“We’re planning a thousand-bed Kulturhotel—concerts, exhibitions, performances—which will draw in the world’s elites and…”
The wife pushed her untouched starter aside and nodded, wearing her own strained version of Eve’s facile smile.
Clive held out his glass for another refill. He was clearly done with Enzo and turned back to Eve.
“A very good Friuli,” he said, gulping the wine. “Herbaceous, buttery, with a tang of tea leaf. From Albrecht’s vineyard.”
“Hmm,” Eve said. She sipped her drink, unimpressed. “And have you been there? The vineyard?”
Her question, she knew, was hardly interesting, but its plodding politeness was entirely in keeping with the rest of the conversation so far. Clive clearly thought otherwise and ignored her. He leaned across her towards Albrecht, raising his glass again.
“Prost!” he said.
“Prost!” Albrecht said, lifting his own glass.
Eve caught Laura’s eye and realised they were mirroring each other’s tightening smiles.
“Good to have the Russkies on the run in Doha!” Clive said.
“They just weren’t up to it, were they?” Albrecht gloated.
The main course was served—slivers of unidentifiable flesh set in a fuchsia sauce and garnished with a rosebud carved from a radish—as Albrecht and Clive continued to re-enact highlights of their latest deal.
“They really thought we were going to walk away! And then you…”
“…His face! I never thought he’d go for it. But I guessed, after the Kohler business, that he…”
Laura Bernoise turned from her husband to her other neighbour, Otto Stoltzer—silver-haired and impeccably suited, his Mondrian-patterned pocket square a discreet declaration of aesthetic tendencies. Perhaps Laura was harbouring hopes of an exhibition in Zurich of wearable gold plumbing equipment. Eve’s neighbour made another hasty visit to the bathroom and she was marooned, alone again.
When Clive returned to the table, he judged that the social preliminaries were over and he was free to get down to real conversation. He pushed out his chair and twisted round, giving Eve a three-quarter view of his back. Laughing at some wan joke of Kristof’s, he leaned behind Enzo. For Clive, gay men obviously fell into the same category as women—at best, they were decorative adjuncts to civilised life, like those ornamental cabbages and gerbera. His voice grew louder—he really did seem high; why else would you find anything Kristof said funny? Kristof seemed surprised by the unfamiliar sound of laughter greeting his unexceptional remarks and, with a fevered gleam, rose to the occasion.
“Why don’t architects get to heaven?” Kristof said. “Because Jesus was a carpenter!”
A joke? Kristof never told jokes. Did he get it from a cracker at the last office Christmas party? She would have to warn him later before this wisecracking got out of hand. But if Clive was guffawing sycophantically at Kristof’s attempts, he was laughing even louder at his own feeble repartee.
“No point in arguing with the contractors,” Clive wheezed. “You just get bogged down in…cementics!”
“That’s so great!” Enzo said. “Your contractors are interested in semantics! Have you met Noam Chomsky? We had dinner with him and Wanda Wilson in the Village.”
Eve began to plan her exit. She needed to think of an excuse that would allow her to leave Kristof there while she caught a taxi east. An accident, not too serious, at the studio—a burst pipe, a small fire. She reached into her bag and took out her phone. Four more imploring messages from Luka, more garlands of kisses.
She was texting him back—“me too x”—when a fluttering movement in her peripheral vision drew her gaze upwards, diagonally across the table to Otto Stoltzer, who was gesturing at her with his index finger. She gave him a little wave back. She’d written him off too soon. His head was cocked and his left eyebrow was raised interrogatively. They exchanged a smile of recognition—a meeting of kindred spirits in an alien setting.
They were too far from each other, across the savannah of oriental cabbages, to speak. She pulled out a business card from her bag—contact details for her and for Hans—and leaned across the greenery to pass it to him. He could, she tried to signal, email or call her tomorrow, once this dreary evening was behind them. But Otto was waving now. Waving away her card and waggling his index finger again. Waggling and pointing. At the wine. She passed him the bottle.
19
She turns onto Old Street, once a dead zone poised between the cold commerce of the City and the human shambles of Hackney and the old East End. Now, with its nearby clubs and bars still thronging at this hour, in this month of frenzied celebration, it’s a chillier, windier combination of Las Ramblas and Rio. Presiding over the party is St. Luke’s Church, with Hawksmoor’s stark obelisk spire, lit blue at night and pointing heavenwards, a neon admonishment to Eve and to the clubbers wandering the streets in search of the next thrill.
* * *
—
For an atheist, Eve is something of a connoisseur of churches. Her parents’ mild Anglicanism rarely involved churchgoing but she had a brief and embarrassing passion for brass rubbing in her early teens—touring London’s historic parishes with rolls of paper and balls of wax, patiently harvesting the imprints of engraved monumental plaques. Though her interest in mere copying, rather than creating, soon faded, she continued to take pleasure in the buildings themselves—Larkin’s “serious houses on serious earth.” The yearning for grandeur again.
