by Clare Naylor
“I’m afraid,” he said.
“Of?” Kate remained rooted to the spot.
“Of the piece. I think maybe that’s why it’s so important to me that you do it with me. I don’t want to do it alone.” Kate saw instantly that he needed her. “It’s the biggest thing I’ve ever done, Kate. It’s the Tate. Do you think I can do it?” He walked toward the window and looked out over London. Kate followed him. So much for the swaggering artist—Louis was petrified. She put her hand on his arm.
“Of course you can. They wouldn’t have given you the exhibition if you couldn’t,” she said quietly. “I’ll help you. I’ll do all I can to help you. But I suppose if I’m going to, then you’re going to have to explain to me all you can about conceptual art and what the hell it is we’re supposed to be doing together. If you don’t mind.” Louis turned his head just enough to read the look on Kate’s face. Which was one of baffled optimism. Clearly she’d said the right thing, though, because just a few moments later Louis had forgotten all about his stage fright and was instead leading Kate back down the stairs into the Turbine Room, describing in exuberant detail, with the occasional tap on Kate’s arm to emphasize his point, the beginnings of postmodernism.
“. . . This is Rebecca Horn. It’s called The Blind Conductor. Can’t you sense the desperate, frantic feeling of being blind by watching that wooden stick tap on the ground and then stop?” He turned and looked at Kate, who nodded. She could actually see exactly what he meant. They’d now been navigating the gallery for the past two hours and rather than beginning to flag, Kate felt as though she was just picking up pace. Each piece meant slightly more to her than the last, and with each artist she felt she not only understood, but also liked most of what Louis was showing her. Instead of being pretentious rubbish, as she’d imagined so much conceptual art was, the work here not only was mentally challenging but also moved her.
“You’re really not bored yet?” Louis asked her as she gazed intently at the cane.
“No,” she said truthfully. Then added tentatively, “But I am hungry.”
“Oh God, you must be.” Louis looked mortified. “You have to eat.” He looked around as if a sandwich might be lurking in the ether.
“No, let’s wait a bit longer,” Kate insisted. “At least until teatime. While we’re here you have to finish my education.”
“Are you sure?” He looked at her as if for signs of faintness or malnutrition.
“Completely. Come on.” And so they toured the Tate Modern until Kate felt as if she might have taken LSD. What had previously been a tarted-up old building full of meaningless junk and strange contraptions was now meaningful. Granted, she still didn’t have a clue why Louis wanted her to paint a life-sized polar bear for him, but in time it was entirely possible that she might.
Finally they ground to a halt back in the Turbine Room. Well, Kate didn’t so much grind as collapse. Her stomach was wailing to be fed and she was dizzy. Not only had she not had lunch but because the house had been out of bounds, she’d had to make do with two triangles of Toblerone from her bedside drawer for breakfast as well.
“Do you think maybe we can find a packet of crisps or something?” she asked Louis as he stood back and surveyed the gallery optimistically. Doubtless he was imagining the private view and all the people who would be praising his work with glasses of warmish champagne in their hands. Well, Kate was anyway. When she wasn’t thinking of her grumbling stomach. Louis was actually thinking of the dimensions of the piece and how they would be able to fit each one into the square footage of the room.
“Kate!” he said, as if he hadn’t noticed her by his side for the past three hours. “I am so sorry.” Then his attention snapped away from his work and back to Kate, who was leaning against a wall looking feeble. “And there’s no way I’m going to let you off with a packet of crisps.” He looked at her sternly.
“Oh no, crisps would be amazing. I’d give my kingdom for a packet of crisps to be honest,” she pleaded.
“No way. I have a plan.” He confidently pulled off his Tate Modern VIP pass and stuffed it in his pocket. “Come with me.” But Kate was not quite so swift off the mark. She remained pasted to the wall, summoning the energy to move, until Louis noticed and then came back for her. “I said come on.” He took her hand and gently tugged her away from the wall, back down through the galleries, and then out into the street. “Taxi!” He threw his other hand in the air and a black cab sailed to a standstill right beside them.
“Wow,” Kate said as she clambered in the back, “you’re quite impressive when you want to be.”
