Rachael's Gift (25 page)

My fist twitched by my side. ‘Think you’d better leave, mate.’

He sized me up. Mr Brown stepped towards him. ‘Hey, matey,’ the guy said, reaching out to pat him again, but the dog growled and he stepped back. ‘You’ve got my card, if you want a chat . . .’ He backed away towards a light blue Prius parked in the street.

‘Yeah, thanks.’

Mr Brown began to bark after him. ‘Brownie, get inside.’ He turned to me, turned towards Archer again, gave another bark and then loped after me into the house.

Pete Archer’s name popped up on Google with hundreds of links to articles he’d written. He even had his own Wikipedia page:
Peter Franklin Archer, born 29 June 1956, is an Australian investigative journalist and author. Best known for investigative reports, which have led to police involvement and arrests surrounding controversial paedophilia cases.
It followed with links to his articles in both local and international newspapers and magazines, and a long list of prizes he’d won, including a Walkley Award for a piece he did on paedophilia rings in South-East Asia.

Pete Archer was no two-bit journo. I could see the headline now:
Posh private school in teacher cover-up.
Had other parents talked? Bloody Avery. She’d be wetting her pants to get in front of the cameras. I had no doubt she’d be leading the charge on Thursday.

I felt hot and then cold; I was a man underwater, gasping for air. First their departure, next the gossip, then Halloween and now this. I was sure it wasn’t the last I’d be seeing of Pete Archer. A man with a list of awards as long as his arm did not just give up. Not like that.

My phone buzzed.

‘Wolfe?’ A familiar shrill voice. ‘Avery Spencer. Are you busy?’ She didn’t wait for my reply. ‘It’s urgent. Can you come see us? Lucy has something she needs to tell you. You’ll want to hear it.’

*

Lucy and her mother lived in a small apartment in a high-rise block on a busy main road. Avery buzzed me in and greeted me in the doorway, her bare arms freshly painted orange.

The flat was littered with banners and ‘Safe Kid’ flyers and smelled of lavender – she probably had one of those air fresheners you plugged into the wall. Lucy hovered by a cream leather couch in the living room, chewing on the sleeve of her jumper.

‘It’s an absolute outrage what’s going on. The school is trying to cover up for their mistake in hiring this guy.’ She threw her arms up. ‘Look at me, I’m a mess. It’s been pure chaos managing this thing, but can you imagine if we just sat back and let the injustice of it all happen? I can’t believe they let the guy back in the school. Poor Rachael!’ She paused, putting her hand reassuringly on my arm, and I wondered exactly how much she knew. ‘They gang up against you, the institutions. Anyway, we can help. Lucy can help.’

Lucy’s eyes flew to her mother in panic.

‘Well, go on – tell him what you told me,’ Avery urged.

Lucy perched on the arm of a chair.

‘Go on,’ Avery pushed.

Lucy’s face crumpled and her eyes began to water. ‘Please . . . I don’t want to get anyone into trouble.’

‘It’ll be okay,’ Avery assured her. ‘People have to take responsibility for what they do.’

One lone tear trickled down Lucy’s cheek. She sniffed. ‘It was a game . . .’ Lucy gulped back tears. ‘The first one to get him to kiss them would be the winner.’

Righto . . . here it was: silly schoolgirl shenanigans. Rachael had told us the truth.

Lucy wiped her nose on her sleeve. ‘So that’s when the rumours started – that he was touching up the girls after class.’

‘Come on, Lucy – tell him what you saw.’

‘Rach’ll kill me!’

‘Lucy, if you know something important you must tell us,’ I said.

She stretched her jumper over her hands and held her knees up to her chest. ‘Mr Everett kissed Rachael.’

Every muscle in my body winced. ‘How do you know? Did you see them?’

She chewed her sleeve again and nodded. ‘I won’t get into trouble, will I?’

Avery hushed her daughter. ‘You see,’ Avery said to me. ‘Poor Rachael. Will this help? Lucy will speak to whomever she needs to.’

I had to stop myself from lunging forward and wringing the girl’s neck. Why hadn’t she said something earlier? This was what we needed. I suddenly felt crippled with guilt. I’d doubted my own daughter.

I crouched down beside her. ‘This is a really brave thing you’re doing, Lucy. It means he won’t be able to do this again to anyone else. It’s important – you should be proud.’ I looked her in the eye. ‘Why didn’t you come forward before?’

