‘He sounds like a nightmare,’ she said to James. ‘The more brilliant they are, the madder they are.’ ‘You’re an artist and you’re not mad,’ said James equably.
He was obviously trying to make up to her for not remembering her birthday.
‘I’m one of the practical ones and we’re a rare breed in the art world,’ she said. ‘Besides, I haven’t been able to earn much of a living painting, have I? I’m missing the mad gene. Thank God for teaching.’
‘He might be as normal as you and me and turn out to be just the man for Ana.’
‘I doubt it. If he messes with Ana, I’ll throw turpentine on all his canvases, I swear,’ she added grimly. She’d been protecting Ana all her life and she’d protect her from this maniac if it was the last thing she did. Then again, who was she to say what sort of man was right for Ana? She’d picked James and he’d recently transformed himself into a grumpy chauvinist.
Word of Carey Wolensky’s fame had certainly spread because there were bodies crushed all around the entrance to the Bamboo Gallery when they arrived, and people clutching catalogues emerged from the gallery itself, crying ‘fabulous’, ‘marvellous’, and ‘such talent!’
They joined the crush and squashed their way inside, where walls of dark and brooding Wolenskys glared down at them. Christie loved art in all its forms, but she’d never been a fan of dark abstract work like this. Oils painted with masterly knife strokes, these pictures were like tornadoes caught on canvas, full of energy and power, and infinitely startling.
There were a few portraits in the collection, but the people in them were cold, harsh and angular, not warm and curved like the Gauguin women Christie loved.
But clearly she was the only one who didn’t approve. There were lots of little red sold stickers stuck on the frames and it was clear that Wolensky would not need to teach at St Ursula’s to pay the rent.
This was all wrong, Christie felt. This man with his dark sinister paintings was not the right sort of man to court her sister. Ana didn’t know a sausage about art and didn’t have a pretentious bone in her body.
The man who’d painted these pictures was fierce and utterly in control. She’d have to warn Ana off him. Christie didn’t want another controlling man like their father to take her over.
‘You got here! And you look wonderful, almost Birthday Girl!’ Ana proclaimed, admiring her sister.
In honour of her birthday dinner, Christie had left her hair down and had stuck heated rollers in
it, so it now tumbled darkly around shoulders gleaming in a plum velvet halterneck dress that clung to her tall, womanly body.
‘Really, you don’t look like fifty at all,’ Ana teased, and Christie threw back her head and laughed her rich, deep laugh. It felt lovely to be with her sister someone who appreciated and loved her.
When she looked back at Ana, a man was standing beside her, and Christie felt something she didn’t think she’d ever experienced before: a spark of tinder and a sensation that this was a person she’d known all her life.
Carey Wolensky wasn’t any oil painting himself, Christie thought drily, but the same passion and vivacity that inhabited his work inhabited his person too. She was tall but he was at least six inches taller and lean, with rather wild dark hair and deep-set eyes that stared bird-of-prey-like at her over a broken boxer’s nose, taking in every detail. He was around her age, maybe older, and looked as if he wanted to taste every emotion, touch every second of life, in case he missed anything. There were many people crowded around and yet Carey Wolensky had that rare ability to be the person every eye was drawn towards.
‘Pleased to meet you,’ said James, who seemed to be enjoying himself now he had relaxed with a couple of drinks.
Carey nodded and smiled, and the bleakness left his face.
More people gathered round him to say how much they admired his paintings, and Ana’s friend Chloe announced that the gallery owner was having a huge party in his house, ‘a mansion on Haddington Road, with a swimming pool in the basement!’ and they were all invited.
‘We’re going out to dinner,’ said Christie loudly. ‘We can’t come.’ She didn’t know why but she knew that staying here was a mistake.
‘A party’s exactly what we need,’ James said, ‘a wild, music-filled night to get you over the misery of being thirty-five.’
‘I’m not miserable,’ insisted Christie. ‘I just don’t want to go.’
‘If Christie does not want to go, she does not have to go,’ said a voice. It was the first time Carey had spoken and she thought his accent was like Lenkya’s, the deep purr of drawn-out syllables. It was a voice used to the harsh rasp of Polish consonants and it growled over the softness of her language, making it a language of love.
