Playing Grace (4 page)

‘Not far,’ the blond guy told Gisella, but the look of triumph in his smile seemed only for Grace.

‘The gentleman is right,’ Grace said, feeling a part of her old self scrabble up and out. ‘These places are not far and, of course, your parents will probably have heard about them on the news – they became quite famous after the riots there.’

Gisella was soon standing back between her fussing parents and Grace dropped an ‘ooh, sorry, look what I did’ smile on the blond guy. ‘Nice move,’ he said, after which he just kept staring at her in a way that made her wonder if somebody had turned up the heating in the little room.

‘Goodbye,’ she tried, in absolutely her firmest voice.

There was a bit of a stand-off before his face relaxed. ‘OK, I’m taking the hint. I’m goin’. But hey,’ he gave her a megawatt smile that she hadn’t expected, ‘it might not be goodbye. We might bump into each other again.’

‘I very much doubt it.’

‘Small world out there.’ He moved towards the doorway. ‘Never say never.’

As soon as he’d gone, Mr Baldridge said loudly, ‘Damn kook from New York.’

There was a beat before that blond head appeared back round the door frame. ‘Nope, Rhode Island,’ the head said with a grin and disappeared again.

‘Rhode Island? That’s even worse,’ Mr Baldridge shouted after him. ‘Bunch of pot-smoking Democrats.’

A laugh drifted back, along with the sound of heavy biker boots on a wooden floor, before gradually fading away.

After that there were no more sightings of him and Grace got the tour safely upstairs and focused on the art, as she always did, until the blocked feeling in her chest was gone. By the end of the day the irritating American would be no more than a memory, filed away by force of will on her part, the emotions he had stirred up pushed back down again.

When it was time for the tour to end, Grace took her group slowly back down to the gallery entrance. Some of them had further questions, either about the art they’d seen or other tours her company offered. There were questions about London too: how to get to a particular theatre; requests for recommendations about authentic pubs. Mr Macintosh needed some advice about an emergency dentist. Grace was not one of those guides who got sniffy about being asked to supply this kind of information – she saw it as an opportunity to build up some brownie points for
London and Londoners; small kindnesses that might be remembered in the face of whatever truculent waiter or gobby taxi-driver was encountered later.

After that it was time for goodbyes. The Baldridges were, unfortunately, already booked on her ‘The Nation’s Best-Loved Paintings’ tour at the National Gallery next week. Other people she was unlikely to see again. She had a feeling she’d always remember the Tuscellis, though, especially Gisella, who even now was acting as if Grace had personally ruined any chance of her future happiness.

Hands were shaken, tips were handed over, and Mrs Hikaranto also gave Grace a paper wallet and an origami crane.

‘How was Norman?’ Lilly asked when Grace had seen the last member of the tour out of the double doors. The question was accompanied by a customary jerk of the head towards the upstairs rooms that always made Lilly look as if she were trying to dislodge something stuck in her ear.

‘He—’

‘Sitting down with his eyes closed?’

‘Well …’

‘Worn out. Caught him asleep yesterday. That new wife, Lavinka, Ludmilla, whatever she calls herself, she’s always wanting this new and that new. Running him ragged.’ The
energy Lilly had brought to that speech caused a piece of hair to work itself free from the artful arrangement on her head and she poked it back into place with a finger before smoothing first one and then the other eyebrow. After that, the finger did a quick check along her bottom lip and Grace knew that if she were not standing there, Lilly would be getting out the hand mirror she kept under the desk and reapplying her lipstick. Lilly frequently refreshed her make-up, swivelling to face away from the gallery door to do it, which did not make it any less noticeable. Whereas in the morning she simply looked like a woman of a certain age putting on a good show, as the day wore on it began to seem as though the make-up was wearing her.

Grace had overheard guides with other companies referring to Lilly as ‘The Painted Lady’ and once, a guide who had suffered under the sharpness of her tongue, had called her the ‘The Daubed Drab’.

Grace refused to laugh or smile at the nicknames, feeling that women who worked in a largely male world had to stick together. Unfortunately Lilly herself did not always buy into that view.

