Perfect Blend: A Novel (20 page)

“He’s right. A woman needs a decent chap in a solid job.” She paused. There was a concerned look on her face. “Darling, are you all right? You look a bit pale.”

Amy explained about her latest journalistic setback. “I totally get why they decided to go with Jamie Oliver, but it’s so frustrating.”

Val gave her daughter a hug. “I know, darling, but you just have to hang in there and believe in yourself. You are a talented young woman. Your time will come. I promise.”

Amy smiled. “You can’t promise stuff like that. Nobody can.”

“Well, I can. I’m your mum, and mums know these things.”

“I love you,” Amy said.

“Love you, too, darling.”

As they made their way back to the living room, Amy warned her mother that Charlie might try to get around her to buy a snake.

“He’s got some hopes,” Val said with a shudder. “I hate the things. Do you remember that python that escaped when you were little? Huge fuss about it in the local paper. Spike, I think it was called.”

Amy said she had never forgotten.

“So, Charlie,” Val said. “You up for a big surprise?”

Charlie gave a vigorous nod of his head.

“We are all off to Legoland.”

“Yay!”

“Mum, you sure? A hot Saturday at Legoland? It’s going to be mobbed.”

“Amy, I’m sixty-three, not ninety-three. I’m not quite ready for my bath chair and ear trumpet.”

Two minutes later, they were out of the door, Charlie with his Spiderman knapsack over one shoulder. “Have fun. See you tomorrow,” she called after him. “And remember what I said about that money. Grandma knows all about your plan.”

“Whaddever.”

Amy smiled. When had he started with the “whaddever” thing? Any minute now he was going to sprout upper lip hair and zits.

Chapter 9

AMY WENT BACK
into the kitchen and washed Charlie’s cereal bowl and spoon. She’d just finished when she happened to glance at the kitchen clock. It was half past nine. Sam was due to pick her up in half an hour for their Tate Modern date, and here she was, still in her dressing gown. She hated the thought of him having to hang around waiting for her.

On the other hand, she could speed things up if she didn’t spend ages on her hair and makeup. After taking a shower, she pasted her upper lip in hair remover cream. This was a habit based not so much on need as on neurosis. She’d inherited it from her mother, who mustachewise wasn’t prepared to put her trust in the naked eye.

Afterward, she rough dried her hair with the dryer and set about it with the straighteners. Her hairdresser, Xavier—he of the permed eyelashes and pec implants—had warned her that overstraightening her hair would make it lose volume and hang flat around her face. His instructions were to blow-dry it first with one of those big round brushes and finish it off with the irons.

This morning, she decided to leave out the round brush part. Her timesaving strategy turned out to be a huge mistake. She’d been going for a soft, voluminous Rachel and had ended up with something between Morticia Addams and Sonic the Hedgehog. There was nothing for it but to damp down her hair again and repeat the drying process, only this time she included the round brush stage. She had just finished and was feeling rather pleased with the result when the doorbell rang.

Once she’d buzzed Sam in, she shot to the bedroom to swap her old dressing gown for her embroidered green silk kimono. It was usually hanging on the back of the door, but when she looked, it wasn’t there. Neither was it on the bed or under it. She wondered if she’d hung it up in the wardrobe. She hadn’t. There was a knock at the door. She cursed herself for her lack of organization, took a few seconds to flick bits of dried cornflake off her toweling dressing gown, and went to answer it.

“HI,” SHE
said, ushering Sam in. “Sorry I’m not ready. Mum and Trevor arrived late to pick up Sam, and then I got chatting with Mum …”

“Hey, don’t worry. There’s no rush. Take your time.”

By then, she had noticed the charcoal T-shirt he was wearing. This was sufficiently close-fitting to reveal his torso. Well developed without being muscle-bound. She felt her stomach flip with excitement. Unaware of the slight unease on his face, she puckered up and made a beeline for his lips. He kissed her back but without the enthusiasm she had anticipated.

It was only as they pulled away and she saw the blob of white gunk on the end of his nose that the realization dawned. “Omigod, this is
so
embarrassing. I was in a rush, and I totally forgot to rinse it off. Now you’ve got it on you.” She produced an ancient ball of toilet paper from her pocket and wiped the blob off his nose.

“Amy, stop panicking.” He was offering her a reassuring smile. “It’s not remotely embarrassing. In fact I think it’s rather”—he paused, clearly searching for a suitable adjective—“charming.”

“Sam, I’m in my old dressing gown, my face plastered in depilatory cream. Precisely which bit of that do you find charming?” By now she was wiping her top lip with the tissue.

“All of it,” he said, grinning. With that he pulled her toward him. Amy resisted, saying she really needed to rinse her face, but he shushed her.

She closed her eyes, allowing herself to sink into his embrace. She felt his lips part, his tongue probing hers. For two pins she would have dragged him off to the bedroom there and then.

