‘Oh, and just a suggestion,’ he called out, before she had even finished her first sentence, ‘cut the swearing and smile now and again. The public like that. Lightens the whole thing up.’
The de Janvers nodded and she was thrown again. As the paintings passed and he kept watching, she felt the frustration and anger build in her. And, as they neared the halfway point of the tour, there was something else building in her that grew stronger every time she saw him watching her: the fear that he was peeling away everything and getting inside her, making her feel as exposed as if he’d just undressed her.
‘Before we go upstairs,’ she said hurriedly, ‘we’re going to take a detour—’
‘Oh crap,’ Tate said. ‘Not the sad woman and the baby.’
When Grace could think about what happened next with any degree of objectivity, she pictured herself as a firework, deceptively harmless-looking and with a very long fuse, but finally exploding as gunpowder met flame.
‘Don’t you dare start on her. You leave her alone,’ she heard herself shout, registering that this was the second time she had raised her voice that day. She also registered that the de Janvers were staring at her, several other people in the gallery had turned to look and Tate was now right in front of her.
‘Hey, keep a lid on it,’ he said. ‘You go see sad lady if you like. I just feel you’ve bored these nice people enough.’
‘Stop it,’ she snapped. ‘You’ve made your point; you’ve paid me back for Esther. But leave the icon alone.’
He shook his head, widened his eyes. ‘Paid you back? You’re joking. You, Miss Nicey-Nicey, left me to Esther for a friggin’ hour. I had to hear every one of her travel plans, including flight times. I thought I was gonna be there all night.’
‘Well, that’s what you get when you stir people up, go out of your way to show them what a free spirit you are and how they ought to be one too.’
Grace sensed that he was actually getting annoyed now – his eyes were stormy green. He took a step closer. She stood her ground. ‘Oh, that’s what I’m doing, am I?’ he said. ‘Not just being friendly? You see, maybe you don’t
recognise “friendly”. You with all your rules, looking down your English nose at me. “Don’t breathe my air, Tate.”’
‘You’re a stirrer – a great big spoon on legs. You’re stirring up all kinds of people: Esther, Alistair …’ She stopped herself from saying Gilbert.
‘You sure they’re the only ones? ’Cos know what? You’re looking pretty stirred up yourself. Touch of the real Gracie slipping out from under all that ice, huh?’ He stopped talking and suddenly his expression cleared and he clicked his fingers and pointed at her, ‘That’s it, that’s who you’ve been reminding me of. Yup, got it now: George.’
She was confused enough about what he meant to stop talking, and during that lull she saw Norman look into the room. The way he was frowning and the realisation that more and more people were watching them made her lower her voice. If they weren’t careful, they were going to get thrown out.
‘I do not know a George,’ she said quietly but with feeling. ‘I have no interest in a George. Now please, go away.’ She turned to the de Janvers. ‘I’m sorry.’ She straightened her jacket and pulled back her shoulders. ‘I’m sorry … let’s—’
There was a tap on her shoulder and Tate’s mouth was close to her ear. She remembered the time he’d blown on it, in the dark.
‘George is my cousin. He’s an actor, Gracie. Hell of a lot of enthusiasm, but he stinks. Always seems as if he’s just playing at being someone else. You’re better than him, but you’re still not quite good enough. Cracks appearing, Gracie. Cracks definitely appearing.’
‘Well, let’s hope you fall down one of them and disappear. And let’s hope you do it before you inflict your wonderful video installation on the world. God, the old masters must be quaking in their frames.’ She stepped away from him. ‘So, if you’ll just follow me …’ She started shepherding the de Janvers towards the door. She checked to see if Norman was still looking at them but he wasn’t there any more, and then very distinctly she heard two loud clunks as if someone were throwing heavy things to the floor. There was a hissing noise, a weird sound that she couldn’t place, but as she strained to listen, all at once it was as if someone had taken a fistful of pepper and rubbed it into her eyes and onto the lining of her mouth and throat. She felt tears spring up and as she tried to rub whatever it was away, they streamed between her fingers and down her cheeks. Her nose was running too – it was unstoppable – and her throat felt as if it were swelling so much that she struggled to breathe. She began to panic. She was aware of attendants running towards and past her; she caught a glimpse of Lilly tanking up the stairs, her arm held over
her nose and mouth, and of the de Janvers coughing and flailing around and trying to help each other to the door. Now a hand was on her arm, pulling at her, and she heard Tate’s muffled voice saying, ‘Come on, get moving, we’ve gotta get some fresh air,’ before everything disappeared under the jarring, screaming noise of the gallery’s alarms. It was hard to know if it was her ears, her eyes or her chest that hurt the most as she was stumbling after Tate, his hand locked round her wrist, bumping into people and coughing, slipping on the stairs, joining the mass of bodies trying to get to the door, and then they were out in the fresh air, gulping in great lungfuls of it.
