A Sculptor's Gift (part 5)
11
"Right... Yes... Carry on... And what happened next?" Lady Pinke-Burnleigh is grilling me about the two men in the wood. She has brought me to town for a change of scene and now we have reached the market: the woman is obviously seething inside but she tries to look nonchalant as she picks up fruit, puts it down again and smiles at stall-holders. They then smile back and try not to look too surprised when Her Ladyship takes out a minute purse and actually buys something.
Lady Pink-Burnleigh may be a multi-millionaire but her fumbling with the catch of the purse has a little pathos, partly because it is a reminder that she doesn’t often get the chance to spend actual, physical cash. After spending a week casting millions of electronic dollars across the globe and then reeling them back in again (with, hopefully, some of their friends as well), the local market must have the cosy comfort of a kindergarten where dinky pretend shops proudly display soft, stuffed cauliflowers and plastic potatoes, a sweet, simple place where you hand over your play pennies and always get something nice back.
And today it’s carrots.
It’s then I act all excited like a small child and ask if this little ritual includes going to the cattle market again to feed the contents of the paper bag to the animals. Her Ladyship ignores my crude attempt at changing the subject.
“I’ll ask you again… What happened next?”
Pausing for a while for inspiration, I finally open my big mouth.
"How about you going to see the mayor and asking him?"
I'm not quite sure why I was rash enough to say that to a woman who is, it appears, already quite capable of making 1) scary decisions and 2) embarrassing scenes.
Every day brings more surprises about my hostess and being proved wrong can be one of the contradictory pleasures of getting to know someone. The incident with the Mayor, the T.V. cameras and my sculpture was, for example, a pivotal point and yet there have been many other moments since. Indeed, a new day will often produce a new episode, will throw up some new proof that the aloof woman in cream I first saw in the square is but just one of many in Lady Pinke-Burnleigh's extensive wardrobe of characters.
And this, unfortunately, is one of those days. It only takes a couple of minutes and we are now standing at the reception desk of the Town Hall. Her Ladyship is behaving differently yet again because this one is about the Mayor and Burnleigh Hall - and therefore real, deep-down family stuff.
There are all sorts of reasons why I shouldn't have suggested a visit to the Mayor, but common sense is rarely the star my ship wants to steer by. It seems at first that Magenta O'Hara the receptionist is too busy simpering over some stubbly-haired security guard to notice us. Squeezing the upper arm of his pseudo police uniform, she giggles and taps the bottom of this half-man, half-witted who is sporting enough chains and handcuffs to no doubt make him very popular in some of the more interesting London clubs... The very same gear that would impede him if he ever actually had to do anything.
I have found that Lady Pinke-Burnleigh can be pretty no-nonsense when needs must and, rolling up Miss O'Hara's August edition of Celebrity Now, she makes herself the second woman this morning to tap the security guard's bottom, only with a somewhat firmer hand - so firm, in fact, that his surprised yelp is heard in the office next door. The Mayor isn't brave enough to come storming out in a rage of indignation, so he does an edited version of Very Annoyed through the small crack he has allowed between the doors that lead into his office. Not wishing to let the momentum flag, Lady Pinke-Burnleigh steps up to the office door and pushes an elegant boot into the paltry, mean-spirited gap afforded her.
That the security guard might want to intervene at all seems debatable. Anyway, he has an added complication.
"She's a woman!" It is reassuring when the guardians of all we hold dear have such powers of observation, thus keeping them razor-sharp for decisive moments such as this but I bet he has racing through his mind the possibility that, should he manhandle Lady Pinke-Burnleigh, she might sue him for inappropriate sexual contact. Not only that, she is a peer of the realm. The whole issue is a thorny one, but he has no such qualms about male hosiery designers and grapples me over Miss O'Hara's desk. He has to pause, though, as only one pair of handcuffs out of the three looks up to the job, the others being the very stuff of either Toys 'R' Us or a sex shop.
By some miraculous good fortune, one of the security guard's many loops of chain gets caught on a drawer handle. This, too, buys me valuable time and I manage to slip from under him. I have him now and, taking the real pair of handcuffs from his belt, I shackle him to the filing cabinet something which, by the randy expression on Miss O'Hara's face, she has wanted to do for ages.
I grab her wrist now and find her surprisingly compliant as I take another more flimsy pair and she totters over to join her colleague. I am about to attach her to 'Sewage and Maintenance' but that's a bit high so she nods at the next drawer down and smiles gratefully as I, out of consideration, attach one of her wrists to 'Sport and Recreation'. I envisage her spending a couple of enjoyable minutes rummaging through his pockets for the keys, this giving Lady Pinke-Burnleigh and myself ample time to make our escape. It is obvious, though, that neither of them is in a hurry to get free. Miss O' Hara even gives me a little mouthed "thank you!" as she returns her attention - and free hand - to the security guard.
