Girl From the South (v5) Page 7

  The party was in an upstairs room above a wine bar. It had been organized by a small collective of individual conservators who wanted the features editors of arts magazines to recognize that the business of restoration and conservation had an honourable place alongside the original work of modern creative artists. Just because they worked out of the public eye and did not get drunk and interestingly abusive on television arts shows did not mean that their work was, in the great historical scheme of things, less valid artistically than a filmed installation of a naked girl asleep on a pile of discarded motor tyres. It was also necessary, they said, to remember the breadth and diversity of academic qualification required to make a good modern conservator.

  Tilly had been planning a series of features on restoration anyway. Each month, she thought, the magazine could look at a different medium – fresco, easel painting on canvas, paper, easel painting on wood, gilding. She planned, this evening, to find subjects for at least the first couple of features, and make appointments to go and see them at work. Henry said it would be all chemistry and microscopes but Tilly had some other hopes, less mundane hopes, about being able to link past and present because of, say, finding a medieval brush hair still adhering to plaster on a church wall. She went up the stairs to the room above the wine bar with her spectacles on, her hair twisted into a French pleat and carrying the black canvas briefcase Henry had given her for her last birthday which contained the stiff-covered Japanese-made notebooks in which she liked to make work notes. Ahead of her on the stairs were the corduroyed legs of her opposite number on a museum magazine, and above him by a few steps, the black-clad figure of the extremely serious picture editor of a periodical which specialized in esoteric historical interiors. She was called Rae Minns and Henry had worked for her several times, on assignments in Europe – Tilly could remember one on Romania’s painted churches – and had said that she was, as a colleague, somewhere on the far side of difficult.

  ‘Hello, Oliver,’ Tilly said.

  The corduroy legs stopped. He turned a little.

  ‘Is this a waste of time?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Tilly said. She pushed her spectacles up her nose.

  ‘More use to you than me,’ Oliver said. He had a plump shiny face and heavy old-fashioned spectacles. He eyed Tilly up and down in the assessing way so peculiarly arrogant in plain men. ‘Keeping busy?’

  Tilly nodded.

  ‘More ideas than space for them.’

  He flinched very slightly. Tilly moved swiftly past him and through the doorway into the room behind Rae Minns. Rae glanced at her, and then back down the stairs.

  ‘Presumably only here for the free drink?’

  ‘Or several,’ Tilly said.

  ‘How is Henry?’

  Odd, Tilly thought, how women always ask me about Henry.

  ‘Fed up,’ she said. ‘Too much wet in the wetlands and not enough birds.’

  A young black girl with her hair held up in a clattering bunch of bead-threaded corn rows offered them a messy tray of glasses of red and white wine. The white looked very yellow, the red purplish. Rae Minns made a face.

  ‘Needs must—’

  Tilly picked up a glass of red wine and took a step back into the crowd. As she moved, someone swung into her from behind and sent her glass-holding hand involuntarily into the air. She watched as an arc of red wine leaped out of the glass and fell in a long dark tongue across the shoulders and curious frizzy hair of a small woman, standing close by with her back to Tilly. The small woman was wearing a pale drill jacket into which the wine soaked at once, like blood. She gave a little cry as the wine hit her hair.

  ‘Oh my God,’ Tilly said.

  The girl turned round. She had wine running down one side of her face.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Someone knocked into me,’ Tilly said. ‘I’m sorry. Oh heavens, I’m so sorry.’

  The girl had an American accent.

  She said ruefully, ‘This jacket was new. Well, kind of new—’

  ‘Your hair—’

  ‘Oh, forget that,’ the girl said, ‘you can do what you like with that.’ She squinted sideways at her shoulder. ‘It’s my jacket—’

  ‘I’ll get it cleaned,’ Tilly said desperately. ‘I’ll buy you another.’

  ‘Pour white wine on it,’ someone said.

  ‘No,’ the girl said with energy. ‘No more pouring.’

  Tilly scrabbled in her bag for a tissue.

