Rachael's Gift (15 page)

I looked through the window. My grandfather had been an expert. And then I had to laugh at myself – don’t be ridiculous, as if he was the only expert in Paris during the war.

Several cars down a man in a dark coat stood with his back against the glass, his body moving with the bends of the train. Tomorrow we would be seeing Lucien. I wondered what he would think of Rachael, whether he would approve? Of course he would take her on. He would be her mentor. And what was wrong with that?

But he was yet to see her work, yet to meet her in person.

What did he look like now? Was he married? Did he have children? I doubted it. I couldn’t imagine him as a father; he just didn’t seem the type. Too . . . what was the word? Self-absorbed. He must be old now. Over fifty. A lot could happen in twenty-one years. There was still a chance he would knock her back. How silly I was being, surely I wasn’t feeling
jealous
. . . Ashamed, I tucked my iPad back into my bag. The train moved on, shimmying and jostling strangers together as intimately as lovers in a dark corner.

The metro screeched to a halt. I stepped out of the carriage and followed the maze of tunnels, emerging onto the street to see the museum’s pipes, which had been built on the outside, and looked like the oversized plumbing of a toilet.

Inside, the Kandinsky Library was more like a science lab crossed with a nightclub, with its mirrored cubicles and bright red floor. People were quiet, coughing occasionally. I’d already given over my bag at the cloakroom and carried my laptop and notes in my arms over to the main desk. The librarian asked to see my ID; she checked her records, saw that I was approved and gave me a form to fill out, which I completed. Then she ushered me through to a separate reading room.

A moment later she appeared with a small grey file referenced RLQ 7491. Inside was the original exhibition book from November 1943, including a list of works, with their title, artist, and current owner. I flipped through and found
La Baigneuse
and looked to the space where its owner should have been named but he or she was listed as Anonymous. That was frustrating.

I flicked through it again. At the beginning was a blurb describing the premise for the exhibition and at the end was a list of credits. I skimmed the names, looking for anything that might be a lead, but instead found my grandfather’s name. He was recorded as an expert. At first it struck me as very odd and then I reasoned that of course he should have been there. That was what he did for a living. Ironic that he had once been an expert for this painting. It was a shame I wouldn’t be able to ask him about it. I scanned the indices for anything else, but found nothing. This was just the exhibition catalogue, but according to my notes there should also have been documents surrounding the exhibition. I packed it up and returned the file to the librarian.

‘What about the correspondence?’ I asked the woman. ‘Do you have that somewhere?’

She checked her database on the computer. Finally she looked up. ‘Yes, but as you didn’t reserve them specifically they are with someone else right now. You’ll have to come back.’

I turned and looked over my shoulder, assessing the other occupants of the reading room, but as they were all examining similar-looking files it was impossible to tell who had the one I wanted.

There was nothing worse than knowing you might be one step closer but the paperwork was just out of reach. I wondered who the ‘someone else’ might be – the claimants? It was a possibility. If I had come this far, so might they.

‘Thank you,’ I said, heading for the door.

‘Would you like to reserve them for another day?’ she called after me.

‘Yes, of course, thank you.’ I made a reservation for a few days’ time.

*

That night I lay awake listening to Rachael’s tiny snores. I held the pillow over my face, tossing and turning. My thoughts somersaulted on a loop. Lucien. Wolfe. The teacher. Francine. The Beaux-Arts. Rachael. Rachael would meet Lucien today.

*

The girl’s hands are covered in paint. She goes to the sink and begins to scrub them, but it doesn’t come off. He is by the taps and takes her hand in his own. It is rough with hard skin. A painter’s hand.

Ouch
, she says, pulling back, but he only grips tighter.

This is how you get rid of the paint from the skin
.

He takes a glass bottle filled with a greenish-yellow liquid and pours it over both her hands while holding them over the sink. It’s lukewarm and smells of her mother’s roast lamb. A tingling warmth spreads inside her, like climbing into a hot bath. He’s using olive oil. It drips into the sink, the aluminium tinkling with each drop. With a handful of salt he begins to rub the mixture into her hands, the tips of his fingers pressing into the crevices and his nails scraping along the ridges. She looks at his face. He has deep grooves around his eyes and a smattering of white flecks through his dark hair. He stares intensely at her hands, working hard. It’s the same when he paints.

