After spinning out three mugs of tea, toast, and an omelette and chips for nearly two hours, and checking his mobile every other minute for a text from Vicki begging him to come back, Andrew drove to the station and took the tube into town. He’d felt so good earlier, when he’d taken that painting back to Conrad’s. Looking at something that had been spoiled and knowing that you had made it perfect again was the best feeling in the world. Even Conrad had pronounced the restoration ‘excellent’, and he almost never said anything nice about anyone or anything. They all respected him, absolutely, but they made jokes, too, pretending that old Marriott slept in the Museum and was part of the European Antiquities collection. Must be sad to be like that, no life really apart from the dear old BM, wife dead, nothing to do or think about other than his prints and his next book he’d been working on for God knows how many years now.
As he walked along Great Russell Street, Andrew could see the vast grey bulk of the British Museum behind its high black railings, its size and solidity immediately reassuring. This was his true home. So what if Vicki had chucked him out? This was where he really belonged. He made his way to the key pound. Officially, people couldn’t just show up at the weekend and get into the Conservation Department. After all, his section was housed within Prints and Drawings and the collection was priceless. If you were there on a Saturday unattended, theoretically you could roll up a Raphael and shove it down your trousers and be off with it in a heartbeat. But he was Andrew, good old, harmless Andrew. He knew most of the guys at the key pound where he went each morning to collect his keys for the department. It would be OK.
It was one of the guards he barely knew, the very chubby one with cheeks so shiny they looked as if they’d been buffed with a fine cloth. He was playing a game on his phone and had a half-eaten doughnut next to him. Robert? Rob.
‘Hey, Rob. Good morning, good morning! Sorry – good afternoon, I should say! How’s tricks?’ Andrew could hear himself adopting an atypically matey tone; could hear the falseness of it, as if he were pretending to be a different kind of person. ‘Hello,’ he added lamely, looking down, suddenly embarrassed by himself.
‘Andy, is it?’ Rob nodded.
Andrew fought the urge to correct him.
‘Yup. Thing is…’ Andrew laughed lightly, showing how relaxed he was, ‘I’ve only gone and left something up in Conservation and I’m kicking myself about it. I wonder if I could just pop up briefly to retrieve it?’
‘Sorry, mate, no can do. You know the rules.’ The guard looked back down at his phone as if the conversation were now ended.
‘Yes, yes, absolutely – I totally know the rules and all that – very much – but, see, what it is… is… see, I’ve left my wallet in the department and it’s got all my cards and everything, and what I was thinking was… I could just nip in and grab it – in and out.’ He shifted from foot to foot. ‘It wouldn’t take a minute.’ His wallet was sitting snugly in his back pocket as usual; he could feel the thickness of it digging into his left buttock like a reproach.
Rob glanced up from his phone, apparently surprised that Andrew was still there.
What was the point in all this, he wondered. He didn’t want to nip in and out anyway, did he? What did he want? He wanted to sit in his department for a bit, that was all. Maybe do some work, nothing too demanding. There was that lovely Ardizzone pencil drawing with a bad tear on one side that he was about to mend, the kind of thing he could do in his sleep. He’d be working on it on Monday morning anyway, so why now? There was no rush for it. He wanted – he fumbled with the coins in his front pocket as a comforting distraction – he wanted to just be, be in the quietness, that particularly calm space that was like nowhere else, with the vast windows and the massive press in the corner, a fixed presence, solid as an oak tree.
‘It’s my wallet, you see.’ He thought of taking it out of his back pocket to show Rob just how many things were in it that he really couldn’t manage without: his credit and debit cards, some cash, his loyalty card at the local car-wash – one more wash and he’d be entitled to a free one – postage stamps. Vital stuff. He started reaching towards his pocket then stopped himself.
‘I’m not exactly your average master criminal!’ Andrew’s tone sounded more and more artificial to his own ears. And what was an average master criminal anyway? Surely a master criminal was, by definition, not an average one at all? Shut up. Just say never mind and leave.
