Artistic Licence (2 page)

‘I don’t think we’re staying. I just came with Petal to collect some things.’

‘Does that mean Petal is taking her artwork home at last?’

This was such good news that Thea couldn’t help a feeling of benevolence breaking over her. She smiled widely at the thought that she would soon be able to get into the attic, her bedroom and the bathroom, without tripping over the component parts of a dragon, a princess and a castle, all made of papier mâché and covered with Thea’s bin bags. ‘You might as well have some tea. She’ll be ages.’ And it’ll give us something to do, so we won’t have to talk, she thought.

Perhaps her glee was rather too much of a contrast from the grumpy woman he’d helped out of a dustbin because the man frowned. ‘I can’t stay long. I’ve got to get back tonight.’

‘Suit yourself, but if I don’t have something my tongue will cleave itself permanently to the roof of my
mouth.’

‘Then, thank you,’ he said, looking somewhat surprised.

Her euphoria faded a little. Petal’s Uncle Ben appeared to have no social skills. Why didn’t he comment on the filthy weather or something?

‘Do you have far to get back to?’

‘Well, after I’ve dropped off Petal’s things, I’ve got to get back to London.’

That would take him at least three hours at this time of day. Thea found an unchipped mug and put a tea bag in it.

At that moment the phone rang. Thea manoeuvred her way across the kitchen and picked it up. It was an old and dear friend who liked a good half-hour per phone call, and that was if she was in a hurry. Thea talked to her for a couple of minutes, then took evasive action. She picked up a box of matches and a candle, kept there for the purpose, and lit the candle. Then she reached out into the hallway and held it under the smoke alarm. It shrieked obligingly. ‘Darling,’ she told her friend. ‘I’ve got to go. Something’s on fire!’

‘Sorry,’ she said to Petal’s uncle, who was looking at her with stunned amazement. ‘That always works. Although I do worry that I’ll have a real fire one day as a punishment. Now, where were we? Tea!’

‘I really mustn’t be long and I was supposed to call in on Molly – er – Petal’s aunt, too.’

‘You don’t have to have any, but I’m gasping.’

The man sighed. ‘Actually, so am I.’

As she poured boiling water into mugs, she glanced over her shoulder. ‘Is that Molly Pickford? I know her. It’s through her I got Petal.’ It was Thea’s
turn to sigh as she wondered why she’d let herself in for having Petal as a lodger. She hoped it wasn’t because she was too feeble to say no to Molly, but she feared it was. Molly had insisted that her god-daughter and niece would be quiet and reliable, and able to pay the rent. While the last bit was true, which was important, Molly had forgotten to mention that Petal was extremely demanding. Thea often thought that even if she paid twice as much, she still wouldn’t be worth it.

‘Milk? Sugar?’ She handed her guest a mug, with suitable additions. ‘Are you related to Molly, too? Petal referred to you as her uncle, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that you are.’

Usually, by this time, Thea would have got over her feeling of awkwardness at being caught with her kitchen at its worst, but as he kept looking around him like a character in a science fiction movie beamed down into a strange land, she felt obliged to distract him with questions she didn’t want to know the answer to.

‘We’re some sort of cousins. You’d have to ask Molly about how many times removed we are. She loves that kind of detail.’

Thea warmed to him a little. She picked up a pile of papers from a chair and indicated he should sit down. ‘Sorry, I didn’t catch your surname?’

‘Probably because Petal didn’t tell you it. It’s Jonson, without an “h”. Ben Jonson.’

‘Like the poet?’

‘Yes.’

His slight surprise that she should have heard of one of the sixteenth century’s most famous poets annoyed
her. ‘I love his poems, especially the one he wrote about his son.’ She bit her lip. ‘His best bit of poetry…’

His glance made her feel she was strangely almost human, and yet not quite. ‘He said “piece”, actually.
His best piece of poetry
.’

Thea’s moment of sentimentality evaporated and her irritation returned. ‘Well, I knew it was something like that. You’d better sit down; Petal might be hours. Now, I hope you don’t mind if I get on with my cooking? In a moment of madness I agreed to give my lodgers an evening meal.’

‘Every night?’

‘Not Fridays or Saturdays, as they’re usually out, or home for the weekend, but I always do a big meal on Sunday night.’ It was Sunday now and Thea had been making a bolognese sauce for the lasagne on and off all day. She silently urged Petal to come back before she felt obliged to invite her uncle to supper. The lasagne might stretch, but the salad and French bread wouldn’t. ‘Please sit down, you’re making the place look untidy.’

