“No problem,” said Daisy. “I . . . er . . . I just wondered if you were coming up on Thursday.”
“Why Thursday?” In the background she could hear the sound of two telephones ringing, some woman having an urgent conversation. “Tell him I’ll be down in a minute,” he yelled. “Give him a glass of wine or something.”
“Health and safety. About the kitchens. You said you wanted to be there.”
“Well, give him a coffee! Hello? Oh, Christ, I did, didn’t I?” He groaned, and she heard him place his hand over the receiver and shout something at what she assumed was his secretary.
“What time are they coming?” he said a moment later.
“Half past eleven.” She took a deep breath. “Look, Jones, stay for lunch afterward. I’d like to show you a couple of things.”
“I don’t eat lunch,” he said, and put the phone down.
She had rung Camille, remembering that Hal was something artistic, but not wanting to ring him directly. It was the kind of thing you had to worry about when you were a single woman. But Camille had been enthusiastic, had said she should speak to him straightaway. Daisy didn’t need to get a restorer, she said. Hal could do it. Hal had done all sorts of courses on restoration back at art school, not just furniture, she was sure. Hal himself sounded less convinced, uncertain whether his knowledge was up-to-date enough.
“But you could find out about any new techniques. I mean, it’s not a canvas, it’s only an outside wall.” Daisy had gauged from Camille’s tone how much this job might mean to them both. “It can’t be that important if they’ve slung a load of whitewash over it.”
Hal had seemed hesitant at first, then cautiously enthusiastic, as if he couldn’t believe he were being thrown a life preserver, albeit a small, potentially leaky one. “I’ve got a friend over in Ware who still does a bit. I could ask him. I mean, if you didn’t mind the fact that I wasn’t a professional.”
“If you do a proper job on it, I couldn’t care if you were a professional mud wrestler. But I need you to start now. I need a good part of it visible by Thursday.”
“Okay,” said Hal, sounding like someone who didn’t want to show quite how pleased he was. “Right. Great. Well, I’ll make a few phone calls and dig out some supplies, and then I’ll head over.”
This was her chance, Daisy thought as she went back out to the garden. This would show Jones that she was capable not just of renovating the interior of this building by herself but of rising above this persona as whom these people seemed to think of as her: the Daisy she pitied and despised. It was a ridiculous trait, Daniel had once told her, this desperate need for everyone to approve of her, but she felt it regardless. The evening that Jones had come, she’d felt satisfied that he had finally seen a newer, better side of her. Because, she cautiously admitted to herself, she herself was beginning to approve of that person, too, instead of solely mourning the loss of the old Daisy. She was stronger now, not quite so bowed by the events of the recent months. Babies do that, Lottie had said when Daisy asked her how she had coped alone. You have to be strong.
Daisy, thinking back to Primrose Hill, had disagreed. But realized that in some small way she had slowly, through some form of osmosis, perhaps, begun to acquire a little of Lottie’s own thick skin. She had thought endlessly about how the young Lottie had given birth, almost unsupported, in a country far from home, and how she had refused to be cowed when, both disgraced and penniless, she returned. She had watched how Lottie the elder now sliced through life like a bread knife, generating respect from those around her simply by virtue of her own confidence and acerbic wit. She expected people to accord her her dues, that things would go the way she desired. She didn’t give two hoots if they didn’t. And what was she, when it came down to it? A pensionable housewife, wife of a garage owner in a small town, mother of a disabled daughter, who never had a job, a career, anything. (Not that she would dared have described Lottie like that to her face.) Daisy, meanwhile, was still the Old Daisy she had been (albeit a slightly more generously clad version)—she was still attractive, still intelligent, just about solvent, and now, as her accountant put it, she was a sole trader. I am a Sole Trader, she had said aloud to herself after she put the phone down. It all sounded so much better than Single Parent.
She did miss him. Still cried occasionally. Still considered it an achievement if she could get through a couple of hours at a time without thinking of him. Still sometimes found herself checking his horoscope in case it offered some clue as to his return. But almost three months after he’d gone, Daisy could at least envisage a time, maybe a year ahead, give or take a month or two, when she would get over him.
She tried not to think about whether Ellie would ever feel the same way.