“Just you wait,” he promised, “I’m about to get a lot more impressive.”
Louis, as it happened, unlike most of the men of Kate’s acquaintance, was completely true to his word. For fifteen minutes later they wandered past the doormen in bowler hats and into the foyer of Claridge’s. Standing there with the soothing sepia light enveloping them, they looked as if they’d just wandered off the stage of Oklahoma! Kate was in her cowboy boots, gingham, and denim skirt, and Louis looked as though he could have been riding bareback all afternoon. They stood in the middle of the checkerboard floor in a daze until one of the doormen began his approach.
“I think maybe we’d be better off in the canteen at St. Martins,” Kate whispered to Louis. She would definitely have had more of a sense of belonging around the corner at their old art college grabbing some macaroni and cheese.
“Mr. Alcott.” The doorman gripped Louis’s hand in his. “Very nice to have you back. Are you well?”
“I’m great, thanks,” Louis replied warmly. “And what I would love to do is to take my friend here to tea. Are we too late?”
The doorman looked at his watch and nodded conspiratorially. “Just wait here for one moment, Mr. Alcott, and I’ll see what I can do.” He vanished like the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland.
“They do crisps here,” Louis reassured Kate, who was admiring the Medusa-like chandelier that seemed to squirm in a serpentine manner on the ceiling.
“Perfect.”
“Mr. Alcott, this way please.” The Mad Hatter returned with the flush of victory and led Louis and Kate through to the café, where a few ladies were just finishing their afternoon tea.
“Thank you,” Louis told him as he helped Kate into her chair. “Good to see you again, Charlie.”
“And you, sir,” the Mad Hatter said, leaving them in the capable hands of a waitress.
Unbeknownst to Kate, one man of her acquaintance who was never as good as his word was at this precise moment just around the corner in New Bond Street. Jake had been standing outside the small casement windows of S. J. Phillips for what felt like an eternity. He’d been staring for so long at the canary diamonds, sapphires circa 1910, and ruby rings that had belonged to duchesses that his eyes were beginning to hurt. But not as much as his stomach, which felt like a butterfly house on a summer’s day. He kept glancing beyond the displays of jewelry, gold snuffboxes, and objets de vertu to the men in dark suits who were sitting behind desks inside. When he’d left home this morning he’d known exactly what it was he wanted to buy. Now he wasn’t so certain. Though knowing Jake, if he could have seen Kate tucked cozily into a booth with Louis in the silver-leaf, art deco haven of Claridge’s right now he would have plumped for the most sparkling, dazzling diamond that his money could buy. As it was he couldn’t see Kate, so he had gone for a short walk to the nearest bookmaker’s, just to be sure that their love was meant to be.
When the four-tiered silver cake stand had first arrived on their table, laced with delicate egg-and-cress sandwiches, fondant fancies, and miniature éclairs, Kate had estimated that it would take her about six minutes to devour the lot. Now, as she took a sip of her Earl Grey and came up for air, she wasn’t so sure.
“Okay, not only does this place look like something out of a fairy tale, but the food is magic, too.” Kate leaned across the table to Louis. “This is the never-ending plate of sand
wiches.”
“You said you were starving.”
“I was but this is ridiculous. Why don’t you have another?” Kate inched the cake stand toward Louis. She hadn’t even touched the crisps that had come in an accompanying silver bowl as if they were a rare delicacy from Jaipur. “Please.”
“You don’t have to finish them,” he said.
“It looks as if I haven’t even begun.” She sat back in her chair and glanced down at her stomach, which was snugly nuzzling up to her waistband.
“That’s the magic, like you said.”
“So, come on, Louis. Tell me, how come everyone here knows you?” Kate had been dying to ask since they arrived. Every member of staff had practically hung out bunting when they saw him. “Did you live here as a child or something?” She wanted to make an E-louis-e joke but wasn’t sure that a man would understand.
“I worked on some pieces here. A few bits of furniture, some of the glass. I spent a lot of time here. Just kind of got to know everyone.” He added, “They were like family for a while.”
