Harriet Smart: The Romances, page 95
“I shan’t make a habit of it,” she said, as Hugh flipped the lid off his beer bottle. “Oh, must you drink out of the bottle? And do I get a drink?”
“I was just about to do yours,” said Hugh, getting up again, hoping that there was still some gin left.
“Jolly good,” she said. “Actually, I had quite an interesting afternoon, your revolting kitchen apart. You had a visitor.”
“Oh? Who?” he said, pouring out the requisite two fingers of gin.
“Kate Mackenzie,” said Jane. Hugh turned to look at her, startled by the way she had said it. “Yes, isn’t that interesting?”
“Is it?” he said, offhandedly, as he fetched the ice-cube tray out of the freezer.
“Perhaps you should tell me,” said Jane. “I mean, I wonder why she came. She said she was just passing through, but you know I don’t think it was just a social call.”
“We got on well, that’s all,” he said, popping the ice out onto the draining board. “We have a lot in common – work-wise, I mean.”
“Really?” Jane said. “Are you sure, Hugh? I can’t help thinking...”
“Don’t think, Mum, please,” he said, putting the glass and the tonic bottle down in front of her.
“So, you do like her?” Jane said, releasing Andrew, who went running to the toy box in the corner of the kitchen.
“Mum, I don’t want to discuss it,” Hugh said firmly.
“Ah, I was right!” said Jane, and clapped her hands together triumph. “Well, it’s a jolly good thing she’s going to New York. You shouldn’t be getting involved with anyone just now, let alone your father’s cast-offs.”
“She’s going to New York?”
“Mm, apparently,” said Jane and looked at him. “Oh, Hugh, you haven’t, have you?”
“Mum...”
“I don’t think she’s a good idea,” said Jane. “I mean, she can’t exactly be the world’s most reliable person to go running off from Allansfield like that.”
“You are so inconsistent,” said Hugh. “Earlier today you thought Kate was a poor pitiable victim, and now –”
“I hadn’t met her then, and I hadn’t realised why she’d left. She told me it was because she didn’t feel committed enough to stay. She strikes me as a trifle fickle.”
“You know nothing about her, Mother,” said Hugh.
“I know she’s very pretty and that you rather like her,” said Jane. “I think that’s quite enough for me to worry about. We don’t another Lara scenario, do we?”
“It’s nothing like that. You’re being so simplistic. Kate is nothing like Lara. Kate is...” He stopped, realising the passion in his voice had given far too much away. He reached out for his bottle of beer, shouting the rest of his sentence in his mind: Kate is intelligent, Kate is fun, Kate is an artist, Kate is passionate, Kate is, in short, everything I ever wanted in a woman. He took a deep breath and said, with more care, “Kate is an academic question. She’s going to New York, OK, Mum? Subject closed.”
“I hope so,” said Jane, and looked at him hard for a minute. Hugh, with annoyance, realised she always knew when he was lying.
~
Gabriel had been on the verge of falling asleep when the telephone rang. He was glad to be woken up. His body’s refusal to function properly still irritated him profoundly, a state of affairs that four courses of combined chemotherapy, with all the attendant horrors, had only compounded. Falling asleep in the middle of the morning was such an annoying waste of time; he could bear it while he was in the clinic, when there was really nothing else to do, but here at Allansfield, during his so-called recovery period, when he wanted to maintain at least a semblance of normal life, it was frustrating.
He reached out for the phone.
“Darling, it’s me,” said Henrietta. “How are you doing?”
“Trying to do a bit of paperwork actually.”
“Same here,” she said, “and failing.”
“Same here,” he said and heard her laugh.
“Do you think you are up to going tonight? You sound a little groggy.”
“I always sound groggy now,” said Gabriel. “And of course I’m up to it.”
“But...”
“What an old woman you are sometimes, Henry,” he said, smiling. “1 think I know whether I can manage tonight. My brain hasn’t rotted yet – or has it? You’re probably the better judge of that.”