‘It’s all right with
your
hair,’ she said, poking at her own again. ‘Your hair’s so neat it stays exactly where you put it. But mine’s full of life, see.’ Lilly was smoothing down
her jacket, giving the cuffs of her blouse a tug to get them to peek out from under the sleeves of her jacket. ‘And this uniform, well, it’s not cut right for a figure like mine.’ She looked over at Grace. ‘Designed more for a boyish figure really. You’d have no trouble with it.’

‘Thanks,’ Grace said as pleasantly as she could, but her face must have showed some kind of negative response to those backhanded compliments because Lilly added, ‘Nice get-up though that, Grace.’ She waved a manicured hand at Grace’s suit. ‘And how do you get your hair so glossy?’

‘White vinegar in the final rinse.’

Lilly nodded. ‘Suppose you need that shine on it or a cut like that could look a bit severe. My hair wouldn’t hold a bob, see.’ Lilly was jerking her head towards the stairs again. ‘Norman’s wife, she’s got a bob, evidently and she definitely wouldn’t fit in this jacket.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Silicone job.’

Grace replied with a non-committal, ‘Oh,’ and before Lilly could add anything else felt the need to retrace her steps past the desk and up the stairs, heading for that small, dimly lit room again. It was empty of other visitors and she stood looking at the tenderness with which the baby was holding on to his mother, one foot twisted in his blanket.

She checked again that she was alone and then bent forward.

‘Sorry about the American,’ she said very quietly, ‘not the Texan – the one from Rhode Island.’ She leaned in further until her nose was almost touching the paint. ‘And while I’m here, I’d like to say again how sorry I am about everything else too.’ She hesitated. ‘Desperately, desperately sorry.’

CHAPTER
3

Grace came out of the gallery, turned left and headed off down the Strand, retracing the route the Tuscellis had puffed along a few hours earlier. Deftly she negotiated her way around the bus queues and the groups of strolling tourists, dropping some money in the cup of the woman in the striped knitted tea-cosy hat and matching blanket who, as usual, was hunkered down in the doorway of the long-gone photo-processing shop. A few yards further on, she spotted the young guy with the cans of Special Brew arranged in a rough pyramid next to his feet. By this time in the afternoon he would invariably ask her to get her breasts out, although he used a more earthy expression. It was absolutely no consolation that he did the same to any woman who passed by, even the tea-cosy lady. Grace brought her perfected avoidance technique into play: quick look over right shoulder to ensure no traffic, skip into the gutter checking nothing nasty lurking there, walk rapidly while looking into bag as if hunting for something and
then, when out of sight and earshot, a hop quickly back on to pavement.

Once breast man had been circumnavigated, Grace was again moving rapidly. Being able to walk fast after the ambling gait necessary in the gallery felt like a kind of freedom and she breathed in deeply. Autumn was mild this year; there was, as yet, no coldness to the air and there was a brightness to the light that Grace loved even more because once October was properly underway it would be replaced by a washed-out dreariness and then early dusk. The street today had the look of a film set – buses, people, taxis – the energy of it all making a canyon of busyness rolling down to Trafalgar Square, side routes splitting off to head down to the river or up to Covent Garden.

She inhaled deeply again. Was she the only person in London who found the smell of the traffic, the dirt, the din and the jostling of the people comfortingly mind-numbing?

She passed Charing Cross on the left and saw the tops of the cranes stretching above the buildings opposite, signs of a new development way off to her right. Just down the road she knew there was a statue of Charles I. That was the thing about London: history was forever shifting around you. In one stretch of pavement you could be in the present,
then given a glimpse of the future before being yanked right back to the past.

The threat of being yanked back to the past spurred Grace on until she was at the heaving, noisy scrum of people and traffic and pedestrian crossings that was the junction of Northumberland Avenue and the Strand. Among those waiting for the lights to change were some Spanish college students, each wearing identical hoodies bearing the name of their college. Hanging from most of their hands were also identical carrier bags from one of the gift shops that lay in wait along this particular stretch of road. Grace guessed that within those bags lay various combinations of beefeaters, black taxis, red buses and perhaps postcards of Will and Kate. As the traffic stopped she saw the boy nearest her extract a mask of the prime minister from his bag. He seemed highly delighted with his purchase and she wondered why until she heard him shout ‘Simon Cowell’ and hold it over his face. There was no time to laugh at that because now it was a half-run, half-walk to get to the safety of the next traffic island before the impatient drivers, revving their engines, surged forward as the lights changed again and mowed you down.

