Vicki's Work of Heart (20 page)

Christophe peered out of his study window when he heard the car pull up. Daniel Keane was quickly round to hold open the passenger door before Vicki had chance to swing her legs out. He offered her a hand, guiding her towards him before leaning in for a kiss. Christophe’s lip curled, even though he knew it was exactly the kind of thing he’d do himself.

It was gone mid-day. No guessing what they’d been up to, last night. Who could blame the guy? Vicki was very tempting. Although that assumed Vicki wanted to get involved with Daniel, and from what he knew about her, she was much more
determined to concentrate on her painting.

He turned back but couldn’t focus on his laptop screen. The car engine revved and Daniel drove away. Good. At least she had the decency not to bring him indoors.

He listened to her murmured greetings to the dogs; that silly baby-talk she adopted for them –‘Herculey -wooley’ and ‘little Bozzy-wozzy’. Mon Dieu!

Would she prepare lunch, today? He heard the stairs creak as she headed up to her room. How long before she moved in with Keane? He shook his head. Maybe that would be for the best.

He clicked through from one document to another, trying to get his mind back into his report. Just as his fingers settled again on the keyboard, he heard a creak on the landing above as Vicki headed back downstairs. Moments later, there was a tap on his door.

‘Viens!’ he barked.

Her head appeared, blonde waves ragged around her pretty but pale face. He’d seen her like that once before and pushed the memory back. She smiled and said, ‘Hi. How are you?’

‘Very well, and you?’

‘I’m good, thanks.’

‘Good.’

She may have been looking pale but she was sickeningly cheerful. ‘Would you like some pumpkin soup?’

He glanced at his watch, knowing full-well it was almost quarter to one. ‘No rush.’

‘It’s okay. I’m ready for it, so I’ll heat it up and you can come and get it when you want it.’ Her smile flickered. ‘The soup. Obviously.’

‘Thank you.’ He focussed again on his computer screen. He would miss her cooking when she went, that was all. But as the door closed, he stared at the back of it for several moments before shaking himself and scowling at his laptop.

*

I’ve never actually tried to cut an atmosphere with a knife. All I’d ever had was my bravado, which I’d just deployed in Christophe’s study…bravado and a seriously misplaced sense of humour. Of course, I knew he wasn’t going to be remotely pleased to see me roll up with Daniel. I’d been praying I might come home to an empty house but God must have been busy on something more important.

I’d made the soup the day before so all I had to do was reheat it. A simple enough task – except I was working with a hangover, a guilt complex and confusion…confusion over Daniel. I’d woken an hour earlier to an empty bed. Nothing much wrong with that, but when I went downstairs and found him chatting over coffee with Connor, all he’d done was pour me a cup and continue his conversation. And after coffee, he offered to drive me home; no ‘shall we go back to bed’ or even ‘that was a wonderful evening, let’s do it again’. Just coffee.

On the way home, he’d warmed up a bit; wanting to know if I still had the copy of his article and would I let him know what I thought about it. It was only when I stuck my neck out and offered to cook him dinner,
while Christophe was away in Toulouse, that he livened up. I tried to put it down to his gauche, public school background but hell, he was over thirty, he’d surely cracked the dating game by now.

As I stirred the soup, my memory randomly fired off Jeanne’s words from last night, ‘I recommend you maintain that confident front.’ A front, indeed. Is that how I came across – a confident pain in the arse? And even if it was, she didn’t have to be so patronising about it.

I pulled out the bread board and attacked the loaf with a knife. Saw. Saw. Saw. Bang! into the bread basket. Saw. Saw. Saw. Bang! Saw. Saw...

‘Ayayay!’ Christophe said in alarm as he walked into the kitchen.

‘Hungry?’ I asked, slowing down on the sawing front.

He grunted in reply then asked, ‘What did the bread do to upset you?’

‘It’s not the bread. Somebody said something that bugged me.’

