A Memory of Demons
Page 27
They got out, she locked her car, and turned to look at him for one last time.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘if you’re absolutely sure. About the damage, I mean.’
‘I’m sure.’
‘At least let me . . .’
He fished some pound coins from his pocket and fed them into her meter.
‘Is two hours enough for you?’
She laughed. ‘That’s two meters in ten minutes. You’re squandering your money, Joe.’
He turned back to her with a bashful smile and stuck out his hand a little awkwardly, as though afraid the gesture may appear presumptuous, but feeling he should do something. She took it.
‘Nice meeting you, Joe. I’m Catherine. Catherine Perretti.’
‘You’re Italian?’
‘French, my father was Italian.’
‘Oh. Well . . . thanks again.’
He let go of her hand, gave a little salute to accompany his parting smile, and started back towards his car.
Catherine started towards Hyde Park, feeling, she decided, a sense of relief more than anything else. It had been a curious encounter, all the more so by being so unexpected. She’d surprised herself by the way she’d acted, and she didn’t surprise herself often or much any more. For a second just then she’d been about to give him her real name, her married name, which he would almost certainly have recognized. People invariably did, and it always evoked a response and led to questions and all sorts of things that she didn’t need right now, not with this perfectly nice young man who had gone on his way and who she was perfectly confident she would never see again.
The weekly lunch at Belle Fairchild’s house overlooking Hyde Park was the usual affair – a hand-picked group of fascinating people from the arts, journalism and politics. Belle had buried two extremely wealthy husbands and gone on to do their memories proud by the scale and lavishness of her famous hospitality. As an ex-actress – very ex and never very talented, as she was the first to confess – she had a larger than life personality and would probably have run a successful salon without either the wealth or the high-level access to society that her money brought her. Catherine liked Belle, and envied her more than a little: envied her independence above all. Belle answered to no one. She had no need to do, say or think anything she didn’t choose to. Mind you, at seventy-two there had to be some compensations in life; Catherine only hoped that if she ever reached that age she would find some similar comforts.
Not that she hoped to be a widow: heaven forbid she should harbour so ungenerous a thought. But perhaps, with time, things would become easier, tensions fewer, and she and Sergei would find a companionship that, despite everything they had both started by hoping for, continued to elude them.
‘Don’t you agree, Mrs Vanov?’
She realized with a start that the fashionable playwright on her left had been answering some casual question of hers at inordinate length and in great detail. What was it she had asked? Oh, yes: Wasn’t farce harder to write than tragedy? Her social autopilot had been monitoring his reply somewhere just short of full consciousness, and the gist of it was that he was a very serious man. But she knew that already, having seen two of his plays. Well, one and a half to be precise.
‘But isn’t there,’ she said, delicately forking a morsel of soufflé towards her mouth, ‘something about history repeating itself first as tragedy, and later as farce?’
‘Karl Marx,’ intoned her solemn companion, ‘expanding on a remark of Hegel.’
A wave of laughter on her right greeted a particularly juicy bit of political scandal from a Sunday broadsheet editor. ‘But,’ he continued to Belle, ‘you won’t see it on my front page, and if anyone asks you didn’t hear it from me first.’
The light-hearted, gossipy tone which was the norm at these affairs continued through coffee in the next room, and Catherine found herself getting back to her car just after three. Despite having overstayed the allotted two hours on her meter by only five minutes, she was mildly annoyed to see a parking ticket on her windscreen. But when she pulled it from under the wiper, she saw it was something else. It was a flyer for some art gallery.
Not being in the habit of buying art from people who stuck special offers on cars, Catherine was about to ball the paper up and look for somewhere to throw it – when she spotted something.
Three names were listed, described as young artists and sculptors, having a debut show together at some gallery in east London that she’d never heard of. One of the names was Joe Turner.
Then she saw that he’d written something. ‘Hope you can make it – and thanks again – Joe.’
She got into her car, still holding the flyer, and looked at it again. The exhibition was on for only another four days. Should she go?
Should she go now?
There was no reason why not. She’d vaguely thought of taking in a movie because she didn’t have to be anywhere till eight, when she and Sergei were guests at some formal dinner at the Park Lane Hilton.
But then again, she didn’t know the East End well, and even with her GPS system to show her the way, she didn’t like driving in crowded streets that she was unfamiliar with.
She could go back to the house in Mayfair and get the chauffeur and one of the other cars to take her. Or . . . ?
What the hell! Don’t labour the point, it was no big deal. Do it on impulse. Don’t think about it.
She tapped the address on the flyer into her GPS system and prepared to follow instructions. Just go with the moment, that was the way to do this.
Go with the moment.
On impulse.