Marriage and Other Games (25 page)
‘How many times do I have to tell you?’ Sebastian’s eyes were cold. ‘I’m not writing a bloody book. I’m not selling my family, my friends or my secrets down the river. Why don’t you understand?’
‘Why don’t you understand?’ she hissed back. ‘We’re talking high six figures here. And unless you’ve got any better ideas - like maybe doing some fucking work - we’re going to have to start selling off your precious family silver.’
Sebastian gave a shrug. ‘Or you could just spread your legs for Martin Galt.’
Catkin gave a gasp. ‘I would never do that.’
‘No?’ Sebastian gave a smile and swayed slightly. Catkin realised he had drunk more than she thought. ‘You thought about it. I could see it in your eyes.’
‘No, I didn’t—’
‘It’s funny. I’m the one who gets all the bad press. But actually, my morals are quite high, in comparison to yours.’
He ambled off, through the hallway and into the dining room, where she could hear him mingling with the other guests as they took their seats. Catkin stood for a moment, stung. Why was it so hard? They should be having a wonderful time. They were both young, gifted and beautiful, with the world at their feet. So why were they at each other’s throats all the time?
Charlotte felt increasingly awkward during what was the most delicious meal she had eaten for days. Crispy pork, roast parsnips and potatoes, carrots tossed in fennel seeds and petits pois à la francaises, served with homemade apple sauce and rich, dark gravy. She felt slightly self-conscious at being the only woman who seemed to be enjoying her food. The two wives were open about avoiding fat and carbohydrates, and just had a sliver of meat and restrained portions of vegetables. Catkin and Penny both toyed with theirs, but made up for it by drinking copious amounts of the delicious wine that Nikita kept pouring.
Boz and Lee, bless them, kept the conversation flowing with wicked anecdotes and topical jokes. Sebastian sat darkly at the foot of the table, drinking steadily, pointedly ignoring Jonathan Elder’s wife on his left and repeatedly whispering in Penny’s ear on his right. At one point Charlotte saw Catkin remonstrate with Nikita, clearly telling her not to fill Sebastian’s glass up so often, but he responded by standing up and fetching the bottle himself. You could have cut the tension between them with the carving knife that sat on the platter bearing the positively medieval leg of pork.
Over apple crumble and Devon clotted cream, Charlotte found herself the object of conversation, as Boz began to ask her about her job. She was hesitant, and supplied only half-truths. To admit to her past clients, many of whom were wealthy and well known, might mean revealing her own identity. Not that she was a celebrity designer, but someone might deduce she’d been working for Breathtaking Designs, and a link might be made from there. She didn’t want to leave any trail. So she played her work down, made out that her clients were less illustrious than they really were.
And all the while Catkin observed her shrewdly, eventually leaning forward with eyes that glittered.
‘So, Charlotte,’ she said, ‘how would you like to come and redecorate Withybrook Hall? I think it’s long overdue.’
At the end of the table Sebastian banged his glass down. Catkin smiled sweetly.
‘I know Sebastian disagrees. And maybe swags and tails will come back in if we wait long enough. But really - it’s all a bit Howards’ Way, don’t you think? What would you do in here?’
‘Well,’ said Charlotte carefully. ‘It all depends on what you wanted. I usually work to a brief.’
‘Say you were given free rein?’ demanded Catkin. ‘How would you give it the kiss of life?’
Charlotte swallowed. She felt as if she was betraying Sebastian somehow. ‘I’d keep it really simple. High-gloss acid yellow walls, maybe? And lots of black framed pictures. Sort of Giverny with a twist.’
Catkin looked around the room, trying to imagine the transformation.
‘I think you should come and give us some ideas,’ she enthused warmly.
Sebastian pushed his chair back from the table. ‘This is my family home,’ he said stiffly. ‘I don’t want it messed about with.’
He stalked out of the room and everyone looked at each other.
‘Think you’ve touched a raw nerve there,’ observed Martin.
Catkin sighed. ‘There’s retro,’ she said. ‘And then there’s hideous.’
Charlotte looked down at her plate, feeling guilty that she had effectively been the start of the argument.
‘Maybe you can talk Sebastian round?’ said Catkin. ‘He seems to have taken to you.’
Charlotte didn’t know quite what to say.
There was absolutely no denying that a commission like this would be a life-saver. As well as being a high-profile, dream job. If she wanted to re-establish herself, it would be an impressive start to her portfolio. But it was clear Sebastian wanted nothing to do with it, and her loyalty at the moment was to him. He’d befriended her, invited her to lunch, made her welcome in his home. She couldn’t just ride roughshod over his finer feelings. And although the house was crying out for a make-over, and her mouth watered at the prospect of being allowed a free rein, she had her principles. So she smiled politely.
‘I’m up to my eyes trying to finish my current project,’ she replied. ‘But perhaps after that . . .’
‘Have you ever considered a career in television?’ Martin intervened smoothly. ‘Maybe you should come and do a screen test and throw some ideas around? There must be something new we could do with interior decorating that doesn’t involve men with double-barrelled names and flouncy sleeves.’
Catkin felt like plunging the cheese knife into his heart. He was deliberately goading her, she felt sure of it. Next he’d be offering Penny Silver a slot as a celebrity doctor.
But Charlotte turned to him with the sweetest of smiles.
‘Absolutely not,’ she said firmly. ‘I’m very camera shy. And I love what I do. So there’d be no point.’
‘Everyone,’ objected Martin, ‘wants to be famous.’
‘Actually, no. They don’t.’ Charlotte corrected him. ‘It doesn’t interest me in the least, I can assure you.’
She could feel her cheeks redden. Any minute now someone might start grilling her even more closely, and she didn’t feel up to any sort of interrogation. Luckily at that moment, Nikita came in with a tray of tiny silver espresso cups and a plate full of dusted chocolate truffles, and so the attention was turned away from her.