“Now you just come here to impress girls.” She winced almost as soon as she’d said this. She didn’t really want to know whether Louis brought girls here, or anywhere else for that matter. Did she?
“Only the pretty ones,” he said in a surprisingly smooth manner. Suddenly Kate couldn’t seem to make Louis out anymore. Where was the shy man she knew? Perhaps he was suffering from a multiple personality disorder, she decided. “The least I can do is buy you a cocktail for listening to me harp on about modern art all afternoon.”
“Okay,” Kate agreed. “But I warn you. I’m going through my dancing-on-tables phase so you might want to keep me away from anything too pink or too strong.”
“Caipirinha it is, then.” Louis grinned and stood up. “After you.”
There was nowhere in the world as reassuring as the bar at Claridge’s, Kate decided as she sipped her way through her second caipirinha. Which was both pink and strong. The dimly lit room was coated in silver and sleek wood, and if there was ever an alien invasion Kate would feel safest here.
“Louis,” she ventured, feeling truly relaxed for the first time all day. “Why did you hate Jake so much?”
“Ah.” Louis tried to sound amused, but she’d caught him off guard.
“I’m sorry. You don’t have to answer that.” She backtracked. She’d been tipsy enough to ask the question but not drunk enough to be insensitive to how it made Louis feel.
“No, I think maybe I should,” he said, and proceeded not to say anything. Kate looked at him closely as he peered down into his glass as if hoping to find the answer to her question. As he gazed into his drink and Kate gazed at him, however, she suddenly saw everything very clearly indeed. It wasn’t that Louis was bipolar at all. He was shy and awkward and tongue-tied, certainly, but—she realized with the resounding thud of truth—only when he was talking to her. Immediately Kate wished that she’d never asked Louis why he hated Jake. Because the thing was, she already knew the answer.
“Because . . .” He took a deep breath and she saw his chest inflate slightly beneath the gray sweater that he’d pulled on over his T-shirt earlier.
“Because he was mean to me. Because you had to scrape me up from the ground of Sainsbury’s car park. Because he was a faithless idiot who didn’t deserve me.” Kate leapt in so that he didn’t have a chance to say what she’d just forced him to pluck up the courage to say. He looked at her very hard for a moment and she watched his chest deflate. The flare of honesty went out of his eyes.
“Exactly,” he said, and stared at the melting ice in his whiskey sour.
If Jake had been looking for a sign that he had to marry Kate, he would have found it in the black cab that hared around the corner of New Bond Street and onto Conduit Street. He would have seen the sign pretty quickly if he’d witnessed his former girlfriend looking with new eyes at an old friend. He would have sensed he was in danger of being left out in the cold. But Jake was looking the other way.
“Come on, you beauty,” he screamed at the television screen on the wall of Ladbrokes. “Come on Mickey Mouse.” Okay, it wasn’t as if the horse was called Love of My Life or Run for Your Wife or anything supersignificant, but Mickey Mouse was about as close to Kate Disney as he was likely to get. And she—the horse, not Kate—was flying into first place in the six thirty at Sandown. Jake launched his fist into the air victoriously and then went to collect his winnings. So while he hadn’t seen Kate and Louis—God had given him a different sign.
“If Mickey Mouse wins I go straight back to S. J. Phillips tomorrow morning and buy her a ring.”
He’d gambled with fate and Kate had won. At least that was how he saw it.
“Come on, Louis. This isn’t some magical mystery tour. I have to go home. I have cress stuck to my skirt and I’m drunk.” Kate giggled as Louis refused to break his silence. He was sitting opposite her in the backseat of the cab, defiantly looking out the window. “Where are you taking me?” she pleaded. He’d whispered his instructions to the cabbie as they got in. “Please not back to the Tate.” She knit her fingers together in prayer and begged. “And not to dinner somewhere. I still have chocolate éclairs up to here.” She slammed her hand on her breastbone to show how full she was. “Speak to me, Louis. Please. And if you won’t then take me home.” Louis turned around. Kate was looking imploringly at him. “Are you trying to kidnap me? Did you just offer the driver twenty quid to take me to Balham?” she asked as they made their way down The Strand and on to Aldwych.
