Bed of Roses (23 page)

Louis’s week-long mission to meet with newspaper editors and pick up work has been hampered slightly by his pleasure at being back in London and meeting up with his friends. His search for commissions was interspersed with a lot of parties, exhibitions, and pub crawls and he has returned from London with just one photographic assignment, which will pay him very slightly less than the figure he put on to his credit card last night when he paid for himself and two old girlfriends to eat curry.

In spite of this he is full of the joys of summer as he bounds into Fanny’s cottage that Friday evening. He notices the painting at once. He and Fanny are in the sitting room, mid-reunion embrace when he stops suddenly—

‘Bloody hell, Fan! Have you been robbing galleries? Where the hell did you get that?’

‘Solomon Creasey gave it me. To say sorry for sending his children to my school without asking. Stupid, really.’ She giggles. ‘Because I’d completely forgotten…It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’

‘I guess he wants to fuck you.’

‘Don’t be annoying, Louis. We haven’t even met.’

He steps around her, closer to the mantelpiece, to get a better look. ‘Seriously, Fan,’ he says. ‘That’s not some piece of crap he picked up in a junk shop. Personal taste aside, that’s a fine piece of work.’

‘I can see that,’ she lies. ‘Anyway, who cares? It’s here now. And it’s mine. And it’s the most beautiful painting I’ve ever owned. Actually, it’s the only painting I’ve ever owned. And I love it.’

‘It’s OK.’ Louis pulls a face. ‘Kind of sentimental.’ He pats the pockets of his suede jacket, pulls out a pouch of tobacco. ‘Victorian paintings of rosy-looking kids always make me feel a little nauseous.’

‘It’s not sentimental,’ Fanny says coldly. ‘Not if you look at it properly. So don’t be a smart arse.’

‘Can’t help it, Fan,’ he says mildly, rolling a cigarette with one hand, peering closer at the painting. ‘I hate to sound like those guys on the
Antiques Roadshow
, but do you have any idea how much this thing is worth?’

‘It doesn’t matter, does it? Seeing as it’s not for sale.’

‘You sure about that?’ He flicks her a glance. ‘You might change your opinion when you find out what you could get…Know what?’ he adds, peering closer still. ‘The guy’s signed it! We should look him up on the Net.’

Fanny is beginning to feel uncomfortable. The question of the painting’s value has, in fact, been niggling at her all day, and she’s been trying to ignore it. Because if the painting really is valuable she’ll feel duty bound to give it back. ‘Oh, don’t, Louis,’ she says quickly. ‘Please. Don’t look it up. I don’t want to know.’

‘Besides which,’ Louis adds slyly – urbane, good-natured, easygoing, cultivated he may be, and a fine lover and a very old friend, all those things, he may be, but he doesn’t appreciate unattached millionaires plying his girlfriend with works of art while he’s away – ‘you might decide that accepting it
isn’t so cool. I mean, it’s probably not illegal. But it sure isn’t—My guess is, a painting as fine as that’s going to be worth at least £20–£25,000. And I don’t know, Fan,’ he says, looking away from it at last, lighting his cigarette, ‘
corruption and bribery inside the English education system
, or whatever, it’s hardly my area, but…’

‘What are you talking about?’

He picks a loose strand of tobacco off his tongue, smiles at her. ‘But I think you should give it back.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous! Honestly…Don’t be ridiculous.’

He shrugs. ‘I’m only saying what I think.’

They don’t talk about the painting again that night. They open a bottle of wine, and then another. It’s a horrible rainy evening. They smoke a spliff together and stagger up to bed. But long after she and Louis have rolled away from one another, and while Louis lies snoring peacefully beside her, Fanny stays awake.

She lies there, thinking about her painting, listening to Louis’s snores and the heavy patter of the rain against her window until the day begins to break.

At five o’clock she dresses quietly in winter jersey and jeans, since it’s early and cold and still raining, and tiptoes downstairs. In the sitting room she stands before her mantelpiece, takes one last, long look at her painting and carefully takes it down from the wall. She wraps it in a dustbin bag.

Fanny had been planning to write a letter to him, explaining why she couldn’t accept such a valuable present, and had spent much of the night composing it in her head. But now that it comes to the moment of setting pen to paper none of the words she prepared seem to make any sense. She can’t think of anything to say. She feels a fool. Angry with herself for accepting the thing. Angry with Solomon for having given it to her. Angry with having to give the painting back.