T
HE HOURS
H
AL WORKED ON THE “MURIEL,”
A
IDAN SAID
, it was no wonder his business was on the floor. You couldn’t do hours like that at a fixed price, he told Daisy, as they sat drinking tea in the kitchen, watching through the window as Hal, bent double against the wall, painstakingly brushed at a tiny section of worn paint. Daisy of all people should know. Small-business men couldn’t afford to be perfectionists.
Small-business men couldn’t afford to be anything if they didn’t get the upstairs corridors finished by Tuesday, like they’d promised, Daisy said pointedly, but Aidan had affected not to hear.
“Now, if your man there were paying him by the hour . . .”
“I think he’s enjoying it,” said Daisy, ignoring the fact that most of the time Hal looked rather agonized. Is this okay? he would ask her three or four times a day as she came out to admire the increasingly distinct images. You don’t want to employ a professional? He never looked particularly convinced when Daisy said she wouldn’t. But Camille, who came up twice a day bringing tea and sandwiches between appointments, said that when he got home, he was buoyant. “I think it’s exciting,” she said, not seeming to mind her husband’s lengthy absences. “I like the thought that it’s been hidden. I like the thought that it’s Hal who is bringing it back to life.” They held hands when he thought no one was looking. Daisy, somewhat enviously, had caught sight of Hal explaining the images to his wife when he’d broken off to pull her to him and kiss her.
The only person apparently not pleased about the mural was Lottie. She had been to town on one of her mysterious errands (she would never tell anyone where she was going or what she was doing; if asked, she would tap her nose with her finger and tell people to “mind their own”), and when, on arriving back, she caught sight of Hal gently working on the exposed images, she had exploded and demanded that they stop immediately. “I painted over it! It wasn’t meant to be shown,” she said, gesturing wildly at Hal. “Paint it back again.”
Daisy and the workmen, who had been examining some guttering, had stopped what they were doing to see what the shouting was.
“It’s not meant to be shown!”
“But it’s a mural,” said Hal.
“I told you! You shouldn’t be taking the paint off. Just stop, do you hear me? I would have told you about it if it was meant to be seen.”
“What’s under there?” murmured Aidan to Dave. “The plans of where she buried the bodies?”
“I can’t stop the renovation now,” said Daisy, perplexed. “Jones is coming especially to see it.”
“It’s not yours to show.” Lottie had become uncharacteristically, weirdly agitated. Camille, who’d been bringing Hal his tea when Lottie arrived, stood holding the mug, blank incomprehension on her face.
“Mum?”
“Hey, what’s the matter, Ma? What’s upset you so much?” Hal had reached out a hand to Lottie’s shoulder. She shrugged him away furiously.
“Nothing’s upset me. Yes it has—you wasting your time uncovering some piece of rubbish has upset me. You should be concentrating on your business, not fannying around on some worthless piece of graffiti. Why don’t you do something useful, like try and save your business, eh?”
“But it’s beautiful, Lottie,” said Daisy. “You must have seen that.”
“It’s rubbish,” said Lottie, her face dark and panicked. “And I shall tell that stupid boss of yours it’s rubbish. And I’m the historical adviser or whatever you call it on this house, and he will agree with me.” And she had walked off, her back bristling her displeasure, leaving them all open-mouthed and halting.
B
UT
J
ONES DIDN’T AGREE.
Daisy, sneakily, brought him out to see it while Lottie was off getting milk for Ellie. Shut your eyes, she told him as he stepped onto the terrace, and he raised his eyes to heaven as if she were an imbecile and he forced to indulge her. She took his arm and steered him around the pots of paint to where Hal had recently stopped work.
“Now open.”
Jones opened his eyes, Daisy’s own not leaving his face. And his dark, beaten-down eyes blinked in surprise.
“It’s a mural,” said Daisy. “Hal here’s restoring it. The builders found it under some whitewash.”
Jones looked at her, apparently forgetting to be irritated, and moved closer, peering at the increasingly distinct images. He was, she noted, wearing the most appalling pair of corduroy trousers.
“What is it?” he said after a minute. “Some kind of last supper?”
“I don’t know,” said Daisy, glancing guiltily behind her for the sound of a child’s buggy. “Lottie—Mrs. Bernard—won’t tell me.”
Jones kept peering. Then stood up and turned to her. “What did you just say?”
“She’s a bit unhappy about us uncovering it,” she said. “She won’t say why, but it seems to have upset her.”
