by Stella Duffy
“Caron, it’s me. If you’re there, pick up the damn telephone. I know you’re busy but there is something I need to discuss with you … are you there? … Well, when you get in please call me at the office immediately.”
And ten minutes later for the second time.
“Caron, I’ve just spoken to your father who assures me you are at home, he spoke to you this morning and you told him you’d be in all day. Now answer the damn phone! … I don’t care if you are working, I need you now … Caron? … Kirsty are you there? Caron? …”
He waited a short while and then hung up. And finally for the third time,
“Caron, call me. I want to speak to you. It’s urgent.”
Maxwell North sounded worried. Certainly not the Mr In-Control who’d run the Process a couple of weeks earlier. Still, Saz figured, even existential gurus couldn’t always have the perfect homelife. Overhead she heard footsteps on the stairs and very quickly turned the monitor off and picked up an old Vogue, settling herself on the sofa. Kirsty came back in.
“Look, I’m really sorry this is taking so long – do you want anything? More coffee?”
Saz looked up at the woman. Classic Australian good looks – tall with long legs, long blonde hair, great tan and bright blue eyes.
“No, thanks. I think I’m about to overdose on coffee. Um … the phone’s been really busy – sounds like the answerphone’s probably overloaded too.”
Kirsty went to the answerphone and played back the messages quietly so that Saz could barely hear them, she rewound the tape with a barely audible “Shit” and bounded out of the room and up the stairs.
“Caron! … Max has been calling, get on the bloody phone!”
Saz heard nothing more for about ten minutes until Caron North herself walked into the room.
“I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting all this time. I didn’t get your name?”
“Molly – Molly Steele,” Saz lied, standing up quickly and bruising her knee on the too-close coffee table.
“No, please, sit down, make yourself comfortable. And call me Caron. I never know whether I should say McKenna or North anyway, so Caron’s always much easier. Now tell me about this wonderful pan of yours.”
Caron McKenna got out a little notebook and Saz told her about her mother’s frying pan, all the while studying the artist who was taking notes in front of her. Her delicate, thin hands still covered in plaster, elegant features, small frame, the long fair hair. Everything about the woman was pale and fine, practically translucent yet also strong at the same time. Her clearly muscled forearms were covered in a fine dusting of plaster powder. According to the press cutting she had to be thirty-eight, not an awful lot older than Saz, though all those years of good breeding and family wealth gave her an assurance Saz never had without a fair amount of effort and bravado coming into play. And there was something else, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. It was to do with a distance, an air of “otherness” that Saz felt she recognized but couldn’t quite place. At least not until Kirsty came back in with a tray of sandwiches.
“I thought you girls might be a bit hungry. I’m out of here now Caron, sorry I can’t stay longer. See you next week, bye!”
Then Saz caught the look from Caron to Kirsty’s long legs and fine mane of hair as she flounced out the door and she knew just what it was.
“She’s a dyke Moll. Caron North is gay and she fancies her very tasty Australian cleaner.”
“You’re mad Saz. Caron North is an upper-middle-class Englishwoman. She’s one of ‘those’ women. She’s married to one of the most successful men in the country…”
“Too flash to be gay?”
“No. But she really doesn’t need to lie.”
“Don’t you believe it. A family like that? They’re not going to ruin their reputation just because their little girl’s queer. And the woman’s an artist for God’s sake. I know she sells well now, but what about all those years when Daddy was supporting her, and then when North was supporting her? It’s an arrangement Molly my darling, a good old-fashioned traditional arranged marriage.”
“Hardly what my Mum would call traditional.”
“Nor mine. But I bet that’s what it is.”
“Possible.”
“You know when you spot one.”
“Yeah right. And I could spot a poof at sixty paces, and all blacks look the same. You sound like a fascist.”
“That’s not fair! All I said was I think she’s a dyke.”
“OK. Anyway, the dubious nature of Caron McKenna’s sexuality aside, what else did you learn?”
Saz screwed up her nose and started on another cup of coffee.
“Not a lot. Classic rich person’s house, most of the decor straight out of the Conran Shop. Nothing spectacular. I was hoping to get to see the studio, but no chance, they kept me well caged in the drawing room.”