She gives up on the letter. She throws it away, half-finished, picks up the dustbin bag and heads out. Solomon’s house is very close. Sometimes, if the breeze is right, and Solomon is outside, she can catch wafts of his delicious lavender and sandalwood aftershave from her front garden. Not today, however. It’s pouring with rain and it’s still only five o’clock in the morning. She doesn’t want to see him, anyway. She just wants to leave the painting on his doorstep, as he left it on hers, and then, if possible, never have to think about it again.

Half an hour later she is sitting at her kitchen table marking exercise books while Louis still sleeps upstairs, when she hears a loud clattering noise outside her door. Fanny tiptoes to the window to discover the cause of it. She peers nervously out from behind the ill-fitting sari curtains and discovers a man, tall, lean, with a face not unlike an eagle: nose, bony and straight, with a dent, as if it’s been broken once; eyes heavy; jaw dark with early-morning stubble. He has tripped on one of her metal dustbin lids.

He’s out there in the pelting rain dressed only in his pyjama bottoms and a grey silk dressing gown. And he has the painting. He raps impatiently on the front door – an economic, graceful movement, pent with energy. And the cottage rattles. Fanny hesitates.

He bends down and flicks open the letter-box. ‘FANNY!’ he yells. ‘MISS FLYNN?’

Miss Flynn? She smiles. She tiptoes back to her seat at the kitchen table and waits silently for him to go away again.

But Solomon has no intention of leaving. She hears him laughing through the open letter-box. It’s a nice laugh – heartfelt and infectious. ‘I know you’re up because you’ve just been to my house and left a bloody good painting outside in the pouring rain. And I know you’re there, because I’ve
just seen the bloody curtains moving…And not only that,’ he adds, after a pause, ‘not only that, the curtains don’t fit! Fanny, I can
see
you. For heaven’s sake, come to the door.’

She’s not sure what to do. She feels cornered.

‘Come to the door.’ An edge to the voice now. She can smell sandalwood and lavender. Solomon Creasey is apparently unaccustomed to waiting.

Kind of sexy
, Fanny thinks. Except it’s half past five in the morning. Why should she come to the door just because a delicious-smelling, unattached multimillionaire James-Bond-Villain lookalike in a grey silk dressing gown is demanding it?

As she pulls back the latch he straightens up, surveys her, and reminds himself never to listen to Grey McShane’s thoughts on women ever again.

Very small
, he thinks.
Very scruffy. Is that last night’s make-up she has smudged all over her face?
He is confused, briefly. He doesn’t know any other women who would open the door looking like this. The women he knows spend hours locked away in their bathrooms. And when they finally emerge, they look sensational. They look—
But does that
, he wonders wildly, as Fanny looks up at him, apparently waiting for him to speak,
does the fact that she comes to the door looking like a draggletail make her better or worse than the other women? BETTER OR WORSE??

Well
, worse,
obviously
.
Stupid bloody question.

Solomon gives himself a mental shake. The incident with the Bentley has clearly unsettled him more than he realised.

He still hasn’t spoken but otherwise his examination of Fanny – and ensuing disappointment – have been meticulously hidden. Solomon hides everything from his face. Instinctively.

Finally, Fanny speaks, with more hostility than she meant. (His silence is making her awkward. The aura of ruthlessness
about him, and confidence and faint depravity, combine to quite an intimidating effect. There is, she thinks, without doubt, something horribly, deliciously carnal about him as he stands there. Not helped by his still being in his dressing gown.) ‘What do you want, anyway?’ she snaps. ‘It’s half past five in the morning. I’m trying to work.’

‘What do you think I want?’ he says. ‘I want to know why you’ve left this excellent painting outside in the rain, where it would have been destroyed if I hadn’t happened to be up.’

‘I wrapped it in a dustbin bag.’

‘And rested the dustbin bag in a fucking puddle.’

‘There wasn’t a puddle there when I left it,’ she says. Though there might have been. She had been keen to get away.

‘Apart from which, yesterday you sent me a thank-you letter saying how much you liked it. Actually,’ he adds, ‘one of the loveliest thank-you letters I’ve ever received.’

‘I didn’t.’

‘Yes, you did. I have it here.’ He reaches into his dressinggown pocket, produces a sheet of paper. ‘What changed? What happened between yesterday and this morning?’

‘Nothing. I mean, I should never have written that letter. I’m sorry. But at the time I had no idea how much…And I’m sorry, but I really don’t think it’s appropriate…’

He rolls his eyes, groans.

