by Anne Weale
As she spoke, she was aware of the latent strength in the long fingers clasping hers. She had noticed his hands earlier, while he was telephoning, and had been reminded of a pair of imitation marble hands, an exact copy of the hands of Michelangelo’s famous statue of David, which had been photographed in the colour supplement of her Sunday paper recently.
To her surprise, instead of releasing her hand, he held on to it. Looking down at her, he said, ‘You have extraordinary eyes. I’d like to look at your irises through a magnifying glass.’
Then he caught sight of a taxi and, with a brisk, ‘Goodbye,’ stepped into the street to hail it, leaving her standing on the step between the area railings of the house where he lived and its neighbour.
When she returned to the car, before she switched on the motor, Kate tilted the rear-view mirror to look at her eyes.
Men had admired her legs and her long, thick, honeyblonde hair. They had paid her all sorts of compliments. Whether they had been sincere, there was no telling. En route, as they hoped, to bed, men tended to say what they thought girls wanted to hear. But no one had ever remarked on the unusual colour of her eyes.
Miss Walcott had commented on them because, being an artist, she was more observant than most people. She had seen that, if studied closely, the pupils of Kate’s eyes were rimmed with gold merging with blue with an outer circle of green so dark at the edge as to be virtually black. This had the effect of making them appear to change colour according to what she was wearing.
A blue sweatshirt would make them seem blue. The dark river-green Indian silk scarf she had bought on a street market made them seem to be green. The amber beads she had worn with smart grey or beige suits in London had made them look golden.
‘With those eyes, a few centuries ago they’d have called you a witch ... and, for different reasons, me too,’ Miss Walcott had said, shortly after Kate had moved in with her.
She was the only person who knew about Kate’s origins; not because it was a secret that she didn’t know who her parents were but because, except for employers requiring the answers to official questions, no one else had been interested. She was someone to whom people confided their life histories and their problems without ever being curious about hers.
On her way out of London she made a slight detour to pass the place where some unknown person, probably her mother, had left her wrapped in a blanket with the name ‘Kate Poole’ pinned to it.
She still had that piece of paper, the only clue to the mystery of her birth and parentage; unless the fact that she had been left in Harrods, one of the world’s most famous department stores, was another clue.
Driving past the massive façade of the building where, twenty-six years ago, she had become the subject of a paragraph in more than one national newspaper, Kate felt a peculiar sensation not unlike the disturbance affecting the radio when a car passed under power lines. The feeling had been even stronger when, during her years in London, she had actually entered the store and walked through the fashion departments.
But today, as Harrods fell behind and Brompton Road merged with Cromwell Road, the artery for traffic heading west, it was not her own birth but the possibly imminent death of the old lady in her care which preoccupied her. Ahead of her was a taxi whose passengers might be on their way to Heathrow Airport. But it was from London’s other airport, Gatwick, that she, Miss Walcott and the thirteen people who had booked places on the last painting course of the season were due to fly to Crete in two weeks’ time.
After disappointing weather all summer, Kate had been looking forward to a fortnight of Mediterranean sun. Now, unless she could find someone to take her employer’s place, the trip would have to be cancelled, much to the disappointment and perhaps, in some cases, indignation of everyone who had enrolled for the course.
The situation worried her all the way back to the hospital. There she was allowed to spend a few minutes at Miss Walcott’s bedside, inwardly shocked by her appearance but outwardly calm and reassuring.
The doctor she spoke to afterwards was non-committal about the old lady’s chances of recovery. Kate knew she would have to wait until she saw Robert to get a franker assessment. Meanwhile she could only pray that the man she had met in London would feel conscience-bound to come.
But did Xan Walcott have a conscience?
At the age of sixteen, after running away, his conscience hadn’t prompted him to let his grandmother know he was safe and well. Why should it trouble him now?
