Playing Grace (2 page)

‘I said Temple, to get off,’ Signor Tuscelli was assuring Grace, his hands chopping out the words, ‘but Gisella,’ he indicated his daughter, ‘she said it was Charing Cross. And so we have had to run, run up the …’

‘The Strand,’ his wife supplied.

‘Yes, the Strand. So fast.’ Signor Tuscelli blew out his cheeks.

‘So hot.’ Signora Tuscelli was shrugging off her coat.

A heady perfume reached Grace as Gisella of the large, dark eyes and very tight jeans said, to the group in general, ‘
Scusi
. It was all my fault.’

Everyone muttered that it was OK, although Monsieur Laurent in particular looked as if he’d like to hear more of Gisella’s pouty apology.

Mr Baldridge, as usual, spoilt the party. ‘The name of the toob station was clearly written on our itin-er-rary.’

‘Ah, but these things are so much harder when your first language is not English,’ Grace said quickly.

Mr Baldridge jerked his thumb at Mr and Mrs Hikaranto. ‘Well, our friends here managed.’ Only the way Mrs Hikaranto gripped the handle of her Prada bag suggested the Japanese couple were not keen on that ‘friends’ label.

Signora Tuscelli was beginning to look affronted, so Grace suddenly threw her arms wide – a gesture that always distracted people long enough for her to change the subject.

‘The London Underground is a confusing place,’ she said so brightly and so loudly that she got an admonishing frown from Lilly at the desk. ‘Yet for all its confusion, it’s an
adventure too. An experience. And talking of experiences, there is another wonderful one waiting for us now. This building was largely completed in the eighteenth century and stands on the site of what used to be a Tudor Palace. Constructed on neoclassical lines around a central courtyard it housed a variety of government departments before it became an art gallery. I think you’ll agree it is both elegant and stately, dominating the Strand on one side and a large stretch of the Thames on the other. Quite simply it is a masterpiece in Portland Stone.’ She laid her hand on a portion of the wall to make her meaning clearer to the Hika-rantos. ‘A masterpiece housing other masterpieces, because here are names that are famous the world over. Monet, Renoir, Cézanne. The paintings of Van Gogh and Manet. We have so much to see, so let’s not waste a moment. Mr Bald-ridge, if I could ask you to lead the way, please? Up the stairs and then sharp left into the first room …’

Sometimes Grace felt like a games mistress who had inhaled too much muscle rub, but faced with all her eagerness and confidence, even the most recalcitrant complainer usually rolled over and gave in. She watched as Mr and Mrs Baldridge vied momentarily on the bottom step to be the first up the stairs and then it was Mr Baldridge who, having gallantly elbowed his wife aside, led the group on the climb upwards.

Grace watched and thought of all the people whose feet had worn down those stone steps. The earls and lords on the way up to adventure and down to the scaffold; the ladies, their skirts lifted just high enough or way too high; the government spies, the civil servants and now the art lovers, tourists and students.

As she moved to follow them, she mouthed a quick ‘thank you’ to Lilly who replied by jerking her head in the direction of Mr Baldridge, who had now reached the first-floor landing.

‘You be able to get all the way round without World War Three breaking out?’ she asked with a chuckle making her earrings do some more wobbling.

‘Of course. Some people just need careful handling and a lot of distraction. It’s all under control now.’ Grace had reached the bottom of the staircase. ‘Besides, they’re about to see some of the most beautiful art in the world – that’s bound to make them happy. It’s not like we’re going to come face to face with anything that stirs everyone up or provokes them, is it?’

Perhaps if she’d had any inkling that she was one hundred per cent wrong about that, Grace would not have run lightly up the steps to join her group with a confident smile on her lips. She would have turned around and headed back out of the double doors as fast as she possibly could.

CHAPTER
2

It was after Monet and just before Manet that she noticed him. He was what her boss, Alistair, called a ‘floater’. Grace felt that description carried far too many toilet overtones and preferred the more poetic name of ‘shadower’.

