Holly Lester (7 page)

He was not friendless; from school, university, and his early days in the London art world, he had any number of friends, many by definition long-standing. But whilst happy to have lunch with them in the West End, he was reluctant to see them at the weekends, since all but a few had families: in his reduced bachelor circumstance this made things difficult – he hated being the single man at dinner, and as a hopeless cook, he could not readily reciprocate hospitality.

In bridging the gap created by his years in New York, moreover, when he had seen English friends at most once or twice a year, Marla had not helped things. He thought, for example, of ringing the Anderson-Russells, once his closest friends in London. But a certain
froideur
lay over their friendship, ever since a dinner party given after Helen Anderson-Russell's completion of a course at a Kensington cooking school. As Helen cleared the table and began to serve coffee, Marla had exclaimed helpfully, ‘Terrible food. But wonderful wine!' Perhaps he wouldn't ring them after all.

Rain on Saturday meant Billings stayed indoors all day, alternating between the small sitting room and even smaller study, moving between rooms as he grew tired of whatever he was reading. He felt less bored but more restless than usual because of the prospect of Holly's call the next day.

On Sunday he left the flat only once, late in the morning, to buy a newspaper, but carefully left on his answering machine in case Holly telephoned. Seeing Marla lurking just off Goldhawk Road reinforced his inclination to stay in, and he worked briefly and desultorily on an article he had promised to write for
British Painting
on the young Paul Nash – at his best in the early years before he went abstract. Then he proofread brochures for his spring show, a mix of naturalist landscape practitioners and abstract artists. Three of the latter camp were holdovers from Miles, but he found it easy to overcome his slight prejudice against them (both for their paintings and for being inherited) when he saw that the prices they commanded were roughly double those of the painters he had recruited himself.

He was not opposed to abstract art
per se
; how could he be, when so much of it was so very beautiful? Who could look at a Motherwell, or Kline, or Stella and say, ‘that's terrible'? Only an ideologue could; in his love for watercolours and landscapes Billings was able to resist turning a positive passion into a negative view of everything else. A good thing too, it seemed from his price list, unless he wished to run a small shop in Bethnal Green.

For lunch he ate half a cold chicken and drank half a bottle of Sancerre. In the afternoon, he watched cricket with a boring monograph about Hogarth on his lap, then repeated his lunch at dinner by eating and drinking the other halves. Still Holly hadn't rung, and he felt irritated and disappointed. He didn't feel he should ring her, and realized he couldn't anyway, as he didn't have her number and it was not, of course, listed in the phone book. As his weekend reverted to its usual melancholy flavour, he returned self-consciously to routine, preparing for work the following morning by going to bed early.

He slept badly and, feeling seedy after his solitary weekend, walked halfway to work before catching the Underground. He arrived at Cork Street to find Tara had already opened up. ‘Any calls?' he asked.

‘Calls? I've only been here ten minutes.'

He shrugged. ‘I thought we could hang the bottom gallery today for the opening.'

‘Only the Lyttletons have come. The courier van was waiting when I got here. You don't want to put these downstairs, do you?'

He would put them in the loo if money were no object, but Tara was right – financially it didn't make any sense to hide them away. He went and unwrapped one of the half-dozen frames stacked neatly against the galley wall. Lyttleton, who rejoiced in the Christian name of ‘Sergio', was hot at the moment. Another inheritance from Miles, he used silk screen to put large blocks of colour onto very fine canvas. This was derivative – Joseph Albers, Rothko, Morris Louis; you'd have to say it had been done thoroughly before, but it was also attractive, for the colours were lovely and rich, textured by the lines of the applying screen and the absorbent effects of the canvas. A dark and smoky blue, the green of the richest poplar tree, a charcoal that flashed an image of Holly Lester's stockings. This last thought worsened his mood, especially as he looked more closely at the Lyttletons. What nettled Billings most about the Lyttletons was their selling point: a trail of faint hieroglyph carefully applied in a vertical line down the canvas centre with India ink. The tinkering seemed mechanical yet had appeal: the smallest canvas, the size of a portable television, cost £5,000; the largest – virtually a railway carriage window, which Tara now helped him unpack – reached £40,000.