“We’re here.” He smiled as the driver pulled up in the middle of Waterloo Bridge. Louis handed him a note and he handed back a bottle that had been on his passenger seat. Clearly Louis had slipped it in when Kate wasn’t looking.
“Okay, you’re throwing me off London Bridge,” Kate said as the muggy evening air wrapped itself around her. Instinctively she went and stood at the railings to see if there was a cool breeze coming off the river.
“It’s Waterloo Bridge, you twit,” Louis said as the cab pulled away into the traffic.
“I missed you, Louis,” she said, and leaned her head over the edge of the bridge so she could see the water. She’d completely forgotten how much they used to see of one another before Jake had appeared on the scene. They’d go to galleries together; they even went on the London Eye for the first time together. Kate turned and looked at the giant wheel as it cast a shadow onto the water. Louis was looking at it, too. “You thinking what I’m thinking?” she asked quietly. The fresh air had taken away her shrill edge and she felt unexpectedly calm being here with him. Calm for the first time in ages—for the first time since she’d split up with Jake, since Mirri had arrived, since her interlude with Felix. It suddenly dawned on Kate that she’d been through so much stretching and pulling and molding lately that she’d barely been in her own skin. And now, as she looked down the river at the most heartrending view in all of London, with Louis by her side, she felt settled.
“We were miserable all those years ago.” She laughed. “And I can’t even remember why now. I was getting over some guy whose name I’ve forgotten and you were down in the dumps for some reason and we called it the Millennium Wheel of Hope.”
“Yeah, we came for a walk here every Sunday before they’d raised the wheel and we’d promise that by the time it was spinning we’d be okay.”
“And we were,” Kate said. She really had rewritten history in her own head—she and Louis had been great pals for a while. Until Jake happened.
“Here’s to being okay.” Louis had been holding on to the bottle he’d brought from Claridge’s. Now he lifted it up, and Kate saw that it was champagne. “I thought it was an auspicious way to start our new project together. Like naming a ship.”
“Let’s name our ship Hope,” Kate said dreamily as she looked at St. Paul’s and Big Ben in the fading twilight.
“Oh, right, ’cause that’s original.” Louis popped the cork on the champagne and gave h
er a teasing sidelong glance. Then, before she could protest or hit him, he thrust the foaming bottle in her direction. “Cheers,” he said. Kate put her mouth over the bottle and gulped it down, trying not to choke. When all the foam had given way to fizzing liquid she caught Louis’s eye.
“If you make one suggestive remark I’ll push you in,” she warned. He gave her a butter-wouldn’t-melt look and took a swig himself. Then he leaned back against the railings.
“Are you still going through your phase?” Louis moved his head close to her head as they both watched a riverboat in the distance. She could feel his hair brushing against hers.
“Which phase is that?”
“The dancing one?”
“Oh, the tables!” She moved her head a fraction nearer. Any more and she would have been resting on his shoulder. “No, that was weeks ago. I think I’ve grown up since then.”
“My loss,” he said.
“Sorry.”
“I’m used to it.” He took another mouthful of champagne and passed the bottle to her. “Day late and a dollar short. That’s me.”
“Louis.” She tried to sound stern but it came out wrong. Instead she sounded pitying.
“You know why I hate Jake so much, don’t you?” He turned his body to hers. Kate only turned her face.
“Yes.”
“Really?” He looked surprised.
“I only worked it out today. About an hour ago, in fact.” Kate looked at her watch. It was nine o’clock. “A few hours ago, then . . . time flies, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t mind anymore,” Louis said, and his dark eyes held hers. She gave him a quizzical look. “I don’t mind being in love with you and not having you. I’m used to it.”
“I never knew.” His face was close to hers again, but unlike yesterday Kate didn’t pull away. She looked at his lips, which were wide with a sharp Cupid’s bow that looked like it had been carved out of marble. She remembered how she’d felt when she saw the picture of him in the magazine. As if she were seeing him for the first time and as if he were her secret and it was weird having to share him with the world. She felt like that now—he looked so strange and yet so familiar.