When they finally pulled away, he stood back and looked at her, his head tilted to one side. “Something’s different about you.”

“No more hairy outcrop on my upper lip?”

He laughed. “No, it’s not that. It’s your actual hair. It looks great—dead sexy. What have you done to it?”

“Oh, I just washed it and gave it a quick blast with the dryer. I’m very lucky. I never have to spend too long on it.”

HALF AN
hour later they were in the car, heading toward the Tate Modern. “So,” Sam said at one point, “what’s happening with the school dinners piece?”

She explained.

“And you’ve heard nothing from this Boadicea woman?”

“Not a word.”

“That’s just so rude.”

Amy shrugged. “In my experience, people in newspapers are all the same—even on the broadsheets.”

“And you want to break into this world because …?”

“I believe I’m a good writer and know I’d get a buzz from breaking stories. It’s like being first with the gossip.”

He smiled and said he could understand that.

The conversation got around to art, and he asked her if she’d been to the Tate Modern before. She said she hadn’t. “Which is a shame, because I love modern art. So are you good at art?” she said. “I always imagine that architects must be pretty talented, particularly at drawing.”

“I paint a little.”

“You do?”

“Yes. Abstracts mostly.”

“So, have you sold any?”

“One or two. Last year, I had an exhibition at a gallery in the East End.”

“You had an exhibition? Wow. That’s amazing. So you’re famous.”

He laughed. “Not really. A friend of mine owns the gallery. It was my birthday, and he organized the exhibition as a sort of gift. It was just a bit of fun.”

“Really? You sure that’s all it was?” She offered him a coy smile. “You should know that I do intend to Google you.”

He rolled his eyes in defeat. “Okay, I sold a dozen or so paintings, and Boris Karpenko bought a couple.”

“Karpenko? Isn’t he that Russian property tycoon?”

“Yeah. He bought them to hang in his dacha on the Black Sea.”

“See, you are famous.”

“Okay, a bit, maybe. In Odessa.”

ONCE THEY
got to the Tate Modern, Amy picked up a guide. They studied it for a few moments and agreed that they should start on the top floor and work their way down.

They wandered through rooms full of abstract canvases. Mondrian’s black lattices and brightly colored rectangles gave way to Kandinsky’s geometric lines, circles, and arcs and Jackson Pollock’s drips and spills. Amy spent ages in front of each painting, unable to tear herself away. She didn’t begin to understand what they were about, but she knew they affected her, which Sam said was the whole point.

Eventually, they came to the Cubists, Picasso and Georges Braque. “I love modern art, but it has always baffled me,” she said. “I really struggle with Cubism. I can see it’s brilliant, but I don’t know why.” They were standing in front of a head and shoulders portrait by Picasso. Before them was a disjointed woman, her breasts where her chin should be, one eye on the side of her head, her nose where her ears should be. “You’re the expert,” she said to Sam. “What is he trying to say?”

“Okay, Cubism is all about the artist representing an object or subject by showing all views at once. This is done using cylinders, cubes, or cones. The image is deconstructed and reassembled in the sum total of its parts.”

“So you abandon traditional perspective?”

“Exactly. You catch on fast, grasshopper.”

“Big head.” She slapped him playfully on the arm.

Amy wasn’t quite as bowled over by the art installations as she’d been by the paintings.

The first they came upon was the Didier Le Boeuf exhibit that Bel had been so excited about. It consisted of a five-hundred-foot-long chain-link fence running down the middle of the hangar-sized gallery. It was seven or eight feet high with barbed wire looped around the top.

It was called
Animus
. According to the blurb under the large black-and-white studio photograph of Monsieur Le Boeuf, the fence represented class hatred.

Major towns and cities in the west are turning into white, middle-class ghettos. Developers in the pay of the rich are building more and more private, gated housing developments, policed by security guards. These areas are built to exclude the poor. Safe behind their high walls, residents can forget the underclass. They can lock them out of their lives and ignore their plight.

An elderly woman with a severe slate-gray bob, her bird frame shrouded in a black silk kimono-style coat and Palazzo pants, stopped to read the blurb. She gazed at the fence and gave a grave nod of understanding and approval. A gaggle of teenage tourists went by, barely giving the fence a second glance. Then a middle-aged couple stopped to look at it. “It’s a fence,” the husband said. “It’s a bloody fence. Who in their right mind gives somebody three hundred grand to put up a fence? They should have asked me. I’d have done it for fifty quid.”

“I’m with him,” Amy whispered to Sam.

Sam said he was inclined to agree. “If you ask me, no real thought has gone into this. Le Boeuf’s having a laugh.”

“And yet everybody thinks he’s a genius,” Amy said. “I know nothing about art, but to me this is like something a bunch of first-year art college students would come up with.”