‘Not me, I hope?’

‘No. And before you ask, not Daniel, either.’ I looked for a reaction but he’d already turned away and was rifling through the dishwasher for clean cutlery. He started laying the table. Finally, I filled the silence. ‘Christophe, do I seem confident to you – like overly confident, like I’ve got it all figured out?’

He carried on, lining the spoons and knives up on the table. Eventually, he looked at me. ‘I think you have confidence but that’s not necessarily the same as being confident.’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘I’ve no doubt you could get up in front of a class and command their attention and demonstrate a skill. That shows confidence. You can walk into a room full of strangers and charm them with your personality. But do I think you are confident in who you are? Non.’

And to think I was looking for reassurance that I wasn’t a pain in the arse.

I filled the bowls with soup and Christophe carried them to the table.

As I sat down, he said, ‘Vicki, you know, very few people are truly confident in who they are.’

‘Exactly.’

He stirred his soup for a moment before looking up at me. ‘The question is, do you have the confidence and the application to fulfil your dreams?’ The way he looked at me, reminded me of my headmistress, Mrs Pope, when she’d asked me if I was going to knuckle down to my GCSEs. He could have been channelling her when he said: ‘Only you can control that, Vicki.’

That proved it – I was no further advanced than I had been at fifteen. Just older. Older and more battle-scarred. ‘I know. And I will.’

‘So, who has upset you?’ he asked.

‘Just someone at the party last night.’
I wasn’t going to mention Jeanne’s name.

He shrugged. ‘Sometimes it’s good when people challenge our perceptions, non? It makes us more resolved to…what do you say?…plough our own field.’

‘Furrow. Plough your own furrow.’

‘Voilà.’

For a few moments, the only sound was that of slurping soup but my mind was feverishly active.

‘Trouble is, it’s made me wonder whether I’m deluding myself, like those girls you see on talent shows – the bloaters who sing like a cow in labour but still think they’re the next Lady Gaga.’

He smiled.

‘I’m serious.’

‘I know.’ He stretched out his hand and put it over my wrist. ‘But Vicki, you’ll never be happy until you’ve tried, will you? This could be an important year for you. You’re here to paint and to get your life back on track. Cooking for me is incidental.’

I wasn’t about to brood on his dismissal of my culinary efforts as ‘incidental’ although it registered momentarily in my brain. Uppermost was the fact his hand remained on my arm and the frisson I was feeling from his touch was more electric than anything I’d felt from Daniel. But lust was transitory, wasn’t it? And anything developing between me and Christophe would just complicate things.

He was right. This could be an important year for me. It was my year. ‘Well said. I’m just wobbling in my convictions. Thank you for putting me back on track.’ With a nod of my head, I withdrew my arm and reached across to grab some bread.

‘You’ve had major changes in your life. You’re bound to have the occasional moment of uncertainty.’

I was having more than one.

I smiled and wiped the bread around the bottom of my soup bowl. ‘Well one thing’s certain – there’s a canvas upstairs waiting to be completed, and I have all afternoon to work on it.’

‘There you go. Vouloir, c’est pouvoir.’ Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

‘Indeed,’ I said as a massive yawn broke over me.

‘I expect you’re tired.’

I was…although judging by the look on his face, not in quite the way he imagined. 

‘Yes, I was dancing till the early hours,’ Not that an explanation was necessary. It was my life, after all.

A few nights later, when Christophe was away at Toulouse, Daniel came over. My feeling of disloyalty over entertaining him in Christophe’s house almost drove me to cancel. But I reasoned that it wasn’t as if I was inviting the Gestapo into the headquarters of the French Resistance. It was just a meal. I set the table in the dining room with a vase full of green leaves and wild honeysuckle on a linen tablecloth. I backed away from going all flash with the meal, though – keeping it simple with smoked salmon blinis to start, followed by paella.

