The Goddess Rules (36 page)

“It was the most incredible night of my life.” Mirri was gazing at the ceiling.

“Really?” Kate sounded suspicious.

“We’ve been in love with each other since the day we met,” Mirri said, as if she couldn’t believe it herself. “He’s thought about me. He kept cuttings from newspapers. He thought about coming to Africa to visit me but always assumed that I wouldn’t remember him and he couldn’t bear that. We felt the same, Kate, we’ve gone through the last thirty years knowing that we were the loves of one another’s lives. But not daring to think that the other was going to feel the same. It’s the fairy tale I’ve waited for all my life. And we’re old. We’ve wasted so many years that we could have spent together, but that’s okay. I think.”

“It really was
it
?” Though Kate had hoped for the very best for Mirri, somewhere she, too, didn’t believe that it would ever happen like this. But here was Mirri, the tireless cynic, telling her the most implausible story of love that she’d ever heard.

“It was it.” Mirri sat up and put her hand on Kate’s. “It is it.” She shrugged as if she could hardly believe it herself.

“So what happened?” Kate asked as she settled in for the long haul.

It was lunchtime when Mirri had finally filled Kate in on every word of the previous day and every brush of hands and shared thought. Mirri and Nick had gone from London down to Oxfordshire, where they had sneaked in on the sleeping household. Nick had taken Mirri upstairs to see his daughters asleep in their beds, at which point she’d almost cried because of how proud he was of them. Then she’d met the dogs, who were pretty much as she’d expected—noisy and smelly and overfriendly. But she’d pretended to find them entertaining for Nick’s sake. Then she’d been introduced to the babysitter, who was the wife of the gardener. She was asleep on the sofa with dribble navigating its way along her jowls. She’d been delighted to meet Mirri and said she’d been a big fan of her films when she was young. Which made Mirri want to slap her across the face because the woman looked about 103 years old, but once again she forced a syrupy smile and pretended to be flattered.

Nick might even have taken her to meet the entire village if it hadn’t been far too late. He was boundless in his energy and desire to show off the woman he’d waited a lifetime to see and be seen with. Even though in his mind he’d taken her to a thousand summer fêtes, carol concerts, and lunches in the pub. In fact, now he could face the truth he realized that almost every breath he’d ever taken since the day he’d met her had been with her in mind. He’d decorated his house, designed buildings, collected awards, and cooked elaborate dishes with a small part of his mind always wishing that she might be there with him.

When they’d finally met everyone there was to meet and Mirri had seen the lake and the pool and woods, Nick began to relax a little. Then they’d walked back to the house through the inky black night and he’d taken her to his library for a nightcap. They’d shared a whiskey as she didn’t really want one, but longed to taste his, and then he’d kissed her. That was all. But it was a kiss that they’d both waited a very long time for.

“So how did you get back?” Kate asked as they sat at the kitchen table at midday. Kate was still in her pajamas and Mirri’s mascara had now streaked down around her eyes.

“I borrowed a car. He wanted me to stay but I said I needed to collect some things.”

“Are you going back?” Kate was surprised. She’d expected Mirri to have more dates and then who knew what. But not really for her to go back so soon.

“We’ve got catching up to do and a lot of time to make up for.” Mirri winked.

“But his children?”

“Their mother was collecting them this morning anyway. I’ll meet them next weekend.”

“Are you sure?” Kate hated to sound a note of caution, but it seemed pretty fast. “I mean, it’s not going to be like the days when you took men home and then spat them out after you’d finished?”

“I don’t know,” Mirri said, for the first time not sounding like a smitten teenager. “I suppose I’ll find out. If it is then that’s fine. But it doesn’t feel like that.”

“Good,” Kate said. “So how does it feel?”

“It feels as if there aren’t going to be enough moments left to spend with him as it is. I can’t waste even one of those moments,” she said, not quite believing it herself. “Though of course we haven’t made love yet so it could all still go terribly wrong. He’ll be the oldest man I’ve ever made love to, you know.”

Chapter Twenty-eight

Without Mirri around, Kate had all the time in the world to finish her portrait. With nothing better to do when her back began to ache and her head began to ache from hours in front of the canvas, she paid a visit to Green and Stone art suppliers on the King’s Road. Here she spent far more than she ought to have on things that she didn’t need—a new Russian sable paintbrush, some cloths, fresh tubes of acrylic, and some handmade inks. She loved the woody smell of the shop and the old crumbling Chelsea painters who dawdled for hours near the turpentine and oak easels. It was as therapeutic for Kate as going to a spa and being drenched in sweet-smelling oils was for other people. She also had some canvases stretched for her next work and looked for an age at possible frames for Mirri’s portrait when it was finished. She decided on a simple limed oak one, but knew that when she came in with the painting in a few days she’d change her mind a hundred times and leave the ever-patient staff wrung out.

“Leonard, what are you up to tonight?” Kate asked when she walked back into the house with next month’s mortgage worth of painting paraphernalia under her arm in a brown paper bag.

