‘Almost certainly.’ Ursula shrugged. ‘Go and see her. Think of a figure then treble it. If she says no, you’re no worse off. And you can have a good nose round her art collection. She’s got an original Hockney. A Lynn Chadwick sculpture in the garden.’
So Cecilia had gone and had a tour of the house and the art, while sipping some incredible wine. The woman wanted a mosaic of Poseidon on her bathroom wall. Cecilia had nodded in a thoughtful way, while thinking: God, how naff, what a shame money can’t buy you taste. Still, the bathroom could be beautiful. Would be if she could keep bloody Poseidon out of it. If she wanted mythical marine clichés, she ought at least to go for mermaids… hmm… yes… strong female icons… sexy… powerful… triumphing over poor, pathetic men… that ought to appeal to a newly divorced woman…
Cecilia walked over to the wall in question, then turned to face the woman.
‘I wonder…’ she scrabbled in her bag for a small sketchbook so she could draw what she had in mind, ‘I wonder if something more female and sensual in here might be more intriguing?’ She found herself talking very animatedly about what would work… perhaps a ragged edge as if the mosaic had been only partially excavated from the wall behind?... Colours ebbed and flowed in her mind… she swept her hands up and over the wall, weaving a picture of the mermaid – beautiful, solitary, victorious… perhaps the shore here, snaking into the foreground… the waves… the rocks… and over here possibly some suggestion of a semi-drowned man…
Still, she had no intention of taking it on. It might take a month or more and she couldn’t be bothered really. She’d ask for some ridiculous sum and the woman would say no, and then Cecilia could go and have a nice proper coffee in one of the innumerable cafés in Hampstead, then maybe cut through to that side of the Heath and sit by one of the ponds to draw the birds or the children feeding the ducks.
‘The thing is,’ Cecilia began, ‘it is a large area and I don’t use an assistant, you see, so it would probably take a good six to eight weeks.’
‘It’s fine. There are three other bathrooms. But this is my en-suite so it needs to be fabulous.’
‘Right. Um… good. I meant, you see, that it would therefore be quite, er, costly…’ God, how she hated this bit. She tried to tot up in her head roughly how much it should be if she calculated it at, say, four days a week for six weeks, though actually she was pretty fast once she got going.
‘Well, whatever. Ballpark figure?’ The woman named an extremely large sum.
Cecilia paused. Blimey. What a thing to have so much money to throw around. Well, in that case, maybe she should do it? She tried to think what she might do with the money, standing there mute.
The woman must have assumed that Cecilia was affronted by the offer so she amended it upwards by a sizeable chunk.
‘That should be fine,’ Cecilia said quickly, before she could change her mind. It was thousands of pounds. More money than she had made in the whole of the previous two years. She’d give some of it to the girls to buy a second-hand car to share.
‘Do you want some up front? For materials and so on? A third?’
‘Yes, that’s usual, thank you. Do you want to see preparatory sketches first?’
‘Sure. Just email them to me.’
‘Er…’ Cecilia had no idea how you could email a sketch. Perhaps the woman thought she drew on a computer? Yeuch. ‘I don’t actually use a computer. I don’t do email.’
‘You don’t have email?’ The woman looked at her as if she might be mentally defective, then she laughed. ‘Oh, you artists! I suppose it’s a distraction from being creative or something, is it?’
‘Something like that.’ Cecilia nodded, though in fact it was nothing to do with that. Some while ago, Olivia had brought round her laptop to teach her mother how to use one, but Cecilia had ended up feeling horribly inept and stupid, like when she’d had to learn about logarithms at school. She couldn’t apply herself if it was something that she found completely devoid of interest. The on button didn’t even say ‘ON’, for goodness’ sake, just had that silly circle with the line like a partial clock face. It was ridiculous. What sort of designer had come up with that? In the end, she had given up. It wasn’t as if she needed a computer, after all. If she had one, it would just be another technological thing – like the cordless phone, the DVD player, even her bloody digital radio that she didn’t understand – to go wrong.