By the time Lady Pinke-Burnleigh comes out of the Mayor's office (with him draped over her shoulder), the free hand has become very busy and the receptionist is, somewhat impressively, managing to get her colleague's shirt off. Her Ladyship's face however, on surveying the scene, rustles up a piquant blend of utter disgust and lurid fascination. Far from conveying anger, the security guard's own face grins at us and then returns to re-attach itself to Magenta O'Hara's as she ministers to the matter in hand.
The guard is, as it is the lunch hour, the only one on duty and it is unhindered - nay to applause - that Lady Pinke-Burnleigh strides out of the Town Hall, throws the Mayor in the back of her open-top car and drives off. It is a surreal moment because the thing I am most shocked by is not the aggravated abduction of an elected representative of the people, something which in former times would have probably meant a visit from a priest, a hearty breakfast and a length of rope… Nor is it the forced (that's debatable) restraint of council employees.
No, it is the fact that Her Ladyship hasn't put her seat belt on yet. The Mayor isn't wearing one either, but there are logistical difficulties when someone's hands are sellotaped behind his back. It is with satisfaction that I see she has not even bothered to tear the tape and the red and gold leather dispenser is still dangling from the Mayor's wrist but I couldn't take it, even though I am tempted.
No, that would be a terrible thing to do.
12
"FOR THE LAST TIME, WHAT WERE THOSE MEN DOING HERE?" Lady Pinke-Burnleigh's customary cool is being tested by the man sagged in the armchair in the library. I'm sure she'd get further by stripping him naked, tying him to a metal chair with his chain of office and attaching live cables to his genitals but it's probably wise not to suggest it: a little while back I'd have thought it too uncouth for her, but I'm not so sure now. She does try a different tack, though.
"Look, you and I have previous. We are family." Lady Pinke-Burnleigh looks at the Mayor, her cousin. She wants to continue, but there are tears welling in his eyes.
"Oh, for goodness' sake, man, don't try that one on me! I haven't been fooled by that since you broke Granny's teapot and then bawled your head off, with Granny racing in and you telling her I'd smashed it over your head. If I had done, I'd have made a proper job of it and you wouldn't be sitting here now with all your pathetic snivelling." She pulled herself erect, strode over to the light, gazed out of the window onto the terrace and intoned bitterly "That was five weeks' pocket money for the teapot and two week's washing up for 'hitting you over the head'".
"That was years ago!"
"Yes, but nothing's changed, has it? You are still the same devious little -"
"DON'T CALL ME LITTLE!"
"I don't mean as in 'not very tall', I mean as in 'small..." Now Lady Pinke-Burnleigh is searching for the right word. She spins round to face him, finger in the air. "Small-minded. That's it". The Mayor sneers, dismissively.
"Huh, yeah, and that's better is it? Right, yeah, of course it is, huh!" He is patently unaware that talking to his childhood friend, rival and cousin is knocking years off him, but not in a good way. There have indeed been many times in his political career - not that he has noticed - when the Baseball Hat Of Yoof has been all too willing but the sense of mature dignity has been very, very weak.
"Small-minded? Ooh, that’s far worse!" Lady Pinke-Burnleigh is nearly shouting now and it’s all getting rather scary. "Being short is only a problem if you see it as so. It certainly isn't a problem to anybody else. I mean, just look at Tom Cr -"
They both seem suddenly aware that this conversation has left the neatly-banked and charted water of officialdom and is now out sailing on the shoreless ocean of familial blood. A reluctant telepathy makes them both turn round simultaneously and face me. There they are, sitting together in their boat while I gaze on from the craft they are casting adrift.
To her, I am perhaps the house-guest who has stayed a little too long. To him, I am the hippy who should have stuck to drawing socks on graph paper and never learned how to bolt two bits of metal together.
I can be unaware sometimes but, if not exactly a family party, it’s obvious this conference is still ‘Burnleigh’ and nothing to do with me.
Yes, it's time to go. Not just go from the room, but go go, as in home: I have been away from my flat too long and I need to catch up. It's been fun, though, and that’s something I never expected. I suspect, too, that Lady Pinke-Burnleigh has come to wonder if I am ever going to develop, whether I am gaining any benefit from being here - that was, after all, the whole raison d'être of me coming to the Hall in the first place.
And where have we got to? Well, Charlotte has gone from strength to strength but I have gone from being an excited metalworker to my default setting of staring at a piece of graph paper. Mind you, I have progressed from mere patterns to dealing with that monumental problem of making the legs of of tights transition to the pants part in a more radical and exciting way than before, this being currently via patterns inspired by Elizabethan knot gardens, seventeenth century Mughal carpets and English Gothic trefoils, so my time here hasn't been entirely wasted.
My plinth in the garden is still empty, but Charlotte is producing a large plaster sculpture of interlocking planes that will presently be transported all the way to Germany in a lorry and brought back as a polished, bronze sculpture... To put on 'my' plinth. I am very happy for her though and there will, no doubt, be an unveiling.
I do hope I'm invited.
