The tightrope walkers, p.3
The Tightrope Walkers, page 3
‘May I come in?’
Opening the door, Amanda grinned at the inquiring face of her one good friend in Norwich.
‘Naturally. Coffee, Iris?’
‘Please.’
Iris Fowlins, who had arrived at the university the same year as Amanda, was reading English and seemed incapable of being impressed by anything. The daughter of an oil-company director, she, too, had had a cosmopolitan childhood, and Amanda’s tales of Florentine society moved her to no more than sympathy, which was attractive to someone who both longed for admiration and yet despised it when it was offered too easily.
Iris had none of Amanda’s glamour; she was plump, had perennially untidy long hair and dressed badly, and yet there was a sexiness about her that was appealing. On that day she was wearing a pair of old black corduroy trousers so loose that they looked as though they might fall off her wide hips and an equally loose tunic made of black jersey splattered with purple flowers. She looked comfortable and quite at ease with her sloppy clothes.
Amanda liked her for her cynicism, her jokes, her refusal to accept anyone’s pretentions, and for her enviable emotional sophistication.
‘Another letter from your infatuated Oxford admirer?’ she asked, pointing to the blue envelope as Amanda handed her a scarlet mug of instant coffee with undissolved crumbs of dried milk clinging to the edge.
‘Yes. It’s such a pity.’
‘What, exactly?’ Iris took a mouthful of coffee and grimaced. ‘Bugger! You’ve gone and boiled the kettle again.’
‘It’s the way I was brought up. You ought to remember that,’ said Amanda, who never apologised for anything, even to her friends. ‘The pity of poor Andrew is that he writes the most marvellous letters. They’re funny, clever, entertaining – and uncomplicated.’ Amanda stretched out her long yellow legs and leaned back in her chair.
‘Unlike him, you mean? Then that is a pity; not least because he’s so good-looking. It seems such a waste.’
‘Don’t.’ Amanda laughed. ‘Actually his looks probably strike me less than you because I’ve known him so long.’
Iris got up and carried her mug to the basin, where she slopped some of the coffee down the drain and refilled her mug with cold water from the tap.
‘Some people have all the luck. That’s better,’ she said, swallowing some coffee. ‘What is it about him that turns you off so badly?’
‘This and that. How’s Benedict?’
Iris looked sideways at her friend and silently accepted her refusal to answer questions. She had her own views on why Amanda found Andrew Suvarov tiresome but had decided to keep them to herself unless she were specifically asked for them.
‘Ben’s fine,’ she said easily. ‘He brought me a huge bunch of elegant bare branches yesterday.’
‘Lovely!’ The sarcasm in Amanda’s voice brought a smile to Iris’s warm brown eyes.
‘They are actually. In that white pot I’ve got they look terrific against the Klee poster. But I can’t imagine where he got them. There just aren’t enough trees to have shed that many branches naturally. I’d been moaning about the lack of big, deep, dark woods round here the day before and he must have gone off to get them for me.’
‘Romantic.’ Amanda sipped some of her hot coffee.
‘Yes, but touching too. On the scale I’d say it was well above five, wouldn’t you?’
‘Perhaps.’
The two of them had worked out their ‘acceptability scale’by the second week of their first term as young men, faced with hundreds of available women for the first time in their lives, began to stake out their claims and territories. Very few of their gestures passed the halfway mark of five. Privately, Amanda would have put Andrew Suvarov’s letters at about nine and his actual physical presence, despite his looks, at nearer two and a half.
‘Do you actually like sex?’ she asked abruptly, remembering all his fruitless pleas during the Christmas vacation.
‘Depends. Sometimes it’s foie gras to the sound of trumpets. Usually it’s cold porridge to the sound of a Methodist hymn.’ Iris wriggled slightly in pleasure at her own joke and drank the remains of her coffee. ‘Why?’
‘I was just curious. People go on about it so.’
‘Wanking’s usually better. I’ve got an essay. I’d better go.’
