Aunt Margaret's Lover (22 page)

'You've seen them?'

'Oh yes. I'm a friend of the family now.' He laughed at my expression. 'I
love
the home counties in spring . . . And, as I said to Linda only the other day, as we prune in the garden, so we can prune an art collection to make it better and stronger. I'm cataloguing and considering and taking my time. I have her in my palm.' He held it out flat and then suddenly squeezed it tight. 'Swimming-pool - really! Silly woman.'

'You sound positively venomous.'

He took my arm and led me towards a series of later Auerbachs. 'He goes on in strength to the end,' Fisher said, pointing at the series, 'and has the courage aforethought, or simply the need, still to take risks.'

'I'd rather have these than my Picasso,' I said.

He tapped my arm again and smiled his wicked smile. 'Ah, now you are being greedy.
That
I cannot do . . .'

We walked on.

'I've heard from Saskia,' he said. 'She's bent on getting Dickie a show over here.'

I inspected the paint on a canvas a little more closely than was strictly necessary - a thing only nervous amateurs do at exhibitions.

'It'll die down,' I said. 'Once she's back.'

I bought the catalogue for Sassy and posted it with a short, uninformative note.
Any
daughter would think her father's work brilliant. It didn't mean that it was. Fisher would soon sort it out. He had lost interest, more or less, in the contemporary art scene. Oh yes, she would forget all about it once she was back. April was a long, long way away. Meanwhile - there was some fun to be had. Oxford, Essex - it was all the same - and I liked the idea of baroque.

At about three minutes after half past seven the doorbell rang. I noted the three minutes because such things were small clues to the persona I could expect. Have no expectations, I reminded myself, as I walked fairly casually down the stairs, the skirt rustling above my knees and the stretchy lace clinging perhaps a little too tightly. Have no expectations.

I opened the door. Had I been the owner of expectations, I would have been forced to let them go. For standing on the doorstep, along with Oxford, and slightly in front of him, looking distinctly
resolute,
was Verity.
At
whom he was smiling politely.

'Hello,' she said gaily, 'I've just introduced myself.'

I grimaced at her, righted myself, and smiled warmly over her head. The smile was returned, all innocence. How could he possibly know what Verity suspected of him?

Now, here is a conundrum. When your new man is standing next to your friend, how do you manage to be unwelcoming to her so that he doesn't think of you as some kind of treacherous monster? Of course, I wanted to say, 'Piss off, Verity,' but instead, for the sake of my standing in Oxford's eyes, I smiled sweetly and said, 'Come in' to both of them.

I held open the door. Oxford passed by first, but before I could hiss a valedictory message over my shoulder at Verity he turned round to say something complimentary. I had no idea what he was complimenting because my brain was entirely engaged in hoping for Verity's demise. Also because she was hissing at me that I was showing too much cleavage, which is a bit thick coming from her. Her breasts seem to start just below her collarbone in a decent set of half grapefruits, and she's never been backward in showing the pips.

By the time we were in the sitting-room Verity was a fact of life and I had to introduce them. Verity smiled, shook his hand and scrutinized him closely.

'You have a mole on your left cheek,' she pronounced and scrutinized it as if preparing an Identikit.

I left them to it. 'Just going to get my
coat,'
I called as I made for the sitting-room door. 'Verity, did you want something?'

'Well, I wouldn't say no to a drink,' she said, which was not what I meant at all.

Neither would I, I thought. I fumed on the stairs and kept my voice light. 'Simon?'

'No thanks,' he called cheerily. 'But don't let me stop you.'

'I think we ought to go,' I said when I returned with my coat on. I sounded horribly like a henpecker, and I added that it was Simon's birthday. Verity, if you please, said that she already knew this because I had told her yesterday. Then, if you double please, she fixed him with a chirpy look and said that she and I had no secrets (That's all you know, I thought) and she knew
all
about him.

'Did you want anything?' I asked her again pointedly. No, she was just passing and had been alerted by seeing a man on my doorstep, she said. 'We are very Neighbourhood Watch here,' she added significantly.

Somehow I managed to get them out of the house. But Verity stuck close and it seemed not impossible she was going to join us. But when they shook hands, I said a very firm 'Goodbye', which gave her no chance.

Even so, before going, she did a circuit of Oxford's car, an unobtrusive kind of vehicle, and made of it what an archaeologist might make of calcified Dinosaur droppings.

'Hmm,' she said. 'Renault, silver grey, H reg.' She read out the number-plate slowly. 'Easily remembered,' she said to him, gimlet-eyed. He looked rather blank at this but showed himself to be game by saying, 'Yes, I suppose it is.' And I dived into the car.

So much for the beginning, I thought, though I was rather more worried about the ending. Verity was perfectly capable of borrowing a ladder and popping her head round the bedroom window. I didn't think I would be able, if asked, to keep my mind on rampant carnality
chez moi
that night. Sometimes, despite myself, I yearned for Verity to get back with the dreaded Mark and just leave me alone.

I gave him a small book of Inigo Jones sketches, usefully on sale at the Hayward that day, and a card of Turner's
Tintern.
'I'm touched,' he said.

'They'll be a bit out of place in the Nicaraguan jungle.' 'They'll be a bit of England.'

'Wales, in the case of
Tintern:
And then, because I could not resist the poke, I added, 'Right continent at least.'