I am leaning on the paddock fence as I pat the horse and watch the official Mayoral limousine crunch down the gravel and glide through the avenues of trees. A hand touches my shoulder and I hear a quiet and thoughtful "sorry". I have shot my bolt here (if indeed I ever had one). I sigh and turn to the apologetic face as it sighs back and waits for what it has suspected for a while: the aristocratic face knows that I'm about to say my goodbye and, while that noble visage has had the good grace not to say the word first, it is not going to interrupt my own as it makes the announcement.
But I don't say it directly. No, I try to put it a softer way. I turn and pat the horse again.
"I'm going to miss you."
"Me or the horse?" So, it is she, Her frank, outspoken Ladyship who is trying to sugar the bitter pill and laugh off the inevitable. Neither of us actually says the word 'leaving' or 'go', but then neither of us has to. She waves a hand in the vague direction of a shiny black speck and the distant crunching of gravel in the avenue of trees.
"The good news is he's not pressing charges but I bet you're thinking I'd deserve everything I got, that I'm bumptious, arrogant, living in my own little world and unaware of the realities of life." But no, I'm not about to judge her as I know I would be just like her if I had the money.
"No, I think you're… “ I hesitate, as I am not used to such a personal conversation with Her Ladyship. “No, I think you’re, um… Great." She gives my arm a little punch and I smile back but that is also the very moment I notice her eyes are moist. There was a time when showing her emotions would have been giving too much away but now she looks at me directly, unflinching.
"Are we okay?" I nod. It's her turn to pat the horse now. Returning her palm to the people side of the fence she leans back, looks at the sky and pushes her hands through her dishevelled hair.
"Bloody Hell. What a morning!"
13
My flat is dusty through neglect but the familiarity is reassuring, like I've never been away.
The photographs have arrived so I take the envelope to my drawing corner and start to pin up the little glossy rectangles depicting Charlotte and me (taken at an arty angle by Lady Pinke-Burnleigh in the billiard room) and of Lady Pinke-Burnleigh and me, a document to the gardener's very cautious if shaky attempt at photography in front of his greenhouse.
Looking at it I can almost hear Her Ladyship's "Yes, that's it, the little silver button on top. You can't miss it," a phrase rapidly followed by "No, the other one. That's the bit to hold the strap" and finally "I know, sorry, those buttons are so fiddly". I remember the moment she watched - with tenderness - his enormous cracked and weathered hands as they slid awkwardly round the minute, shiny technology like weathered stone around a bubble of mercury.
Lady Pinke-Burnleigh's smile was radiant as she took the camera back, examined the skewed blur and exclaimed "Oh, that's lovely, isn't it?" She tapped my shoe with hers to get me to voice my agreement, looking relieved when I, too, contributed my own little white lie. I stare at the picture and I realise it is that very blur - and the memory of her kindness - that make it more vivid than any object of perfection could ever be.
And here's the one of Nicky and me (taken on the timer once Nicky had taught me how to use it) and of the shy gardener and me. That one was only achieved because it was a request issued by Her Ladyship and thus, in his eyes, tantamount to a royal decree.
Then there are pictures of the octopus mosaic, distorted yet still menacing at the bottom of the swimming pool, the knot garden taken from a third storey window and the carpet in the dining room, a shot that also including a maid's sensible black shoes as she was cleaning the silver table centrepiece at the time...
...And then there are the patterns in a brick path, patterns in the masonry, patterns in the palm house floor, patterns of numerous radiator grilles and… Patterns... Patterns.... Even more patterns. My notebook has both frenzied, excited scribbles and detailed drawings done with ruler, compass and setsquare; there are shaky splashes of colour across spattered pages and there are cool, analytical monochrome investigations that scarcely betray the presence of a human hand.
I make no apologies. That's just the way I am.
It isn't until I have covered the small wall with pictures that I check the post. It is while I am pondering a six week-old card stating that my parcel must be collected immediately from a depot that there is a knock at the door below. As I negotiate the musty, cramped stairs I can see the broad shoulders and grey peaked cap of Adlington, Lady Pinke-Burnleigh's chauffeur silhouetted and simplified in the frosted security glass like a fuzzy Lego interpretation of himself.
Adlington would not appreciate being likened to a Lego man. At least, he wouldn't if he knew what one was. His sole knowledge regarding children is that that they always leave sticky marks on cars, so the only fly in his ointment when accepting the near-perfect post of chauffeur at the child-free Pinke-Burnleigh residence was (according to the gardener) the fact that his employer was a woman. Artists must, I'm pretty sure, come a close second.
So, it is with little ceremony that he proffers me, at arm’s length, a box wrapped in gold and black Art Deco paper (he has practically closed his eyes as if to shield them from this decadent abomination) topped with an exuberant black and gold silk bow (Glory be, he can't hand it over quick enough). Adlington gives the most perfunctory of nods and turns to open the limousine door. My mouth has just opened to ask him a question but he is already pulling the luxurious, four-wheeled liner away from the kerb next to the dirty, peeling orange paint on the outside wall of the downstairs flat.