After her coffee, she walked through to the Heath, found a bench by the first pond and sat watching the ducks and the coots. Her thoughts spun and wove in a delirious tangle, first diving into a succession of colours plucked from sea and sky – cerulean, turquoise, aquamarine, peacock, lapis lazuli, kingfisher, sapphire – then, with a flush of guilt, thinking about what she could do with the money. She wasn’t very au fait with how much things cost, but she was pretty sure it would be enough to build a simple studio-shed in the garden with a good sum over for the girls. She wouldn’t admit it to them, of course, but she was finding it harder and harder to use her studio at the top of the house. Her left knee made a noise like a creaking cellar door in a horror film and she feared it might be arthritis. Arthritis! Like old people have. If she told the girls, Olivia would have her on the waiting list for a knee replacement, and there was really no need. Bollocks to all that.
14
The Man who Walks into Trees
Saturday morning. Andrew had already had tea and a bowl of Weetabix (‘It’s important to keep yourself regular,’ his mother said, prompting Andrew to bury his head in his bowl as if he needed to examine his cereal in extreme close-up) at home with his parents but had managed to extricate himself – ‘Just popping to the library to do some work’ – to go to a café to read the papers in peace. Fortunately, as his mother had never got to grips with exactly what his job involved, she did not question how he might accomplish much work in a library; his father, surely, had twigged that Andrew just needed time out. Andrew told himself that he was merely imagining the beseeching look in his dad’s eyes – Take me with you! – and managed not to do a hop, skip and a jump in the hallway as he headed for the front door.
Already, after only a couple of weeks, he had elected a particular café nearby, called simply Froth, as his favourite. Although it was trendier than he would usually go for, the coffee was excellent, it had deep, squashy sofas you could sink into, and plenty of free newspapers. He disliked the bobbly modern lamps that descended at different heights from the ceiling like a gathering of UFOs hovering in space, and the orange Perspex stools you got stuck with if you didn’t manage to get there in time for a sofa or a proper chair. But this morning he woke up thinking about their banana muffins and, while he told himself he was a sad sod to be having a fantasy about food rather than sex, still, food was unquestionably easier to obtain and, in the absence of sex, a banana muffin was about as good as it was likely to get.
Ah-ha, a covetable corner of a sofa was free at one end of a big table and he colonised it immediately, marking out his turf with his jacket on one side and his laptop on the other, though he might not even open it. It was just a prop, he knew, as he was here on his own: look, I am a busy, important person who needs to check my emails and stay on top of my jam-packed life at all times, not a sad git who has no girlfriend to come out with me for coffee on a Saturday morning.
Andrew tried to catch the eye of the pretty Spanish waitress who sometimes served him, but she was covering the other side of the room today, and it was the annoyingly good-looking designer-stubbly waiter who came over instead. His blond hair was swept forwards and to one side as if he had stepped out of a cartoon in a high wind and been left stuck that way.
‘Yuh?’
‘Good morning,’ Andrew said pointedly. ‘Could I have a cappuccino, please? And a banana muffin.’
‘Not a problem!’
Andrew tried not to grind his teeth in annoyance. Why would it be a problem? It’s a café, serving food and drink. I haven’t asked for anything problematic,
have I – a pot of yellow paint and a stepladder? He went and fetched a newspaper and sat back down.
The door opened and she came in: the woman he had seen in the street a couple of weeks ago when he had impressed her by walking into a tree. She hesitated, scanning the room – luckily, it was pretty packed this morning – then took a step towards him. He smiled encouragingly in what he hoped was a friendly yet unintrusive way.
‘Are these two seats free?’ She gestured at the orange stools at the end of the table.
Two seats. Bugger.
‘Yes. Help yourself. Please.’ He wondered if he should offer her his prime corner seat on the sofa, or would that be too much? It might scare her off. Besides, any moment now, surely her ultra-tall, ultra-handsome boyfriend would come in and then Andrew would be perched awkwardly on a stool while she and her boyfriend snuggled cosily in the corner together and he’d feel like a right prat.
