Guns in the Gallery

by Simon Brett

  ‘Yeah, well, whatever,’ said Chervil. Then a marketing thought struck her. ‘Hey, Jude, maybe you could write a little piece about this stuff . . .? Then we could print them up and add them to the welcome pack we put in the yurts for our guests. We’re thinking of having on the welcome packs the logo “Deeply Felt”.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Carole.

  ‘“Felt”. That’s what the yurts are made of – Felt.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Carole.

  ‘But would you be up for writing something about the Buddhist bit, Jude?’

  ‘Sure. If you think—’

  ‘We’d pay you, obviously.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think I’d need paying for something like that.’

  ‘No, of course we’d pay you,’ said Chervil firmly. The Whittakers had so much money that they liked to dole it out for every service, however minor. Paying for things gave them a sense of security. ‘Yes, I think that’d be good,’ she went on. ‘I think a lot of the people who’re likely to come here will have spiritual needs . . . you know, they’ll want time in the country really chilling out and getting their heads together.’

  Carole could not prevent a wince of annoyance crossing her face at the mention of these two alien concepts.

  ‘You say “people who’re likely to come here”,’ observed Jude. ‘Does that mean the site isn’t open yet?’

  ‘We open officially next week. Last month we’ve had friends staying, testing everything out, seeing all the facilities work as they should.’

  ‘And what kind of facilities do you have?’ asked Carole.

  Chervil smiled confidently. ‘I’ll show you,’ she said, and led them to the painted door of one of the largest yurts.

  The central space was large and, though quite a lot of light came through the circular, spoked smoke vent at the crown of the structure, Chervil switched on the lights. Clearly the back-to-nature experience included electricity.

  It also included a large wood-burning stove in the central area, perfectly appointed bathroom with toilet, and a fully equipped kitchen featuring a state-of-the-art gas cooker. Everything was so new and top of the range that Carole and Jude wouldn’t have been surprised to see an Aga in there. On the walls hung framed pictures of various Buddhas.

  ‘They won’t be exactly slumming, will they?’ said Jude.

  ‘Certainly not. What we’re offering here at Walden is pampering rather than slumming.’

  ‘Walden?’ echoed Jude.

  ‘That’s Dad’s input. From something he read, I forget what it was.’

  ‘Walden, or Life in the Woods,’ said Carole, with something of the tone of a school swot, ‘was the name of the book written by Henry David Thoreau, chronicling the two years of his life he spent practising self-sufficiency and simple living in a cottage near Walden Pond.’

  ‘Gosh,’ said Jude. ‘How on earth do you know all that?’

  ‘I found it on Wikipedia,’ admitted a somewhat shamefaced Carole. ‘There was a clue in The Times crossword to which the answer had to be “walken” or “walden”. “Walken” didn’t make sense, so I googled “walden”. Hence my exhaustive knowledge of Henry David Thoreau.’

  ‘Well, that would figure,’ said Chervil. ‘That must be why Dad chose the name: “simple living”.’

  Jude looked around the lavish interior of the yurt and refrained from commenting on the irony of those last two words. ‘So if I were to do therapy sessions, how would it work? Would I come and visit the people who required them in their individual yurts?’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Chervil. ‘We have a special place where we’d do the therapy sessions.’ Keeping silent to maintain the drama of her revelation, she let them out and along a path to the largest yurt of the lot. Opening the door, she announced with a flourish, ‘This is the Spa and Treatment Area.’

  Her coup de théâtre, seen through a short passage, was a complete state-of-the art gym in a circular space smaller than the exterior circumference of the yurt. It was floored with gleaming white ceramic tiles. Off this area, doors led to other rooms labelled ‘Plunge Pool’, ‘Hot Tub’, ‘Steam Room’ and ‘Sauna’. Chervil pointed to three doors without signs on them. ‘Those’ll be the treatment rooms.’

  She opened one to reveal a pleasant space containing an electrically adjustable massage table and other equipment. Once again, everything was top of the range and brand new. ‘Would you be able to work somewhere like this?’

