The Debutante (34 page)

She opened her mouth but again, nothing came out.

In the silence that followed, Mr Trask stepped forward. ‘It seems that Mr Munroe has failed to pay you for the painting he commissioned.’ Reaching into his breast pocket, he produced a cheque. ‘Mrs Munroe hopes that you find this amount sufficient.’

He put it down on the table between them.

‘My husband really is the most avid collector. He’s surprised me so many times with his new acquisitions. Sadly,
though, we’ll have to auction some of them later this month. One cannot always keep what one’s picked up. And of course, others …’ she paused, giving a little shrug of her shoulders, ‘others one just becomes bored of.’

It was as if Cate were made of lead, unable to move or even think clearly. It was beyond her comprehension. It was meant to be him. She thought it would be him.

‘I’m told it’s the going rate,’ Anne Marie said.

Cate stared at the cheque. It was for £50,000.

‘For services rendered,’ Anne Marie added.

The gallery was so dark and close, the very air itself felt as if it were pressing in against her skin.

‘It’s … it’s …’ Cate stumbled, her throat tightening around the words.

‘Pardon me?’

She swallowed hard. ‘It’s not for sale,’ she managed at last.

‘I’m sorry?’ Anne Marie gave an incredulous little laugh. ‘What did you say?’

Cate forced herself to meet her gaze. ‘The painting is not for sale.’

‘Are you trying to bargain with me?’

‘No. I’m telling you it can’t be bought. It’s not for sale.’

Anne Marie’s eyes narrowed.

‘I am at a loss then, Miss Albion, to understand exactly how it came to be in my husband’s possession.’

Cate weighed up her words carefully. ‘It was a mistake,’ she said quietly. ‘A serious mistake.’

Anne Marie’s face hardened.

‘Would you be so good as to have the gallery return the painting to me?’ Cate asked, turning to Mr Trask. ‘I believe you have my address.’

He frowned, pursed his lips.

‘Or shall I speak to them myself?’ she suggested.

‘No, no,’ he conceded, glancing sideways at Anne Marie, who ignored him. ‘I’m sure I can make the necessary arrangements.’

‘Thank you.’ She looked back at Anne Marie. ‘I’m truly sorry, Mrs Munroe.’

Anne Marie’s dark eyes widened in rage. She turned her face away, stared out of the window again. ‘You’re mistaken if you imagine the matter to be of any importance to me at all.’

Somehow Cate made her way out and on to the street.

It was only when she reached Brook Street that she began to breathe properly again. And Oxford Street before her head stopped pounding and her hands stopped shaking. She’d had a very narrow escape.

The only thing worse than being a mistress to a man like that was being his wife.

Endsleigh
Devon

17 March
1941

Oh darling!
Irene has gone to London and I am so jealous I could scream! Of course I can’t as I am the size of a bus. She’s to have lunch with Pippa Marks and do some shopping. Have begged her for a pair of shoes as my feet are so swollen now. Last time she was there she had to spend the night due to bombs, tucked in the basement of the Dorchester along with Lord R, Nicki Monckton and Baba Metcalf. Came back looking tense and old. Wouldn’t tell me anything and went upstairs to lie down. I do hope she brings me shoes.

I have successfully knitted the most misshapen little jumper for my son and heir. Really quite revolting and in a ducky yellow. Alice just shakes her head while I knit and then spends half an hour pulling it apart. If it fits it will only be because he’s completely deformed. With all the disruption I can only conclude that you don’t receive my letters but I will still try. I cannot do without you, you see. Even when you don’t write, I need to know that you are there—that you exist in the world. One cannot carry on otherwise. What would be the point?

Your only,

B xx

Jack pulled up on the long wooded lane to Wooton Lodge Nursing Home. The drive wound around for almost a half a mile before the house finally became visible, behind a thick clump of trees. Tucked miles away from even the smallest village, it had been difficult to find. His mother had admitted his father about two weeks previously, after years of struggling with him on her own. As he climbed out of the car, he noted the grandeur of the place, the extensive parkland and the profound sense of solitude that pervaded. This wasn’t so bad. Neat manicured lawns and flower beds bordered the main building, which was neo-Gothic in design, with high cathedral-style leaded glass windows and arched flying buttresses. A little further in the distance, a man-made lake was visible and what looked to be converted stables, now presumably a state-of-the-art medical facility. His father might be comfortable here.

Reaching into the back seat of the car, he pulled out a bag containing the old writing case as well as a copy of Benedict Blythe’s
Myth and Irish Imagination
which he’d managed to find in a second-hand bookshop in Malvern. It was a surprising book, what he’d read of it. Lyrically written and much more entertaining than he’d expected from an academic work. Clearly part of Blythe’s popularity had been his ability to translate the ancient tales into fresh, highly romantic adventures, lavish in their sensual detail and innuendo. The author’s sexuality seeped through the descriptive passages of a land and a people
taut with physical longing and passions, which undoubtedly mirrored the paradoxes of his own torn psyche.

Jack walked up to the main entrance and smiled at the woman at the reception desk.

‘Hi. I’m here to see my father, Henry Coates.’

‘Is he expecting you?’

‘Ah, not really.’

‘And your name?’

‘Jack. Jack Coates.’

‘Coates …’ She entered the name, checking the details on her computer. ‘Here we are. He’s in the east wing. Let me ring through to the nurses’ station and see if I can get someone to take you down. Do you want to take a seat?’ She indicated a long, leather bench.

‘Thanks.’

Jack wandered, loitering near the doorway, suddenly nervous and filled with dread. From the outside it had seemed like a posh hotel. But now he could see the security guards and locked doors. It felt properly like an institution. Was his father really that bad? What if he hated it and wanted Jack to take him out? Or would this be one of the days when he had trouble placing Jack at all?