‘Nothing personal. Sorry, mate.’ Rob shrugged. ‘If you’re really desperate, you’d have to get written authorisation from your Section Head. Can’t you borrow a tenner off a mate or something?’
Andrew smiled and took a step back.
‘I’ve got a few quid, I’ll get by. Sorry.’ He patted his trouser pocket and his coins jingled. ‘Sorry about that. See you. Cheers.’ He nodded goodbye and backed out, so that Rob wouldn’t see the wallet-shaped bulge in his back pocket.
Now that he was here, well, perhaps he’d go and see some of the collections he never had time to see normally. He passed through the main entrance with a throng of others. The Great Court was abuzz with people; they really were just like bees, jostling appetitively around the shops, the café, the information desk: Japanese teenagers, organised groups clustering around a guide, elderly out-of-town couples perching awkwardly on the low, hard stools to unpack their cheese and chutney sandwiches brought from home.
He walked up to the huge map of the Museum to study it. Of course, he knew parts of it very well indeed: the Prints and Drawings exhibition space just outside his department – Rooms 90 and 91 – the Japanese Galleries, as they were so close, Ancient Greece and Rome as they were his favourites, and the route from Conservation all the way over to the other side of the museum to the staff canteen where they collectively headed for coffee most mornings, but he’d barely visited the rest of it, not since he was at school. His parents were never keen on museums. There was an astonishing amount to see. His eye fell on Ancient Egypt. He’d popped in briefly once the first week he worked here, but it was a weekday and packed with groups of schoolkids, pressing their noses to the glass and shouting, ‘That’s your mummy, that is!’ Papyri in need of conservation work came into his department; they had a specialist who did nothing else. He wouldn’t mind taking a look now.
He made his way there, taking the stairs two at a time, suddenly eager to be at the heart of the museum, to be surrounded by things that had lasted for thousands of years. The first room was very busy but just about bearable. He stood looking in at an exquisite sarcophagus, its interior covered with hieroglyphs. Someone had dipped a brush in pigment and painted those pictographs, knowing what they meant, forming each line with exquisite care, brow furrowed in concentration – someone patient, dedicated – someone possibly not unlike himself. It was extraordinary. An image of Vicki standing on the drive in her clackety pink sandals suddenly came into his head. He swallowed and forced himself to concentrate on the information caption instead. It didn’t matter. In four thousand years, no schoolkid would want to come and find out about Andrew’s crappy relationships or Vicki’s garish footwear. It was the collections that mattered: the vast, extraordinary array of treasures here in the Museum, some of which were entrusted to your care. And even though you were nothing – you would be dead and turned to dust soon enough – some of these astonishing objects and artefacts had passed through your hands and you had helped safeguard their existence. You were like a shabti really, a servant ensuring that they would be preserved forever.
Afterwards, Andrew went to a pub and sat in a corner sipping a pint and reading his book for a while. At a little after 7 p.m., he straightened up and accepted the inevitable. He decided not to call first: that would make too much of it. Better to swing by casually, say he and Vicki had had a bit of a row and could he stay for a day or two? No big deal. He imagined giving a little laugh, showing his parents how unbothered he was by it. The timing would be perfect. By the time he got the tube back, then drove to their
house, he should get there at about 8.30 p.m., late enough for them to have finished their evening meal, but not so late that his mother would have conniptions at the sound of the doorbell.
5
Departure
Eleanor did not cry at the airport; she found public displays of emotion a little suspect, as if they had been put on and played up for an unknown audience. Besides, it would only distress Hannah, and would benefit no one. If children really understood just how much their parents worried about them, they would probably be freaked out. She silently reminded herself for possibly the thousandth time that Hannah was mostly very sensible, that she would be with her two friends for the entire trip, and that all three girls had been repeatedly briefed on how to stay safe. At that moment, Hannah’s friends appeared with their parents and backpacks, and the three girls fell into an ecstasy of shrieking and hugging.