The spring show was important to Billings, for although cash was flowing through the gallery of late, like rich gravy from a jug, he was having trouble ensuring that enough of it covered his own food. He was paying sixty-five pounds per square foot and had nineteen hundred square feet to pay for. Tara was on £22,000 a year, too much for a mere receptionist, but too little for such a knowledgeable assistant – he was going to have to give her a rise soon. Printing bills knocked him for six, especially after the low prices of the States; his last bill for an eight-page four-colour brochure on a photographic realist inherited from Miles, cost a little over three thousand pounds. He was taking little out of the business himself; most of what he did take went on the exorbitant rent he paid for the flat off Goldhawk Road, let when he left Marla on only a six-month lease.

He hung Lyttletons all morning, perversely putting two of them downstairs, then ate a sandwich in the galley while a bunch of non-buying Germans filled the upper floor. In mid-afternoon, the
Professore
came in quietly, fastidiously dressed, in a pink button-down shirt and a patterned tweed jacket which, through the hint of violet in its dominant green pattern, subtly indicated that it was foreign.

Billings had long before concluded that the man was a retired academic, from Padua perhaps, or was it Ferrara? Learned, speaking halting but fluent English, he had first been spotted by Billings inspecting some watercolours by Ivan Packworth, a Devonshire artist who loved to do series of pictures, moving from pencil sketch to gouache to oil, of the same scene, usually a river. Billings discovered that the Italian was an expert on Victorian watercolours, engaged in a personal search for twentieth-century equivalents. They became friendly; the Italian took to visiting the gallery weekly (always on Mondays), and Billings would bring out watercolours from storage and even from his own small but treasured collection, which he kept in the vault. It was an utterly uncommercial acquaintance, since the
Professore
never bought anything; Billings thought of him instead as a kind of critical auditor. Now he found him standing in front of the spot where the Burgess had hung, replaced by a luridly maroon Lyttleton. ‘Do you like it?' Billings asked politely.

The
Professore
turned to him with an expression of alarm and shook his head. He waved a finger at the wall. ‘
Dove Signor Burgess
?'

‘It's been sold,' said Billings. ‘Usually it would still be here, but the spring show starts soon, and the buyer insisted on taking it away.' He thought of his struggles to get the canvas in the taxi, en route to Primrose Hill. It suddenly seemed a long time ago.

The
Professore
put his hand over his eyes and shook his head. ‘I wanted to buy.'

Billings was deeply surprised. After months of the
Professore
's visits, he had ceased to see him as a customer. ‘I'm so sorry,' he said.

‘It is in good hands?'

He thought sourly of the uncommunicative Holly and the weird mish-mash of paintings in her bedroom. He shrugged. ‘I hope so. Would you like to see some other pictures? I have two Packworths for the spring show I haven't hung yet.'

But the
Professore
shook his head. ‘No, but if ever the buyer is unhappy, please let me know. I
loved
the Burgess picture.'

Billings smiled. ‘So did I. I'm so sorry.' The
Professore
left the gallery looking depressed, which increased Billings's own sense of melancholy. He cursed Holly Lester, wishing she had never entered his gallery or his life.

Tara returned with the
Standard
, then made them each a mug of tea. He looked quickly at the headline.
TORY MP DIES: NOW IT'S DOWN TO ONE.

‘One more to go,' said Tara, nodding at the paper. Billings quickly scanned the article. Sir Jock Nichols, a veteran backbencher from the Midlands, had been found dead that morning at his home. No cause of death was mentioned, which caught Billings's attention, since Nichols was only fifty-seven. So now the outright Tory majority was a single MP. In the
Standard
, the Prime Minister expressed regrets at Nichols's death, then voiced his determination to stay on in office. The paper pointed out that, theoretically, the election could be over twelve months away.

The rest of the day passed quickly, with many spring tourists coming in, though none proved buyers. He sent Tara home and locked the front door at five thirty, then in an end of day ritual, imported from New York, he sat with a glass of white wine and read Daisy Carrera's favourable views of the new Lucien Freud exhibition. At quarter to six the telephone rang. ‘Are you still open?' a voice crackled from what sounded like a mobile.