You’re hurting me
.

He says nothing, just looks at her, his pupils huge and black, so that she cannot see where they finish and the irises begin. Still he doesn’t relent; instead he turns her palm over and begins working his thumbs deep into the fleshy heart, massaging over and over. She closes her eyes and after a while doesn’t notice the pain anymore, just the tiny flakes of salt rubbing away the top of the skin. They are standing very close and she can now smell his muskiness from a long day’s work. She opens them again when his touch becomes lighter.

We could fry your fingers up and they would be very tasty
, he says.
Very tender
.

She laughs and he brings one hand to his mouth, devouring all four of her fingers in one gulp.

She screeches embarrassingly, like a little girl,
Hey, that’s disgusting
, and attempts to pull away, but he holds her wrist.

Lucien! Stop it
.

This time he stops and draws her fingers from his mouth, slowing right down so that the tip of her middle finger slides between his tongue and lips. She feels heat flare at the base of her spine; it travels to her heart, which pulses against her chest, and glazes her eyes.

His eyes glisten and his crow’s feet sharpen in a wicked smile. She snatches her hand back.

You have to scrub the rest with this
, he says, throwing her a dirty cake of soap. She attempts to catch it, but it slips through her fingers and clunks around the sink like a roulette ball.

The water moved fast, black and silky, a mosaic of tiny phosphorescent mirrors, rising like a giant tongue and then crashing hard onto the shore. Sometimes I came down here at night to get a new perspective. Study the arch of the waves as they came rolling in the half-light, naked and free. Seeing their unsurfed majesty and wondering how we could harness them better. How could we fit easier and smoother, ride them like a dolphin? My best ideas came to me here.

Back at my drafting board, by the light of my small desk lamp, I sketched the membranes of some new ones and became lost in the point of the pencil, the arms of a quiet night and the smoke of a reefer settling around me. I wanted to shut everything else out. Big guns were doing designs on computers now. Whipping them up overnight and bam, testing them in the morning. But I was old school. I loved the idea travelling through my fingers and down the pencil onto the page. Some punk had tried to show me once, moving his plastic pen on a notepad and the design appearing on the screen, but it just didn’t have the same appeal.

‘Yoohoo?’ I heard knuckles rap on the garage door and the click-clack of high heels. ‘Hello? Anyone there? Camille?’

I turned around, pulling myself away from this meditation as if through a long tunnel.

A blonde woman wearing tight white pants cut off at the ankle appeared. She had a large handbag slung over her shoulder and clutched a leather-bound folder in one arm.

‘Good evening. I hope I’m not disturbing you,’ she said in a voice that melted. ‘Wolfe, isn’t it?’ She sniffed at the air and made a little coughing noise.

‘G’day,’ I said, pulling myself together and suddenly realising I was just in a pair of daks.

She marched towards me holding out her hand, my half-nakedness not seeming to bother her. She shook my hand hard. ‘Avery Spencer. Sorry to barge in – I tried the front door and then when no one answered I saw the light on in here. Actually I’m looking for Camille – she didn’t come to the meeting tonight. Normally she comes . . .’

I searched around the workshop and saw an old t-shirt hanging from a nail. ‘No . . . she didn’t. She’s away right now.’ I reached for the t-shirt and slipped it over my head. ‘Sorry, I wasn’t expecting anyone.’

She glanced around the workshop, her nose wrinkling.

‘Is there something I can help with?’ I knew she was referring to the RPA meeting but thought it best to play dumb.

‘Sorry. I’m Lucy’s mum. My daughter absolutely worships Rachael.’

I vaguely remembered a chubby girl hanging around the house. I looked at Avery with her caked-on make-up and painted nails and felt sorry for her kid.

‘It was a shame you weren’t there tonight. There was a big parent–teacher meeting at the school. You’ve heard about what’s happened?’ She didn’t wait for me to answer. ‘It’s just awful. I don’t know how they could have let it go on.’ She ran her hand across one of the boards in the rack. ‘I was hoping I could talk to Camille.’ She took her hand away and then dangled it in the air, realising it was covered in fibreglass dust. That stuff could get real itchy.

