The Kiss (13 page)

‘I didn’t expect all this,’ she said happily. ‘To see so many together, and with this light!’ The room was quiet, and uncrowded, unlike the museum in Paris. There were only two other visitors apart from themselves and they were soon to depart.

Cathy and Sue did a quick tour round and said they’d wait for them outside.

Cormac and Clarinda moved slowly round the room, stopping for long spells in time in front of each exhibit. There were studies and casts for many of his major works which, as Cormac pointed out, gave an insight into the artist’s method of working.

‘He was so wonderful with clothes, wasn’t he?’ said Clarinda, when they came to the statue of one, Bastien-Lepage. ‘Look at the creases in those boots, they look like real leather, and the breeches! You want to touch them to see if they’re made of real material.’ She was breathless with admiration.

‘He was a genius,’ said Cormac.

They came to a cast of
The Kiss
.

‘It’s beautiful,’ whispered Clarinda, ‘even as a plaster cast.’

He felt a tightening in his throat.

‘Cormac,’ she said, looking up into his face.

‘We must go,’ he said. ‘Sue and Cathy are waiting.’

‘Please! I’ve got to tell you. I’ve fallen in love with you.’

‘No, you have not, Clarinda.’ He spoke gently. ‘You’re just carried away by visions of Gwen John.’

She shook her head. She appeared to be calmer than he felt. ‘You’re wrong. And it doesn’t matter what you say, it won’t change how I feel.’

‘Hey, you two!’ called Cathy from the doorway.
‘Will you be long? Sue and I thought we might go and see if we can find a café.’

‘No,’ said Cormac, ‘wait for us in the garden! We’re just coming!’

By the time Clarinda accedes to his request to leave the shop and get out of his way Cormac realises he is going to be late for Davy. He stashes the bucket in the corner and flings down the mop. He’ll come in tomorrow morning, Saturday, when he doesn’t open the shop, and do the rest of the clearing up.

As he is putting on his jacket in the back shop he hears the door open. Surely she’s not come back! He goes through to the front. The girl closing the door is not Clarinda, but his own daughter.

‘Oh, it’s you, Sophie.’

‘Who did you think it was?’

‘You’re out of school early.’

She says she hasn’t been in today, she wasn’t feeling well in the morning. She looks well enough to him but he doesn’t want an argument so he doesn’t say so. He feels half the time that he is being blackmailed by his children.

‘You wouldn’t have any sandwiches left, would you?’

‘There’s a couple in the fridge but listen, Sophie, I’m in a hurry. I’m late for Davy.’

‘It won’t take a minute.’

There are three cling-filmed wrapped sandwiches on focaccia bread, marked mozzarella, tomato and basil. She drops them into her bag. ‘Could I have a couple of bags of crisps?’ She throws in four and two cans of Fanta.

‘Sophie, be quick!’ says Cormac.

‘All right, all right, I’m coming.’

‘Who are you planning to feed? The five thousand?’

‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ she says and skips out of the door in front of him.

He arrives at the school to find Davy standing by the gate gazing up the street with the face of an abandoned child. The playground behind him is empty.

‘Sorry, Davy old son!’

‘I thought you weren’t coming. Everybody else is gone.’ The boy is close to tears. Cormac puts an arm round him but is shrugged off.

‘You know I’d always come, you should never doubt that. I got held up. A couple of late customers.’

‘Can I go to Mum’s tonight?’

Cormac sighs.
Oh yes, go ahead and punish me! Everybody else is keen to so why not you?
His spirits, which were not that elevated to start with, fall even lower. This is one of those days when the gods are showering down every kind of rubbish they can find on top of his head.

‘Can I?’ Davy asks again.

‘I’ll ring her when she gets in from work.’

Davy cheers up, which does not cheer his father who, until recent times, has thought himself a pretty good father who loves his children and enjoys them and makes time for them and is loved by his children in return. Now it seems that Davy can’t wait to get away from him.

He rings Rachel’s number at six and gets the answering machine. He rings at seven and gets it again. And at eight. It is not worth trying after that. It is time for Davy to go to bed.