‘Stay here,’ Tate said to her as she tried to open her eyes. ‘Don’t move.’ Still struggling to breathe normally, she attempted to peer around to see if, among all the other people bending forward with their hands braced on their knees or sitting with the heels of their hands over their eyes, she could see the de Janvers. She couldn’t, but felt strangely dislocated from that as if this were all happening on a screen in front of her. The gallery alarm was still ringing out and now there were sirens added to it. Police cars were arriving in the courtyard.
Tate was back. ‘Hold out your hands,’ he ordered and when she didn’t, she felt him take hold of her wrist again. ‘Cup your hands – I’m gonna pour some water in them.
Give them a wash and then I’ll give you some more; you need to bathe your eyes. Tear gas, nasty stuff.’
‘How do you know?’ she said, fumbling around to do what she was told.
He snorted. ‘Friend of mine did a “happening” with it once. Let a canister off in a huge multi-storey car park; thought it would just make people cry a bit. Wanted to show how the world’s love of the combustion engine was really a source of sorrow, that kind of crap. Big mistake. Still getting the ass sued off him.’
Bit by bit, she was able to open her eyes properly and keep them open, and she saw him bathing his too, his eyelids looking puffy and his nose red. She saw him take a drink of water, slosh it around his mouth and spit it on to the cobbles. She did the same and he smiled at her.
‘Looks funny, seeing you spit.’
Now, when she felt grateful to him, when they were bonding over what had happened to them, this was when she had to be careful.
‘I ought to find the de Janvers,’ she said, although she dreaded the thought of standing up and walking.
‘No need. They’re out on the street, sitting on the kerb. They’re safe; saw them when I went to get the water.’
It felt hard to say ‘thank you’ to him, but she did.
‘That’s OK.’ He smiled at her again, a self-conscious one
this time it seemed to Grace, and they didn’t say anything for a while, both of them watching the people still coming out of the gallery and the police going in. The crowd had grown bigger: some people standing around and talking, high on adrenalin, some still dabbing and wiping and sitting propped against bollards and walls. A few were on their mobiles and Grace wondered if it was loved ones they were texting or just splurging their experience on Twitter.
She still felt removed from it all, confused about what had just happened, and she guessed Tate was too because he called over to a couple of men in suits who were standing nearby, ‘Any idea what’s happening?’
‘We think,’ the elder one said, ‘someone’s tried to steal something.’ His companion nodded. ‘Won’t have got anywhere, security’s so tight. Even if they got something off the wall, they won’t get it out.’ He was indicating the number of police cars and, as if to underline the fact that no one was going anywhere, Grace saw that the gateway leading out to the Strand was full of men and women in uniforms. She turned to the other exits. Same.
‘They’ll be wanting to take witness statements, I suppose,’ Grace said, a piece of information she’d picked up from years spent listening to her father.
She was right – they did – and it was when a policewoman came round to take their names and contact details
that Grace found out the man in the suit was wrong. ‘They’ had managed to get something off the wall, and get it out of the building. Or maybe ‘they’d’ hidden it somewhere in the building. Whatever: it was missing.
‘What was it?’ Grace asked, suddenly not looking at things happening on a screen, but knowing she was right there on the cobbles, her eyes stinging, her nose running and water all down her jacket.
‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you that,’ the policewoman said.
She didn’t need to be told. Grace just knew it would be the icon.