‘Sorry, it’s not finished that one.’ I fussed around looking for a rag, found one and handed it to her, not sure if it was actually clean. She took the end of it with her fingertips, shook it out and wiped her hands.

‘Has Rachael said anything?’ She watched me carefully.

I didn’t reply.

‘Nor has Lucy, but I heard it’s to do with Mr Everett. You know, the photography teacher?’

I shook my head.

‘Well, allegedly he’s the one.’ Avery’s eyes drilled into me, her voice shrill with excitement. ‘That poor girl,’ she paused, ‘whoever she is.’

‘Sorry, Avery, what’s all this about?’

‘Oh, God! Sorry! It’s me – I just go on and on. There’s a shocking story going around that one of the students has been abused by a teacher. Can you believe it? We are all stunned. I mean, literally, stunned. You really haven’t heard?’

I feigned confusion.

‘No, well, I guess if Camille’s away . . . Anyway, as I’m the chair of the parents’ association it was my responsibility to ask the hard questions – so I questioned the principal tonight and oh, did she flounder – couldn’t put a sentence together. I said –’ and she pumped her fist into her palm ‘– “We have to have transparency – we have a right to know what’s going on – for our daughters’ sakes.” It’s their safety at risk, after all. I bet she was planning to keep the whole thing quiet. Anyway, as you can imagine, the parents went ballistic. She should have sent a letter to everyone immediately. She should have been upfront instead of trying to cover it all up. Hopeless.’

Sweat broke out on the back of my neck. What a nightmare. How had they found out? Someone in the school office? A teacher? Another kid? Who knew? I shouldn’t have been surprised, really. Stuff this explosive was always going to get blown sky high. We just weren’t expecting it to happen so quickly. Poor Sheehan – I actually felt sorry for her.

Avery lingered over my drafting table.

‘Ms Sheehan asked for people to come forward with any information.’ She lifted up a page and then let it drop. ‘Have you met him?’

‘The teacher?’ I caught a glimpse of disapproval. I shook my head again. I’d never seen the guy.

‘Fancy the school hiring someone like him. There was bound to be trouble. Thankfully he would never have troubled Lucy.’

‘Why’s that?’

She gave a snigger. ‘You obviously haven’t seen my daughter.’

‘Can I get you something? A drink?’

‘Oh no.’ She waved away my offer. ‘I must run. I just popped in to give Camille this. But I’ll give it to you instead.’ She reached into her folder and took out a piece of paper. ‘It’s to keep you abreast of the situation,’ she said. ‘Lord knows what’s going on and we need to protect our girls.’

She click-clacked towards the door. ‘Well, let me know if you hear anything. Give my regards to Camille and Rachael. Byeee.’ She rubbed the tip of her nose and left.

I unfolded the sheet of paper. There was an image of three icons inside a Give Way sign – a mother and a father holding hands above a child, followed by:
Your right to ask. Give your child a voice. Know the dangers in your child’s school. Demand the truth. [email protected]; www.parentsforsafekids.com; Twitter: @safekids; Facebook page: safekids.

I screwed it up and threw it across the garage to a bin – missing and hitting the floor. We didn’t even know if the guy was guilty. I felt that creeping tingle of dread. A part of me felt responsible; the rest of me hoped Sheehan would get it sorted.

Rachael shook me awake. The morning light crept bleakly through the window. ‘Get up – we’ll be late for him.’ Rachael was already fully dressed, her lips glistening with pink gloss.

My phone buzzed. Rachael grabbed it and pressed the answer button.

‘It’s Dad.’ She held the phone out.

‘Jesus,’ I mouthed silently at her, screwing up my face.

She shook the phone at me and I snatched it from her, turning away.

‘Hello?’

‘Cam.’

There was silence, surprise at hearing each other’s voices. I always felt that whatever happened between us, we were joined by an invisible elastic band – we’d always spring back.

‘You answered.’

‘Yeah. Didn’t mean to.’

‘Thanks.’

‘How are you?’

I heard his breathing. ‘Shit, Cam . . .’

‘I had to stop you.’

‘You’re fucking kidding me, right? Look, I’m not gonna say anything about what you did right now because there’s bigger shit going down, but it was fucked up running away like that.’