From earliest times, artists had tended to ignore the conventions and moral values of the societies they lived in. Xan was not the kind of painter who lived in picturesque squalor. On the contrary, he appeared to be steering his career in the direction of all the rich pickings and public honours the world of art had to offer, thought Kate, on her way to the cottage.
Robert Murrett, son of the now retired doctor who had been Miss Walcott’s GP and friend for thirty years, had taken his father’s place in the local group practice not long before Kate’s arrival.
They had met at a drinks party. A few days later he had rung up to ask her to go to a concert with him. She had had to refuse because the concert had coincided with the first painting trip of the year, a visit to France. But in the intervals between subsequent trips, their acquaintance had advanced to a friendship which might or might not develop into something deeper.
Robert, so she had been told, had had a serious but abortive love-affair with a fellow medical student who, it was said, had attached more importance to her career prospects than to their relationship.
But that was five years ago. As he had never given any sign of being unhappy, Kate concluded he was over it now.
It was Robert who last night had answered her emergency call to the surgery, automatically relayed to the doctor on duty. He had come to the cottage very quickly, confirmed her fear that Miss Walcott was suffering a myocardial infarction and, rather than wait for an ambulance, had taken her to the nearest hospital in his own car.
Later he had run Kate home. Early this morning, before she’d set out for London, he had telephoned to see how Kate herself was bearing up.
‘She gave you a nasty fright. You handled it well,’ he’d said kindly.
After being on night duty, he had the day off, and not long after her return she saw from the kitchen window his car turning into the parking space at the side of the cottage.
Seeing her at the sink, rinsing lettuce leaves, he waved and entered the kitchen without knocking on the back door. ‘Hello. How did it go?’
‘Xan was there, but he was going out. So we only had a few minutes. Whether he’ll come I’ve no idea. I shan’t be surprised if he doesn’t.’
‘You didn’t take to him?’ asked Robert.
Like his father, he was a man of middle height and solidly muscular build. Both had kind blue eyes and calm voices. They were not men who would ever flap or lose their tempers. Comfortable men. Reliable. And, in Robert’s case, rather attractive, with a good sense of humour.
‘I didn’t expect to,’ she said. ‘From everything I’ve heard and read about him, Xan isn’t my sort of person.’
‘I never had much to do with him,’ said Robert, folding his arms and leaning against the dresser. ‘I remember envying his height. I was short for my age until I was about fourteen. He was always noticeably tall... and very much a loner. I was into team games in those days. Cricket and rugger and drilling with the school cadets. I expect I thought sketching a sissy way to spend time. Some of the lads at his school certainly did. Dad was saying at breakfast that he remembers Xan being brought to the surgery, under duress, by his grandmother after several beatings-up. There was a gang of yobs who had it in for him:
‘Miss Walcott wanted to send him to his father’s schools, but she couldn’t afford the fees,’ said Kate. ‘She’s had a terribly tough life. Being a single mother must always be difficult, but in her case it was a really bad experience.’
‘Has she talked to you
about it?’
‘Only the bare facts ... that her lover was killed in World War Two and that both her parents and his wanted the baby adopted. When she wouldn’t agree, they more or less disowned her. It seems unbelievable, doesn’t it? Like a Victorian melodrama.’
‘It’s fifty years ago. Nice girls didn’t—or at any rate weren’t supposed to. Babies born outside wedlock were “illegitimate”,’ said Robert, waggling his forefingers.
‘That was still a nasty stigma, even when the fathers had been shot down or torpedoed or whatever and would have married the mothers if they hadn’t been killed.’
On impulse, Kate said, ‘I was an unwelcome baby. Or did you already know that?’
When he shook his head, she went on, ‘Miss Walcott knows and she might have told your father.’
‘If she had—which I doubt—he wouldn’t have mentioned it to me. I had noticed you didn’t talk about your family.’
‘I don’t have one.’ She told him, briefly, about being an orphan. It was better to spell it out now, before their friendship developed ... if it developed.
