Out of My Depth
Emily
BARR
My Depth
Copyright © 2006, Emily Barr
The right of Emily Barr to be identified as the Author of
the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
For James, Gabe and Seb
Thanks to Lisa McLean, Geòrgie Morgan, Bridget Guzek, Maria Gentile, Kate Ireland, Michelle Arscott, Jane ENglish,
Gail Haddock, Chris Harbach, Jan Kofi-Tsekpo, Peter Webb, Jonny Geller, Jane Morpeth, Rebecca Purtell and
everyone at Headline. And thank you as ever to my boys,
James, Gabriel and Sebastien.
Contents
chapter one
Susie
Les Landes, France
January
It was cold, in the south of France, in January. In winter, nobody wanted to visit me. The last visit was always in October; the first was at the end of March. Even though everybody said, on the phone and in emails, throughout the winter, ‘I bet the weather’s better where you are!’ they must have known, really. Otherwise they would have come.
This particular afternoon, the winter was as bad as it got. I would rather have been in Wales. The wind was howling outside my painting shed. The sky was low and grey, and the rain was imminent. Worst of all, it was cold, and my shed had wooden walls and nothing remotely resembling insulation. I was painting an urgent commission, with two electric heaters beside me. I was wearing a tweed dress, thick woollen tights, two sweaters, a scarf, a pair of beaded slippers and a woolly hat. Yet I could still feel the cold of the tiled floor on the soles of my feet, even when I was standing on a rug, and I still shivered as I worked.
It was ridiculous. I was going to move my studio indoors. The shed was romantic and shambolic and sweet, but it was not practical, not today. I remembered a builder, a couple of summers ago, suggesting that he might line the walls of this old chicken shed with insulating plasterboard to keep me warm while I worked. I remembered myself refusing, telling him that I wanted it to be like a beach shack. I vaguely recalled the look he had exchanged with a colleague. He had been right. I was wrong.
I smiled at myself. We had a whole house, absurdly large for the two of us, and yet I spent my days shivering outside, and Roman spent his time in the attic, or out. The house stood as empty as a holiday home, until we convened in the kitchen for meals.
My mind wandered, aimlessly, mulling over the cold and the likelihood of rain, and the commission I was painting, until it stumbled upon the plan. While I thought, I applied myself to the canvas, which had to be finished by Friday afternoon at the very, very latest. One moment I was trying out the colour for an electric-blue sky. Then, suddenly, I was planning. It was as if the idea had always been there, had probably been there for years and years, but I had never before managed to face it.
On the surface, it was trivial. Everyone had school reunions, from time to time. Catching up with old friends was the least remarkable of impulses. Yet this was a dark idea, with the potential to change everything. It had the potential to ruin my life, or to make it better. It was an open-ended thing.
I heard Tamsin’s voice in my head, years ago, in a pub far away.
‘Why don’t we meet up,’ she had said, ‘when we’re really old? When we’re, I don’t know, thirty-two.’ I heard the echoes of our laughter as we had imagine ourselves at such a grand age. I pictured Tamsin, clearly, with her long unbrushed hair and her idealistic pale face. I hadn’t thought about Tamsin for years. At the: same time, awareness of Tamsin had shaped my life.
I hugged myself, and turned both heaters up to their highest settings.
‘It’s mainly about showing off,’ I told Roman, over lunch. ‘You know. This place is finally looking good. I’m sure my schoolfriends will want to see it.’
I smiled around the dining room. There was a fireplace, with a fire made up for the evening. The high ceiling was supported by original oak beams. The walls were rough, whitewashed. Everything about our house was a cliché incarnate. We even had garlic hanging on the kitchen walls. It was good to show off. People liked staying with us.
Roman smiled, his teeth even and white. My smile widened. Roman and I had been together for four years, and, to my slight surprise, we didn’t seem to be getting tired of each other. I loved the fact that it was just the two of us for half the year. I loved the fact that we both worked at home. Roman was half French. I would not have been here without him. He took care of all the social niceties for me, because my mastery of the language was rubbish, and I was secretly shy.
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Schedule them in. Who are they? Have I heard of them?’ He frowned. ‘Met them?’
I shook my head. ‘Life moved on pretty soon after we left school.’ I said it as lightly as I could, trying to make it all sound normal. ‘We were close at school, the four of us. Amanda was my best mate, my partner in crime. She was tall and blonde and skinny.’ I smiled at a memory of the lengths Amanda had gone to to keep herself unhealthily thin. ‘Isabelle was beautiful. She had amazing long auburn hair. She was the prettiest girl in the school, and the most stylish, too. Jackie used to have a crush on her.’
Roman laughed. ‘Your sister had a crush on a girl? Remind me to take the piss next time she rings.’
‘Oh, I’m sure you’ll remember. Everyone had a crush on Izzy. And then there was Tamsin. She was . . .’ I swallowed, and made myself carry on. ‘Into politics. She was funny. She was living in Australia, last I heard.’ Again, I pictured Tamsin. I pictured her, almost the last time I had seen her, looking awkward in a black dress that didn’t suit her, wearing some garish make-up, with her hair in a bun.
