by Clare Boyd
‘I can personalise little going-home presents for all your guests too, if you like. Maybe truffles?’
Elizabeth checked the clock. It was ten minutes to ten. Ten minutes until Lucas would be finished on his call. ‘Look, Sarah. I have to explain something before I try one,’ she said.
Sarah bounced James on her knee and waited for her to go on.
‘Lucas is … how can I describe it … a bit of a traditionalist. He likes to know what he’s spending his money on.’
‘He’s worried it’ll be going on some scruffy mum who bakes out of her kitchen, right?’
‘He’ll take a bit of persuading,’ Elizabeth admitted, reaching into the cupboard for a box of macarons from a famous patisserie in Knightsbridge. The lettering – The Brompton Cross – was splashed across the box, modern and garish in hot pink.
Sarah looked at her searchingly. ‘Please tell me you’re not going to compare mine to Brompton’s?’
James stopped gurgling and inspected his mother’s face.
‘I know it’s a risk. But yours are better. When he tastes them alongside theirs, he won’t be able to doubt me – doubt them, I mean.’ If Elizabeth wanted to win this battle, she had to work doubly hard for it.
‘I think it’s professional suicide, but hey, you know your husband better than me.’
Elizabeth checked the clock again. Five minutes.
‘Why doesn’t Agata take James for a walk around the garden? Give you a breather?’
Sarah blew out her cheeks. ‘You don’t have to ask me that twice.’
Agata pushed James away in the pram minutes before Lucas strode into the kitchen at ten o’clock exactly. Elizabeth’s shoulders rose and her heart hiccuped.
‘Hello! Hello!’ Lucas bellowed, clapping his hands. ‘My mouth is watering.’
Elizabeth handed him a fork. ‘I’ll make coffee.’
‘So, I’ve heard you’re the best in town,’ he said, leaning across the counter on his elbows.
Sarah straightened her skirt and smoothed her hair, shifting from one foot to the other. ‘Well I don’t know about that,’ she said, and handed him one of her boxes.
He undid the satin ribbon and popped a green macaron into his mouth, closing his eyes as he chewed. Sarah seemed mesmerised by him, jumping slightly when he blinked his eyes open. ‘Not bad at all.’
Elizabeth placed a coffee on the side and brought out the box from the Brompton Cross. ‘To compare.’
Lucas raised an eyebrow and took one. ‘Not as pretty as yours, for starters.’
When he had finished his mouthful, he said, ‘Okay, Sarah Smith. My assistant got me a twenty per cent discount at Brompton’s already. Can you be competitive on your pricing?’
Elizabeth was shocked by his cool lie.
Sarah handed him her brochure. ‘Yes. I think you’ll find I can.’
He scanned it with expert speed and threw it on the counter. ‘Looks good. Welcome to the madhouse!’
‘Ha! Thank you!’ Sarah’s tired eyes were stretched wide.
Taking up his coffee, he said, ‘By the way, darling, will you find Gordon and Heather and tell them to pop in and see me sometime today?’
‘Sure,’ Elizabeth said, watching him walk away, wondering what he had in mind for Heather.
‘And don’t forget to order the invitations today. We’re already pushing it time-wise.’
Returning to Sarah, Elizabeth said, ‘I think you just pulled that off.’
‘We did,’ Sarah replied with a grin, holding her coffee mug up to Elizabeth, who clinked it with her own.
‘To rainbow macarons!’
‘To the party!’
Elizabeth was high on the success for about five minutes. As soon as Sarah was gone, the long to-do list unravelled in her mind. She needed to order the DJ and find a company for the marquee and the drinks van, and pin down the menu with the caterers, and so many other things. Absent-mindedly, on the way out to the garden to find Heather – whom she guessed might not have a job by the end of the day, which she thought might be a good thing for everyone – she grabbed a sample invitation from the kitchen counter and began scribbling a list on the back with one of Hugo’s crayons.