“No, unfortunately not. You’d be easier to manage then, wouldn’t you?”
“But you’d hate that. There’d be no pleasure in exercising your authority over a vegetable.”
“John Hepburn might like it,” she said. “After that last earful you gave him.”
“You were as bad,” he said. They had had quite a few scenes with the specialist, whose bedside manner and complete lack of humour had contrived to rub them both up the wrong way.
“He’ll be charging us danger money next,” she said. “Poor man.”
“I’ve sent him a case of claret, actually,” said Gabriel.
“What? You creep,” she laughed. “You darling creep. Oh, I have to go – there’s someone knocking at my door. I’ll be back after lunch – and make sure you eat it, OK?”
“OK,” he said, and put down the telephone. He heaved himself out of his chair and decided he would go for a prowl round the garden. He was supposed to be taking gentle exercise, after all.
It was one of those mild, damp, inviting autumn days, with the sun lying low across the landscape like a caressing hand. He went out on to the terrace through the glazed door and stood for a moment, crinkling up his eyes against the sun, wondering whether he needed to fetch a coat. He decided he would not. It was good to be cool for once. The tropical temperature at the clinic had only added another discomfort to an already long list.
He sighed, remembering it would be back to that routine next week; another dose of noxious chemicals being dripped into his bloodstream, doing maybe more harm than good. And next week he would not have Henrietta there all the time to see him through the worst of it: no Henrietta to make the black jokes that made it bearable when he vomited yet again, or to read Jane Austen aloud to him when he was simply too tired to do anything but lie on his bed. It had taken some persuasion on his part to convince her that he would manage without her (especially as he was secretly not at all convinced of it himself), and that she must give her teaching priority now that the term had started again. She needed to be back at that particular helm. She was not made for nursemaiding him, and he hated to think that he had forced her into it, this endless, loving and fastidious care which she had given him, and for which he did not know how he could recompense her. He could only begin by insisting she worked.
He walked along the spectacular autumnal decay of the long herbaceous border and opened the gate to the wild garden, wondering what Kate’s exhibition would be like. Disturbingly accomplished, he imagined. As he looked at the Fallen Athena lying in her glade, with soggy golden leaves stuck to her grey granite robes, he knew he wanted to see her again and make a proper apology. He wanted to sort this wretched business out, as far as it could be sorted out, and he wanted simply to see her again. He had missed her. It was that simple.
It was not that he loved her the way he loved Henrietta. Nor did he feel any lingering passion for her youth and undeniable beauty. Those feelings had disappeared as quickly as they had come. His ego had given in to the terrible temptation of something so young and fresh, and it had tricked him into believing that he loved her in the way a man should love the woman he lived with. He had been drinking then from a drugged fountain of illusions. There had not been the right stuff there to make a partnership between them; he had not had that sort of love to give her – that had been locked up with Henrietta’s name on it all those years. Yet he did feel for her strongly still, with a feeling that was stronger than friendship. Perhaps it was a more perfect form of friendship, a refinement of affection entirely independent of sexual feeling, that made him feel that Kate was still an indissoluble part of his life, as much as Henrietta was. He wanted to see her that night, and wanted her to forgive him, not just for the sake of a quiet conscience, but so that they could go on as friends.
~
As the day passed the weather turned bad, and St Andrews was caught in the grip of a violent autumn gale. The wind was like a fierce, unpredictable animal, constantly changing direction, leaping forward for a savage attack and then retreating into its lair for a few minutes, before jumping out again to bewilder from another unexpected angle. Now it was throwing the rain against the window of Kate’s hotel room, as it charged in from the black shoreline in the distance. Kate stood, looking out at the dark turbulence. She had been in the act of drawing the curtains, but the strength of the maelstrom had caught her, and she pressed her palms to the window pane, enjoying the coolness of the glass after the almost tropical heat of the hotel room.
