Something Stupid

by Victoria Corby

  Why not? It sounded like a pleasant way of whiling away a couple of hours on a Sunday morning.

  Then the usual female bugbear raised its head. ‘I’m not dressed for a private view.’ I waved vaguely at the black trousers and cherry-coloured shirt I’d put on after hours of agonising. It had been difficult to choose something that was neither too scruffy nor too smart for returning a pair of chewed slippers nor looked as if I was trying too hard. It might have been Serena who’d answered the door.

  ‘It’s hardly a hats and gloves occasion. The Wittle Gallery’s not the Royal Academy. And Justin’s and Robert’s pictures definitely aren’t.’ He gave me a once over to check for obvious holes or gravy stains and smiled. ‘I expect most of the people there will be dressed much the same. Though if you’d been in the sort of get up you were wearing the other night I’d have had second thoughts about taking you. Justin can get over-excited.’

  ‘I’m hardly likely to wear my party gear on a Sunday morning, am I?’ I pointed out.

  ‘Depends if you’re on your way home or not,’ he retorted. ‘And in my opinion you’d be better off not wearing that kind of outfit at any time outside a room with tightly drawn curtains. But what you’ve got on now is fine. Quite acceptable.’

  Talk about backhanded compliments. If it had been any cooler he’d have had icicles dripping off his tongue. ‘All right then,’ I said a touch ungraciously, and then added as a new and worrying thought hit me, ‘So long as I’m not expected to buy anything. My bank balance won’t stand it.’

  ‘Neither will mine. Robert and Justin are enthusiastic believers in the idea that you don’t get taken seriously unless you put a price tag of several thousand on your work. Given that most people only buy pictures like theirs if they’re spending someone else’s money Rob and Justin end up giving away a lot as Christmas presents. Look, we’d better get a move on, I have to be somewhere for lunch at one. There’s my car, just over the street.’

  As we walked to it I asked, ‘What happened to that thing you had before? A TVR, wasn’t it? Something that looked like a sex aid and was very noisy in tunnels.’ It had been the latest in a long line of elderly but fast cars with which James had amused himself to the consternation of his family who were constantly afraid he’d be brought home in several pieces.

  His mouth curled slightly. ‘It didn’t go with the image of the respectable and staid head of an antiques business.’ There was a distinct edge to his voice.

  I looked at him sharply and said, ‘You? Staid? Never! And if you try too hard the effect will be so unbelievable you’ll only end up looking shifty.’

  He laughed, the hard expression disappearing from his face. ‘Thank you for your vote of confidence, Miss Moreton. Some of my more elderly clients thought that a young man who drove an obviously fast car must be a bit of a flash Harry and, more importantly, was also likely to rook them on the price - which of course I regularly do,’ he added with a straight face. ‘I just prefer them not to realise it. So as there was no point in having a car rusting away through only being used once a month, I sold it.’

  I smiled in response, but couldn’t help wondering if James was finding running the business a strain. Harry as the eldest had been earmarked to take over while James had pursued his passion for pictures, gaining experience in various art galleries, in between chasing women and living a lifestyle that was guaranteed to put white hairs on the heads of all who loved him. Then Harry announced he wanted to go back to university so he could train to be a barrister and Henry Lovatt had a heart attack. James took over the shop on a strictly temporary basis; he was still there five years later. He’d turned out to be unexpectedly good both as a dealer and at managing his father, who saw no reason why he shouldn’t continue to dominate the business and everyone involved in it from his sickbed a hundred miles away. According to the jungle drums, which still work remarkably well since at least one person in every family of this extended series of steps and cousins is an inveterate gossip and regards the dissemination of information as far more important than the possibly wounded feelings caused by the odd divorce or two, James finally managed to ‘persuade’ his father to let him do his work without interference. I gathered that the persuasion involved the sort of discussion that had elderly aunts clucking and saying they knew dear James was finding it difficult but he should still try and be more respectful to his father... Still, he didn’t look too unhappy, and it was no bad thing if he’d been steered away from driving lethally fast sports cars. However, he’d certainly learned how to handle this car like one if the drive back to my flat the other night was anything to go by.

