by Jenny Harper
Cora looked at him.
‘You want to watch it, Pats. You’re getting to be really anti-social. How will you ever find a woman if you can’t compromise on the little things?’
‘Who says I want a woman?’
‘I do.’
‘See? This is exactly what I mean. If you move across here I won’t have to have these damn silly conversations.’
‘Idiot.’
‘What do you think?’
‘Are you suggesting I move right now?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, it’s almost midnight.’
‘Then I’ll look at it tomorrow. Now will you chill?’
‘It will give you more privacy too.’
‘Stop trying to justify yourself, Pats.’
‘You know you like privacy.’
‘Patrick.’ He flicked the lights on in the hallway of the main house and she glared at him in the sudden brightness. ‘Shut. Up.’
He grinned. ‘Thanks for your help tonight, by the way.’
‘No problem. Now can I go to bed? I promise I won’t move a single thing before breakfast.’
Patrick liked his bedroom better than any other room in the house. He closed the door, tugged off his shoes and socks, sank his feet into the thick carpet and allowed himself to relax. The room was spacious, with one large window overlooking the park and another facing into his garden. There were, therefore, two sets of curtains to draw. He padded across to them and dragged the heavy cream fabric across the dark panes.
Cora was right, he was a private person. He didn’t like to talk about his childhood in Ireland and he most certainly didn’t want to talk about Niamh.
He dropped onto a winged chair near the garden window. It was upholstered in grey-blue tweed – the exact colour, now he thought of it, of Niamh’s eyes. The thought took him back to the day he’d first seen her, perched on a wall at the edge of one of his father’s fields, wincing as she’d tried to pull off a walking boot.
He’d watched for some moments as she’d twisted the boot and turned it, but for some reason had seemed unable to pull it free. Perhaps sensing his gaze, she’d looked up and seen him and despite the shyness that had dogged him aged seventeen, he’d been jolted into action.
‘Can I help?’ he’d called, striding towards her across ploughed, heavy earth.
‘I’ve got a stone in my boot but I can’t get it off.’ Her smile had taken his breath away. ‘As you can see.’
He’d knelt by her side, not caring that the dampness of the soil was seeping into the fabric of his trousers.
‘There’s a knot,’ he’d said, peering at the claggy laces.
‘Can you loosen it?’
He had her boot in his hand. He was looking at her ankles, trying to resist following the slender line of the bones as they extended upwards, towards knee and thigh. He wanted to be close to her, like this, for ever.
‘I’ll try.’
He’d worked at the knot as slowly as he dared, glancing up at her from time to time, seeing the sharp sweep of her cheekbones as the flesh softened towards her delicious lips, and the long fluttering length of her eyelashes as she gazed down at her feet, concerned.
He could delay no longer. ‘There.’
He’d eased the boot off – the deliciousness of it! – and she had shaken out a tiny stone.
‘Thanks.’
She bent her knee up to her chest in one fluid, supple movement and wriggled her foot back into her boot.
He had never been as close as this to such a pretty girl before. He only knew the girls at school – lumpen, wide-hipped beings, destined to marry rough-handed farmers and breed a new generation for the land.
He was a farmer, but he was not rough-handed. He knew that this was not his destiny. He would leave Ireland, find a vocation, become rich. He would have a beautiful wife. He would have this girl.
He was in love.
Patrick jerked upright. Why in hell’s name was he thinking about Niamh, when he’d sworn he would never find a corner for her in his mind again? The humiliation when she’d left him for his brother was long past, he’d more or less got through everything before he met Lexie.
Quirky, generous, stubborn, talented Lexie.
He leapt to his feet. He’d thought that Lexie was different from Niamh – until she, too, betrayed his faith in her. Perhaps he’d been silly to react like that, but surely it had been understandable?