I take the weighty package and I unwrap the paper, making sure that there is not one tear because I so want to keep it. An Edwardian shirt box has been commandeered for the purpose and there, nestling inside is a long, hand-written letter from Lady Pinke-Burnleigh saying how much she will miss me. I would like to think that is true but I scan the words over and over, convinced in my gloomed, pessimistic state that I will find tell-tale traces of insincerity somewhere among the fond memories and the kind words.
I search further and there, in the box, is an abundance of gold tissue paper round a framed picture. It's a photograph of Lady Pinke-Burnleigh and me. I remember exactly when it was, to the day, to the minute, almost. It was a few hours after seeing Charlotte's sculpture for the first time and we are sitting on a bench on Lady Pinke-Burnleigh's favourite hill, she showing me a distant view of the house.
There's an ivy-covered tree stump near the seat and we were alone so she must have placed her camera there surreptitiously on a self-timer; I smile; I bet she didn't need a seventeen year-old to tell her how to use it.
This must have been a moment that was important to her, important enough to send her chauffeur over with it frozen on paper, framed in solid silver, wrapped in tissue paper and presented in a lovely gift box. This was a moment important enough for her to spend a long time in her busy day composing a hand-written letter to me.
Blimey.
I stare at the picture again. We look like Mr. and Mrs. Andrews by Gainsborough, both in archaic, rural clothes but looking totally natural and at ease in them.
Except, of course, we aren't a couple.
The rest of the day is spent shopping for food (something I haven't done for a while) and just walking round my neighbourhood, feeling claustrophobic as I try to acclimatise to this world again. As I wander around the supermarket and forage for beans and tins of spaghetti to put in my meagre basket, I am like a brickie picking up another bag of cement from the DIY store, having spent the night before on an enormous stage on a TV talent show wowing millions of people.
Back home, I lie on my bed for a while and look at the stains on the ceiling, each one so familiar and gazed at many times. Yes, their presence has been benign in the past and it’s been fun turning them into objects but they are, since I came back here, a diagram of my life, of my achievements. That one over my wardrobe? It looks like a ‘thumb’s up’ but its sarcasm hurts. The one near the door? It resembles a flying arrow but it’s really a symbol for the fact I am stuck here in this shitty little flat and going nowhere.
Soon, the lunchtime can of own-brand lager is taking effect and I am now dozing, the crack across a corner coming to life and threatening (in my drowsy imagination) to break as if the ceiling is a huge piñata and not about to disgorge sweets but rather a huge litany of my weaknesses, a whole lifetime of hesitations and a bulging sack of missed opportunities.
Enough! I won’t be cowed. I’m made of sterner stuff now and I’m not the flaccid wannabe Bohemian who drifted into and out of some artistic encounter in the town square. No, I am he who entered the circus tent of The Aristocracy, jumped into the ring, did my turn and survived.
I feel a little more human after my evening meal. I watch the local news and the Mayor is on it in yet another shiny Italian suit. He is saying that what the town needs is a new injection in the economy with, this time, more money being spent on the rural community. It is to this end he announces a plan, and the television displays an architect's visualisation of giant, hangar-like constructions in an intersection of roads I remember seeing on Google Earth.
And it's all near Lady Pinke-Burnleigh's estate.
Very near.
Nobody else would pick this up from just the crossing of a couple of roads, but I do. It's not surprising though, because I can estimate angles as well as any Amsterdam diamond cutter. If we packed away a couple of minutes early, my Maths teacher (grateful that I could at least do something) would occasionally have me in front of the class so I could do my party piece. This consisted of a pupil calling out any angle up to three hundred and sixty degrees and me drawing it on the board - I was never more than a couple of degrees out.
I watch a film on the television at the end of the bed: I'm not really into it, I just can't sleep because I've got too much going round my head. It is the first night for weeks that I have slept here, the final item on today's first-for-a-long-time list. Lying down and staring up at a ceiling should be fairly straightforward - indeed, it is something that I have, over the years, honed to perfection - but it is by no means the easiest item to tick off since returning home.
My bed - yes, even my own special bed - feels small and I am already missing ‘my’ room at Burnleigh Hall with the bowmen on the marble chimney breast taking aimless pot-shots at the Chinese birds as they swoop around the pagodas on the wallpaper. Although I won't be there, the same sun will shine on them tomorrow as the one that shone there this morning when the knights bade me 'goode daye' for the very last time, the same sun as the Fair Messenger of Morn that shone on the new Hall two hundred years ago, the same sun as the God-In-The-Sky that shone on Lady Pinke-Burnleigh's favourite hill at a time when inhabitants more uncouth and infinitely less sartorial than her brought home a sabre-toothed tiger to roast on a spit… And it is the same sun as the flaming ball of gas that will be shining on the headboard of my bed where I am now looking to see if the fading remnant of the Sugar Bear sticker will grant me any succour.
