Artistic Licence (5 page)

She spent the rest of the lecture planning what she would say to Molly – ‘I’m going to return to my room and read a little Proust.’ That would shut Molly up for a good ten seconds. Would that be time enough for Thea to leg it down the road, up an alley and into a little café? It might be, she decided, but later she would have to buy a copy of Proust and be able to explain to Molly her sudden passion for culture. She could, of course, just admit she was tired because she couldn’t sleep and only wanted to sit outside a bar in the sun, but that would be unkind. Besides, Molly probably wouldn’t believe she snored. She and Derek had separate bedrooms, but Thea have been given the
impression it was because of Derek’s bodily functions rather than Molly’s.

By the time the lecture had finished Thea still hadn’t come up with a story she thought Molly would wear. When she saw her edging along the seats towards her, Molly was already saying, ‘we won’t have lunch as such, just coffee later …’

What wasn’t immediately obvious was that Molly wasn’t talking to Thea, but the woman behind her, who Thea remembered was a rather nice person from the Home Counties. She was nearer both in budget and age to Molly, and now it seemed Joan wanted someone to shop with.

‘Are you set, Thea? I was just saying, we’ll skip lunch and have coffee and a cake later.’

‘Actually, Molly, would you mind frightfully if I didn’t join you? I’d like to take some more photographs and I’ve got postcards to write.’

Molly took this almost without protest. ‘Are you sure? Well, that’s fine. Joan and I will have a lovely time.’

Thea felt like skipping as she waved goodbye to Molly, and set off on her own. Molly, at close quarters twenty-four hours a day, made her long for solitude.

She found an enchanting
place
, with an intimate little fountain and a charming-looking café with outside tables. She collapsed into a seat, ordered a beer and a salade niçoise, and took her book out of her bag.

‘May I join you? I don’t speak a word of French and I’ve a thirst on me which makes… my stomach thinks my throat’s been cut.’

Thea looked up to see the beautiful, boring lecturer. He looked so much less boring close up that she
smiled. ‘You couldn’t ask for a beer, could you? I don’t speak much French either.’

He helped himself to a chair at her table. ‘I could, and I could probably order a cognac, but I should eat as well. I know that if you’re not careful you can end up with entrails all over your lettuce. What are those?’ He peered suspiciously at Thea’s salad, which arrived at that moment. ‘They put gizzards on salad here, you know.’

‘Anchovies. It’s a salade niçoise. Have it, it’s delicious.’

‘
Pour moi aussi
,’ he said to the waiter, pointing at Thea’s plate and glass. ‘
S’il vous plaît.
’

‘You see, you can manage perfectly well.’ Thea was beginning to enjoy herself. There were worse fates than sitting in the sun with an attractive man, eating and drinking.

‘I can, but when I saw you sitting here, I thought, “Why walk past an attractive woman and eat on my own, when I at least recognise her and could inflict my company on her.”’ He held out his hand. ‘Rory Devlin.’

Thea gave him hers, hoping he would put her blush down to Provengal sunshine. ‘Thea Orville.’

‘So what is a lovely young woman like you doing on a Tiger Tour?’

‘Lapping up the culture and listening to lovely young men tell me about Cézanne.’

‘I was shite, wasn’t I? I’ve forgotten more about Cézanne than most of these people have ever known and I can’t make him sound interesting.’

‘And what most of the people listening knew about Cézanne could be written on the back of a postage
stamp …’

He gave her a rueful smile. ‘You’re a wicked, heartless woman, telling me the truth like that. Have another beer.’

‘Well –’

She was about to say that beer, sunshine and lunchtime were a dangerous combination when he broke in, ‘Don’t tell me, if you have another beer you’ll need the lavatory. That Gerald, you’d think he was potty training this lot, with his obsession with toilets.’

‘I think you’ll find his obsession is shared.’ She smiled at him. ‘It’s a policy of mine to always travel with people who need the loo slightly more often than I do.’

