Dancing in the Dark (3 page)

Not a good day at all. But at least it's now raining. There's a towel in the downstairs cloakroom and I wrap it round my hair before I pad into the kitchen and pour myself a glass of wine.

In the office, I check the answering machine. There's a message from Regis Harcourt, with yet another brilliant new idea she wants me to incorporate into the design for her town garden. There are three commissions for a Decoration, one of the miniature tabletop container gardens which I've developed into a lucrative extension of my garden design business. A couple in Kent wants a change of date for a meeting I've set up with them. A man from Yorkshire asks me to go up and advise on revamping his garden. Bob Lovage, my contractor, has rung to say he's hurt his back. And Jenny Hill wants me to call her urgently, the absolute minute I get back; it's a matter of life or death. She's my best friend and probably just wants my recipe for strawberry shortcake.

The mail consists of notifications of already-paid bills, a postcard of the Acropolis from a client telling me when she'll be back and hoping we can get together over her garden, a letter from someone I'd known at university, an excitable communication from
Reader's Digest
informing me that I've been specially selected to win at least two million pounds and, failing that, a set of steak knives. There's nothing much else, except an invitation to a gala night in Stockholm, at which a trio of specially commissioned interlinked modern dance ballets choreographed by Lucia Cairns would be performed. Choreographed? Has my mother finally turned respectable? It's hard to believe. Since the event had taken place two weeks earlier, I drop the invitation into the wastepaper bin.

I go upstairs, dry my hair and finally, I go into the sitting room and look up at the portrait hanging above the fireplace.

‘I'm back,' I say.

As I speak, the doorbell rings. Visitors, Jehovah's witnesses, double-glazing: whichever it is, I don't need it. All I want is a small whisky, a hot bath, an early bed.

I open the door and, to my irritated surprise, find Liz Crawfurd, one of my clients, standing there. She holds an umbrella over her head, and there is a tentative smile on her face.

‘Hello,' I say. Coldly.

‘I do hope you don't mind me dropping in,' she says.

I do. ‘That's OK,' I say, not attempting to sound gracious. I hate the unexpected, the unplanned, being caught unawares. And why has she come to the front door, when a sign on the wall of the house quite plainly directs visitors to the office at the back of the house? Why is she here at all, when it's way past office hours?

Behind her, the rain is tipping down. I can almost hear my thirsty plants sucking up the moisture. I remind myself that Liz and her husband have recently bought an Arts & Crafts-designed manor house down in Somerset and have lucratively commissioned me to help them restore the gardens. That certainly doesn't bestow on them the right to barge in unannounced. What it
does
mean is that I have to be nice – not something I'm particularly good at. ‘I've just got back from the States,' I say. ‘But do please come in.' I'm so sweet, you could put me in a centrifuge and spin me into candyfloss.

It's unfortunate that the reception room is still being refurbished by possibly the most incompetent builder in the world, which gives me no choice but to take her into my own sitting room. That's another thing I dislike: uninvited people leaning against my cushions, eyeing the books on my shelves, the
objets
on the mantelpiece, the contents of the eighteenth-century chinoiserie cabinet. My home may also be my business premises, but I prefer to keep my personal life to myself.

As soon as she's in the room, Mrs Crawfurd's eyes swivel towards the painting which hangs above the fireplace and then back again to me. She smiles. ‘What an interesting place,' she says.

I launch into a brief description of how the house was once three separate farm cottages, now knocked together and how I bought it five years earlier because just over an acre of paddock and copse came with it, offering me the challenge of my own wilderness to tame.

What I
don't
tell her is that the thing I'd liked best of all was not the land, nor the orchard full of gnarled old trunks of apple and plum, but the fact that it would be
mine
. That it sat rooted in the earth, solid as a tree and nobody would ever be able to make me move on. That stepping over the threshold for the first time, I'd already felt my roots sprouting, burrowing down through the stone-flagged passage and into the ground beneath, strong and fibrous, permanent.

