Playing Grace (3 page)

The voice came from behind the Macintoshes this time and was accompanied by a hike of eyebrows and a grin suggesting that the blond-haired guy had started to enjoy himself and was fully aware of the effect his words would have. Nearly all of the group were now staring at him rather than at the painting, except the Hikarantos, who had their phrase book out and were no doubt searching for the word ‘prostitute’.

Grace knew that at least one of Mr Baldridge’s hands would be on a hip. His wife’s mouth looked as if she’d drunk hot varnish.

If Grace weren’t careful, this was going to descend into something unpleasant. But would trying to get rid of the blond guy be even more disruptive? She checked along the gallery to the seat usually occupied by Norman, a large, amiable attendant, but it was empty.

‘Thank you so much for that interesting comment,’ Grace said, hoping that beneath her sweet delivery the blond guy would hear the sarcasm. She followed up with her iciest stare, the one which unfailingly told anyone getting too close to retreat. The guy just stared right back and, if anything, seemed even more amused, but whether it was
by Grace or the reaction his speech had just provoked, she could not tell. For the first time in a long, long while, she was tempted to stop being well behaved and say exactly what she thought, something along the lines of ‘Bog off, you smug freeloader.’

She quashed that idea and said politely, ‘I’m sorry, I think you might have mistaken us for your group. I did notice another one in the “Italian Masters” section. If you go through that door—’

‘Nice try,’ the blond guy said, ‘but I’m right where I’m meant to be.’

‘You think?’ Mr Baldridge cut in. ‘You paid to be part of this group, son?’

‘Nope.’ The tone was laconic.

‘Well, we have.’ Mr Baldridge raised his chin. ‘Paid in full, up front.’ Others in the group nodded.

Mr Baldridge upped the ante with a double-hand, double-hip stance and the blond guy responded by pointedly folding his arms and lowering his chin. Monsieur Laurent was strangling his leaflet again off on the sidelines.

‘I think,’ Grace said slowly, calmly, ‘it would save time if we left chatting about payment until after we’ve viewed the paintings.’ The blond guy opened his mouth, no doubt to say he wasn’t paying for anything, but she had regained the group’s attention and she wasn’t giving it back. She
was already moving. ‘Come along then. It’s Van Gogh next. No time to waste; remember there’s so much more to see.’

Like a fussy mother goose with her brood, she got them out of the room and on to the next one. She talked brightly to cover up any lingering embarrassment and spotted where Norman the attendant was roosting today. Slumped on a seat next to the wall, he had his eyes closed, but at the sound of their feet on the wooden floor, he opened them and mouthed, ‘All right, Grace?’

She was going to mouth back, ‘Not really,’ when she saw that the blond guy had not followed them.

The unchewed thing in her chest dissolved slightly, but even while she was talking them through the self-portrait of Van Gogh, she kept an eye out for that blond hair. She explained about the painter’s extraordinary use of colour and the huge influence he had on artists who had come after him. She waited. No interruption; still no sign of him. Gradually she felt her muscles stop clenching and, as she relaxed, she could see the group was doing the same. If one of them felt at ease enough to ask a question, she knew all was well again.

‘I hear,’ Signor Tuscelli said, ‘Van Gogh did not sell any paintings when he was alive.’

She flashed him a grateful smile. ‘That’s very nearly true, Signor Tuscelli. He sold just one –
Red Vineyard at
Arles
. Tragically, much of the time he
was
struggling against poverty. And now … well, the highest price ever paid for a Van Gogh was $82.5 million back in the 1980s.’

‘So sad,’ someone said. ‘Such a pity.’

There was an exasperated, ‘Only if you think an artist’s worth is measured in money.’

‘You back?’ Mr Baldridge snapped and the blond man, now towering over the Hikarantos, said, ‘No fooling you, is there?’ did a pirouette and wandered over to a bench and sat on it. He made a big show of turning in the opposite direction, but when Grace started talking again it was obvious he was listening. At one point he sighed loud enough for everyone to hear, before stretching out his legs and wiping something off his boot. Grace could see he was unsettling people once more – every now and again someone would turn to check what he was doing.