‘Sorry. We shut at half past five.'

‘Good. Then lock up and wait out front. I'll pick you up in five minutes.'

It was Holly. ‘Where are you?' he asked, but she had rung off. He finished closing up, went out and pulled the massive grill down over the front window, then stood awkwardly, looking around. He heard a sharp squeal of brakes near the Royal Academy, a surge of acceleration, and the familiar Audi pulled up in front of him, with Holly waving wildly from the driver's seat.

Billings opened the door, and Holly said, ‘No hanging about. I've managed to give Terry the slip, but we can't rest on our laurels. Or else he'll find us.' Billings got in quickly, shutting the door, and Holly drove off at speed.

‘Where are we going?' he asked.

‘I thought the same place. Is that all right?' When he nodded, she looked relieved, and said, ‘There's something tacky about hotels.'

He looked out at the pavement, full of people on their way home. ‘And you might be recognized.'

She shifted down crossing Oxford Street and looked at him coolly. ‘There's that, too.'

He wanted to ask about her failure to ring him, but there was something about being in a car with Holly (perhaps her frenetic driving) which kept him silent. It was only as they entered the flat again that Billings felt he could raise the topic, trailing Holly as she made a bee-line for the bedroom.

‘I'm sorry about yesterday,' she pre-empted, taking off a blue wool jacket with smart gold buttons. ‘I hope you didn't wait around for me.'

‘Not to worry,' he said automatically.

She stared at him with what he was beginning to recognize as her look of intelligent appraisal. ‘You
were
cross, weren't you?'

He nodded reluctantly.

‘But you see, once news came that Nichols had died, I literally didn't have a minute to spare. Harry came down early from the constituency in a helicopter and soon the house was full of people.'

He looked at her with a sudden, almost desperate sense of disappointment. She must think him very stupid indeed. ‘I saw the
Evening Standard
, Holly. It said Nichols died this morning. Not yesterday.'

‘It
did
?' she said, then smiled knowingly.

Billings felt immensely confused. ‘Well didn't he?'

Holly hesitated, did her best to look out the window, then shook her head.

‘I don't understand,' Billings said.

‘I'm sure you don't. In fact, I'm astonished you're even halfway interested. It's only
politics
after all.'

‘Please explain,' he said hopefully.

‘I can't.'

‘Why not? It's not as if I'd tell anyone – or have anyone to tell.' He dismissed McBain from his mind slightly guiltily.

Holly went and sat on the bed, crossing each leg in turn while taking her heels off. ‘How do I know that? For all I know, you might be a Tory spy. Or Liberal Democrat – even worse.'

Billings sat down on the chair in the corner and untied his own shoes. ‘Of course. That makes perfect sense. I've been given several hundred thousand pounds to return from New York, buy a gallery, and establish myself in the West End. This in the uncanny foreknowledge that out of all the galleries in Mayfair, the wife of the Leader of the Opposition would somehow pick mine; then manage to fall in love with one of the pictures in the gallery;
and
ask the owner to deliver the picture; and finally take him to bed. What planning. What a conspiracy!'

She was laughing by the time he finished. ‘All right. You win. I
will
tell you what happened. Nichols did die yesterday, but not in the right place.'

‘Meaning?'

‘We don't know for sure. All we knew is that he had died, but that news of it wouldn't come out until today. This gave the Tories twenty-four hours' head start.'

Part of him understood perfectly the words Holly was using; part of him felt she was talking in code. ‘What do you mean head start? On what?'

‘On a General Election. Nichols's death means the Tory majority is only one. It can't be long before it's nought and they
have
to call an election. Someone will die, or get sick. Two's much more than twice one.'

Most of Holly's clothes were off by now. Billings looked at her appreciatively, then realized that, caught up in her account, he had stopped undressing. He pulled off his tie and nodded understandingly. ‘So naturally everybody had to meet and figure out what to do if an election were called.'