‘How do you feel about it?’ Robert asked.
‘I don’t think it’s given me any deep-seated hang-ups. When I compare my childhood to what’s happening to children in parts of the world now, I feel grateful to have been fed and educated.’
‘Are you curious about your parents?’
‘I was as a child. Less so now. There’s no way I’m ever going to find them, and I might not like them if I did.’
For supper, Kate baked a potato to have with a mushroom omelette. She ate from a tray on her lap while listening to the news on the radio. Miss Walcott disapproved of television.
When Kate had come to live here, the only modern gadgets in the house had been an electric kettle and an iron. The old lady’s household laundry had been done by someone in the village. A short time after her arrival, Kate had pressed for the hire-purchase of a washing machine and a steam iron. Reluctantly, complaining about the expense, her employer had agreed to these innovations.
Kate had put the tray aside and was finishing her meal with a hard russet-coloured pear from the tree in the garden when there was a rap at the front door.
There was no way that word of her employer’s illness could have passed round the village yet. Nor would there be a rush of enquiries when it did. Miss Walcott kept herself to herself, declining involvement in any local activities on the grounds that she was too busy.
Mildly irritated at being interrupted in the middle of an interesting programme, Kate uncoiled her legs and slid her feet into the Breton-red espadrilles she wore around the house in summer.
Opening the front door, she was startled to find Xan Walcott outside. She had hoped he might go to the hospital, but hadn’t expected him to call at the cottage.
‘Good evening.’
Now casually dressed in chinos and a blazer over an open-necked shirt, he still had the air of a sophisticated man of the world rather than the dégagé look she associated with artists.
‘Good evening. Come in. Mind your head on the lintel:
‘I’ve been to the hospital,’ he said, on the way to the living-room.
‘Have you seen your grandmother?’
‘No. When I explained the nature of our relationship to the doctor in charge, he agreed it was inadvisable at this stage. Seeing me would be bound to agitate her.’
‘I was there myself a couple of hours ago but she was asleep,’ Kate told him, switching off the radio and picking up her supper tray. ‘I was just going to make some coffee. Will you have some?’
‘Thank you.’ He glanced round the room. ‘Do your duties include keeping the place in order?’
‘I do whatever needs doing.’
‘It wasn’t like this in my day...or not after my mother died. Nerina was never domesticated.’
She said, ‘Excuse me. I shan’t be long,’ and went to the kitchen.
When she had first come to the cottage, it had been in urgent need of a thorough spring-clean. She had assumed that it was her advancing years which had made Miss Walcott tolerate grubby curtains and covers and dust in every corner and crevice.
Kate was not a fanatic about cleanliness but she hadn’t been prepared to put up with the state of the bathroom and kitchen. Once they were in order, she had turned her attention to the rest of the cottage. Now it smelt of wax polish and flowers instead of musty neglect.
While she was waiting for the kettle to boil, Xan joined her, his grey eyes raking the dresser and the scrubbed pine drainers on either side of the old-fashioned deep stoneware sink.
‘Will you mind being here on your own?’ he asked.
The question surprised her. The cottage was half a mile from the village, beside a lane off the main road, but she hadn’t, until that moment, thought of it as isolated.
“I shouldn’t think so. I’ll be too busy. Perhaps you can advise me. How do I go about finding a substitute tutor for the trip to Crete early next month? We have thirteen bookings. To call the course off at this stage is going to be a major disappointment to those people, not to mention a serious loss of income to Miss Walcott. Somehow I have to find a stand-in. But I can’t ask her what to do, and my knowledge of the art world is still very limited. Would the Royal Academy be helpful?’
‘Probably, given more notice. But maybe not in the time available. Had this been a holiday period, there would have been plenty of professional instructors who’d have jumped at a busman’s holiday. But they’re back in harness now.’
‘What about some of the galleries handling the work of young, up-and-coming painters? Might they know of someone, do you think?’
