by Alice Castle
‘You are shocked. It’s not the image of this place, is it?’ Kuragin gestured round the beautiful kitchen and, by extension, the placid and prosperous environs of Dulwich itself. ‘But what can you expect? The bourgeoisie exists to create friction, no?’
For the second time in their short conversation, Beth felt a possibly unwarranted irritation rising with this man. Though she often felt as if she was on the outside of all that was so comfortable about Dulwich life, that didn’t mean that she didn’t love and value everything she very much hoped the area was going to do for her son. And she certainly wasn’t going to stand around while someone stuck her best friends – and Kuragin’s hosts – into a category he seemed to have nothing but contempt for. How rude.
There was another reason why his comment had riled her. If the friction he spoke of so lightly led to a violent death, then she was even more against it. She felt like turning on her heel and joining Harry and Michael outside, where they were loitering quite determinedly. On the other hand, she was finally gleaning some useful information about the murder victim, and that had to mean it was worth continuing to winkle what she could out of Kuragin.
She also had to be honest with herself and admit that she found it annoying that Kuragin had been able to wrong-foot her like this. She’d certainly noticed the anomaly that Smeaton hadn’t seemed to produce much art since that stunning debut show, yet had managed to remain a darling of the art world, but she hadn’t twigged at all that he might have had an alter ego. So, he was the talent behind Slope! What an extraordinary thing.
She hated the fact that Kuragin had got one over on her. He was quite visibly preening himself now, thrilled at her ignorance. But who, living in Dulwich, would have made that connection? She comforted herself that there was nothing in the frankly smug, well-heeled world that Smeaton moved in which suggested for one moment that he would make his living at the extreme edge of left-wing political grandstanding. It was not only biting the hand that fed him, it was garnishing it with sage and onion stuffing before chomping it down whole.
She wondered whether Harry had found out this much yet about Smeaton. The idea of getting a march on him was very appealing, she had to admit. He’d been such a crosspatch lately. Though he’d atoned last night – quite thoroughly, she remembered with a half-smile – it would still be deeply satisfying to get her hands on lots of juicy information if she could. And Kuragin might be in a confiding mood, now that he thought he was so damned clever. She leaned forward and peeped wide grey eyes at him, through her fringe.
‘You’re a dealer, did you do much business with Smeaton yourself?’
Immediately the shutters came down. Kuragin leaned back, took a sip of his wine, and let his glance flit about the room. He was clearly trying to find something to comment on that would turn the conversation, but he was failing. Maybe Katie’s lovely kitchen was too bourgeois for him, Beth thought crossly.
‘Oh, but come to think of it, I suppose his works were probably a bit too valuable for you,’ Beth said innocently. She took a cocktail sausage from the dish on the counter, and then slightly ruined her nonchalant act by eating it in one bite, and then having to chew very fast to rid herself of bulging hamster cheeks. Somehow, she managed it, while watching Kuragin carefully.
As soon as her mouth was empty and her eyes had stopped watering, she was back on the attack. ‘You probably don’t have that sort of gallery, do you? I’ve heard Slope’s stuff changed hands for absolute fortunes. Not many people could handle that sort of deal, I suppose.’
Sure enough, Kuragin’s vanity was piqued. ‘On the contrary, I handle many works that are much in excess of any price Smeaton may have attracted,’ the man barked.
‘May have?’ Beth pounced.
‘I’m sorry?’ Kuragin raised his eyebrows.
‘You said “may have”, in the past tense. Why was that, I wonder?’ Beth took a step nearer.
The Russian was starting to look very uncomfortable. He put his wine glass down with a snap, endangering the delicate stem in a way that would have had Katie wincing if she’d been with them. Beth wondered briefly what was keeping her friend, surely she must have shoved Teddy into his cage by now? But she needed to focus on Kuragin.
‘Do you know something about Smeaton, about where he is?’ she asked slowly.
At that moment, there was a blast of cold air as Michael and Harry tramped back into the kitchen. Inwardly, Beth groaned. It was terrible timing. Kuragin immediately broke away from Beth’s gaze and hailed Michael like a long-lost friend.