‘You’ll be seeing her tomorrow, anyway,’ says Cormac as he makes hot chocolate for his son and sets out a chocolate biscuit on a plate beside it. Bribery and corruption. After Davy has gone to bed and been read to for fully twenty-five minutes he washes the dishes and loads up the washing machine. Then, at ten, he presses the redial button on the phone once more.

Sophie answers. She sounds short of breath.

‘Have you just come in?’

‘No.’ She is lying, he can hear it in her voice. He is not as foolish as Mrs Bain is to think his daughter always tells the truth. He thinks too much still about Mrs Bain, which is not good for his blood pressure. He sees her satin arm with its shimmering dragons lifting
the receiver and hears her plum-filled voice saying, ‘Officer, I’d like to make a complaint.’

‘I’ve been in a while,’ his daughter is saying.

‘So what did you do with yourself this afternoon?’

‘Went to Tilda’s.’

‘Was she not at school either?’

‘After she came back.’

‘And before?’

‘I just wandered about.’

As lonely as a cloud. Not lonely at all, he’d lay a bet on that.

‘I’m in the middle of my homework,’ she says.

‘I’d better not keep you then. Is your mother there?’

‘No, she’s not back yet.’

‘It’s not her badminton night, is it?’

Sophie’s response is defensive. ‘I’ve no idea.’ Is she protecting her mother? She doesn’t have to of course: Rachel is free to do what she wants.
What is she doing? And with whom?

‘See you tomorrow then.’

He is determined, this weekend, to be firm with Sophie. Lay down the law.

‘You
must
come back tonight,’ he tells her. ‘I don’t want any of this staying at Tilda’s lark, and you’re to be in by eleven-thirty.’

‘
Half eleven
? None of my friends are home before two.’

‘Twelve then. And I want to know where you’re going and who you’re going with and if you’re not here by midnight I’ll come and fetch you.
Comprendido
?’

‘All right! You don’t have to shout.’

She goes out mid-afternoon, but not before leaving an address. Cormac watches Saturday sport on the telly, then makes an omelette which he consumes with the best part of a bottle of red wine. He has a free evening ahead and doesn’t know what to do with it. The trouble is most of his male friends are married and have their Saturday nights spoken for. Everybody loves Saturday night! Not if you’re on your tod you don’t. You feel you should be doing something other than lounging around. He decides to give Ken Mason a ring on the off chance that he might free for a drink. Ken says there’s nothing he’d have liked better but they are committed elsewhere.

‘Remember April, that woman you were speaking to at our party? She’s giving a dinner. She’s found herself a new man, a lawyer, widower, plenty of money. She wants to show him off.’

‘Have a good time,’ says Cormac, putting down the receiver.

He goes along to a pub in St Stephen’s Street for a
while but nearly everyone looks under twenty-five, and he is wary of bumping into Clarinda again. Edinburgh is a small place if you want to avoid someone. Too small for him, with hundreds of his ex-pupils milling about, knowing too much about him. There are a couple in the pub but he doesn’t think they’ve noticed him. They’re not coming over to slap him on the back, at any rate, and say nice to see you. Nor are they glancing covertly in his direction and whispering behind their hands. Maybe he should go to Dublin, make a fresh start, and insist on taking Davy with him. But what kind of a life would it be for the boy waiting in the upstairs flat for his father to come up at midnight reeking of cigarette smoke and beer from the bar?

Coming back through Stockbridge, preoccupied with such unproductive thoughts, he bumps into Archie Gibson, his former headmaster and friend. He still regards Archie as a friend but they’ve fallen out of the habit of seeing each other. After his suspension it was too difficult.

Archie is about to go into a restaurant with two people, a man and a woman, neither of whom Cormac recognises.

‘Archie, hi there!’

‘Oh hello, Cormac. How are you?’ Archie is more embarrassed than he is; his time in the wilderness
taught him to grow a thicker skin. Archie’s friends go ahead into the restaurant.

‘I’m not bad,’ says Cormac. ‘Surviving, at any rate.’

‘Good. That’s great. I’ve been meaning to give you a call.’

‘I’ve moved.’

‘Yes, I heard.’

‘Sheila not with you?’

‘No, no she’s not.’ Archie clears his throat, finishing with a cough. He looks away. ‘Actually, we’re not together any more.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry. I hadn’t heard.’

