The Fearsome Particles (22 page)

Yes, she knew Jeremy. He was Hella’s little terror. A product, Vicki suspected, of inappropriate habits during pregnancy, though her other two children had turned out all right.

“And he started throwing the apples and pears around and, see” – Hella looked up again – “we have a dog.”

Vicki closed her eyes.

“Normally he’s not like that, really. Like, he doesn’t wreck things? He’s really a good dog? But something got into him. I don’t know what, but he just went to town and by the time I came upstairs it was like, wow, crunchy bits of fake fruit everywhere.”

Hella stopped for a moment, and in the silence, Vicki thought she could hear the shush of a car outside, driving too quickly down Lightenham Avenue. The new owners of this house, whoever they turned out to be, would probably not like that very much, though Robert and Margeaux were the kind of people able to tune out that sort of thing.

“I see,” said Vicki.

Hella stared down at the ball of paper, her angular face taking on the wide-eyed look of someone reliving a bad memory. “For a while I was really worried, you know, that maybe he’d eaten a lot of it, because that wouldn’t be good for him, all that glue and varnish. I was going to take him to the vet, but –”

“Actually,” said Vicki, “it’s fairly edible.” She could feel herself giving Hella a reassuring smile, though the muscles of her face seemed to be functioning without her having to be very much involved. “It’s really just flour paste and paper, and the type of varnish most of these artisans use isn’t poisonous once it’s dry. I’m sure your dog will be fine.”

“Yeah, that’s what my husband said.”

“Well there, you see?” Vicki looked down and discovered a pretty Longton Hall dinner plate in her hands, its delicate bouquet garni pattern seeming quite pale against the creamy background. She wondered for a moment whether this pattern, so faint and frail, was really the sort of which Margeaux would approve. It was possible, thought Vicki, that she had made a terrible mistake, and with Avis arriving in twenty minutes, it was one she had no time to repair.

“Anyway,” said Hella. “I’m really sorry. I thought I was doing something nice, and it turned out really shitty. And I’m really, really sorry.”

“Yes,” said Vicki.

“Are you upset?”

It was clear she had to make the best of things with the china, she had to move on because it was too late, and there was nothing to be done. She set down the plate in her hands and
reached into the box for another. “There should be a set of side plates to go with these,” she said to Hella. “And a sauceboat. Do you think you could find them for me?”

Hella reached back and lobbed her paper ball through the doorway toward the sink in the kitchen, and seemed chagrined when she missed the mark. Then she turned and faced Vicki with her arms crossed. “Do you want me to, you know, repay you for the fruit or anything? I don’t know how much they cost, but I could. I could pay you back in, like, instalments. If you wanted.”

Vicki shook her head. “No, Hella. These things happen. I’ve lost a number of fragile items over the years and it’s always unfortunate, but you can’t dwell on it.” She unwrapped a plate and folded the paper into a tight package. “Now listen,” she said, looking into Hella’s eyes and gripping the paper hard, “let’s try to work very quickly over the next twenty minutes, so that we have the downstairs as ready as possible when Avis arrives. All right?”

Hella sighed as she checked the band in her hair and then sang out an “Okay” that suggested she was far from convinced. “What’ll we put in the bowl in the kitchen?”

Vicki reached across the table and handed Hella the wedge of folded paper. “Why don’t I leave that up to you?”

A
t five minutes after one, Avis trilled a sweet “Halloo” when she opened the door. She had slipped off her shoes and was setting them beside Vicki’s blue pumps when Vicki entered the foyer from the library.

“Have you seen what they’re doing to that beautiful Georgian on the corner?” she asked, stretching to her full height to meet Vicki as Vicki leaned down to kiss her on the cheek.

“You’re warm,” said Vicki as she straightened.

“Oh” – Avis fluttered a hand – “there’s something wrong with the air conditioning and Peter refuses to lift a finger about it and I’ve been in the car since about nine this morning. Anyway I’m furious. You know the one I’m talking about?”

“Where they’ve added an addition and covered the whole west side with stucco?”

“Can you believe that?” Avis’s fury sounded like the caroling of meadowlarks. She pulled the silk scarf from around her neck and pushed it fiercely through the handles of her purse. “I sold that house two years ago, and three years before that. It was simply gorgeous. The stone work! And now they’ve really made it a dog’s business.”