“So what now?”
“Not sure, I’ll sleep on it. I get my ideas better that way.” Saz gulped down the rest of her coffee and took Molly’s hand leading her to the bedroom.
“Only I don’t intend to have any ideas for at least a couple of hours yet.”
CHAPTER 16
Saz rose early the next morning and went out for her run before the rest of London even knew Sunday had started. Leaving Camberwell had been hard in many ways, giving up her freedom being just one of them; though she and Molly had seemed to spend all of their free time with each other, it wasn’t until they moved in together that she realized it wasn’t quite the same as never being able to get away and “go home”. And she missed the “cosmopolitan” nature of Camberwell – blacks and whites, Asians and Greeks, living side by side, if not in complete harmony, at least with a fair degree of nonviolent co-operation. After only one week she missed the Greek bread and the little gift shop and she especially missed the chip shop with Jamaican patties for which no amount of Hampstead Haagen-Dazs was fair compensation. But at six in the morning on an early summer’s day, she would gladly have traded it all yet again for the pleasure of having her early morning run on Hampstead Heath. For four years she’d been running, in all seasons, in Camberwell, Vauxhall, Stockwell and Brixton, now she ran through trees and over fields. She’d quickly discovered she could run for an hour and not meet anyone – as long as she left home early enough. This morning she left their flat and ran straight across the heath to the women’s pond where three old ladies were already swimming, up another hill to take a five-minute breather at her favourite resting point – just two trees and a stunning view of London. Today in the warmth, the view was hazy and she thought she could just make out St Paul’s, but in late winter when she’d first met Molly, it had been cold and crisp, the whole of London clearly imprinted on the southern sky, making the pain of leaving her new lover in bed and running in freezing weather almost worth it. From the hill she turned again and ran through the wooded area, then past the car park to the tearooms where the staff were arriving at work. They knew her well enough by now and she was able to buy fresh coffee hours before opening time. This morning she took her polystyrene cup, borrowed a copy of The Sunday Times and went back outside to sit on the grass.
She was halfway through the review bit, having discarded the other sections, with an apology to the many trees dying for newsprint she wasn’t even vaguely interested in, when the wind whipped up the pages, scattering them all across the little hill. She ran around frantically, gathered them together and was carefully replacing them to return the paper as neatly as possible to its owner, when she saw Caron North’s name, in one of the longwinded articles she never normally could be bothered with. The article said little of interest, mostly it was about the difficulty of finding good staff and how hard it was for a busy woman to run home and family. It did however mention Caron North as one of the few women who seemed to have it all – husband, home and career, all in glowing health. Though even she was quoted as saying “What I wouldn’t give for the perfect assistant” and ended wit
h the writer chiming in with the old cliché about every successful woman needing a wife to come home to. Saz laughed to herself, “Yeah, but I bet you don’t have any idea of just how much Caron would welcome that wife!”
She ripped the article out of the paper, gave it back over the counter, threw away the rest of her coffee and ran home.
Five hours later Saz bowled up to Maxwell North’s Kensington home, her head stuffed with the names of every sculptor and British artist of the past fifty years that Molly could recall.
“How do you know all this?” Saz asked groaning, her head sagging on her hands, her hair brushing the chunks of fresh parmesan she’d loaded on top of her pasta.
“It’s not that I know so much,” Molly replied. “It’s that you know so little. And get your hair out of your lunch. Didn’t you ever watch The Late Show?”
“Not by choice.”
“Well it’s too late now. Anyway this still seems a little stupid to me, what if North finds you in his house? What if he answers the door?”
“Doesn’t matter. I gave them your name when I did the course in the first place.”
“Great.”
“And it’s Sunday. He’s probably taking a course.”
Molly stood up and started to clear away the empty plates.
“What if he’s not? Don’t you think he’d be surprised to find you there?”
“I might be very interested in art for all he knows. Just because I’ve done the Process, doesn’t mean I can’t talk to his wife. Anyway, Maxwell North has run two courses a week for the past three years, all over the world. I don’t think that even I could have made that much of an impact on him. Now if you’ll kindly stop depressing me and give me your car keys, I’ll be on my way.”
Molly handed over the keys with a kiss and the last piece of olive ciabatta.