‘And the fact is, when I found out,’ she continues, ‘I mean, I certainly don’t mean to be ungrateful, but I was a little annoyed. In a way. Because I’m not some sort of – I don’t know – one of your
mafioso
business associate…’

‘
Mafioso?
’ He laughs. ‘You’ve been listening to village rumours.’

‘I’m actually your children’s teacher,’ she continues, feeling silly.

‘I’m aware of that.’

‘And I’m certainly not the sort of person who…’ She stops, uncertain how to finish.

‘What?’

She shrugs. ‘I dunno. Gets given lovely paintings.’

He smiles. Lets the comment hang there for a moment. ‘Well, you should be,’ he says, his voice rich as velvet.

She looks away. ‘I mean, I just can’t be seen to be taking bribes…’

He bursts out laughing. ‘Fanny, I hate to be rude, and I’m not in the least averse to providing bribes when necessary – but what reason on earth would I possibly have to bribe you?’

‘I don’t know…How do I know?’ She’s beginning to feel very stupid. ‘I’m just
saying
I don’t want to be a part of it. I mean, the school isn’t for sale. And nor am I.’

The sound of Solomon’s heartfelt laughter wakes Macklan and Tracey in the house next door, wakes Mrs Hooper at the post office, wakes the vicar in his bungalow vicarage behind the church. Upstairs, even Louis stirs.

‘You can laugh as much as you like,’ snaps Fanny. ‘I’m sure in
your world
people accept bloody great presents like that without thinking twice about them.’

‘They certainly do,’ says Solomon.

‘Well, bloody well bully for them.’

He looks at her. His children had been quite right, of course; the woman in the painting looks just like her. ‘Only I don’t know any other anxious, brown-haired, untidylooking village schoolteachers to give this to, and since you happen to be teaching three of my children…’ He pauses to wipe the rain from his eyes, looks up at the sky and then down at the offending painting. ‘Look, I don’t suppose we could discuss this inside? This painting’s going to be destroyed.’

She looks at him. Never mind the painting, he’s drenched. With a sigh she stands back. ‘Come in, then. I’ll make you some coffee. But be quiet, though. Louis’s upstairs, sleeping.’

‘Ah yes. Louis,’ he says. ‘The photographer.’

‘That’s right.’

A silence. She can feel him watching her as she turns away to switch the kettle on. ‘Sit down,’ she says.

Solomon doesn’t walk, he prowls: three long steps from front door to sitting area. He stretches himself out on her small sofa, his large frame and that aura of power which surrounds it, making her sitting room feel suddenly uncomfortably small. ‘I don’t suppose you could drop a bit of whisky in that coffee, could you? It’s bloody cold outside.’

‘I could forget the coffee and give you straight whisky if you prefer.’

‘No, no, no.’ A flicker of a smile. ‘That would be disgusting.’

She hands him his cup and stands beside him, feeling awkward in her own house. There’s nowhere left to sit except the floor cushions – and somehow she doesn’t like the idea of sitting at his feet. ‘Anyway, look, enjoy the coffee,’ she says, watching him gulp it down, ‘and it’s nice to meet you at last. But to be honest with you, Solomon, as far as your painting’s concerned I’m not sure that there’s really a hell of a lot to discuss. I can’t accept it and that’s that. Thank you very, very much. And everything.
Really
. I mean it was beautiful—’

‘It still
is
beautiful, Fanny. Or rather, it was.’ He halfprops himself up, pulls back the sodden dustbin bag with a surprising delicacy. ‘Before you left it to rot in a fucking puddle. Let’s have a look…’

A silence between them as he holds out the painting and watches her gazing wistfully at it. It is still beautiful – more beautiful, she thinks, than it had been even half
an hour ago. A tiny, regretful sigh escapes her and he laughs.

‘The children said you and she were alike,’ he says thoughtfully. ‘Look…’ He leans forward and casually traces a finger over the tiny frown line between her eyebrows. ‘It’s uncanny…I dare say she would have left the bloody painting in a puddle too.’

Fanny, not expecting to be touched, rears backwards. She bumps her head on one of her wretched Mexican lanterns and sends it crashing to the floor.

‘Oops,’ says Solomon, taking another slug of coffee and settling back on to the sofa again. ‘Anyway, it’s all yours. I shall probably sell it if you don’t take it. But to be frank with you, Fanny, it’s more of a bother putting it up for sale than leaving it here with you. So for Christ’s sake, take it. As Grey McShane would say,’ he adds, watching her through dark, half-closed eyes, ‘“
Don’t be so fuckin’ prissy.
”’