The Exhibitionist, page 16
‘I have been? Are you serious? You . . .’ and then she remembers what’s in her pocket, and weariness overcomes her. ‘Oh forget it.’
‘Fine.’
‘Fine. So.’
‘Mum’s being crap. Since you didn’t ask.’
‘I did notice. Does she n—’
‘But the main thing is, after the opening,’ Leah says, ‘Dad might feel a bit flat.’
‘Is there a, a problem, with it?’
‘No! But anyone would. It’s unavoidable. So you need to stay at least a week. Distract him.’
‘You know we can’t,’ Jess says. ‘How—’
‘But you have to.’ Leah’s lowered her voice; they could be plotting an assassination. Tears begin to escape; they roll down her cheeks and to her mouth and she licks them away. ‘You can’t just bail.’
‘Sis,’ says Jess hopelessly, ‘we really do have to get back. Our whole, well, jobs are out there, and . . .’
Leah shrugs, clutches her elbow across her chest, drags again on her cigarette like a woman who’s dodged disaster. They watch a blackbird screaming out of a tree; somewhere a motor dies. ‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘Your life. Well, Martyn loves it down here.’
‘OK. Yes. But he doesn’t un—’
‘It’s not right, sacrificing someone else’s happiness. You can’t do that to him.’
Jess frowns; somewhere she has made a huge mistake. ‘Martyn? But he . . .’
‘Not Martyn,’ says Leah, with elder-sibling scorn. ‘Dad.’
‘Wow,’ Priya keeps saying. ‘You absolute knockout.’
She’s tenderer than usual on the phone; she calls Lucia girl, which, for her, is practically love. She repeats ‘Biennale’ with emphasis on different syllables, and Lucia laughs and shushes her and doesn’t know how to confess that she is going to refuse it. How can she, when Priya’s so delighted with her?
Priya whispers, ‘And think of the party. The opening, or private . . . whatd’youcallit. View. I’ll be there. Didn’t I say we’ll go abroad together?’
Lucia catches her breath. ‘Will you wear your green dress?’
‘The one I told you about? With the zip?’
‘Yes. The zip. Help.’
‘Or maybe a sari. Now I can finally bear them. Give your fans something to ogle. And you,’ says Priya, ‘in something fabulous I will have bought you. Like a wrapping. And at some point, after the speeches . . .’
‘The thing i—’
‘Shh, I will take you off through a service door past the kitchens, a cool private corridor where no one, probably, will see us, and into a cypressy garden at the back . . .’
‘Ohhh. But actu—’
‘You know,’ Priya says, ‘talent should always be rewarded. We must practise.’
‘Meaning?’
‘I told you I have a trip tomorrow. Two or three nights in Bristol. Know anyone in Bristol?’
‘No.’
‘Neither do I. It’s perfect. So. Why don’t you?’
‘What?’
‘Come away with me.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Maybe. Let me think,’ says Priya.
That’s not enough. Lucia’s going for broke. ‘Let me think,’ she says. ‘Although . . . here’s a thought. Come to the opening tonight. Seriously. No one will think it’s weird. Because I’ve got to see you. I do really have to explain something.’
25
Jess needs to ransack. Any minute Martyn will find her, complaining about neglect. Who wouldn’t want a little kick before that?
She hasn’t been down in the basement for years. Every time there’s a condiment crisis, she’s elsewhere until the ketchup has been retrieved, increasingly by Martyn, who still believes that cellar-access is a rare honour.
Her father is so proud of the deep jungly green of the corridor, the absence of beige good taste, but the damp is exposing itself. The paint-blisters have miniature blisters of their own, glaucous blooms like the skin of a plum. Opening the door, thickly painted as a ship’s, sounds like killing pigs; you’d think no one ever comes down here. Martyn says that the stony air could kill you, happily: botrytis and ancient cork, wine-salts, history. No: it’s the stink of decay.
Down four steps, whose walls are lined with, if not technically toadstools, then fungal blisters, a toxic crust. The main room has ramparts of stained Tupperware and jam jars; discoloured candles; cash-and-carry pallets of macaroni and silver foil; restaurant tubs of peppercorns; forgotten Christmas teas. Some of the rusty tins are fermented-looking, like dead heroes’ Antarctic stores. All along the back wall are red cupboards with doors akimbo, stuffed with teapots and fax machines, redundant printers like segments of elephant, gritty from ceiling dust and whitewash crumbs. Machines hum and chirrup; a huge chest-freezer, an ex-fridge, bags of old knitwear through which moths stickily tunnel. She makes herself see the torn lampshades and boxes of yellowing thrillers, the damp, the filth, letting it settle on her skin and sink into her bloodstream: inoculation. She needs to be cured; she needs to go. There is nothing for her here.