Narrow escape, thought Charlotte. Narrow escape.
At the other end of the table, Penny felt sour. No one had offered her a bloody screen test. She wished she had the nerve to go and find Sebastian and console him. Slide her arm around his shoulders and murmur a few words of solace. He had been whispering in her ear conspiratorially throughout lunch, bitchy but witty remarks about the other guests, and Penny had felt her insides turn to syrup at his proximity. But now his mood had blackened, she no longer felt like his partner in crime. One thing was certain: his wife was a nightmare. A self-serving control freak. What the hell was he doing with her? He was a free spirit, a mischievous, puckish creature who needed the lightest of reins to keep him on track, not an overbearing harridan cracking the whip.
‘OK, everybody. Make-over time.’
Everyone’s head swivelled. Sebastian was standing in the doorway, grinning. He was holding a selection of paint pots in each hand.
‘Let’s see what we can do, shall we?’
No one breathed a word as he sauntered over and stood in front of the main wall with its outdated self-striped paper.
Catkin clutched the table. She knew there was no point in remonstrating with Sebastian when he was like this. He was like a child. Any attention and he simply behaved even worse. The best tactic was to ignore him.
The gentleman in Jonathan Elder started to rise to his feet to stop him, but then thought better of it. Why stop a bad boy in the middle of behaving badly? This could be history in the making.
Martin Galt sat back in his chair with a smirk. He was going to enjoy this.
And so everyone at the table watched in horrified disbelief as Sebastian took each can of paint and sloshed it against the wall. Arcs of colour shot through the air, hitting their target with a satisfying splat.
After a few moments, he stepped back and surveyed his handiwork with satisfaction.
‘What do you think?’
Nobody quite dared reply.
Sebastian tipped his head to one side and nodded approvingly.
‘Jackson Pollock, eat your fucking heart out.’
Eight
O
n Monday morning, Sebastian lay in bed, the duvet pulled up to his chin. He knew he had behaved appallingly at the weekend and had undermined his wife at every opportunity. Of course, he knew what he should do was pick up the phone to Catkin and apologise. But she never accepted apologies graciously, she always made him feel worse, so there was no point.
n Monday morning, Sebastian lay in bed, the duvet pulled up to his chin. He knew he had behaved appallingly at the weekend and had undermined his wife at every opportunity. Of course, he knew what he should do was pick up the phone to Catkin and apologise. But she never accepted apologies graciously, she always made him feel worse, so there was no point.
The lunch party had disintegrated pretty quickly after his little one-man show. The only person he felt had been on his side was Penny, who gave his hand a squeeze and whispered ‘Well done’ as she kissed him goodbye. He and Catkin hadn’t even had a showdown. She’d merely packed up her things and called Tommy to take her back to the station early, her silence speaking volumes.
In the end, he had gone into the dining room and tried to clean up the mess as best he could, because otherwise Stacey would try to do it. She’d been quite happy to tell him what she thought.
‘Having a tantrum, were you?’ she’d asked him. ‘Well, I hope it was worth it.’
She made him feel thoroughly ashamed, but then she’d had six children, so she was used to bad behaviour.
The underlying problem, the reason he was being so utterly vile and antagonistic, was he still couldn’t think of a single thing to paint. Every time he squeezed a blob of raw umber or ultramarine or crimson lake onto his palette and started to dabble, he froze inside. It was all futile. He didn’t see the point. Catkin would tell him soon enough. The point, she would say, was cold hard cash. But Sebastian had never found money a motive. On the contrary, it was positively inhibiting. The success of Alter Egos, which he had meant to destroy but had ironically been such a triumph, had repressed him even more. And now he felt boxed in, claustrophobic, frustrated, angry - and of course he ended up taking it out on Catkin, because he was frightened.
He couldn’t admit it to anyone, but he hadn’t actually put brush to paper since that last exhibition. He had four white walls in a gallery waiting to be filled just after Christmas, the art world were holding their breath, and he had nothing, not even a germ of an idea. He spent his days lying in bed playing poker online, smoking a bit of weed, wandering down to the post office to collect the various magazines and newspapers he had on order -
Q
, Art Monthly, Sporting Life, Vanity Fair - in the hopes that one of them might stimulate him to have an idea, that one of them might contain an article or an image that might unlock his creativity. But so far they had only served to inhibit him further. He veered between feeling scathingly critical of other people’s work to thinking everyone else was a genius and he was a fraud.
Q
, Art Monthly, Sporting Life, Vanity Fair - in the hopes that one of them might stimulate him to have an idea, that one of them might contain an article or an image that might unlock his creativity. But so far they had only served to inhibit him further. He veered between feeling scathingly critical of other people’s work to thinking everyone else was a genius and he was a fraud.
When he was little, he had wandered the countryside with a tin of watercolours and a pad of paper, doing slightly surreal paintings of his surroundings: wild, exuberant work that showed no restraint, just raw talent. Looking back, that was when he had been happiest. When he had painted for the sheer pleasure of it, with no pressure, no demands, no expectations. And he was angry that the thing he loved had been tainted. When he looked at a blank canvas now, his head filled with questions: would it be good enough for the public? Would it be well received? Would it make money? Time and again he told himself those things didn’t matter, but of course they did. Catkin had spelled it out to him time and time again.
He lay in bed until midday feeling crippled with malaise. Why the hell was he such a coward? Why couldn’t he just march into the studio and get on with it? What was he so terrified of? He only needed to make a start, and he needn’t show anyone else, after all. But then Sebastian knew he was his own harshest critic, that to execute anything that pleased him even remotely would be a Herculean task, especially the way he was feeling.
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