Picture Imperfect (9 page)

‘So anyway.
Room service,
Champagne, bonking until seven or eight, then dinner in the hotel restaurant
which was surprisingly good considering the things I’d heard about it from
other people. Romantic walk around the West End, then we went to this bar in St
Christopher’s Place. Did you know that amber place is still there?
After all these years?
It’s still there? I mean – who buys
amber?
Ghastly, vulgar stuff.
 
Anyway, staggered back to the hotel for a bit
more bonking then I had a lovely long soak in the bath, which believe you me I
needed by that time. Unfortunately, the free bathroom stuff turned out not to
be up to it, but you can’t have everything.’

It never stops.

‘So! By this time I was absolutely starving again, so
we found this fantastic Persian place down Bond Street which I had literally
never seen before.’

‘What time was this?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. It had gone two, though.
Or two-thirty?
I mean, I must have walked down Bond Street
god knows how many times and I must have walked past this little place just as
many times. It was like it was invisible and I asked one of the waiters how
long they’d been there in case they’d only opened up the week before or
something and he said they’d been there for thirty two years. Can you believe
it?’

I’m going to tear my head off in a minute.

‘We had this mezze that seemed to go forever. I drank
rather too much, I’m afraid, and…’

She stops what she was going to say and stares vacantly
into the middle distance. For a moment, I wonder if she’s ill. Or intoxicated
in some way I haven’t encountered before. She looks at the floor,
then
looks at the ceiling. She slowly places the coffee mug
on the kitchen surface and strides out into the hallway to where the canvases
are leaning contemptuously against the wall. She finds the light switch and
puts both hall lights on.

She stares at the canvases for a full minute without
saying anything. I have to say that I’m feeling a little anxious. She takes a
deep breath and exhales slowly. Then, she takes a tiny black mobile out of a
pocket and presses a button on it, placing it to her ear. She’s breathing
deeply, her boobs rising and falling and her lips pursed. She flicks a stray
lock of hair away from her forehead. God – she must be irresistible to men. No
wonder she can pick up handsome hunks in department store food halls on weekday
afternoons. I’m so jealous.

‘Clementine?
Sorry to call so
early, darling. Have you got a pen handy? Well look – I’m sure you’ve only just
woken up, but I haven’t even been to bed yet. It’s still Tuesday as far as I’m
concerned. Listen. Ready? As soon as you get in to the office, give Jake
Chalmers a ring. Tell him I want him to pick up a couple of seven by sevens
ASAP. He’ll need the bigger of his two vans. He’s got a three tonner hasn’t he?
Tell him to use that.’

She glances at me and raises her eyebrows in
exasperation.

‘Tell him to be careful as neither of them
are
dry yet. He’s to take them to Charlie
Haggett’s
gallery and leave them there. Charlie’s girl will
know what to do with them. Now, you haven’t asked me where Jake is to pick them
up from. I’m going to tell you that now. Name is Chloe Dixon. She’s on our
client file. Address is on there. This will all happen before midday today,
understood? Repeat all of that back to me.’

She taps her foot impatiently and says ‘Mm. Mm. Mm. Mm.
Mm. Mm. Mm. Mm.’ I can faintly hear poor Clementine’s voice on the mobile. She
sounds posh. Finally, Rhoda nods in satisfaction.

‘Excellent. I won’t be in today until about one.
Possibly even later.
Goodbye.’

She turns to me and raises a hand, even though I wasn’t
about to say anything. She taps out something else on her mobile and listens
intently.

‘Bloody
ansaphone
.
Hello, Charlie. It’s me. This is a message for your girl, really. I’ve
forgotten her name. Sorry.
And if it’s you listening, girl,
sorry again.
There’s
a couple of big ones
coming your way before twelve this morning. Jake.
Still wet.
Don’t touch. I’ll be in later this afternoon to deal with them. Be a love and
turn the heating in whatever room you’re going to put them in up to thirteen
degrees. Thanks.’

She walks over to me and gives me a huge hug.

