Waking Broken (6 page)

Tuesday, 3.20pm:

Rebecca looked up at the map on the wall. It was an intriguing idea. Over the space of more than forty years, Paul Cash had produced a steady stream of highly-regarded portraits, earning himself a place in the pantheon of great British artists, up there with the likes of Lucien Freud. His life had also become a form of artwork: an exhibition of hedonism and social misdemeanour.

Now, Cash was proposing something new. He wanted to move on from oils and scandal. This time he planned to use the estate at Howarth Manor as his canvas.

He stared at Rebecca. ‘So, Miss Shah. Now you know my intentions. What about you?’

She turned to meet his gaze and almost flinched. Cash’s eyes were piercing. Pale grey or blue in colour but as deceptive as ice. Their depth could be no more than a wafer. Or they could stretch back to the dawn of time. His stare contained something primeval. Rebecca felt naked.

‘How do you mean,’ she said, knowing she was stalling badly. ‘What do you want to know?’

Cash gave her a blank look. She could have sworn his upper lip actually curled a fraction.

‘What I mean, Miss Shah, is what relevance does your company see in sending you? What do you bring to my party?’

Rebecca pulled her eyes away. Her thoughts skimmed over what she knew about Cash. Although now filthy rich and speaking like a public schoolboy, that was just one of his fronts. The painter had grown up in a place called Shirley Warren, a run-down council estate outside Southampton. His father was a dockworker, while his mother served meals at a local secondary school. Cash himself left school with virtually no qualifications but went to London, where he lived in a squat and made friends with musicians hanging around the fringes of fame.

The squat turned into a party scene for some of swinging London’s beautiful people and Cash helped turn it into a suitable venue, painting vast murals across walls, ceilings, floors, windows and doors. The house became known as Wonderland and as the parties got better so did the guest list. Soon after, the young rake was painting album covers, then murals in other houses and eventually portraits. That was back in the late sixties and Cash had never since been short of commissions, money or notoriety.

All in all, he was an intimidating character and Rebecca decided honesty was as safe an approach as any. She shrugged. ‘I’m not sure I can bring a lot to the party but that’s not really my role, is it?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, like you say, it’s your party. My job is to make sure everyone comes to the party.’

Cash snorted. She was unsure whether the sound was an expression of contempt or smothered humour. ‘Fine. That’s obvious. But why you? What made that woman decide to send you?’

Rebecca bit back on a smile. She wondered what Paul Cash thought of Claire Hamilton. And vice versa. And had he seduced her? Somehow she doubted it. The artist might have a rake’s reputation but from what she remembered of the conquests he had painted they were all extremely nubile, if not always conventionally attractive.
La belle dame
Hamilton did not fit into either category.

She shrugged. ‘I imagine “that woman” thought I was probably the best qualified person to send.’

‘What makes you say that?’

Rebecca turned to face Cash again. ‘I’m probably the closest thing they’ve got to someone with the right experience for your party. We don’t have any artists in the office… well, none I’m aware of. But my uncle was a photographer, quite well known. So, in the mind of someone working in the PR world that probably counts as an artistic background. And, before I worked for Claire Hamilton, I studied garden design.’

She shrugged. ‘It’s a long way from what you’re planning, I realise, but I guess that makes me the closest thing to an arboricultural artist in the office… or artistic arboriculturist if you prefer.’

Cash’s expression was hard to read. ‘Who was your uncle?’

‘VJ Shah.’

‘Really?’ His eyebrows lifted just a fraction. Cash fell silent for a moment, his pale gaze weighing her up.

Rebecca watched his face without comment, waiting for the outcome of whatever calculations were going on behind the artist’s eyes. She had guessed Cash would know her uncle’s name. Vikash Jai Shah had been her father’s elder brother. Born in Fiji, Vikash had come to England as a young boy just after the Second World War. As a teenager, while Rebecca’s father Mahesh worked in the family grocery store, the young Vikash somehow persuaded his parents to let him enrol at the local art college. Five years later his portraits were appearing in magazines worldwide, from
The National Geographic
to
Vogue
and
Rolling Stone.