Amanda watched Iris wave casually from the doorway, thinking admiringly that never in a million years could she have said anything like that. She tried to practise it, imagining herself saying it to her mother. It was not convincing.
She finished her essay, read it through to make certain there were no glaring mistakes or patches of naïvety and then wrote politely to Comfort Gillingham to suggest that they should go to the exhibition together. She would, she wrote, be ready at six o’clock.
In fact she was not ready. Having spent the afternoon fending off the advances of one of her more persistent admirers, she was late getting into the bathrooms. She had to wash her hair, which was so long and thick that it took about three-quarters of an hour to dry. Alternately painting her face and checking her watch, she was still standing in front of the wholly inadequate mirror in her room, making up her face, at six o’clock.
Hurriedly pulling on a new dress, so that she would at least be decent when Comfort Gillingham arrived, she went back to her make-up, carefully sticking on her false eyelashes. When everything was done, she checked each aspect of her appearance in the mirror.
The dress was made of thin black wool printed with maroon swirls and it exaggerated both her height and her slenderness. It had a round-edged collar, a high waist and very tight sleeves, and its hem hung ten inches above her knees. Her dark hair fell, sleek and glossy, over her shoulders and she had made herself up to look very pale to set it off. Almost the only colour in her face was provided by her dark-ringed eyes and the maroon lipstick she had used. She had just decided that all was well when she heard a knock at the door.
Pausing only to spray some Hermès Calèche behind her ears, she opened the door to her visitor.
Comfort Gillingham’s extraordinary face, with its bony nose and hooded, glinting, slate-coloured eyes, was familiar from innumerable photographs, but Amanda had expected neither her smallness nor the extraordinary impression of power that she carried with her.
‘Do come in,’ Amanda said, stepping backwards and feeling unaccountably shy.
‘Thank you,’ said the painter in a slightly hoarse voice that retained the faintest trace of an American accent. She looked Amanda up and down and laughed.
‘What’s the matter?’ Amanda was slightly affronted.
‘I’ve been watching the development of your face in Tibor’s paintings since you were about six. You’ve now reached the stage where your real individuality is beginning to show at last and yet you get yourself up like any trendy shopgirl. May I sit down?’
Amanda pulled up the only spare chair and gestured to it, unable to think of a suitable answer to a statement that had shocked her, and at the same time titillated, with its mixture of criticism and surprisingly familiar knowledge of her past. Comfort unbuttoned her wide aubergine-coloured coat to reveal emerald silk beneath and sank gracefully down into the chair.
‘I didn’t know that you knew him,’ said Amanda at last. ‘He hasn’t sold any of the things he’s done of me – except to my parents.’
‘I’ve always seen them in his studio as he was working on them. Tibor and I know each other well. Has he never told you that?’
‘I don’t think he’s ever even mentioned you. How bizarre!’
Comfort Gillingham shrugged.
‘If I’m to paint you,’ she said, watching Amanda, ‘I shall strip off all that make-up and have you as you are. Are you prepared to risk that?’
‘Is it so dangerous?’ Amanda was beginning to relax. She had never met anyone quite like Comfort before, but her peculiar manner was appealing.
Comfort smiled at the question and raised one flying eyebrow.
‘If I do my job properly, I’d say it was quite a considerable risk. You may see things you don’t expect.’
‘Such as?’
‘I can’t tell yet. Only the preliminary drawings will give us a due. Well, are you prepared to try?’
‘Yes, please.’ Amanda could hear an unsuitable eagerness in her voice and damped it down. ‘When shall you need me?’
‘What plans have you got for the vacation?’
‘Nothing except for some scattered modelling jobs in the middle two weeks. I’m not going to Fiesole this vac because I’ll be there for most of the summer working on my dissertation.’
‘Then I suggest daily sittings for next week,’ said Comfort, displaying a most unusual lack of awe in Amanda’s plans. ‘That will give me time to decide how I’m going to proceed and after that we can fit sittings in with your other work. Shall we go? I have a car waiting downstairs.’
As they walked together from Amanda’s room to the windswept car park, Comfort shuddered.
