‘The children, Grace. The Right to Play. I told you all about it the other day.’
‘Oh yes, you did.’
There was a pause. ‘Well, the girls at Lady Katherine Ellen are being marvellous,’ Robina said finally. ‘Now, what I need you for is the grand auction.’
‘How is Leonora? Have you reported him to the police yet?’
‘Police? No, no, of course I haven’t. I had a long talk with them both and he’s agreed to go to counselling. And Leonora isn’t entirely without blame. I’ve always said to her, “Love is an act of will. You work and then you work some more.” I’m convinced this was a one-off. He’s a good man, Archie.’
‘If you say so.’ Grace had met him three times and on each occasion she had had to ask Andrew who he was. It was those quiet sandy little men you had to watch. ‘Although if someone had beaten up a daughter of mine, I might think that person not at all a good man.’
‘You do see things in black and white, Grace. And there is Rory to think of. He needs his father. Archie has asked her to marry him. As you know, I’ve never been happy about this living together and not being married. Not because I’m old-fashioned – you know I’m the last person to worry about things like that – but because I think it signifies a deeper lack of commitment. Sir Dennis and Lady Barbara called me up and said how thrilled they were that our children were finally taking the plunge. You’ve never met Archie’s parents, have you? Charming people.’
‘He beats the shit out of your daughter and you’re planning their wedding … have you gone mad?’
‘Hardly “beating the shit” as you put it, Grace. They both lost their tempers. Anyway, our auction. I want you to do something.’
Grace gave up trying to understand her mother-in-law, asking in a tired voice, ‘What?’
‘A photograph; something really special for the auction. It was Andrew’s idea. He’s so proud of you, Grace, if only you knew.’
Andrew came in through the door just then and Grace turned, receiver in hand, frowning at him, pointing at the phone. ‘It really was good of Andrew to offer my services but I’m doing a project of my own right now. I’ve been invited to exhibit at the McLeod Gallery and I don’t have much time.’
There was another pause before Robina asked, ‘What do you mean, you might not have time?’
Let’s see, Grace thought, what could I have meant? She said, ‘I might not have time.’
‘Please don’t make difficulties, Grace,’ Andrew said.
‘I’m sorry, but as I explained I’ve got an important project on right now.’
‘I didn’t know about any project,’ Andrew said. He sounded aggrieved.
‘I told you about it,’ Grace said, turning away from the receiver. ‘Then it’s not that you’re particularly interested, is it? You just hate to think you have been kept in the dark.’
‘You mean you won’t help?’ Robina wailed at the other end. Grace, it seemed, still had not learnt the rules. Smack small defenceless child and throw him out of the room: A OK. Refuse to do ‘one’s bit’: descend to hell without passing Go. Grace was feeling strangely light-hearted. How bad becomes me, she thought. How neatly nasty fits.
‘But we counted on you.’
‘Maybe you shouldn’t have,’ Grace said evenly. ‘Maybe just occasionally you should ask before you start counting. And, if you don’t mind me saying so, I think you should pay more attention to your children and less to mankind. Mankind, on the whole, can manage without you. Your family should not have to.’
The conversation ended.
‘It’s as if I never even knew you,’ Andrew said.
Grace looked at him. ‘Now you notice. Of course you never knew me. You weren’t interested in knowing me. You had decided what you wanted me to be and then you looked no further, or rather you just kept on looking past me at all the relative strangers you could dedicate yourself to, be a friend to, be good old Andrew to.’
‘And you knew me? If you did, how come you’re so disappointed? No, you’re as guilty as I am of projecting your favourite images on to a willing surface.’
Grace turned round. ‘You know, you’re absolutely right, I am.’
‘Well, at least we know where we stand,’ Andrew said. ‘So what is your precious project about, anyway? And can’t you combine it with doing something for the auction?’
‘It’s up to you. It’s about plastic surgery. Silicone and fake bone matter and some kind of fabric surgeons use for enhancing lips which actually is the same stuff used in ski suits. As far as I know, most of these materials aren’t biodegradable; well, not as rottable as flesh anyway. And I had this vision of rows of decomposing bodies, all with perfect pert breasts and luscious kissable lips and cheekbones to die for, and I thought it would be a great idea for a series of pictures.’