It was the money made by VJ, as he started calling himself, which had put his younger brother through university. It was thanks to her uncle that Rebecca’s father had become a respected GP rather than spend his life stacking shelves and selling cheap food to customers who looked down on him as just another foreign shopkeeper. Rebecca had always been very fond of her Uncle VJ, as well as extremely grateful for everything he had done for the family. Particularly as if Vikash had not made it possible for his little brother to go university, her father would never have met her mother and then there would have been no Rebecca.

It had been a genuine family tragedy when VJ died in a car crash in the south of France five years ago. He was driving his latest sports car too fast around the hairpins of the Cote d’Azur after a lengthy session photographing another Hollywood star. The only consolation for the family was that VJ died as he had lived: enjoying himself. Something Rebecca imagined Paul Cash could relate to.

‘That’s all very well.’ Cash gave an unimpressed sniff. ‘Your uncle was a good man with a camera. But do you really think his abilities qualify you to understand what we’re doing?’

‘No. But I think that’s completely irrelevant.’

‘What?’ Cash sounded irritated. This time he turned away from her and Rebecca’s heart sank a touch. He looked bored with the conversation but she decided to forge on.

‘Why should I be qualified in what you’re doing?’ She glanced at the third person in the room. Ron Meredith had hardly said a word except to say hello and had kept quiet while Cash lectured Rebecca on his grand project. Now looking distinctly uncomfortable, Meredith was fiddling with some pens on the desk. ‘You’re happy to work with a tree expert aren’t you?’ said Rebecca.

Cash glanced back over his shoulder. ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

‘Well, what other skills does your tree expert have? Are you an expert in publicity as well, Mr Meredith?’

The tree man shook his head. ‘No, sorry.’

‘Don’t be sorry,’ said Rebecca. ‘I’m not. It just proves my point. Mr Cash doesn’t expect his tree expert to be a publicist so why should he expect his publicist to be a tree expert.’

She paused a moment. ‘After all, Mr Cash isn’t an expert on trees otherwise he wouldn’t be consulting you and he isn’t an expert on PR or he wouldn’t have engaged the Hamilton Agency. So, like I said, why should I be qualified in what you’re doing?’

Cash turned and grinned at her. ‘Damned if I know.’

It was the first time she had seen his mask melt and Rebecca’s stomach gave a little lurch.

‘So. Just a way of testing my mettle,’ she said.

‘Got it in one.’

‘And are you satisfied yet?’

Cash shrugged. ‘Oh, I’m never that,’ he said with a lazy smile. ‘But I’m sure we can work on it. You’ll do, Rebecca, you’ll do nicely. Beauty and balls.’

She held a hand up. ‘Please, leave the looks out of it.’

‘Ohhh.’ Cash looked mournful. ‘Do I really have to?’

Rebecca nodded. ‘Yes. If you want me to work for you, that’s a rule. I’m here to work. How I look is… at best irrelevant, at worst…’

‘Harassment?’

‘Condescending,’ she said. ‘Which is almost as bad.’

Cash smiled. ‘Do you have any other rules?’

‘Well…’ Rebecca’s expression thawed a little. ‘I’m sure I could make a few up if I need to.’

As she drove away from Haworth Manor half an hour later, Rebecca had a grin plastered across her face. She felt much better than earlier in the day. She sensed she was going to enjoy working with Paul Cash. She was not sure she entirely trusted him but, on the other hand, he made no pretence at hiding the type of person he was. He was challenging but refreshing too: certainly an improvement on the firm’s other clients.

Tuesday, 3.50pm:

Van Hulle led the way out onto the balcony. They were on the fourth floor of the block. Below, landscapers were busy laying turf and breaking up ground compacted by heavy machinery: preparing the ground for shrub beds and trees. Across the road, a team of workmen was installing a playground.

He waved a heavy hand at the scene. ‘I thought you would get a better overall picture from here. It’s easier to appreciate the scale of what we’re doing.’