Conversation was a great deal easier this time around, though a little probing about his marriage elicited a rapid shut-down. Quite nicely done, skilfully in fact, but a shutdown nevertheless. Same for 'Why Nicaragua?' Fair enough, I decided. I would not pry. This was a jaunt for a year, not an invitation for life. So I could just sit back and enjoy the simplicity of it all.

'I never married, for which I am jolly thankful,' I said. 'Given the ratio of misery to happiness.'

'And so you select a lover like this whenever you feel so inclined? That's enviably positive.'

'Oh no. This is the first time. You see before you a lonely hearts virgin.'

He laughed but with a distinct edginess.

'I mean that I've only had one bash at it . . .' Too late, I winced inwardly at the romantic delicacy of my words. In these gauzy days of first love here I was sounding like an old colonial major. 'And you?'

'You are the only one I have met. I liked your smile.'

'What if I'd turned out to be horrible?'

'I'd have gone for no. 2 reserve'

I felt a nasty bristling sensation around the back of my neck. Damn Darwin. I concentrated very hard on the froth of my cappuccino, running the spoon back and forth - a very soothing motion under the circumstances. Despite everything there is that residual worm of possession. I had no idea what my voice would come out like when next I spoke -somewhere between a hiss and a squeak, I suspected.

'Hmm,' I said, noncommittally, sipping the coffee.

'Anyway, here we are.' He raised his glass. 'I don't like that side of things. A bit like a cattle market.'

'Catalogue,' I said. 'And you have to assume that the people who go in for it are as tough as you are.'

He nodded. 'To the year ahead.' He smiled. I smiled. 'May we both get what we want.' We chinked glasses and drank. The hackles went down a bit.

We lingered over more cappuccino and I asked him if he had ever read Ovid on the matter of lovers. He looked a bit taken aback, as people often do when asked if they have read Roman poetry. I really do not see why. After all, there is great comfort to be had, when you are floundering around feeling like the first ever twerp, to find out that people were doing and feeling exactly the same two thousand years ago.

'He's very funny about it all - how to get the girl, how to keep her, what she's probably thinking, how to go about giving gifts and what to expect in return,
quid
pro
quo
..
.'

'Sounds very cynical.'

'Not at all. It's a blueprint and honest. He says what's in his mind really, as opposed to what others pretend. In the erotic poems, he gives away great chunks of advice which is both hilarious and painful at the same time. Like if you have a married lover and must dine with both her and her husband, when it is impossible to touch or speak of love and you are on fire, you must devise a system of body language instead. He says,

' "When you are thinking of the last time we made love together

Touch your rosy cheek with one elegant thumb.

If you are cross with me but can't say so, then pinch the bottom of your ear lobe
...

When yo
u yearn for your husband to suff
er some well-merited misfortune

Place your hands on the table as though in prayer
..
. Slip neat wine in his glass if you get the chance
...
If he passes out comfortably, drowned in sleep and liquor,

We must improvise as occasion dictates
..."'

He leaned forward, interested. Ovid always interests people - he's so wicked. 'Could you remember to do all that? I mean, suppose you got something wrong? Pinched an earlobe when you meant to make praying hands?'

'Doesn't matter, really. The game's the thing.'

'Is it?' He was looking at me very steadily.

'It is,' I said firmly.

'We understand that?'

'We do.'

He leaned back, just about as relieved, I should say, as I was. 'Well one thing's for sure,' he said, as our bill arrived, 'you can't go touching your rosy cheek with your elegant thumb with me yet.'

As Aurora Leigh, that talented orphan girl with the creditable pen, observed, 'We have hearts within/Warm, live, improvident, indecent hearts .
..'
Well might she say it -and Ms Browning report it - for despite our
knowing
for a medical and biological
fact
that hearts are no more likely to be the seat of emotion than ankles, nevertheless - and at this particular moment I could vouch for it - they
certainly
feel as if they are. Mine went another one of those almighty bumps and my thumb felt several stages short of elegance. As for my rosy cheek, I had absolutely no doubt it was iridescently puce as an Auerbach.

Lord,
Lord,
sex is such an item .
..

We held hands walking back to the car, which felt all right if slightly teenage. And I suppose because the Pinot Grigio had been as good as the company, I felt emboldened, and a little vino-veritassed, to say, 'You haven't commented on how I look. My hair, for instance
...'

He stood still and stared. 'Oh yes I did,' he said, 'but with your friend there I don't think you heard. You look . . . um . . . very bold.'

'Bloody Verity,' I growled, and the Pinot Grigio loosening the treacherous monster's tongue at last. 'She's so
nosey’

'She certainly took a lot of interest in my car,' he said. 'Odd for a woman. At the risk of being sexist, you're usually concerned with more interesting things than tail-lights and number-plates. . .'

'Oh,' I said, 'Verity's a
writer.''

That seemed to satisfy him.

'She was very much in evidence,' he said cautiously.

'Ah well,' I said, 'the thing is she doesn't exactly
know
about the advertisements. She thinks we just sort of. . . met
...
in a pub. So she's a bit suspicious. Hence turning up on the doorstep, and all that stuff about your mole.'

He laughed. 'Why don't you want to tell her?'

'Because she will disapprove. Because it will spoil the game.' I sounded exactly like a petulant child but couldn't stop now. 'Part of the game is that everybody else must believe in it. They really won't if I say I go
t you out of a catalogue. Even I
might not. There's something about being surrounded by believers. You catch their faith - like measles and Billy Graham.'