‘God, these stools are just ridiculous, aren’t they?’ she said. ‘Fine if you’re an eight-year-old boy; hopeless if you’re a woman with hips.’
‘Oh, sorry. Would you like to swap?’ He started to gather his belongings.
‘No, no. I’m sorry, I wasn’t hinting, honestly. Just… you know… whingeing pointlessly.’ She smiled. ‘Number One leisure activity for the English.’
He laughed appreciatively and she smiled again.
And what a smile. He looked back, drinking it in. She was not just attractive, as he had first thought, but beautiful, with creamy skin and green eyes. He looked away suddenly, aware that he had been staring at her gormlessly.
‘I suppose the stools are to deter customers from lingering too long?’ he said, attempting to stay in the ring.
The waiter bounded up to take her order, and set down Andrew’s coffee and muffin with a cheery, ‘There you go, mate.’
‘Well, good morning, good morning! And how are you today? Haven’t seen you in here for a couple of weeks.’ He took his time, Andrew noted, with a range of unnecessary questions and comments: would she like extra hot water with her tea, what type of milk would she prefer, excellent choice, the almond croissant, they were especially good today and not long out of the oven so still warm, was there anything else he could get her? That’s a lovely scarf, really suited her, brought out the colour of her eyes.
He hadn’t bothered with any of that friendly chit-chat with Andrew. The penny dropped. He was chatting her up. What a creep. Honestly. Men. No wonder women were always complaining about being harassed. Couldn’t a woman even go to a café without some smug lothario hitting on her? At least he wasn’t like that. No, he respected women, knew when to give them a bit of space, not to keep bothering them when they clearly just wanted a few minutes’ peace. Yes.
Still, he had seen her before, albeit only in the street. He could perhaps mention that: Excuse me, you do look slightly familiar. I wonder if…? It sounded lame, a contrived chat-up line. For God’s sake, he was thirty-five, why wasn’t he better at this by now? He’d barely progressed since he was fourteen. What do other men say? Her scarf was nice, but he couldn’t compliment her on that. She’d think he was just copying the waiter. He wished he’d thought of it first, then dismissed that idea. Besides, then she might think he was gay.
He caught her eye, smiled, then quickly looked away and stirred his coffee, trying to think.
‘Excuse me,’ she said, ‘this is going to sound like an awful line, but you do look incredibly familiar. I wonder if…?’
‘Yes!’ He grinned as if he had just won the lottery. ‘I saw you in the street the other day. In Eastern Avenue?’
‘That’s it! I knew I’d seen you somewhere. You’re the man who walked into a tree.’ She smiled.
Great. I’m the man who walks into trees. Still, at least she remembers me.
‘Yup, I’ve been practising it as a comic turn. It’s nearly perfect now.’
‘I thought you had it nailed pretty much. You could probably take it on tour.’
‘Coming soon to a venue near you…’
She laughed, then turned to the waiter, who had begun putting down her tea with an elaborate degree of care, repositioning her teapot, milk jug and cup in front of her. He left, then scooted back after a second and a half with her almond croissant.
‘And here’s an extra napkin for you, Beautiful.’ He set the napkin on the table as if delivering a crown on a velvet cushion. ‘Enjoy your almond croissant.’
My God, the man was practically drooling into her cleavage. He was completely shameless.
‘Thank you.’ She beamed up at the waiter. ‘I intend to.’
Bloody hell – why hadn’t he called her ‘Beautiful’? After all, she was. Look at her: she was practically glowing with pleasure. He could have made her feel like that with a single word. There was no copyright on the word. But he hadn’t said it… because… because… it would have sounded contrived and kind of creepy, and it wasn’t the sort of thing he would say to a woman he’d only just met. Still, no sign of handsome boyfriend yet so he could say something else, something that wasn’t too obviously flirtatious, something low key and normal, yet sparkling with wit and cleverness. Or, in the absence of that, just something. Anything. He returned to stirring his coffee. Anything at all, Andrew, but say something.
‘So, do you live around—’ he began, and she turned towards him, smiling.