Louise Brent looked to either side. From the balcony, she could see another seven blocks. They were all four storey and each block contained sixteen flats. Beyond the playground, she could see more buildings going up. These were going to be rows of terraced houses, with a small precinct of shops and other community facilities in their heart.

Van Hulle smiled stiffly.

He seemed a little awkward to Louise, perhaps uneasy at being interviewed or simply reluctant to take time out of his office. He was big and his face had a heaviness that stopped him being good-looking. He possessed presence of a sort but there was also something unattractive about him. Dour, she decided: worthy but dull.

‘This will be the largest social housing development anywhere in the country,’ he stated, his stolid tone deadening the ambition of the claim. ‘This project will set an example to other cities. We will show them what can be done if they have the will to take responsibility.’

Louise nodded. In quick shorthand, she jotted the quote down in her notebook. ‘But you’ll still make a profit?’

Van Hulle’s face twitched. ‘Yes,’ he said slowly. ‘That is so.’

He looked away from Louise and closed his hands slowly around the balcony rail. ‘We will. In one sense that is not important. As a company, we are not in this business to make money. But, in another, it is essential.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Because we must prove this is cost-effective. To demonstrate it is not just charity; that it is possible to do good and not be out of pocket.’

He shrugged. ‘This project has been costed very carefully. If we were building ten houses it would be more difficult. Probably, we would have problems breaking even. But, because of the scale on which we are operating, we can make economies. When you are building dozens of units you can cut costs and make significant savings. And that means although we are spending millions on social housing we still expect to make a profit.’

‘Small or large?’

Van Hulle shook his head. ‘A modest profit.’

Louise looked out at the size of the site. It covered many acres. ‘But what if you had built offices or big houses. Couldn’t you have made more money?’

‘Possibly, yes,’ said Van Hulle. ‘On the other hand, we probably would not have been allowed to build offices. This land was allocated for housing. Yes, it would have been more lucrative to build flats for the open market but that would mean ignoring our social responsibility.’

He turned to Louise. ‘There are many people in this city who cannot afford to buy even the smallest home. Some have nowhere to live at all. And what can the council do? It is not allowed to build new council houses, your Mrs Thatcher put a stop to all that. It is forced to turn to private landlords, people who charge the highest rates they can get away with and make profits from other people’s misfortunes.’

The developer shook his head. He looked sad, disappointed with his fellow humans.

‘I will not work like that,’ he said. ‘My beliefs teach me we should look after those less fortunate than ourselves. Yes, I could have done other things with this land and made much more money but would that have made me a happier man? No. Instead, what we are doing here is two-fold. Firstly we are making a real difference to the housing problem in this city. Secondly, we are proving it is possible make a profit by building homes people can actually afford to buy.’

He smiled. ‘Our good book teaches us we should look after those less fortunate than ourselves. We should fight injustice and provide shelter for our little ones. We should be building cities for them, not prolonging injustice by abandoning the needy while we rebuild Sodom and Gomorrah.’

Van Hulle watched as the reporter scribbled away in her notebook. He could make no sense of the shapes her pen made and wondered if she was actually writing down his words or something completely different.

He had taken an instant dislike to the girl the moment she arrived at his office. She was as superficial as most of her kind. Dressed like a tart and more concerned with making an impression than behaving with dignity. Van Hulle had instinctively sensed her disinterest in the story despite the effusive smile and handshake with which she introduced herself. She did not want to be writing about houses, was not interested in a project to change the lives of hundreds of people. She was the type who would rather concoct scandals, place lives under the microscope and dissect reputations, expose flaws and hound out errors. Either that or pour out sycophantic praise about the latest worthless celebrity.

‘Will this be in tomorrow’s paper?’ he asked.

Louise shrugged. ‘I’m not sure. To be honest, I’m filling in for someone else. One of our reporters was in an accident, got knocked down by a car. He was supposed to be interviewing you. I think the news editor was planning some kind of series on the changing face of the city.’

She smiled at Van Hulle. ‘But it’s a good story. It’s quite a big thing in its own right. They might decide to run it separately.’