Staring At The Light (4 page)

‘And the opposition had toothache and the Master got the giggles,’ she added.

He was lost, so stuck to his own agenda, changing the subject, not daring to say, You know what you should do with Cannon?
Dump him
. Dump him like you dumped my son, only I don’t understand why we all still love you. Instead, ‘Still househunting, are you?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘We’ve a new project,’ he announced briskly, after coughing and clearing his throat. ‘Every other leading London legal firm
is doing it, so we have to do it too. Get an art collection.’

As a change of topic, this took some beating. She shook her head to clear her face of incredulity. ‘This firm wants to collect
art
? For what?’

‘Not wants, Sarah. Needs. Helps raise our profile in places where—’

‘Rich corporations go in order to raise theirs,’ she finished for him crisply, rallying faster than a Centre Court tennis
player.

He nodded. ‘Part of the image, you see. Doing our bit. We get a few dozen paintings, maybe the odd sculpture or two. Decorate
the foyer. Place looks like an empty cricket pitch with walls, anyway. Then we put them on show, oh, wherever these things
go on show. Our logo all over the place, of course. It was these Japanese chaps started, buying
Sunflowers
. Hopefully we make money on our investment at the
end of the day. But we can’t have things like that man with his dead sheep in tanks. None of the partners knows the first
thing – and none of them has got time. So we thought … you.’

She laughed. Another reason why they could never bring themselves to get rid of her. This easy, non-contemptuous laughter
that embraced them all, without ever accepting the ethic of any one of them. A potential blackmailer, too, of course.

‘Is there a theme to this collection?’ she asked. ‘I am not, emphatically not, going out in search of stags at bay in Scottish
Highlands. Or dogs on cushions.’

Personally, Ernest liked the idea of anything featuring food, especially if it was going to include dead game ready for the
pot, but he shook his head, then changed it to a nod. The worst was over. She had not said no, or told him he was being ridiculous.

‘Investment pictures. Modern art, but not too obscure, right? Why don’t you just go to one of the reputable dealers?’ she
asked.

‘Bunch of charlatans. Take huge commissions. Besides,
you
’re artistic. Only another mug’s game, isn’t it? You just swot up on it and away you go. Why pay anyone else?’ There was the
implied suggestion that Sarah was already paid too much. A slight threat,
Do this, or else
… He nodded, agreeing with his own wisdom. Nodding had become habitual. He tried to make it look wise rather than foolish.

‘What’s the budget and the time-scale? Do I have complete freedom?’ Now she was going too fast for him, as usual.

‘Oh, a few weeks at least …’

‘Yes. I’ll do it. Three dozen. But I will, of course, need time out of the office. More than usual. I’ll have to go to all
the exhibitions, scout round dealers, that sort of thing. Time-consuming. Ernest darling, what ails you? Talk to me, please.’

‘The budget’s generous, Sarah. We’ve to prove we aren’t a bunch of Philistines. Get out of here, will you? Just go.’

She went. Uncurled those slender limbs without a word, and went. It was only after the door began to close behind her that
he remembered he had meant to enquire what else she had done with the morning. Without adding the question he never asked
– namely, whose bed had she left before she began? Her own?

‘Oh, Sarah, one more thing …’

‘Yes?’

‘You’ve got to get rid of that ridiculous Mr Cannon. Where did you get him from anyway? We simply cannot subsidize our clients.
We
can’t
.’

She paused delicately, hand on hip. ‘Oh, I don’t think so, do you? He’s a very knowledgeable artist. He’ll help with the collection.
He’ll be an unpaid consultant, and where do you ever find those?’

The door closed softly. Ernest remembered a stray piece of information. The child had grown up in a convent. She could be
vigorously clumsy, noisy, ebullient, and yet oh-so-silent. Even when she had the last word. He put his head in his hands and
groaned.