You got them on almost every tour: the member of the public who would loiter near the group to listen to what the guide was saying while trying to appear as if they weren’t. Sometimes they would pretend they were studying a different picture, or station themselves on a nearby bench and shut their eyes as if gallery fatigue had overtaken them.

A woman Grace had attracted last week had developed some problem with her shoe which necessitated taking it off and peering at the heel as Grace explained why Gauguin had felt compelled to leave France and paint in Tahiti. The moment Grace stopped talking, on went the shoe and off went the woman.

Alistair got very shirty about the whole thing, reasoning that if someone wanted to listen to a tour they should damn well put their hands in their pocket and pay for one, but Grace took a more relaxed approach. None of the shadowers stayed long and barely any followed from one room to the next. If they did, Grace stared at them and asked, with a concerned expression, whether they were lost. That invariably sent them slinking away.

This particular example of the species was different. Positioned just behind the Tuscelli family, he was making no effort to hide the fact that he was following them. He moved on exactly when the group moved, stopped when it stopped.

Grace guessed that he wouldn’t have had much success trying to be inconspicuous anyway. He was more of a show-off than a shadower. His shaggy blond hair, finger-combed she suspected, made her wonder if he was Scandinavian or perhaps spent a lot of time outside in the sun. He might even be a surfer, but his clothes had definitely never been anywhere near the sea. He seemed to be wearing a formal evening dress jacket with tails, its sleeves pushed up to reveal a jumble of brightly coloured wristbands from music festivals. Under it was a purple T-shirt and on his bottom half were, well, Grace was not sure what. She would have said pinstripe trousers but, if they were, they were
incredibly old-fashioned, the kind that you’d expect to see topping spats in a black-and-white film. His were teamed with black biker boots, chunky and looking as though they’d been scraped along the road, possibly where he’d fallen off a bike.

There was something deeply familiar about that kind of appearance – the off-the-wall rather than off-the-peg clothes and the way they had been put together – and Grace didn’t like it at all. Not one bit. It made her feel that everything she had worked to dampen down in herself over the last nine years might be in danger of taking light again, and while her mouth continued to explain about brush-strokes and artistic influences, in her chest there was a sense of unease that felt as solid as if she had swallowed something down without chewing it properly. She continued to talk, the group continued to listen, but there was mad Fred Astaire at the back, his blond hair blaring out at her every time she let her eyes stray that way.

Her sense of unease intensified as she got beyond his hair and clothes to his face. It wasn’t a disturbing face in itself – strong nose, green eyes, usual number of lips – but as she talked it was obvious from the range of expressions animating it that he was intensely, mind-numbingly bored. His body language was shouting that too – now he was
crossing his arms, now uncrossing them. He examined the palm of his hand, turned it over and seemed to find fault with one nail. If he did look at the painting they were gathered around, it was with an expression that suggested not only boredom but also irritation. It was followed by more fidgeting.

All that energy. All that restlessness. Hard to contain.

Once or twice she caught him watching her and then his expression became even more morose, a frown making him suddenly look more Viking than beach boy.

Not knowing the Swedish or Norwegian for ‘Are you lost?’ and hoping that he would simply drift away, she shifted position so that he was not in her sight line. A quick check on the group confirmed that nobody else was really concerned about his presence yet. Except for Gisella Tuscelli: she was running through what Grace supposed was her flirting repertoire, alternating hot glances with shy dips of her chin, her body being subtly displayed in the blond guy’s direction. He gave her a half-hearted once-over and returned to examining his fingernail.

‘So,’ Grace said briskly, ‘that’s the first of Manet’s paintings we’ll be looking at this afternoon, and now, for the second.’ She gestured along the wall. ‘It’s perhaps one of the best known in the world.’

Everyone turned to look.

‘
A Bar at the Folies Bergère
,’ Mrs Macintosh said, as if she couldn’t believe it was here, just a few feet away. Grace saw that a few others had the same star-struck expression on their faces and waited for the customary scramble to get the best position. She beat them to it and asked them to move back a few steps, mindful of a previous client who had been so caught up in the moment, he’d reached forward and would have touched the painting if Grace had not stopped him.

The blond guy had followed them and the unchewed thing in her chest got bigger.