But it doesn't. Turning on the radio for company, I listen to the familiarity of the Shipping Forecast as it comforts me and then finally lulls me gently to sleep.
14
I only came to the Town Hall to see the Mayor. It was merely idle curiosity on my part to find out where the remains of my sculpture have ended up, but things really aren't going to plan.
As I am bent over the reception counter in the Town Hall, I can hear the sound of loose change in a pocket, except that it isn't money, it's a collection of chains hanging round the great lump of the security guard like jungle vines on a Tarzan set. I am assuming the heavier clinks are the handcuffs. I notice he has gone for quality now, just the one decent pair.
A hard metal hoop tightens around my wrist and I give up struggling. With my arm dragged over to a plinth I am now handcuffed, intimately engaged in mutual bondage with a respectable-looking Mayor. This is unwilling on my part, but unwitting on his as my couplee, expediently right next to the desk, is one hundred and twenty years old, nine feet tall and happens to have a very convenient bronze ankle to tether me to.
After the brief scuffles, the lobby falls dead silent and I can hear the not-too-fit and slightly wheezy security guard catch his breath. I can even make out the hand rubbing over his stubbled head.
He's thinking.
This could take a while.
And now he’s talking.
"I've got him, Magenta... Sexy Honey Doll..." He emits a slow groan, not unlike the creak of a tree being felled and then a kiss which seems to serve as an 'over'. The radio crackles and hisses asthmatically, the receptionist's tinny voice telling Big Daddy Bear that it will be down shortly.
My face is pressed against the 'comments' section of the visitor signing-in book and, just as I'm wondering if dribble constitutes feedback, I hear the neat clipping of stilettos on the vast stone staircase.
"Oh, SweedySweedySweedy, when I said 'don't let him go 'til I've seen him, I meant make him a cup of tea, or something." She clicks her fingers to maintain his attention and strokes my arm like a vet calming a dog about to be spayed. "Look, do you remember? He's our friend!"
"Sorry. I forgot". The voice is lower, quieter now, the maiden having calmed the beast in his lair.
"Oh, that's alright, Big Bear. Come here to Mummy Bear.....Mmmm......" I hear smooches that would, if he had a pulse, probably shock the august, bewhiskered gentleman so recently tagged... But maybe not, as I recall he is the one who is rumoured to have been caught in a gent (in the Gents), a situation which no doubt sparked exclamations of 'caught red-handed', a phrase lacking sufficient anatomical accuracy to satisfy the more pedantic.
And they are still snogging.
"Erm... my voice is muffled and I am now stuck to the book with a pool of saliva but I manage to make my cries a little louder, hopefully conveying that, when they have finished coupling on the magnificent inlaid brass coat of arms in the foyer, I might perhaps be untied?
"Ooh," giggles Magenta. "Sorry". I then hear further groaning and rustling of chains as pockets are searched for the key.
"Hey, Sexy Kitten Doll.... Try my trouser pockets... In the front..." Further titters precede my standing vertical at last and I am offered a chair but that chair is not out here, the common ground of mere mortals off the street. No, we go to the inner sanctum, the security guards' CCTV monitoring room.
"Ooh, sorry," tuts Magenta, "I don't think you boys have been formally introduced?"
"No,' I opine, "I don't think we have, but that's alright… We've met."
"This," says Magenta with a sigh, "this is Troy".
"Hello, Troy". But Troy is busy. Big Daddy Bear Troy is keeping an eye on the screens and I suddenly see what makes him spark - apart from Lurid Pink Mummy Bear, that is. He switches from one grainy monochrome screen to the next, his eyes darting rapidly from the underground car park to the roof garden and from the kitchens to the corridor with its display of dormant Mayoral regalia in a glass case, all the while muttering a catalogue of possible safety breaches in rooms and situations which, to the uninitiated, look so innocuous and normal.
This man observes. It's what he does and he's brilliant at it. This man is not a clown after all... No, he is like a slouching youth on a street corner who suddenly executes exquisite dance moves in front of his mates for no apparent reason and then goes back immediately to leaning against his bin, motionless apart from the hooded head swaying slowly somewhere between a nodding dog and the Grim Reaper, a malcontent intent on menacing anyone willing to be fooled by his bored, studied act.
"There... You'd better move, darling." Even the love-talk is on hold as Troy flicks a finger at the screen trained on the entrance hall and we watch a man with a laptop and a briefcase enter the grainy image, walk across the vast brass inlay in the floor and disappear off the other side.
"No, I've got a couple of minutes. Look, he's off to the loo." Magenta flashes a smile - and a diamond ring - at me as she yanks a warm, scented silver envelope from her capacious bra. I try not to stare but I do notice her phone is stuffed in the other compartment and wonder if, as women's breasts – and bras - are apparently getting bigger nowadays, handbags will soon be redundant.
"Look!" she exclaims, regaining my interest in her hand as she waggles her engagement ring proudly, worried that, calamity of calamities, I haven't noticed it. I don't find this superficial or ostentatious, I just find it really touching as it means that I matter... That, yes, I am now actually a friend. She points at the card laden with glitter, a shocking pink love heart and a huge gold M intertwined with a T. "And that's a wedding invitation, a little 'thank you' for getting us together."