Avery jumped in. ‘I told her she shouldn’t have been scared. I told her she should have said something straight away.’

I shrugged. ‘That doesn’t matter. It’s good you told us now.’

The girl puffed her cheeks out, triggering a memory in me. ‘That was you the other night, wasn’t it?’ I asked her.

Lucy’s neck physically shrank.

‘You were at my house. You and the others. Halloween, wasn’t it? Did you have fun? I did.’

Her bottom lip began to tremble.

Avery cocked her head. ‘What’s this?’

Lucy didn’t need to answer for me to know that it was her. ‘Is this why the girls turned on Rach? Because of the kiss?’

She was frozen now, unable even to nod.

Avery wrinkled her nose. ‘Is there something I should know?’

‘No, no, the girls came to visit Rach on Halloween – left her a message, that’s all.’

Avery exhaled and I smelt peppermint. ‘Okay, well, we’ll be fighting in your corner on Thursday. I know you can’t be there – we understand.’

I was turning to leave when Lucy blurted out, ‘She was boasting about it.’ There were pink patches on her cheeks. ‘That’s why they hate her.’

I felt my shoulders tighten; the lavender smell was cloying.
Oh, Rach, why’d you do it?
The words physically hurt.

‘We’re seeing Ms Sheehan tomorrow morning,’ Avery told me. ‘I’ll call you.’

I touched her shoulder. ‘Hey, this whole Safe Kids thing, don’t you think it’s getting a bit out of hand?’

Avery’s face hardened. ‘As a teacher he has a responsibility to keep his public persona clean and his private life private. Our children should not be exposed to such things.’

‘But these are pictures of his artwork. It’s a way to showcase – a basic right to freedom of speech.’

‘Then I’d say that’s a conflict of interest.’ She gave a light laugh. ‘You’re joking, of course. Don’t get cold feet, Wolfe. These people will wipe the floor clean with you and lie until they’re blue in the face to save themselves and their precious school. You’ve got to give them something to make them scared. And as for Everett – what are you worried about? Lucy saw them. He’s a pervert and it should be made known. So, no – as far as I’m concerned, we’re not going far enough.’

*

That evening I called Camille to give her the news.

‘There’s been a development – they’re reopening the case.’

There was no response. ‘Hello?’

‘Yeah. I’m here.’ Her voice had a cold edge to it.

‘Lucy’s confessed that she saw Everett kiss Rachael.’

‘What? When?’

I told her the details. She sounded strangely vague and said almost to herself, ‘That’s really odd.’

‘Odd? We’ve got proof now – he did do something and Rachael didn’t lie.’

‘Yes. Yes. It’s good. I mean it’s not good, nothing about this is good. I’m shocked, that’s all. I’m glad we know the truth now.’ But her words sounded hollow and after we hung up, I couldn’t shake the feeling that her reaction was weird.

Francine, Rupert and Rachael waited for me in the foyer of Yvon Lambert’s Gallery on Rue Vieille du Temple. A poster in the window read:
Rétrospective d’Art Contemporain Lucien Moreau jusqu’à 31 Janvier
.

Rachael was wearing a new short leather jacket and a pair of knee-high black leather boots that Francine had bought her. She looked twenty. We kissed and she led the way, the leather rubbing between her calves. I was puzzled by Lucy’s admission and had spoken to Rachael about it. ‘Did you know?’ But Rachael swore on Mémé’s ashes that she didn’t know anything about it.

The gallery consisted of several adjoining rooms all painted in white; Yvon Lambert had been discovering new artists since the sixties and had fostered Lucien’s career since the beginning; the show was a collection of his life’s work. A young woman, dressed head to toe in the customary black, handed us a catalogue in the doorway.

Rachael talked about each picture as if she were an expert. Around us, well-groomed couples browsed. I could hear Lucien’s voice through hers and wished I were alone. I wanted time with the paintings, to hear their stories, but most of all I wanted to know about Lucien through his work and I couldn’t do that with everyone else around.

‘He’s working on a commission for the president,’ Rachael continued as we moved from one painting to the next. ‘It’s a giant waterlily. It’s fabulous.’

‘So, what does he say about your work?’ Rupert asked.

‘He loves it. Naturally.’ She shrugged, as if there could ever be a doubt.

From painting to painting we saw how his style had changed over time. His portraits had become larger and were heavily textured. I stopped before an enormous woman who lay naked on her front. Her speckled and very large bottom pointed toward the viewer. It was an ugly depiction of the woman – all teeth and bottom and toes. It was ugly and yet somehow beautiful. I had always liked what he did with the skin.

