The Tied Man (16 page)

A shake of the head.

‘Your room?’

Nod.

‘Good woman.’ I tried to think where Lilith’s organised mind would put the bloody thing – imagined her waking up, maybe, and reaching out for it.  ‘By your bed?’

One last nod.

‘I’ll be back before you know it,’ I yelled, already halfway down the corridor.

*****

‘Thank
fuck
for that.’ 

If it were my room, I’d have been long-dead by the time anyone found anything under three years of accumulated shite.  But this was Lilith Bresson’s corner of the planet, and sure enough, the blue plastic inhaler was set neatly parallel to the edge of her bedside table.  I grabbed it and hurtled back towards the studio, hoping that my efforts wouldn’t be too late.

*****

I handed the inhaler over and Lilith grabbed at it with both hands.  The cylinder hissed twice and she gulped back the spray as best she could.  She didn’t resist as I put a guiding arm around her rigid shoulders and brought her to the floor.  I was terrified that maybe she was too far gone for this to work, that her lungs had shut down and refused to allow the drug into her system.

All I could do was kneel beside her and wait.  Despite the risk, I found myself running the flat of my palm from the nape of her neck, between her shoulder blades and down the length of her spine in slow regular strokes.  I couldn’t remember the last time I had voluntarily touched anyone, and I half-expected her to shrug away from me. Instead, as I watched, her lips returned to their usual hue and her breath came back, mercifully slow and steady.  I stopped my stroking, suddenly aware that it might not be the most appropriate of moves.

‘No. Don’t stop,’ Lilith’s eyes were tightly shut as she focused on regaining control.  ‘Helps.  Lots.’

So I kept going, feeling each muscle release its grip as the minutes passed.  Finally her eyes opened, bright and blue if slightly unfocused. ‘Well that was fun.  Well done.’

‘Yeah, genius, huh?  Sending you over a cliff on a wild horse didn’t work, so I decided to asthma you to death instead.’

‘Interesting verb,’ Lilith smiled. 

‘Yeah, it’s about to be made into a new offence.  Asthma-ing an artist to death.  Automatic life sentence.’

‘Wasn’t being sarcastic for once.  Meant it.  Well done.  For not panicking.  Doing what you did. Spot on.  Did it once when I was a boarder.  French mistress hit the floor with me.  The moment my face turned indigo.  Thought I was.  Dead.’

‘I can understand that.’ I tucked my hands into my pockets.  ‘So.  Shall we give this another go?’

‘No we shall not,’ I got to my feet and feeling the world spin beneath me.  I rested my hands on the back of the chair.  ‘I am
not
bloody well dying.  For my art.  Especially. Not here.’

I was furious with myself.  For missing the tell-tale struggle to pull in a full breath and the vice that had been tightening around my ribs since my altercation with Coyle, but mainly for this obvious, terrifying regression.  I resigned myself to using the dull brown steroid inhaler every day until my escape, consoled by the thought of the velvet warmth of the Spanish autumn that would soothe away the resurgent curse of asthma as soon as I managed to escape.

‘What would you have been doing if you weren’t with me?’ I asked.

‘Dunno,’ Finn shrugged.  ‘Fuckin’ about in the gardens, probably.  Weeding.  Shit like that.’

‘Right.  Change of plan, on health grounds.  I get to go outside for some fresh air to aid my recovery, and you get to keep your clothes on.’

‘Lilith, I need to do this – I mean, we can’t -’

‘I’m still going to draw you.  I’m just doing my best to find a professional compromise despite an unexpected problem.’

Finn ripped another strip of skin from his thumb as he considered this.  ‘Might work.  Not more than the once, and she’ll be as pissed as hell, but yeah, we might just get away with it.’

‘Well that’ll do me for now.’  I began to gather together my sketch pad and a handful of pencils.  ‘Do me a favour and roll that rug up, will you?  I could do without a damp arse on top of everything else this morning.’

*****

‘It’s nothing glamorous,’ Finn explained as we emerged from the Hall, blinking against the bright daylight.  ‘Just weeding, that’s all – I sorted out a herb garden for Henry last year.  All that organic bollocks, no weedkiller, so I need to keep on top of it.’