She didn’t turn round to see if he realised she’d made a little joke; she was almost sure he had no sense of humour, but she didn’t want it confirmed.

Petal came back into the room, still talking: ‘Must go, see ya, doll.’ Almost the moment she had disconnected, the house telephone went. ‘Oh,’ said Petal, breezily confident, ‘that’ll be for me.’

Thea took a gulp of tea, wishing it were red wine. Now Ben was seated, she couldn’t get past him to the fridge. ‘Would you mind very much passing me a bottle of milk? And the lump of cheese? The fridge is just behind you.’ He had already seen her kitchen, so
the inside of her fridge should be no shock to him, although Thea wouldn’t let anyone very nervous look in it. ‘The semi-skimmed, in the door.’

He handed her the milk and cheese. Petal was still on the phone, making arrangements. Soon, Thea’s other lodgers would begin to arrive back from their weekend haunts, and the kitchen would be more crowded and cooking would be more difficult.

‘I do wish Petal would get off the phone,’ said Ben and Thea together. They looked at each other and Ben smiled.

It transformed him, but as Petal hung up the phone at that moment, Thea looked away before she could work out why. When she looked back again the smile had gone.

‘Oh, by the way, Thea,’ said Petal. ‘Aunt Molly’s coming over later.’

‘Oh, God, why?’ Too late, Thea realised that this must have sounded extremely rude to Molly’s relatives. ‘I mean, I’m just so busy at the moment.’ Thea tipped the milk into the pan. ‘Do you know why?’

‘Some art appreciation tour or something. On Wednesday.’

‘Well, it’s my day off on Wednesday, so I can probably go. I’ll give her a ring later. Save her the trouble of coming over.’ It was more to save Thea the trouble of sanitising the kitchen. Ben Jonson might look about him disapprovingly, but at least he kept his thoughts to himself. Molly would be voluble on the subject of Thea’s standards of tidiness and hygiene.

Petal frowned. ‘I may have got it wrong, but I’m sure she said something about France.’

‘France?’ Thea, whisking hard, was wondering if she’d made enough sauce and wasn’t really listening.

‘Yeah. I think Aunt Molly wants you to go to France with her. On Wednesday.’

Thea put down her whisk, leaving a smear of cheese sauce on the worktop. ‘Try and think, Petal. What did Molly say? She can’t possibly be asking me to go to France with her on Wednesday.’

‘Yes! Molly’s mate’s broken her leg, or her hip or something, so she needs someone to go with. I told her you were probably up for it.’ Petal, bored with a subject that didn’t involve her, turned to her uncle. ‘Oh, Uncle Ben, I’m glad you’ve got some tea. It’ll take me ages to find the stuff in the attic, it’s so full of junk.’ She looked at the crowded table, the crockery-covered worktops, the Welsh dresser buried under paper. ‘This house is always so untidy.’

‘So would yours be if it were full of lodgers who can’t put a mug in the dishwasher, let alone run a tap and wash it,’ said Thea. ‘And I hope you’re going to take everything off the landing. At least the stuff in the attic is out of sight most of the time.’

Momentarily abashed, Petal said, ‘Sorry Thea, but you don’t nag us enough. If you don’t nag people, they just don’t clear up. When I move into a flat people are just not going to leave their stuff all over the place!’ Petal marched out of the room, stiff with resolution, leaving Thea limp and without it.

‘So Petal drives you mad?’ asked Ben.

‘Is it that obvious? Well, only sometimes.’ She tasted the sauce and reached for the nutmeg grater. ‘I mean, I love her really. She’s very decorative, and great fun and great to go shopping with.’

She was aware that if only she were a firmer and less indulgent landlady she wouldn’t be so walked on by her lodgers. But she was new to the trade and hadn’t learnt how to make rules and stick to them. ‘You wouldn’t be a sweetie and grate some cheese for me?’ she asked and then had to hide her giggle with a smile as she realised how inappropriate her endearment had been.

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Since you ask so nicely, how can I refuse?’ He took the cheese and the grater, and set to work.

‘I wonder what Molly wants? I can’t believe she really wants me to go to France on Wednesday. Even she …’ she paused, suddenly realising she was about to criticise his second cousin once removed or some such.

‘Couldn’t be that unreasonable?’ he suggested, not giving anything away on how he felt about Molly.