Daniel arrived bang on time, bless him, presenting me with a bottle of Pinot Grigio, which I thought a brave move considering we were in one of the proudest wine-making countries in the world. He’d chilled it in advance so we cracked it open immediately and sipped it over the blinis.

‘I liked your article,’ I said. ‘If that’s not too immodest of me to admit. Thank you for writing it.’

‘Hey – it’s what I do.’

‘Well, thank you for wanting to write it. It means a lot to me.’

He smiled his lopsided smile, catching my hormones off guard. ‘I think you’re worth it, don’t you?’

‘Hah!’ I scoffed, but felt a thrill all the same. To hide my embarrassment, I pushed a whole blini in my mouth and nearly gagged so I swallowed it and felt like a snake on a binge.

Daniel’s hand reached across and covered mine. ‘From the little I’ve seen, you should believe in yourself more. You might find it opens up the floodgates of your creativity.’

I squirmed at his over-the-top enthusiasm. I’m not used to such praise. As if sensing it, he squeezed my hand. ‘Truly. Confidence works wonders.’

I nodded. Confidence. That bloody word again; the one that had me debating the value of my dreams with Christophe. The difference tonight was that Daniel knew what he was talking about.

I used my other hand to raise my wine glass and took a sip of wine or two. My affirmations kaleidoscoped through my brain. ‘I do believe in myself, just like I believed in my students…at least, some of them.’

‘Exactly.’ He removed his hand and reached for his own glass. After a sip, he grinned at me, ‘I must say, this wine’s brilliant with the salmon, isn’t it?’

‘It is.’ I savoured another mouthful.

Life was good – as was the paella. The rice wasn’t too squishy and had slightly caught on the pan, giving that delicious, treacly taste to the bottom crust.

As we cleared away the dishes, Daniel said, ‘I have an important question to ask.’

I stood still, wondering what on earth was coming next.

He tipped his head to one side and said, ‘Would you agree that the best thing about being in France, is being able to eat crêpes, any day, in almost any town?’

‘You’re talking a lot of
crêpe there, Daniel.’

He laughed. ‘I just love them. Crepes with syrup,
crêpes with cream, bananas, chocolate, booze…any way they come. I’m not crazy for all that French haute cuisine but crêpes…’ he kissed his fingers. ‘Magnifique.’

I’d made apple tarts for dessert…but they’d keep. ‘Are you dropping hints, Mr Keane?’

‘Good lord, no. It’s just that once the main course is over, my thoughts naturally turn to pud. Especially after all those years at school; sponge and custard, fruit and jelly, cake and cream. Never got a bloody crêpe, though. Even on Shrove Tuesday, if we wanted pancakes we had to twist Matron’s arm to make them in the boarding house. Matron taught us all a big lesson – that favours could be reciprocated.’

‘Favours – from Matron? Sounds dubious.’

‘No. Favours from us. We’d do little jobs for her.’

‘What, like running errands?’

‘You could say that. We’d bring duty-free fags back from foreign holidays for her. She had a regular supply of marijuana too, thanks to Greenaway. His brother grew it in a barn in Portugal.’

‘What, might I ask, did she do for you?’ I asked, wide eyed with anticipation.

‘Turned a blind eye to booze in the wardrobe, fags under the pillows, that kind of thing. She always had a stock of Fernet Branca for the morning after. And, of course, spoiled us with pancakes, occasionally.’

‘How did she get away with it?’

‘Shagging the Bursar. Oh, and Hancock, Head of Seniors for a while, till his wife found out and blew the whistle. Matron was evicted and replaced by Attila the Nun; she had the moral code of a saint and the temper of Miss Trunchbull.’

I was seeing a new and much funnier side to Daniel.

‘So, no more pancakes.’

‘No, but I only had two terms left, so I didn’t suffer for long.’

‘Would you like pancakes, now?’ I smiled.

‘Well…’ he moved closer to me and ran a hand down my arm. ‘I did write a very flattering piece on you…’

I grinned. ‘Just don’t call me Matron!’