‘These things happen.’

‘Too true.’ Cormac warms to the idea of renewing the friendship, now that they are in the same boat, in one respect, anyway. ‘Let’s have a drink one night, OK? I’ll give you a call.’

‘Fine, fine.’ Archie glances through the restaurant window.

‘You’d better go,’ says Cormac.

‘Yes.’ Archie’s throat is bothering him again. ‘It was most unfortunate, all that business.’

‘It was.’

Cormac leaves Archie and walks through to the Colonies, reflecting on Archie’s nervousness. He’s been left with the feeling that Archie would just as soon he
didn’t bother to call. Maybe he’s just thrown by the break-up of his own marriage. He and Rachel used to think Archie and his wife were not a well-matched pair: she liked the glamorous life, cruises, expensive hotels; he liked hill walking and camping in the Cévennes. But they had agreed that one could never tell looking in on a marriage from the outside.

So Cormac goes home to watch Saturday night telly, which proves to be dire, and is half asleep when he hears the key grate in the lock and Sophie say, ‘It’s me, Dad.’

He looks at his watch. It is twenty to one, which is not bad, and he won’t even mention she’s late. This is what he’d call within bounds. It’s as well she has come in; he wouldn’t be in much of a state to cycle over to Mandy’s on the other side of town.

She has a mark under her right eye. He puts up his hand to touch the side of her face and she backs away. He frowns.

‘Is that a bruise you’ve got there?’

‘I bumped into a door.’

It sounds like a stock excuse, the first to come to mind. He pushes it no further but he’s bothered. He can’t show it of course as that would only cause more irritation on her part. She easily becomes irritable these days.

He makes hot chocolate for them both and they sit
talking till two, which cheers him. He has always felt close to his daughter, until the last few months. She is talking about going to drama school; she’d like to be a director or producer, not an actor. She is producing the school play with another girl.

Romeo and Juliet
: more star-crossed lovers, like Paolo and Francesca. Them! The crossing of stars appeals to Sophie. She loves Shakespeare. She loves
Romeo and Juliet.

‘You must come, Dad.’

‘Oh, I will. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.’

He goes to bed feeling happier than he has done since he and Rachel took the decision to split. They agonised over it for weeks but, in the end, when they did decide, it seemed inevitable. And it still does.

In the morning, waking later than usual, he gets up to find a note on the kitchen table.

‘Gone out to meet Tilda. Back for lunch at Mum’s. Sophie xx.’

Fair enough. He doesn’t expect her to sit in on a Sunday morning and keep him company though he was going to suggest they went for a walk in the Botanic Garden. She used to love doing that with him when she was small. But she is no longer small and she doesn’t consider an outing to feed the ducks exciting. He longs to know what does excite her. He goes upstairs whistling
to make the bed and tidy Davy’s room for his return that evening. He always complains loudly if Sophie has messed up his stuff. He’s a tidy boy, takes after him in that respect rather than his mother. Surprisingly, Rachel is not very tidy, except in her person, whereas he likes order and hates random mess. People knowing them, though not intimately, would imagine that their penchants for tidiness would operate the other way round. His studio might have looked messy to the casual viewer but everything in it was in a state of transformation, of being processed into some form of order.

As he is plumping up the downie he notices a bag sticking from under the bed. Sophie always leaves something behind. He pulls the bag out. It is a manky old sports holdall and should be thrown out. She doesn’t have to cart a thing like that about! They’re not that hard up, even though he is only earning tiddlywinks so far with his sandwiches. The rent and council tax are crippling and he has to pay off the loan on his equipment before he can go into the black.

He looks at the bag. The zip has stuck on some cloth halfway along, showing signs of having been pulled together hastily or, if he knows Sophie, impatiently. It is his excuse to open the bag: to release the trapped cloth in case it might be an important piece of clothing.
Otherwise, he wouldn’t have touched it; he regards other people’s property as sacred, including his children’s, and not to be tampered with. Unless one suspects them of something. Does he suspect Sophie? Of course he does. And of course he is curious, as well as a little apprehensive, to find out what is in the bag. Drugs? Every parent’s nightmare: to open a bag and find something nasty lurking in the bottom.