‘Let me top up your glass,’ he said, grabbing the bottle and striding away from Beth as though she were radioactive.
Having for once wiped the mud and grass off his shoes, not something he was so punctilious about in her house, Harry wandered over to her side. ‘Everything ok?’ he asked, smiling down at her.
‘Did you know that Mark Smeaton is actually Slope, the artist?’ Beth said with no preamble.
Harry tutted and turned his head away, shook it slightly, then directed a chilly blue gaze right at her. ‘Really? You want to do this now, at lunch with your friends?’
Immediately, Beth felt terrible. She didn’t want to ruin poor Katie’s lunch party. Yes, she wanted to find out as much as she could about Smeaton; of course she did. She’d found the man’s poor broken body and she owed him that much. And as she’d now somehow also acquired his dog, she felt they were tied together in a strange and unexpected way. Colin had wagged his way into her heart, with his uncomplaining gentle nature.
She worried briefly about how he was managing at home with only Magpie for company, then dismissed the thought. He’d been asleep when they left to come over to Katie’s, and doubtless he’d be asleep when they got back.
Though she wouldn’t trust Colin an inch as a guard dog, having seen the appalling scene on the Rye where he must have unaccountably stood by while murder was done, or maybe even taken one of his extended naps, she had now become very fond of him. If she could find out who’d killed his master, she would. But yes, maybe Harry was right. This wasn’t the moment to get the thumbscrews out.
Chastened, she pressed his hand. ‘You’re right, I suppose. Listen, I’ll just see what Katie’s up to. I’m getting peckish and I bet everyone else is, too.’
Beth wandered out into the hall and looked around her. Katie must have taken Teddy off into the utility room. In Beth’s own house, the ‘utility room’ was the top of the washing machine, upon which perched everything from the washing basket – permanently overflowing like the magic porridge pot in the story – to the ultra-strong stain remover spray, which was Beth’s secret weapon against Ben’s one-boy campaign to destroy all his clothes. Right at the bottom of the basket was a strange string bag she’d bought on a whim for delicate items, before she’d realised they didn’t have any.
Katie, meanwhile, had an entire room, roughly the size of Beth’s sitting room, devoted to her laundry procedure. It wasn’t quite floor to ceiling marble, like her kitchen, but it was still very swanky.
Or had been. As Beth opened the door, she saw that Teddy had wreaked his familiar havoc here. The floor was littered with toys that had already been loved to death. There, in the corner, was the large cage, which was really more of a bijou wire mesh bed – a cube that stood nearly as tall as Beth did. The idea, presumably, was that this was Teddy’s retreat from the world, where he would curl up on a gorgeously squashy-looking fleecy bed, in a womb-like environment, forget his troubles, and drift off into peaceful doggy slumbers, dreaming of delicious cotton-tailed rabbits.
Unfortunately, this wasn’t going to happen today. The cage was already occupied. Teddy was sitting disconsolately outside, with the ruins of a particularly pricey-looking astrakhan cushion at his feet. And inside the cage, huddled up in a position that even years of yoga couldn’t possibly have made comfortable, was Katie. Her head was buried between her knees, her arms hugging her legs into her chest, reminding Beth strongly of a painting of Promet
heus she had once admired.
‘Katie!’ Beth was shocked. She hadn’t realised things had got this bad, despite the evidence of the charred chicken, the frozen food, and the chopping board. Not only was their lunch seriously at risk, but much more worryingly, it looked as though her friend was really having a mental health meltdown of epic proportions.
‘Katie, come out, please,’ said Beth, trying not to raise her voice too much. She didn’t want to alert Charlie or Ben to the crisis, or have anyone else seeing this distressing scene. ‘Things can’t be as bad as all this, surely?’