‘Not at all. I just meant that she’s usually very organised. I hope she doesn’t arrive just as everyone’s sitting down to eat.’ This was likely. Molly, with only a husband to organise, was likely to have got her evening meal cooked, served and cleared away before nine o’clock. Thea, whose supper was a feast made moveable by the punctuality or otherwise of its guests, rarely achieved this happy state.

Petal came back just as Thea had levered the completed dish into the oven. Preceded by a large number of plastic sacks, Petal said, ‘You really should clear out the attic, Thea. I can’t believe you’ve got so many cardboard boxes. What on earth have you got in them?’

In fact, they were full of Thea’s photographs and negatives, carefully indexed and catalogued, from when she was a student to the moment she gave up professional photography. But she had no intention of telling Petal that. ‘The attic’s probably a lot clearer now you’ve taken your work out of it, Petal,’ she said, mentally trying to locate the corkscrew.

In a minute Petal and her uncle would go away, and she could open the bottle of red wine which was hidden behind the bleach in the cupboard under the sink, the one place her lodgers would never look, however desperate for a drink they were. She wouldn’t offer any to Molly when she appeared. Molly was of the ‘life’s too short to drink cheap wine’ school of thought. Thea felt that life was too long not to.

Petal, oblivious to the acid in Thea’s tone, looked anxiously about the kitchen. ‘Don’t you think you should tidy up a bit, if Aunt Molly’s coming?’

Thea would have liked to commit murder, but thought she’d better not. It would only add to the mess. ‘I’m in the middle of cooking a meal, Petal. And I take it you’re not eating with us?’

‘Oh, no! Didn’t I say? Sorry.’

At that moment the doorbell rang. ‘Answer it, will you?’ Thea implored.

‘But it’ll be Aunt Molly, for you.’ Petal was surprised Thea could ask such a thing of her. ‘I’m really busy.’

‘So am I!’ said Thea who was swooping round the worktops with a cloth.

‘I’ll get it,’ Ben offered.

This was kind and, if he wanted to be even kinder, he would involve Molly in a lot of time-consuming chat upstairs in the hall, giving Thea valuable extra
seconds to clean up.

Molly, whom she had met on her first day in Cheltenham, had been introduced by some distant relative of Thea’s mother’s. It was a very tenuous connection but Molly, who could be very kind, had followed it up immediately by inviting Thea for coffee. Thea, delighted to get away from the removal men, walked round in her old jeans and torn shirt. Molly, as always, was immaculately groomed and dressed, and had given her sherry, not coffee. She assumed that Thea’s dishabille, meant that she was ‘arty’ and had taken her under her wing. In the two and a half years that Thea had lived in Cheltenham the two women had spent quite a lot of time together. Now she entered Thea’s kitchen, all benevolence, a good five minutes after she had rung the doorbell.

Thank you, Petal’s uncle, thought Thea.

‘Thea, sweetie!’ Molly was fond but brisk. ‘I hope this isn’t wildly inconvenient, but I wanted to come and tell you in person.’

‘Tell me what, Molly?’ asked Thea, after they had kissed each other.

‘About the trip.’ Molly pulled out a chair, regarded its seat dubiously and sat down. ‘To Aix. In Provence. Should be lovely at this time of year. Petal did give you my message?’

‘She said something about you going to France on Wednesday.’

‘Darling, Provence is
in
France. Surely you knew that? But not just me, you too.’

Thea, who had been getting more of her surfaces wiped than she usually achieved in a week, turned
round. ‘What?’

‘Thea, do pay attention! I said I want you come to Provence with me. On Wednesday.’

‘This Wednesday, coming?’

‘Yes. I was going with my friend from my pottery class, but she’s broken her leg. If I go on my own I’ll have to pay the single room supplement. Come on,’ she went on bracingly, as if Thea were refusing to go swimming because the water was cold. ‘It’s only for six days.’

‘Take Derek.’

‘Derek hates art and sightseeing, and all that stuff. He is such a Philistine.’

‘But Molly – it’s terribly short notice.’

‘Oh, I know it’s a bit sudden, but think how heavenly it would be. Early April is just my favourite time for Provence, before all the tourists get there.’ Molly obviously hadn’t noticed she was a tourist herself.

‘I can’t afford it, for a start.’ This was a guess, but Molly was, by Thea’s standards, enormously rich and had probably booked a very expensive tour. ‘And really…’

‘Oh, come on, Thea, be a bit spontaneous. Don’t worry about the money, Derek’ll pay. It was his idea that I ask you, actually. He said you probably deserve a holiday for looking after Petal.’