Love Is a Four Letter Word (28 page)

‘Why? Not if you're going to tell me off. You're doing your schoolmaster voice.'

‘Give it a rest.' Will let out a breath. ‘Right.' He got back into the car and slammed the door.

Bella sat facing straight ahead like a passenger on a bus, feeling his eyes on her.

‘Hello?' Will ducked his head from side to side to try to make eye contact. ‘Hello? Am I going to get any response or what? It's like you're not even
here.
You've gone off to Kreuzer Dreamworld again, haven't you?'

Anger rose inside her, bubbling up through her body like boiling milk, threatening to spill over in a hiss of scalding steam and acrid smells. How could he? How dare he? She wanted to let it out, scream at him, rage at him, punch him as hard as she could. She dug her fingernails into her hands, felt her fury wind tight as a spring, coiling around her in wiry bands; she clung onto it, buckling it around her so it would hold her together.

‘Just don't.' She raised her hand in front of her face as if he were about to strike her.

‘Have you any idea how cold you seem when you do
that? How on earth is anyone ever supposed to get close to you if you keep shutting them out?'

‘I don't imagine anyone is
supposed
to get close to anyone else. You either are or you aren't.'

‘Fine. And I never have been?'

Bella shrugged and folded her arms.

‘Right. No need to put up a placard. I think even thicko Will has finally got the message.' He fumbled for the door-handle. ‘I love you to pieces. You know I do. But I can't—'

She could see him trying to swallow.

‘Whatever.' He clenched and unclenched his hands. ‘Why didn't you just say you didn't love me? Is it so hard? Will, I don't love you, please go away. There. I feel like – I don't know. Jesus. I—' He ran his fingers through his hair and was silent for a moment. ‘It's Patrick, isn't it? You're still in love with him. And how the
fuck
is anyone supposed to compete with a
dead
guy on a fucking ginormous pedestal?'

Bella held herself still as he opened the car door. A wall of cold air hit her, surrounding her. She felt it was coating her, pouring over her like chilled liquid glass, sealing her in.

‘I do love you,' she spoke quietly.

‘Well, feel free to have mentioned it before now. Or had you signed the Official Secrets Act?'

The touch of his lips briefly brushing her hair.

‘Take care of yourself,' he said, without turning round.

The door clunked firmly behind him. And then there was nothing, only the almost-silence of air prickling in her ears and his footsteps walking away.

Bella took from the dresser a fine china cup and saucer, one patterned with tiny shamrock leaves and edged with gold. Decanted some milk into a small matching china jug. She needed proper tea, more for the predictable complexity of the ritual than for the flavour. Real tea, English Breakfast. Warmed the hand-painted teapot, losing herself in its swirls of colour: citrus, sky and seaweed. One and a half spoons of tea, using the smooth wooden caddy spoon Patrick had given her in her stocking one Christmas, carved from a cherry tree; a tiny bit more to make it just so.

If only tea were harder to make, then she could really put 100 per cent of her mind to it, lean on it, let it hold her together, perhaps that was what the Japanese Tea Ceremony was all about, the quest for order, for pattern in the untidiness of life. Then she could sink herself absolutely into the perfect execution of the elaborate process, keeping those other thoughts at bay – those thoughts that now nestled in the tea tin, waiting for her when she eased off the tightly-fitting lid, that poured creamy-white from the milk jug, clouding the clear tea in her cup, that breathed hotly on her upper lip as she dipped her head to drink.

She cradled the cup in her hands, concentrating on the slight burning of her fingers through the thin china,
and examined the floor. That rug was really very pleasing in here, she thought, wonderful colours, but a bit slippy on the floorboards; perhaps she should get one of those mat thingies to go underneath. Or, she had a sudden thought, she could get rid of it and
paint
a rug on the floor. An image came to her of the entire house emptied of objects, with
trompe-l'oeil
furniture painted on the walls, lamps on the ceilings, a stage set in distorted perspective; the cushions would never be creased nor the rug ruckled; nothing would wear out, nothing would get broken, nothing would change.

