A young man pushed through the people towards Amy. He wore a black jacket which owed its origins more to crude oil than cowhide and he held a spiral-bound notebook at the ready.
'You the girlfriend?' he said.
'If that's a question it seems to be lacking a verb,' said Amy. A flash-gun went off in her face.
'What's your name?'
'I'm not the girlfriend.'
'What are you doing here then?'
'I was just passing.'
He laughed. 'No one just happens to be passing this place. Tell us your name anyway.'
He wasn't local, Amy thought. His voice sounded more Midlands.
'Emma Bovary,' she said.
He wrote it down. 'Bove … how do you spell that?'
'B-O-V-A-R-Y,' she said helpfully.
'Are you proud of him?'
'I don't even know him,' said Amy. 'I was looking for the Job Centre.'
Someone took her by the arm and said firmly, 'We need you upstairs.'
Don's mother.
'Ha!' said the reporter triumphantly and another flash-gun went off.
As if she were under arrest, Amy was held firmly in Ellen's grip until they arrived at a room upstairs where
Don sat at a table with a mug of tea, looking pale and exhausted.
'Why did you come?' he said to the mug. 'I'm beginning to feel like I've got no private life as far as you're concerned.'
'He needs leaving alone, love,' said Ellen. 'Today's bad enough for him without you showing up.'
'I didn't know anything about today,' said Amy. 'I wouldn't have butted in if I had.'
Don thumped the table with his fist, spilling tea, Amy jumped. 'You don't need to know! It's got nothing to do with you at all. You keep doing this. "I didn't know." That's what you keep saying. As if all I've got to do is tell you absolutely bloody everything about me, as if you've got some right to know so that then you can decide which bits are your business and which bits aren't. Why don't you just fuck off and …'
Which was when Amy, instead of getting angry as she normally would, burst unexpectedly into tears, thinking as she did, with peculiar clarity, damn – that's the second time he's got to me like that.
Don just watched her but it wasn't in Ellen's nature to see somebody suffering and not do anything to help.
'Oh come on now, love. Have a sit down. Shall I get you a cuppa? There's a fresh pot.'
'Don't fall for it,' said Don, 'she's just …'
'Shut it, Don,' snapped Ellen. 'Don't mind him, love. Take a deep breath and just tell us, that's me and my unfeeling lout of a son over there, how you came to be here, because he wasn't exactly planning to shout it all to the rooftops you see?'
'B-but you've got the TV here and the press and …'
'We didn't get them. They just came. Someone told them and I'm sure I can guess who,' said Ellen, grimly. 'That's why the star of the show here did his vanishing trick at the crucial moment. So what brought you here?'
'I was told to. I didn't plan it. I – well, he said I'd lose my job unless I went and found Don and got him back and …'
'Who's "he"?' asked Ellen.
'Hawk. The foreman. He said I needn't bother to come back if I didn't find Don and it was all my fault. He said things had been all right before I arrived so I went to look for him but he wasn't on the road and Hawk said I should come here if I couldn't find him and when I …'
'Hang on right there,' said Ellen. She was lighting a cigarette and Amy thought she would like to paint Don's mother entirely in diluted shades of tobacco juice, nicotine brown. Until that moment she had thought Ellen dyed her hair but now she realized the yellow was all at the front, stained by the smoke.
'So, young man,' Ellen went on when she'd taken a drag, 'did you forget to tell the boss you were taking the afternoon off?'
'He lets me work the hours I choose. Bloody Parrish knew, didn't he? He's here, I didn't want to have to tell everyone what was happening.'
'He's not bloody Parrish. Don't start that again, and he's not your boss, is he? It's the foreman you have to ask.' She looked at him judiciously and blew a very ragged smoke ring. 'But I have a suspicion that it quite suited you to pick your moment so it looked like this poor lass had pushed you into walking out.'
'It wasn't like that.'
'Wasn't it?'
'Coincidence, that was all.'
'I'll believe you. Thousands wouldn't.' She straightened up. 'Listen you two, I'd better go and do a bit of pressing the flesh. Stay up here or come down. It's up to you.'
