Other People's Husbands (17 page)

It had been an odd lunch. Well, any business lunch in-adequately fuelled by alcohol was odd, really. He should have gone by train, then he could have got roundly drunk and blanked out a lot of Gerry's incessant hectoring. Gerry was keen for him to do every publicity opportunity that came up. Well, he would be, wouldn't he? It made him look good, kept the buzz going with collectors and would big him up to newer potential clients, get him back in style and see off all those Young British Artists who went everywhere clutching a MacBook Air and a look of Hoxton hip.

A lot of possible press was coming up, with this birthday. Did the posher press really have nothing better to publish than look-backs over a painter's life work? How many Day In The Life and In My Studio pieces could these damn fools need? And how undignified was it that Gerry was touting for the slots like a media tart? Gerry had been busy at the gallery, updating the website to make sure this landmark birthday was included, circulating press releases to all and sundry. Too many had responded positively. At this rate the house would be a traffic jam of photo shoots and keen young journos knocking into each other. Sara was good with them – forever patient.

She'd make an excellent widow, he thought fondly. She'd just get on with it, all calm and capable, and even when she cried, she'd do it prettily. She always had. She looked like a sweet Madonna when she wept, tragic and still with pearly tears running tidily down her pale, delicate face. The funeral would run like Mussolini's railways; Pandora would design beautiful invitations to the memorial service and Cassandra would howl and wail very gratifyingly for days and days. All right, it was a shocking piece of bailing-out on them all, but it would have to be done if they were to be saved a dismal future of passing him round to be cared for and mopped and wiped. If they could see that ahead, they'd thank him for setting them free from it. All he saw these days were people that bit older than him, once magnificent, energetic, capable men falling to pieces, crumbling like overdried biscuits. Decrepitude was waiting like a mugger, ready to nab his vitality, any minute. The most cruel would be the desiccation of intellect. That was something else he couldn't bear – to see once scathing minds become limp and formless.

‘I feel like you've been sending out sodding begging letters to all these press oiks,' Conrad grumbled to Gerry over the Dove and Olive's hefty steak pie. ‘I don't
want
all this fuss. I've sold enough. Painted enough. I've quit. I'm well past normal retirement age, for heaven's sake. Can't I stop now and have some peace? In fact can't I just Rest In Peace in the death sense? Time to go while the going's good, as it were?'

‘Bollocks.' Gerry wouldn't have it – which was only to be expected in a man who had made a large chunk of his gallery earnings from Conrad over the years. ‘What do you want peace for? Dead or alive? What would you do with it? Artists don't retire. Look at Freud. Is he being all bonhomie in a golf club? No. Bacon? Never stopped. Look at Peter Blake. Committed, absorbed, fresh, still got something to say. The way you're talking, anyone would think it was just a
job
.'

‘It
is
a job like any other. Just because everyone thinks it's your “calling”, and it takes a bit of something that not everyone's got, it doesn't mean it ain't work.' Conrad could hear himself sounding stubborn, childlike. ‘And it definitely becomes
just
a job when you have to be nagged into doing it. The minute you think, “Shit, I'd rather stay in bed,” that's the end. I can pay the bills with what I've earned, what I
still
earn from print sales and copyright licensing. And I
might
just take up golf.'

‘Now I know you're taking the piss,' Gerry sniggered. ‘
You
on a golf course? I think not. You wouldn't understand the rules, or the concept that you have to play the eighth hole after the seventh but before the ninth. You'd build sandcastles in a bunker. But what I'm saying here is if you don't get your finger out now, the next bit of press you'll get will be your sodding obituary! You don't want that, now do you? You want to keep going, have the buggers stocking up your wares against the day you snuff it and they can stick another zero on the value of their investment.'

‘And now you're talking like a stockbroker,' Conrad grouched. ‘If you think I'm going to keep going like some kind of factory, just so some grasping bastards can make a fortune after I've snuffed it . . .'

‘Ha! Changed your tune there, haven't you? A second ago you were saying it's “just a job”. Now you're being all precious. Can't have it both ways, matey.'