“Some art opening at the Tate,” he said as he hung up the phone on a very stressed-sounding customer.

“Louis’s?” Kate asked. “And mine I suppose.”

“Let me see.” He looked in his desk diary and nodded. “You’re right, he sent me the invitation a while ago. Will you still be going?”

“Yeah, I’m going to go, but I wanted moral support. I was going to ask you to be my guest ’cause I’ve got spare tickets but I forgot you’re the most invited man in London. Maybe I’ll get Robbie and Tanya to come, too.”

“We could all have supper afterward.” Leonard loved a gathering. “Shall I call Louis and ask him along?”

“I think he’ll have other plans,” Kate said. “I’m sure that Amazing Grace will have booked something very intimate and special.”

“Just the four of us, then.” Leonard shrugged. “And you never know, we might pick up a few strays on the way.”

“I’ll give Tanya a call,” Kate said, and was about to disappear when she turned back. “Leonard, do you think that Mirri’s done the right thing?”

“In which respect?”

“In swallowing her pride and going after Nick.” Kate knew what the answer was going to be but she had to check. There didn’t seem to be any drawbacks from where Kate was standing but in the eyes of the world maybe there was a downside to running headlong into a relationship with a man you’d loved for most of your adult life.

“Well, it certainly looks as if she’s done the right thing,” he said as he searched under piles of paper for something he’d lost earlier. “I’ve spent the past few days desperately trying to remember if I have a lost love, as a matter of fact, just so that I can look him up and relive my youth. Can’t say I’ve had much luck.” He shrugged. “I did remember a chap from Sotheby’s the other day whom I’d taken rather a shine to but I gather he’s an MP now so it’s probably starcrossed.”

“Yes, maybe best to leave that one alone.” Kate smiled as she headed back to the shed. She was going to miss Leonard when she moved out and had already made him swear to twice-weekly suppers around the corner at Lemonia. Though he’d been afraid it might interfere with his bridge playing, so they’d settled for two coffee mornings instead.

Kate felt completely schizophrenic about tonight’s party. While she embraced any possible opportunity to see Louis, she dreaded him being there with someone else on his arm—and also the indifference with which he now seemed to view her. He’d called her briefly yesterday to say that he was putting the final touches to the exhibition and that everyone who’d seen it so far seemed to be very impressed, especially with the polar bear, and he wanted to make sure that she was going to come. That was it. Business-like and as if she were just the guy who’d wired up the installations or the girl who’d mailed out the flyers for the show. She was no more than a part of his team, and she no longer seemed to matter a bit to him. Which was no more than she deserved, she understood, but it was a bitter pill. She needed to know what Mirri would do in her shoes but didn’t want to disturb her. Eventually, though, she couldn’t bear it anymore. Mirri had been in Oxfordshire for a week and Kate needed advice.

“Mirri, it’s Kate Disney,” she said, as if she might have been forgotten already.

“Ah,
cherie.
” Mirri was slightly breathless, and Kate worried that she’d caught her and Nick in bed. It sounded as if Mirri might just have been reveling in the fact that despite being her oldest lover ever, Nick still seemed to be in complete working order.

“Am I disturbing you?” Kate asked tentatively.

“No, hang on a minute,” Mirri panted.

“Okay, I’m sorry, I’ll call back later.” Kate was about to hang up when the heavy breathing subsided.

“There we are. I can speak now. I was in the river and I had something hooked.” Mirri was now sitting on the riverbank in her green waders, watching Nick farther down stream as he reeled in a fish.

“You were fishing?” Kate sounded alarmed.

“No, I was fly-fishing, it’s much more exhilarating. And very wet.”

“That’s pretty bourgeois for you, isn’t it?”

“I went duck shooting yesterday.” Mirri laughed and put down her rod.

“And heartless, too.” Kate was looking at her portrait of Mirri in the corner of her shed. Mirri was sitting on a chair in her bedroom at Leonard’s with an intelligent, contemplative frown on her face. She looked like a woman who hadn’t quite found peace but who was on a path, at least. She was serious and focused on doing her best for animals.

“It’s amazingly good fun.” Mirri laughed down the line. “I’m a great shot.”

“Your picture’s finished.” Kate yelled to be heard over the rushing water of the rapids in the background at Mirri’s end.

“I can’t wait to see it,” she shouted back. “We’re going to be in town this weekend. Will you be around?”

“Sure,” Kate said. She was permanently around at the moment. “Mirri, can I ask you something?”

“Always.”

“It’s about Louis. It’s just that I miss him and I don’t know what to do and tonight it’s his exhibition and there’s nobody else I can trust to tell me and . . .” Kate stopped speaking. There was nobody at the end of the phone. Perhaps Mirri had been tugged into the water by a giant salmon or something. Maybe it was just a bad line. Now she couldn’t ask her. She had no clue what to do.