Of course, it was impossible NOT to think about a particular person or a particular thing just by deciding to. The very act of NOT thinking about – brought his face bright and alive before her. She would not name him to herself as if even the letters, the sound of them in her head, held the power of a spell. His scent seemed to hover in the air, catching her unawares when she entered the bedroom. She felt she could see the imprint of his footsteps on the floors, the whorls of his fingerprints on furniture, objects, as if she had infrared vision. She must fill her head with something else, anything else, to oust him. Flush out all thoughts of him as if they were no more than niggling grains of sand stubbornly stuck between her toes. Soon he would be uprooted from her mind, and his face nothing but a fragile, gauzy image, a fleeting fragment of a distant dream.

Thank God she had her painting to focus on. The date of the exhibition private view gleamed in red pen in her diary; she forced herself to keep it in her sights, a brilliant buoy in a dark ocean. When she got home from work, she dumped her bag on the floor, clunking her keys on the table, sloughing off her jacket like a snake eager to slither from its old skin. She ate
standing at the cluttered kitchen worktop, shoving aside coffee-cups and old newspapers, hunched over a dish of pasta – forking it rhythmically into her mouth as if fuelling a boiler, not bothering to chop onions, crush garlic for a sauce, bored with cooking, bored with eating, bored with herself. Then she climbed the stairs to her studio and sank into her paintings, losing herself in colour and shadow, letting the smell of paint and turpentine fill her head, her brush jabbing into the paint, swirling onto canvas, blotting him out.

She stood under the shower, an automaton washing herself by rote. Felt like a gerbil in an exercise wheel, running nowhere, endlessly watching the same scenery. Wash, dress, teeth, work. Eat, undress, wash, teeth. Again and again. Year in, year out. And a relationship was no different. Meet, date, talk, kiss, fuck, row. Again and again. What a waste of time. At least with painting, once the brush touched the canvas, the board, the paper, the mark was there. It existed without her having to redo it over and over again. Even if she were to paint over it, she knew the original brushstroke remained beneath, hidden yet real.

Bella started getting into work crisply at nine instead of breezing in towards ten with the rest of them, paring down the hours to be endured alone at home. Work was dull but safe and she was grateful for the routine and the office banter. She shunned socializing, pleading the need to prepare for her exhibition when the others sloped off to the pub, even avoiding Viv. She stayed late one Friday evening to excavate the office fridge, a task that had been left so long that Anthony said she should wear protective clothing and evacuate the building. Seline had agreed that it would be worth attempting to train Anthony as Bella's deputy if she could get him to act a little more responsibly and not refer to his pierced nipple in front of clients. Bella
concentrated on ‘grooming him for stardom' as he put it.

‘Other boys wanted to be astronauts, footballers,' he said, ‘but I dreamed of becoming a megalomaniac.'

‘All in good time,' she said. ‘Don't let them see the power-crazed glint in your eye until it's too late.'

She closed the door from Seline's office with a too-loud clunk, after yet another meeting that had once again been sidetracked from the insignificant issue of future projects and which ones Bella might be involved with on a freelance basis to the far more important one of the redecoration of Seline's house, involving the serious consideration of two thousand shade cards with tiny squares of infinitesimally differing tones of what used to be known as beige but now seemed to be called ‘Cappuccino', ‘Sahara' and ‘Antique Gold'.

Two yellow stickies on her phone: ‘Your dad called. Have you remembered your mum's birthday? Please call back.' Another Duty Visit, that would be fun; she flicked through her desk diary – it was a Friday, she'd have to book a day off. And a message from Viv, saying hello and goodbye before she went off to work at head office in Birmingham for three weeks. It was too late to ring her back anyway – she'd have gone by now. Viv had been strangely unsympathetic when Bella told her about Will – ‘You're a bloody idiot if you've shoved him away, Bel. That man is a gem.'

A series of sketches were spread out on her studio floor and she was about to start painting when the phone rang. It was Fran's voice on the answerphone; Bella stood at the top of the stairs, wanting to run down and pick up the phone. Fran went on at length – she was ringing to see how Bella was, to tell her she was still very welcome, she didn't have to come with Will. Bella
crept downstairs as if Fran could detect her presence, and rested her hand on the phone.