Nine
As I placed the first clump of peonies into the hole, I spotted Elizabeth heading in my direction. She was sucking on something, a sweet perhaps. Her small, light steps, her unreadable prettiness gave her the air of a younger woman, younger than me, a teenage girl even, who had not engaged with real life quite yet.
The water lapped noisily from behind the hedge, like a rushing broil in my ears. The trowel escaped from my sweaty palm and the rocky soil flicked into my face, stinging my eyes. I stood straight, light-headed, spotting an envelope in her hand. It might be a termination letter, or a contract that she would rip up in front of me and scatter in the soil at our feet.
‘Heather, can I have a word?’
‘Sure,’ I said, adjusting my cap, pulling it a little lower over my eyes.
‘Gosh, you look peaky. Are you feeling okay?’ She pushed a wave of her golden hair back from her forehead.
‘I’m fine. I think.’ I stared down at the envelope.
‘Do you want to see?’ She held it out. ‘It’s the invitation Lucas wants. Boring, isn’t it?’
It was a white card with a crease down the middle and scribbles on the back.
‘You don’t like it?’ I said, ambivalent, wanting to sound neutral, wondering if it was a trick. If she and Lucas were about to sack me, I wondered whether she would be capable of engaging in chit-chat about an invitation. But she was hard to read, nervy always. She might want to avoid a confrontation, play good cop to Lucas’s bad.
‘I hate it.’ She slipped it back into the envelope, adding, ‘Lucas wants a word with you and your dad.’
‘When?’ I gasped, unable to hide my dismay.
‘Now. Will you find Gordon for me?’ Her baby-blue eyes blinked at me. ‘I’m off to look at marquees with the kids. I’ll be back later. If you’re still here.’
She left me clutching the trowel. For a moment, I was too frightened to move. Looking for my father would be like walking a gangplank of my own free will.
I found him in the barn, helping Piotr lug a rusty lawnmower outside.
‘Lucas wants to see us.’
‘Really?’
His surprise increased my terror.
‘Is that unusual?’ I asked him.
‘It must be about the party,’ he said, dusting off his hands.
I looked over at pale-faced Piotr, who had stopped work to stare at me. His eyes were hidden under a noon shadow. Sinews were carved into his arms like drawings of a superhero in a graphic novel.
On the way up to the house, my father’s silence was a wall that blocked out any ideas of a quick confession about my illicit swim.
* * *
Lucas Huxley’s study was small but immaculate. The desk faced the floor-to-ceiling window. His chair swivelled rhythmically, his suited knees jutting out like angular instruments. Buried intently in his work, he didn’t seem to notice we were there. He continued to read the document laid neatly in front of him. The back of his head moved from side to side, as though he had no peripheral vision, back and forth across the lines of text like an old typewriter. At the end of the page, he swept one hand through his golden curls.
‘Hi! Sorry, you two. If I don’t finish this now, I’ll lose my thread,’ he said, holding his finger up to us, continuing to read.
My socks left damp marks on the concrete. Agata had spared me the humiliation of the slippers. I tried to stand evenly on both feet, ready for the verdict. The material of my T-shirt clung to the front of my body. I kept plucking it away. Dad pulled my cap off my head just before Lucas turned to us.
‘Do you want to sit down?’ he said, pointing to the two-seater leather bench to the left of his desk.
We sat down and he swivelled his chair around.
My father’s thick, brutish thighs wer
e almost knee to knee with Lucas’s long, lean legs. Our trousers were caked in mud. Flakes sprinkled the floor at our feet. I twisted my fingers into contortions.
‘You both look terrified!’ Lucas laughed, fiddling with the links on his wristwatch. I remembered the digital Casio he had always left by the side of the pool before getting in.
In the soft summer light, the mole on his cheek had given him a kind of feminine beauty. I wondered if the image of us in the pool together flashed before him now, as it did before me.
* * *
I turned up at six o’clock, as arranged. He was already swimming lengths. The rotation of his arms worked the muscles in his back, defining them. Did he know I was watching him? I whipped off my towel and hurried down the corner steps into the shallow end, desperate to submerge my legs in the water, wishing I had started shaving them, like Amy did now.