  ‘I just am so sorry—’

  ‘I know you are.’

  ‘If you’re nice, I’ll feel worse—’

  ‘I’m not being nice,’ the girl said. ‘I just feel sort of detached. I’ve felt that ever since I got here.’

  Tilly found a clump of tissues in her bag and offered them. The girl began to mop at her face and hair.

  ‘Do I look very weird?’

  ‘No more than anyone in this room—’

  ‘I think my mother would say to put salt on the stain.’

  ‘I don’t have that kind of mother,’ Tilly said. ‘So I wouldn’t know. My mother would just throw the jacket away.’

  ‘Can’t do that.’

  ‘No, of course you can’t. But you can let me get it cleaned.’

  ‘Thank you,’ the girl said. She looked at Tilly. ‘I’ll bring it round to you when I’ve got something else to wear.’

  ‘What can I do for you now?’ Tilly said. ‘Get you another drink? Introduce you to someone?’

  ‘Tell me your name,’ the girl said.

  ‘Tilly.’

  ‘Tilly?’

  ‘I was christened Mathilda,’ Tilly said.

  Wow.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m Gillon,’ the girl said. ‘Hard g. Gillon Stokes.’

  ‘Gillon—’

  ‘It’s a street,’ Gillon said. ‘A street in Charleston, South Carolina. My brother and sister are named for rivers. My father is named for an old plantation house. It’s what people do, in Charleston.’

  ‘Even odder, then,’ Tilly said, ‘than Mathilda.’

  ‘I guess so,’ Gillon said. She smiled. She said, ‘Are you a journalist?’

  The young black girl with the tray wriggled past them through the crowd. Tilly put her empty glass on the tray as it went by.

  ‘Want another?’

  ‘No fear,’ Tilly said. She looked at Gillon. ‘Yes, I’m a journalist. I do features and stuff for Arts and People.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Gillon said.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Sorry, I’ve never heard of Arts and People.’

  ‘I wouldn’t expect you to. It’s very small, very English and very focused.’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘On whatever,’ Tilly said, ‘it happens to be looking at, at the time.’

  ‘Like art,’ Gillon said. ‘Or maybe people.’

  Tilly grinned.

  ‘You have it.’

  Oliver from the museum magazine loomed beside them. He had an almost empty glass in one hand and a dead-looking pakora in the other with a bite taken out of it. He regarded Gillon’s hair and shoulder.

  ‘What happened to you?’

  ‘It was me,’ Tilly said. ‘I half drowned her.’

  ‘Not on purpose,’ Gillon said.

  Tilly smiled at her.

  ‘Thank you.’

  Oliver took a clumsy bite out of his pakora. Through it, he said to Gillon, ‘Are you from the museum world?’

  She eyed him.

  She said warily, ‘Kind of—’

  ‘But not from here. Over here, I mean.’

  ‘Yes and no,’ Gillon said.

  She took a step back. Oliver took a step forward. He gestured at her with his pakora.

  ‘Intriguing. Tell me more.’

  ‘Not now.’

  ‘Oh, come on.’ He drained his glass. ‘Why don’t you—’

  ‘Sorry,’ Tilly said.

  He turned.

  ‘Sorry what?’

&nbs
p; ‘Sorry, but I’m taking Gillon away.’

  His face gleamed disagreeably behind his spectacles.

  ‘Not yet—’

  ‘Right now,’ Tilly said. She put a hand on Gillon’s arm. ‘I’m giving her supper as an apology for ruining her jacket.’

  ‘Oh,’ Gillon said. She made a tiny movement with her hand. ‘That’s so kind but—’

  Oliver pushed his face at her.

  ‘Room for a third?’

  ‘No,’ Tilly said.

  ‘You didn’t need to do this,’ Gillon said.

  Tilly was looking at the menu.

  ‘I did. Anyway, I wanted to. And I wanted to leave that party.’

  ‘It wasn’t,’ Gillon said, ‘quite what I was expecting. But then nothing over here is.’

