‘I understand, Richard.’
‘Those photos you took up on the Newfoundland coast ten years ago, well, that coastline is just what the consortium has been looking for. Luxury travellers love nothing more than a place in an exotic, “eco”—’ he tweaks his fingers to indicate quotation marks ‘—location. Especially one that’s virtually impossible to access. Keeps out the riffraff. We’re talking about absolute exclusivity here, Sophie. They love the idea of Newfoundland. No one’s even heard of the place.’
‘Richard, the photos weren’t really meant … I mean, they were basically holiday snaps. The local community … I’m not sure how the consortium’s vision is going to go down with them. The hotel’s going to be a hard enough sell, but, seriously, Richard, a golf course? It’s winter there for eight months of the year, and it’s all moss and wonky trees. You have no idea. Those cliffs are a death trap. You know the locals call it The Rock? There’s a reason for that.’
Her boss waves his hand as if he’s swatting an annoying fly. ‘They play golf in Scotland, don’t they? My God, they haven’t seen the sun there for centuries. I got dragged around St Andrews last June with that obnoxious TV guy, pitching for his hotel job in a bloody parka. Couldn’t feel my fingers for hours. Bloody June! I could see my breath! Newfoundland can’t be any worse than that.’
‘Yes, but, you know, the locals in Tippy’s Tickle … I mean, don’t you think it’s better to get the locals on board rather than buying them out? It could be a wonderful employment opportunity for them. They’ve been having a hard time up there since the cod fishery shut down. There are a lot of talented people—’
Richard’s fleshy face folds into in a frown. ‘That’s another thing. Tippy’s Tickle? What kind of a name is that? That’ll have to go.’ He pushes his glasses down his large nose and peers at her over the top of the frames. ‘All you need to do is secure the land, Sophie. Everyone has a price and the treasure chest is full. We need hotel staff with experience, not some local yokels. Get them to sell up, and I’ll make you the lead architect on the project.’
Sophie sits back in the black leather chair. ‘The lead architect?’
‘Absolutely.’
This was a turn-up for the books. No matter the awards she’d brought to the practice, the front-cover features in Architectural Digest, the hard graft on the front line as the project architect, she’d never been made lead architect. That was a job for the big boys. Richard Niven, Tony Mason and Baxter T. Randall. The Triumvirate.
She frowns. ‘I’m not sure, Richard.’
A thick black eyebrow twitches above his glasses. ‘You’re not sure?’
‘I want you to make me a partner in the firm.’
Richard’s eyebrows shoot upwards like two birds taking flight. ‘Partner? You know I can’t promise that. I have to speak to the other partners. It has to be a unanimous decision, which is … well. I’m sure you understand.’
Yeah, sure I understand. She could almost feel the glass ceiling bang against her head. ‘You’re the controlling partner. I’m sure you can sway the others.’ She stands and straightens the jacket of her Armani suit. ‘Think of the consortium, Richard. Think of all the awards the firm will win. Think of the publicity. Richard Niven & Associates Architects will be up there with Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright.’
Richard fixes her with a stare, his eyes like two green marbles flecked with orange. ‘Fine. A partner, then.’ He presses the intercom on his desk. ‘Jackie, get Sophie on the next flight to Newfoundland.’ He glances over at Sophie. ‘Book economy.’
Chapter 3
Over the Atlantic Ocean – 11 September 2011
Sophie leans over the armrest and squints through the greasy fingerprints streaking the aeroplane’s window. The late summer sky is vivid blue above the clouds drifting like wads of tissue over the inky water far below. The afternoon sun throws a sharp streak of light across her lap. Pulling down the shutter, she glances at her watch. Three forty-five. She could have done without the 4am dash to LaGuardia and the tedious layovers in Toronto and Halifax. Halifax airport, the most boring airport in the world. Not even a Starbucks. Almost eight bloody hours to Gander since she stepped on the plane in New York. Getting Jackie to book her on the milk run had to be Richard’s idea of a joke.
Sophie rubs her temples. The aeroplane rattles with the excited chatter of “plane people” heading back to Newfoundland for a ten-year reunion. Ten years already since those thirty-eight international planes had been diverted to Newfoundland on 9/11. She is a plane person too. But she isn’t here for a reunion party. A party is the last thing on her mind.
