Facing the Light (11 page)

The scones had been put away in a tin. The tin was on the dresser, ready to go in the pantry. Rilla stood up, went over to it, opened it and helped herself to another one. She brought this to the table and sat down again opposite Efe.

‘Go on, then,' she said, reaching for the butter. ‘Tell me all about it.'

The back door opened as she spoke, and James came into the kitchen. Efe made a rueful face at Rilla and stood up.

‘Hello, Dad, got to go, I'm afraid. Sorry about that, Rilla. Never mind. Catch you later, perhaps.'

‘What was all that about?' asked James, as Efe left the room. Rilla looked up at her brother-in-law.

‘I really have no idea. I think Efe was going to tell me something. Confess, perhaps. D'you think he has things to confess, James?'

‘Shouldn't be bit surprised. Chip off the old block, wouldn't you say?'

In Rilla's opinion, James rather overdid the old roué routine. True, he looked the part, but he was altogether too moustache-twirling for comfort and that was without a moustache. She suppressed a giggle.

‘What are you laughing at?' James asked her.

‘Nothing, really,' Rilla said. ‘Nothing important.'

‘Jolly nice to see someone laughing, I can tell you. It's been quite tense round here lately. Gwen's so busy with everything to do with the party that we've hardly exchanged two words in the last couple of days. Still, I expect things'll go back to normal after Sunday, wouldn't you say?'

‘You're never here, James,' Rilla said. ‘I arrived yesterday just after lunch and it was breakfast today before I laid eyes on you. You can't altogether blame Gwen, you know.'

‘Well, I was seeing people in town, of course. Couldn't be helped.' He pulled on his earlobe. Rilla had read a magazine article once called ‘What your body-language says about you' and was almost sure that earlobe-pulling meant that person was lying through their teeth. He'd probably been knocking it back rather too much in a bar somewhere.

‘You look very well, James,' she said, and was rewarded by his famously brilliant smile. It was true, too. He certainly didn't look like someone who drank too much. His skin was more lined, and his hair greyer than
Efe's but they shared the stature and the charm. Such a shame, Rilla thought, that he knows it. He'd be completely irresistible if he was unaware of the effect his looks have. As it is, he's too fond of himself by half. He was the kind of person – and there were plenty of men as well as women who were like this – who couldn't pass a mirrored surface without checking to see whether their beauty was undimmed.

‘And you are as lovely as ever, Rilla dear,' he said, automatically. Rilla smiled. He'd been saying the same things to her for all the years he'd known her, and once upon a time, might even have meant them. Still, it was kind of him to pretend she hadn't changed, and she appreciated the gallantry.

*

Fiona was feeling queasy. Pregnancy was the biggest drag going and part of her felt resentful that she had to go through it yet again so soon. Douggie was only two and a half, for heaven's sake. Bless him! Her son was very busy on the floor at her feet, constructing a fort or something out of Lego bricks. She'd produced an heir, someone to inherit the Walsh Collection and everything that went with it, hadn't she? Surely now she could have a few years off to recover her waistline and have a bit of fun?

She wondered whether she was going to be able to get through dinner without throwing up. It wasn't fair. Some people only got morning sickness, but she had it at different times of day, and it ought to have been getting better by now. She listened to Efe, waiting for him to start humming in the bathroom, which he often did, but he was oddly silent. He'd been in a funny mood altogether for the last few days and, anyway, he was always a bit strange down here at Willow Court. Never mind, she thought, he knows I'll be here for him whatever. She wondered why it was that some women were forever running their husbands down. She always
supported Efe. Some of her friends thought she was mad to be so submissive and she knew that Chloë certainly, and Beth too, probably, reckoned she was nothing but a living doormat. Fiona didn't care. She regarded obedience as a wife's duty. That wasn't a fashionable view, and privately she thought that was most likely why divorce was so common. Women just had no idea, some of them. Men needed to be jollied along, rather like children did, and it didn't surprise her at all that she got her own way much more frequently than most of her friends managed to.

