Dancing in the Dark (9 page)

‘Overworking. Undersleeping.'

‘Surely you don't need to work so hard.' Her placid brow wrinkles. ‘You should take a holiday.'

‘I know, but I can't afford the time right now.'

‘Money isn't everything, Theo.'

‘Did I ever say it was?'

‘No. But why else are you pushing yourself like this?'

Given her secure upbringing, her happy family background, it's not something I could ever explain to her, even though from time to time I've tried. I put my hand on the small mound of her stomach. ‘How's Laura coming along?'

‘Fine. Everything's just fine.' Her face grows suspiciously bland. ‘Uh . . . what did you think of Fergus Costello?'

‘Not you, too.'

‘How do you mean?'

‘Charlie's more or less admitted there's some kind of Cartwright conspiracy to get Fergus Costello and me together.'

‘You're being paranoid.' She laughs. ‘So . . . what
did
you think?'

‘Nice bloke.'

‘Is that all?'

‘What more do you want?'

‘As soon as he walked in, I thought Aha! This guy is just Theo's type. Or, rather, exactly
not
her type, which
makes
him her type, if you see what I mean.'

‘If I tie a cold cloth round my head, it might start making sense.'

‘He seems really nice, Theo.'

‘I'm sure he is. As long as you don't read the tabloids.'

‘Tabloids?'

I gather that she doesn't, and give her a quick run-down.

‘Ten times . . . Are you sure?' she gasps.

‘Of course not. But there's no smoke without fire, as they say. So definitely
not
my type.' I feel like Judas, saying this. But I'm not about to get involved with a gypsy. Let alone a love-rat.

Jenny steps back, looks at me with her head on one side. Sweet Jenny. My dearest friend since we'd first met. My almost-sister. Everything that I am not: grounded, settled. Happy. ‘Oh, Theo darling. I just wish you could be as happy as I am.'

‘Who says I'm not?'

‘I
know
you're not.'

She's quite wrong. Apart from the sense of emotional disruption that Liz Crawfurd has brought into my life, I am perfectly happy. Perfectly.

T
he morning after Caro Cartwright's party, I lie in bed, staring at the ceiling. I've scarcely slept. Cars start up as people set off for work. A tractor is already coughing and bucking in the fields behind the house. Birds are chirping away outside in the garden. I picture them in my orchard, clinging to the branches of fruit trees already swelling with harvest. Green apples, golden pears. The dusty purple of plums. Crab apples as colourful as parakeets. Nancy Halloran, formerly of Boston and Cape Cod, sometimes used to commandeer the Cartwrights' kitchen and line us children up in aprons, to help her make jelly from their fruit, like the distilled essence of rose petals.

Footloose Fergus Costello is caught in the crevices of my brain.

The telephone bleeps and I pick it up. ‘Hello?'

‘Was that a great party or what?' Jenny says enthusiastically.

‘Mmm.'

‘Hello?' Jenny says.

‘I'm still here.'

‘What's with this “mmm” stuff,' she demands. ‘Is something wrong?'

‘Nothing whatsoever.'

‘I loved your dress yesterday – Chloé, was it? Silk chiffon . . . heavenly.'

‘You said I looked terrible.'

‘You know I didn't mean it. Not terrible in that sense. You just looked . . . well, terrible.'

‘You're far too kind.'

‘You promise it's not a man?'

‘No more than usual.'

‘Nothing to do with the gorgeous Costello, is it?' Her voice is expectant, as though she hopes for girlish gushings on my part.

‘I barely spoke to the man.' I'm not going to tell her about the invitation to join him in Corfu because she'd immediately start lobbying for me to go. As if he'd even meant it.

‘OK, if it's not love that's making you look so run-down, then either you're heading for a nervous breakdown, or you're working too hard, or both. Why don't you take a break, go away and veg out for a week or two?'

‘If only,' I say.

‘Come on, Theo. You know your nice Marnie can manage perfectly well without you for a bit. All she has to do is ring round and tell your clients that you're taking a vacation.'

‘Except this is my busiest time of year. I can't afford to take time off.'