  ‘Looks fine,’ said Jude.

  ‘In our preliminary brochures we’re offering “a range of alternative therapies”.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Reiki, Hatha yoga, homeopathy, acupuncture, reflexology, bach flower remedies.’

  ‘I don’t do any of those.’

  ‘Oh?’ Chervil Whittaker sounded severely disappointed. ‘Do you do hot stone massage?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why? Don’t you believe in any of them?’

  ‘No. I’ve tried some of them and I have friends who use them very successfully, but I’m not qualified in any of them.’

  ‘Oh? Does that matter?’ Chervil’s priorities were evidently different from Jude’s. She just wanted a range of therapies available for her potential customers, and didn’t seem too bothered by their practitioners’ level of competence.

  ‘I think it does a bit,’ Jude replied.

  ‘So what therapies do you do?’ the girl asked.

  This was a question to which Carole had often wanted an answer, but she now knew her neighbour too well to ask it. How convenient that Chervil had done the job for her. She awaited the reply attentively.

  ‘I’m a healer,’ said Jude. ‘I channel energy.’

  Well, what on earth does that mean, thought Carole, who had been hoping for more specifics.

  But the answer appealed to Chervil Whittaker’s marketing instincts. ‘I like that,’ she said. ‘“Healing . . . Energy-channelling”. They’d look really good in the brochure. What does it involve, Jude?’

  ‘A mixture of techniques which I’ve worked out over the years.’

  ‘Massage?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Laying on of hands?’

  ‘In a way.’

  ‘Wow!’ The girl was getting very excited. ‘We could call it “Total Healing”. Lots of people would go for that.’

  ‘What kind of people?’ asked Carole. It was another question to which, as a natural sceptic in such matters, she had wanted an answer for a long time.

  ‘Well, people who feel kind of that they’ve got something wrong with them, but they don’t know what it is, so they’d like to have some kind of therapy that covers everything.’

  ‘“One size fits all”?’ Jude suggested.

  ‘Exactly that!’ Chervil Whittaker was ecstatic now. ‘This could be a real winner. Now, how would you rather be paid? Per session, or would you like us to put you on a retainer?’

  ‘I’m sorry, but I haven’t said that I’ll do it yet.’

  ‘But surely you will?’ Something in Jude’s face gave the girl pause. ‘Why not? Aren’t the facilities up to scratch?’

  ‘The facilities are absolutely fine. Best I’ve seen for a long time. But I don’t do healing as a kind of add-on leisure activity.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I do it for people who I think need it, to help people who are genuinely suffering.’

  ‘Some of the people who come here might be genuinely suffering.’

  ‘And so they could have healing rather in the same way that they might have a session in the hot tub or the sauna?’

  ‘Yes.’ Chervil nodded with enthusiasm.

  ‘Hm. I don’t think that’s for me, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Why not? You’d get paid well over the odds.’

  ‘I don’t do it for the money.’ That prompted a predictable snort from Carole. Jude smiled wearily at her neighbour as she tried to explain. ‘Healing is a kind of gift. When I do it, it takes an enormous amount of energy out of me. And it does
n’t work unless I believe totally that the person with whom I’m working is in genuine need of my services.’

  ‘Oh.’ But Chervil was only cast down for a moment. ‘Well, some of the people who come here might be in genuine need of your services.’

  ‘Yes. And when you have some that you think genuinely are, then give me a call and I’ll come and make an assessment.’

  ‘Right.’ The girl still seemed upset that anyone could want to resist taking their share of the Whittaker millions. ‘Are you sure you don’t want us to put you on a retainer?’

  ‘Positive.’ There was a silence while Chervil seemed to turn something over in her mind. Then she said, ‘So you think my sister is in genuine need?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I know Fennel’s been coming to you.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And her need is genuine?’

  ‘As opposed to what?’

  ‘As opposed to her just play-acting, doing the prima donna routine, trying to monopolize our parents’ attention?’