CHAPTER
24
Violet felt that the least your guest could do when you had spent six days cleaning the house, making sandwiches and cakes, rinsing cups and saucers and plates, shining the cutlery, putting down fresh paper on the route from the front door to the sitting room and to the downstairs toilet … the least your guest could do was sing for her supper. By that she supposed she meant be lively and talk a lot, particularly about what Violet wanted to talk about. Although, now Violet thought about it further, ‘singing for your supper’ was an expression her mother had used and she wasn’t completely sure it
was
about being lively and talking a lot; it might actually involve singing.
Anyway, Grace could certainly be a lot more forthcoming and not sit there like a wet weekend – another of her mother’s expressions, which seemed to apply in this case even though it was Tuesday. Violet supposed she ought to be more sympathetic and perhaps more grateful: Grace
could very well have postponed her visit after the upset yesterday. But my goodness, she was being irritating.
Violet was eager to get on to the subject of Tate and when Grace wasn’t just staring at the rug, she was chewing unenthusiastically on an egg and cress sandwich and not being particularly careful about how many crumbs she dropped on her plate. Violet was pleased to see that Grace was at least trying to keep both of her feet neatly on their allotted pieces of paper.
Yes, Grace was definitely looking peaky. Slightly bloodshot eyes. Still neat, though. Neat hair, neat clothes, neat nails. Very glossy hair. Gilbert said she was neat at work as well, and very, very organised. He liked her a lot, said she was good-looking. Well, that was allowed because it was obvious that Grace wasn’t Gilbert’s type. But what about those other women Tate had brought into Gilbert’s life?
‘It was just so quick … so brutal,’ Grace said suddenly, and Violet forced herself to agree: ‘Awful, awful,’ but made sure she added, ‘that’s what I said to Gilbert when he told me
all
about it.’ She hoped that conveyed to Grace that she felt there was nothing left to be said on this subject. She’d heard more than enough. Gilbert hadn’t stopped going on about it when he came home from work last night, and he’d rung again today, just to keep her up to date – how the police had been to the office to take statements from Tate
and Grace, how the Russian picture of Ivon someone was still missing and how people were whispering that it must have been an inside job, despite the gallery having been searched right down to the baby-changing room.
There had been lots of other snippets and details but Violet had a hazy recollection of them. Tear gas was one and a thing called liquid plastic, which had been painted over some of the cameras inside and outside the gallery so they weren’t actually recording anything.
‘Did Gilbert tell you that Tate and I were having an argument when it happened?’ Grace said. Violet felt her interest peak.
‘Tate?’
Grace nodded. ‘Yes, and the Dutch family have complained, asked for a refund, and Alistair is angry because he thinks it’s unprofessional and people might start wondering if we were causing a diversion.’
‘Were you?’
‘No. Of course not.’ Grace appeared affronted, but then seemed to lapse back into misery. ‘It’s awful. I’ve never, ever had someone complain before and they had every right. I really let him get to me.’
Violet sat forward. ‘Ah, Tate. Gilbert … well, Gilbert seems to think he’s nice. “A breath of fresh air” I think he called him.’
Grace definitely didn’t care for Tate, even the way she took a bite of her sandwich suggested that. She didn’t need to be quite so wild, though – a bit of egg had fallen back on to her plate.
Violet considered getting the dustpan and brush out, but decided that would interrupt the flow of conversation.
‘In fact, Gilbert talks about Tate quite a bit.’ Violet let that sit for a while. ‘And someone called … Baby.’
‘Bebbie.’
‘Hmm. Yes, an unusual name. I can’t quite picture what a woman with that kind of name would look like.’
Grace screwed her mouth up, which was not attractive.
‘She’s quite stunning: long legs, long hair. Arty type, you know.’
Violet didn’t, but she did know danger when she heard it described to her. She looked around her sitting room, imagining what a long-limbed, long-haired arty woman would do to it. Would do to Gilbert. It was no good; she couldn’t go on inching her way forward like this. She put down her plate.
‘Is she someone Gilbert might like?’ she said, knowing her voice had wavered as she’d asked the question.
She saw Grace’s expression change as if something had
just broken above her mind and the noise had made her wake up. Her face looked like those idiots from social services; she was leaning forward. Did she still have her feet on the paper? Just.
‘Are you worried about something, Violet? Is that why you wanted to see me?’