She squints as a face materialises in the murk of her mind’s eye. Will he still be in Tippy’s Tickle? No, no, no. It’s over, Sophie! It’s been ten years. Get a life, woman. She erases the face, like she’s wiping away a chalk image on a blackboard.
She stuffs in her iPod earbuds and switches on her chill-out playlist, slumping back into the lumpy seat with a yawn. Her body feels so heavy, like she’s wrapped in a duvet. If only she could just do that – burrow under a duvet and block out the phone calls and the emails and the meetings, meetings, meetings. She swore her skin had looked grey this morning when she’d staggered into the bathroom at three-thirty, drenched in sweat. Bloody New York humidity. She had to do something about that fluorescent light, though. No woman over twenty-five, let alone a forty-eight-year-old, should have to deal with fluorescent light. It was the light of the devil.
Still, this time the prize is worth it. Partner in Richard Niven’s architecture practice. Everything she’s ever wanted. Everything her late mother, Dottie, had always wanted for her. Success. Independence. Freedom. Queen of the hill. Top of the heap. New York. New York.
Well done her. She’d held her nerve with Richard. Refused to back down. Just like her mother had taught her. Dottie would be so proud.
She rubs her eyes. So why has she been feeling so bloody … empty? If only she didn’t feel like the air was constantly pressing her into the ground, like she was a lump of mozzarella having the water pressed out. If she could wake up for once without the empty-stomached anxiety that had been plaguing her for months. Everything was just so … just so nothing.
She shakes her head impatiently and closes her eyes as Adele’s ‘Someone Like You’ wafts into her ears. She’s just tired. The break from the office will do her good.
It’d been ten years since she’d stepped foot on The Rock. Stranded there for five days in the middle of nowhere after all the air traffic was grounded, while the world fell apart on 9/11. At least this time she was coming to Newfoundland voluntarily. Well, almost voluntarily. She never should have shown Richard the photos she’d taken in the outport village of Tippy’s Tickle back in September 2001. Of Ellie and Florie’s general store, of the whales spouting off the coast, of her aunt Ellie’s handsome Victorian merchant house, Kittiwake, standing like a colourful sentinel on the cliff above the village. On the same cliff where the consortium wanted to build the hotel.
What would her mother have said about turfing Ellie off her property? Sophie grunts. That wasn’t hard. ‘Keep your eye on the prize, Sophie. Don’t let anyone keep you from fulfilling your potential, least of all your aunt. She squandered everything God gave her on a man. She made her bed, now she has to lie in it. You don’t owe Ellie anything.’
She could hear her mother’s clipped English accent over Adele’s honeyed voice. ‘Do your best, Sophie. Get up early. Stay up late. Work those weekends and holidays. Show everyone that you’re somebody. Show them. Show them all. Don’t let anyone stand in your way or distract you. Don’t make my mistake, Sophie. Don’t regret the person you could have been.’
Oh, she’d been a good student. She’d worked hard and now had everything she’d ever wanted – an imminent partnership at an international architectural firm in New York, a gorgeous rent-controlled apartment in Gramercy Park, a pension plan, designer clothes, money in the bank. No plants, pets, partners or children
to distract her. It was better not to get too attached to living things. They only ended up leaving. Or dying. First her father, George, over twenty years ago of a heart attack as he inspected the Cherry Cobblers production line at Mcklintock’s, then Dottie back in 2000. Lung cancer. Cigarettes will get you every time.
It was okay. She was okay. She didn’t need anyone.
Sophie hadn’t even known her aunt Ellie existed until she’d opened an envelope addressed to The Parry Family one Christmas back in the late 70s. The card had a cartoon moose surrounded by tinsel-strewn Christmas trees on the front. Inside, in a fine, confident hand: To all of you at Christmas, from your loving sister and aunt, Ellie. She’d copied the address into the small green leather address book her father had given her for her fifteenth birthday. Then she’d placed the Christmas card beside the mahogany clock on the black marble mantelpiece, with the ones from her father’s colleagues at Mcklintock’s Chocolates, and the ones from the Women’s Institute and the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital Auxiliary. It was gone the next day.