There was silence, apart from Teddy slobbering gently on a corner of the very dead cushion, and a faint sniffing emanating from Katie. Beth had never seen her friend like this before, and it was a seismic revelation. Katie was her rock. Whatever Kuragin said about his own name – and she couldn’t imagine anyone who was less like a ray of sunshine – Katie had always been the one to bring light, warmth, and joy into Beth’s life. There had been so many times when she’d felt she couldn’t go on, when even thinking about Katie and her generous, optimistic nature had been enough to convince her that her troubles would lessen if she just persevered for another minute, hour or day. Now Katie herself had been brought to this pass. Was it all about Teddy, or was there a lot more going on?
Beth couldn’t help giving the dog a very cross glance as she edged past him to the door of the cage, which was still open. She pushed it all the way back until she was close to Katie, and it was a little as though they had just chosen to sit together for a chat, although in a very uncomfortable fashion. Beth leaned her back against the cage, and put a hand in to pat Katie’s arm in what she hoped was a comforting way. She was so bad at all this tactile stuff.
For a moment, she considered abandoning ship and going to fetch Michael, but she knew that was pure cowardice. After all Katie had done for her over the years, the least she could do was share her friend’s misery for a while now. And besides, it had been clear since the moment they’d arrived that things weren’t going at all well between Katie and Michael. No prizes for guessing what the cause of the problem was. Beth flicked another cross glance towards the puppy, who was entirely oblivious, now happily licking the source of many of his wilder urges.
They sat there in silence, Beth stroking Katie’s arm ineffectually, Teddy drooling with little guttural sounds of rather revolting pleasure, while Beth tried to formulate some sort of sentence that would express total solidarity with Katie’s suffering, yet uplift her enough to get her out of the cage, and possibly the room. Beth’s stomach suddenly rumbled loudly. It was enough to break the tense atmosphere, and both women giggled a little.
‘Oops, sorry about that,’ said Beth. ‘Look, I know you’re feeling awful and I completely sympathise. But I think everyone’s getting to starvation point. Well, apart from Teddy,’ she added, averting her gaze from his busy tongue. ‘I know I am, so the boys are probably really hungry. Is there anything I can do to get lunch going? Or would you like me to just sit with you for a while? What’s the best thing I can do?’ Beth asked.
Katie sighed, her head still buried in her knees, then finally she turned her head to the side. Her fine blonde hair had stuck to her face a little. While it was cold in the garden, in this airless room it was getting quite warm with three stressed bodies grappling with a lot of emotions – or in Teddy’s case, with cushion remnants and other things that Beth didn’t even want to think about.
‘I’ll have to come out, won’t I?’ Katie said sadly. To her horror, Beth saw that her friend’s blue eyes had that overbright sheen which meant tears were less than a blink away. She nodded gently, but didn’t risk saying anything in case she got it wrong and the floodgates opened.
‘The irony is that I’ve been trying to persuade Teddy that it’s great sleeping in his cage, really comfy and safe and lovely. He won’t have anything to do with it. But now I know for sure it is actually super-comfortable, even scrunched up like this. I could stay here all day.’
‘Please don’t.’ Beth’s eyes widened in alarm. ‘It really doesn’t look at all relaxing, with your elbows virtually up your nose. You’re going to get cramp,’ said Beth, more confidently than she felt. Yoga teachers probably never got cramp, since they were made pretty much entirely out of elastic and rubber. But how on earth would it go down with Kuragin, let alone with Michael, if Beth breezed out into the kitchen and announced Katie wouldn’t be joining them as she was having more fun in a cage? Would Kuragin find that this was the kind of bourgeois friction he enjoyed so much?
Katie sighed again. ‘I suppose I can’t stay here all day, can I?’ Beth shook her head. ‘Has Michael even noticed I’m missing?’
Beth searched her memory of the kitchen, then had to shrug. ‘To be fair to him, he’s been outside all the time with Harry. I thought he and Kuragin were friends, but he seems to be avoiding him. Am I imagining that?’
Katie took a deep breath and Beth thought she was going to sigh for a third time, but instead she started to unfurl herself and wriggle out of the cage. Teddy, of course, thought this was the most marvellous game. He dropped his investigations to come sniffing around his mistress’s head and arms instead, making her extraction process all the more difficult and probably not at all hygienic.