‘He wanted to represent humanity in all its forms,’ Rachael explained. ‘Its contradictions and pretensions. He wants us to see how we judge her and to become aware of our own prejudices. It’s like she’s laughing at us, at our own hypocrisy. Lucien told me that the woman was not fat at all and when she saw this portrait she sued him. What can you expect when you sit for Lucien? Had she never seen his stuff before?’

We came to the commissioned portraits – chairmen, bankers, presidents and celebrities; most were fully clothed and ‘real’, but even so there was a lopsided quality to them. They were not flattering.

‘I have been tempted to commission him myself,’ Francine said, ‘but if he ever wanted to upset me that is the way he would do it.’

Francine took Rachael’s arm and I lingered behind. I stopped at the next painting. I knew this room: its trellised drapes, bejewelled lampshade, and the old sofa on which bare limbs sprawled. The woman posed cross-legged with one hand against her shin, lips rising in a playful smile, inviting the viewer to come closer. I read the tagline:
Les Reveils Nus
(
Nude Awakenings); Paris, year 1995. Oil on canvas.

Up close, I traced my finger over the ridges of her skin, like the ribbed stitches of a muslin cloth, her ghostly image calling to me from the past. I remembered him painting her.

‘
Allez-vous faire une offre?
’ said a voice behind me. ‘I don’t think you should be touching it.’

‘Sorry . . .’ I turned around. Lucien was standing behind me. ‘Why are you always doing that to me?’ I chided him, but my insides were humming.

‘So are you going to make an offer?’

‘Way too overpriced. I should have bought you way back when.’

‘You still wouldn’t have been able to afford me.’

‘True. You could have given me one, though.’

‘Why don’t we get out of here?’

I looked for Rachael and Francine, but they must have moved on to the next room. He took my hand and pulled me after him.

‘Wait! I should tell them –’

‘Send them a message.’ He dragged me towards the exit. ‘I know a great little place.’

Lucien pulled me down the street. Arrows of water shot through the damp yellow light of the streetlamps, an icy wind seared my eyes.

*

Lucien took me to a tiny bar carved into walls of stone; we slid into a table for two in the far corner. Small red lampshades encouraged anonymity. We drank martinis and the alcohol fired up my belly. I looked at him over my glass and felt the hot kick of his presence.

‘Much better than that stuffy exhibition.’

‘But it’s yours.’

‘Even more dull. I much prefer to be here with you. Alone.’

I looked over my shoulder. The bar was busy with arty types in trilbies and goatees. ‘We’re not exactly alone.’

Lucien smiled mischievously. ‘We could be.’

I had to look away, and stared into my martini. His fingers played with the stem of his glass. Once, long ago, those graceful fingers had known me intimately; had rubbed the skin on my back, pressing each bony point of my spine as they moved towards softer, more pliant flesh; had made my breath change gear, become fast and uneven. But I had been a tiny blip for him, just a corridor joining one moment of his life to the next. A young, naive girl, open and seeking. Easier than sleep. He had passed through me all those years ago and left a stain. He was still attractive, still remote, still unattainable and now he was proven – the authority of genius, the charm of a revered mentor. I drank my martini.

I thought of him and Rachael together in his studio. The young, naive girl. He liked them like that. I thought of his fingers holding a paintbrush, dabbing thick blobs of paint on the canvas, blending oils and smearing them together with his rag and blunt-ended spatula, the model sitting on a simple kitchen chair, dark hair springing about her face. The picture would take shape, gradually revealing itself as a snake might, with almond eyes and red mouth, and at the top of her bare thigh, a fawn-coloured birthmark in the shape of a strawberry. Her mark. I tried to look him in the eye. No, I thought, I’m imagining it all. Not Lucien. Not with the way he was looking at me now.

Two more martinis arrived.

‘Just like old times, hey?’ he said, clinking my glass. ‘I remember you, Camille. You liked to dance, didn’t you? I would drink and you would dance.’ He gave a half-smirk. ‘You did cartwheels in the middle of the room. Remember that?’ He broke into laughter. ‘Your legs flying bare in the air. Crazy girl, I used to think.’ He touched my cheek. ‘But I loved that about you. Your fire.’ His expression shifted. ‘What happened to her? Where’s that fire?’