  The exhibition was in a gallery on the north side of Hyde Park, not top drawer but still pretty prestigious. ‘Justin’s uncle owns it,’ explained James, ‘but even so he’s not giving them more than ten days. Hence the private view on a Sunday, they’re trying to pack in as much as they can.’

  It took me all of ten seconds to see that James had, in thoroughly masculine fashion, completely under­estimated the desire to dress up for a Sunday morning social occasion amongst those who know that they are going to be as much on display as the paintings. Liv’s DMs and my French Connection trousers stood out like a hen in a field of golden pheasants among all the little dresses and cashmere twin sets and asymmetrical jackets and suede somethings from Prada and Whistles and Ghost and Edina Ronay. I tried to hide one DM’d foot behind my leg in a vain attempt to conceal how big they were and hoped desperately that everyone there would think that I was into reverse chic.

  I was introduced to Justin, all artistic attitudes and floppy hair, who was still astute enough to sum up almost instantly that I didn’t have the sort of bank balance that could make me a potential patron. He smiled vaguely, murmured in a camp manner he hoped I would enjoy the show, and drifted off in pursuit of hotter prospects. James grinned at me and handed me a glass of white wine which turned out to be several cuts above the usual acidic and lukewarm offering you generally get at gatherings like this. He muttered sardonically that it must be an effort to get the guests so paralytic they’d buy several paintings before they left, as it was the only way most of this lot was going to get shifted.

  ‘Come on, they aren’t so bad,’ I protested, looking around, worried in case we were near either of the two maligned artists. ‘They aren’t ugly.’

  ‘No, but they aren’t worth five thousand nicker either.’ He had a point there. The pictures seemed to be mainly pastiches of other, more talented artists, like Van Gogh. The ladderback chair with a vase of yellow flowers on the floor alongside it had some particularly familiar elements. At least none of the canvases included body parts. The policy with the wine seemed to be working too. A surprising number of the paintings had little red dots beneath them, indicating that they’d already been sold. James had been waylaid by a university friend so I was left to wander around looking at the exhibits on my own. Unlike the other night I didn’t in the least mind being abandoned as it was the sort of gathering where you can talk to complete strangers because you’ve got a ready­made subject in common - what was on the walls. It was quite easy once I’d learnt to make sure exactly whom I was talking to. Fortunately the elderly gentleman who turned out to be Justin’s father was deaf or I might have found myself ignominiously turned out on to the street.

  After we’d been there about an hour James waved to me from the other side of the room, pointing at his watch to indicate that we’d have to leave soon. I nodded and turned my attention back to the plate of spicy little somethings in filo pastry that I was busy getting myself outside. The eats were just as good as the wine. I had another glass of that too. James had been absolutely right - in his opinion nothing unusual - to get me to come. There’s nothing like a series of pretentious and completely uninformed discussions about modern art to make your own woes seem less pressing. I might have been one of those who woke tomorrow and realised that in an excess of good-will and better wine they’d spent several thousand on one of the ser
ies of canvases covered in multicoloured dots entitled ‘A Homage to Pointillism’.

  ‘So which of these daubs have you bought?’ asked a voice next to me.

  A tallish, fair-haired man with a faintly cross-eyed expression that suggested the glass in his hand wasn’t his first, or his fifth for that matter, was staring intently at a vague representation of a pontoon bridge over a river.

  ‘None of them.’ I made a face. ‘They’re a bit beyond my budget.’

  ‘Completely overpriced, you say? I agree with you,’ he said loudly. Several people turned around and glared at me as if it was I who had voiced such a heinous opinion. I smiled weakly at a woman I recognised as Robert’s sister. She had been quite pleasant to me ten minutes ago. I doubted she would be again.

  ‘I said, I couldn’t afford them,’ I corrected through gritted teeth.

  ‘No, neither can I.’ He stared morosely into his glass, apparently surprised at the magical way it seemed to have emptied itself. ‘I can’t afford much these days - it all goes to the wife, or most of it. And it was only a one-night stand. So what if it was one of her friends? And I suppose I shouldn’t have done it in our spare bed - at least it wasn’t ours - but all the same, it was quite unreasonable of her to throw me out...’ I smiled politely and started to edge away. However, with that sixth sense that drunks seem to have he grabbed my wrist and held me fast. ‘I was meeting my sister but she hasn’t turned up. As you’re alone why don’t we go out and have some lunch? My car’s just around the corner.’

