Damage (13 page)

He nodded, the moment skipped over. “And my Modigliani? Did you see that one? And Moïse Kisling? Vivienne kind of tucked those away. I think she liked my abstracts more.”

She thought then of the big energetic geometrical daubs she’d identified as a de Kooning, and the mad explosion of shapes she’d thought was Kandinsky. He was so self-effacing about his art, and yet it was a collection that would have stood up well in any gallery or museum in the world.

“They’re all genuine?”

He nodded. “A mix. Some are copies I had commissioned for display. My insurers won’t let the originals out of the vaults.” He shrugged. “It used to give me pleasure.”

“Not any more?” The words were out before she had thought them through. It wasn’t just his art that didn’t give him pleasure any more. It was his life. And, by extension, everything in his life, including her.

“I’m starting again from scratch,” he said. “Rediscovering. Trying to understand what I used to see, if that makes sense. To be honest, I thought the art was a mistake. I didn’t want anything of me in the Hall, but Vivienne did it anyway. She may have a pretentious job title but she knew what she was doing. Now it’s when I come out here with Alfie, or when I’m with my art, that I feel things starting to reawaken. And, now, when I’m with you.”

She didn’t know how to take that. His double-edge thing again: saying things that both give and detract. He’d just told her she made him see the world afresh, but said it in a way that suggested it was just a form of therapy.

They stopped in the dappled shade of another oak tree. The ground was littered with shiny acorns, dry twigs, and a mosaic of copper and bronze leaves. Holly hugged herself; even in the coat she’d borrowed, out of the full sun it was cold as a winter’s morning, and her wet feet and legs didn’t help.

Blunt was gazing off into the distance, hands deep in the pockets of his long tweed coat. She reminded herself how hard it was for him to talk like this, to tell another woman that she got through to him.

Another woman
: not Sarah.

“So, you,” he said. “Art. What do you like? What do you paint? Why?”

She’d already told him she painted watercolors and acrylics, but he meant more than that. “Right now I paint whatever I’m asked to,” she said. “Book covers, packaging design, illustration. It’s all project work: anything that comes up on my course. I don’t have time for anything other than that right now.”

He picked up that she was being evasive straight away. “No,” he said. “I mean what do
you
paint?”

It was Holly’s turn to shrug. “I don’t,” she said. “Not now.” It wasn’t just a time thing. It was... was her life really as empty as his? As devoid of spark? “I don’t know,” she went on. “I really don’t know any more.”

“You should,” he said. “You should find it again, whatever’s missing.”

“I... the inspiration’s gone.”

She saw in his look that he didn’t believe her.

She knew the argument: sports-people don’t wait for inspiration, scientists don’t – and they were all creative in their way. So why was art different?

“It’s not that,” she said. “I just... when you paint for yourself it exposes things. Explores things. I don’t know if I’m ready for that.”

He nodded, looked away. He got that. The whole thing about avoiding anything that would turn over painful memories. That was what his life consisted of, after all.

It came as a shock to realize she couldn’t remember the last thing she’d painted for herself and not as a college assignment. It was so much easier simply following a project brief. If she had to design a breakfast cereal package for her coursework there were clear requirements and constraints, and it was much more a matter of technique. It wasn’t
her
on a sheet of canvas.

“Go on,” he said, and she realized she’d missed something – he’d spoken softly and she’d been looking away, lost in her thoughts.

She looked at him, eyebrows raised questioningly.

“Draw me,” he said. “Paint me. Do whatever it is you do. You should never put something like that aside.”

She shook her head, an instant, gut response. Even as she did so she caught herself looking at him in a subtly different way, and she saw two things.

First, she saw the way the autumn sunlight slanted across his features, emphasizing the angles, the flat surfaces, the faint crow’s feet lines around his eyes, the strength of the jaw-line. The way his brow ridge cast dark shadows and yet those pale gray eyes shone like beacons. She saw his face as a structural thing, to be drawn and painted over, washes of pigment and then fine brushwork to start picking out the detail, bringing it to life on the canvas.