Despite Finn’s low-key introduction to his other world, I was left speechless.  The garden, hidden by the vast servants’ wing and therefore something I had not seen on my morning run, was amazing: Finn’s own artistry.

Herbs that I recognised – lavender, chives, clary sage, mint – stood in gentle regiments alongside a good many I had never seen.  He had arranged the textures and colours with an eye for structure that many of my fellow so-called-artists would never be able to achieve.  Even in the morning sun, the scents were beginning to mingle to create a heady perfume. 

‘You undersell yourself.  It’s beautiful, Finn.’ He spread the rug on the grass for me.  ‘How the hell did you get into gardening?’

‘Ah.’  Finn glanced up, squinting in the sun.  ‘I got put inside when I was eighteen.  ‘Possession with Intent to Supply’.  Nothin’ major, more like buying in bulk and sharing it out – keeping the cost down for a group of us that worked the Park, but I still got two year.  Served one.  I did this horticulture course to pass the time.  Turned out it was something I could do.  That, and I discovered the library.  Pretty much read a book a day, every day I was in the place.’  He sat back on his heels.  ‘It sounds mad, but it was probably the happiest I’ve ever been.  The safest, I know that.  If I’d have known what I was coming out to, I’d have kicked off, trashed my pad or taken a screw hostage.  Something – anything to get the extra year.’ He gave a remorseful smile.  ‘Hindsight, huh?’

‘Oh yeah, hindsight,’ I agreed. 

‘Still, I could always grow something that could poison the whole fucking lot of them – that’s the only way it would ever work, taking everyone down in one go.  Blaine, Coyle, all the sick bastards that use this as their little place in the country.’

For a moment, his pale, intense face hardened, then the grin returned. ‘That’d add a twist to Henry’s wild bloody mushroom risotto – I could frame the poor little fucker and be in
Dun Laoghaire
by sunset.’  He laughed hard at the thought, only stopping when his smoker’s cough kicked in and rendered him breathless. 

‘Christ, you’re a wreck, Finn.’

He cleared his throat and spat noisily into a hedge.  ‘Yeah, I know.’  He pushed his wind-ruffled fringe out of his eyes. ‘I’m so sorry for being a twat, Lili.  For earlier.’

Lili
.  A diminutive that no-one else dared use, yet from Finn it somehow sounded right.  ‘Forget it.’

‘I just – Christ, I was shitting myself, to be honest – If you hadn’t looked at me that first bloody night, known what you know, then maybe…’

‘It’s worked out, Finn.  It’s okay.’

‘Nah, it’s not okay.  It was Coyle I wanted the fight with, not you.  Scrote of a man.’ He stabbed a trowel deep into the soft earth.  ‘And you defending me –  nobody’s ever done that.  Probably why I was such a cunt about it.’  Finn glanced around as if Coyle might still be lurking, and for all I knew, he might be.  ‘For fuck’s sake watch him, Lili.  He was a dangerous little bastard back in
Dublin
, but here he’s got enough power to make him lethal.  Next time, just try to leave him ‘til he gets bored, huh?’  There was a real plea to his voice, but I didn’t need telling.  Coyle exuded threat in the same way that other men sweated.

‘I’m duly warned.’

‘Good.  Then we’re sorted.  So, what do I do now?’ Finn asked.

‘Just… be.  Do the stuff you would usually do. Forget I’m here.’

‘Right, so I’ll just ignore the wee midget on the flying carpet then, huh?  No problem.’  Finn’s smile returned with a brightness to rival the sun, and I knew that this morning’s work would be the best I had done at Albermarle.  Without even looking at the page, I began to capture my latest sitter in his element.

It was weird at first.  Lilith’s exhortation that I should ‘forget she was there’ felt impossible, especially as she was cross-legged in the centre of one of the ugliest rugs I had ever seen,  but the longer she sat in silence with her pencil making mad flurries across the page, the easier it got.  Soon she became part of the landscape, and I got on with the task at hand, relishing the sun’s warmth on my shoulders as I worked.

*****

‘That’s me just about done.’ Lilith put her pencil down on the rug in a definitive gesture.  She glanced at her watch.  ‘Four hours.  Not a bad shift.’

‘Jesus, really?  That long?  I’d reckoned maybe two.’