  Tilly put the menu down and began to hunt in her bag for her mobile phone.

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘I thought everything would be very settled. Very certain. I thought everything being so old would make it feel, well, kind of solid.’

  ‘And it doesn’t?’

  ‘Well, the buildings do.’

  ‘But not the people—’

  ‘No,’ Gillon said. She gestured at the phone in Tilly’s hand. ‘Go ahead and call.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Tilly said. She dialled rapidly. ‘Won’t be a moment.’ She put the phone against her ear and looked down at the table. After a while, she said, ‘He isn’t there,’ and then, a moment later, in quite a different tone, ‘Henry, it’s me. I’m just having supper with someone. Won’t be late.’ Then she paused, as if deciding what else to say, and simply added, ‘Bye,’ and dropped the phone back in her bag.

  ‘My boyfriend,’ Tilly said.

  Gillon nodded. She took a mouthful of water.

  ‘He’s a photographer. He was supposed to be at home tonight sorting out his accounts.’ She smiled quickly. ‘Why did I say “supposed”? Who did the supposing—’

  ‘Not him—’

  ‘No.’

  ‘They never do. If men and women feel a sense of obligation, it’s never about the same things.’

  ‘Nice,’ Tilly said. She picked up the menu again. ‘What would you like to eat?’

  ‘Maybe pasta? And a salad—’

  ‘And some wine?’

  ‘Not really—’

  ‘Just a glass?’

  ‘Maybe—’

  ‘Don’t you like wine?’ Tilly said.

  ‘Sure I do. I just don’t like too much of it.’

  ‘Do you think we drink too much anyway, in England?’

  Gillon looked past Tilly. ‘Maybe,’ she said again.

  ‘You mean yes.’

  ‘At home, the men drink. Most women, not so much. Men of my father’s generation buy whisky in halfgallon jars. When my brother found his apartment he said it was ideal because it was two blocks from the gym and three from a liquor store.’

  ‘Well,’ Tilly said politely, ‘we all have our own priorities.’

  ‘He was just boasting.’

  ‘It’s the girls who drink here. All my friends—’ She grimaced, then she said, ‘Me.’

  ‘I like the candour here, though,’ Gillon said. ‘I like the way girls are upfront here. I like the way you just come out and say things. Do things—’

  Tilly looked round for a waiter.

  ‘Isn’t that how things are in Charleston, South Carolina?’

  Gillon gave a wide, slow smile.

  ‘No way.’

  ‘Tell me—’

  ‘If someone of my mother’s generation wants to express real, real dislike of someone, she’ll say, “Of course, she’s perfectly nice.”’

  ‘Got it,’ Tilly said.

  A thin red-haired waiter appeared at their table. He wore a tight white T-shirt over his bony torso, and his legs were wrapped in a black drill apron, almost to the floor.

  ‘Would you like to order?’

  Tilly gestured towards Gillon.

  ‘Gnocchi, please,’ Gillon said. ‘And a green salad.’

  Tilly handed the menu back.

  ‘Same,’ she said. ‘And a glass of Pinot Grigio. A big glass.’ She looked at Gillon. ‘You sure?’

  Gillon nodded.

  ‘Tell me,’ Tilly said, ‘tell me why you’re here, why you were at that party.’

  Gillon looked at the table. Then she looked at Tilly.

  ‘It’s a long story—’

  ‘I have all evening,’ Tilly said.

  Glancing up from the pavement, Henry could see, from the still-dark windows, that Tilly wasn’t home. Maybe, he thought guiltily, it was just as well. The beer with William had turned into three or four beers with William and his business partner Sam, and then Susie came with an Irish girl called Breda who had the astonishing and dramatic colouring of a J. M. Synge heroine. After the beers, they’d all jostled out into the street and found a pizza place and Henry had ordered far too much chilli on his. He then suddenly found himself asking Breda if he could photograph her one day and she looked at him levelly and said, ‘And what would you be wanting to do that for?’ and he had felt, for some undefined reason, that he had better go home before any further impulses overtook him. When he said goodbye, William and Sam and Susie and Breda all looked up from their pizzas with the good-humoured but faintly scornful pity reserved for those whose freedom is curtailed by domestic requirement.