In the silence after she had gone, Don continued to look at his mug, then eventually he said, 'I didn't want the rest of them to know. I'm sorry the Hawk gave you a bollocking.'
She shrugged.
It wasn't the time to ask about the division of opinion amongst the men of Paull Holme, much as she wanted to.
'That doesn't matter now. This is your day. Shouldn't you be downstairs?'
He just shook his head.
The speech downstairs had cleared Amy's head of the whirl of suspicion and fear instilled by Dennis. She looked across at Don and saw only the damage, the bravery and the sweet potential for them both. Reaching across, she squeezed his good hand but she got no response.
'What you did was great,' she said gently. 'I was so relieved. I thought the police were looking for you because you'd done something dreadful.'
'Maybe I did,' he replied, staring at their hands together on the table as if they had nothing to do with him, 'but why would you have thought that?'
That was a mistake, she thought. She tried to pass it off, 'I don't know. No real reason. The police were …'
'Because Dennis talked to you. That was it, wasn't it?'
'Dennis? Well, he only said …' Her voice trailed off.
'What did he say?' Don's voice was venomous.
He's entitled to sound like that, she thought. If Dennis's mad, smashed nephew nearly killed him, he's allowed to be angry.
'Nothing I took any notice of,' she said firmly. 'He's loyal to his family, that's all.'
'Don't talk to him any more, okay?' He took his hand away and scratched at the hard surface of the table with a finger. 'It's all bullshit, though, isn't it?' His voice had changed, become less harsh.
'What is?'
'This whole award thing. I was shitting myself. There was nothing gallant about that.'
'Being afraid makes it braver, not less brave.'
'You'd know, would you?'
'No.'
'I can't remember what I thought. There was him, that guy and a hell of a mess and a hell of a lot of noise. You know how much racket those saws make? The room was full of the smoke and the smell of it. That and blood. The woman was on the floor and there was blood all over everything. I didn't know what was going on. Do you know what I thought first?'
She shook her head.
'I thought, Mum's going to be really annoyed at all this mess. Then we were fighting and the saw was revving and first I had it then he had it then I had it again.'
She kept silent, waiting for him to finish.
'Everybody thinks I was protecting Mum and the others. Maybe I was just protecting me. What's brave about that? It was him or me. Gut reaction, nothing to do with heroism and it didn't stop the woman being dead.'
Listening, Amy felt every word etching its way into her memory. Why did he say 'the woman'? Why not 'Sarah'? Did it make it easier?
'People love heroes,' he went on. 'If there isn't a real hero about, they'll invent one. They invented me. So can we stop talking about it now? For ever?'
'All right.'
Then she said, 'Tell me something else, then. Were you coming back?'
He looked halfway towards her. 'To the job? Why do you ask?'
'I looked in your room. Just to see if you were there. It seemed to me that you'd taken a lot of stuff with you.'
He laughed. He laughed in a straightforward way, the way you do when someone says something funny, not the way he'd laughed in t
he past, not to fend off anything.
'There's a washing machine here. One of those industrial ones. It gets my overalls clean.'
'Yes, but there's something else. My book, Amelia's daybook. You took that too.' It occurred to her as she said it that there was another possibility. Dennis might have taken it, but Don was looking embarrassed.
'Yeah, sorry.'
'Why?'
'I thought I might show it to my mother while I was here. Didn't get round to it though, what with all the fuss.'
'You could have asked.' And I would have said no, she thought. 'I didn't come straight here,' she said instead. 'I went to the library first.'
He didn't say anything but he gave her a quick glance. Now she was talking to his mug.
'I read a bit more of Amelia's journal. It's the bit where he's starting to paint her portrait.'
'Ah.'
'She doesn't like it. She gets really irritated with him because he keeps talking.'
'No, she doesn't.'
'What do you mean? I've just read it. That's what she says.'
'I've just read it too. It's not like that at all.'