‘How can you bear it? It’s exactly like a prison.’ She waved one long-fingered hand towards the entrance to one of the residential buildings, where labels marked ‘Floor 01’, ‘Floor 02’ and so on were the only decoration.
‘I find it rather exciting actually,’ said Amanda, gesturing gracefully towards the stepped apex of the building that overlooked the lawns and trees. ‘The mixture of stark lines and natural curves is rather pleasing.’
Comfort looked amused and changed the subject back to Tibor Smith, whom she appeared to know surprisingly well, until they reached the car she had hired. Amanda thought of the tedious bus ride that would have been her alternative and smiled.
The gallery was already full when they arrived. Comfort stood for a moment at the edge of the noisy throng and then turned, held out her hand and smiled in sudden brilliance as Amanda took it.
‘Thank you for saying yes,’ Comfort said. ‘I think we might both enjoy it. I shall see you at four o’clock the day after tomorrow. It’s the same address as on my letter.’
Amanda nodded, feeling the strength of Comfort’s hand.
‘Thank you for bringing me here,’ she said. Comfort nodded and moved into the crowd.
Slightly shaken by the whole episode and by Comfort’s strange familiarity with her childhood, Amanda took a glass of champagne and a handful of nuts from a tray and waited for someone to notice her. In the short interval before they did, she watched Comfort Gillingham receiving the homage of a great many important critics, connoisseurs and scholars and for the first time asked herself why such a celebrated painter should have wanted her as a model. The doubts did not persist for long once Amanda’s own admirers began to flock round her.
Chapter Three
The telephone bell shrilled in Felicity’s ear, waking her from a heavy sleep. Blinking and licking her dry lips, she pushed herself up against the pillows and reached for the receiver.
‘Hello,’ she said, becoming aware that she had woken an hour or so earlier and must have fallen into a second, much deeper, sleep. Her brain felt slow and useless and there was a dryness about her mouth that made forming words uncomfortable.
‘Flixe, is that you?’ Julia Wallington’s voice was urgent enough to wrench Felicity’s thoughts from her uncomfortable headache. She remembered going down to the kitchen to make a cup of hot chocolate at about two in the morning and adding a slug of cooking brandy to help her sleep.
‘Yes, what’s up, Julia?’
‘Amanda. She’s excelled herself this time. She danced in here yesterday evening to announce triumphantly that Comfort Gillingham of all people has invited her to sit for a portrait, and the wretched child’s gone and agreed.’
There was a pause while Flixe tried to make her mind work properly. Memories of the things Julia had said about her first marriage years earlier warned Flixe to take the announcement seriously. She was wryly amused to think of her son’s vision of Julia as a terrifying basilisk when she was so ready to ask for help and solace for her various wounds.
‘That doesn’t sound too disastrous,’ Flixe said, her voice warmed by her amusement. ‘After all Amanda’s quite accustomed to being painted by Tibor. I can see why you’re bothered at the idea of the two of them in contact, but I honestly don’t think Amanda will get into any kind of trouble. There’s nothing Comfort can do to her after all.’
‘You don’t know her. She could make trouble out of a simple walk in the park. Besides, if she didn’t want to get at me, why on earth would she want Amanda?’
Flixe laughed. Back in her familiar role of confidante and adviser, she felt a shadow of the old security.
‘Come off it, Julia,’ she said easily. ‘Amanda’s been in the news a lot lately; I suspect your erstwhile sister-in-law merely wants to establish her credentials among the trendy set by painting one of its newest and youngest stars. And she is highly paintable. You must see that.’
As she spoke, Flixe thought with satisfaction that if Amanda were preoccupied with having her portrait painted she would not have much time left in which to torment Andrew, who had arrived back from Oxford the previous day laden with bags of books. With his final schools the following term he needed to work undistracted.
‘I suppose you’re right,’ said Julia slowly, ‘but I can’t help feeling that something dreadful will come out of it.’
Flixe thought then that she understood what was worrying her old friend. Her headache forgotten, she concentrated on Julia’s tricky relations with her daughter.