“It’s a shame.”

“It’s a shock. I hate what’s become of that whole end of the street, all those stucco additions spreading like disease.”

“They finished the one on the corner about two months ago.”

“Well, I hadn’t noticed. I hardly ever come up that way.” She was pressing the hair at her temples into place. “Anyway, dear, let’s see what you’ve been up to!”

She stepped forward into the circular foyer and Vicki felt her heart quicken as Avis passed her eyes over the flanking oyster-veneered mirrors, up to the Viennese chandelier with glass pendants, and down to the fresh flowers exploding from a coppery Pilkington’s vase set on an enormous tripod table with a piecrust top.

“I’m never disappointed,” Avis said, “to see that table in one of my houses.”

Vicki smiled.

“Cherry, isn’t it?”

“Walnut,” said Vicki.

“But I don’t think you’ve ever used it with that particular vase before.”

Vicki crinkled her eyes, because she had.

“Well, whether you have or not,” said Avis, “it’s lovely. And the flowers.”

As she continued her tour of the main level, Avis seemed pleased, even delighted, by nearly everything Vicki had done. In the grand living room, she cooed over Vicki’s juxtaposition of swooping Regency curves against straight-backed Edwardian rigour, appreciated her medley of silk cushions and admired each of the topiaries she had placed in majolica jardinières. In the library, she paused for a moment when she spied the thin, tapered legs of what Vicki thought of as Robert Lightenham’s Carlton House desk, before pronouncing the desk – and Vicki’s arrangement of a bound leather journal, a blue-and-gold Sèvres inkstand and several loose tea-coloured papers featuring her own impersonation of a man’s dashed handwriting – “inspired.”

She approved of the kitchen counter arrangements, which included a set of buttery glazed Savoie pottery jugs under the window and a Victorian syrup dispenser in the corner, and said not a disapproving word as she passed by Hella’s concoction of dried flowers in the porcelain Worcester basket.

In the dining room, she seemed to hesitate over the George
III
drop-leaf table, and bent down to peer closely at one of the
Longton Hall plates. It was then that Vicki had an urge to admit to Avis that these particular plates were not ideal, that in fact she would probably change them before the weekend, to bring in something more appropriate (though of course she would not say “appropriate for Margeaux”). But before she could say a word, Avis straightened and proceeded to purse her mouth and lift her eyebrows in a way that suggested she was calculating the outcome of an intricate equation. And she said, “The couple I’m bringing tomorrow – he’s in tire manufacturing, and she’s on a huge number of committees – and of course I’ve been to their home for dinner many times … unless I’m mistaken” – she bent down again to examine the plate’s pattern – “I think they have a set with this exact design.”

When she straightened again, she squinted an eye at Vicki. “There are times, Victoria, when I think you’re either a genius or some kind of clairvoyant.”

Vicki brought a hand to her forehead and touched the soft place where her brow met the bridge of her nose. “Actually, Avis, I was thinking of replacing those tomorrow, possibly with a Chelsea set, or something a little more …” She waved her fingers in the air.

“Vivacious?”

“That’s a good word.”

Avis shook her head. “Don’t – these people are not the slightest bit vivacious.”

“Oh.”

“They are grim and disheartened people, quite frankly. It takes everything I have to get through dinner with them.” Avis tilted her head toward Vicki. “Just between us.”

“Of course.”

Avis, lost in thought, shuddered at some memory.

Vicki clasped her elbows as though she was cold. “Do you think, Avis, they would be happy here?”

The agent surveyed the room and inhaled as though she were standing in a field, savouring the perfume of mown hay, and when she looked at Vicki she gave a wry little tilt to her head and showed her palms to indicate their generalized surroundings. “I think they will give every appearance of being happy.”

Vicki smiled to signal that she understood and moved away from the table to the window. From here only a stretch of ground and a tall cedar hedge could be seen. She let her hand fall against a drapery panel of clay-red damask and felt at her fingertips the small imperfections in the weave that gave the fabric texture, that made it seductive.

“I just don’t know why,” she said, almost to herself, “you would want to bring people like that here.”