Fiona knew very well that no one gave her credit for any intelligence, and there were, she acknowledged, many things she had no idea about. She'd left school with two GCSEs and they were in Art and Food Technology. But there was more to her than everyone thought. She may not have read many books, but she understood how to please a husband.

It wasn't hard for her, of course. Who in their right mind wouldn't adore Efe? She did sometimes wish that he could have been named differently. Efe was silly, really, like a lot of nicknames, and Fiona avoided it by saying ‘my husband' when talking to others and ‘Darling' or, more embarrassingly, ‘Pie' when she addressed him directly. ‘Pie' was a silly nickname too, short for ‘Sweetiepie' and he frowned blackly at her whenever she uttered it outside their bedroom, so she tried hard not to let it cross her lips once he was fully dressed.

He emerged from the bathroom with his mobile clamped to his ear. She was used to that, but still, it was a bit much to be still talking just before drinks. His whole family was here, so it must be business. Fiona looked at him and tried to guess who he was speaking to and what exactly was going on. It was something to do with the Collection, she realized, but was a bit hazy about the
details. All she knew was that her husband was preoccupied and she wished he'd go back to being his usual self again. She needed him to act as a sort of guard around her, to protect her from his family.

They'd taken some getting used to. Efe was the only one, for instance, who took after James and Gwen in any way that Fiona could see. Her heart still gave a little jump in her chest whenever she looked at him – handsome, well-dressed, successful – everything a man should be. His father was like that as well. Oldish now, of course, but he must have been a heart-throb when he was young. Gwen, too, was always expensively dressed, even if style wasn't exactly her middle name, so what had gone wrong with Alex and Chloë? Neither of them would have looked out of place lying around in a shop doorway with a thin dog on the end of a string.

Fiona sighed. Efe was worried these days, and it was because of the bloody paintings that were everywhere you looked in this house. She didn't understand the ins and outs of it all exactly, and in fact was rather bored by the whole subject, but they had been in Efe's mind.
They're my responsibility ultimately
was something he said quite often.
Leonora won't last for ever, and then they're in my hands
.

Even though she'd been a married woman for more than three years and had a baby and everything, the old lady made her feel about six years old, shy and tongue-tied and silly in every possible way. It wasn't anything she actually said, but just the way she looked at you. It drove Fiona mad, but she couldn't ever admit it. Leonora had cast a sort of spell on the whole family and criticism of any kind was strictly forbidden. She'd more than once pointed out to Efe that when his grandmother died, Willow Court would actually pass to Gwen, his mother. And Efe always laughed and said, ‘Well, yes, of course,
but that means me, really, doesn't it? Ma will do exactly as I say, because she knows I'm right.'

He said it perfectly seriously, and somehow it didn't even seem conceited, just commonsensical.

Fiona thought the terms of Leonora's will rather unfair, and had once dared to say, ‘What about your aunt Rilla? Doesn't she get anything? She's Leonora's daughter too, isn't she?'

Efe had smiled and said, ‘She'll get a fair old dollop of money, don't you fret. And she'd hate to be saddled with dealing with the paintings. Willow Court is not her favourite place in the world, and besides, she leads such a rackety existence. If it was left to her, it'd be some kind of commune within the decade. And although she works hard at looking like some kind of gipsy, she's actually not short of a bob or two. She still works, you know. In telly and sometimes even in movies.'

Ethan Walsh's paintings hung on almost every available wall at Willow Court. The entire art world, it seemed to Fiona, kept approaching Leonora, writing to her and telephoning her, wanting her to give permission for the Collection to be rehung somewhere a little more accessible to the Great British Public than the depths of Wiltshire. Leonora wouldn't hear of such a thing. The paintings stayed exactly where the first Ethan had wanted them to be. Fiona never breathed a word to anyone, but she couldn't really see what all the fuss was about. Everyone in the family, and crowds of other people, said the pictures were masterpieces. They spoke about the Walsh technique for laying colour on canvas, his method of depicting light; the strange imagination which lifted ordinary objects into some other, more surreal universe, but Fiona couldn't really warm to the paintings. They were troubling, that was true, and when she was actually here, she found herself not looking straight at them if she could help it.