‘Of course you can.' Jenny speaks with the certainty of one who has never been poor, who has never had to steal a loaf of bread in order to feed herself and her mother, who's never learned to shoplift in the full knowledge that if she doesn't she will go naked or dirty. I am determined never to be anywhere near that situation again. ‘You could come and stay here. You know how much we'd love to have you. Not to mention your little god-daughter-to-be.'

‘I'm not very good company right now.' I'm quiet for a moment. Without really meaning to, I say, ‘Jen, I'm afraid.'

‘What of?'

‘Cracking up. Falling apart.'

‘Maybe it's about time you did. Actually acknowledged for once that all is not entirely well with Superwoman Cairns.'

‘Is it that obvious?'

‘Only for the past twenty years or so.'

‘I hate feeling so . . .
flimsy
.'

‘Oh, Theo,' Jenny says softly. ‘I know things aren't right with you. Is it to do with your mother?'

‘I doubt it. I came to terms with all that, years ago.'

‘I wish I could give you a magic kiss and make it all better, the way I do with the little boys.'

‘So do I.'

‘Ever thought of talking to someone about it? Professionally, I mean?'

‘No.'

‘Perhaps you should.'

‘Perhaps I will.'

I put the phone down on Jenny's snort of disbelief then struggle out of bed. After a shower, I feel almost normal again – whatever normal is – apart from the black weight of depression hanging a foot above my head.

By the time I get home from the school project the following Tuesday afternoon, I am bone-weary. It has been a long day and I am ready for a shower and the chance to put my feet up. I'm not, therefore, thrilled to find a dark-blue four-wheel drive parked on the gravel in front of the house and a man in a Tattersall checked shirt and yellow cords leaning against it, smoking. He must be fifteen or twenty years older than I am, and very much a type: solid, ruddily handsome, the sort of upper-middle-class Englishman who takes it for granted that he will always get whatever he wants. After my years with Harvey, I recognize the breed.

As I get out of my car, he tosses his cigarette, still burning, into one of the blue ceramic pots beside the front door. Outraged, I glare first at the thin stream of blue smoke rising between the leaves of the white agapanthus which I planted in the spring, and then at him.

‘Sorry,' he says, not in the least apologetic. He picks up the fag end and stubs it out against the side of the pot. About to drop it on the gravel, he sees my expression and instead tosses it over the hedge into the lane. I can tell we are never going to become friends.

‘What can I do for you?' I ask in my most off-putting voice.

‘I'm James Bellamy.' He holds out a big hand, which I don't take. ‘And you're Theo Cairns. I've seen you on the television.'

‘Right.' Two appearances on a darned gardening quiz show and I'm a national celebrity.

‘I'm a friend of Liz Crawfurd's.' Bellamy sounds as though he considers this more than enough reason for his presence on my property.

‘So?' The front of my designer T-shirt is filthy, and my thumb still throbs from a misplaced hammer-blow delivered by an overeager young carpenter from Woodwork B. I am not inclined to be gracious.

‘She tells me you own a Vernon Barnes.'

‘Apparently so.'

‘She also says it's one which would be of particular interest to me.'

What's the matter with these people? ‘Did she also tell you that it's not for sale?'

Bellamy glances at the front door as though waiting for me to open it and invite him in. When I make no move, he looks a little less certain of himself. ‘I . . . uh . . . could I see it?'

‘I repeat: it's not for sale.'

‘Miss Cairns. Let me show you something.' He walks over to his vehicle and raises the back. Easing forward a rectangular shape carefully wrapped in a horse blanket, he lays it on the flat bed of the boot and pulls back the woollen folds which protect it. Unwillingly, I go and stand beside him. Lying there is another painting. I recognize at once the reason why Liz Crawfurd has alerted him to mine.

‘What do you think?' he says.

What do I think? I think I want him to leave, right now. I think I am about to learn something I do not want to know. I also think that simply dismissing this man, simply walking away from him and into my house, closing the door behind me, is not going to change any of that.

‘You'd better come in,' I say.

Carrying his painting, he follows me through the door, ducking his head under the low lintel, and into the sitting room. As soon as he looks up at the wall and sees my own portrait, he stops.

‘Oh my God,' he says. ‘At last.'