Why is she here? Even though there is nothing in the least ominous about her smartly styled grey-blonde hair, her green linen slacks and short-sleeved white blouse, I am disturbed by the way her eyes march about the room, leaving footprints on my possessions, my painting, the blackened beams of the ceiling, the exposed brickwork of the hearth.
Leave my house,
I want to say.
I don't want you here.
The words sound so strongly in my head that I am not entirely sure I haven't spoken them aloud.

I pull myself together. ‘How can I help you?'

She hesitates. ‘Look, the chances that you can do it at such short notice are slight, I know that, and it's a bit of a cheek even to ask, but my youngest daughter's twenty-first birthday is coming up and we're planning a celebration for her, very small, nothing fancy. I'm wondering if you could possibly find time to make one of your Decorations for her.'

Couldn't she have telephoned? ‘I'm really awfully busy at the moment . . .' I interrupt.

Mrs Crawfurd spreads her beautifully manicured hands. The big emerald on her fourth finger exactly matches her trousers. ‘You probably get booked up years in advance, and I wouldn't have asked except that . . .' Briefly, she closes her eyes. ‘You see, my daughter Holly is . . . is very special. She suffers from a form of cerebral palsy and she was never expected to live this long. As it is, she's confined to a wheelchair and, although she shares our pleasure in the garden, it's difficult for her to do much, even though we've built special beds for her. But the sort of thing
you
do, those amazing tabletop gardens – it's something I think she could really enjoy.'

My instinct is to tell her the truth: that I won't have time. Then I try to imagine what it must be like never to walk through summer grass, never to kneel at the edge of a border and drink in the scent of lavender, or lie beneath a plum tree on a late summer's afternoon and see the purple fruit heavy against the sky.

I open my engagement diary. ‘What date are we talking about?'

‘You'll do it?' Her face lights up. ‘Oh, thank you so much.'

With the date in October written down, I move towards the front door and am reaching for the latch when she stops in the middle of the room. She puts her head on one side and says, ‘I love your painting.'

‘So do I,' I say.

‘Funnily enough, a friend of mine has one very similar.'

‘Really?' I open the door but she stays where she is.

‘In fact,' she continues, ‘his is almost a companion piece to yours.'

‘Is that right.'

‘As I'm sure you're aware, Barnes has come right back into fashion,' she says. ‘Not that he ever really went out of it.'

‘Barnes?'

She looks surprised. ‘You did realize it was a Vernon Barnes, didn't you?'

I shake my head.

‘But . . .' Her voice is disbelieving. ‘You must know that it's an extremely valuable piece of work.'

‘As far as I'm concerned, any value it has is entirely sentimental.'

‘I hope I'm not being impertinent if I ask how you came by it?'

She knows perfectly well that she is. Impertinent
and
intrusive. ‘My mother gave it to me for my eighth birthday.' I am distinctly frigid.

‘Eighth?' Her careful eyebrows rise a little. ‘That's an unusual gift to give a child.'

‘My mother's an unusual woman.'

‘And where did she get it?'

I recall myself, aged seven, nearly eight. I remember my whining, repeated questions. ‘Why haven't I got a father? All the other children have – where's mine? Why doesn't he live with us? I want a daddy, like everyone else.' And Luna, her voice trembling, saying, ‘Oh, darling, you know your daddy's dead, I've told you often enough.'

And then, on my eighth birthday, she presented me with this painting, said I was old enough now to take charge of it. ‘That's John Vincent Cairns,' she said, looking at the portrait, reaching a hand towards it as though to brush away the lock of hair on the man's forehead. ‘That's your father.'

‘I never asked.' I give Mrs Crawfurd a facsimile of a smile. ‘Children don't, do they?' I pull the front door wider, feeling like someone trying to get rid of a blowfly, but she still doesn't move. ‘Do you have any idea who the subject is?' she asks.

‘Of course I do.'

‘Who?'

Again, I can't see what it has to do with her. ‘It's my father,' I say.

‘Your . . .' She frowns.

‘Colonel John Cairns.'

‘Are you sure?'