Sophie shakes her head to jolt away the image that threatens to materialise again in the blackness behind her eyelids. She can’t let him into her head. His brown eyes, quizzical and teasing. Her mother had been right. Men only confuse you. Best to keep them at arm’s length. At least the ones who could matter. The ones like Sam.
Maybe that’s why her mother had married George Parry. Because he never really mattered to her. She didn’t do much to hide that fact. Poor Daddy was a means to an end. A means for her mother to become top of the social elite of Norwich.
George did everything he could to make Dottie happy. Join the Lions Club. Tick. Suck up to the owner of Mcklintock’s Chocolates. Tick. Become a patron of the Norwich Philharmonic Orchestra. Tick. Buy bigger, more expensive houses in better neighbourhoods as he worked his way up to managing director of Mcklintock’s. Tick. Tick. Tick. But her mother was never a happy woman. Sophie had grown up in Norwich in a beautiful house heavy with unspoken words. She’d escaped to university in London as soon as she turned eighteen, Frank Lloyd Wright’s The Natural House and a sketchbook under her arm. It’d been a relief. Like throwing off a thick wool coat in an overheated room. She’d never get married. Ever.
Sophie opens her eyes and examines her hands, moving her fingers the way she’d been taught at the Sign Language Centre. ‘Hello, Becca. How are you?’ Becca must be eighteen now. Sophie didn’t really know what had prompted her to learn sign language, when she’d never intended to go back to Newfoundland. She’d been curious, she supposed. And it was something else to put on her CV. Chances were Becca and Sam didn’t even live in Tippy’s Tickle anymore. People move on. It will be better if they’ve moved on.
Sophie loosens her seatbelt and rubs at the stiffness in her neck. She’d meant to keep in touch with her aunt. But after posting out the first couple of Christmas cards, bought in a hurry at Browne’s between client meetings, time just got away from her, even as Ellie’s annual Christmas and birthday cards, full of the chatty goings-on of Tippy’s Tickle, sat on Sophie’s mantelpiece like a reproach, until they’d end up in the ‘To Do’ pile on her desk, begging for a response that she’d never get around to writing.
She’d thought of Sam often, at first, and an ache would form that would roll into a ball and sit in her stomach like an anchor. He’d left messages, which she hadn’t returned, even though her heart had buzzed with pleasure when she’d found his messages on her phone. She’d meant to call, to text at the very least. She’d stood in the kitchen of her apartment with her finger hovering over the numbers on her mobile phone at least a half dozen times. But, she hadn’t called him. Or texted him. She’d wanted to so much. But, it would never work. He knew that. He’d said as much himself the last time she’d seen him. That had hurt. Especially after … No. She wasn’t going to let herself be hurt.
She shakes her head, catching a sideways glance from the over-tanned Florida retiree beside her as she grabs for an earbud that pops out of her ear. Bloody Sam. What is he doing in her head like this?
Sophie turns off the music and stares out the window at the sky. They say time heals all wounds, but they’re wrong. Time buries all wounds. Dig them out, and the wounds still bleed. Better to keep them buried. The words from a pop song spring into her mind. Absolutely no regrets. She has absolutely no regrets. There’d been a crazy moment when the idea of living an artist’s life on the north coast of Newfoundland with a widowed lover and his deaf daughter, not to mention that ridiculous beast of a dog, had brought her up short on the path that had always been so clear and straight. Then Sam had rejected her. The phone messages he’d left her in New York couldn’t erase that fact. If he’d done it once, he could do it again.
No, she has absolutely no regrets. Her path is clear, her focus laser-sharp, as long as she stays on course. The prize is everything: partner in the firm now; then, in a few years, when Richard retires, managing director of Richard Niven & Associates Architects. A long-distance relationship with Sam would have complicated everything. Some things were better left alone.
