Gold Digger (3 page)

‘It’s still good, though,’ she said. ‘Still looks like an angry baby does. But it isn’t quite what he wanted to do, was it? He wanted the paint to stand up and cheer, not lie down and die. It’s sort of lost its own shadows.’

Thomas wanted to shout ‘hurrah!’ He noticed that her shoulders beneath the cotton coat were thin and sharp.

‘Enough,’ he said. ‘How thoughtless I am. What can I get you, Ms Quigly? The sun, the moon and the stars? The touch of the sea, salt on that pale skin of yours? A good meal? What do you want to do first? Go for a swim?’

She had paused then, confused and dumbfounded with choices. The thought of being in that vast, salt water beyond the window made her faint with longing, and yet she did not want to move, yet.

‘Can we look at some more paintings?’ she asked.

‘Let’s go out first,’ he said. ‘And look from the outside in. It’s a perfect day for a swim.’

M
oving downstairs, Di noticed how he never closed the doors, how most of them would not shut properly anyway; how nothing had a lock except the door from the snug room
to the cellar. She hated closed doors: she believed that if she was ever placed under lock and key again, she would die. She could not believe this was happening, and yet she knew it was, as natural as it was bizarre. But then, she had no idea of what normal was, nor did he. He led the way, whistling happily.

Outside the house, their footsteps seemed to take the same direction without any discussion as they moved along past the last of the big houses and away from the pier towards the quieter stretch of an already quiet beach where the shingle sloped out of sight of the path and the sea stood proud. Below the slope, the shore flattened out and at low tide, like now, sand peeked through an overcoat of shingle, shells and bleached relics of the sea. Wading into the water was automatic, as if they were pre-programmed to do just that, just now, both drawn to it, inexorably, obeying the call and the dictates of the day. There were few enough days as still and warm as this when the clarion call of the sea was irresistible to those who heard it.

She stripped off her jeans and ran in, the sound of the splash loud in her ears, the sensation one of burning cold, then fresh heat and freedom to scream. Thomas passed her at a fast crawl; she trod water and watched. He was a fine swimmer, as sleek and ageless in the water as a seal and she wanted to say:
don’t go far, come back
.

That was what he reminded her of; a seal in water, and a nimble, long-legged bird on land.

He threw a towel round her shoulders when they sat on the bank, he being careful to keep a distance from her and her shivering until the heat of the sun began to penetrate. Then she shrugged off the towel, wanting the sun on her skin, and he handed it back.

‘Keep it on, I would,’ he said, gently. ‘Keep wrapped up for now, or you’ll burn.’

The sea, and that single act of solicitude, made her want to weep, and she gripped the towel closer. He had skin like lovely old leather and even then, she wanted to touch it to see if it was real. She looked down at her own legs and began to struggle back into her jeans.

‘Milk bottle white, you are,’ he said. ‘Never seen such white pins. Perfect for an artist’s model. Luminous white.’

She expelled the air from her lungs in a big balloon of breath in a moment of happiness so unfamiliar it made her giddy. There were so many variations of white.

‘Could I be alabaster white? Chromium white? Titanium white? Or maybe something more like the colour of sand?’

‘So many kinds of white,’ he said. ‘Most of them toxic. Such a struggle to find a non-poisonous white. What was it like In There?’

‘Grey,’ she said. ‘Grey and beige. But I dreamt in colour. I dreamt of paintings and paint.’

‘I do that all the time,’ Thomas said. ‘I need the sea to distract me from it. Give me balance, perspective. Thank God for Nature.’

Di knew no God, but she was briefly in heaven.

‘Were you born here?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Me too.’

He already knew she was. Both of them born within the sound of the sea, albeit decades apart, but with the same response.

‘And your children?’

‘My daughters? No, they were born in London. Never took to the sea, even in a painting.’

‘Poor them,’ she said.