I'm just about to thank her too when I see her compose her serious face. I see it shining silver in the glow of the monitors in the darkened room. She nods at a screen as she smoothes her dress.
"See that one there, the one just coming in? He's in on the deal as well."
"What deal?" This is beginning to sound exciting.
"The new industrial complex."
"The one near Lady Pinke-Burnleigh's estate?"
"Nah, that was just a warning to her. It's going to be twice as big and it's going to end up the one on Lady Pinke-Burnleigh's estate. Well, partly, anyway."
"He can't!"
"Oh, yes he can. Compulsory Purchase Order."
And, recalling the council workers taking photos in the wood, I think I know where it's going, too. The next place alongside the Mayor's proposed development is the wood with the mausoleum in. I chip in with a question, realising the answer even as I ask it.
"So how do you - Ah, of course, you take the minutes."
"Take the minutes? He's so clueless I practically run this town."
"The power behind the throne?"
"Nah, that's the cistern. I'm the bog brush, the one that has to clear up all the smears and the crap. Anyway, better dash as the other one's here now. And gotta love that Lady Pinke-Burnleigh! The way she heaved His Holiness in the back of 'er car? Smashing. We all clapped. Anyway, must dash - see ya!"
Well… Not so Bimbo and Jobsworth after all.
"Bye." Troy gives her a brief nod as he stands at the desk and signs the second man in. Even he's beginning to learn that discretion is the better part, but he does watch her bottom as it wiggles its vivid pinkness up the ancient, dignified official stairs. It isn't with lust, though, that he gazes after her so adoringly. No, it is with a profound love, a tenderness that I can only imagine, having never been lucky enough to experience what this man has found. He turns to me as if in a daze.
"Sorry about that, earlier." I give his arm a little bump with my fist, confident now that it won't initiate a ping pong of taps going into thuds going into GBH and me on a life-support.
He is blushing now, his eyes a little moist.
"I'm so lucky. That's my babe, that is."
"I know. And, yes, you're a lucky guy. While we're at it, thank you for the invitation and it's just a 'me' at your wedding. There isn't a 'me-plus-one'." But Troy's thinking about something else and begins to smile slowly.
"That little scuffle earlier; that makes us one-all at the moment!" I'm not sure I like the sound of the 'at the moment', but I nod vigorously in agreement, hopefully looking as if it hadn't occurred to me yet.
"Oh, yes, you're right... It does!" He looks at his watch.
"It's going to be quiet for at least the next half hour. Do you fancy a cup of tea?"
"Do you know what? That would be great."
15
It’s around midnight and I'm sitting here in the hospital and clutching the catalogue of Charlotte's private view, an event that had started so well.
It was the one who had got tanked up and starting to mess around in a Porsche, he was the one who did it. He had gone around the coach house pointing, mockingly, at Charlotte's work and giving his considered opinion to a girl as they meandered, slightly unsteadily, through the slalom of pristine white slabs.
Then, once outside, he had started mouthing off, trotting out the same old crap you always hear at a private view.
"What a load of bollocks. What the fuck was all that about?" As Lady Pinke-Burnleigh is a stickler for good form, the youth's father, the Mayor, had been invited but he had shown rare sensitivity in staying away. His son, in a scruffy (but extremely expensive) pair of jeans and tee shirt, hadn't been invited at all but he wasn’t to be burdened with such an inconvenient sense of propriety; no, he was going to be there because he knew that his rich relative's cellar door was always swung open for events such as this. He also knew he was going to get through a fair amount so he had also bullied Nicky into finding him a bed for the night, hinting that hers would be good but one to himself would be a satisfactory second-best.
Adlington had been roped in as extra help but he was probably not enjoying his evening of playing skivvy and serving drinks to a lot of 'Left-Wing pseuds and poseurs'. This, his summing up of the guests was relayed to me by Nicky, Lady Pinke-Burnleigh's personal assistant, who was now sporting a black and white servant's outfit from the nineteen-twenties she'd found on one of her treks up to the attic. She wasn't quite sure what Adlington meant, but she was amused when I translated it. Regarding the Mayor's son, however, it was a clear case of message understood.
"Ooh, that cheeky little wanker!" Nicky was fuelled with caffeine to a point of hysteria by the secret stock of Diet Cokes she had hidden behind a tree and it was comical to see her nip behind it now and then to pacify her craving. Her addiction also had the effect of making her feisty. "Sorry," she burped, as some of it, in its haste to go down, took a wrong fork. "Probably spoke out of turn there." She looked at me apologetically. The poor girl has never been quite sure where I fall on the upstairs/downstairs divide.
And neither have I.
"Oh," I nodded vigorously, "don't worry. ’Little Wanker'? I'm with you there!"