She carried on, refusing to lose what felt like a battle of wills. When they moved from Van Gogh to Cézanne, she saw Blondie lie down on the bench and cross his hands over his chest as if he were dead. She increased her volume and animation and when she looked again she was pleased to see that Norman had hauled himself off his chair and was standing near the bench, presumably asking the blond man to sit up. He did so like a lamb, but as he turned his head to look at Grace, she heard him
say, ‘Hey, she’s the one who put me to sleep. Tell her off.’

Grace fought the temptation to walk over and ping all the wristbands on his arm to wipe that lazy grin off his face. She could feel her muscles, particularly those in her jaw, start to tighten up again. She would ignore him, talk louder.

The next time she checked, the source of her irritation was leaving the room, methodically folding and unfolding his gallery ticket as if that was the only thing that would prevent him from falling into a coma.

‘I think we’re safe now,’ Grace chanced saying in a conspiratorial whisper to the group, as the noise of his heavy boots receded, and was pleased to get back laughter and smiles and a comment from Mrs Macintosh that she didn’t know how Grace had stopped herself from ‘slugging the guy’. Gisella gave Mrs Macintosh a look that suggested she’d like to strangle her, ditch her parents and follow the sound of those boots.

For a while, there were no further incidents, and Grace should have headed straight upstairs to ‘Impressionist Landscapes’, but she wanted to introduce the group to a painting hanging on the wall in a darkened side room. Although, if she was truthful, her detour had more to do with her need than the group’s: she could no more have
walked past the room than a mother could have ignored a child pulling at her skirt.

‘If you’ll forgive me,’ she said, as she led them into the room, ‘I’d like to show you this recent acquisition. It’s a fifteenth-century icon from what is now Macedonia. I think if the people at the front move along a bit, we can all fit in. That’s it … Mrs Macintosh, you here, and you, Monsieur Laurent. Please mind your footing; it’s a little darker in here to protect the colours.’

Even in the low light the vibrant blues, golds and purples sang out and Grace gave the group a few seconds to take in what they were seeing.

‘The Madonna with child is a common, much loved subject of religious art,’ she said when she gauged the time was right, ‘but this painting, with its quite tender and animated pose, is more unusual. The child hugging his mother with his back to the viewer looks natural, but the mother’s response does not. She’s looking straight at us, not at him, and we see how worried she is – you get a real sense of what’s to come.’ Grace fought to keep her voice steady and carried on. ‘The intimacy of the relationship between the Virgin Mary and—’

‘Jesus!’ It was the blond guy, leaning against the door frame. He prised himself away from it and there was a shake of his head suggesting he thought that she was
crazed. ‘What, you’re going backwards now – you plannin’ to do cave paintings next?’

As he came further into the room he caused a general shuffling to make room for him.

Grace closed her eyes, hoping that when she opened them not only would he somehow be gone but that this dizzy feeling slowly spiralling up from her feet would have disappeared too. She opened her eyes to find him still there, and everyone was looking from her to him and back again.

She should concentrate on the colours, finish what she was going to say.

‘Do you have a problem?’ she heard herself ask sharply.

All heads swiftly turned to him.

‘Well,’ he said, squinting at the icon, ‘as you ask, and apologies if you’re religious, but an icon? Really? You’ve got everyone all cosied up in here for this?’ Now he was really screwing up his eyes as if assessing the painting. When he opened them again it was obvious what the assessment had been.

‘This icon,’ Grace said, aware of the heads snapping around to look at her as if they were watching some kind of point-scoring, art-based tennis match, ‘this icon is interesting and relevant in so many ways. Its survival, for a start, is miraculous in the face of all kinds of historical upheavals – war, communism, the black market. Icons
like these used to be slashed with knives, dumped in rivers, sold abroad only to disappear into private collections. Even …’ she was going to say
loaded on to bonfires
but couldn’t get the words out. She took a deep breath and set off again before he could butt in. ‘And, yes, they are an aid to prayer, but icons have also had a huge influence on all kinds of painters. Matisse, to name but one, loved their colour and spontaneity and they influenced his own work.’

She came to a halt to see the blond guy was smiling at her and his expression had a warmth to it which made her feel more uneasy than everything else about him.

‘OK, OK,’ he said, ‘I get it, you like the icon. Boy, you’ve got some real passion going on there. Makes a nice change from all that painting-by-numbers spiel earlier.’