‘And you expect her to fly over from Australia? For a weekend?’ Roman raised his eyebrows.
I shrugged. I fully expected her not to. That was my get-out clause. If Amanda and Isabelle came to stay, we would be able to have a lovely weekend together. We would know that I had invited Tamsin, that I had done my best to make amends
‘Well,’ I said, ‘I’ll ask. You never know.’
Roman nodded, and finished his soup. He looked perfect here. His mother was French, his father English. He looked French. His dark hair was longer than usual, at the moment, and I liked the shaggy look. He needed to shave. He was wearing a red jumper, which suited his dark colouring. As usual, I couldn’t believe how lucky I had been to find him. I had kissed a lot of frogs along the way.
I was glad that Roman didn’t have a job. It meant I got to have him near me all the time, to eat lunch with him every day. He was happy dabbling in whatever caught his fancy. He was devoted to snowboarding, and surfing and climbing, as well as to eating well, drinking good wine, and relaxing. He was good for me.
‘Not Alissa?’ he asked, pleased with himself for remembering someone’s name. ‘Isn’t she your schoolfriend?’
I shook my head. ‘We got closer after school. These are a different crowd.’
Roman was bored by now. ‘Can I go boarding in the morning?’
‘You don’t have to ask!’ I told him, tying my thick hair into a knot. It was black and shiny, and people sometimes told me I looked like Catherine Zeta Jones. I loved it when that happened, although I always brushed the compliments away. ‘Of course you can. Do what you like.’ I stood up and took his bowl.
‘You could come. Conditions look perfect. Waist-high powder.’
‘Can’t. Deadline.’
‘Deadline, plus too cold and too wet?’
‘You know I like my exercise safe and warm.’ I sighed. ‘Warm. Remember that?’
‘But it’s romantic to be on a mountainside in virgin snow with the man you love.’
‘It’s not romantic when your bum’s so covered in bruises you can’t sit down. Thanks all the same, though.’ I thought about it. ‘I’ll come next time. Sometimes it’s worth it just because I appreciate it so much when it’s over.’
I took a cup of strong white coffee back out to the shed, to warm me. The wind whipped my cheeks as I crossed the corner of the lawn to get there. There were no birds. Even the grass looked cold. The garden here was too big for us, really. This was the only corner I used, in the winter. The rest of it was wasted for half the year. I stopped, nipped by the freezing wind, and stared down at the back of the garden, trying to make out whether the digger was moving. Supposedly, there was a pool under construction, back there beyond the trees. As long as it was ready when spring arrived, I didn’t care whether the workers were knocking off at lunchtime, particularly not on days like this.
The clouds were blacker than they had been earlier. It was definitely about to rain.
The wind slammed the door with a loud bang behind me, and even though I knew it was about to happen, it made me jump and spill a few drops of coffee on my dress. Paintbrushes clattered in their jar, and the easel rocked slightly. I straightened it with a hand and stared at the painting as I exchanged furry boots for slippers, and pulled my hat down over my ears.
I got back down to work, and tried not to think about my friends. My job, today, involved copying a postcard onto a canvas. This might not have constituted art in its purest form, but it worked for me, for the moment. What I did was, increasingly, a craft, or even a trade, although I would not have admitted that to anyone except for Roman. This particular masterpiece was going to need a huge investment of time and effort if I was going to finish it by Friday. The client was sending a courier on Friday morning, and he needed to present the painting to his wife on their wedding anniversary on Sunday. The pressure was on.
I picked up the postcard. There was a blue sky, a stone village clinging prettily to some hilltop, and the odd splash of green grass. I would add some bright flowers to the grass and make the track slightly less dusty and more verdant. I looked at the back of it, to remind myself of where it was that I was painting. Gordes, in Provence. The other side of southern France from here.
I sat on my chaise longue, which was below the window, and winced at the draught. This was my favourite item of furniture. It was more of a day bed than a true chaise longue. It was high off the ground, and piled up with pale green cushions, and it was made from walnut wood, with elegant curves at each end. I was always careful with my coffee when I sat on it, and today I wiped the drips from the cup with tissue paper, just in case. My pinboard was on the white wall opposite me, and I stared at the photo of the woman, and then at my canvas, and then at the postcard in my hand. I tried to work out exactly where I would place her.
The woman was to go somewhere in the foreground, at my discretion. This was her reward for staying married to my patron, Neil, for ten years. Her photograph had been on my pinboard for weeks. I fetched it from my board, and hopped back onto the bed. She was thin and blonde, aged about forty. I generally painted brightly coloured landscapes with blue skies and green grass and red and purple flowers. If there were people involved, they were languid, elegant women, ripped off shamelessly from Modigliani (although mine were clothed). This woman, I decided, could easily be transformed into one of my trademark ladies.