It was the first time I'd been back since I left and I was enjoying catching sporadic, random snippets of gossip as Nicky broke off from handing out drinks to have a quick slurp - and a fag - behind her tree.
I had, fortunately, managed to steer The Little Wanker away from Charlotte who had not heard his critique of her exhibition and was still basking in her celebrity, a beautiful white gown on her elegant body and a massive grin on her sweet, sweet face. Lady Pinke-Burnleigh had contacted her chums in the press and Charlotte was being button-holed by the art critic of The Times who, yes, was probably going to come up with something better than my 'wow'. Charlotte was so euphoric, though, I think even her fragile confidence would have survived a few jibes from an ignorant yob, and she would have been well up to grabbing the glossy catalogue from under her arm and heaving a good swing at his head.
It was obviously too tempting to pass up: the Mayor's son could get totally rat-arsed on free booze, stagger to his car, slump behind the wheel and yet in his opinion still be on the right side of the law as, egged on by a cackling and whooping girl, he practiced repeatedly at the dark end of the long private drive. Each time he did it he slammed the handbrake on, making the back end slew round and chuck up increasing amounts of gravel as he got faster, more confident.
After a few shots at it, the Mayor’s son reckoned he'd had his practice runs. Stopping a little way up the drive was no longer satisfying him and it was time now for The Big One. Sensing he had an audience, he probably thought they looked a bit poe-faced and, yes, it was his duty to liven things up a bit. Picking up speed, he screeched up the drive and pulled on the brake lever, scores of onlookers witnessing the moment the back of the car swung its weight round and flung Charlotte into the statue in the middle of the fountain.
Cradling the same token flute of champagne all evening, Lady Pinke-Burnleigh was one of the few there under the limit. It was too late to worry about Charlotte's spine as her unconscious body was already undulating and shifting in the depths of the fountain so we lifted her bent and bruised form out of the pool, her white gown turned pink by the blood in the water.
Nicky was dialling '999'. Lady Pinke-Burnleigh shouted to her not to worry about the ambulance.
"Take too long - but get the police!" We carried Charlotte to the back seat of the Porsche and Lady Pinke-Burnleigh dragged the stunned, sobbing youth out of the driving seat and dumped him on the gravel. Screwing up her face at his vomit on the steering wheel, she turned the key in the ignition, shoved the hysterical girl out of the other side of the car with her foot and shouted at me to get in.
The staff, they're very nice here at the hospital.
The nurse looking after Charlotte has been as smiling and as encouraging as she can be: she doesn't even seem to notice Lady Pinke-Burnleigh's outlandish dinner suit with the Art Deco details. The blood on the front of my companion's dress shirt is already drying in the heat of the hospital and crusting around the diamond and jet studs. I notice her monocle is not dangling in its customary place and lined perfectly with her buttons - no, it is pushed round the back of her jacket, partly to keep it out of the way but partly because it seems an object of ridicule in this place, a nonsense.
In the brash fluorescent light I can see every minute crease around Lady Pinke-Burnleigh's eyes, I can see minute granules of mascara that have fallen on her cheek like soot disturbed onto pale marble. We shrink back in our chairs and pull our jackets around ourselves but we are still scrutinised by every passer-by as an oddity. Out of the pond, we are embarrassed, cast up on the bank in broad daylight to be stared at by the curious who are fascinated but recoiling as if we are specimens they are dying to touch but daren’t.
The nurse has come out again.
But this time she is not smiling.
We sit next to Charlotte who is thin and pale on the white bed with the white sheets, the white bedspread... And the rich, red blood travelling through a tube. The beeps stop. The nurse pauses respectfully before walking slowly, softly over to the machine and turning it off. Pausing to press Lady Pinke-Burnleigh's shoulder, she slips out of the room to let us all have a final time together.
And what has happened to Charlotte’s soul? Is it feeling sad to be bidding farewell to such a beautiful earthly vessel and perhaps hovering among the machines and the tubes in the hope of a last-minute reprieve? No: any angels sent for Charlotte will not find themselves prising a reluctant spirit from its earthly incarnation - she was impatient with the physical limitations of life when she was with us, so her aetherial dead body will have no hold. Perhaps, amidst the loss, is the promise that breaking free at last will reveal to her a canvas that no mortal artist – even she - could even dream of.
We have been here for three hours now and the dawn is rosy, just as it was the morning Charlotte and I stood in the square. The sun falls across her pallid mask giving her a false, taunting blush as if she is alive again; then it disappears behind a cloud and all is as it was. Charlotte, white in the white room, her stark, cold finale.
We leave the dented Porsche where it is in the hospital car park as we cannot, in the cold light of day, even bear to look at it. There is a drain near the taxi rank and Lady Pinke-Burnleigh drops the keys through the grille.
Sitting closer to me in the taxi, Lady Pinke-Burnleigh leans on my shoulder. I smell her scent, and I feel guilty as I indulge in the heady fragrance of her shampoo as her hair falls on my jacket: it is as if this is neither the time nor place to feel pleasure, that this aromatic moment is at the expense of Charlotte’s death and her ladyship’s grief. It isn't until we pull up in front of the house that my fellow passenger lifts her head, a languid smile soon disappearing as she remembers why she is in the cab.