‘I know I can be a bit of a nosy old bag, but I promise not to interfere. I'd just love to see you. I'm so fond of you and I hate it when people lose touch – life's too short. Besides, I have an ulterior motive …'

She'd just said she wouldn't interfere; surely Fran wasn't going to lecture her about Will?

‘… I'd love some more of that flan you made. The upside-downy one …'

The tarte Tatin?

‘I even dreamt about it the other night. That's what being past the menopause does for you. No more fantasizing about muscular chappies whisking you off into the sunset.'

Bella thought about standing in Fran's kitchen, rolling out pastry while Will peeled the apples, dipping a piece into the bag of sugar before slipping it into her mouth; his look of childlike wonder when she had turned the tin upside down and there was the tart, warm and brown and smelling of caramel; his face as he smiled at her across the kitchen table.

‘I daresay you must be up to your eyes preparing for your exhibition. Will told me – he sounded so proud of you …'

Should she pick up?

‘Anyway, sorry to blether on, hope I haven't used up your tape. Do ring me any time you want to come. Don't wait to be asked. It's always open house here for you.'

And then she was gone.

Donald MacIntyre phoned from the gallery. How were things progressing, he wanted to know, and could she supply a brief biography of herself. She sat slumped on the stairs, lulled by the rich maleness of his voice.

‘… you'll need to have them here by then at the
latest so they can go to the framers … or would you like us to pick them up? We can do that.'

‘I think – there – might – I think there could be a bit of a problem.'

‘Oh?' His tone was cool.

‘Um, yes. I'm not sure if they're – well, I might not be ready for the exhibition. I think perhaps you should just count me out.'

‘No.' He spoke with authority. ‘Sounds like classic pre-exhibition jitters to me. Let me come and see what you've done.'

‘I'd rather you didn't.'

‘I'm afraid I think I'll have to. Say this evening? Around eight?'

Donald MacIntyre was taller than she had remembered, filling the sitting-room with his presence. His smart suit made her suddenly self-conscious about her appearance – her hair hauled back roughly into a clip, her faded leggings and slipped-down socks. She saw his gaze sweep the room, noticing the half-drunk mugs of coffee dotted around on every flat surface, long-dry washing draped over the radiators.

‘They're upstairs.' Bella led the way.

She was sure he would hate them, anticipated his embarrassed look of disappointment, the shrug of his shoulders as he searched for the most tactful phrases. Best get it over with.

‘There are just a few water-colours.' She gestured. ‘Some line drawings as well. The rest are oils, as before.'

He squatted, incongruous in his beautiful tailoring among the oily rags and half-squished tubes of paint.

‘Careful! Those ones aren't quite dry yet.'

He paused by a large painting, the one based on her very first sketch of Will.

‘This.' He nodded. ‘For the window.'

‘No!' She coughed apologetically. ‘It's not for sale.'

He laughed drily to himself and shook his head.

‘We can fight about that later. Anyway, what was all this nonsense about your not being ready?'

Bella shrugged.

‘With the others you brought, there's more than we have space for anyway. However …'

Here it comes, she thought, he hates them.

‘These are better than a couple of the other ones, so we might have a bit of a swap round before they go to the framers, OK?' He straightened up with a creak. ‘Getting old.' He tutted at himself, then looked at her. ‘Is there a problem?'

‘No. Yes. Are they – all right then?'

And then he laughed. A great big, generous, booming laugh. Bella giggled nervously, unsure why he was laughing, surprised that such a sound could emanate from this quiet, elegant man.

‘I do apologize,' he said. ‘Forgive me. Do you think for one second that I would exhibit them if I didn't think they were “all right”? Why would I? I'm not running a charity for unemployed artists. All right? No, they're not all right. They're bloody good. Really. Consider yourself told.' He shook his head, laughing again. ‘I love this business,' he said. ‘If only I didn't have to deal with artists.'

‘You'll bring Will of course, won't you?' Gerald said on the phone when Bella finally returned his call about Alessandra's birthday.