Laughing at the absurdity of the question, I step outside on to the rain-wet step, ‘I'm one hundred per cent positive,' I say. ‘And I ought to know.'

‘I suppose so.' She sounds very uncertain.

Why can't she just
go
? ‘Look, I'll be in touch about the miniature garden for your daughter nearer the time, and we can discuss the details then, all right?'

‘Fine.' Mrs Crawfurd steps towards her BMW in the drive. ‘Thank you so much for your time.'

‘Just part of the service.'

The rain has eased off, but the shrubs and bushes which surround the front of the house are still dripping. Water drops hang from the laurel leaves which, now that the summer's dust has been washed away, shine like polished green leather. As she opens the door of her car, Mrs Crawfurd turns to where I'm still standing under the porch and gives me a speculative look. She climbs into the front seat, turns the key in the ignition and drives off.

I gaze after her. What was
that
all about? As the sound of her engine dies away down the lane, I breathe in deeply. The rain has brought out the perfume of growing things and I fill my lungs with leaf-flavoured, flower-scented, fruit-laden air. Then I turn back into the house.
Are you sure?
For some reason, I feel a vague unease, as though I have meekly offered a lighted match to someone holding an open can of kerosene.

It's obvious her interest in my painting has nothing to do with aesthetics. Does she want to buy it? Too bad; it isn't for sale, and never will be, since it's just about my most precious possession – certainly the one I love best.

Crude initials are splashed in the bottom left-hand corner, VB in careless red paint. It's executed in what my mother told me was the
faux-naif
style. It shows my father standing to one side of a long window, his face in three-quarter profile, as though he has just turned away from gazing down at the garden below, which is all white pebbles and box-edged parterres
.
A small fountain plays in the centre; there are stone urns in the four corners. In the background, a girl sits on a white-painted bench, her pale dress sprigged with green, a straw hat on her knee. Although I've never been there, I know the garden well. It's my father's garden. It's the place of my dreams.

To one side of the middle distance is an orchard full of fruit trees. Not just apples, plums, cherries, but oranges and lemons, mangoes and pineapples. If I look carefully, I can see a small tree laden with silver nutmegs and golden pears. On the right-hand side of the canvas is a dark wood where, between stiff lines of tree trunks, a unicorn lurks. Beyond them, the landscape stretches across fields and hills towards a faintly suggested sea on which rocks a full-rigged ship flying a skull and crossbones.

In the foreground a slice of grand piano is visible. The letters STEINW are on the lid, shining brassily in the light from the window. A Siamese cat sits beside the pedals. Next to the cat is a mouse; next to the mouse, a ladybird. The man's open-necked shirt is tucked into white flannel trousers which are held up by a red-and-white schoolboy's belt fastened with an S-shaped clasp. Holding a book, he seems on the verge of crossing the parquet floor towards me, on his way to engage in some manly pursuit: fencing or cricket, or riding a high-spirited horse across the fields beyond the garden.

His face has always moved me: grey eyes, a slick of blond hair, a thin and aristocratic nose, a full mouth. I love him more than anything in the world. Colonel John Vincent Cairns. My father.

Are you sure?

Of course I'm sure.

I dial Jenny Hill's number and wait for her breathless voice to answer. Jenny, wife of Richard, is my closest friend. A model of everything I would like to be.

‘It's me,' I say, when she picks up.

‘Darling, how lovely! Did you have a good time in the States? Did any gorgeous males come on to you?'

‘I was there for business, Jen.'

‘I realize that, but you never know your luck.'

I smile. ‘So what's the life-and-death thing?'

‘Life rather than death. I wanted you to be the first to know – apart from Richard, of course. Even before Mum.'

‘Know what?'

‘I'm pregnant again! Isn't that wonderful?'

‘Fantastic! Brilliant. Jen, I'm
thrilled
. And if all goes according to your life-plan, this will be my god-daughter Laura, right?'

‘Right.'

‘And after that, all you have to do is carry on living happily ever after.'

‘You got it.'

‘Congratulations! I'll come for a visit as soon as I can.'

‘Don't leave it too long. We don't see enough of you these days.'