All she needs to do now is convince Ellie and Florie and some of the villagers with places along the tickle to sell up. The consortium wanted to build a restaurant down on the shore too, and put in a marina for the multi-millionaires’ yachts sailing up from Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The financial package the consortium was offering to the villagers was generous. It shouldn’t be that hard. She’ll keep telling herself that. But she has a bad feeling. Her stomach flutters and beads of sweat break out on her forehead. She brushes the sweat away with the back of her hand. Why’s it so bloody hot everywhere?
The plane veers right. Sophie flips up the window blind. The sun, bright in the western sky, burns out the blueness until all that’s left is throbbing white light. She leans her forehead against the warm glass and closes her eyes. Willing the heat to erase the face that threatens to form again in her mind. Wondering if coming back is a huge mistake.
Chapter 4
Norwich, England – 26 July 1940
Ellie steps back from the easel and squints at the dimpled peel of the orange on the canvas, looking, she thinks, like the spitting image of the dents and pores on the face of Mr Pilch, the greengrocer. She picks up a small, fine-tipped paintbrush and dabs at the titanium white paint on the palette she balances in her left hand. Leaning closer, she brushes delicate strokes of white onto the dimpled skin, copying the effects of the light filtering through the branches of the elm tree outside the large arched window as it gleams on the fruit.
‘Cracking job, there, Miss Burgess. You’ve caught the feeling of that orange extremely well. Can you see when you paint, that you must put aside your notions of what you’re observing, and become like a child observing an object for the first time?’ The woman points a blunt-tipped finger at Ellie’s artwork, dragging the sleeve of her embroidered white muslin blouse across the rainbow of wet paint on Ellie’s palette. ‘Can you see the green cast to the orange? The way the shadow at its edges is almost violet? Can you see how the orange is telling you its story?’
Ellie’s heart jumps. Four weeks into the advanced oil-painting class and this is the first time the celebrated guest tutor, Dame Edith Spink RA, has singled her out for praise.
‘Thank you, Dame Edith. I do think I understand. I’d always thought an orange was round and smooth … and orange. But, it’s not at all. My brain was telling me one thing, but my eyes are telling me another.’
The great woman stands upright and rests her hands on the yellow canvas skirt covering her generous hips. ‘Indeed, Miss Burgess. Now you begin to be an artist, rather than simply a renderer.’
Ellie’s face burns, the compliment almost too much to process. She catches a blue-eyed glare aimed at her by Susan Perry-Gore. ‘Thank you, Dame Edith.’
‘You’ve heard that I’ve been commissioned to do some work for the War Artists’ Advisory Committee?’
Ellie nods at the other students
dabbing earnestly at their canvases. ‘We … we’ve all heard.’
‘Indeed. I’m working on a portrait of Corporal Deirdre Cross. Very brave young woman. Saved one of our pilots by pulling him out of his burning plane and throwing herself on top of him when the plane’s bomb went off.’
Ellie shakes her head. ‘I hadn’t heard of that.’
The older woman huffs and runs her hand over the neat central parting of her greying brown hair. ‘The war isn’t just about men, Miss Burgess. There are many brave and capable young women out there doing their part. Their stories must be heard.’
‘Yes, Dame Edith.’
‘I find that I’ll be requiring an assistant. I have another commission to start as soon as I finish Corporal Cross’s portrait.’ The woman frowns, a deep line creasing the still-smooth skin of her broad forehead. ‘Just to mix the paints and clean the studio, of course. Would you be interested, Miss Burgess? I couldn’t pay you, of course, but you could watch and learn.’
Ellie sucks in her breath. Had she just heard right? Had Dame Edith Spink, the first woman to be elected as a full member to the Royal Academy, asked her if she’d like to help in her studio?
‘Oh, yes! I’ll do my absolute best for you.’
‘Right. See me after class on Monday. We’ll make arrangements. You’re not worried about travelling around town, are you, what with this bombing nonsense going on?’
Ellie shakes her head, the net snood holding her ash-blonde hair bouncing on the shoulders of her blue cotton dress. ‘Not at all. My father said the Germans are mainly after the factories down by the riverside, so I don’t go anywhere near there. In fact, I’m meeting my friend Ruthie to see a film after class. We’re not going to let any Jerry keep us away from Tyrone Power in Jesse James. We’ve been waiting ages for it to reach Norwich.’
The English Wife Page 2