But also, she saw him as an artist really should. Not as a
thing
, but as a story, a narrative with many different threads that wove together. He was loss and grief and a bitter, hard anger. He was passion and desire. He was an aching cavern.

“Go on,” he said again. “Humor me.”

He thought she regarded his suggestion as an indulgence, a whim, but that wasn’t the reason she resisted.

She held back because it scared her.

When he’d asked her why she no longer painted, her reason had been that it exposed her and forced her to explore aspects of her mind she would rather keep hidden. But painting
him
was an even more terrifying prospect. Painting him would force her to explore a part of him that he had been avoiding for all this time.

“It’s okay,” he said. “It’s fine.”

He wrapped his arms around her and she realized she was shaking.

“It’s fine,” he repeated. “It was just an idea.”

She’d thought he hadn’t understood her reaction, but now, perhaps, he really did.

Did he see her as clearly as she believed she saw him?

If he did, and if he still liked what he saw, then... Well, she didn’t know what that meant, but she did know that she was now in territory she had never known before.

Way back, she’d told Tommy she loved him and she’d really believed she did. That head-spinning thing, an infatuation that filled her thoughts when she was with him, and when they were apart. Intense and heady and so strong that she had thought such a feeling could never die.

But this...

She nestled into Blunt’s embrace, still trembling like a frightened animal.

How had they reached this place so quickly?

She didn’t understand what was happening in her head. She felt as if she were standing in the face of a torrent and now she understood what people meant when they described it as being swept away, swept off your feet.

“Be gentle with me,” she murmured, against his chest. “I’m easily broken.”

Briefly, his embrace tightened around her. “Me too,” he said. “Me too.”

§

They followed a trail that led through the long, tussocky grass. A well-worn path. Holly took Blunt’s arm and they walked close together, naturally falling into a shared rhythm. She couldn’t help but think it was another sign of how, when you stripped away all the protective layers, the two of them just
fitted
. A natural, automatic thing.

It was a strange thing to be thinking.

Alfie bounded on ahead, so full of energy. She’d never been an animal person, although she’d helped the Dwyers at their stables and walked people’s dogs for them over the years. Alfie worked, though: for two people still finding their way with each other, the big red setter meant that there was always a point of focus nearby.

As they came around the side of the Hall, Holly saw a couple of white vans pulled up. She remembered the caterers and the band setting up yesterday. It was Saturday, and Blunt was having one of his parties.

Saturday.

“Oh God,” she said, fumbling in the back pocket of her jeans for her phone. “What time is it? I need to be at the cottages.”

It was still only 9.30, so she was fine.

“I’ve got to go,” she said. “I’ve got to work.”

She looked up at the Hall. From this to cleaning at Bank Cottages. Such different worlds.

Blunt was nodding. “Of course,” he said. “You’ll be back, though?”

The Hall was lit up like a theme park. Lights in every window; strings of bulbs in the trees; floodlights illuminating the gardens. A marquee occupied the main area of lawn to the front of the Hall, its front panels rolled up so that it was open to the chill evening air. Despite the coldness, the marquee was packed tight. People dancing and sitting around tables or standing in clusters. Men in anything from dinner jackets to jeans and t-shirts and leather jackets. Women in ball gowns, slinky little black dresses, or jeans. High heels and sneakers, boots and pumps.

Holly paused at the point where the long driveway opened out into the wide graveled area before the Hall. Cars were pulled up here bumper to bumper. Sports cars and classics, BMWs, Mercedes, an old, battered VW.

She surveyed the scene. The cars, the marquee, the Hall. She pulled her coat around herself, starting to shiver. Music pulsed out from somewhere inside the main building, and from speakers in the marquee. She felt a strange thrill, and simultaneously nervous.

She’d heard about Blunt’s parties, but only ever seen the aftermath.

She’d never been to anything like this. So many people. Such...
indulgence
. This moment brought home forcefully just how much she’d closed down a side of herself since her mother had passed away. A whole period of growing up had been skipped over when she moved straight into fully-responsible carer and provider mode.