They stared at each other, oblivious to everyone else. Christie could have drawn his face instantly, she knew it so well. He watched her as if he would touch the contours of her face, then move down to her body, unhooking the halterneck dress to caress the skin beneath …
‘Isn’t he wonderful?’ sighed Ana, taking Christie’s arm. ‘I think he’s the one,’ she whispered for Christie alone. ‘Well, I hope he is. He says he’s too old for me and that’s sexy, isn’t it?
Reverse psychology. It makes me want him even more now.’
Carey still locked gazes with Christie and she knew she’d have to look away or it would be obvious to everyone around them, obvious that Carey Wolensky and Christie Devlin were experiencing a physical attraction hot enough to send the whole room up in flames.
‘Wolensky, marvellous show.’ A well-dressed and well-padded man with a cigar broke the spell by standing between them.
A rich collector, Christie surmised, exactly the sort of person to take Wolensky’s attention. Only the greenest artist didn’t know that the official language of art was hard currency.
Christie stood back and breathed deeply. She was married. This was her sister’s boyfriend, her beloved Ana’s man. There would be, could be, no electricity between them.
‘Shall I take you round the exhibition?’ asked Ana.
‘Yes, take me round,’ Christie said.
With James at one side and Ana at the other, they toured the pictures, Ana explaining what each canvas was called and James standing back and raising his eyebrows occasionally. Normally, Christie would have teased him every time he did this, whispering that he was a philistine and the only picture he’d really adored was the one of the tennis player scratching her knickerless bum. Which would make James grin and say no, he liked the poster of the dogs playing poker best.
This time, James’s lack of comprehension irritated Christie. Couldn’t he see how amazing these paintings were, the energy and fire that burned out at the audience?
By the time Lenkya arrived at the gallery, Christie and James weren’t talking to each other. ‘Argument?’ asked Lenkya, kissing Christie twice, European-style.
‘Yes,’ sighed Christie. ‘What’s new?’
Lenkya was with her partner, a sculptor, and they toured the exhibition quickly.
‘We’re going to dinner,’ Lenkya said, putting an arm round her friend. ‘You are sad, you should come with us. You and James will never make up your differences here in this noisy place.’
‘No,’ said Christie firmly, ‘we’re staying a little longer.’ Another thing she regretted. For if she and James had left then, it might never have happened.
As the crowds milled around, Christie could feel Wolensky watching her, feel the intensity of his mind turned towards hers. She did all those things you did when you were being watched: stood up straighter, held herself even more gracefully, smiled more, wanting to look more beautiful in his eyes even though, as she did it, she knew it was wrong.
They went to the party on Haddington Road. ‘It’ll be a bit of craic,’ James said. ‘We said we’d
be home by twelve and it’s only half nine now. We can phone Fiona on the way to say we won’t be in the restaurant but we won’t be late, either.’
Fiona, who was babysitting, was a college student who lived on Summer Street with her parents. Her mother was a nurse, which gave Christie peace of mind that if anything did happen - please God it wouldn’t - Fiona’s mother would be at number 34 in a flash with the full breadth of her medical training.
‘I don’t know …’ Christie began, feeling strangely edgy.
‘Stop being a martyr!’ exploded James. ‘You’re furious I didn’t arrange a big birthday evening for you, and now we have a chance of a party where we’ll have some fun, and you don’t know if you want to do that either! You don’t know what you want to do.’
Perhaps if they hadn’t had the argument, perhaps if Christie hadn’t felt so lonely and neglected for so long, perhaps if Ana hadn’t started flirting with a young man with merry eyes, and perhaps if Christie hadn’t felt pure admiration at Wolensky’s stunning paintings, then none of it might have happened.
The house on Haddington Road was a large Victorian mansion with pale floorboards and walls, perfect for displaying art, and utterly unsuitable for a wildly boozy party. Christie felt old surrounded by Ana’s friends, who’d soon located a stereo and a stack of records to organise an impromptu disco. Ana and a group of her girlfriends began to dance. The young man with the merry eyes joined in, and Christie watched as Ana laughingly held his hands, clearly not caring whether her supposed artist boyfriend saw them or not. He was nothing compared to Wolensky, Christie thought, mystified.