Caron North answered the door. She was obviously very surprised to see Saz.
“Oh … Molly, isn’t it? Do you want the pan back?”
Saz smiled and held out the newspaper article.
“No. Look, I know this is weird, and I’m sorry to disturb you like this, but I saw how busy you were yesterday and then I read this today and I know it’s a bit of a silly idea but…”
She took a deep breath and launched into the lie she and Molly had rehearsed while making lunch.
“I thought maybe you could do with an assistant. And I could do with a job. Just for however long it takes until the exhibition – it is soon, isn’t it?”
“Ten days.”
“Right. You see I’m going back to college in the summer. Adult student. I’m going to study art – not fine art, but gallery management, history, all that stuff, only I don’t really know much yet and I know how busy you are, well it was obvious really, and then I read this, and I wondered … if maybe you’d take me on.”
Caron opened her mouth to speak but Saz interrupted her.
“You do need some help don’t you?”
Caron just looked at Saz and then burst out laughing.
“I really don’t know what to say. You have to admit this is a little odd.”
“I know, I’m sorry, I did think I ought to call first but I just got all enthused and then …”
“Don’t apologize, I appreciate your enthusiasm. Not that I’d actually thought about taking anyone on … Kirsty comes in twice a week to help with the house. What can you do?”
“Type a little, answer phones a lot. I make great coffee – espresso, cappuccino, latte. Depends what you need really.”
Saz waved the article under Caron’s nose.
“It says here you need a wife.”
“Journalistic licence. I really need someone who doesn’t mind doing all the crap legwork until the show opens.”
“I’ll give it a go. Eight quid an hour.”
Caron asked Saz in and gave her coffee and individually wrapped Turkish delights, read through the non specific references – dug up that afternoon by Molly, one from an old landlady and one from her grammar school headmistress. They then talked briefly about sculpting, though, luckily for Saz the discussion was rather more about Caron’s own work than anyone else’s. She then sent her away with orders to show up the next morning at nine. And an amended wage down to six pounds an hour.
After five days Caron North was declaring she couldn’t survive without her “new helper” and Saz, with only five more days until the exhibition, was becoming more and more frustrated. As she explained to Molly,
“It’s not that she doesn’t talk to me, it’s just that when she does it’s never about anything that matters.”
“You’ve only known her a week, you can’t expect her to divulge her life’s secrets just like that.”
“You did.”
“That’s what you think, like your Mrs North, I’m still an untapped mystery waiting to be discovered.”
“Yeah, but I don’t have time to wait. For her I mean. My job’s done in five days’ time. I’m stuck on this one and going nowhere fast.”
“You seem to be going all over London.”
“The circuit from their house to Caron’s agent, encompassing Harrods’ Food Halls and Harvey Nichols, is hardly my idea of seeing life.”
“God, she really is one of those women isn’t she?”
Saz munched thoughtfully on her thumbnail.
“Kind of. I mean she has all the trappings – boring clothes, black velvet headband, BMW – all that. But she just doesn’t quite fit in with them. You know, I’ve met two of her friends so far and they really are those ‘ladies who lunch’ – hairdresser at ten, nails at eleven, little walk to Sloane Square at twelve and then a glass of champagne and three lettuce leaves at any one of those identical trendy bloody Kensington restaurants for lunch. But she’s different. It’s like there’s something going on. More than just the artist thing. I mean at least she actually has a job, she’s doing things with her life, she’s not just defined by her husband and his work. But there’s definitely something else.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“Stick it out for these last few days. Try and snoop around a bit more. I haven’t had a chance to look into her bedroom yet. I haven’t even had any reason to go upstairs. I think she’s starting to trust me. I know she’s not going to talk to me like a normal woman friend or even a new boss might, but maybe I can get her to tell me a bit about Max. Or whatever else might help. I’m just certain something’s not quite right. And I really do think she’s a dyke.”
“Then get her drunk. Even posh ladies talk when they’re drunk.”
Saz laughed, “Yeah, but so do I.”