‘So strange to see this in front of me,’ Mrs Macintosh said, the sense of wonder still in her voice, ‘I had a poster of it on my bedroom wall when I was a student.’

‘I also.’ Monsieur Laurent nodded at the woman in a black-and-white dress standing at the centre of the picture. ‘She is beautiful.’

Beautiful she might be, but Grace had always felt the woman seemed distant, as if she were protecting herself from all the frenetic activity around her in the painting. Perhaps that was why she loved it so.

‘This is a painting that is very much rooted in a particular time and place,’ Grace said, her enthusiasm genuine. ‘It’s full of details that make the famous Parisian nightclub come alive.’

She heard a sigh from the blond guy and turned to see him wander over to a window and stare out through the glass. He was putting his hands in the pockets of his trousers, a flash of a silver ring on one thumb. Everything about him said bored, bored, bored. He remained there, chin down, looking glumly out at the courtyard.

That was the point when, if Grace had been one to indulge strong emotions any more, she would have lost her patience. As it was, she contented herself with hoping he might force the window open and jump out, and returned her attention to Manet.

‘Painted in 1882, this was Manet’s last major work, and although he’s not strictly classed as an Impressionist, this painting conveys beautifully the new trends in painting at the time. Most importantly, Manet has done some intriguing things with perspective and reflection.’ Gisella was again turning and flirting, occasionally glancing slyly back at her parents to make sure they hadn’t noticed. Well, Gisella’s parents had paid for her to learn about the paintings in this gallery and as far as Grace was concerned that was a binding contract.

‘Now,’ she said, raising her voice, ‘I mentioned the many wonderful details in this painting so perhaps I could ask Gisella …’ She was amused to see the girl’s head turn sharply to face front as if she were a schoolgirl caught
dreaming in class. ‘Gisella, would you like to come here and look in the top left-hand corner of the painting? Tell us what you see.’

Gisella’s parents helped propel her forward, and she hesitantly approached the painting, leaned in closer and peered into the corner. There was a sharp exclamation.

‘Feet,’ she said, looking round at the group, the astonishment evident. ‘Green feet on a … a …’ She deferred to Grace.

‘A trapeze,’ Grace said, ‘
trapezio
. It’s one of the entertainments in the nightclub: an acrobat. I love the way he, or she, is just tucked away up there. I’ve seen some posters of this cropped so badly that the acrobat isn’t even on there.’

‘That’ll be the one I bought,’ Mrs Macintosh said with a wry shake of her head.

Gisella went back to her parents and after one or two others had come up to peer at the feet, Grace began to talk through other details about the painting: a way of leading everyone gently towards the bigger things Manet had been trying to convey. She pointed out that there was champagne and beer at the bar and that the beer was Bass Pale Ale, so the tastes of British tourists were obviously being catered for. She showed them where the painter had signed his name on one of the bottle labels.

‘Damn clever,’ Mr Baldridge said.

‘Indeed. So, remember I was saying about perspective and the use of reflection? Well, if you look behind the barmaid and off to the right, do you see the back view of a woman and a man in evening dress?’ Grace could not stop herself from glancing towards the blond guy and his take on evening dress, and was pleased to see he had not moved from his contemplation of death by jumping. ‘Now, if this is meant to be a reflection of the barmaid here, talking to a customer who would be standing where we are now, it’s in the wrong place. It should be right behind her – that’s how reflections work. Does that mean Manet wasn’t that good a painter? Or has he deliberately played with perspective to create a kind of before-and-after situation – two realities? Look closely at those figures off to the right. The man is bending in to ask the barmaid something and even from the back she looks engaged, animated; but here at the centre of the painting, the barmaid we see staring out at us appears distant. Are we seeing her reaction to what the man in the reflection has asked her for?’ She paused. ‘It’s only one reading of the painting, but it makes us question her status and her relationship with the man.’

Grace usually left it there and let the grown-ups draw their own conclusions, but she had barely got the word ‘man’ out when a bored American voice said, ‘Oh come
on, cut to the chase. What you mean is, has he just asked her for sex because she might be the kind of barmaid who’s also a prostitute?’