‘So now you’re going to rob graves,’ Andrew said.
Grace, mock-patient, assured him, ‘I won’t use real dead bodies, promise. I’ll go to my friend Rob. You remember Rob? Does props for films. He’s very successful. He’ll have bodies and in all stages of decomposition too. I’m not aiming at an exact replication of what actually happens to a body in that situation, but to make people pause and think about the absurdity of what we are doing to ourselves.’
‘It’s obscene,’ Andrew said.
‘And, Andrew, that’s exactly what I’m saying. All this surgery is obscene.’
‘That’s not how I meant it,’ he said. ‘As you well know.’
Andrew ate his supper of sausages and mash. In the early days Grace had refused to cook such food as it was so obviously bad for him, but lately she served up whatever he wanted. For a while she had even stopped putting out his vitamin supplements. It used to be a little game between them, she portioning them out for him every morning saying it was important he take them and him protesting that it was all faddist nonsense but taking them anyway; for her sake. Then the day had come when she left them in the cupboard. It was not planned. It just happened that as she was groping round for his multivitamins and his fish-oil capsules her hand came out empty and clenched in rage.
But when, on the third day, he looked at her with hurt eyes and said in a little-boy’s voice, ‘Where are my vitamins? I thought you said I had to take them,’ she had felt bad and had put them out again although she could not, in all honesty, say that her heart was in it.
Grace was arranging her books. She had got to her collection of biographies; row upon row of teachers and role models, line upon line of inspiration and accumulated wisdom. She sank down on to the chair by the desk, a Diane Arbus biography in her hand. How long since she had read any of these books? Had she been frightened of what they would tell her, these lives lived truthfully and in the light of conviction? She had been lost; lately her life had been a half life lived by less than a person. Less-than-Grace had stalked the streets and the meandering lanes. Less-than-Grace had bargained with the truth and negotiated with her feelings. Less-than-Grace had been miserable and pretty damn useless.
The phone rang. It was Angelica. ‘I was just thinking about you,’ Grace said. ‘I need more work.’
‘You’ve lost a lot of contacts. You need to get out there, network. What are you doing right now?’
‘I’m arranging my books.’
‘Now, that’s useful. Beats taking photographs for getting back to work.’
‘I’m thinking about whether I should give my marriage another chance.’
‘Really!’ said Angelica, who had just got divorced and wanted all her friends to be divorced too.
‘Oh, Angelica, I don’t know. It must be one of the most common delusions of our times; that we can make marriage work. But when the sum of two people makes less than one … Then again, Robina was banging on about love being an act of will. Maybe she’s right. Maybe if you will yourself to act lovingly the feelings will follow. In fact, I think that’s how Mrs Shield came to care about me and Finn.’ Mrs Shield was a good woman and when she married Gabriel
Shield, she knew that it was her duty to love her little stepchildren, however hard that might be. And she knew it could not be done if you brought the mixed emotions of an adult, of a second wife, to the party. ‘She just went ahead and acted the good mother,’ Grace said. ‘Whatever her actual feelings. She picked me up when I fell over and gave me a hug when I was sad. She took up the hems of my school tunics when short skirts became the fashion, and let them down again when I seemed to have grown an inch overnight. She practised cricket in the garden with Finn and she took us off for our inoculations and cheered us on at sports day. One Christmas she queued all day outside Selfridges to buy us each a Beatles doll, and she did get two although by the time she got to the front of the queue there were only Ringos left. At some time during all that acting the part, she actually came to love us. So maybe I should give it a go; act loving and happy with Andrew and then I might wake up one morning and feel it too.’
‘Bullshit. You either love the man or you don’t. There is a bit in the middle where you deceive yourself and everyone else, but that’s all it is: deception.’
‘You’re bitter.’
‘I was married for longer, that’s all.’
‘I just think it would be good if we could get it to work again.’