Mirri had sounded so full of life on the phone. If Kate had to paint her at this moment she suspected she’d have to start all over again. She pictured Mirri laughing on the riverbank in the damp grass. She was doing things that two weeks ago she would have been full of scorn for. And she was loving them. That’s where Kate had gone wrong and Mirri had gotten it right, it seemed. Kate had done what she thought she should do in agreeing to marry Jake, and she’d lost out on something better. Mirri did things that nobody expected of her and that she didn’t expect of herself, even, and she lost nothing. Kate unpacked her paintbrushes and wondered how she’d play it tonight now that she hadn’t Mirri to guide her. For the first time all summer she’d have to work something out for herself.

Kate arrived at the doors of Tate Modern with Tanya and Robbie. Leonard, true to his word, had met somebody on the street outside and promised to come in and join them in a moment.

“I can’t wait to see it,” Tanya said as they walked inside and merged with the crowd. Everyone looked amazing. Even the strangest-looking people in the art world managed to look fabulous; here rubbery lips and cross eyes and hook noses were simply assets to make you look more interesting. And the clothes were striking beyond the imaginations of the fashionable, who were always too sheep-like and nervous to stand out. Kate felt an old rush of belonging to something whenever she stepped into an art opening. Much as she felt like the poor relation to all the famous faces and personalities and numinous talents here, she also knew a lot of the people in the room—she’d gone to college with some of them; had met them through Louis over the years; and though she didn’t know much about the work they were doing, and they certainly didn’t lose too much sleep over Kate Disney as a competitor, there was some mutual respect. Which gave Kate a slight buzz when she smelled the freshly painted room and saw glasses of champagne swinging between people’s fingers as they mulled over a piece or caught up with old friends. She looked around for Louis but knew he’d be the nucleus of an admiring posse somewhere.

“So which one’s yours?” Tanya asked as she glanced around the room.

“I can’t see it yet.” Kate hadn’t even thought to look. She’d been too riveted by the old faces and wondering whether they’d be graced with Grace’s presence. Kate wondered how differently she’d feel tonight if she were the girl with Louis.

“Let’s go and find it,” Robbie said, and took his wife by the hand. Kate followed closely behind and felt a rush of happiness for them. Though it was still too early for Tanya to be able to tell the world about the baby, it was so obvious from her face that she was going to be a mother that Kate thought she might as well get T-shirts printed. She looked so preternaturally relaxed that even in a room of solipsistic freaks, Tanya was the most stared-at person. Kate was terrified to think how lovable they’d be as a family unit, and had joked that she would only buy the child baby clothes made out of horsehair and sackcloth so that it would develop a character beyond being the cutest thing on earth.

“There it is,” Kate said as they approached the farthest corner of the room. Towering above the other works was the polar bear painting, but in a context so alien that Kate couldn’t recognize it as her work. It had been transformed into a metaphor for destruction and isolation and the loss of innocence in the world. Well, at least that’s what the respected art critic next to her was telling to the camera of the BBC news team. To Kate it looked lonely and sad. But maybe she was projecting. She thought back to the day at the zoo when she’d been making sketches and she’d run into Louis. Maybe it had started as a metaphor for his isolation from her. And now, ironically, it ended up being Kate’s narrative. She wondered if she ought to thank the art critic for helping her out with her interpretation of the piece, but the next minute he was beckoning over “The artist himself, Louis Alcott.” He tugged at the corner of Louis’s sleeve as he wrested him from conversation with some fascinated Germans.

Kate couldn’t exactly run away when Louis was placed in front of the camera, just a couple of feet in front of her. Instead she smiled in case he looked up. She’d imagined for some reason that tonight Louis would be wearing something smart. That he’d look important and serious and commanding, being the man of the hour. But he wasn’t. He looked exactly the same as he always did. He was wearing his worn-out jeans, with frayed edges hanging over the back of his sneakers and a T-shirt that had been rescued from the laundry basket. His hair fell over his forehead in the same schoolboy way it always did. The only concession he seemed to have made to it being a special occasion was that he was wearing a snakeskin belt. It was one that Kate had helped him to choose in Barcelona years ago on a college trip. Kate remembered standing in the shop while they looked at about twenty different belts. She’d thought they all looked the same and was impatient for him just to pick one out. But Louis had taken his time and knew exactly which one worked for him. And that seemed to be the way he was with everything. Louis knew who he was and what he wanted. Unfortunately it no longer happened to be her.

Kate listened to the first part of the interview. Louis told the cameras how he believed in a democracy of ideas and how high and low culture could coexist and that was what his work was about. Then Kate felt an elbow nudge her.

“Come and see this piece,” Tanya whispered to Kate. “Robbie thinks it’s meaningless but I like it. Anyway what does he know. He spends all day writing about manure.” It was good to have her old friend back, Kate thought as she allowed Tanya to lead her away from the crowds, who were gravitating toward Louis and the cameras. Tanya seemed to have lost a bit of the preciousness that had crept over her of late and become her fearless, feisty former self.