Efe was still on the phone. She worked out from what was being said that he was discussing some boring thing about money. She knew, because he moaned about it so much, that things were hard for him at work, as far as money went. That was one reason he was so keen that Leonora should agree to his plan; he stood to earn a huge commission if the deal went through. Fiona would have been quite happy to give him as much money as he needed, because she had more than enough, but once when she'd dared to suggest it, Efe's eyes blazed at her and he'd sounded so enraged that she'd never suggested it again.

‘Fine kind of a husband I'd be if I came running to my wife every time I had cash-flow problems,' he'd almost spat at her, and she blushed and said nothing, which was silly of her. She ought to have fought back a bit, said that now they were man and wife her money was his, and so on, but she hadn't dared to utter a word at the time.

Now, she stopped listening to Efe's conversation and put it out of her mind entirely. Instead she thought about maybe being in this documentary that was being made. Leonora was a vain old thing, really. She couldn't resist the idea of being on TV and it was typical of her to arrange for filming to take place during her birthday celebrations. The house and garden would be looking mega-lovely and she'd be seen at her best, every inch the grande dame. Efe, she knew, would make sure he was in plenty of shots, and quite right too. She stared at her husband and thanked her lucky stars, as she did every day, that he'd chosen her, out of everyone else in the world, to be his wife.

Efe caught Fiona looking at him as he spoke and signalled that he'd be finished soon. And he smiled at her. Her heart melted. There were times when he went for ages without smiling at her and then she felt as though the sun had gone behind a cloud. He spoke unkindly to
her, too, occasionally, but only when he was fed up with her, and Fiona resolved each time that happened to try as hard as she could not to annoy him. She'd worked out some of the things he didn't like her doing and saying, and whenever he frowned or showed his disapproval she made a note of what it was that had angered him, and determined to try to be more the sort of person he wanted her to be. She loved him too much, that was the problem. She knew all his faults and still loved him. Sometimes she wondered what it was about her that had attracted him in the first place. She knew she was pretty, but feared that prettiness on its own wouldn't be enough to keep him interested in her for ever. Her mind went back, as it often did, to the very best day of her life. Her wedding day.

They'd got married in December, and the snow was falling as they left the church, like confetti dropping down from heaven. Her dress was cream satin, its train stitched with snowflake-shaped jewels, and her veil was like a cloud of lace around her head. She'd carried a bouquet of white and pale pink roses, and in the photographs you could see the ribbons falling from the flowers and making three shining lines on the lustrous fabric of her skirt. Oh, she'd been beautiful then, all right, and Efe had looked at her with something like adoration. Not like now, when she felt bloated all the time and nauseous too. At home, there was a whole album of photographs, taken by Alex, which showed her looking her best and she wished she'd brought it down here to comfort her. There'd be so many people here on Sunday for the party. So many women, all dressed up. What if one of them caught Efe's eye?

Cold dread rose in her as she began to think about it. She found it hard not to worry about all those hours when he was at the office, away from her. Wasn't there a good chance that he'd meet someone else, someone cleverer than she was? Fiona made a huge effort not to
think about it, and was quite determined to stay married to Efe. She would do exactly what he wanted in every way. He must never have anything to complain about, ever. If being pregnant was what was required, she would bear one child after another, just as long as he never left her. Her life, her house – everything – was absolutely as she wanted it to be, and that was how it must, must, must remain.

‘Come on, Fiona,' said Efe, putting the mobile away. ‘Let's get down there. Come on, Douggie. We're going down to the garden to see the others.'

‘Piggyback!' the little boy said, but Efe replied, ‘Tomorrow, old chap, okay?'

Fiona knew he was anxious not to crease his shirt. Well, so what? There was nothing in the world wrong with wanting to look nice. She followed her husband and child out of their room and down the stairs to the hall.