That subject closed itself. They drifted back along the beach, retreating higher as the tide came in, both of them with their eyes to the ground, picking things up as they went along, the way he did, most days. Feathers and shells, shells and feathers, nursed in the towel as the sun sank lower and the breeze and the shadow took away the danger from the sun. He noticed how carefully she selected: she was starving hungry but she still had time to choose. Only the best shape, the cleanest white, the least damaged razor shell, the perfect conch, the stone with the hole all the way through, as though she was arranging them into something in her mind: as if they already had another purpose other than to be where they were. The rejects were gently replaced on the ground, waiting for another day. Watching her concentration, he thought she had the instincts of a true Collector, a connoisseur with an innate respect for the perfect as well as that which was less. She found a piece of flint shaped like a bird. No man-made sculpture could rival such a thing. There was a waft of barbecue smoke from a long way away. Her stomach made an ominous growling sound, audible over all the rest, and she clutched her abdomen in apology.

‘Food,’ he said. ‘Food. I have food at home. I can grill some fish and bake some potatoes. Tomatoes.’

Her stomach went into spasm at the very thought of real food, but all the same, they forgot it and talked about paintings. Paintings on the walls, painting behind corners, paintings on the computer screen. Pictures which made her clap her hands. Photographs of children: she wanted to know about his children. Time passed. When they finally ate, she consumed it like a starving waif, and then she was violently sick.

R
aymond Forrest phoned the next day.

‘So, did she arrive?’

‘Yes, and she’s still here. Asleep at the top of the house.’

‘Get her out of there. You old fool, Thomas.’

‘No, I’m not.’

‘She can’t stay with you.’

‘Yes, I know.’

But the weather changed. Rain in torrents, thudding against windows for two days: the sort of rain that defied movement out of doors and made it easy to stay in. It was August, but all the same Thomas lit a fire in the gallery room. She kept protesting that she should go, but it was weak protest, from a weak body, and she would fall asleep at the drop of a hat.

He worked at the computer in the gallery room. It was still a source of amazement to him, that he could view and buy paintings from all over the world. She hovered, sometimes, watching.
Do you write something every day?
she asked.

Every day, sometimes all day. It’s a good thing to do. Here, try it.

She could use the keyboard, clumsily, then easily. Hers was such an open mind, there was nothing she could not learn. And when he was not looking, she talked to the paintings.
My, but you’re a fine one
, she said to the Portrait of a Boy on the Stairs.
Don’t you love your own hair?
He could tell that her hands itched to rearrange what she saw, make space for more; and he wished she would.

He was glad she had been so ill so soon and he thanked heaven for the rain. It gave him time to observe her and to acknowledge that she had not come back to blackmail him, although she still could. They never talked about the night of the storm; they talked about the house.

He found her in the big room, early on the morning of the fourth day, talking to Madame de Belleroche. Look, now, she said to the grand, kind lady in the hat whom she had just dusted with tender loving care. Do you think, Di said to her, that he lets me stay just to see if I’m going to pinch anything? I hope not, but even so, I’d better go before I do. And what about his children? Why don’t his children want to come and see you, even if they don’t want to come and see him? Why don’t they? Or is it just me who’s the freak? Yes, I am a freak – bet you were, too, looking like that.

He loved the fact that she talked to the paintings, as if she knew, as he did, that they were alive. Thomas had so quickly grown accustomed to her presence in the house, moving about like quicksilver: it unnerved him how right it felt. As long as it rained, and as long as she was weak, she would stay, but he did not want her to stay for that reason. He wanted the child who talked to paintings, and he wanted her strong.

On this morning it was bright again and the outdoors beckoned. She was wearing the cotton coat she had carried with her when she first arrived and her little bag was by the door. His heart slowed to a standstill. Di sensed his presence, spoke over her shoulder.

‘My mother told me about the parties there used to be in this house. Parties for children, when it was a school, and then after that. Your father had parties for children. They were magic, she said.’

‘My father was a headmaster who believed in magic,’ Thomas said. ‘And that was a long time ago.’

‘You could do it again.’

The wonderful, glorious possibility of that, of filling this house with children, entered his mind for a minute, took hold and then began to fade.

‘No, I don’t think so.’

She shook her head. ‘Pity, Mr Porteous, Thomas. Perhaps it’s just me, but if I was magicked by this house and all the paintings in it, so would other kids, other people be. There’s nothing different about me. If I could have kept on coming to a place like this more often than the few times I did, I’d have known there was another world outside my bastard own. So, I just thought if more people could see all this, love all this, for free, there might be a few less thieves. Kids need magic. People need paintings, don’t they? Even if they don’t know they do, they do.’