Avis’s phone twittered in her purse. “Excuse me one moment.” She plucked it out, looked at the caller, and placed it against her ear. “Avis!” she barked. “No, that’s ridiculous and I’m in a meeting.” She closed the phone. “I’m sorry, darling?”

Vicki’s face was to the window. “This is a happy house,” she said. She turned back to the agent, who was showing the beginnings of a frown and seemed to be leaning over to one side. “Doesn’t it feel happy to you?”

“I’m not following you, Victoria.”

It seemed to Vicki almost as if the drapery panel were electrified; she could not let go. She felt the damask crunching in her hand. “I work so hard,” she said.

“Of course you do.”

She knew that it was wrong to give Avis trouble over the sorts of clients – the “clee-on-tell” – she cultivated. Their personalities, their behaviours, weren’t really in her control. But this house, Vicki thought, this home she had made, was meant for joyful, contented people. Unhappiness had no place here.

“What are their names?” she asked, still facing the window.

“Who?”

“The grim, disheartened people you want to bring here.”

Avis cleared her throat precisely. “I shouldn’t have said that, Victoria. It was unkind. I hope you won’t repeat it.” She opened her purse and began to shuffle through its contents.

Vicki held tight to the damask as she faced out the window. “It wouldn’t even occur to me,” she said. She wished she could see trees from here. She wished Margeaux had not been so stubborn about the light.

“Victoria,” said Avis behind her, “I still have some time. Would it be possible to see the upstairs?”

Though she could not place when it had happened, the discomfort under her ribs that she hadn’t felt for several days had returned, a constriction that made it difficult to breathe. She felt the ridges in the damask weave chafing under her fingers. “But who are they?”

She heard Avis sigh. “Mildred and Alan Webb.”

Vicki repeated the names silently and thought for a moment, trying to attach faces and facts to the blank substructure of “Mildred and Alan Webb.” She turned partway toward Avis. “Aren’t they quite old?”

“Late sixties, more or less.”

“She has very hard features.” Vicki searched her memory. “I can’t picture him, but I’ve seen her somewhere. I remember her face looked grey and set, like a plaster cast.” She tried to imagine Mildred Webb’s plaster face smiling to put guests at ease, Mildred Webb staring at her plaster face in the mirror of the Empire dressing table, with the light streaming unwanted through the bedroom windows behind her.

Avis took her hand out of her purse; she seemed to be breathing more calmly. “You don’t see him I expect because he spends his evenings holed up in his den, so far as I know. Kept company by big-shouldered bottles of gin. Well, of course it’s been very hard for them, but I think Mildred is functioning rather remarkably. At least she puts herself out there and gets involved. You have to admire that, even if it gets a bit morbid, all the frenetic activity.” Avis looked around the dining room. “Anyway, I think they
could
be happy here. They still have lots of visitors, children with grandchildren, people who care about them. The main thing is for them to get out of the house they’re in now.”

“Why?”

Avis blinked, as if startled by Vicki’s innocence. “Because of their daughter, the one they adopted.”

Gripping the damask as if she might otherwise sink, Vicki shook her head.

“She was a bit of a hellion, as I understand it. Gave them a lot of trouble. And I don’t know the whole story but one night she brought someone home with her, and he was a bad sort – I gather there were drugs involved – and she wound up dead. Really very tragic.” Avis snapped her purse shut. “So. Shall we go upstairs?”

As she stood at the window, feeling the speculative warmth of April sunshine on her skin, Vicki began to see things in a way that perhaps she hadn’t before. There were fresh colours and details in her awareness, and the discomfort under her ribs eased a little, as if it were being pushed aside by the arrival of a new acceptance of what she must do. She had always known that happiness was the product of wise choices, something a person, or a family, built and shaped from within. She saw now that once it existed, once it was alive, it needed to be protected. In that way, she saw, happiness was like a fire, fuelled by diligence and hope. She saw that unhappiness came from outside, like rain.

She loosened her fingers and released the damask curtain, then tried to pull the panel smooth where her grip had left creases in the fabric.

Avis lifted a hand and pointed. “I think that may need the touch of an iron.” She turned and rounded the dining table on her way to the arc of stairs. “Just a quick peek at the bedrooms and then I’m off.”