‘Perhaps you’re bothered that the two of them will get together to conspire against you?’ she suggested. When Julia said nothing, Flixe went on as gently as possible: ‘It’s not very likely you know. Comfort behaved badly to you twenty-odd years ago, and I know that Amanda is difficult, but I don’t think you need worry. Amanda at least is very fond of you.’
‘If she is, she never shows it.’ Some of the habitual humour was creeping back into Julia’s voice. ‘You’re right, of course, Flixe. I hadn’t seen it, but that could well be what’s behind my certainty of disaster. I suppose I don’t trust Comfort and there’s no doubt that Amanda delights in doing things she knows I dislike, whatever she does or doesn’t think about me.’
‘I think that’s because—’ Flixe began and then stopped, reluctant to say something that might upset Julia.
‘Because what? Come on, Flixe, don’t leave me in suspense.’
‘I just wondered whether that might be a kind of double-bluff. If you’re angry with her – which you often are – then at least she’ll know it’s because she’s done something you disapprove of. D’you see what I mean?’
‘Yes,’ said Julia after another silence, ‘but I think it’s a bit over-subtle… not something I’d accept in court. I can just imagine opposing counsel’s objection: “Supposition, m’lord. There’s no corroborative evidence at all for what m’learned friend has just suggested.”’
Flixe laughed dutifully, thinking that everyone had a defence against too much difficult emotion. Hers might be other people’s problems; Julia’s was definitely her work and the success it had brought her.
‘Talking of court, I’d better run,’ said Julia. ‘Thank you, Flixe. You always do manage to cheer me up even when you give me a wigging.’
‘And even when I make you cross?’
‘Even then. But, Flixe, we’ve talked enough about me. Before I go, will you tell me how you are – really?’
‘Bearing up.’ Flixe’s voice had changed. While she was consoling Julia it had been warm and backed with affectionate amusement. When their positions were reversed, it seemed to cool and harden in defence. ‘Thanks for ringing, Julia. Good-bye.’
‘I wish I could do something to help,’ said Julia urgently.
‘You have, Julia. Without your guarantee at the bank I couldn’t have screwed enough of an overdraft out of them to carry on.’
‘That’s not exactly what I meant.’
‘I know, but I don’t think anyone can do anything about the rest. Time, no doubt, will help.’
‘I hope so, Flixe, You know we all—’
‘I know. Thank you, Julia.’
As soon as her friend had rung off, Flixe threw back the blankets and hurried to the adjoining bathroom to run herself a bath. She noticed that her headache had gone completely.
‘Why can’t I find consoling the constituents as refreshing as doing it for my friends?’ she asked herself as she mentally listed the things she had to do that day.
Her three younger children would be breaking up for the holidays in a week’s time and then she would need to concentrate on them. Before that she had to complete arrangements for the first of the deb dances she was being paid to organise that season and make sure that all the outstanding constituency matters had been settled. The sitting Member of Parliament had graciously agreed to take all his own surgeries for the school holidays but Flixe knew that he expected her to leave a desk clear of problems.
If his goodwill had not been so important to her future, she thought as she got into her bath and started to wash, she might have been tempted to tell him exactly what she thought of his handing on to her all the work he most disliked but for which he still got the salary.
She was honest enough to recognise that a large measure of her resentment was caused not by the money but by the depressing effect of listening to his constituents’problems. So many of them were insoluble that offering encouragement and comfort seemed hypocritical and yet not to offer anything was worse.
No Member of Parliament, however consciertious and effective, could make the stupid intelligent, the poor rich, the criminal law-abiding, or turn noisy, malicious, difficult people into ideal neighbours. Only when the constituents’ difficulties were caused by idle or obstructive officials did Flixe feel she had any chance of sucessfully helping them. Then she pursued their claims with a vigour that Michael Diseholme occasionally mocked but more often applauded, and she even enjoyed doing it. For the rest of the time she felt helpless in the face of the constituents’misery and all too aware of her own.