‘Well, you were right to pick Tiger Tours, then. What else do you have in common with this bunch?’

‘I came with Molly – the tall, handsome woman?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘But actually, the others are dears. You wouldn’t come on a tour like this if you were too stuffy or set in your ways.’

‘I wouldn’t say that. I gave a lecture last week to a bunch from another company. There was a woman there who was so damn bossy the others tried to bribe the coach driver to leave her behind.’

‘You do these talks quite often, then?’ She was surprised, since he was so bad at it.

He shook his head. ‘I was offered my expenses and a bit of a fee, so I came early and took the opportunity to do some painting.’

‘So you’re an artist?’

‘Yeah. What do you do?’

He obviously didn’t want to talk about being an
artist. It was unfortunate that she didn’t much want to talk about being a landlady, or having been a photographer, either. ‘The good thing about being on a tour with retired people is that on the whole, no one asks you what you do, because they mostly don’t do anything.’

‘Is that a brush-off?’

‘Not at all. I just don’t want to bore you.’

‘I’m sure you couldn’t do that if you tried. I, on the other hand, can do it at the drop of a hat. I saw you nodding off during my talk.’

Thea laughed. ‘I’m dog tired. Molly snores like a grampus.’

‘And I’m shite at talking – we won’t go into that again. I’m a much better painter.’

‘I’m glad to hear it.’

He frowned. ‘To punish you for that unkind comment I will make you tell me what you do.’

‘OK, but here’s your lunch.’

‘
Deux bieres, garçon, s’il vous plaît.
’ He picked up his knife and fork. ‘Well?’

Thea sat back in her chair. ‘I have a house full of students and a part-time job in a photographer’s.’

He frowned. ‘You’re not your typical landlady, are you?’

‘What is a typical landlady? Nora Batty? Arms folded? Out of the house by nine and not in again until tea and rock cakes at five?’

‘Don’t get edgy. You know what I mean. You’re too young to be a landlady with a part-time job.’

‘No one fits into the stereotype, you know, and I like young people.’

‘And the part-time job in the photographer’s? That’s
some camera you’ve got there. You should be taking photographs, not putting them in envelopes.’

She looked down at her Leica M4. She had bought it for fifteen hundred pounds, second-hand. She loved it. ‘Yes.’

‘You’re holding out on me.’

‘Why shouldn’t I? I don’t tell my story to just anyone, you know.’

I’ll tell you mine if you’ll tell me yours.’

He gave her the sort of smile which caused a reluctant awakening in the region of her libido. Thea had almost forgotten she still had a libido, it had been so long since she had allowed herself feelings like that. ‘OK,’ she said eventually, ‘you go first. But if it’s not very exciting, I reserve the right to pike it.’

He frowned. ‘Pike it?’

‘Back out, give up, go home. Or in my case, back to the hotel.’

‘I suppose you got that dreadful expression from one of your student lodgers.’

‘That’s right. Now – I’m listening.’

Chapter Three

He insisted on ordering cognac for them both before he started. Only when it had arrived and he had taken a large sip did he finally begin. ‘Well, I was an art school whizz-kid. I went early, taught myself to draw and, at first, followed the party line. At that time anything representational was considered naff. Only abstract or conceptual work was thought worth anything. Do you know what I’m talking about?’

‘I
am
on an art appreciation course. I have heard of Tracy Emin.’

‘Sorry. I was forgetting. Where I come from people mostly think an unmade bed is an unmade bed.’

‘Go on.’

‘Well, I did the conceptual stuff, the dustbins full of road kill, the giant aquarium with amputated limbs suspended in jelly. And I did the abstracts, great swirling balls of fuck-all, which I made out represented “anger” or “grief”. And I wrote statements about why I did what I did that would make you sick. Come the degree show, I did what I wanted. Paintings, drawings, of things you could recognise. I thought I’d be slated, but no, that came later.’