That was something else she and Florian fought about. He loathed all religion and thought her appreciation of a quiet nave, a baroque choir loft and a carved baptismal font betrayed a superstitious nature. He couldn’t have been more wrong. To Eve, each church was a novel, or a series of novels—a Trollopian box set—written by many hands over the centuries, remnant of a time when it was easier to place your bets on an invisible world than on the tangible, visible world around you. A rolling programme of hope and grief, down the years—all that marrying and baptising and burying. Kristof later opened her eyes to the architectural complexities. St. Luke’s, in its current incarnation, was a secular music venue and they went to several concerts there—the LSO, Patti Smith—even though Kristof bore a grudge against the place; in 2002, he’d submitted designs for the church’s conversion and lost out. He took it hard. He was competitive about his work and he hated to lose. Another thing she and her husband had in common.
* * *
—
After the excruciating dinner party, as they stood in the street waiting for a taxi outside Albrecht’s apartment, Kristof was in high spirits, confident that he’d secured the Doha deal. Eve took advantage of his drunken triumphalism and told him outright that she wouldn’t be going back to Delaunay Gardens that night.
“I should go straight to the studio to catch up on lost time,” she said. “One of the herbaria needs to be sealed urgently tomorrow morning—Ines Alvaro is coming next week—so I might as well spend the night there and get up early to do the job.”
“Can’t Glynn do it? Or Josette?”
He’d forgotten her new arrangement. If he’d ever taken it in. She didn’t bother to enlighten him.
“No. I’ve got to deal with it myself,” she said.
“You’ve been working too hard,” Kristof said woozily, handing her into a separate cab. “Isn’t it time you got yourself another assistant?”
She stared out of the taxi window at the wet city streets slipping past, sliding down the social scale at twenty miles an hour—the same route she’s taking now, six months later, on foot—and she began to have doubts. Perhaps it would have been better if she’d gone back to Delaunay Gardens. She was feeling so diminished by the evening, so old, unattractive and marginal, and she didn’t want Luka to see her in that state.
But when she opened the studio door and found her lover still up, sit
ting at the computer, she felt a rush of relief. He’d finished the green ground for the next painting and was uploading the latest film footage. He turned towards her, welcoming her with that seraphic smile, and led her towards the bedroom. Redemption. He restored her to herself.
There was no time for more physical intimacy over the weekend. There was too much to do. He had to finish the artemisia herbarium and then they could move on to the yellow sequence. She started her drawing of a gelsemium flower—the deceptive five-petalled star, fragrant as orange blossom, innocent in appearance as a child’s painting of a summer sun. She would apply the watercolour later. Luka began to mix the oil pigment for the canvas—aureolin yellow with potassium cobaltinitrite and Hansa arylide—then he returned to the dissecting tray with some specimens.
“So, this one?” He twirled the flower in his gloved hands.
“An interesting one,” she told him. She opened the herbal manual and read aloud: “ ‘Cold war politics…said to have been used in assassinations by Chinese and Russian security services.’ ”
“Like those Russians in Salisbury?”
“If you insist,” Eve said with frank irritation. “You know I’m not interested in banal commentary on current affairs. This project’s focus is planetary and timeless.”
But he wasn’t listening.
“Slip it in a sandwich…” he hypothesised, “what happens then?”
She sighed and picked up the book again: “ ‘convulsions, paralysis and fatal asphyxia.’ ”
“I could think of a few candidates for that…” he said, bending to his task at last.
“Now can we get back to work?”
Once the weekend was over, the charade of her married life continued. Luka stayed on in the studio at night while Eve, after a full day’s work, returned dutifully to Delaunay Gardens. Ines came to the studio to look through Eve’s old work and exult in the new, but the curator’s enthusiasm was oppressive and did nothing to raise Eve’s spirits. How long could she sustain this split life? And how long would Luka tolerate it?
Later that week, she seemed to have her answer. After he’d filled and sealed the artemisia herbarium, Luka told her he was going back to his sister’s flat.
“Just for a few nights. It’s lonely in the studio without you,” he said.
Eve smiled to hear this admission but said nothing. The situation was hard on him. His growing insecurity was undermining their lovemaking. Sometimes their nights seemed to be more about reassurance than sex. His return to his sister’s flat was an ultimatum and Eve couldn’t blame him for giving it. She must make a decision but she feared the consequences, either way.
* * *
—
Towards the end of Old Street, she skirts the roundabout—an infantile name for a hellish pedestrian-hostile tangle of traffic; didn’t Kristof have something to do with one of these hideous biscuit barrel buildings?—and crosses into Shoreditch. When she was a young student living in a crumbling shared house with Wanda and Mara, the area was known for its dilapidated social housing and squats. By night it was bandit country, haunted by the twentieth-century equivalent of footpads and vagabonds. And now? Newly built blocks, some of them Kristof’s, were selling for millions to overseas investors, and industrial warehouses and Victorian banks had been turned into fancy clubs, low-lit twenty-first-century versions of Gin Lane, with champagne, cocaine and surround-sound music.
Five years ago, when these pleasure grounds were in their infancy, her godson Theo worked as a DJ in one of the new clubs—a glorified illegal rave legitimised by cash. He told her about his job with the pride of a young musician announcing he’d just secured a season at Wigmore Hall.