But you can stare as long as you like, she thought, and it still won’t make any sense. She turned and looked critically at the room, which had been booked by and would be paid for by Lionel. It was one of those luxurious places that aimed at a so-called country-house style, with all the falseness that entailed. The room disturbed her. Those expensive details – the immense glazed chintz curtains that decorated both the bed and the windows with over-exuberant ruffles and bows; the solid reproduction furniture that did not quite succeed in convincing; the stilted arrangement of flowers on top of the vast television set; and the inevitable and absurd chocolate on the pillow – all filled her with a sort of creeping despair. She felt like throwing up the window and howling. Instead she sat down on the bed and ate the complimentary chocolate.
There was a knock on the door.
“It’s me, Kate,” she heard Lionel saying.
“Oh, come in, it’s open,” said Kate.
Lionel entered, resplendent in a primrose damask waistcoat under his chalk-striped suit.
“You should be dressed,” he said. “You’ll be late.” Kate, still wearing her dressing gown, gave a slight grimace. “Are you nervous?”
“Why do I need to be there?” she said. “It’s my pictures they’re going to see, not me. It’s not performance art.”
“It’s networking. The press will be there.” He sat down in the armchair. “I’ve seen this before. You can call it what you like: shyness, false modesty, downright cowardice.”
“Oh, I know, I should relish the moment, shouldn’t I? And normally I would, it’s just there’s –”
“You’re not as bullish as you were in London, Kate,” said Lionel. “Has something happened?”
“Nothing really,” said Kate. “I suppose I’m just being very unprofessional and letting my personal life get in the way of things.”
“You want to talk about it?”
“Are you a therapist as well as a dealer?”
“I don’t mean to sound mercenary, but your state of mind is one of my professional concerns. I need you firing on all cylinders for my investment in you to pay off.”
“Yes, of course you do. I’m sorry. I’ll be ready soon.”
“Do you want to talk about it first?”
“No, it’s all right, really.”
“OK, whatever you say,” he said, going to the door. “Chop-chop then, Kate. It’s showtime!”
Showtime, thought Kate, going into the bathroom. She took out the scarlet lipstick she had worn at the ball in June. She needed some more war-paint. Ever since Jane Cherrington had dropped that startling news into her lap, Kate felt like a child riding a bike without the stabilisers for the first time. Any certainty she had constructed for herself had suddenly gone. She would not have predicted that the news would have rocked her so. She ought to feel merely sympathetic that Gabriel was ill, not plain scared that he was going to die. She ought, quite rightly, to be extremely annoyed to discover that he had been playing some game behind her back with Henrietta, but that should not have made her doubt her own decisions. She had been so sure she had everything sorted out and was ready to move on with her life. It had been all fixed – except for Hugh, of course – but in trying to get herself over that stumbling block she had simply uncovered all the rest.
With a bit of luck, she told herself as she got dressed, Gabriel would not be there tonight. He was probably too ill for such jaunts, although she had seen his name, along with Henrietta’s, on Eleanor McCleod’s guest list for the private view. Hugh’s name had also been on the list, for some strange reason, but it was highly unlikely he would be there. At least she would not have to deal with that as well. Again, she found herself asking why she had gone to Bion Street. Of all the questions that were plaguing her, it was that one she had the least idea how to answer.
~
Hugh arrived in St Andrews and parked in North Street. He sat for a few minutes in the car, stunned with tiredness after the long drive to Scotland.
When the invitation to Kate’s private view had arrived, he had filed it at once in the waste-paper basket in his bedroom at Bion Street. It had felt like a cruel joke, but he supposed Henrietta had added his name to the list without any malicious intentions. After his mother had left and he had taken Andrew upstairs to sleep, he had retrieved it, and had sat staring at the coloured reproduction of Triptych, wondering what to do. That she had come to see him was surely significant, but if she was going to New York, then what was the point of reading anything significant into it? But why had she come, then? By the time Andrew had dropped off to sleep, he had decided he would go to the private view and ask her.