  This time I didn’t need my guardian angel prompting me to refuse this particular offer of a ride in a car. I was well on the case already. ‘But I did come with someone. Sorry, I can’t.’

  ‘He’s been neglecting you so he’s not going to mind just this once,’ the drunk slurred, fingers tightening on my wrist. ‘We could have some fun.’ And went on to make a suggestion of such inventive depravity that it took me a few stunned seconds to register what he’d actually said. Once I had, I was torn between swooning from outraged modesty and letting him know at full volume what I thought of his proposition, thus causing a ruckus not usually seen at respectable private views. He was watching me with a satisfied expression that made me wonder if that was how he got his kicks; from shocking the pop socks off women he’d never met before and that he had no real intention of performing the acts he had just suggested. I hoped he didn’t. Especially not with those props. But I didn’t have the bottle to ask.

  ‘Er, my boyfriend’s a really jealous type,’ I said quite untruthfully. ‘He’d never let me go out with anyone else.’ In fact I don’t think it ever occurred to Daniel to wonder what I did when I wasn’t with him, which was most nights of the week. Sometimes I saw this as a lack of passion for me which depressed me enormously; other times I wondered if it was because he had a low sex drive. I didn’t know which was worse.

  The man showed no signs of letting me go. I didn’t particularly mind staying where I was. I could still reach for my glass with my other hand and rescue was approaching. James was making his way over to our side of the room, though his progress was slow as he appeared to know virtually everyone and kept on stopping to talk.

  ‘Oh, is that your sister?’ I asked brightly, seeing a woman who looked as if she’d just arrived, with the same distinctively coloured dark gold hair as my captor. She was wearing a white coat of the sort only those who can afford continual dry cleaning bills even contemplate. It hung from her shoulders in the elegant folds that come from meticulous hand stitching in some designer workshop, I noted enviously. ‘So you’ll be able to go out to lunch with her after all. I wouldn’t dream of butting in on a family party, so if you’d just let me go...’

  He stared at me owlishly. I hoped he was working out how to open his fingers. My hand was beginning to get pins and needles. ‘Orlando, I do not believe that the signorina is enjoying her capture,’ said a middle-aged man with a lot of inky black hair cut uncompromisingly short. He was broad-shouldered and stocky, and wore the English gentleman’s uniform of navy blazer and grey wool trousers that screamed good tailoring from some­where like Savile Row, but even without his marked accent he was palpably foreign. No Englishman looks that polished. Most of them don’t smell that good either.

  Orlando swayed. The newcomer cleared his throat meaningfully. Orlando blinked and obediently dropped my wrist.

  I turned to the man and said with genuine gratitude, ‘Thank you,’ but he wasn’t look­ing at me. Instead he was staring intently into the middle of the room like a terrier that has just spied a rat. I followed the line of his head and all I could see was the fair-haired woman with her arms wrapped around James’s waist as she gave him an enthusiastic kiss. It wasn’t the air kind either. He returned the kiss with what looked like equal enthusiasm and stepped back slightly - just enough to slip a knife between the pair of them - as she chattered away with a lot of hand movements that showed off how pretty they were.

  My rescuer made a noise in his throat rather like that of an enraged bull and said, ‘It was my pleasure. Excuse me.’ If his intention was to break up James and the woman his effort was wasted, for somebody had already tapped her on the back and she turned around to speak to him while James began to ease towards me, nodding without any noticeable degree of warmth at the dark-haired man as he passed him. He reached me and put a hand on my arm.

  ‘Ready to go?’ I got the impres­sion he couldn’t wait to get the hell out of there. ‘Hello, I didn’t see you,’ he added in a guarded tone as Orlando turned around from slopping wine into his glass.

  He looked at James, at his hand, then at me with mounting alarm. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said to me, enunciating his words with painful difficulty. ‘If I’d known it was James you were talking about, I wouldn’t have said what I did.’