He took a sip of brandy and Thea sensed that there was a certain amount of pain in what he was about to
tell her.

‘My degree show was a fantastic success. I was hailed as the next big thing and I met a beautiful woman who introduced me to the owner of a Cork Street gallery. So far, so fairy tale.’

He regarded Thea directly and she knew she had been right about the pain. ‘Go on,’ she said gently, her curiosity too much aroused to spare him.

‘To cut a very depressing story short, I got offered an exhibition, accompanied by as much hype as you like – far more than I liked – and I blew it. I got completely wrecked before the show even started and didn’t stop drinking until I passed out. In the morning it turned out I’d insulted every major critic in the business and vomited over a major gossip columnist.’

‘Oh, dear.’

‘Yes. So the bastard critics trashed my work, and said I’d never come to anything and would end up painting greetings cards.’

Thea winced. ‘What did you do?’

‘Buggered off round the world. I travelled for a bit and then settled in Ireland. Now I make a bit of a living painting people’s dogs and horses. Sometimes their children. I like the dogs best. But I don’t do frigging greetings cards.’ He said this last so bitterly Thea could tell it all still hurt. She put her hand on his wrist; there was nothing she could say to make anything better.

‘I wouldn’t have minded them telling the world I was a drunken slob, because that was true enough. But they liked my work well enough before I got drunk. The work didn’t change because I’d a few too many – OK, a lot too many. Now, what about you?’

She chuckled gently. ‘I’m afraid my story hasn’t got
a happy ending either.’

‘Oh, God, do you need another drink.’

She shook her head. ‘It’s not that bad although it isn’t very much more cheerful. I was a photographer, just making my name, getting enough commissions to pay the mortgage and justify having an accountant.’

‘What sort of work did you do?’

‘I was a photojournalist, really. I took shots of famous people, sometimes I went abroad. I was just getting somewhere when – well, the shit happened.’

‘What sort of shit?’

She took a breath. She really didn’t like telling people this story, it made her feel so stupid. ‘I had a boyfriend – a journo I’d met out in Africa. I thought he was a hero, risking his life to bring the stories of the oppressed to the world and I thought we were… well, you know. I was about to sell my flat and move in with him –’

‘And? He cheated on you?’

‘Yes, though not with a woman.’

‘Oh, my God! A man!’

Although these memories were still tender Thea had to laugh. ‘How like a man to think you can only betray people with sex.’

He accepted her censure with a twinkle. ‘How, then?’

‘He stole something from me, an image, and tried to sell it and use it without my permission.’

‘Would that have been the end of the world?’

‘Yes. It was a very … a very sensitive one. I was only allowed to take it because the clients trusted me and it wasn’t for the general public to see.’

‘And he didn’t give you the money?’

‘Honestly! Sex, money, isn’t there anything else in the world that’s important to you?’

‘Sorry. So he didn’t take the money and run off with another woman?’

‘You’re not taking this seriously! This is my life story, my sordid past, the reason I’m the embittered woman you see today –’

‘You don’t look embittered.’ His tone implied that she looked something a great deal more pleasant, but she ignored it. This was no time to be distracted. ‘So if he didn’t take your money, or cheat on you, what was the problem?’

Thea sighed. She’d never been able to convince Conrad it was because he had tried to sell her honour that she was so furious. ‘It was him selling – or trying to sell – something so private to people with the morals of tomcats and fewer scruples. He just disregarded the fact that it was my integrity that was on the line.’

Rory frowned, trying to understand. ‘So what was the picture of?’

‘I don’t want to tell you. The people involved are extremely famous.’

‘So, was it published?’

‘No, thank goodness, but no thanks to Conrad, and it took some persuading on my part to convince them that I hadn’t had anything to do with trying to do a deal.’

‘How did you manage it?’

‘I told them what had happened as soon as I found out and advised them to get on to their lawyers straight away. The lawyers got it stopped without too much trouble and fortunately I could prove that the image had been stolen.’