'In the day-book? You mean you opened another page of the day book?' She didn't say it, but her tone of voice added the silent words, without asking me, without sharing it. 'There was an owl in your room,' she added illogically.
'He's back, is he?' Don fidgeted. 'Maybe I shouldn't have. I was angry. Anyway, it's not really yours, is it?'
'I'll hand it over to Parrish, don't you worry,' she said bitterly. 'I know I can't keep it. I just want to go through it first. Amelia's my ancestor. Well, are you going to tell me what it said?'
'You can read it now, if you like. You're better at it than I am. I might have got it wrong. There's no hurry, they'll be eating the sausage rolls downstairs for a while yet.'
'Where is it?'
He got up from the table, went to a cupboard at the back of the room and took out Amy's bag. He wiped the table with his sleeve and put the day-book down in front of Amy, opening it carefully. 'See what you make of this.'
She had seen the start of this passage before. Indeed she had read it, revised and tidied up, only an hour or two earlier. She started to read.
'Out loud,' said Don. 'Please.'
'A winter day after sunshine with north winds showing the places where the men have not yet done their proper job in the roof. Roused from sleep before sunrise by rain on my bed and set bowls in place to save the floor.'
'Yes, That's it. This is the same bit I read earlier,' she said, excited. 'The words are a bit different but it's about the same things. She finds him in the kitchen next. That's right. Listen.'
She read again of Amelia's annoyance at finding the Dutchman in her kitchen, using her best pestle and mortar, then: ' … I did give him the old mortar instead together with a full remonstrance at the spoiling of my best pestle but the fellow will but smile when I speak whatever it is that I say. It is most hard to be out of sorts for long with him. He has a wise face and a knowing eye.'
Amy stopped reading and looked up at Don. 'She didn't say that in the journal.'
'Go on.'
'Today he is to start, at my husband's command, on my portrait and I confess that I am nervous of how it will be to sit so long in his presence without making some mistake. My husband is to town to flog a dead horse with the Elder Brethren concerning his difficulties and Marvell has gone to challenge Gilby for the rights to claim Sunk Island which all men say should be no man's but Crown land, being risen from the river by the grace of the Lord, I do not think one may draw a line between Marvell and Gilby in this matter both being out for themselves and anxious to secure the island for no other benefit but their own.'
'Did you know there was a Gilby in it?' Amy asked Don.
'He was in parliament, too. He's supposed to be an ancestor of ours.'
'What's that all about?'
'Haven't a clue,' he said. 'Mum will know.'
'I don't want you telling her about it.'
'I already have.'
'Have you?' She could feel her ownership of the day-book slipping away and that brought a desperate sense of loss. Amelia was hers, not theirs. 'But isn't she on Parrish's side? She worked for him.'
'She did more than that,' he said, and there was an edge of black night in his voice.
'Why do you say it like that?' she said.
'What do you mean?'
'You sounded angry.'
'I don't like Parrish fawning over my mum, right? My business. We'll show it to Parrish when we're ready. Mum's as interested as we are. She typed out the journal, didn't she? Go on. It's the next bit.'
'We did start upstairs this noon-time when Vanrin was quite ready, spilling much Venice-turpentine on the new boards so that I gave instructions for a cloth to be brought to protect the wood, a vexing business. There is to be a contest as they tell me between Vanrin and Marvell his picture of me ranged against Marvell's next verse and I am to be the judge of it and the deader of the prize. He amuses me, this limner, being sharp of eye and quick of tongue. Nor does he know how to hold his tongue but does make very free with his thoughts on all matters. I shall stay dumb at all times, otherwise ill chance may …
'End of the page,' said Amy. 'Can we open the next one?'
'Not without damaging it. I tried.'
'In the journal, she goes on about how annoying he is and how he makes everything dirty.'
'The journal was meant for her husband's eyes, wasn't it? She said so. If you want the truth, you'll find it in the day-book, not the journal.'
Amy weighed the fragile day-book in her hands. 'Yes. We're going to have to be very careful of this.'