He grinned and leaned closer still. ‘Wouldn’t dream of it. You’re far too sexy for that.’ Then he closed the gap and kissed me, his hand travelling up my spine and pulling me in. He was a good kisser; firm and soft at the same time. As he pulled away, he slid a strand of hair behind my ear, stroked my face and said quietly, ‘My pretty girl, Vicki.’

‘You’re only saying that for extra pancakes.’

He smiled. ‘My pretty and very talented Vicki. Who will, one day, be a celebrated artist.’

‘Are you after Crepes Suzette, now?’

He held both my arms then and stood back, his eyes suddenly still and focussed on mine. ‘I mean it, Vicki. You truly have talent. Trust me on this. I know.’

I could feel the prickle of tears behind my eyes and dropped my head. He pulled me to him then and hugged me. ‘Vicki, you’re special.’

After reining in my emotions, I said, ‘Daniel, you’ve definitely earned your pancakes but there’s something I want to give you, even more…’

I looked up into his face, slid my hands away from his body and stepped back to peel off my sweater. His eyes drifted over me as he watched my t-shirt follow the sweater and the bra drop to the floor. I’d only had one glass of wine. I was fully in the moment. For the first time in a long time, where a man was concerned, I was in control of my actions.

‘I’ll take pancakes for breakfast,’ he said and, like Rhett Butler, lifted me into his arms and carried me upstairs.

I never got around to making pancakes. Daniel thought it best not to stay the night. As we lay in our post-coital knot, he said, ‘In a little town like this, nobody misses a thing. I wouldn’t want you getting a reputation.’

‘Spoilsport.’

‘We want people talking about you for the right reasons – your work.’

I traced the line of his arm with my finger. ‘Think of all the great artists with a reputation for loose morals – Gauguin, Lautrec and don’t get me started on Sickert. Actually, scrub Sickert, he was a creep. But I think I’d quite like history to remember the artist, Vicki Marchant, as a bit of goer.’

‘Odd,’ he said, and drew my hand to his lips for a kiss, ‘how there are very few truly great female artists.’

‘Well, don’t bet on me being one of them. I might be good but I’m not that good.’

He smiled, kissed my hand again and said, ‘Never undersell yourself, Vicki.’ He turned to me and kissed me full on the mouth. I could feel my body brewing up again but he pulled back and said, ‘I really should be off, but no need for you to move, lovely girl. I’ll let myself out.’

So I lay there, watching him dress; fascinated by the brisk, matter-of-fact way he pulled on each item of clothing. Nothing like Marc, who’d made getting dressed a performance – rolling his hips into his jeans and whipping the zipper up accompanied by a double click of his tongue; sliding into a sweatshirt, shrugging it to a neat fit on his shoulders and smoothing down the front, before checking the result in the mirror. I hadn’t watched a man dress for over a year. Too long.

In a lazy stupor, I must have nodded off really quickly because I didn’t even hear Daniel’s car start.

The following morning, I was up before it got light, straight into the shower and singing my head off. I just loved the acoustics in that bathroom. Downstairs, Hercules and Boz stood whipping their tails back and forth. I lobbed them each a chunk of stale bread from the basket. Coffee-maker on, I cleaned up the detritus from last night’s meal and put the vase from the dining room onto the kitchen table. I drank my coffee and crunched through some muesli and blueberries, as daylight slowly spread through the windows.

Once it was light enough to head off up the hill, I wrapped myself in a jacket, scarf and gloves, calling the lovely dogs after me. The only way to approach that hill on a frosty morning was with enthusiasm. Up we went, listening to the swish-swish-swish of my sleeves against my jacket. From the top we looked back at the little town, where lights were still twinkling in windows. Life was good. Life had never been better. ‘This is great,’ I said aloud.

