Ivory (11 page)

Richard
studied Martin with a peculiar wariness, seemingly waiting for him
to come to rest. When he did Richard appeared hesitant to speak and
when he did speak his words were slow and measured. “What’s her
name?” As though he knew, or was fearful that he knew, how Martin
would answer.

Martin
swallowed and stared at Richard, unsure whether he could trust him.
If Candy had gone to the police and implicated Ivory then Martin
could be incriminating himself by mentioning her name. However, if
Candy had gone to the police then she would have mentioned the car
accident and they would have gained his details from that. He could
be screwed anyway. “Ivory. She’s called Ivory.”

Richard
fumbled with his mug, almost spilling it before he could replace it
on the table. He slumped back in his chair and stared out at the
red, amber and white lights of the traffic on the busy dark evening
road. “I know her,” he managed after some time. “I’ve seen her walk
to and from Arven. That’s when I first saw her.”

Martin leaned
forward trying to bridge the gap created by Richard’s withdrawal.
Every cell in his body called for information, wanting every word
at once, a download of information straight into his brain. With
caution fallen like a ruin and forgotten his words fell over
themselves with excitement. “Tell me.”

“
I saw her around. She was so unusual looking. Like you say
she has a beauty about her that is almost disturbing. I might be
gay, but I could always appreciate what was attractive in a woman.
Sexuality doesn’t affect your recognition of whether things are
beautiful or not. Ivory was different. I had feelings for her that
I couldn’t escape. They haunted me. I had wrestled with issues
about my sexuality in my early teens, before even then. Yet she
made me question things. Things that made me wonder about what my
Dad had said about phases and confusion. But, deep down I knew it
was her that created the confusion. It was just about her. Her
alone.

“
I moved my hustling plot nearer to her route. I followed her
around, to and from her home. She started coming out in my art but
whatever I created just did not live up to her likeness.” Richard
turned his attention from the road and back to Martin, his dark
eyes soulful and lost.

“
I don’t remember ever seeing them,” Martin demonstrated
incredulously.

“
I kept them to myself. I was ashamed of what it said about
me. How it made my overt confidence about my sexuality somehow
hypocritical. Made me a sham.” Richard reached into his fitted
jeans and drew out a packet of cigarettes. “Step out? I need a
fag.”

Martin nodded
somewhat reluctantly, and they moved to the tables and chairs
outside, leaving their consumables behind them. It was bitterly
cold and the four lane road was busy and noisy with rush-hour
traffic.

“
Did you ever… talk to her or…” A knot of dread tightened his
stomach, at the possibility of Richard having any kind of
relationship with Ivory.

Richard’s
fingers trembled as he fingered the cigarette packet open. “No. I
was always terrified of what would happen if I actually spoke to
her. I thought that I would be lost if I did that. I would have no
escape then.” His lips pursed around and a cigarette and he lit it
and took a deep draw.

“
What happened?”

Richard
exhaled a steady stream of ghostly blue smoke. “I spoilt several
relationships because of my doubts about myself and I lost some
good friends clumsily trying to reaffirm my sexuality and prove
something to myself. I thought I was losing it. So I made the
decision to be free of her. I adapted my routine so it wouldn’t
clash with hers. Avoided places where I had seen her. Found a new
patch further away. Some days I didn’t leave the flat. Weeks if I
am being honest.

“
Beyond a counsellor you’re the first real person I have told
about this. I was worried I would sound melodramatic, but I can see
the same look in your eyes that haunted mine back then. So I am
glad I have told you. Maybe it will spare you the same
anguish.”

“
Where are your pictures?”

“
I destroyed them. Burnt the lot. It was the only way to cast
her out of my life. I couldn’t trust myself to paint. That is why I
changed to sculpture.” A little anger reinforced his voice as he
finally explained the true reasons for his change of art, maybe
bitterness for Martin’s rejection of him. “I did it to escape the
subtlety of paint, I was afraid that the chance of creating beauty
would posses my hand back to trying to recreate her on canvas. She
destroyed my art.

“
Whatever your interest in Ivory, I would suggest leaving it.
Maybe it was just me she had this affect on. Maybe not. I saw the
way other people looked at her. People would stop dead in the
street to look at her. I think I was lucky to escape myself and my
obsession. I am not going to lecture you, but you have a wife and
kids. Don’t let this take over. Don’t let it destroy
you.”

Chapter Eight

Ordinarily
Martin would have considered Richard’s warning to be dramatic, but
taken in context with recent events it unnerved him. So much so
that he had felt the need to divert his thoughts from Ivory and
ground himself in normality by re-engaging with his life. When he
had returned home from having coffee with Richard he replied to one
of the many texts Donnie had been pestering him with, and accepted
Donnie and Bea’s invite to their dinner party. He arranged for
their usual babysitter and made Jenny’s month when he told her that
he had arranged for them to go out for the evening that
Saturday.

Martin grabbed
Jenny’s arm and steadied her as she stumbled through the door.

“
Oops. How much wine did I have?”

Martin put a
hand to his forehead. “I have had so much myself I don’t think I
can count.”

“
You do the standing and I will do the Maths.” Jenny propped
herself up on the newel post and balustrade and groaned.

The
babysitter, Sally Jenkins the eldest daughter of a family down the
road, emerged from the family room. Her abnormal height threw him
in his drunken state, then he remembered her bulky boots and the
six inch platform soles. Having been paid at the beginning of the
evening she had her black patent floor length coat on already and
was ready to leave. She tucked her bangs of starkly died black hair
behind her ears and her heavily blacked up eyes sheepishly shifted
from Martin and Jenny and the floor, explained that the boys had
gone to bed without any problems. She appeared to find it awkward
being around their drunkenness and made a hasty exit. Martin closed
the door behind the pale goth and struggled to get the key in the
lock in a pin the tail on the donkey style.