It had been too late to stop off at Allansfield – he would go later – and so he dragged himself out of the car and dived into a pub for a beer and a sandwich, resisting the temptation to have a whisky for Dutch courage. He tried to rehearse what he wanted to say to her, but he was never entirely convinced by his arguments. He would just have to try and do his best. He knew what he wanted depended entirely on her. Clever advocacy was not going to make any difference if she felt nothing.
There was already quite a crowd at the private view, but neither Kate nor his father nor Henrietta was there yet. He was glad. He wanted a chance to take in her pictures first.
It was not a large exhibition space, and such a mass of her work hung quite closely together created a powerful effect. It was like walking into a highly decorated medieval chapel, with dazzling saturated colour on all sides, burning as brightly under the artificial light as if the surfaces were covered with lustre glazes. It only needed a pattern of angels and clouds spiralling up and up towards a blue sky to be painted on the ceiling to complete the illusion. Hugh was certain she would have been capable of such a magnificent piece of trompe-l’oeil, but glad as well she had not done it. It was overwhelming enough, with colour and form coming from sides, attacking the eyes, like the trumpet bursts and soaring voices of Monteverdi.
It was not a chapel, but a distinctly pagan temple, he realised, as he looked more closely at what each scintillating image represented. Even Adam and Eve in Eden had shrugged off a biblical restraint, and stood, confident in their sexual potency, flesh almost vibrating with life. He found he could hardly bear to look at Eve; it was so clearly a self-portrait, and yet he stood there, transfixed by it, feeling any hope of curing his obsession crumbling away the longer he looked at it. It had been hopeless to think he could stop loving her.
He managed to turn away at last, to find himself looking at the large canvas she had been working on so diligently in the studio. Then she had called it The Ghosts of Allansfield, but according to the catalogue it was now called Myth. It was as strange and as troubling as its new name implied; a green and grey composition, with rampant vegetation, full of furtive shadows that seemed more sinister than the various garden spirits who were running across the landscape towards the statue of the great breasted goddess who was heaving herself upright.
“Hugh!” He heard Henrietta’s voice behind him. “What are you doing here?”
“I was invited,” he said, turning to see her standing with his father. “How are you doing, Dad?”
“Fair to moderate,” he said. “Good to see you, though,” he added with a smile, and then caught sight of Myth over Hugh’s shoulder. “Oh, good grief,” he murmured. He sat down and looked intently at it for some minutes.
“What an amazing picture,” he said at last to Hugh. “She’s quite surpassed herself with it. To have caught that atmosphere. I’ve felt it so often myself, but, there it all is... I can’t say in black and white, can I?”
“In glorious Technicolor,” said Henrietta.
Hugh turned away from the picture and watched as Henrietta began a tour of the room. She was wearing a rather dramatic long velvet coat the colour of an aubergine and matching trousers, her glasses perched halfway down her nose as ever, and speaking to the other guests. Her voice was rising above the hum of the crowd with its usual clarity.
“No, I’m afraid she’s not here just yet, but I promise I’ll introduce you the moment she gets here. I’m sure she’ll be so interested to meet you.”
His father must have heard her too, for he remarked to Hugh, with a smile, “There’s some serious networking going on here. That’s the critic from the Financial Times, I think.”
“Great stuff.”
“Reparation,” said Gabriel. He shook his head slightly, and returned his gaze to Myth. “It’s as if she’s always known us, that’s she’s always been one of us. That picture is Allansfield, isn’t it?” he added, as he peered at the detail in the corner, where she had painted the Allansfield cats lying asleep in a patch of sunlight.
Hugh turned slightly and saw from the corner of his eye that Kate had walked into the gallery.
~
For a moment, Kate stood on the threshold, a little astonished by the crowd in the gallery. It was hard to believe that so many people had come to look at her pictures.
“Listen to that buzz,” said Lionel behind her.
“Great,” she said, forcing herself to smile.
“In you go, then,” he said, and gently put his hands on her shoulders, propelling her further into the room. She wondered what everyone was saying about the pictures. Was the hum of chat appreciative?