Finally, I’d hit the groove. Ahead of me was a whole day of painting, and I knew exactly what I wanted to achieve. ‘Geronimo!’ I hollered, before running haphazardly down the hill, Hercules and Boz bounding along in front.

I was working on the detail of the market stall-holder when I heard Christophe climbing the stairs to my floor. I turned to wait for his appearance in the doorway. Was it the pale fabric of his white shirt reflected in his face, or did he look more drawn than he had the last time I saw him? He hovered in the doorway.

I beamed at him, my spirits buoyed up by the progress I had made. ‘Salut.’

He smiled. ‘Wow! It’s going well, huh?’ He stepped forward, scrutinizing the canvas. I waited for his reaction, watching as his eyes travelled over and around the image. He raised his eyebrows. ‘It’s looking good. I think you are pleased with it.’

‘Still a lot to do, though.’ Despite his saying all the right things, I felt his mind was elsewhere. ‘How were things in Toulouse?’

‘Fine.’

‘You sound tired.’

‘Do I?’ he shrugged. ‘I have been riding.’

There was a frown on his face. ‘Would that be Léopard or Belle?’

He glanced at me, one corner of his mouth lifting, before he turned to sit on the edge of table. ‘Which do you think?’

‘Judging by your mood, I’d say Léopard.’ He nodded slowly, his eyes locked on mine. This close, I could practically feel his emotional turmoil. ‘O…kay…’ I stepped forward and offered him my brush and palette. ‘Wanna paint a picture? It’s very therapeutic.’

Christophe glanced down at the palette and let out a muffled snort of humour. He looked back at me. I realised my clothes were a mess and my hair was scrunched up in a shambolic sprout on top of my head, but hey – I was busy working there.  ‘You think I need therapy?’ he asked.

I grinned back at him. ‘Not if your ride on Léopard did the trick.’

He still looked troubled. ‘It helped.’

‘I’m glad. Oh shit!’ I said as one of the brushes slid off the palette and hit the floor – taking a detour via his leg. A smear of cream paint added a unique touch to his trousers. ‘Jeez! Sorry!’ I shoved the palette on the table so I could sort out the mess.

He stepped away. ‘Hey. Don’t worry,’ he said, moving towards the door.

‘It’s only acrylic, I can wash it out straight away.’

‘I said, don’t worry. You carry on with your painting.’

‘But you must let me clean them, it was my fault, after all.’

‘Non!’ he barked, sounding thoroughly cheesed off, not that I blamed him. Then he raised his hand apologetically. ‘Really, I will sort it out. I shouldn’t have disturbed you.’ He turned away but stopped in the doorway. ‘I also came up to see if you wanted anything.’

‘Oh. Thank you but no, I’m okay.’

I listened to him descend the stairs and called out, ‘Get those trousers in water, straight away!’ But he didn’t reply.

I wondered if Christophe knew about Daniel’s visit? Had someone said something? Was I transmitting guilty conscience? Actually, scratch that. Was I broadcasting ‘woman with re-awakened libido gagging for more’? Oh lord, that would be it. My aura had a phosphorescent glow from rampant hormonal activity. My pores were oozing post-sex pheromones with all the potency of Samsara.

I leapt over to the mirror to investigate. Crap! I looked a bloody mess. Oh well. That would negate any sexual tension that might have been brewing. And I’m sure it had been. I wasn’t imagining it. Christophe had a kind of vibe about him, which set my hormones on red alert – red for danger – and I didn’t need danger in my life, thank you very much. I needed my life to remain on an even keel. Daniel was a steadying influence in my world and that, I decided, was invaluable.

Although…

I had to admit, my coupling with Daniel, whilst it had been lovely – a welcome release of sexual tension and shared intimacy with a man I liked – it hadn’t been momentous.

I pulled a face at my reflection.

‘I am an artist,’ I began reciting my affirmations.

Daniel encouraged and supported me in my work. He understood me.

‘There is an audience for my work and the Universe is bringing us together.’

Result!