‘Someone will be up shortly,’ the woman said, putting down the phone.

‘Great.’ He picked up one of the nursing home’s glossy brochures and sat down, leafing through.

Originally belonging to Rothermere Estate, Wooton Lodge was built as a private hunting lodge in 1873, its architecture modelled after that of Notre Dame in Paris. During the Second World War it was taken over as a psychiatric hospital and rest home for soldiers recovering from the traumas of active service. Its secluded location and wooded surroundings were thought to be highly therapeutic. After the war it remained a psychiatric hospital, bequeathed to the nation by Lord Rothermere, until the Alpha Group purchased it from the state in 1983. It then shifted its focus to geriatric care, particularly assisted living for people suffering from Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and dementia, providing the most comprehensive, up-to-date facilities possible.

A nurse was walking towards him. ‘Mr Coates?’

Jack dropped the brochure on the bench and stood up.

‘Annabel,’ she introduced herself, and they shook hands. ‘Do you want to follow me?’ She led him down a hallway. ‘Have you been here before?’

‘No, this is my first time.’

‘Allow me to show you around.’ She swiped a pass key and they went through a door and down another hallway. ‘This is the common room,’ she pointed out. ‘It must’ve been the main drawing room. And as you can see, it gets quite a lot of use.’

It was a cavernous space, with huge oversized features and an enormous fireplace. Whoever had designed it had
obviously pictured it as a kind of latter-day Camelot; there were stained-glass windows with vaguely Masonic, medieval imagery, arched doorways and a flagstone floor, now covered with crimson deep-pile area rugs. Jack looked around at the clusters of elderly patients, some playing bridge, others dozing in front of a television. A few drinking tea and looking out of the front bay window. They seemed daunted, diminished by the sheer grandiosity of the place. There was a feeling of waiting, as if they were being held in a rather comfortable airport lounge. It disturbed Jack to think of his father sitting here, staring forlornly out of the window with all the other patients, unsure of where he was or why. ‘Great. Very nice,’ he said.

They continued on. ‘And the dining room.’

He poked his head into the narrow room with its vaulted ceiling. Long tables were arranged with plastic-covered chairs; easy to wipe down and well spaced from each other. ‘Very nice,’ he said again, his apprehension growing. Who did his father sit with? Was it like school? Were there little cliques?

She took him round to the left and through a set of large double doors. They were obviously out of the main public spaces and in the wing with the private rooms now. It looked more like a hospital and less like a cathedral. The ceilings were lower, the floors beneath him wooden, creaking from use. The nurse paused before a room on the right.

‘I think he’s asleep,’ she said, softly.

Jack peered in. His father was sitting upright in a cushioned armchair; his head lolled to one side. ‘Dad?’

Henry’s chest rose and fell, a quiet, soothing rhythm.

‘It’s the medication,’ she explained. ‘Can I get you anything? A cup of tea?’

‘No. No, I’m fine.’

She left and Jack sat down on the bed, holding the bag on his lap, looking at his father. He seemed to have shrunk since he last saw him; his hands and feet appeared exaggerated, much too big for his slender limbs, and his face was like a soft rubbery mask, mouth open, snoring softly. He was sitting in a warm patch of sunlight.

‘Dad? Dad?’

His father stirred slightly, his eyes flicking open. ‘Hello? Yes?’

‘It’s me, Jack.’

The old man shifted. ‘Yes. I’ll be with you in a moment.’ His head rolled to the other side and his eyes shut again.

Jack sighed and looked around. It wasn’t a bad room, after all. The bed was a hospital model, but the rest of the furniture he recognised as coming from his parents’ home, along with pictures, paintings and books that helped give the room the familiar understated style he associated with his father’s tastes. Jack got up, looking at the spines of the books his father was reading, picking up
and examining the photographs he’d chosen to keep with him, paying attention, for perhaps the first time in his life, to the finer details of who his father was. There was a certain type of fountain pen he liked to do the crossword with. A vein of rather sensationalist historical fiction that caught his imagination. A positive devotion to his mother, whose face smiled back at him from no less than four of the photographs that were crowded on top of his chest of drawers. Jack ran his finger across a shiny silver frame; there were large thumbprints from where his father had picked it up, looking at her.

It brought to mind his own flat; ordered, spare; devoid of any tokens or memories.

He turned away from the chest of drawers, checked his watch. Taking the writing case out of the bag, he arranged it, along with the book and the pages he’d photocopied at the library, where he knew his father would see it, on the side table next to his chair.

Taking off his jacket, he folded it, sat back down on the bed and waited. There was the faint ticking sound of his father’s alarm clock.

It hadn’t been that long ago that his father had owned his own business. Now he was visiting him in a nursing home. The physical ache of loneliness filled his chest.

Jack thought of Cate. Of her hand in his, the smooth silkiness of her cheek; of her standing, naked, by the window.

Then he imagined his thumbprint on the picture frame of the woman he loved.

He wanted the picture on his chest of drawers to be of her.

‘So, what are we having tonight?’ Cate asked, wandering into the kitchen.

Rachel was chopping an onion. She nodded to a cookbook on the worktop. ‘I thought we’d try something different. A fish pie.’

‘Wow!’ Cate laughed. ‘How retro is that!’

‘I thought it might be fun.’ Rachel smiled.

Cate watched as she flitted between the oven and the worktop, humming a bit of a Burt Bacharach song softly under her breath. There was something different about her today. She had an energy and an ease Cate hadn’t seen in her before. Then she noticed something else.

‘You haven’t got your red shoes on! You look so different without them.’

Rachel looked down on her feet, adorned by a pair of simple flat summer sandals. ‘No. I think my red period is finally over.’