Muddy Waters (33 page)

All the same, and just in case, Adrian slid past the front of the house, crawling on all-fours past the front gate and finding himself at the sinewy feet of Ellen MacIver. She was carrying, inadequately covered by a flapping bin liner, a catering size box of pork and herb sausages and an expression of embarrassed confusion. For once he remembered something useful that he'd read: never explain, never apologize. He continued to crawl on past her as if it was a perfectly normal way of moving till he was safely past all possible viewpoints from his house and then stood up and greeted Ellen who was waiting to be told what was going on. ‘Good evening,' he said, using the kind of exaggerated polite tone that goes well with the raising of a hat.

‘What were you doing down there?' Ellen couldn't resist the question, ‘If you don't mind me asking that is.'

Adrian treated her to a manic smile and she backed away slightly. ‘I do mind,' he said, ‘though I'll make you a deal: I won't tell everyone that you're planning full-scale catering for tomorrow when you know it's against the rules,' – he pointed at the box of sausages – ‘if you don't mention that you've just seen me.'

Ellen smiled uncertainly, looking as if she was wondering how to mollify a mugger. She shifted the huge box as if there might just be somewhere around her body where she could hide it and then gave up the struggle, defeated. ‘Oh, all right then, I won't say anything. I shall just go on wondering . . .' She wandered away towards her house, muttering quietly to herself and looking forward to telling Fergus.

Peggy and Ted made an early morning start, equipped with a supermarket trolley each – freshly purloined from the local store and with fully working wheels, not pulled out from those fatally twisted and half buried ones in the mud on the bottom of the river. By soon after eight they were waking and infuriating the other residents with the clattering of hard wheels on rough paving as they made their laborious journeys from barge to shore and across on the ferry to the van that Ted had hired. On their way they met early visitors who were already stepping carefully onto the ferry, eager to snap up Giuliana's best scarves or rummage through Willow's selection of imperfect bargains. Some simply wanted to whisk round the exhibits and move onto Sainsbury's before the crowds arrived, content that they'd at least have picked up something to talk about. Others took their inquisitive time, peering through splintered fences and uncurtained windows, hoping to see some of the goings-on that Mr Karesh the newsagent so luridly described, sniffing at the air for the sweet scent of cannabis and waiting to catch a resident wearing nothing but woad and a beatific smile.

Philip Porter took his time and arrived just after ten. This way, he was sure he wouldn't arouse suspicion by being too eagerly early. He'd been ready to leave his home for some time before that, with his late mother's second best shopping bag containing a small camera and a pair of light leather gloves. He wouldn't look out of place snapping away like a tourist, he thought gleefully, but just in case anyone recognized him, he'd also got a Panama hat and a pair of gold-rimmed sunglasses. He felt a dashing excitement, actually setting foot onto the rickety ferry and fastidiously pulling on his gloves before attempting to turn the handle. Two elderly ladies joined him on the platform and looked at him doubtfully, as if they couldn't quite believe that he, so scrupulously dressed with the hat, his cricket club blazer and a neat maroon cravat, could actually organize the energy needed to make the ferry move. Philip winced as flakes of rust fell off the handle onto his gleaming shoes. The whole thing was falling to pieces, he thought. When they finally got their bridge they should name it after him out of sheer gratitude because surely it was only a matter of a very, very short time before the ferry collapsed and drowned someone – maybe that pretty young red-haired mother and her little girl. They'd be sorry then, wouldn't they, he thought with relish as he and the ferry reached the island shore and he stepped out onto its pagan land.

‘Nice day for it,' Peggy greeted Philip as she waited by the landing stage with her loaded trolley.

‘For what?' Philip Porter enquired, recognizing the rebel bargee and wary of what she might mean. She might think it was a nice day for shoving him back towards the way he'd just come, but without the means of the ferry. Something told him the residents wouldn't exactly be rushing to pull him out of the river.

‘Moving house. Or boat,' she told him. ‘Give me a hand with this lot,' she ordered, shoving the trolley towards the ferry and running over the front of his glassily polished shoe.