A swirl of bright pink coat and clashing scarlet scarf and red leather satchel swept in through the front door and straight up to their table.
‘Hello, hello, yes, I know I’m late.’ The woman in pink bent to kiss the beautiful one’s cheek. You could see at once that they must be related, although this one had dark hair and was shorter. ‘Can we move? I hate these stools. Here—’ There was a man on the other side of the café turning round to gesture for his bill, though he was still seated. She swooped in like a hawk, and with a huge smile and a, ‘May we? Thank you so much. That’s so kind’, commandeered the table. The man found himself standing up and heading to the counter to pay, his half-drunk coffee still in his hand, looking both pleased and bewildered as if had been kissed and slapped at the same time. ‘Liv! Liv! Over here. Come on.’
Beautiful turned and smiled at Andrew with a shrug.
‘My sister.’ She gestured with a nod of the head. ‘An irresistible force of nature.’
‘Have a nice… croissant,’ he said. Is that it? Is that really your best chat-up line? Dear God, man, get a grip.
‘It was nice talking to you.’ She nodded. ‘Um… see you around?’
‘Yes.’ He attempted to lever himself upright, but the low, squashy sofa defeated him and he subsided once more rather than mortify himself further by an undignified scramble to his feet. ‘Yes, you will. I will. See you around. Definitely. Yes.’
She gave a half-laugh then, though whether because she liked him or felt sorry for him and his hopeless ineptitude, it was impossible to tell.
15
Mosaic Mermaid
Sketches approved, here Cecilia was in this huge house in Hampstead, working away. Best of all, the owner had explained she’d be back in Florida for most of the winter – Cecilia tried not to think of her as a goose flapping across the ocean in her horrid leopard-print leggings – but the housekeeper would pop in every day anyway to clean the house and water the plants and feed the cats, so she would prepare something simple for Cecilia’s lunch. Cecilia had said, ah, yes, good, as if this were a perfectly normal thing: a housekeeper coming in to leave her a blissful roast beef sandwich or a chicken salad with a clingfilmed platter of perfect, sliced fruit for afterwards as if she were in a fancy hotel.
She’d had a field day choosing the tesserae, had floated round her supplier buoyed on a delicious cloud of cash, knowing that for once she could choose anything she fancied.
The girls, bless them, seemed almost more excited about the commission than she was, and not just about the money.
At brunch, Olivia had said, ‘Good for you, Ma,’ and kissed
her on the top of her head as if Cecilia were the achieving daughter and Olivia the proud mother. She’d given them all the advance money left over once she’d bought the materials; the studio could wait until spring. So nice to be able to give them something without having to go back to her ex-husband with a begging bowl.
At six o’clock each day, she stopped. Partly because, even though she rarely started much before noon, still it felt like a long day as the work was so intense, and partly because, even after all these years, it was at this time of day that she allowed herself a brief reverie about DH. It was almost like a prayer, a telling of a rosary – this interlude on the cusp of day becoming evening when she succumbed to the bittersweet temptation of remembering. She allowed herself only a few moments for each thought, pausing at each image: the first time she ever saw him, being in bed with him, the way he lit up like a little boy when he was talking about something he loved, his deep, wonderful voice in her ear, his strong hands hot on her skin, his unexpected tenderness, and, at last – unbearable – his tears.
As always, after a minute or two, she let the memories flit away, like a child releasing a butterfly back into the summer breeze.
On Sunday, the girls came to brunch. After they’d eaten, Maddy asked if she could rummage in her mother’s stash of wool and fabric scraps. Madeleine made knitted and appliqué cushions with quirky, stylised animals on them, which she sold online and at various craft fairs across London. She said she was looking for something in a very particular shade of green, partway between eau-de-Nil and chartreuse, she thought. Olivia took the opportunity to excavate the hall table, which was a repository for unopened post, unwanted takeaway menus and fliers, and stray items that Cecilia hadn’t got around to returning to their proper places. She held things up from time to time for Cecilia to pronounce judgement.
Growing Up for Beginners Page 10