‘These are absolutely brilliant, Chloe. I’ll have
flogged these beauties by the end of the week and I know exactly who I’m going
to call first. Do me a favour and don’t go out until Jake gets here. Don’t try
and help him, he knows what he’s doing. I don’t want these touched by an
amateur. No offence.’

She looks at the two canvases again, tilting her head
to one side. ‘Look at the anger!
The energy!’

I can’t believe what I’m hearing. I can feel tears in
my eyes and suddenly I’ve got my hands over my face and I’m crying my eyes out.
It’s such a cliché, but my whole body is racked by huge sobs and I can’t stop
it no matter how much I concentrate. It’s loud, it’s wet and it’s beyond
embarrassing.

Rhoda comes over and puts her arms around me. I bury my
head in her shoulder and create a big damp patch. I’m shaking as if I’ve got
the flu or something. She rubs her hands up and down my back and probably wants
to get out of here as fast as possible. I wouldn’t be that surprised if I heard
her calling a minicab on her mobile as I sobbed. After a couple of minutes, I
manage a recovery of sorts and am actually able to speak.

‘I’m sorry, Rhoda. I don’t know
what’s
the matter with me
.’

‘It’s just shock, my dear. Many of my clients have had
an emotional response to their first
bigtime
sale.
It’s relief, as well. I don’t like to count chickens, as you know, but these
bitches may just push you into a different league altogether.’

To be honest, I’m not really sure which league I’m in
at the moment. I didn’t even know that there was a league. I start to cry
again, tears streaming down my face. I wonder if I’ve suddenly become one of
those weepy types, who are forever bursting into tears for no discernible
reason. Rhoda must think I’m insane. Then I realise that it’s not the news about
the paintings, at least not entirely. It’s Mark. All the stress, hurt,
bafflement and feelings of betrayal from the past five days have suddenly
erupted to the surface and Rhoda’s excited reaction to the canvases was the
trigger.

Part of it is self-pity, too.
All of
Mark’s
snidey
, philistine comments about what I do
will be proved wrong.
I don’t want to ask Rhoda how much she’ll sell
these paintings for, as I don’t think it’ll be polite. Moreover, she probably
doesn’t know the exact figure herself yet. But I know the market for big
abstracts like mine and I know the sort of people who buy them.

‘Come on, darling. Don’t have a nervous breakdown on me
now. If things go as I plan, you’re going to really have to knuckle down and do
a lot more work before you can afford to have a complete mental collapse. Not
that there’s anything wrong with complete mental collapses. I’ve had two of
them myself. They’re like a holiday, really.
Cheaper, as
well.’

We sit in the kitchen and drink coffee. I have a ciggy.
Rhoda is starting to yawn quite a bit. I suppose she’ll go home and have a few
hours’ sleep after she’s left here.

I didn’t plan to tell anyone else about Mark,
particularly as I’m still reeling from the reactions of Kristin and Mrs
Goddard, but Rhoda is smart enough to realise that there must be something else
bothering me. At first, she thinks that Mark (she didn’t actually know his
name, but knew I lived with someone) had left me or been having an affair.
After a bit of prodding, I finally spill the beans. I tell her about the
holiday and everything else. I tell her about Mark’s attitude to money, to my
painting, to everything.

‘Can I have one of those?’

She pinches one of my cigarettes and lights it from
mine. She stares into space for a few moments and doesn’t say anything. Maybe
she’s thinking of something else entirely. She might be thinking about
Selfridge’s Food Hall.

‘It’s a weird one, isn’t
it.
I’ve never heard of anything quite like this before.’

I nod. ‘Me neither.’

‘It’s almost as if he’s single. That’s the sort of
thing that a single man would do.
Someone with no attachments
of any sort.
Remarkable.’

‘Everyone I’ve mentioned it to has…’

‘As for just doing it to help his friend out, well
that’s about as tenuous a reason as you could hope for. It’s an excuse not even
worthy of a two year old.
Hmm.’

She rests her chin on the back of one of her hands and
yawns again.

‘Shall I tell what I would do?
If I
was you?
You may not like it.’

‘Tell me anyway.’