Philip squared his shoulders and obediently manhandled the trolley onto the ferry platform. It was precariously loaded with books, bin-bags full of what he assumed were soft furnishings, a stack of saucepans. Cutlery jingled in a basket at the bottom of the trolley.

‘Performance art,' muttered one of the two old ladies knowingly, from where they lingered at a polite distance and watched intently. One of them cuddled her handbag close to her stomach as if afraid someone would ask her to open it and throw money into a hat.

‘You're actually leaving then?' Philip Porter couldn't believe the luck of it. The old bag was going. He'd won, though without much of a fight. He'd been hoping to spend the day in the exciting pursuit of damning evidence – hygiene regulations abused, broken bye-laws – enough for an instant and dramatic eviction. Water bailiffs still existed, he was pretty sure of that, though whether they'd have been willing to come along with a removal order and tow away Peggy's barge with a hefty dredger or tug he wasn't sure. He could only hope. Now he felt curiously let down. Peggy's voluntary removal downgraded his efforts. Cheapened them. Ted Kramer must have said something, the right thing. The thing he'd just not thought of himself. It was tempting to tip the whole trolley into the cut and watch her cushions float downstream but he couldn't of course do that. It would count as litter and be quite against the grain.

‘You're not ill, are you?' Stella asked Adrian as he lay inert and shallowly breathing on his side of the bed. She thought he very much resembled a cat lying low under a sofa in fear of a visit to the vet. ‘It's not like you to stay in bed this late. I suppose you drank too much last night. I didn't hear you come in. You always creep about when you're pissed,' she said cheerfully, ‘that way you think I won't notice. Once I saw you say “sshh” to your own reflection.'

Adrian groaned and wondered what to let her think. ‘No, I'm OK,' he admitted, ‘just, you know, post-book inertia, I suppose.'

‘Oh
that
,' Stella said, climbing out of bed. ‘We real people call it laziness.'

‘You're being bossy again,' he grumbled from the depths of the duvet. ‘Don't you have any sympathy?'

‘Not when there's a lot to do,' she told him briskly. ‘Ruth could need a bit of help today, selling her stuff. And there'll be people up and down the garden all day. It's a big day for her, she's never had to deal with real live face-to-face customers before. We might need to pick up the emotional pieces if she gets the sort who go round the summerhouse picking up and putting down and telling her how much they
don't
like everything.'

Adrian sat up and rubbed his eyes. ‘You don't have much faith, do you? She might have sold the lot by eleven and spend the rest of the day counting her money and grinning at everyone.'

Stella opened the bathroom door, reached in and switched on the shower taps. ‘Of course I hope she'll do well,' she told him, ‘I suppose I just like to imagine the worst as a kind of insurance so that it doesn't creep up and surprise me. That way, the only surprises I
do
get are the nice ones.' With that she disappeared into the bathroom and started splashing about.

Adrian groaned, muttered, ‘Bloody Pollyanna again,' and slid down under the duvet once more, wondering how soon he dare face the day and Abigail.

Abigail found the little doll under her pillow. She'd had a vaguely uncomfortable feeling all night that she wasn't the only item in the bed. It had one black-headed pin stuck right through where its heart should be and she knew immediately who'd put it there. She sighed and smiled to herself in the mirror. ‘Ruth will like Sussex. Soon she'll be thanking me,' she said. She pulled the pin out from the doll's body with difficulty. It must have been baked in, she realized, wondering just how much damage its powers would have caused if she'd been inclined even the slightest bit towards superstition. She put the little doll in a drawer in the blue painted chest and closed it firmly. Venetia would love it, she knew, but somehow it didn't seem at all like a toy.

Willow floated around the gallery feeling important in a way she never had before, not even at her own exhibitions, or the first day she'd seen her work displayed in Liberty's window. Artistically, she felt she was Bernard's equal, that their work, arranged together like this, complemented each other's perfectly. She had been photographed with him, and being the opposite to Abigail in terms of superstitious leanings, felt that this somehow linked their souls. More importantly, they would appear together in the press, in art magazines and at least one (he promised) Sunday colour supplement. Willow dreamed forward to the next set of photos in which she would appear with Bernard. In them she planned to be wearing the antique Russian wedding robe she had kept wrapped in tissue paper and stored high above the damp level in her cabin, ever since the BBC costume auction that a psychic medium in Muswell Hill had told her she must attend. Thoughtfully, as she watched visitors nervously stroking her exhibits, she tugged at her straggly hair. When it grew this time it would be lustrous and golden, she decided. Not only had the man of her fantasies been lacking from her life for too long, but also a competent hairdresser.

