't he?
'Please get him,' she said.
When Tel came back in with Dennis, he pursed his lips.
'What you gone and done now, Don boy?' he asked.
Amy had a sudden insight into the male world of teasing blame that she had introduced into the situation.
'It wasn't him,' she said. 'I pushed him. I tripped when I was coming down the ladder.' She avoided catching Don's eye.
'Your fault, was it, darling?' said Tel, with immediate, patronizing chauvinism. 'You can fall on top of me next time if you'd rather. Well, let's take a look, then. Least said, soonest mended.'
'I dunno,' he said when they'd shown him the panel. 'You know what the Hawk's like. If he walks in, I'll get all sorts of shite.'
'I'll sort him out,' said Dennis. 'I've got a buzz on a horse running at Doncaster tomorrow. That'll tie him up for a half-hour. I'll tell him the nag's whole life history.'
'Yeah? Worth a fiver is it?' said Tel. 'Put one on for me and let's get on with it.'
Dennis left on his mission and they watched as Tel produced some effortless magic with wood glue, drawing the pushed-in section of the panel forward with an improvised grip of canvas, pinned to it with tiny nails, to mate perfectly with the split edge.
'Hang on to that for ten minutes,' he said, turning to her. 'Don't let go and no one will have a clue. That's your punishment. Just pull the pins out when it's done. Twist them out carefully like, with the pliers. There's a bit of wax here. Rub that in. It shouldn't hardly show. Come on, Don, mate. Got something downstairs you can do for me.' He looked back at Amy, 'Hey, see to it I get my pliers back.'
'Thanks, Tel,' she said, and they both went out and left her.
She sat on the floor, holding the panel together and feeling the currents which had filled the room draining away in Don's wake. Damn, she thought. It's him I want, he's not like anyone I've met before. It didn't occur to her to question whether that was good or bad. All she suddenly wanted was to be near him again. She had no sense of time passing, of whether it had been ten minutes or an hour, but a moment came when the sun, filtering down through the fringe of the western trees, made her realize finishing time must be near and carefully, she let go of the canvas. The glued edges of the wood didn't stir so she carefully twisted the pins out and rubbed in the wax as Tel had said. No one would spot it. She climbed back up her ladder to start clearing up. Footsteps came and even before the door opened something rising like bubbles inside her told her it was Don.
He looked at her and then at the panel. 'Is it done?' he asked.
'Yes, I think so.'
'It's knocking-off tim
e.'
'If you felt like saying thank you, how about letting me draw you now?'
He crossed the room to the base of her scaffolding with suddenly uncoiled energy and for a horrid moment she thought he might be about to tip her off it. He stared straight up at her, but his face had a layer of fine paint dust across it, as concealing as stage make-up, and the goggles gave her no clue as to how he really looked.
'Listen to me, Amy Dale,' he said. 'I'm no picture, not any more. I don't want anyone feeling sorry for me and I don't want anyone trying to make me feel better, least of all the sort of woman I might have looked at twice in the street before this happened. Do you understand?'
All she could do was freeze in the face of his quiet anger.
'Now, let me tell you how it's going to be,' he said. 'If we're going to work in the same room, you're going to be on your best behaviour from now on. That means you're going to stop banging on about the way I do or don't look because it's nothing to do with you at all. I know you think you're on some sort of mission but that's all in your head, not mine. Got it?'
She could only nod and he turned away but then to her utter fury, that treacherous part of her emotions which had not yet reached full adulthood let her down and she gave out an inadvertent sound that was half sob and half sniff. Even worse, he heard her and turned round and she blew her nose, pretending it was the sawdust.
'I should get a mask,' she said, and her bloody, bloody voice wobbled on her.
'Maybe,' he said. He stood looking at her and bit his lip but whatever he was going to say never came out because Dennis came back in at that moment.
'All right is it?' he said, looking at the panel, but Don had gone by that time, the door swinging shut behind him.
Dennis glanced at Amy and seemed to sum up the situation. 'Go and get yourself cleaned up, love, I'll bring you a cuppa.'
When Amy had cleared up her paintbrushes and given the pliers back to Tel, she washed her hands and face under the kitchen tap, then she trudged up to her room in the tower and stood in the middle of the floor, wishing she had a chair to sit on because the air bed looked so far down she knew she wouldn't get up again if she lay on it. There were footsteps outside and a knock. Dennis stood there with a tray.
'Here you are,' he said. This is just the stuff.' He set it carefully down on the box. 'Sugar?'
'One, please.'
She looked at the tray. It was an ancient slab of dark brown wood with thick curving edges and because he seemed poised to say something she wasn't sure she wanted to hear, she said, 'Where did you find that?'
'Lying around. They were still clearing out the junk when we arrived.'
'Anything valuable?'
He gave her a shrewd look. 'Not that I was in time for. Pity. That's what I like about working in old houses. You never know.'
'I found a bottle of champagne in here,' she offered. 'Here, look. It's too old to drink but it's nice.'
'Doesn't champagne get better with age?'
'Well yes, but this one's way past it. It's gone all cloudy.'
He was fascinated by it. '1902. Look, they did the cork differently, see? It hasn't got that mushroom bit on top, just wire clips to keep it in. Do you want it?'
'Yes, I think I'll hang on to it.' The question jarred her a little.