‘I would walk out of that front door right this minute
and I would never return. I would never see him again. I would cut him out of
my life completely and give no reason as he doesn’t deserve one. I wouldn’t
even bother to pack my stuff. I’d just leave it here to make him feel shitty.
Let him spend a miserable day picking though it all and deciding what’s his and
what’s yours.’

‘But you can’t do something like that, can you.
There’re all sorts of things that make it too complicated.’

‘Tell me one of them.’

‘Well. Just for starters, there’re the bills. He’d want
me to pay my share of the next electricity bill when it arrived. Things like
that.’

‘Forget all of that. You’re thinking like him. What’s
he going to do? Report you to the police over a couple of hundred piddling
pounds, if indeed it’s that much? He’d look like an idiot and a cheapskate. Is
he going to report you to BT’s legal department? His ego wouldn’t be able to
stand it. I’ll bet you any money that everything’s under his name. It’d be part
of his control
freakery
. Forget all that. This will
have done irreparable damage to your relationship. Things will never be the
same now, but I’m sure you’ve realised that deep down.’

‘I haven’t to anywhere to go. And I haven’t got any
money to speak of. I can’t afford to do a big life-changing shift like the one
you’re describing. That’s you talking. That’s something that someone like you
would do, Rhoda. I just can’t walk out of the door like that. It isn’t as easy
for me for lots of reasons.’

‘When does he get back from Spain?’

‘Greece.
On Saturday.
His
plane gets in a half past five or five thirty-five or something like that.’

‘In the morning?’

‘Tea time.’

Rhoda yawns and stretches.

‘Listen, Chloe. I’ve got to get a few hours’ sleep.’

‘You can stay here, if you like.’

‘No. Jake could be here at any time in the next couple
of hours and I hate being woken up by any sort of noise. Remember – stay here
until
twelve midday
.’

‘I will. Oh. Rhoda. Why did you come ‘round here in the
first place?’

‘I was going to dump you from the agency, sweetheart.
Don’t worry. I don’t think that will be happening now.’

She gets up and heads for the front door, air kisses me
from about three feet away and disappears, leaving only the odour of truffle
sauce and Tom Ford
Jasmin
Rouge behind her. This
place smells like a Parisian brothel.

I saunter back into the kitchen and open the window to
get rid of the smell of cigarette smoke. I feel like I just want to go to sleep
and wake whenever whatever it is that’s going to happen, good or bad, is over.
It’s as if time is this big cloud of treacle that I have to swim through to get
to the next good or bad bit.

I try not to anticipate what’s going to happen with the
paintings. Just because Rhoda likes them – or, should I say, thinks she can
match a buyer to them – doesn’t necessarily mean that anything will happen.
I’ve heard of lots of instances where artists think they’re on the verge of
some big sale, just to have it collapse at the last moment because of some
stupid last-minute decision by someone.

I try to put the whole thing out of my mind. I try to
put everything out of my mind.

Thursday 19
^th

I’ve only been in the office for about five minutes
when my mobile goes off. For a second, my heart leaps. Is it Rhoda with some
news already? But it isn’t Rhoda,
it’s
Alexis, an old
school friend of mine.

I was very close to Alexis between the ages of fourteen
to seventeen, but after that, our paths diverged and we didn’t really see each
other very much, until about three years ago when, by coincidence, we were both
with respective bunches of friends at the same pub. We started chatting about
all sorts of rubbish and got to know each other all over again. I last saw her
about six months ago.

She’d been married at the age of twenty to some guy
called Robyn, who she was madly in love with until she found him in bed with a
girl who’d come to their house selling solar panel deals. I think that’s what
it was, anyway. This was a little over six months after they’d
got
hitched, so as you can imagine, it rather put Alexis
off the idea of marriage and she’s never done it again. I often wonder, though,
what the sexual chemistry must have been like between Robyn and the solar panel
girl. Sparks must have been flying!

‘Are you busy, Chloe?’

‘I’m at my bloody office job. I’m never busy here. You
know that.’

Kristin looks up and grins. She hasn’t asked me about
the Mark situation so far today and I don’t think she will unless I happen to
bring it up. Mrs Goddard is, as usual, silently ensconced in her office,
looking, no doubt, out of the window and thinking about the past.