I do not want to know what he means. I do not want any of the distress which already I sense is piling up.

‘Would you like a drink?' I make the offer, not out of hospitality but because I myself need something short and strong.

‘Nice idea.' He props his canvas carefully on the cushions of the armchair so that it rests against the back. ‘Whisky, if you've got it.'

I pour him one, the blended stuff and another, slightly larger and single malt, for myself. I'm not going to waste expensive whisky on a man who smokes. Both holding glasses, we stand side by side and look from one painting to another.

His shows the same parterred garden as mine does, the same girl in the pale dress with the straw hat, the same obelisks, the same white bench. There's a house of ivied stone, blank windows, a roof of lichened tiles. At one of the tall second-floor windows, is the image of a man in white.

The difference is that Bellamy's picture is painted at ground level, with a full portrait of the woman who sits in the foreground, gazing up at the windows. As I do, in my dreams.

‘Of course,' Bellamy says, ‘at the time this was commissioned, there was no garden there. Outside that window now is lawn and herbaceous borders, no hedges or parterres.'

‘So why did Barnes paint that particular garden?' I'm puzzled.

‘He was given free rein to fill in the background as he pleased, as long as there was
some
kind of garden there. I guess he just made one up. Or picked something he'd seen somewhere.'

‘And the woman is . . .?'

‘That's Connie.' Bellamy points to a little gold plaque set at the bottom of the frame. Black-painted script reads,
Connie In Her Garden, 1968
.

‘Yours and mine are obviously meant to go together,' I say unwillingly.

‘Exactly.' Bellamy lifts his whisky tumbler to his mouth. ‘I can't tell you what it means to me to find this. We had no idea what had happened to it.'

‘Who's Connie?'

‘My mother.' He sips more of his drink, his eyes still on me. ‘The Honourable Maud Constance Bellamy. The person who originally commissioned the two portraits.'

I know the name, though for the moment I can't think why. A fine tremble has started up somewhere as the base of my throat. I can feel my entire life poised as though at the edge of a cliff, ready to tumble into the raging seas below.

‘Strange,' I say. I clear my throat. ‘I wonder what the connection between the two of them was. The man and the woman, that is.'

He stares at me as though I've said something incomprehensible. ‘Rather obvious, I would have thought.'

‘I don't see why.' Nor do I want to.

‘The house is clearly the Grange – Shepcombe Grange, where we live. As I said, the woman is my mother. And the man is—'

‘John Vincent Cairns,' I say loudly.
Shepcombe Grange
– I know the name almost as well as my own. Constance Bellamy is a distinguished professional gardener.

‘Liz said you had some strange notion about the identity of the painting.' Bellamy laughs, not unkindly. ‘I'm afraid it's not your father, Miss Cairns. And I ought to know.'

‘Why?'

‘Because . . .'

He nods at the picture. ‘That's Captain Thomas Bellamy, Baronet.
My
father.'

They say that at moments of extreme stress, you can feel the turn of the globe, the earth moving beneath your feet. I certainly do. Not just moving, but splintering apart. I want to scream at this man who has come into my house and taken away something I have treasured most of my life. I want to yell that he is mistaken. And yet I know instinctively that he is not, if only because of the unmistakable likeness between the two faces, one painted, one a physical entity in front of me.

‘No,' I say faintly. ‘Not your father.
Mine
.'

‘Look . . . this is obviously a bit of a shock.'

‘You could say that.' Tremors have broken out all over my body, fluttering like feathers under my skin. My lungs are seizing up. I bend from the waist, draw in gulps of air, try to catch my breath.

‘I'm sorry if this has been a surprise.' Bellamy takes my arm and leads me over to a chair. He pulls up another one and sits down, facing me. ‘Perhaps I should explain. I mean, even if he
was
your father, which he couldn't be – he certainly wasn't called Cairns.'

From here I can see what I've never noticed before: the mark on the gilt frame of my painting where the plaque has been removed. Who removed it and what was once inscribed there?
Tommy at His Window, 1968
, perhaps? A flap of profound grief is ripping away from my heart, leaving it raw and wounded. ‘My mother said he was. Why would she lie to me?' I demand.