He reached the end and stood up, flicking his hair out of his eyes, smoothing it back. His torso was tapered at the waist, slim and toned. I had not been this close to a man’s unclothed chest before. His form was different to those of the boys at school – which were either skinny or fat – and its strength, its hardness appealed to me.
‘What did you tell your parents?’ he asked.
‘They think I’m revising.’
‘They won’t check?’
‘No,’ I said. My parents would be having their bath, sharing two inches of brown water, chatting about the Huxleys and the weather and their plans for the garden tomorrow. Their routine after work never changed.
I asked him the same question about his parents.
‘They like me using the pool when they’re away,’ he replied. ‘But they don’t know you’re here, obviously.’
I became aware of my own semi-nakedness and I rounded my shoulders to hide myself, self-conscious about my rapidly developing body. My chlorine-eaten swimsuit was threadbare and billowed at the stomach.
‘Let’s begin,’ he said. ‘Copy me.’ He fell back and floated like a plank with his arms and feet spread wide. His toes, his thigh muscles, his groin and his pectoral muscles protruded above the surface. ‘Hold your breath and be still.’
I lay there with the water blocking my ears; suspended, rocked, transported. A series of droplets splashed on my cheeks. When I opened my eyes, Lucas was looking down on me. I shot up, choking, forgetting I was in water; sinking, scrabbling to stand, realising I had floated into the deep end. He grabbed hold of me, one arm supporting my shoulders and the other under the crease of my knees. ‘I’ve got you.’
I coughed out what I had swallowed. The water was choppy around us.
‘Sorry for startling you.’ He smiled down at me.
I lay across his arms, my heart beating wildly.
‘You okay now?’ he asked, releasing me.
I nodded.
Then he reached out and pulled a wet tendril of hair away from its chokehold around my neck. ‘I don’t want to have to tell your dad that I drowned you,’ he laughed.
* * *
I guessed this was why we were really here in his study. Because of who I had been to him back then, rather than what I had done wrong now.
I dragged as much air into my lungs as possible, to prepare.
‘I want to ask you a favour,’ he said.
‘A favour?’ I blurted. Lucas’s lips parted in a small, questioning smile, and I wondered if he knew about the swim. There was a dance in his eyes that suggested he might.
My father cleared his throat. ‘Anything at all, Mr Huxley.’
I tried to keep a straight face.
‘Elizabeth’s brother is an artist – I don’t know if you knew that.’
My father nodded his head.
‘I didn’t know,’ I said.
‘Jude Woods. Have you heard of him?’
The name rang a bell. ‘I think I have,’ I said, surprising myself.
‘Well, a few years back he gave us three large paintings that we’ve been keeping in storage in Guildford, but now we want to get them out and mount them in the barn. When it’s finished, of course.’
‘How can we help?’ my father asked.
‘Well, the trouble is, the BMWs are too small to transport them, so I thought your van might do the trick.’
‘Yes, we can do that for you.’
‘Any chance you could squeeze it in this week? Elizabeth is extremely anxious about them – they’re rather special, you see – and she thinks the lock-up is damp. I’ve promised her it isn’t, but anyway, we’re keen to get them back into the house as soon as possible,’ he said, holding both arms of his swivel chair.
I grinned, biting back a laugh of pure relief. ‘Of course.’
‘Great stuff. I’ll text you the address and the code for the lock-up.’ He rubbed his hands together. ‘You wait till you see them. They’ll blow your mind. They’re of the sea, you know,’ he said pointedly, looking straight at me.
‘Cool,’ I said, trying to sound nonchalant, immediately intrigued by the paintings, wanting to ask why such valuable art had been kept in a storage unit for so long. I held my tongue.
He turned to my father, ‘When do you think you can get down there?’
‘Is tomorrow morning okay?’ my father asked.
‘You’re literally lifesavers, thanks,’ Lucas said, eyes glinting.
As I closed the door behind me, I snuck a glance of him through the gap. He was staring out at his garden, at his kingdom, distracted from the papers that had so absorbed him before; his mind on the paintings of the sea perhaps.