“But it’s beautiful,” said Jones. “It looks great out here. Gives the terrace a focus.” He turned and walked to the far end of the terrace, examining the mural from a distance. “We’re going to have chairs here, aren’t we?”
Daisy nodded.
“Is it old?”
“Definitely this century,” Daisy said. “Hal thinks it must be the forties or fifties. Certainly no earlier than the thirties. Perhaps she covered it up during the war.”
“I had no idea. . . .” Jones was speaking to himself now, one hand raised to the back of his head. “So . . . can I ask how much I’m paying for this? The restoration, I mean?”
“A damn sight less than it’s worth.”
He smiled slowly at her, and she found herself grinning in reply. “Don’t suppose you’ve found any priceless antiques hanging around while you’re at it?”
“Nah,” said Aidan, appearing behind them lighting another cigarette. “She’s out buying milk for the baby.”
I
T WAS OVER
. H
AL SAT IN HIS CAR OUTSIDE
A
RCADIA,
looking at the latest sheaf of bills that wouldn’t begin to be covered by the mural money, and he felt something peculiarly like relief that it was now out of his hands, that the thing he’d known was inevitable for weeks, possibly months, had finally become a reality. The last bill, the one he’d put off opening until lunchtime, had been so huge that it had left him no choice. He would wind the business up, and then, once the mural restoration was over, he would set out to find a job.
He closed his eyes for a minute, letting the hope, the tensions of the last weeks finally ebb away, to be replaced by a kind of dull gray mist. It was just a business. He had repeated those words to himself like a mantra. And if the disposal of its assets meant that he could stave off bankruptcy, then at least they all had a future. But then, they
did
have a future. He and Camille the past few weeks . . . well, they had convinced him of that at least.
Focus on the good stuff, that was what the counselor said at their last session, wasn’t it? Be grateful for the things you have. He had a wife and a daughter. Health. And a future.
His mobile phone broke the silence, and he fumbled in the glove compartment, trying to blink what felt suspiciously like tears away from his eyes.
“It’s me.”
“Hi, you.” He leaned back against his seat, glad of the sound of her voice. Nothing urgent. She just wanted to find out what time he might be home, whether he would like chicken for supper, to tell him that Katie was going swimming—the comforting minutiae of domestic life.
“Are you okay? Sound a bit quiet.”
“I’m fine,” he said. “Fine. I’ll bring some wine home if you like.”
She sounded a little unconvinced, so he tried to make himself sound more animated. He didn’t tell her what she needed to hear—that could wait—but instead the things she liked to hear—what had happened “at work” that day. What he had uncovered. The latest bon mots from the builders. He told her how her mother now barely spoke to him while he was working on the wall and yet, as soon as they left Arcadia, how she would chat to him as if nothing had happened. “Maybe you should ask her. Find out what’s bothering her about it.”
“There’s no point, Hal. You know there’s no point asking her anything. She won’t tell me,” said Camille, sounding sad and cross. “I have no idea what’s wrong with my mother sometimes. Do you know it’s their anniversary next week and she said she’s needed at Arcadia? Dad’s so disappointed. He’d booked the restaurant and everything.”
“I suppose they could go another night,” he said tentatively.
“But it’s not the same, is it?”
“No,” he said, thinking back. “No, it’s not.”
“Better go,” she said, brightening. “Mrs. Halligan’s complaining about her pickling.”
“What?”
She moved closer to the phone. “It’s what happens to your skin after you’ve been waxed. She’s got pickling in an unfortunate area, and now she can’t put her tights back on.”
Hal laughed out loud. It felt like the first time he’d done so in months.
“I do love you,” he said.
“I know,” she said. “I love you, too.”
A
BOVE WHERE
H
AL SAT
, D
AISY WALKED
J
ONES INTO THE
rooms that would one day be known as the Morrell suite, but were for now known among the builders as Blue Bog, after the color of the bathroom. It was the most traditional bedroom in the house, and it was finished. The bed, like all the other beds, came from a contact in India who specialized in old colonial furniture. Next to it stood a military chest, its clean, angular corners squared off in brass, its aged mahogany veneer glowing against the pale gray of the walls. At the end of the room, which was really two rooms knocked through, were two comfortable chairs and a low, carved table. On this, Daisy had placed a cloth with two plates of crab sandwiches, a bowl of fruit, and a bottle of water.