Cutting across Trafalgar Square and squinting to see what was on the fourth plinth, she scattered pigeons and headed for the domed and columned mass of the
National Gallery. A quick check of her watch – no, Gilbert’s tour would not have finished. If she was quick, she could catch him in action. Making slow progress against the flow of visitors already exiting, she reached the stairs and climbed them to arrive in the run of rooms dedicated to sixteenth-century European paintings. The atmosphere was hushed, reverential almost, as she approached a gallery in which, at the far end, she could see Gilbert and his tour of four people. They were gathered around a picture of a portly woman whose hand was resting on a stone balustrade.

In his pink shirt and pale linen trousers, his jacket slung over one arm, Gilbert could have been any urbane man in his sixties who, judging by his slight paunch, was too fond of a good meal and a good drink. Yet close up, the half-moon glasses, the intensity of his tone and the way he was talking as much with his hands as with his mouth hinted at a more cultured, perhaps studious, person. Grace watched him illustrating Titian’s vigorous brush-strokes.

Heads moved in closer to the picture. There were nods, noises of consideration.

‘And here,’ Gilbert said, moving along to the next painting, the blue of his eyes still vivid behind his glasses, ‘one of the most influential paintings of the Renaissance:
Bacchus and Ariadne
.’ He surveyed the group and left a pause of a
few seconds before confiding, ‘Of course, Titian’s religious paintings of the period exhibit this same vibrancy.’

There was more nodding as if those listening had known this all along and were happy that Gilbert had been able to confirm it for them.

Grace was going to move closer when she saw one of the gallery attendants walk slowly towards her, raising a hand in greeting – Samuel, his curly dark hair grey in places, but his friendly, open demeanour still managing to make him look much younger than she guessed he was.

‘Puttin’ them all in a trance,’ he said in a soft aside, his accent lilting and tripping and somehow at odds with his sombre gallery uniform.

Grace nodded. ‘Kind of mesmerises you, doesn’t he?’

They continued to stand, side by side, as Gilbert moved his group along to the next painting. As he did so, he caught sight of them and lowered his head and peered over the top of his glasses, but did not smile. Gilbert liked to maintain a serious persona with his tours, but when he had all of his group firmly established in front of the next painting, she saw him lift his hand and place it on the back of his head as if smoothing down his hair, before splaying his fingers wide and then wiggling them.

‘He’s telling me he’s got another five minutes to go,’ Grace said in response to Samuel’s quizzical look.

There was a low-throated laugh. ‘He’s a clever one, that Gilbert. Yeah. Really clever.’

A suggestion of something in Samuel’s voice made Grace turn to look at him. That ‘something’ was in his eyes too, soft and watchful.

‘I’ll wait for Gilbert outside,’ she said and walked away as quietly as she could, thinking about Samuel and what that soft look meant and whether Gilbert had any inkling at all.

Out on the steps, she watched the people in Trafalgar Square before tipping her head back to peer up at Nelson. Did he dream of Lady Hamilton up there, a soft gleam in his eye like the one in Samuel’s? Or did he look down at all these nationalities and now and again spit on the heads of French visitors? She should warn Monsieur Laurent.

She was still thinking of that when Gilbert appeared at the top of the steps with his tour group. He was putting on his jacket, chatting with one of the women, and there was a handshake during which a tip was obviously being handed over. Gilbert was charming in the way he accepted it, but still managed to convey the impression that he was doing the giver a huge favour by taking the money. Slowly the group descended the steps with him and there was a gradual parting.

‘Art group from Whitstable,’ Gilbert said, coming to join her. ‘Phil, Philly, Philippa and Phyllis.’

‘Oh, come on, Gilbert, they can’t all be Philistines. They were really paying attention, enjoying it.’

Gilbert sighed. ‘You’re right. They weren’t a bad bunch. And no one did that bloody awful “Bless you” when I first said Titian.’ He reached in the pocket of his jacket and pulled out his watch. Its strap was broken – had been broken for months – and Gilbert was in the process of getting it mended. Gilbert’s processes for anything took time and involved more thinking than doing.