James was still barely talking to her and was ensconced on a deep window seat with a man who turned out to be one of his brother’s old friends.
Christie felt alone and miserable, until a hand took hers and led her out of the kitchen, into a small hallway and up three flights of stairs to a huge attic room hung with paintings.
‘This is where he keeps the good stuff,’ Carey said, not letting go of her hand. ‘The paintings that are valuable. He has two of mine, see.’
They were alone, standing hip to hip, and even though her head told her it was wrong, her heart screamed that it was right.
She adored Ana, and she adored James. This should not be happening, she had to get out of there. Yet she felt as if she’d die if Carey didn’t swing round and haul her into his arms, sinking into her soul and her body.
‘You feel it too,’ Carey said softly. He was looking down at her hand now, examining it, touching the palm as if he could see her whole life through the lines on her hand. ‘What is between us. You feel it, I know.’
‘No, I don’t,’ she lied. ‘I’m married.’ As if that
was a talisman she could hold up like a crucifix to Dracula.
‘So,’ he said, still looking down at where her hand was trapped by both of his. ‘Marriage severs the mind from the body, yes?’
‘It does for Catholics,’ Christie replied in an attempt at levity. ‘It’s in the ceremony. Forsaking all others.’ She couldn’t remember the rest of the vows, to her shame.
Then who are not allowed to have women make up those rules,’ Carey murmured. ‘They cannot be expected to understand that such rules cannot always be followed.’
‘I believe in those rules,’ Christie said. ‘And I love my husband.’ This was true, utterly true. But she felt shaken still. For if she absolutely loved James, how could she feel so wildly attracted to this man? If he made just one move towards her, she’d offer herself to him, here on the floor with scores of people beneath them.
‘Ah.’ He let go of her hand and Christie felt bereft.
She hadn’t been teasing. She’d meant every word she said, but having him touch her had been so tender.
‘I will let you go,’ he added, ‘but can I touch your face, first, to remember?’
Her eyes, shining with excitement, must have said yes, because Carey stood inches away from her and with both hands cradled her face, rubbing his thumbs over the high planes of her cheekbones, down to the sweep of her jaw, and over the softness of her mouth.
When his thumb massaged her lower lip, slipping into the cavern of her mouth, she couldn’t stop herself biting gently.
Watch out, said every instinct inside her. This is not a game.
‘Not a unicorn after all but a lioness,’ he said as her bite eased.
She made herself pull back from his touch.
‘Married lioness,’ she reminded him. ‘And you’re supposed to be going out with my sister.’
He shrugged. ‘She is happy tonight,’ he remarked. ‘She has found the sort of young man she should be with. I told her so. I prefer’ - he paused, looking at her - ‘more complicated women.’
‘I’ve got to go,’ Christie said. ‘Nice meeting you, Mr Wolensky.’
‘Is that it?’ he called as she almost ran down the stairs.
‘That’s it,’ she replied over her shoulder.
In the kitchen, she filled a glass of cool water and drained it quickly, hoping it might douse the heat on her face and neck.
Back in the main part of the house, she searched for James. They had to go. He was still sitting on the window ledge laughing. Christie watched the man she curled up beside in bed, the man who’d held her hand through the births of two children, the man she loved. Despite his current obsession
with work, James was a good man. He was being blind, not seeing how he was hurting her, that was all. If she told him, sat down and said she was on the verge of walking out because of his behaviour; he’d be shocked and she knew he’d change in an instant.
And yet the image of James in her head was being crowded out by the dark brooding face of Carey Wolensky, who was all the things she’d ever dreamed of when she was young, and who’d come into her life when it was already full. Too late.
In the taxi on the way home, she held James’s hand tightly. She would force Carey Wolensky out of her head. This was the man she loved, the father of her children.
James was exhausted and went to bed after politely walking Fiona, the babysitter, home.
Christie stayed up and scrubbed the kitchen tiles with the small scrubbing brush. She made James’s favourite apple cake, diligently and carefully, where normally, she flung ingredients in at high speed.
She would push Carey out of her mind.
Ethan and Shane’s little trousers hung on the clothes horse and she ironed them. Normally, she folded carefully, not bothering ironing garments that would be on and off within an hour.