Ruth was thrilled. She'd sold so much that the summerhouse was starting to look bare and it was still not quite lunchtime. ‘You should have had a couple of boxes of spares under the table,' Melissa told her, sitting on the window ledge and eating a banana. Ruth, in black velvet to show off her finest silver pieces, thought Melissa's torn Levis lowered the tone and looked untidy, unprofessional. Presentation was so important.

‘I'm not a factory,' she told her disdainfully, ‘I'm an artist. If I make millions of the things I'll be into mass-production and that's not what people want. They want
unique
.'

Melissa pulled a distinctly unimpressed face, ‘Well, you'll have to have more
unique
ideas then, won't you, if you want to get rich. Today's takings won't buy you a car.'

‘They'd buy me a moped, second hand, easily,' Ruth retorted quickly. ‘How many Saturdays behind some miserable dull shop counter would that take
you
?' she asked. She picked up one of the few remaining voodoo dolls and threw it to Melissa. ‘Here, stick some white pins in that. Perhaps you'll get lucky. Wish for something.'

Adrian thought it was safe to venture out some time close to lunch. Still exiled up in the bedroom, having had a slow bath and pretended he just didn't fancy breakfast, he could smell the barbecue in the MacIver's garden and decided that Ellen's sausages, with a roll and some onions, would make a very good brunch. Abigail and Stella would probably be safely out of the way in the boathouse gallery, drinking the wine that Bernard would be pouring into his choicest guests.

He sauntered out through the back door and went first to the summerhouse to see how Ruth was doing. He could hear footsteps from the path beside the house and the contented voices of those who'd bought something they liked from the MacIvers. ‘A perfectly
sweet
mallard drake . . .' he heard an appreciative woman telling a friend, which he assumed referred to one of Fergus's paintings and not her plans for lunch. As he approached the summerhouse, nervous from Stella's morning conversation that Ruth might be in a blue sulk, nothing sold and her confidence shattered, the summerhouse door flew open and a selection of customers flew out in a bunch like racing pigeons from a loft at exercise time.

‘
Well
,' an outraged beige-clad matron said in scarcely-hidden delight, ‘what did you think of
that
?' Her companions, now level with Adrian, looked at him and sniggered. Oh God, he thought, quickening his step, they must have found a manuscript under a table or something and sneaked a shocking read. Thinking of what his
Maids of Dishonour
had been up to, he was surprised the women weren't in a collective dead faint. He ran to the door and flung it open. Inside, Ruth and Stella faced each other in fury over the black-clothed table. Melissa and Abigail sat together on the window ledge like an audience that wasn't sure how much participation was required.

‘It's only
art
,' Ruth was shouting as Adrian went in.

‘It's only
pornography
,' Stella yelled back. ‘Just because it's painted doesn't mean it's not obscene. How
could
you? How many hours did he make you sit like that? I bet it was for a lot longer than it took for the work . . .'

‘What's happening?' Adrian tried to make it sound like a perfectly normal enquiry. Ruth and Stella both glared at him and he looked away, meeting Abigail who gave him a broad and encouraging smile. This made him want to go straight out and get his sausages from Ellen's, but he didn't dare.

‘It's Bernard,' Stella finally explained, ‘I've just been up to the gallery and there's a painting of Ruth.'

Adrian could have laughed. ‘Is that
all
?' he said. ‘It sounded like World War Three when I came in.' He sat down next to Melissa on the ledge, joining the audience to see what would happen next.

‘
All
?' Stella shouted, waving her arms. Adrian ducked. ‘
All
? Adrian you should just go out and see it. Down there in the gallery is a portrait of your daughter, naked as a newborn, legs splayed in a pose like something from one of your favourite magazines and all you say is “Is that
All
?”'