“Maybe, but I think their tutor would have taken one look at the preliminary sketches and sent them away for a rethink.”

“If I were arts minister,” Amy said, “I’d have a real problem explaining to the struggling masses that I was giving three hundred thousand pounds of taxpayers’ money to the Tate Modern so that some poncey, deluded, third-rate creative on a social crusade could erect a chain-link fence and call it art.”

She took a step back and felt her body connect with another. She turned around to see a fiery-faced man with beady eyes and Art Garfunkel hair.

“I’m so sorry,” Amy said, referring to the collision. “My fault.” She found herself staring at the man. “Don’t I know you? I’m sure I recognize your face from somewhere.”

“Oh, shit,” Sam murmured. “Amy, the photograph … over there … on the wall.”

Amy’s eyes went from the man to the photograph and back again.

She let out an understated “Ah.”

“Oui,”
Didier Le Boeuf said. “Zat is me—zee poncey, deluded, third-rate cree-ateef.”

What was he doing there? Artists never visited galleries where their work was on show, at least not famous ones. They would be mobbed by fans. Then she remembered what Bel had said about Le Boeuf being addicted to praise and how he would hang out at the gallery, giving visitors informal lectures on his work.

“Omigod. I am so sorry,” Amy said. “What can I say? Look, when I accused you of being poncey and third-rate, I didn’t really mean it. I should tell you that I know nothing about art, I mean absolutely nothing.”

“Ah can see that.” Le Boeuf offered her a patronizing smile. “You are a philistine,
n’est ce pas?
You British. You are all ignorant peasants and ’ooligans.”

“Hey, that’s enough,” Sam said. “The lady has apologized. Now let it go.”

“Hang on. Who are you calling bloody hooligans?” It was the middle-aged chap who had offered to build the fence for fifty quid.

The artist ignored him. Instead he took a few steps forward and squared up to Sam. “Nobody tells Le Boeuf what to do,” he snarled.

The middle-aged man, a burly fellow, wasn’t about to be snubbed. He tapped Le Boeuf on the shoulder. “The gentleman told you to let it go. I suggest you do as he says.”

Le Boeuf swung around. “What? You are challenging me? Okay, we take this outside,
n’est-ce pas?”

Amy and the middle-aged man’s wife exchanged horrified looks. “Malcolm, leave it. Please. It’s not worth it.”

“I agree,” Amy said to Sam. “Come on, let’s go.”

Malcolm decided to stand his ground. “The young lady is right,” he said to Le Boeuf. “This so-called piece of art is nothing but pretentious, meaningless crap.
Merde
, as you Frenchies say.”

“Actually, I didn’t go quite that far,” Amy whispered to Malcolm.

“Nobody calls my work
merde,”
Le Boeuf roared, veins standing out on his forehead. “I am a genius. You hear? A genius.” With that he drew back his arm and punched Malcolm in the face. Malcolm collapsed to the ground.

The two women and a handful of onlookers gasped. Malcolm’s wife rushed to his side. “Omigod, Mal. Speak to me. What has he done to you?”

Malcolm managed to sit up. His hand was clamped to his right eye. “You bastard,” he snarled at Le Boeuf.

By then a security guard had arrived. “Monsieur Le Boeuf, sir. Are you all right?”

“Yes. I am fine. I merely acted to defend myself. Please throw zeez troublemakers onto the street.”

The onlookers protested that Malcolm had done nothing and that Le Boeuf had been the aggressor, but the guard refused to listen. Instead, he helped Malcolm to his feet and insisted that he, his wife, and Amy and Sam leave.

“But why? We haven’t done anything,” Amy protested.

“Madam,” the guard said, “I have no intention of arguing with you. You either leave now or I will be forced to call the police.”

Didier Le Boeuf smiled a valedictory smile. Meanwhile, the two couples were escorted to the exit. Once outside, the four commiserated briefly before parting. Malcolm and his wife set off to find a pharmacy and get something for his eye. Amy and Sam decided to take a calming walk along the river.

“I’m so sorry,” Amy said to Sam. “That was all my fault. Me and my blinkin’ big mouth.”

“Oh, come on. It’s a free country. You’re entitled to your opinions. You couldn’t know that Le Boeuf was behind you.”

“I guess.”

“If you ask me, the reason he’s so sensitive to criticism is that he knows he’s a con merchant. He’ll get his comeuppance. You wait.”

“I hope so … By the way, thanks for sticking up for me back there.”

“You are more than welcome.”

A few yards ahead there were a couple of market stalls full of costume jewelry. Amy would have adored nothing more than a quick look, but she wouldn’t have dreamed of inflicting her—albeit minor—jewelry habit on Sam, certainly not on their second date. She couldn’t believe it when he said, “Hey, come on, let’s take a look.”

“No. Honestly. We don’t have to.”

“Oh, come on,” he said. “You know you want to. It’s written all over your face.”