‘If they did, they’d suggest a fat fee plus their commission,’ he said drily. ‘Nerina used to sell through a gallery. Has that stopped?’
‘No, but they haven’t had any paintings from her for some time. She was hoping to remedy that situation while we were in Crete. It’s been a busy summer. We’ve done a succession of trips with only short breaks between them. I believe it’s become too much for her. Well, clearly it has. That’s why she’s had this heart attack.’
‘I should think the causes go back a lot further than this past summer,’ said Xan. ‘I talked to a cardiologist attached to the CC unit. It’s likely her coronary arteries have been hardening for years. May I carry that for you?’
There had been a reference to his impeccable manners in one of the articles about him, Kate remembered, as he carried the tray to the living-room. She wondered how he had acquired them. His mother might have instilled the fundamentals and, after her death, Miss Walcott would have been quick to stamp on any signs of loutishness. But her influence on him had ended when he was sixteen. Where had he acquired the polish of his adult persona?
‘I’ll make enquiries for you,’ he said, as he put the tray in front of the ancient sofa which needed its cushions re-stuffing. ‘Where is the course taking place and what will the stand-in be expected to do?’
‘The venue is Chaniá,’ said Kate. ‘It’s a historic seaport at the western end of Crete. As well as the town and the waterfront, there are various picturesque sites in the hills behind the coast. The plan was to paint every morning and every evening, with the afternoons free for swimming or resting. The groups always breakfast and have dinner together, but they make their own arrangements for lunch. Some people picnic. Others go to a café. Every night, before dinner, there’s a discussion session led by the tutor. My function is to sort out any practical problems. Miss Walcott takes care of the artistic ones.’
‘So, in theory if not in practice, you’re both on call most of the time?’
‘All the time really... except for the long lunch-break between noon and four, and our two days off.’
‘What sort of people go on the courses these days?’
‘All sorts. Singles. Couples who both paint. Painters with partners who don’t paint. Total beginners. Talented amateurs. A few professionals. The women usually outnumb
er the men, but not always. On the whole, they’re exceptionally nice people but sometimes there’s a difficult person ... someone who doesn’t fit in, or complains a lot. But dealing with them would be my province, not the tutor’s. I’ll give you one of our brochures to take away with you.’
From what had once been a scullery and was now her workroom and the ‘office’ of Palette Holidays, she fetched the folder containing the brochures for the fortnight in Crete.
On the front was a photograph, taken some years ago, of Nerina Walcott seated at a portable easel on the bank of the Dordogne in France. She was wearing her bigbrimmed planter’s hat and smiling at the camera with the charm she could exert when she chose. Although white-haired and deeply lined, she had looked a strong, active woman, very different from the one lying in hospital, wired to an electrocardiographic monitor, with a drip-feed attached to her arm and a catheter connected to a bag on the foot-rail of the high white bed.
After a cursory glance at the photograph, Xan looked more attentively at the rest of the brochure.
‘This is very good “selling copy”,’ he said, after skimming the text. ‘Who dreamed this up for her?’
‘I did ... based on what your grandmother told me about Chaniá and my own research,’ said Kate. ‘Since I lost my job with an estate agency, I’ve been teaching myself desktop publishing with a view to eventual self-employment.’
He gave her a thoughtful look. ‘I wondered what you were doing working for Nerina. I can’t imagine anyone staying here unless they had no other option.’
Kate’s reaction made her eyes sparkle. ‘How can you speak of her like that when she’s seriously ill ... maybe dying?’
‘Because I’m not a hypocrite,’ he said equably. ‘You’ve known Nerina for six months. I lived under her aegis for sixteen years. I think that makes me a better judge of her character. She could always charm...when it suited her. But the charm is only a facade.’
Without stopping to think, she shot back, ‘The same could be said of you. From what I’ve read, you have very winning ways, but they seem to cause more pain than pleasure in the long run.’