‘Why?’
There was a pause. ‘Ah, well there you’ve got me.’
Angelica was phoning from her small office at the gallery. She was busier than ever these days, acting as an agent for several of her past and present exhibitors, Grace included. At the beginning Grace had said, ‘What about the rule that says don’t mix friendship with business?’
And Angelica had replied, ‘If I had to choose I’d rather have you as a client.’
‘Thank you. And I mean that,’ Grace had said.
But now on the phone, Angelica complained, ‘Not that there’s been much business from you lately.’
‘That’s changing,’ Grace said. ‘It’s like all the best romances; through all the turmoil of the past years work has been there, steady, faithful, patiently waiting by my shoulder for when I would be ready. Finally I turned round and saw it for what it is; the love of my life.’
‘So why are you arranging books?’ Angelica said. ‘Why aren’t you out there working?’
‘I can do both in a day,’ Grace said. ‘And I need to get some order: in my head, in my house.’
‘I’ve got clients who do more work in a week than you do in a year.’
‘Good work? As good as mine?’
‘Some of it is better. You’ve lost your edge, Grace. Your energies have been sucked in other directions.’
‘I suppose marriage and fitting into a new family and a couple of miscarriages can do that to a person.’
‘Do you talk, you and Andrew? Does he know how you feel or is he walking around convinced that he’s really happily married; they can do that, you know. If only Tom and I could have talked we might still be together. That and if he hadn’t been a complete arsehole.’
‘We talk,’ Grace said.
‘Andrew, are you busy?’
‘I’m going over some papers for work. What is it?’
Grace stood in the doorway of her husband’s study. ‘It’s about the new project.’
‘What about it?’
‘I don’t like talking to you while you’re reading.’
Andrew put the pile of paper covered in columns of figures down on his desk.
‘You know Angelica’s acting as my agent.’
‘No.’
‘I told you. Anyway, this work I’m doing for the council …’
‘What work?’
‘I told you about it. I also told you I didn’t think you were listening.’
‘If you got on with it, I would listen.’
‘I’m trying to, but you’re either reading or you interrupt.’
‘Do you want to talk to me or not?’
‘Just forget it, Andrew.’
‘Grace …’
‘Yes.’
‘Where are you?’
‘In the darkroom.’
‘Are you planning ever to come out of there? Only asking.’
‘What did you want?’
‘Have I got any clean socks?’
‘I don’t know. Look in your drawer.’
‘Andrew …’
‘Yes …’
‘Do you ever think about the nature of light?’
‘Why do you ask such bloody stupid questions? Can’t you see I’m busy?’
* * *
‘Grace …’
‘Yes …’
‘You never take the initiative any longer.’
‘I don’t feel like it.’
‘I knew it. I just knew it. So what’s wrong? I mean, there’s obviously something wrong.’
‘Of course there’s something wrong.’ Grace sat up in bed and turned the light on. ‘How can you even ask if there’s anything wrong?’
‘So something is wrong.’
‘What’s wrong is that I feel too angry and frustrated and meanspirited to have an orgasm. I can lie back and let you get on with it, but that’s about as far as it goes.’
‘You really are a disagreeable woman. And coarse.’
‘Now I really feel in the mood.’
‘Bitch.’
‘Don’t ever talk to me like that.’
‘Oh, just belt up.’
‘Andrew …’
‘What?’
‘Stop bullying Rory.’
‘The boy needs a firm hand. It’s ridiculous the way Leonora spoils him.’
‘I dread to think what kind of father you’d make.’
‘Luckily, we’re not likely to find out now, are we?’
‘Luckily?’ A smarter man than Andrew, or, Grace thought, one who gave a damn, might have taken heed of her tone of voice and stopped there.
‘Anyway, who are you to talk? What kind of mother would you be?’ Andrew’s open boyish face had turned pinched and mean-looking. ‘I’ve seen sides of you that make me think it wasn’t such a bad thing after all, you losing those babies, not if they were going to take after you.’
His fist in her face would have hurt less.