It had crossed Conrad's mind, even as he heard Gerry nagging on, that the view from this pub garden was well worth the trip, if nothing else. The strange non-perspective of the softly rounded Oxfordshire hills, the spring-vivid shades of green on the varying ripening levels of the rape fields, interspersed here and there with silver-leaved crops of poppies. How many dead bodies did these perfect colours hide, he found himself wondering. Not people – though possibly
some
people – but rats and rabbits, mice and moles. If he were to paint part of this scene, he'd put them in. They wouldn't be the first thing you'd see . . . it would be the rotting, fetid truth under nature's pretty skirts. A favourite theme of his. Here he was – he surprised himself – thinking about working, in spite of what he'd decided. How inconvenient. He stubbed the last centimetre of cigarette out and tried to dismiss creative thinking.

‘Dead birds,' he said to Gerry. ‘Why is it you never see any dead birds unless they've either fallen from a nest or a cat's dragging one in? Why isn't the woodland floor covered in them? Is it foxes, do you think? Carrion?'

‘
What?
' Gerry looked despairing.

‘Nothing, just thinking aloud. Look – I really don't mind about the obituary thing. Soon would be fine.' Conrad shrugged, lighting another Gauloise. ‘In fact, I might just write it myself. That way I make sure I get to say what I want them to print and it's one thing less for Sara to have to deal with when the time comes. I hate to think what the
Telegraph
will come up with.'

‘Good God, man, don't be ridiculous! Look at you! A picture of rude blooming health. Though if you're seriously back on smoking the vile weed it won't help your chances of making the century.'

‘I have
no
intention
at all
of making the century, as you put it. Far from it,' Conrad snapped. ‘And that's another good reason for writing your own obituary. You don't get God-awful phrases like “he had a good innings”.'

‘You are being
totally
ridiculous,' Gerry scolded. ‘I think the posh papers can do better than that, don't you?'

Now, racing at scare speed along the M4, Conrad wished he'd bought a flimsier car. This Mercedes was fully equipped with every airbag, crumple zone, side padding and roll bar that the safety wallahs could chuck in. Very German tank, he thought. How hard would he have to hit something in it to guarantee instant and painless oblivion? And suppose it bounced off a concrete pillar and took out a family saloon containing . . . a family? No – too dreadful to contemplate. This was to be his ending, and his alone. He couldn't risk it. He would have to think of something else.

The most direct route to Ben's cottage took Sara past her own house. The most sensible thing to do would be to leave the car in her driveway, say a quick hello to whichever family members were in residence, collect Floss and walk her the half-mile along the towpath. Instead, she found herself parking at the corner of her road out of sight of all windows and scurrying down the alleyway to the riverbank, almost holding her breath and with her heart thumping as if she was on a clandestine mission. For heaven's sake, why? she asked herself as she strolled at a more relaxed pace beside the water. What on earth was all the secrecy about? She'd met someone she liked, that was all. A friend; someone she'd admit she fancied a teeny bit. According to Pamela Mottram, nothing could be more ordinary or normal. But Sara had gone off to the cloakroom after she'd made sure the studio was tidied. She'd brushed her teeth. As she'd looked in the mirror and applied lip gloss, brushed her hair, sprayed on perfume, she thought, what kind of meeting was she expecting today that needed scrubbed teeth? How, overnight, had she turned into the kind of woman who kept a Muji miniature toothbrush and paste in her handbag? She'd picked up that little trick from Marie, who said you should always go out prepared for anything. Sara kept telling herself that the ‘anything' she was going out for definitely wasn't something that needed preparing for. It didn't stop the adrenalin whizzing about, though.

Ben was in the long front garden of the pink cottage, cutting flyaway tendrils from a rampant jasmine that surrounded the door frame. ‘Aha – at last!' he said. ‘I'd almost given up on you. You're lucky I didn't eat all the Jaffa cakes.'

‘Sorry – I couldn't get away any quicker. The class left a hell of a mess of paint in the sink and . . . well, one of them wanted to chat a bit.'

‘You smell nice,' he said, leaning close to her. ‘Clarins Eau Dynamisante?'