Now... she didn’t understand how all this worked, what she was supposed to do.

She took a few more steps towards the marquee and peered into its brightly-lit interior. The guests were all strangers. Even the staff... Funny that she should feel more likely to know the waiting staff than the guests. She’d thought at least some of them might be from the village, or even fellow students working a Saturday night, but she recognized no one.

She felt out of place and under-dressed, even though she’d put on her best dress: her own little black number, one that clung to her curves, emphasizing the narrow pinch of her waist. It stopped mid-thigh, her legs covered in sheer black hold-ups. Her heels, outrageously high by her own standards, seemed modest in this company.

Her coat was a fur-lined parka, her winter coat. She hadn’t given it a thought when she’d thrown the coat on: the parka was warm and practical and she’d only be wearing it on the walk up to the Hall, but now she was acutely conscious of it – where others here were either dressed up or dressed down in a kind of shabby chic way, she was merely shabby. Dowdy.
Practical
.

This was a mistake. She should leave now.

§

The main entrance of the Hall was wide open.

A knot of people gathered around outside, all tuxedos and mini-dresses and accents out of some upper-class BBC costume drama. Holly threaded her way through and nobody seemed to even notice her. She must have the air of a waitress, a natural disguise in a setting like this. Maybe she should just pick up a tray and be done with it.

She paused in the doorway, partly to adjust to the light and the sound, but partly also to chastise herself for allowing herself to feel so out of place. First sight of the party and she’d been convinced she shouldn’t be here. It was stupid. Damaging.

She straightened her spine, put her chin up, and felt as if she’d grown a couple of inches taller.

She just needed to find Blunt.
Nicholas
.

And stop feeling so damned self-deprecatory.

§

She worked her way through the crowd to a side-room where she deposited her coat. That made her feel better immediately. Her dress may only be an off-the-peg one from New Look, but nobody was going to know that, were they?

She snagged a flute of champagne from a passing tray and gave a conspiratorial nod to the waiter, as if he must know she was an impostor. The fizz was sharp on the back of her throat and she almost coughed.

She found her way across the main lobby area to the double doors that opened into the ballroom. The band was playing: she recognized the shaven-headed guy slapping away at the double-bass, and the saxophonist riffing on the melody of
It Had To Be You
, pulling the tune about into something both recognizable and new.

They’d played that yesterday evening, when they were setting up and Blunt had swept Holly around the empty dance floor. Now, the two half-familiar musicians seemed like old friends to Holly.

She took another mouthful of the champagne.

Still no sign of Blunt. What did he do at these parties? She’d had the impression he threw himself into them, the perfect host at the heart and soul of everything. That he lost himself in the hubbub. It was his way of forgetting, of losing himself in the thick of it all. But now she had an alternative vision: him on his own, in his study, headphones over his ears, eyes closed, fingers steepled. Alone while the party went on without him.

Another alternative flashed up into her brain before she could squash it: Blunt picking up another of his ‘tarts’. She didn’t believe it for a moment. He wouldn’t. Things were different now, weren’t they?

She saw someone she recognized then, a couple who had been into the Bull a few times. Friends of Ruby’s, and now she remembered that Ruby had said she knew people who came to these parties. The couple – she couldn’t remember their names – were dancing, so she didn’t interrupt. It was good, at least, to know that there might be people here she knew, after all.

She came out into the lobby again and glanced up and that was when she saw him.

He was standing at the top of the stairs, over to one side on the mezzanine area. He leaned forward with his elbows on the marble balustrade, hands clasped, surveying the scene below.

Had he seen her? He gave no indication that he had and now she wondered if he even expected her. This morning he’d asked her to come back, and she’d assumed he meant this evening when she finished work, but that wasn’t necessarily the case. It could have been a far more general
You’ll be back, though?

Again, she was overcome with a wave of uncertainty. She didn’t know what she was doing here, what he expected of her, whether she should even be here at all.