  James raised his eyebrows quizzically but before he could ask what it was that Orlando was talking about I said quickly, terrified he might just be drunk enough to spell it out, ‘Forget it, I have.’

  Orlando smiled gratefully and said in a burst of wine-fuelled bonhomie, ‘I’m not surprised you’ve been keeping this one to yourself, James old boy. She’s an absolute cracker. And a sport too,’ he added with a sideways glance at me. ‘Very understanding.’

  James looked a bit startled to hear of our new relation­ship but rose nobly to the occasion. ‘I’m so glad you approve, Orlando. And I quite agree with you Laura is - exciting. Unlike most people she starts at the conclusion and works backwards.’ Orlando looked justifiably con­fused, and probably fearing that James and I were about to have ‘words’, turned away to glance sorrowfully at the empty bottle beside him. James looked at me with raised brows. ‘I take it we’re no longer married? I have to say that’s a relief, I don’t think marriage would suit me. Come on, Laura, I’m afraid we have to go,’ he said in a voice that brooked no delay. ‘Goodbye, Orlando.’

  I nodded and obediently followed him as he pushed his way through the crowd. We stopped by the doors to the street to congratulate the two artists and tell them with the deepest insincerity how much we’d liked their paint­ings. Attention wandering as the three men exchanged views on some dramatic affair that I knew nothing about, I glanced back over the room and saw Orlando, joined by the fair-haired woman who’d been all over James, point­ing me out and saying something with the urgent air of someone passing on a piece of really interesting gossip. Oh, dear, it looked like he was busy telling the whole world that I was James’s latest woman. I grinned. It would probably get back to Serena, someone here was bound to know her. But I had no objection to Serena’s cage being rattled a little. Her deft removal of my boyfriend of two days when I was seventeen still rankled.

  James was unusually quiet for him as he drove me back to my flat, not even demanding to know what I’d been so understanding about, which was most unusual. ‘Is that fair-haired man with the original line in chat up a friend of yours?’ I asked.

  ‘Did he ask you to come up and see his feelthy pic­tures?�
� asked James absently.

  ‘Not see them, act them out.’

  That got his attention, momentarily. ‘Did he now? Good thing you didn’t accept, his wife’s got a strong right hook. She always takes him back in the end, poor fool.’ He looked at me severely. ‘I don’t know what it is with you, Laura. You seem to attract over-sexed bozos like bees around a honey pot.’

  ‘Come on! That’s not fair,’ I protested. ‘It’s only been twice. It just so happens they’ve both been in the last few days.’ James appeared sceptical. ‘Anyway, Orlando wasn’t responding to any attraction of mine. He was so drunk he’d have made advances to a Grecian urn if it was curvy enough.’

  James laughed. ‘Judging by past history, you aren’t far wrong. He’s a complete tosser. I only know him through Cressy. He’s her brother.’

  Light dawned belatedly. ‘He said he was waiting for his sister. Was that her in the white coat?’

  ‘I had no idea she’d be there. I’ve hardly seen her since- She’s invited me to go and stay with them at their new house for some ball or other.’ Talk about being ultra-civilised. It was impossible to tell from his tone whether he was looking forward to it or not. No wonder he was looking so thoughtful. Meeting an ex out of the blue was unsettling enough even if the break up had been entirely mutual and amicable, but if you’d been dumped... And he didn’t even have the consolation of a supermodel girlfriend on his arm to salvage his pride. Oh, no! Now Cressida thought his girlfriend was the very un-supermodel me. Usually I’m an expert at putting my great big size 6’s straight into it but this time I had the sense not to say another word. Besides when he appeared with Serena in tow at this party it would just add to his reputation as a lady-killer, and he was a normal enough male not to object to that.

  James let me out in front of my flat, mouthing plati­tudes that I was sure he didn’t mean, like it would be nice to see me again soon and to give his regards to my mother. I waved him off and reluctantly returned to the pile of now urgent ironing. I whiled away the boredom by speculating about what James had felt at meeting Cressida Buonotti again until I decided there wasn’t much point in concerning myself about him or his feelings about Cressida, since I was hardly likely to ever meet her, or even see James again for ages.