*

Miss Fortune climbed the stairs to her office, which was a very small place as befitted her almost itinerant status, and a
pretty cluttered space in accordance with the way she was. The services of a secretary had been withdrawn. Yesterday’s flowers
still looked fresh, but the rug on the floor was crumpled, showing signs of intruders. People stole into Sarah’s room, sometimes
to weep, avoid the open-plan, or sleep off the hangover. Space was at a premium in Matthewson’s firm, while privacy was even
harder to find. Which, of course, made it all the more ridiculous that they should have such a large foyer as proof of prosperity.
The shop-front, like a marbleized cave, long, narrow and high, a perfectly natural art gallery, the rest a custom-built warren.
She sat, yawned and stretched. Got up, closed the window, prowled around the room, which took a matter of seconds. Felt, although
she had only just come in, the same old claustrophobia and the desire to be anywhere else. Looked longingly at the envelope
full of estate agents’ particulars. Pulled a face at herself in the tiny mirror by the door. How the hell, she asked her reflection,
did God and man between them ever make a lawyer out of you? Because if it wasn’t by divine intervention, it was otherwise
a miracle of misjudgement.

She smoothed out the charred fragment of letter given her by Cannon. He had told her what the rest of it contained; she had
to take his word for it as she struggled to read the remainder.

Cannon said he believed this promise, and she had to believe Cannon. Someone must. She yanked open the neck of the blouse.
Fingered a small, white scar on her clavicle. There were others spread over her torso and arms and, just at that moment, she
felt a strange pride. She
had
taken a look at Cannon’s portrait, and he had not noticed the scars. No-one did. She was proud of that. It was as though
they had disappeared. Little white scars, pieces of history. The work of a
client
. One of Matthewson’s
better
clients, which was why it was odd that he should be so fussy about the rest. It was not as if they were saints employed to
deal with sinners.

Nothing mattered now, except loyalty.

The door opened and a young man sidled in. Sarah stifled a sigh. A reputation for a sympathetic ear and a room that doubled
as a haven for frustrated smokers was not always an advantage, attracting as it did not only the gossipers, the jokers and
the anxious, but also the others. There was no such thing as a legal firm consisting entirely of nice people; there were always
the sedulous, the ambitious and the jealous. Andrew Mitchum entered the room as if he owned it, sat without invitation, lit
his cigarette and looked round with lazy appreciation. He coveted this room.

‘You’ll never guess who I had dinner with at the weekend,’ he drawled.

‘Jamie Lee Curtis?’

‘Ugh! Darling, how could you? Why waste my time on trash like that? Prince William, more like. No, he’s too young for money
either. I only dine with clients.’

‘Who, then?’ She was watching a grasping young man, verging on the theatrical in a less than attractive way, convinced he
was God’s gift to both sexes while clearly preferring his own. The stories of his conquests bored her, but she was not going
to say so. Instead she smiled encouragingly.

‘John Smith. Our mysterious Mr Smith. He with all the houses. My God, you should see
his
. Vulgar, my dear, beyond belief.’

She kept her face clear of all reaction but polite, impressed curiosity. ‘Oh, and what did he want? Another acquisition?’

Andrew Mitchum wagged his finger. ‘Secret,’ he said teasingly. ‘A little extracurricular activity is all. Wants me to do a
bit of research for him.’ His eyes took in the pictures on the walls, yesterday’s flowers, the heavy blue ashtray, with indiscreet
approval. ‘I’m good at research,’ he added modestly. ‘I’ve found out quite a few things about
you
, for instance. Such an interesting life.’ He sat back and scrutinized her with frank, asexual curiosity, watching the anxiety
flicker over her face to be replaced with an even wider smile.

‘Not a lot to know, Andrew.’

‘No? I don’t understand you. All you had to do
was marry the boss’s son and you would have been a partner. What stopped you? Ah, I know. A penchant for the wrong kind of
man and entirely the wrong kind of client, I gather. You were the one Charles Tysall fell for, and when you wouldn’t have
him he beat you up, right? Tut, tut. No ambition. The man was as rich as Croesus.’

‘A long time ago, Andrew. Another country. And he’s dead.’

She was relieved that that was all he wanted to impart; equally relieved that he was so dismissive of her clients. She did
not want him examining their identities and seeing any connection between her waifs and strays and his moneyed men; far better
that he should be as contemptuous as he was. His ambition was not distracted by imagination. He fingered his immaculate tie,
unembarrassed by the silence.