He sat down, impossibly excited this time. How did she know what he had always wanted? She was frowning, looking like a monkey, frustrated by her own lack of coherence.

‘It’s time I went, Thomas. Thank you for bringing me back to life. But I’d better go. It’s not fair on you. You can’t be seen to be harbouring jailbait like me. But, yeah, thanks.’

He made up his mind. Bugger Raymond, bugger anyone else. He’d rather be an old fool than take the risk of ignoring his instinct. There was guilt in the equation, too. She had already honoured his secrets. She seemed to have forgotten what else she had seen on the night of the storm, forgotten the cellar through which she came, and she seemed to want nothing but to exist and learn.

‘You can stay as long as you like.’

She shook her head. ‘You’d be branded a nutcase, Thomas. They’d reckon you’d gone mad.’

‘I’m branded already,’ Thomas said. ‘I’m the freak, not you.’

‘That makes two of us, then,’ she said.

‘We’ll make it a job,’ he said. ‘You can be housekeeper. You can be my eyes. And if you’re the housekeeper, maybe we
can have the party. And if you’re here, maybe my daughters will bring the children … and, who knows?’

She was laughing at his excitement, feeling the infection of it, knowing it was hopeless. He stopped, breathless, smiling the smile that made him look like a boy. The man had such a capacity for joy, it was infectious, made everything possible.

‘You’re a Collector,’ he said. ‘That’s what you are. A natural born collector. Look, stay for a few weeks. See how it goes.’

She paused, trembling. He waited, holding his breath. Then she spun round.

‘Will you teach me, Thomas? Please, teach me.’ She banged her fist on his desk, making a startling sound. ‘I want to learn. I know what I love, but I don’t know WHY. I’ve gotta learn. But shit, if I could help make your children come back, that’d be something, wouldn’t it? Oh yeah. But I’ve gotta work, and you’ve gotta tell me stuff, ’cos I know nothing. And you know nothing about me.’

‘Yes, I do,’ he said. ‘You have eyes, you have a conscience, and you’re a Collector. You talk to paintings, as collectors do. I need help, and quite apart from anything else, I like you very much. That’s all I need to know.’

She turned on her heel and addressed the painting at the far end of the room, pointing at it. It was another loose sketch of a courtly man in evening dress, raising a glass towards Madame de Belleroche.

‘Did you hear that?’ she demanded of him. ‘Like
me?
Do you know what, no one’s ever said that to me before. You know this man here? He really is a freak.’

‘Recognise you, then,’ he said. ‘Like a true colour. A lake colour, made of dye, lets the other colours shine through.’

She stopped short. She wanted to cry, but Madame de Belleroche would not have approved of that.

‘Let’s go out,’ he said, understanding it. ‘Look at it from the outside in, again. Shall we go up to the bay?’

Di looked at him with shining eyes.

‘The sanctuary? Oh, yes, yes, yes. I know the names of the birds, I do. I like the sticky little waders with the flat feet. Only you mustn’t scare them, you gotta be quiet. It’s their place, no one’s but theirs, you gotta have respect.’

‘I never did know their names,’ Thomas said.

‘Well, I do. I’ll tell you. Hey? Something you don’t know? Works two ways this teaching business, I can tell you.’ She was grabbing her coat, and then she remembered and her face fell.

‘Someone’ll see us, Thomas. Someone will see.’

‘Does that matter?’

‘It should, it should to you. I’m the slag and the thief, and my mum’s dead and my Dad’s bad and I’m not what you call popular in this town.’

‘And I’m the old freak,’ he said. ‘I’m the Pervert. The child abuser.’

She laughed out loud.

‘Bollocks,’ she said. ‘Is that what people say? Oh screw it, then. We can go skinny dipping off the pier. And go bollock naked up the High Street. Go into Monica’s and get our hair done in the nude.’

‘A day of frivolity, then,’ he said. ‘And tomorrow, we learn.’

I
t was on the tip of his tongue then, to tell her. To go back over the night of the storm and whatever else had happened in his house that night, but that would be later. Instead they
spied upon the birds in the bay, and made pies in the sky, she said.