“
I’m sure the last time she babysat she was blonde and pink
and fluffy.” Martin slurred.

“
Shows how often we go out.” Jenny clapped her hands to her
face. “We have turned into hermits.”

“
Should we check that she hasn’t summoned a Demon in the
family room?”

“
Or sacrificed the children.”

“
I think the boys could handle her. They would just kick her
platform boots from under her. The fall would kill her.”

Jenny did a
twirl and brandished her sequin and diamante shoulder wrap in the
air like a scarf at a football match, scattering spots of reflected
light over the gloomy hallway. She looked nice all made-up and
dressed in something other than her slouch clothes, the
transformation had been something of a surprise it had been such a
long-time since he had seen her like that. She hadn’t taken much
pride in her appearance since Finn had been born.

“
Did I out glam Donnie’s beard?”

Martin reached
around Jenny and deposited his keys on the newel post. He spoke
into her neck, could smell the Kenzo Flower perfume he had bought
her for tonight. She smelt good. “That’s impossible.” He kissed her
behind the ear and pulled away. Bea’s vast frame had been draped in
a voluminous dress of aqua blue sequins. “She was a veritable
glitter ball this evening. There must be a shortage of sequins in
the world after making that dress.”

“
I wonder how many little Indian boys went blind sewing them
on.”

“
Three at the least.”

Jenny fingered
her wrap absently and leaned against Martin as they headed towards
the kitchen. “Did you have a nice time?”

It had been a
good evening. Donnie and Bea had invited two couples that were
regulars at their parties Clive and Gillian and Toby and Shirley.
Such a combination always guaranteed intelligent witty conversation
and bawdy and mischievous drunkenness. “It was good. Apart from the
Americans.”

Jenny stopped
in the doorway to the kitchen and patted Martin on the arm as she
scolded him. “They were nice.”

“
Janice, who you spent much of the evening talking with, was
nice. She’s a card-carrying member of the NRA and has more guns
than you have handbags. I heard you asking her about guns for the
majority of the evening.” Martin attempted to tap Jenny playfully
on the nose, but the drink caused him to miss and he poked her in
the eye.

“
Ow!” She blinked against the sting. “She’s the first fellow
female gun fan I have ever spoken to.”

“
Thankfully there were no guns present when I was stuck with
her husband. George was an arrogant bore.” Martin headed into the
kitchen and started to crash about making a cup of tea for them
both. George was in his fifties, but attempted to obscure it with
Grecian 2000, and by being ‘fashionable’ through every item of
clothing or accessory being branded with a designer label. He could
have sought sponsorship going out like that. George had chipped
into every conversation or talked over it until he held court at
the dining table talking about his success as a business
entrepreneur and boasting grossly about his wealth. Donnie and Bea
had met their match in the talking department, and Martin had
noticed that the hosts were throwing as much alcohol in his
direction as they could in the hope it might sedate him a
little.

It had only served to loosen his tongue and lower his
inhibitions, most noticeably when Donnie mentioned his two
daughters, and George had responded with dramatic incredulity;
“You
have
children?”

If the first brick wall your assumptions ran into when you
were getting to know Donnie was that he was married to a
woman
, the second was
that he had fathered children. Bea wasn’t just a trophy wife. It
usually evoked a hesitation as the brain reappraised, but George’s
reaction had been embarrassing for everyone, although Donnie and
Bea only demonstrated the smallest flinch.

“
Yes, we do that over here too,” Martin had leapt in to defend
his friend.

“
And for quite a while longer too.” Donnie added before
swigging back the rest of his wine. A little more than he had seen
Donnie knock back in one go.

“
Where are they now?” Janice had asked, trying to cover for
her husband.

“
They have flown the coup,” Bea announced with a theatrical
flutter of her hand in the air. Her other hand squeezed Donnie’s
wrist as if it was a subject she knew Donnie would need comforting
over. “It was a wrench to have them leave, but it’s lovely to see
them happy. Jen-Jen is married and Janey is living in Edinburgh.
She’s frantically making her designs into clothes for a show that
she has coming up.”

“
I guess we have that to come, honey.” George had nodded to
Janice, wrenching the spotlight from Bea and turning it back on
himself. Quite a feat in itself. “Did you see our
darling?”

“
You have seen the American prodigal already, Martin,” Donnie
poured more wine into Martin’s glass at this point, so that as he
explained Martin would be the only one able to see him arch an
eyebrow. “George and Janice’s daughter played the lead in my recent
production
.
”

The girl with
the acute nose. “Her performance stood out from all the others.”
Martin raised his glass in a toast. “To Donnie, for he has a nose
for talent.”

Bea and Donnie
had raised their glasses conspiratorially within their shared joke
at George’s daughters’ expense. Jenny had stifled a smirk and
kicked him under the table but she needn’t have worried as George
was so ignorant he wouldn’t have been able to recognise a flaw in
his perfect world if Martin had just said, “Oh yes, the girl with
the memorable nose.”

“
Talented she is, but her choice to take her studies in Europe
was difficult for me when I had managed to secure her a place at
Yale.”

In Martin’s
line of sight Donnie had rubbed his thumb and fore-fingers
together. George had bought his daughter a place.

“…
but I figure if I pump enough money into this university of
yours I can make it fit for my princess.”

Bea had raised
both her drawn on eyebrows at this, exaggerating her usual
appearance of sustained surprise, and had begun to clear the table.
Her signal to Donnie that she had had enough of George.

Donnie kept
Martin and George connected as the party broke away from the table
and the couples moved to lounge on the sofas and chairs, freeing
the others to talk more independently and take much needed breaks
from George. “Martin has two lovely children, much younger than
ours but just as talented. His oldest is following in his father’s
footsteps.”