‘So what
are
you doing for John Smith? Screwing him?’

‘If only. The dinner was wonderful, but he doesn’t seem interested in food.’

If there were more to tell, he would tell it. He would not be able to resist. Ernest had hired this boy but, then, Ernest’s
judgement was not always sound.

‘I suppose having been attacked yourself is what gives you sympathy with all your dozy victims?’ he said, without really expecting
a serious answer.

‘No,’ she said, rising to open the window and wishing he would go. ‘Not always. Look, Andrew, take a tip. Do
not
take money from John Smith for this
research
. Everything you do for John Smith has to go
through the firm’s accounts. You might think Ernest’s a woolly old buzzard, but if there’s any hint you’re raking in a personal
cash profit you’ll be out on your ear.
Finito
. End of career.’

‘Oh, ho, ho, occupying the moral high ground, are we? From what I hear, that’s not like you, Sarah, really it isn’t.’

‘Oh, yes, it is. Sometimes,’ she added demurely, smiling again to defuse the malice in his tone. ‘Are you staying for coffee
or are you going out to make money?’ She fumbled in the top drawer of her desk and handed him a red apple, slightly dusty.
‘Want one? They’re good for you. The man on the corner …’

He looked at the mess of letters on her desk, mixed in with estate agents’ particulars, the arm outstretched with the apple.
‘Eve offered Adam an
apple
, Miss F. I suppose some poor version of Adam offered the same sort of thing to you. Pity about you, Sarah. You could have
had it all. What do you want?’

‘A house with lots of white walls,’ she said, and sank her teeth in the fruit.

White. Should be the favourite colour of a dentist like me, William thought. But white, my boy, is a non-colour, a state of
nothing, a mixer. White is never white: it is either white mixed with yellow or brown, or bloodstained pink; skin is never
white, it is multicoloured; white is never pure, it is muddy or creamy or tinged with grey. Or, at least, it was when it came
to teeth.

He paused, paintbrush in hand, about to advance on the last wall of the waiting room. What colour, then, if he was aspiring
to match their teeth? Make them feel at home when they saw their own teeth in a monitor. For God’s sake, paint the place white
with a hint of apple green. He paused. Isabella, his ex-wife, would loathe this colour and the thought exhilarated him, although
he still wanted her approval. Isabella, the stuff of dreams and nightmares, probably at this very minute examining some new
abode with her new, second-hand lover. Isabella, met all those years before in the curtain-material department of John Lewis,
he confused by choice, she revelling in it. Houseproud Isabella, to whom the pursuit of perfection indoors was a kind of holy
grail. A frustrated designer, a design snob, but what a series of cocoons she had made for them. White shaded green?
Dated, yughh!

There was one small alcove to go. He continued with the off-white apple green, humming … droning, since his voice could never
hold a tune, any more than his hands could have played a fiddle, or done one of the many things he had once aspired to do.
They were pretty hands, his mother had told him, the exact opposite to the way a surgeon’s hands were supposed to be. Splayed,
to be honest. Short-fingered with a broad span and no arthritis, every damn finger working with an individual dexterity, capable-looking
hands. His were the elegant, long-fingered things of a woman whispering behind a fan. His hands, with a permanent tendency
to irritation, fungus, fast-growing nails and a dislike of any chemical, were
currently enclosed in gardening gloves with rubber gloves beneath, and it was quite insane for a Wimpole Street dentist, with
a practice surely lucrative enough to get someone else to do it, to be painting his own public rooms. The private rooms, both
above and below, were ignored; they were beyond aesthetic redemption anyway. Why, then, William, why? he droned. Because you’re
an ass; the prosperity is all on the surface and, let’s face it, you have nothing active left to do when everyone has gone
home. And you are fascinated by the technique of it … and, besides, everyone else makes such a devil of a mess.

The doors would have to remain wood-coloured doors. There were too many doors and too many locks. He liked the arrangement.
Reception desk by outer door; short corridor to large waiting room; surgery off that, with another damn door opening to reveal
not the immediacy of the surgical area and the chair but another little seating area for consultation to the left, out of
sight of the door. A non-threatening view.