‘Here’s a little extra something for the journey.’ Eleanor handed over a bag of homemade lemon shortbread, her daughter’s favourite, tied with twirly gold ribbon.
‘Oh, yummy – thanks, Mum.’
‘And this is for once you get there…’ It was a spiral-bound sketchbook, the same type she used herself. ‘I know you haven’t had time to draw so much recently, but…’
‘I know, I know – always keep a sketchbook with you. Always.’ They laughed together at the rare piece of advice Eleanor had offered. ‘Thank you.’ Hannah hugged her mum. ‘It’s really nice to have a proper one. I promise to use it.’
Finally, kisses and cautions were dispensed all round and the girls were waved off outside the Departures gate.
Still Eleanor did not cry, even when, at the last moment, Hannah suddenly turned and ran back and threw her arms around her mother in a final hug – ‘Oh, Mummy, I’ll miss you lots and lots!’ – sounding like a little girl again.
Eleanor had squeezed her daughter tight, unable to speak.
‘Don’t cry, Mum.’
‘But I’m not, silly. I’m fine.’
‘Just because I can’t see any tears doesn’t mean you’re not crying, Mum. I’m not two.’
Eleanor clamped her lips shut and just gathered her daughter close for a few precious moments more.
‘Have fun, sweet pea. Plenty of texts and emails, yes? Otherwise, I will follow you out there and say I’ve come to bring you your little snuggly bunnikins as I know you can’t sleep without him.’
‘Funny. I’ll email and text and send you lots of pics, OK? And we can FaceTime or Skype or whatever. Have a fab dinner out tonight.’
‘Thank you.’
‘And promise not to worry. Repeat the family mantra – one, two, three…’
‘It’ll be fine,’ they said together.
Once Hannah had gone, Eleanor suddenly felt starving. She bought a takeaway tea and a croissant from a café on the concourse and slowly went back to the car park.
She sat in the car, taking small sips of her tea and tearing off pieces of croissant. Glanced at her watch. There was really no need to rush home this instant. Conceivably, she could well be at the airport for at least another half an hour as they’d allowed so much time, and she’d still be back in time to change for dinner. Roger would not approve of her having a croissant so close to eating out at such an expensive restaurant; it was silly of her really, she could see that. She should just have waited. Tore off another flaky fragment and pushed it into her mouth.
She let her mind drift, pleased she had thought of the sketchbook. Hannah used to draw all the time when she was younger, on any scrap of paper she came across, but there was something special about having a really good-quality sketchbook. Eleanor remembered when she’d been given her first proper grown-up one – by a total stranger, too. It was such a nice memory that she’d carried on using the same kind ever since: the same type she’d given Hannah, the same type she had even now in her handbag. She wasn’t much younger then than Hannah was now…
Feeling suddenly overwhelmed by the pressure of her looming A levels, after school, Eleanor goes into Central London on her own. She wanders around the shops for a bit but doesn’t have enough money to buy anything anyway. Looking up at the ugly monolith of Centrepoint at Tottenham Court Road, she decides to go to the British Museum as it is so near. She could go and visit her father for a few minutes, if he is free; he always knows just what to say when she is getting herself het up about homework or revision. He will put it all into perspective.
But when she gets there, he isn’t in his department. A colleague in Prints and Drawings explains he has had to leave for a meeting elsewhere.
Feeling flat, Eleanor goes to sit in one of the Ancient Greece galleries. There is a beautiful statue there she has always loved: a woman reaching for something unseen, yearning.
Eleanor gets out a pencil and a lined A4 pad from her schoolbag. Drawing always makes her feel better. She begins to sketch the statue, losing herself almost at once in the act of intense concentration, looking, really seeing.