He opened the majestic Georgian wardrobe, took out a box and carried it across to the bed, where he sank down onto the soft white covers, so carefully laundered by Mrs M.. For a minute he stared at it sightlessly. The box was so full of memories, and of regrets, that he was almost afraid to open it.
At last he lifted the lid and set it to one side.
Yes, these were just as he remembered them: objects of great beauty – and a stark reminder of what he had forfeited the day he had lost his temper so badly with Lexie. And yet, she was the one who’d been in the wrong. It should be Lexie who crawled back, begging forgiveness.
For a long time, Patrick sat immobile. He might be the one with right on his side, and common sense dictated that he should sell the damn things, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it.
The centre of Hailesbank had held up fairly well in the face of commercial development south of the river. The retail park, supermarket and leisure centre there were popular with the young, aspiring residents who commuted into Edinburgh for work. Lexie preferred to stay loyal to the shops and facilities in the heart of the old town, but there was no denying that its pub, the Duke of Atholl, was tired and shabby. Tonight, Lexie had arranged to meet Cameron in the Crown and Thistle – not only because it was much nicer, but also because she liked to stroll across the river and over the new bridge.
A decade ago, the old coaching inn on the south bank had been seriously run down. The roof needed urgent attention, the garden was filled with unsightly weeds and the bar was a throwback to the 1950s. Then it was bought by a young couple who had halted the slide into disuse, and managed to turn the business around.
It was a lesson, in how things could be done, Lexie thought as the pub came into view. How come they had managed to modernise, yet Gordon’s remained frozen in time? And what would it take for Tom to understand this? Lexie stopped in the middle of the bridge, overcome by a strong sense of Jamie’s presence. He’d loved the Crown and Thistle. It had been his natural habitat: Jamie and some girlfriend, hanging out on a Saturday night when the match was over and there was a victory to celebrate or a loss to obliterate.
Arms circled round from behind her and hands covered her eyes.
‘Guess who?’
Lexie giggled. ‘Get off me.’
Cameron turned her around and pulled her towards him.
‘You look just like a Liquorice Allsort. Pink and white and good enough to eat,’ he said, laughing.
‘Silly. Where’ve you been hiding, Cameron? You haven’t been in to Gordon’s.’
‘Old man Pettigrew put me on other runs. Anyway, you said you’d call me.’
Lexie remembered the circumstances of their last parting and blushed. She’d been ready to sleep with him again – or thought so. Her sudden about-turn must have been humiliating.
‘And so I did.’ She smiled at him, willing him to put the episode aside.
‘Let’s get a drink, eh? I’m dead thirsty.’ He tucked her arm under his and turned towards the pub.
‘I saw the article about Pavel.’
‘Wasn’t it great? And guess what? People have been sending me shoes. Dozens of them.’
‘Really? Why?’
‘They seem to want paintings.’
‘Weird.’
‘I do good paintings,’ she said in mock indignation.
‘I know you do, lovey, but people want paintings of shoes? Don’t you think that’s a bit odd?’
‘Not really. I think it’s sweet. Carlotta wants me to make a book.’
He turned his head aside. ‘Oh, Ca
rlotta ...’
‘She brought in her bridal shoes and a load of letters and ribbons.’
‘I should have thought Carlotta would—’ He broke off.
‘Carlotta would what?’
His shoulders rose dismissively.
‘I’ve forgotten what I was going to say.’
‘But that’s not all.’ Alexa’s excitement about the exhibition bubbled to the surface. ‘Pavel’s offered me a space to hold an exhibition in!’
‘Pavel? What space has he got?’
‘I never knew about it, but there’s a small cobbled courtyard outside the back of the shop – Cobbles, get it? – and there’s a good-sized room on the other side. It’s full of junk, but he’s going to get it cleared and the room done up for me.’
As they reached the pub door, a Land Rover passed, towing a trailer carrying two rams.
‘Off to the Royal Highland Show,’ Cameron said. ‘Nice-looking beasts.’