Once we were at a safe distance from the house, my father said, ‘Millionaire problems, eh?’
I chortled. ‘It’s all relative, I guess.’
‘Like we don’t have enough to do.’
‘Come on, Dad. It’ll be a change of scene.’
He scratched his head. ‘If you say so.’ And he laughed.
I threaded my arm through his and we walked, united, down to the bottom of the garden, where he left me at the flower bed by the pool.
As I worked, a fresh smile crept back onto my face. I was overjoyed that my father and I still had a job. I couldn’t wait to tell Rob. Elizabeth’s brother came to mind. His name, I now remembered, had been featured in an online Guardian article about emerging artists returning to the traditions of the Old Masters by painting in oils – they were apparently making a comeback on the art scene and selling for small fortunes. Normally I wouldn’t have clicked into an article about art, but the photograph of the seascape painting had been arresting and had drawn me in.
On the front of the bag of peony bulbs there was a stock photograph of an elaborate explosion of pink petals. Their beauty was shamelessly extravagant. They reminded me of Lucas. I pushed the misshapen bulbs into the ground. An earthworm slid out from the side of one hole. Absently I watched it writhe before covering up the last bulb with soil. The flowers would take years to grow. Their full glory lay in wait, latent, full of potential, like Elizabeth’s brother’s paintings, which had been buried in a dark storage unit for years. Lucas’s excitement about bringing them out again had been palpable, rousing my own curiosity. Unlike my father, I enjoyed going to see art exhibitions, mainly at local galleries – not that I ever told Dad that – and I felt thrilled to be part of uncovering a famous artist’s paintings tomorrow. Especially as they depicted the sea. It felt like a present I couldn’t wait to unwrap.
Ten
‘Where would you like it?’ Gordon huffed. Elizabeth thought it was typical of him to be a martyr. The canvases weren’t heavy, just long and awkward to carry. He had far harder tasks to contend with in the garden.
‘Just there’s fine,’ she said, pointing to the concrete pillar where it could lean for the time being.
Heather hovered while Gordon went out to their van for the second painting.
‘Would you like to see it?’ Elizabeth asked.
‘Yes please,’ Heather replied, glancing over her shoulder. ‘Lucas told me how amazing they we
re.’
‘Did he now?’
Elizabeth was too nervous to care that Lucas might have been flirting with Heather instead of telling her off about the swim. Her heart fluttered at the thought of setting eyes on her brother’s paintings again. Her fingers jittered over the packaging, hovering there, feeling ill-equipped to peel it back.
‘Do you want some help?’ Heather asked, reaching out.
Elizabeth stepped in to stop her. ‘Please don’t.’ The shock on Heather’s face shamed her. Sorry, she thought, but she didn’t say it out loud. She was too overwhelmed by the task in front of her.
The storage unit had not been climate-controlled and she worried the paintings might have been laid on top of each other, or even left underneath heavy bric-a-brac. She placed her hands on the crackling bubble wrap and slid them along the ridge of the frame. The masking tape had come away from one corner, tearing the sticker in two: Blue No. 1 by Jude Woods.
When it was revealed, she heard Heather gasp, ‘Wow.’
The tall panel jutted out of the wrapping-strewn floor, larger than life, a portal to a blue seascape. The interplay between the bold, wild strokes was breathtaking: the bleeding of light into the sea, the dense churn at the tip of the prow of a dinghy, the block of yellow shoreline. Her eye was swept back and forth across it like the tide itself.
‘I love the sea,’ Heather murmured.
The two of them stood there mesmerised until Gordon came in, nonplussed.
‘Here’s the next one,’ he said, and off he went for the third.
Together, this time, Elizabeth and Heather unwrapped the second canvas panel, titled Blue No. 2. It was a continuation of the first, moving further away from the shore, into choppier, moodier sea. Elizabeth’s mind flew over the jagged, angular peaks of froth, fell into the troughs of green-blue and got tangled in the twist of seaweed that led her eye off and away into the distance.