"Lady Pinke-Bur -"
"Sarah." She looks around, still only semiconscious. "Do you realise," she says softly, "that nobody ever calls me by my name? Please, call me Sarah."
It is this Sarah who makes the arrangements. Not Nicky, not Lady Pinke-Burnleigh, but Sarah, a massive sense of guilt driving this particular Sarah to do it all herself. It is Sarah who, as Charlotte's coffin lies in the dining room on the table where I had once thought the beautiful artist too perfect, too irritating, goes in with a remnant of the white paint from Charlotte's studio and covers the coffin, the handles, even the name plaque. She does not notice the white rivulets crawl across the table and onto the Mughal pattern of the carpet as if they are decreeing that this is not the time for colour.
Charlotte was a virgin. Sarah says that is why the coffin is white, because Charlotte will be pure for all Eternity. As the object of the few friends assembled here comes in through the chapel doorway, I don't just think of all the experiences she did not have in her short life, but of how, when she did have them, they were passionate, intense.
Sarah is standing next to me, her velvet coat looking an intense black against the marble floor. It is the kind of velvet that absorbs so much light that it does not contemplate anything less than total darkness. It is even blacker against the coffin that, alone in this chamber of austere marble, stands up to the tyranny of the gloom of the day. The only objects to approach it are some large gilded rays, a gold burst of glory that surrounds the giant crucifix above the altar, itself darkened and cracked so much with age that it has given up the struggle.
I am looking at the priest as he chants the funeral rites, but am brought back to that which is now so near us we could touch it. Sarah's hand is not holding mine for support now but squeezing it for my attention and I see she is looking at the coffin with a faint smile. The chapel is still dark and sombre, but there is one spot where the sun has broken the clouds and is streaming in through the stained glass windows, vibrant coloured light dancing on the white of Charlotte's casket as we all look on. It is brief and lasts a minute, no more, as if her final act of creation, a final act of farewell.
Even the priest stops chanting and just stares.
The crematorium is what it is. It has a job to do and it tries to do it the most human way it knows, but it should have been the factory chimneys that carried Charlotte heavenwards, the tall, ancient towers delivering her to her Maker in silent, dignified reverence. Yes, they should have been woken from their long sleep, the old furnaces coaxed gently to life just one last time.
After the service, we file out of the chapel into the garden of remembrance and Sarah grasps my arm and asks me to travel with her back to the house. Closing damp eyes behind the black veil of her hat, she becomes studiously deaf to my naïve protestations that there are others who have a greater claim to her, who have shown much greater loyalty. In one’s struggle to understand the world and its ways, it’s sometimes easy to forget that not everything trundles along a ‘proper’ route, that there are deeper, subtler reasons that dwell by the feint byways of human understanding. Sarah is such a one who knows better and it takes just one touch, just one minute squeeze of a hand to soothe all my clumsiness and uncertainty.
Yes, it is me she wants in the large black car with her and that is the final decision.
When we get back to the house, Sarah and I stand in silence in the stable block, both aware of each other in the pitch black of the room. My hearing is heightened by the dark and I hear my companion catching her breath softly, as if trying to check her grief. With her arm through mine we walk through the red beam and it begins, the coloured lights appearing softly and dancing on the white surfaces in front of us before they disappear again. Sarah's tears glisten in the glow and yet she is smiling.
Then, inexplicably, we both laugh and it is with a strange joy that we walk over to the house, rejoin the others and toast Charlotte in champagne.
I sidle up to the gardener in the drawing room and he is almost telepathic as he reaches in the cardigan pocket under his grey suit. He gives me one of his nods but we are a long way from the dismissive one first tossed my way through the greenhouse window that day. We are even quite a way on from the bashful fumbling for the key and the looking down at the ground as I took it from him the first time I went to the woods. No, it is an easy, sympathetic smile to a friend I get as I pocket the precious metal and turn to Sarah to make my temporary excuses.
Except that it is 'Lady Pinke-Burnleigh' when I address her. Addressing her as 'Sarah' now, in this room, would be claiming familiarity in a foreign place where I have no right to do so.
As Sarah watches me leave she understands. There is a lot about me she seems to understand. She doesn't mention it and I can't quantify it, but she just... Knows. And right now she understands that I need to go to my special place.
What I don't need is what I see when I get there. Poking about the woods is the almost-forgotten blue and blonde head of Hettie as it snuggles up to the viewfinder of a camera. She has a little more cunning than the men from the council and is wearing camouflage, but I still spot her as she skulks around the trees. Being quite near the mausoleum, I manage to keep it between us as she spends the next ten minutes walking round the woodland and picking flowers before being helped back over the fence by a familiar, shorter man who wraps his arm round her as he accompanies her to a large car just outside the perimeter fence.