* * *
—
Outside the clubs tonight, junkies and alcoholics without the income to sustain their habits linger, badgering the wealthy incomers.
“Help the homeless?” A skinny old man in a tattered coat extends a hand seamed with dirt. He has picked the wrong prospect. She shakes her head, draws up her collar and walks on.
* * *
—
After Luka’s first night back at Archway, they met the next morning at the studio door. Eve asked him lightly about his evening but his answers were terse and evasive.
“Fine. Yes. I saw her. She was fine.”
He opened the fridge, took out some gelsemium samples and carried them to the dissecting tray, moving through his tasks in silence.
“What’s wrong?” Eve asked.
“Nothing.” He picked up a flower with tweezers and walked to the herbarium.
“Tell me.”
“I said, nothing!”
There was anger in his voice and, as he waved her questions away, the tweezers slipped from his grasp and fell into the cabinet, splashing preserving fluid across his ungloved hand.
“Careful!” she shouted.
“Fuck!”
He was shaking his hand, blowing on it, looking around for something to wipe away the corrosive liquid. She picked up a clean rag, quickly poured water on it and went to help him. He shook her off and, still clearly in pain, hurried to the sink to run his hand under the tap. His anger seemed directed at her. This was unfair. It was his carelessness, not hers.
If he didn’t want her help there was plenty to occupy her elsewhere. There was work to do. She switched on the news. Another weather front on its way…80mph storm…Power cuts…Danger to life from flying debris. So, turbulence was general. She put on some music instead—Lester Young, at full volume, hoping those free-floating sax riffs would lift her mood.
She climbed the ladder to start work on the yellow canvas. Unobserved, she looked down on him as he poured out the powdered pigment. He was still sulking. It was like dealing with Nancy, who expected you to spend your time trying to read her feelings, wondering whether you’d accidentally inflicted some injury. He mixed the colour—a quivering slick of egg yolk—put on the gloves and returned to the herbarium.
By early afternoon, she wearied of the music. The news—American sabre-rattling and Brexit scaremongering—was no better. It was Ines Alvaro’s misfortune that she should choose this moment to phone. She wanted to follow up on her visit to the studio.
“I’m wondering again about the cobra lily,” the curator told Eve.“I’m thinking maybe your old Amaranthus—lovelies-bleeding—might work better in that spot.”
“Really, Ines. I don’t have time to deal with these details,” said Eve, with a terseness that was perhaps ill-judged. “That’s why I have an agent. Call Hans.”
She turned off the phone. Luka’s continued silence pressed in on her again and her composure began to crack. She and Kristof were scheduled to meet Nancy and Norbert that evening at a launch for one of Nancy’s affiliate partners—a fair trade “luxury loungewear” company. Mara, such a loyalist, though not an obvious champion of luxury loungewear, would be there with Dot. Mara’s daughter Esme, Nancy’s IT adjutant, was coming too. Eve would have traded an evening with all of them for an extra hour at the studio with Luka, even in his current mood.
She had to leave. Her absence would raise suspicions at home—Kristof had insisted: “you have to support your daughter”—and Eve didn’t want a confrontation. But she despaired at the thought of a sleepless night, tormented by thoughts of Luka. Unspoken questions and self-hating answers flooded in to fill the silence. Had he tired of her? Why wouldn’t he? Was it over? Why wouldn’t it be? What was he doing with her in the first place? Perched on the stepladder in her paint-smeared overalls, thinning hair uncombed—when was the last time she’d been to the hairdresser?—streaks of yellow pigment on her tired and, yes, old face, did she really expect the beautiful boy below, bent over her work, to desire her?
He was at the dissection tray again, frowning. She climbed down the ladder to reload her brush with colour, working the bristles back and forwards in the
thick golden cream. In a neutral voice, she asked him if he was returning to Archway that night. He shook his head and picked up the still camera. He and Belle had quarrelled, he said.
“It was a major row,” he added. “We’re not speaking.”
“Why?” she asked softly. She didn’t care about the details. The only thing that mattered was that he was angry with his sister, not her.
“She told me I was a waster. Couldn’t stick at anything. Need to get a life.”
He worked on, methodically photographing each plant part in turn.
“Why don’t you tell her you’ve got a life? A perfectly good one?”
“I kind of did. But she’s just full of all these big ideas and thinks everyone else has to be on board with her programme.”
Eve went to him and reached for his hand—still raw and inflamed from the formalin—lifted it to her lips and kissed it.
“Ring her now. Bring her here. This evening. Before I leave. Show her your life. Our life. I’d like to meet her, anyway.”
It was an impulse partly prompted by guilt over his mishap with the formalin—as if it were her fault, somehow, and partly by gratitude to his sister for being the cause of his moodiness. Eve wanted to make him feel better, too. Let Belle see her brother flourishing, in good hands. Eve knew the invitation was irrational, that her affair with Luka was still clandestine, that she was asking for trouble. But there was some part of her that was seeking trouble. She needed an invigorating jolt. No good art ever came out of complacency.
Nightshade Page 15