Grace did not hear that last bit, because at the word ‘passion’ she suddenly had such a strong vision of a beach that she had to put her hands behind her and press on the wall. There were waves too, baby ones, running up and back. She could feel the sand under her bare feet, even though when she peered down she was wearing the shoes she had put on that morning … blue shoes to match her blue suit. She lifted one hand from the wall and placed it on her jacket to check it was still there and had not been replaced by something made of cheesecloth.

She knew that she had to do something, but she was running into the sea, Bill behind her. She was splashing him before he caught her in his arms. ‘You’re pretty quick for an old guy,’ she whispered into his neck and he laughed and let her go. ‘I’ll show you who’s an old guy,’ he said, turning and sprinting out of the water and back up the beach, and she knew there was only one way to stop him – she was reaching for the hem of her dress and peeling it up and off, chucking it back over her head into the waves. Tips of her thumb and third finger in her mouth, she whistled sharply and saw Bill turn; her heart gave a jolt at the way he veered to a halt, seemed unsteady. ‘My God, you can’t do that here, there are people,’ he shouted, but he was coming back to her. ‘Look at you, look at you, Venus out of the waves,’ and she stood there feeling the sun all over her, his gaze all over her, beautiful, adored, free. Sublimely, crazily happy.

‘Are you OK?’ she heard an American voice say and she looked at the man in front of her and wondered how it was possible that Bill had grown younger. And then she was pushing herself away from the wall, leaving the beach behind, shaking the sand from between her toes.

‘Yes, I’m absolutely fine,’ she said, staring into green eyes and ignoring the puzzlement in them. ‘And it’s been incredibly nice having you along, but I’m sorry, we have to say goodbye now.’

He was looking like a Viking again. ‘You doin’ that “we” thing when you’re really talking about yourself.’

‘I’m also sorry I’ve been unable to show you anything that interested you.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that,’ he shot back, doing a flicky movement with his eyes up and down her and then giving her such a direct stare she was forced to look away and busy herself with apologising to the Hikarantos for talking so fast.

She heard him move, saw him stretch. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘don’t sweat it … it’s just my taste in art isn’t so—’

‘Sophisticated?’

A flash of green eyes. ‘I was gonna say conventional. I like something more modern. Challenging.’

Grace should probably have let him go then – she sensed the majority of the group were growing restless – but that arrogant assumption that his taste was better than hers was crying out to be deflated. She reached into her bag and extracted a Picture London leaflet and held it towards him. ‘We do other tours,’ she said, ‘Hepworth to Hockney, Bacon—’

‘I was thinking of something a bit edgier. Installations, happenings. What’s on the streets right now.’

‘Ah.’ She put the leaflet back in her bag.

‘Ah?’ he echoed with a short laugh. ‘“Ah” as in “how great” or “Ah” as in “I don’t like it”?’

‘I saw a Gilbert and George exhibition once,’ Monsieur Laurent announced. ‘And Damien Hirst and a man called Angsty.’

‘Banksy,’ the blond guy corrected him, looking delighted that someone else was on his wavelength.

‘I did not like them,’ Monsieur Laurent went on, shaking his head sadly. ‘They did not speak to me. Inside.’ He placed his hand over his heart as if to make absolutely clear that he did not mean any other part of his anatomy.

‘They don’t damn well speak to me either,’ Mr Baldridge blustered, pushing people aside to get to the blond guy. ‘And even if they did, I couldn’t hear them with your voice yapping on, son. How about you shut the hell up and let us get on with this tour? We’ve got time to make up, you know.’

‘It’s all right, Mr Baldridge,’ Grace said softly, ‘this man is just leaving.’ She turned back to the shadower, who was looking at Mr Baldridge as if he wanted to tell him to have a go if he thought he was hard enough, or whatever the equivalent American expression was.

‘I suggest you try the White Cube gallery,’ she said. ‘Or the Serpentine Gallery, the Institute of Contemporary Arts, or any number of artist spaces in Hackney, Tottenham, Hoxton …’

Suddenly Gisella was standing next to Grace. ‘Hackney, Tottenham, Hoxton, are they far?’ she said, the place names
sounding both exotic and erotic in her mouth. Grace tried to think what the Italian was for ‘on heat’.