'Was that all there was?'
'There was lots of rubbish. Nothing much worth keeping.'
'I hope you're right,' he said. 'You can't tell with rubbish, I wish I'd seen what was in all the other rooms. They cleared some of them before I had a chance. The only reason no one touched these two was because there wasn't a way up, not until we opened up the hole through from the main house.'
'So how did people get up here in the old days?'
'Stairs from the bottom of the tower. You can get down to the middle floor from here if you're careful but that's as far as you can go. The bottom stairs have rotted away completely.' He looked at her. 'So what else was there?'
'Only an old box. I think it was one of those vanity cases. You know, the sort of thing women kept their make-up in. It's pretty far gone.'
'Give us a look.'
It was odd that she felt suddenly reluctant. She drank her tea to delay the moment, then took out the little sports bag she had tucked away under her rucksack. The nylon flopped around it as she unzipped the bag to pull it out. It was an oblong box, perhaps a foot wide, and it stood six inches high. She passed it to Dennis, who inspected it carefully. The wood was covered in pinholes and here and there rusted metal pins still stuck out of it, attaching blackened shards which were all that remained of some covering material.
'Look at that, that was ivory, that was,'said Dennis,'Shame it's come off. An ivory-covered box, eh? Just the thing for my lady's chamber. Oh, and see here,' He rubbed a finger over one corner where a triangular piece of black metal was still attached. 'That looks like silver. Must have been quite something once, this box. Anything inside it still?'
'Not really. Open it up. The hinges have fallen apart. The lid just lifts off.'
Dennis took off the lid and made a face. Inside the box there was nothing to be seen at all but for a few broken wooden slats with traces of felt still glued to them. 'They were the partitions, weren't they?' he said. 'One little compartment for her bracelets, another one for her nipple rings, you know the sort of thing.'
'It's a bit old for nipple rings.'
'I'll never be too old for nipple rings, myself.'
Leaning over, Amy could see the slots cut in the inside edges where the partitions must have fitted but now they were just so much dry tinder.
'It was a jewellery box, all right. Not worth anything now.'
It didn't matter in the slightest to Amy whether it was worth anything. She went to take it back from Dennis, much more interested in how old it was and who it could have belonged to than in any value it might have had, but he was looking inside it still.
'The bottom's loose,' he said, 'Hadn't noticed that, had you?'
'No.'
He took out the broken partitions, turned it upside down and suddenly, there on his hand was the box's false floor and resting on it, like the product of a conjuring trick, was a thin book, the shape and style of an old school exercise book with a soft grey cover.
'Well now, what's this then?' he asked, with a harder note to his voice. He put the box down and opened the book, Amy stared at it, wishing she had found it with no one else there. He handled it roughly and it was too old for that. She knew just how old it was as soon as she saw the page he had opened, the page that had come apart from its binding as he opened it. She saw the handwriting and she knew immediately who had written it. A terrible desperation filled her. She wanted to get it back from him, to interrupt his interest in it.
'Well now,' he said. This might be worth a bob or two.'
'It's only an old book,' she said. 'It's handwritten. Not even printed.'
He glanced up at her quizzically. 'Old? Very old, I'd say. Must have been in that box for a long time. Someone wanted it hidden.'
The same thought had occurred to Amy. 'Can you read it?' she said, crossing her fingers and hoping he couldn't.
Dennis pored over it, tilting it to catch the light.
'Silly writing,' he said. 'I'll have to take it away and look at it with my glasses on.'
'No, I'll do that. I found it, Dennis.'
'Really,' he said looking at her, 'you found the box, I found the book.'
There was an expression on his face she didn't like. 'No way, Dennis. I'd have found it soon enough. That's mine.'
'Yours?' he said. 'It's not yours any more than it's mine.'
It was just a chance of a few quid to him, she realized, but she knew it was already much more than that to her.
'Come on,' she said, 'give it to me. Now.'
'Don't shout.'
'I'm not shouting. Just give it back to me.'
'You still upset?'
'You're upsetting me.'
'No,
come on. This all started with him, didn't it? Chummy there, the man in black. You shouldn't be working with him and you shouldn't be sleeping up here next door to him, I told you.'
'Why shouldn't I, Dennis? How about some plain language for once?'
'Because he's a fucking lunatic, that's why.'
'It's nothing to do with him. It's you. I don't like the way you're behaving and I …'
The door opened sharply and Don stood in the doorway.
'Something wrong?' he asked. 'What's going on?'
'Nothing,' said Dennis, handing the book to Amy. He picked up the tray, pushed past Don and was gone, Don looked after him darkly, then half-turned back to Amy.
'Well?' he said.
She was glad he'd interrupted them but she didn't want anyone else butting in. 'Well nothing. Just a difference of opinion.'
Don looked at the book she was holding. 'Over that?'
Amy shrugged. 'Maybe.'
'What is it?' he said, and his eyes narrowed as he stared at it.
'Just an old exercise book.' Amy wanted to be left alone in the room to look at it, 'What did you want?'
'To say sorry.'
'Oh, really? I thought you came in because you heard me and Dennis.'
'Yeah, that too, but mostly to say sorry.' He was looking at her a little sideways, shielding his scar, but his eyes kept returning to the book in her hand.
The Painter Page 11