‘Yup.  The sign of a good sitting – time flashing by without either of us noticing,’ she smiled.  ‘Well, it was good for me, anyway.  Want to see?’ She turned the pad towards me.

‘No.  Not that I don’t think it’ll be any good, it’s just…’  I tailed off, wondering how the hell I might explain that I had no wish to look at myself, just to be reminded of who I had become.

‘I understand.’

Anyone else, I would accuse them of bullshitting.  But Lilith knew, I was certain of that.

‘This
is
you, though,’ she continued.  ‘Your image.  I’d hate her to have it without you seeing it first.’  She held out the sketch once more, gently insistent.  ‘It’s not the same as looking in a mirror.’

I sighed and reluctantly took the pad from her hands and forced myself to look.  ‘
Wow
,’ I managed.  I wanted to say that it wasn’t me, that she had missed the bruise that still throbbed sullenly against my cheekbone, the dark circles that framed my eyes, and skin that felt as though it was nothing more than hide stretched over a frame.  The version of Finn Strachan that I held in my hands had none of these, had not let himself be buggered until he bled onto the sheets, or be slapped around by some smug little twat who was just asking to be buried.

But it was breathtaking all the same.  And despite the omissions it was undeniably me. 

‘I see what I want to see,’ Lilith said by way of explanation.  ‘It just happens that I’m bloody good at it.’

‘Wow.’ I was still caught up in my own eyes that laughed up at me from the page.

‘Praise indeed.’

‘Yeah, I’m an international art critic on the quiet.’  I handed the pad back to Lilith.  ‘Sorry – feel like I should have managed something a little more profound.’

‘It’s all in the first reaction. And yours was a good one.’

‘Did you expect anything less?’

‘I hoped you’d like it.  It mattered, you know?’  She held my gaze until I had to look away and pull at the strands of grass beneath my knees.  Right then I wanted to make the afternoon stretch on forever, but even as I nodded in reply, the sight of the launch returning to the island snatched everything away.

We watched as a hard-faced woman in her early forties, head-to-toe in Chanel, stepped from the little boat.

‘Tonight’s guest,’ Finn explained.  ‘Laura Fenworth.  Some investment banker or other.  Two and a half million a year before the bonuses, houses in
London
and
Provence
, and as miserable as sin.  The cat’s-arse mouth of a reluctant divorcee if ever I saw one, and just desperate to take it out on someone.’

‘What, are you going all psychic on me now?’

‘Nah.  It says so in her letter.’

‘Her what?’

Finn gave a rueful smile.  ‘Ah shit, you won’t know about that, will you?  If a guest’s booked in for the full works, they get asked to write a letter.  A few intimate details so
Blaine
can set things up exactly to their liking.  It also lets her set her trap just right, the devious old cow.  If she’s in a good mood, I get to have a look.’

‘Bloody hell. 
I
never got to write a letter,’ I complained, mock-indignant.

‘Yeah, and look at the problems that caused.  She won’t be making that mistake again.  She really thought she had your measure – reckoned she knew just how to play you, then you went and fucked it up from your very first night.  Didn’t get pissed, didn’t want to play.’

Across the lawn, Henry struggled up to Albermarle under the weight of Laura Fenworth’s designer luggage. 

‘I really didn’t join in her game at all, did I?’

‘Nope.  And you’re still not playing.  No-one’s ever come this far and said ‘no’.  Believe me, if you get out of here unscathed, it’ll be something to be proud of for the rest of your life.’

He stood and brushed grass from his jeans.  ‘Ah well, better go and get ready for the nightshift.’

I watched the light in his eyes fade like a sunset.  ‘Is it likely to be bad?’  I asked.

‘
Blaine
needs a new tame financial advisor because the last one dropped dead on a squash court last month.  Lucky bastard.’ Finn suddenly looked weary, and ten years older.  ‘So if it was just a good seein’ to she was after,
Blaine
would send her down to the place in
London
.  But that divorce thing?  A bit of persuasion from her ladyship about getting it out of her system, and a tenner says Miss Fenworth there’ll have the skin off my back by midnight.’ He gave a dry laugh.  ‘A couple of decent shots of my client in action that just might end up in the vice president’s inbox first thing Monday, and Blaine gets a new pet for her collection.’