Robina was thrilled when Grace asked if she could take some shots of the family and Hillside House for her contribution to the auction. ‘I haven’t quite worked out how I’m going to do it, but I’m thinking of something along the lines of a series of family life shots, 1950s-style possibly.’
‘Of course you can. Any time. Just let me know. I want to make sure my flowers are at their best. Though I say it myself, not many homes could sport such an abundance of home-grown flowers at this time of year. And as I always say, flowers make a home.’
‘Oh, that was you, was it?’
Grace Shield’s contribution to the auction at Lady Katherine Ellen School for the Right to Play consisted of a photographic collage, mostly in black and white but for the rainbow. There was Andrew, straight and handsome, a captain at the helm of his good ship, his eyes fixed on the horizon as Grace swam helpless before the bow. He was there too, staring, a puzzled look on his face, at the broken bits of Grace that had toppled from a marble pillar in Robina’s conservatory. Timothy sat serene in his favourite armchair by the fireplace, The Times crossword on his knee, while the flames spread from the hearth to the curtains and his house burnt down around him. Kate walked through the fields in a white veil that covered her from head to foot (Kate had been a willing participant but no one ever knew). Finally there was Robina, a light round her magpie’s-nest hair, stepping across the river towards the rainbow on the horizon, the heads of them all – Timothy, Andrew, Leonora, Rory, Kate and Grace – neatly laid out as stepping-stones.
Andrew said, ‘This is the end.’
‘Good,’ said Grace, although her last night in the cottage in the small Devon town she cried most of the night and then some more when she collected the mail before leaving and saw the letters still addressing a lost partnership. Andrew and Gra
ce Abbot. Mr and Mrs Andrew Abbot. Mrs Andrew Abbot.
As Angelica had said when she saw the collage, ‘Good, you’re getting your edge back.’
In spite of this, Grace’s contribution did not sell at the Lady Katherine Ellen School auction.
Louisa
It was Elliot Hummel who made Georgie the carved wooden horse. He drove all the way from London with it strapped to the roof of his motor car, thereby earning my eternal friendship. I am a good friend. So is Arthur; it’s just that sometimes he forgets people. When Elliot falls on hard times and has to sell the car, making it difficult for him to visit, Arthur is sorry but what can he do? ‘People have to live their own lives.’ He says that a lot: people have to live their own lives. Of course they do, we all do, but you can dip into each other’s now and then, can you not? ‘People don’t like charity,’ he says. ‘You really don’t understand, do you? You have no idea how the artistic mind works. With you it’s all the material – a new toy for Georgie, next week’s menu, logs for the fire, the latest creation by Madame Schiaparelli; you can’t help it. Some of us, people like Elliot, live for the spirit. He doesn’t want your hampers.’
‘Madame Schiaparelli is an artist!’ I tell him. ‘And I don’t recall Elliot returning my hampers.’ But later, alone in my bedroom, I stand for a long time in front of the glass. What had Arthur seen in this thin face with its long nose and sharp cheekbones? I have a good complexion, if you do not mind its pallor, and fine eyes, but I don’t smile nearly enough and my hands and feet are large and bony; there is little that is graceful about the way I move. Gentlemen like softness; round cheeks and rounded shoulders and arms, soft little hands. I was clever when it came to studies, but that was not the kind of cleverness admired in a woman. So what had he seen in me that was enough to make him love and marry me, he who had women offering themselves like merchandise on a market stall? At the time he came into my life I had been content. I had my friends, other young women like myself with little money and few admirers, happy to spend time on our studies and the occasional afternoon out by the river. I had no expectations to be loved. You don’t when your parents leapt to their death, hand in hand from a high-backed bridge, with no thought for the child they left behind. But suddenly, there he was, this man made out of sunshine, an artist, a genius some say, who made me laugh and believe in him both at once. He wanted me. When he asked me to marry him I stopped breathing for a moment and in that moment the world stopped with me. I felt it: a collective holding of breath at the miracle of someone like me getting her heart’s desire. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘oh yes.’
Shooting Butterflies Page 18