“In which case, my darling, you’ll have to stay sober, won’t you? It’s easy, work late one night, ask her if she fancies going to the pub for a quick half, she’ll be shocked and horrified at the thought and offer you a glass of the lovely champagne that’s chilling in the fridge, you get her to drink most of it and then ask her how a refined, fancy girl like her comes to be married to Dr North, guru to the establishment.”
“So that’s what they teach you in medical school.”
“That’s right. Bedside manner always was my forte.” Molly rolled over until she was on top of Saz, she held her face in both hands and began to kiss her; nose, eyes, mouth, chin, shoulders, each body part rapidly surrendering to her touch. Molly muttered as she kissed, “Bedside, fireside, heath side, beside you, down your side, underside, overside, outside…”
“Inside?” Saz whispered and pulled Molly even closer.
CHAPTER 17
Saz’s first chance to get inside Caron North’s head came the next day. Kirsty had just left, having finished dragging the vacuum cleaner up and down the four flights of stairs, and Caron had received an urgent call from her agent begging her to come down to the gallery and “chat pleasantly” to the owner. Caron was expecting an upholsterer to come and look at the sofa she wanted to cut in half for another installation and her agent left her with no choice but to go out. She assured Saz sh
e’d be back in a few hours and left her with a long list of questions for the upholsterer about the best ways to mangle sofabeds. Saz put Caron into a cab and then jumped back up the steps, closing the front door behind her and grinning in anticipation. She ran up to Caron and Max’s bedroom on the second floor.
The room was ageing eighties chic – swagged curtains, ragrolled walls, dominated by a huge old bed, draped with a slightly threadbare, obviously handcrafted patchwork quilt. On what was clearly Max’s side of the bed was a small bedside table, with a neat stack of medical books and a halogen lamp as the only marks of his presence. On the other side of the bed there was a slightly larger, matching table. This one held three or four fashion magazines, a pair of reading glasses, a selection of homeopathic remedies, an open bottle of mineral water, two alarm clocks and a photo. A signed photo of a young woman, smiling directly at the camera, using one hand to hold back a swathe of long dark hair from her eyes. Across the bottom of the photo was an inky scrawl.
To my darling Caron, all my love, Deb
It was signed with three large kisses. The head and shoulders shot was taken at a beach, Saz could just make out a shoreline in the background and she guessed it must have been at least a few years old, the colours in the picture were starting to fade slightly. She slipped the photo out of its heavy silver frame and turned it over. It was an ordinary enlargement of the kind of photo taken on any summer holiday and then made into Christmas presents by the subject, elated to finally have a picture of themselves good enough to give away. Written on the back in Caron’s tiny, neat handwriting were the words – “Deb. Summer ’86. Sifhos.” Saz carefully replaced the photo and then began going through the drawers.
One by one she gently sifted through Max and Caron’s clothes, underwear, hankies, socks. She went into their bathroom and rifled through the bathroom cabinet, no condoms, diaphragm or pills anywhere, no obvious signs of any heterosexual activity. She went into each of their walk-in wardrobes and slipped the jackets and shirts and neatly drycleaned dresses backwards and forwards on the sliding rails. She scanned the small bookshelf by Caron’s side of the bed but it scarcely revealed a hidden passion for dyke novels, being largely full of weighty tomes on expressionism and the postmodern in the present day. Finally, she went through the big desk against the end wall of the room. It was obviously divided in half – three drawers for Max and three for Caron. Max’s drawers were singularly unspectacular. One was completely empty, one was full of old cheque book stubs and an international assortment of coins and the last one held a range of writing paper and stationery with both names and their home address elegantly printed across the top. Max obviously kept all his work-related things quite separate from his home life. Caron’s drawers were much more full but initially, equally unhelpful. A mix of old letters in the top drawer, from various interior designers, builders and plumbers confirmed that Caron took control of all their joint household requirements. The second drawer down contained another neatly piled bunch of used cheque books and assorted foreign monies. In the bottom drawer Saz came across a pile of old cards, from Christmases and birthdays long gone. She was about to dismiss them when, shuffling them into a neat pile to put them back, she noticed that a couple were not in the same cheery colours as all the rest. She pulled them out of the middle of the pile and opened them. They were sympathy cards. One signed with Max’s thick, calligraphic pen which the manufacturers had thoughtfully left blank inside to allow Max to pen his own message. It read