  Aware of the underscoring of bitterness in the words, Jude replied gently, ‘I think her need is genuine.’

  ‘And do you think you can help her?’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘I hope so too. I’ve been living with her throwing hysterical fits all the time ever since I was born.’

  ‘Well, as I say, let’s hope I can help her.’

  ‘Hm.’

  Carole decided that a new direction in the conversation might be timely. ‘I gather you used to work in the City, Chervil?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you decided to get out of the rat race?’

  ‘A bit of that, yes. And I really got excited about this Walden project. Now my boyfriend’s living down here too, so that’s fine.’

  ‘Giles Green.’

  ‘Yes.’ The girl looked curiously at Carole. ‘Do you know him?’

  ‘I’ve met him briefly. I was in his mother’s shop; you know, the gallery.’

  ‘Oh yes? And did she mention that I was his girlfriend?’

  Carole realized she had got herself into something of a social cleft-stick. She hadn’t heard about the relationship between Giles and Chervil in the Cornelian Gallery. It had been Jude who’d mentioned it. And now she was in danger of looking as if she’d been gossiping about the girl behind her back. (Which of course she had. Gossiping behind people’s backs was the principal pastime of the Fethering community.)

  ‘No, no. Bonita didn’t mention it.’

  ‘No surprise there,’ said Chervil.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Bonita Green doesn’t approve of my relationship with Giles.’

  ‘Why not?’

  The girl shrugged. ‘I think she got on rather dangerously well with his wife. Soon to be ex-wife, I’m glad to say. Or then again, maybe she’s just one of those mothers who think no girl is good enough for her son.’

  On the way back to Fethering in her prim Renault, Carole said, ‘You missed a trick there, Jude.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Turning down that retainer Chervil was offering. It would have been very nice for you to have a regular income coming in.’

  Jude sighed. ‘You just don’t get it, Carole, do you?’

  And it was true. Carole didn’t.

  SIX

  Neither of them had mentioned it when they met at Butterwyke House, but Fennel Whittaker had a session booked with Jude at Woodside Cottage for the Monday morning. The girl arrived on the dot of ten – she was obsessive about timekeeping – and Jude could tell from her expression and body language that her mood was bad.

  But initially nothing was said beyond greetings and conventional pleasantries, as Jude uncovered the massage couch in her cluttered sitting room. The curtains, almost terracotta in colour, had been spread across the windows and the sunlight diffused through them to give the space a warm, orangey glow. Without being told, Fennel Whittaker stripped down to her underwear and, once a length of paper sheet had been unrolled for her, lay down on her front on the couch.

  Jude’s attitude to healing was instinctive. She adjusted her treatments according to the needs that she sensed in individual clients. Though she had trained in a variety of alternative therapies, she did not subscribe to any one to the exclusion of others. Her approach was mix and match. The important element in any healing was channelling energy. How that end was achieved varied from client to client.

  With Fennel, Jude had quickly realized that they should start each session with a traditional massage, for which she rubbed a little aromatic oil on to her hands. The young woman’s frame was full of tension. The gentle force of Jude’s hands could ease that, and also feeling the contours of the girl’s body gave an insight into what was happening in her mind.

  As ever, while she massaged, Jude talked. What she said was relatively unimportant. If the client wanted to contribute to the conversation, fine. If not, equally fine. What was important was Jude’s tone. Together with the magic wrought by her hands, the soft warmth of her voice helped to put the client at ease, to make them more receptive to the therapies that followed.

  That morning Fennel was disinclined to talk. No problem. Jude chatted casually about the visit she and Carole had made to Butterwyke House on the Saturday. She observed, but did not comment on, a new tautness in the girl’s body when mention was made of the Walden experiment. The tension increased when the name of her sister Chervil came up.

  When Jude finished the massage, Fennel was lying on her back, considerably more relaxed than she had been when she entered Woodside Cottage. Jude wiped the oil off her hands with kitchen roll and said, ‘Are you happy lying there or do you want to sit up?’