‘I'm impressed! You know it well?' she asked, following him into the house. The front door opened into a white-painted sitting room. A huge blue sofa occupied the far wall and three remote controls for a selection of steely gadgets were lying on the arm. The fireplace had a glass-fronted woodburning stove with a neat pile of logs on each side of it. She thought of Stuart and his wood deliveries. If Ben needed a supplier, perhaps she could sort out the contact for him.

‘Yes – my daughter wore that scent for a while.'

Ah. A daughter. With a daughter, as a set, tended to come a wife. And there, presumably, she was: on top of a hyper-shiny black lacquer piano, in a photo frame, pictured on the deck of a sailing boat with a pair of teenagers, one boy, one girl. She was pretty: smooth tanned skin, big straight teeth, laughing face and long dark hair, scooped up and loosely clipped. Wisps of it fluttered round her face. She looked quite young, no make-up, one of those slim, fine-boned sorts who would never get jowly or have upper-arm qualms about buying a strappy party frock. Sara was willing to bet the woman was also quite tall and she felt immediately short, round and inelegant in her vintage fabrics and ditzy too-young tie-front cardigan.

‘Is this your daughter?' She pointed to the crop-haired blonde teenager in the photo.

‘That's Abigail. Couple of years ago now, actually. About the time we were talking about a divorce.'

‘Divorce? From . . .' Sara's finger hovered over the smiling woman.

‘Yep – that's my wife. Caro.' He was standing just behind her, looking at the photo over her shoulder. She could feel body warmth and moved away a little, conscious of an urge to do the opposite.

‘We're still on good terms,' he continued. ‘Well, as you can see from the photo. We'd been separated for a while but we'd still take the kids sailing together now and then. You get used to how you sail the boat together, you know? Who pulls which ropes. Which side of the boat . . .'

‘Yes, I get the idea,' Sara interrupted. She couldn't look at the woman any more. This sounded too intimate. Were they really talking about boats or . . . She then said, as the two of them moved towards the kitchen, ‘It's like in
High Society
, where Tracy's yacht is a kind of metaphor for their sex life.'

Ben laughed. ‘No! Definitely not! I meant it literally about the boat. God no, our sex life wasn't on at that point. Well, together it wasn't anyway. Caro was having a fine old time with her new man. They'd practically moved into the Oxford Malmaison.'

‘I was talking about the film, not your . . . Oh never mind . . . !' Sara felt flustered. Why on earth had she said all that? Mad.

The kitchen had been extended sideways so what would have been a long narrow galley was a big square with a scratched old oak table by French doors at the far end, looking out over a tiny back garden leading to a white-painted brick wall with rows of shelves that held rows of pots full of seedlings.

‘What are you growing out there?' Sara asked, keen suddenly to get away from the topic of spouses and sex. She was, obviously, just here as a friend. This was just tea and Jaffa cakes. Ben didn't look as if he minded too much about the Malmaison business, but then he had said it was over. He switched on the kettle, found mugs in a cupboard, tea bags. He had a massive brushed-steel fridge, too big for the kitchen really, as if it was something he'd fought to get custody of in the split-up and was determined to hang on to. What on earth did a lone man fill it with? She heard a clink of glass as he closed its door and decided it probably contained bottles of beer and just-in-case champagne.

‘I'm growing morning glory and nasturtiums,' Ben told her. ‘Climbing stuff; but I don't want them to climb, I want them to hang down the wall and cover it.'

‘Oh I do that!' Sara said. ‘I've got a big trough hanging on a wall over the pool and I plant it up with nasturtiums every summer. Looks great!'

‘Pool?' Ben looked at her. ‘Swimming or fish?'

Sara wished she hadn't said anything. Only one house in the area had a garden big enough for a swimming pool. And everyone knew whose house that was. And today she wasn't being ‘wife of ‘; she was being Sara McKinley. Not quite single Sara, just not quite
married
Sara.

‘Oh you know, just a regular garden-type pool.' She shrugged.

‘Oh,
that
sort. Frogs and fountains, right? OK, let's go . . .' Ben had a mug of tea in each hand. ‘You bring the biccies.'

For a mad giddy moment, Sara half expected him to turn left up the open-tread staircase . . . but of course he went back through the open front door to the lush garden and the pink-painted bench and table that Alma had left behind when she'd moved.