Just when Beth thought she’d have to grab a limb, either canine or human, and give it a hearty pull, Katie emerged fully, looking really only slightly flustered considering she’d been jammed in a pet cage for some considerable time. She rapidly scraped the hair off her face, rubbed her eyes with the palms of her hands, and asked Beth, ‘How do I look?’
Beth surveyed her for a moment and could say, with hand on heart, ‘Really much better than anyone has a right to look, after what you’ve been up to.’ Now that Katie had emerged, she felt she could risk a question or two. ‘What on earth is going on, Katie? I know Teddy can be a nightmare, but this is, um, a little extreme.’
Katie, now sitting effortlessly cross-legged by the cage with Teddy’s adoring head in her lap, looked at her friend ruefully. Beth tried and failed to achieve anything like Katie’s serene lotus position with her short legs, tight hamstrings, and hips that didn’t want to give an inch, and settled for curling up any old how, hoping they’d be getting up very soon.
Meanwhile, Katie murmured, ‘You won’t believe it, but it’s this damned dog again.’
‘I have absolutely no trouble at all in believing it. Is he just driving you round the bend?’
‘Well yes,’ said Katie, stroking Teddy’s ears while he gazed at her in ecstasy. ‘But it’s much worse than that. He’s done something really bad.’
For a second, Beth looked at her friend in wordless alarm, a bewildering series of possibilities rushing through her mind in a frightening slide show. But then she shook the visions away. This was Katie, and a puppy. It really couldn’t be as catastrophic as it seemed. ‘Honestly, Katie, whatever it is, you’ll feel better if you talk about it. Just tell me. Please.’
‘It’s dreadful. I feel so terrible about it. He’s only gone and eaten the memory stick with Kuragin’s book on it. It was such bad luck, really, just before Kuragin arrived. The stick was on the desk in Michael’s study. Teddy jumped up the way he does, and two seconds later it was gone, and Teddy was looking a bit like he had indigestion. And now Michael’s got to break it to the man. That’s why he’s being so weird with me. Well, not just me, but Teddy and Kuragin as well. The only person he wants to be around at the moment is Charlie, and all Charlie wants to do is play with Ben.’
Despite her faith in her friend, Beth had been expecting all this to have been a bit of a fuss over nothing. But destroying someone’s book? She had to admit that wasn’t great. Kuragin would have a legitimate reason for going nuts. And so did Michael.
‘Oh, Katie, I’m so sorry,’ Beth said immediately. ‘This is a pickle, isn’t it? I can see why Michael is cross, I really can – but it’s not your fault, is it? Listen, we don’t have to stay. Particularly not if Be
n is monopolising Charlie, and Charlie is the only one who can get Michael to calm down. I’ll get him out of your hair…’ She made to get up, but Katie lunged for her arm.
‘Don’t you dare move! You’ve got to stay. Protect me from Michael. And Kuragin. And this blooming dog as well.’
Beth couldn’t help laughing, but looking at Katie’s stricken face, she realised it was too soon. Much too soon. She tried to make Katie see sense.
‘Listen, you don’t need to take the blame for Teddy eating the memory stick. It’s hard enough to stop him eating the whole house, let alone a tiny bit of plastic. And surely Kuragin will have another copy of this book? Or a backup on his laptop, or something? Who only has one copy of an important document these days? Only a total idiot, surely.’
Katie smiled, and though it was a tentative shadow of her usual beam, it was still like the sun coming out on a dreary, overcast day. ‘You’re right. He must have a duplicate. We’ve been working ourselves up over nothing. Come on, I’d better get out there, face the music. I know I didn’t eat the stick personally, but Michael is treating me as though I did.’
‘That’s so unfair! He must have noticed Teddy’s a bit of an omnivore,’ said Beth, glancing over at the puppy who was now taking a few exploratory nips at the laundry basket. As it was made of plastic, it seemed to be resisting his gnawing. So far. She wasn’t sure if the little dog was just breaking in new teeth, or whether he had a boundless appetite and hollow legs. But if he kept on eating at this rate, he’d be bigger than Katie’s enormous house in a month or two.