A flicker of movement catches Eleanor’s eye. She stops and turns: another woman, drawing standing up a little further away. She is wearing very baggy dungarees smeared with what looks like brown paint, or perhaps clay, and a bright blue and yellow headscarf tied Caribbean-style covering her hair.
‘That’s very good,’ the woman says, stepping nearer. ‘Are you at art school?’
‘No, I’m still at school. I’m sitting my A levels in a couple of months. I should be at home, revising really.’
‘Well, I can’t imagine you’d have any problem getting into a decent art school if you draw like that.’
‘I’ve applied to university to read English. I don’t think my parents would be happy for me to go to art school.’
‘Oh, parents! What do they know?’ The woman laughs. ‘Still, I’m sure you’ll enjoy that too. Here, would you like some better paper?’ She tears out a couple of sheets from her sketchbook. ‘It’s awfully annoying drawing on lined paper, I always think.’
They sit in silence for a while then, side by side on the bench, just drawing. Then Eleanor stands up and says she’d better be heading home and thank you for the paper.
‘I come here quite often to draw,’ the woman says. ‘Sometimes I draw exhibits, but also the people looking at them. It’s a good place as people often stand still for ages.’
‘My dad works here so I sometimes come just to see him. He works really hard so he’s not at home much.’
‘Oh, men! Honestly. That’s a shame.’
‘Mmm. It’s really not the same at home when he’s not there.’
‘What does he do here – your dad? Which department?’
‘Prints and Drawings. He’s the Assistant Keeper.’
‘Oh. Is he? How – how grand. Well, that’s – that must be very interesting, I’m sure.’
‘Yes, he’s hoping to be made Keeper soon, when the current one retires. I’m sure he will be. He’s very clever.’
‘He – I’m sure he will. Well, I must be off. Nice to meet you.’
‘Can I just ask, what make is your sketchbook? The paper is lovely.’
The woman shows her the cover, then looks down for a few moments, appraising her sketches.
‘Hang on a tick.’ The woman tears out the two pages she’d just covered herself with quick-fire sketches and hands the blank sketchbook to Eleanor. ‘Take it.’
‘Oh, no, I couldn’t.’
‘Yes, you could. Every artist needs a decent sketchbook.’
‘But I’m not an artist!’
‘Every artist needs a decent sketchbook,’ she repeats. ‘And you should always keep a sketchbook with you. Always.’
Funny how a stranger could do something or say something that left its mark on you. Like always using the same type of sketchbook, as if it were a lucky talisman because it had been given to her by some random woman who told her she was an artist probably just to be kind. Silly really.
Eleanor drained the last of her tea, then leaned her head back again
st the headrest and closed her eyes. What would it be like to stay here, in her car, in the car park all night? There was an old blanket in the boot, a bottle of water in the cup-holder, and a tin of travel sweets in the glove box, her sole vice. She could probably manage at least a couple of days… more if she popped back to the terminal for food. Then she could last a week… a month… the rest of her life… Maybe she could just live there, eating and sleeping in her car, and no one would ever find her? But no, she was already uncomfortable and Eleanor was highly pragmatic. She shook the thought away – how silly; what a peculiar thing to think of. Funny to think of Hannah’s not being at home. Or Daniel. Just the two of them now. Well, people made such a fuss about empty-nest syndrome but it was fine really. As she’d told her father, it wasn’t as if she’d be drifting about the house off her head with boredom. There was always plenty to do, always plenty of things to occupy her time and her head.
She turned the key in the ignition, and put on the radio. It was time to go home.
6
The Devil Tree
Mr and Mrs Tyler’s house was a 1930s mock-Tudor semi, with a pebble-dashed exterior painted white, and fake timber framing. As he walked up the front path, Andrew averted his eyes from the recently installed uPVC windows as if from a particularly unpleasant scene in a horror film.
The bell rang ding-dong, insistently chirpy regardless of your mood. After a few moments, the distant hum of the hoover stopped and he heard his mother’s voice bellowing down to his father.
Growing Up for Beginners Page 4