Before his disappearance, Cameron had worked on his uncle’s farm just outside Hailesbank.
‘You used to love farming. Don’t you want to get back to it?’
‘Maybe.’
They sat in the garden, near the river. A family of mallards paddled by, the young almost ready to break free of their mother’s protectiveness. Lexie thought of the rams and how Cameron used to arrive at her studio smelling vaguely of hay. Why had he left, years ago, so suddenly and with no explanation. She’d waited weeks for him to explain, yet he hadn’t brought the subject up at all. She couldn’t wait any longer, she had to know.
‘Why did you go away, Cameron? You were happy, weren’t you? With the farming? We were happy, weren’t we? I thought we were.’
Cameron found the antics of the duck riveting.
‘Look at that one, arse in the air. What a way to have to get your food.’
‘Cameron.’
He turned towards her, his mouth twisted into a wry grimace, his manner apologetic.
‘I wasn’t ready, sweetheart, that’s the truth of it. You were so damn possessive that I felt, you know, swamped. I needed to get out, get some space.’
Had she been possessive? Lexie searched her mind for the evidence, but couldn’t recall feeling that way. He must be right, of course, otherwise why would he say it?
‘Oh. But couldn’t we have talked about it? You didn’t have to just disappear.’
He took possession of her slender hands and traced the tattoo round her thumb with his fingers.
‘You’re right. I behaved like a pillock. Of course we should have talked, but I was scared you might persuade me to stay. I was bloody immature, I admit it.’ He lifted his gaze to her face. ‘All that time I was away, I was thinking, Cameron, you’ve been a fucking idiot. You had a jewel there and you let her slip through your fingers. When I finally faced it, I came home. Can you forgive me?’
‘I don’t think—’
He raised one hand and held her under the chin.
‘You’re a miracle, woman. Look at you. You gave up everything when Jamie was killed, and came home to support your parents. I don’t know anyone else who would have done that. But you’re bloody talented, Lex. You’re going to make a roaring success of this exhibition and I want to be the one who’s around to help you. Will you let me?’
She searched the familiar face with its skewed nose and long scar as if she might find the answer to his question there. What did she think the other day? I’m ready for love. Had that changed?
‘I’m certainly going to need help,’ she said.
Chapter Seventeen
Catalogue number 2: Black leather traditional lace-ups by Clark’s. Donor, Tom Gordon, Hailesbank. There’s nothing remarkable about these shoes, except that they seem to personify the story of Tom Gordon, my father. They are plain, inexpensive, serviceable, worn and a little old-fashioned. They make me choke with pride and admiration for all they stand for: the way my father plugged on doggedly, determined to hold his family together, whatever the personal cost.
Lexie was sitting in the bathroom at Fernhill clad in only an ancient tee shirt and running shorts, applying dye to her hair. She had smeared Vaseline round her hairline to stop the vivid dye colouring her skin, covered her head with a shower cap, and set the alarm on her phone to go off when it was time to rinse the colour off.
She glanced at it. Five minutes to go.
Her mind slipped back to shoes. She thought of shoes from the moment she woke until she put her head on her pillow at night. She had become obsessed with shoes. They paraded in front of her eyes – not filled with slim feet or bony feet or calloused feet, just shoes.
Not just shoes – shoes that told stories.
She had thought about the premise of her exhibition a great deal. She was desperate to make a start, but something was getting in her way. It wasn’t the fact that she was still working at Gordon’s, although that had to be addressed. It wasn’t that she had no studio to paint in, somehow she would overcome that hurdle.
No, it was something else, something she had never told anyone. Something she was desperately ashamed of.
Three minutes to go.
When she’d gone to Patrick Mulgrew a year ago and told him she could not finish the painting that was to form the centrepiece of her exhibition, she’d allowed him to think it was because of Jamie’s accident – because he was in a coma and, later, because he’d died. That hadn’t been the whole truth.
The truth—
Ping. Ping. Ping.