  ‘See you,’ William said.

  ‘Take care,’ Susie said.

  Breda said nothing. She simply regarded him with her black-lashed stare and made him feel big and ungainly and crass.

  ‘Run along, then,’ Sam said.

  The girls laughed. William gave him a small conspiratorial wink. He went out of the pasta place into the warm, dusty evening and said, between his teeth and for no specific reason, ‘Fuck. Fuck,’ before setting off towards home at a penitential jog.

  He put his key into the street-level door. As usual, it had to be pushed open against a small heap of items that had been shoved through the letter-box during the day – a drift of junk mail, a local socialist newssheet, half a take-away baked potato smeared with curry sauce. Henry manoeuvred the pile sideways with his foot, shrouding the potato under the news-sheet, and set off up the stairs to the flat. On the first-floor landing there was a collection of dispirited houseplants sitting in cracked saucers belonging to the old lady who had lived in the flat for thirty years and who had once accosted William on the stairs and demanded to know if he, or Henry, was Tilly’s husband.

  ‘We both are,’ William had replied earnestly. ‘It’s part of our religious beliefs.’

  What Mrs Renshaw made of William’s departure, Henry couldn’t guess. She had always scowled at them anyway, if they passed her while she was watering her plants, so it was difficult to tell if her scowls were any blacker.

  Henry switched on the timed light for his own landing. There were no plants up there, nothing except a shabby cream-painted space with a scuffed carpet and the doormat William had given them when he left, with two huge black footprints on it. Henry put his key in the lock and let himself in. The flat felt, as it always did when they had both been out all day, as if it had been quietly holding its breath in their absence and could now at last, equally quietly, exhale.

  ‘Hi,’ Henry said.

  He dropped his bag on the passage floor and went into the bathroom. The mirror over the basin told him he looked red and rumpled and unacceptable. Unacceptable to – well, to a person of discernment and taste who imagined she would return home later and find all the invoices and statements from Henry’s last accounting quarter stacked neatly in date order on the kitchen table, and Henry himself, mission accomplished, lying calmly-and soberly – on the sofa, listening, perhaps, to Bach.

  He ran a basin of water and plunged his face and hands into it. Then he soaped both vigorously and rinsed with deliberately cold water. He bared his teeth at himself. Hideous. Horrible. He picked up the nearest toothbrush-Tilly’s – and applied a small mountain of
toothpaste.

  In the sitting room, Tilly’s first coffee mug of the morning was still where she had left it on the low Indian table they had bought to replace William’s chest. Henry picked it up and turned it round in his hands, peering to see if he could tell where her mouth had been. He pressed the rim of the mug against his own mouth for a moment, and then carried it out to the kitchen. Tilly’s weekly list was on the table, alongside a tube of lipgloss and the pink elasticized band she scooped her hair up into when she bathed. He looked briefly at the lipstick and the band and then, because the sight of them made him feel strangely unsteady, looked away again and took the mug to the sink.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said into the sink. ‘Sorry.’

  There was the sound of Tilly’s key in the door. Henry raised his head.

  ‘Hi there!’ Tilly called.

  He turned round.

  ‘Hi—’

  She came into the kitchen smiling, her cardigan tied over her shoulders by its sleeves, in the way she sometimes wore it at weekends.

  ‘I’ve just got in,’ Henry said.

  Tilly put her black briefcase on the table and came across to kiss him.

  ‘Oo,’ she said. ‘Chilli and toothpaste—’

  ‘Try and be thankful for the toothpaste.’

  ‘William?’

  ‘William,’ he said, nodding.

  ‘Did you get my message?’

  ‘Sorry,’ Henry said. ‘Haven’t checked—’

  Tilly took a sharp little breath.