'Too right you are,' said Ellen, coming back in through the door, 'otherwise, there'll be hell to pay. I'm not going to be answerable if you damage that. Let me see it.' She took it and held it reverently in her hands, opening the pages no more than halfway. Amy's resentment vanished. This woman understood.
'You'll give it to him soon, won't you love?' Ellen asked Amy, and she nodded in reply.
'Do you know about Sunk Island?' asked Don. 'He talks about it.'
'Course I do. You should too. I've told you the story. Come to that you've been there enough times.' She started pulling drawers open. There's a map here somewhere. Ordnance Survey. Have you seen it? Oh, here it is. Someone's pulled the cover off.'
She spread it out on the table and jabbed a finger at a big buige projecting from the north bank of the Humber.
'See it there? Before 1660 you wouldn't have done. Didn't use to be there. It was just a mud bank at low tide, then something changed and it began drying out. You go there now and it's hard to believe it. Must be five miles long and a couple of miles wide and there's just a couple of muddy old creeks that meet up round the back of it to show it was once an island. Do you see there's a house marked?'
Amy peered at the map. 'The Old Hall?'
'That's it. It was a Gilby who built that. Colonel Anthony Gilby. Supposed to be some ancestor of ours. He got his hands on the whole thing, being a Member of Parliament you see, using his influence. There were two Members, him and Marvell, and they bloody hated each other. Marvell loathed the colonel so much he had a big fight with him once in the House of Commons. Got into loads of trouble for it too. I reckon it was because the colonel got Sunk Island before Marvell grabbed it.'
'So you know all about Marvell?' asked Amy.
Ellen stared at her in shock, 'Where were you brought up? He's even had pubs named after him.'
'I'm sorry. I'm not up on the history of Hull, I'm still learning.'
'I'm not talking about the history of Hull, for God's sake. I'm talking about the history of England. Didn't you do English at school? Everybody knows about Marvell.'
'So it is the same one, Andrew Marvell, the poet?'
'Of course it is.'
EIGHTEEN
Don was walking fast with his bag over his shoulder and Amy, skirting a puddle which he had s
trode right through, felt a physical tie between them tugging her in his wake, a tie which would start to ache if it stretched too far. Anything could have been happening around him and she would have been unaware. She tried to catch up, needing to be near him, wanting to talk, drawn after him by biological magnetism, and her eyes were fixed on the way he walked, athletic and contained, prowling again. From here behind him, there was no sign of the damaged man to get in the way.
'If they'd given him a first name, I would have known,' she said. 'If Amelia had written Andrew Marvell. I felt such a fool when your mother said that, I did ask you, didn't I? You said he was a politician.'
'He was. He was both.'
She was beside him now and that felt like where she belonged. They were walking up the side of the marina in the old docks. An old sailing barge was moored alongside the nearest pontoon and beyond it, the massive stone warehouses had been subverted, diluted into bars and restaurants.
'Let's get a drink,' said Amy.
'Are you thirsty?'
'It's a sociable activity, Don. Sitting in the sun with a glass in your hand is not just about drinking. It's about watching the world go by together. It's about seeing and being seen, There's no hurry, is there? We've got as long as we warn. The Hawk didn't set me a time limit on finding you.'
What she wanted was to be with him, just the two of them, away from Paull Holme, away from anybody else they knew. She wanted to give the uncertain flame between them another chance to catch and burn bright because it was burning again in her and she didn't believe such a flame could be kept to one person alone.
'There's a place up here,' he said. 'It's old.' His voice had flattened.
Seeing and being seen, she thought. Was that a stupid thing to say?
'Go on,' she said. 'Tell me what you know about Marvell.'
'Okay, I knew he was the same one really, I wasn't thinking. Ellen says round here, people didn't even know he was a poet. At the time, he was just a politician. All that poetry stuff only came out much later when the Victorians discovered him.'
'How do you suddenly know all that?'
Don glanced at her and she suspected for a moment that such information was currency to him, to be gathered, hoarded and spent when it suited him to bring them closer.
The Painter Page 21