  ‘Lying’s cool,’ said the girl drowsily.

  ‘Did you bring some of your recent artwork?’ This was a suggestion Jude had made at a previous session. Fennel Whittaker was a talented artist. She had started at St Martin’s College of Art, but had been forced to give up the course halfway through her second year. The cause had been a complete mental breakdown. She had suffered two before as a teenager, but the one at college had been the most severe.

  In fact, she was lucky to be alive. Living at the time in a Pimlico flat her parents had bought, Fennel had made a suicide attempt, washing a great many painkillers down with the contents of a whisky bottle. She’d also cut her wrists, but fortunately missed the arteries. It was by pure chance that Chervil had dropped into the flat, found her sister unconscious and summoned her father. The incident had been followed by six months’ hospitalization for Fennel in the most expensive private clinic the Whittakers’ money could buy.

  She had emerged on a strong regime of antidepressants, which did seem to improve her condition . . . so long as she took them. But Fennel Whittaker was still the victim of violent mood-swings and seemed to be permanently on the edge of another complete collapse.

  In her manic phases, however, she produced a lot of art and, from what Jude had seen of the stuff, it was very good art. For that reason she had suggested that Fennel should bring along some examples of her recent work to their next session, in the hope that the paintings might offer some clues as to the the causes of her depression.

  ‘In the carrier by the sofa,’ the girl replied lethargically.

  Jude picked up the bag. ‘Do you mind if I have a look at them?’

  ‘Be my guest.’

  She shuffled out a handful of paintings. They were watercolours that had been done on ordinary copy paper which had curled a bit as they dried. But though the medium was a subtle one, there was little restraint in the images depicted. The predominant colours were dark, deep bruise blues, slate greys interrupted by splashes of arterial blood red. So violent were the brush strokes that at first Jude thought she was looking at abstracts. But closer scrutiny revealed that the paintings were representational.

  Each picture showed the body of a woman, young, shapely, but twisted with pain. Their features were contorted as they struggled against
restraints of chain and leather, the red gashes of their mouths screamed in silent agony. But a defiance in their posture and expressions diluted their bleakness. There was suffering there, but also a sense of indomitability. Tormented as they were, Fennel Whittaker’s women would not give up anything without a fight.

  ‘And these are recent works?’

  ‘Yes. All done since our last session.’

  A week then. ‘You’ve been busy.’

  A shrug from the massage couch. ‘When I’ve got ideas I work quickly.’ But the way she spoke was at odds with her words. She sounded apathetic, drained, only a husk of her personality remaining after the threshing storm of creativity that had swept through her body.

  ‘Well, they’re very good,’ said Jude. ‘A lot of pain there.’

  ‘Yes,’ Fennel agreed listlessly.

  ‘Don’t you get a charge from knowing that you’re doing good work?’

  ‘I do while I’m actually painting. I look at it and it feels right. Every brush stroke is exactly where it should be. I feel in control. Then I look at it a couple of days later and . . .’ She ran out of words.

  ‘And what?’

  ‘And I think it’s derivative crap. I can see the style I’m imitating and I’m just deeply aware of all the other artists who have done it better over the centuries, and all the artists who’re even doing it better now.’

  ‘Have you always had that kind of reaction against your work?’

  ‘Usually.’

  ‘And does it ever change?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Do you ever come round to thinking what you’ve done’s rather good again? Do you recapture the feeling you had while you were actually painting it?’

  Fennel Whittaker sighed. ‘Has happened. There’s some stuff I did during my first year at art college . . . before I . . . you know . . . I felt pleased with it . . . and one of my tutors, Ingrid, who I really rated, she thought it was great. Yes, some of that’s bloody good.’

  ‘Doesn’t knowing that cheer you up?’

  ‘No. It makes me feel worse, if anything.’

  ‘Why?

  ‘Because I look back and I think: God, the girl who did that had a lot of talent! Unlike the girl who’s looking back at the stuff. Whatever it was I may once have had, I think I’ve lost it.’