The alarm grew insistently louder. Time.
She pulled on protective gloves and dropped the shower cap in the bin. She dipped her head deep into the washbasin and started to pour jugs of lukewarm water over her head, rinsing and re-rinsing until the water ran clear. She squeezed an inch of conditioner onto the palm of her hand, massaged it in and repeated the rinsing process. Finally, she grabbed a towel and patted the water off her short crop.
She raised her head and stared at her reflection in the mirror. Dark eyes stared back at her, the lashes long and thick, the pupils pinpricks in the brightness of the lights. Only she knew the truth concealed behind that stare.
Damn it.
The truth had nagged at her a year ago, when she’d realised she could not complete the last painting. It hadn’t been grief that had forced her to stop, it had been the realisation that the work she’d been producing for Patrick had been dishonest.
There, she’d confessed it at last, even if it was only to herself. It had been dishonest because she’d been painting not what was in her heart, but what she thought would appeal to the art world. She’d decided that huge canvases with a dark theme and disturbing images would catch the eye of the critics and attract buyers, so she’d pushed the work further and further in that direction, ignoring the warning voices in her head. It’s not what you’re about. It’s just artbollocks. So when Patrick Mulgrew spotted her paintings and offered her a show, she’d been caught in a trap of her own making.
‘Lexie?’ her mother called through the bathroom door.
‘Yes?’
‘Everything okay? Supper’s nearly ready. Dad’ll be home soon.’
Stupid. ‘Ready in ten.’
She returned to her room and picked up the hairdryer. She didn’t need to blow her short crop dry but she liked the feel of the hot air on her head. Her cut had a little length on top, but the sides and back hugged her head, emphasising the shape of the skull and the length of her neck. It was easy to manage. Once she started painting, she’d forget everything, so the simpler the better.
She slipped on a pair of coloured leggings the exact scarlet of her hair and discarded the dye-stained tee shirt in favour of a lime-green cardigan, buttoned up to the second last hole. She took a moment to examine the effect. Her hair had turned out well, the colour had covered the roots and it had a pleasing sheen.
Her room was now jam-packed with shoes. She had to get a studio, and she had to do it quickly. She’d planned to stay until the work for Fleming Hous
e came through, but why? She’d done what she could at Gordon’s and the time had come to reclaim her own life – and now that Cameron had come clean and confessed that he had been immature, she felt able to give herself to a more physical relationship with him again.
She smiled. Whatever it was that had come between them that first time in his flat, she’d well and truly got over it now. I want to be the one who’s around to help you. Will you let me, he’d asked her in the pub. Well, why not? It seemed that Cameron had grown up in the past six years, maybe at last he was ready to commit.
Tom Gordon had won a great deal of respect in the local community for the way in which he’d coped with his son’s tragic death.
‘Brave feller,’ was the general consensus. Others said, ‘Dignified. Very dignified.’
Martha and Lexie saw another side of him – his determination to fight grief and adversity could make him impossible to live with. Somewhere along a path littered with emotional obstacles and traps he had managed to lose some of the qualities that used to make him endearing: a sense of humour, spontaneity, empathy. As they sat down to eat, Lexie was all too well aware that she’d have to find the seam of understanding she knew lay somewhere in her father’s character if she was to extricate herself from the business without hurting him.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ she started as her mother filled bowls with pasta.
‘Careful,’ Tom grunted, offering her wine.
She held her glass out. ‘You know these shoes ...?’
‘If you mean the dozens of parcels that seem to arrive here every day, I would say, yes, I know what you’re referring to.’
‘And my idea of painting some of them?’
Martha chipped in, ‘And doing the books, like Carlotta suggested.’
‘And the books. Well,’ Lexie watched as Tom picked up his fork and started to spear the food, ‘Pavel Skonieczna has offered me an exhibition. He’s clearing a room specially for me. I’d like to take some time off from Gordon’s, Dad.’