The air’s cold, cheesy tang could be refreshing, were it not for the feeling of being inside an irretrievably broken mind. There are spiders’ webs everywhere, furry cathedrals of them, dotted with tiny bandaged corpses: folded mayflies, daddy-long-legs. She ducks to avoid a dried wasp, rotating at the end of a thread, and almost falls against a cardboard box which is half-rotted, flaking – oh Christ, no, gnawed. A bubble of vomit eases up her oesophagus: a feeling of sickness, without and within. Her body itches: the grime, the aversion to reason. She’s trying to look at it as a stranger might, without sentiment or rage, but it’s worse than she has ever seen it. They’re past saving, all of them.
‘Oh, hello, sweetheart,’ says Lucia. ‘All OK?’
‘No,’ whispers Becca, prodding at the fireplace with a poker and waiting for Uncle Ray to shout. Her eyes are continually pooling with tears; she will claim hay fever if anybody asks, but no one will. Oh God, they’re spilling over again.
Uncle Ray acted like their arrival was an astonishing surprise. Maybe it’s because of the weird stand-off between him and her dad, but he’s even scarier than she remembered, swearing at her when she tripped over the rug. Patrick, on whom she had an embarrassing crush when she was young, has barely noticed her. All the cousins are on edge, as if a surprise is about to burst out too soon.
Earlier a sweaty doctor came by for a home visit, like Uncle Ray was a heifer needing James Herriot, and Becca’s dad followed him upstairs. Five minutes later he stormed back down and now he and Uncle Ray are already not speaking. Her father sits harrumphing in the living room, loudly recording letters for his secretary and ignoring Becca, as though she is nothing to do with him.
Then there’s a whole weird non-argument about where Becca and her brother will sleep. The main bit of the house is, apparently, full, which makes her father furious, and after endless awkwardness it’s decided that ‘the kids’ should stay in the other part of the house, lined up on the floor of Ray’s old wife’s sitting room like cannon-fodder.
Her mum keeps getting up to check her plenteous eye-shadow in the mirror above the mantelpiece. Her father, who usually prides himself on his greyhoundy physique, has gobbled handfuls of peanuts. Becca is staring at the top of his bald head, willing him to look up, which he does not. He’s not a bad man. But he isn’t the kind of father you’d ask for comfort, except in an emergency.
She is no way sharing a room with her brother. And she’s scared to eat because of botulism and by now a certain kind and engaged friend of her brother’s, like him a promising biologist, etc., who’s been friendly to her, will have found her letter. It was hard to write but it might work. You have to be willing to do anything for love. Boys do like you to be daring. And it might not be horrible. It might not hurt.
Asking Priya to the show was unhinged. If Lucia wasn’t a coward she’d risk driving to meet her, but coming back home she would crash, no question, and then it would all emerge. Today can’t get much worse, she thinks, and then Ray bursts in, with the rage of hell upon him.
Then he’s silent, which, given the timing, is very bad. She puts out a hand towards his general atmosphere.
‘Don’t touch me!’ he says. He is yellowish with wrath, like double cream.
‘What’s happened? Seen Patch?’
Ray mutters, his jaw coming up: ‘Oh, what a surprise that he’s a priority. Obvious where he gets his selfishness, that little turd.’
‘Well,’ says Lucia hurriedly, ‘that’s not exactly fair—’
‘And even bloody Leah’s left me. Why am I surprised?’
‘Oh,’ asks Lucia, ‘you came back by yourself? That’s good. That’s pro—’
‘It’s abandonment,’ he says. ‘As if I care where the caterer is. You’d have thought that for one day everyone could pretend I still matter, but no. So, presumably, you knew?’ he asks.
‘Knew what?’
‘What your son has done to me. Screwed me over completely. Presumably you think that’s OK?’
Lucia’s still wading through the confusing story – a real job but, oh that sweet boy and his bad timing – when Patrick quietly comes home.
This is when Lucia makes her mistake. The job’s a good sign, a small shoot of the self-confidence she’s tried to foster (but, Ray says, has instead destroyed with her helicoptering over-protection, her favouring) for years, and she misses it. Why does she fail him, not look back? Because she is trying to wipe away her stupid, joyous smile, the Priya hopes and Venice thrill. Because she doesn’t yet know all the facts, is trying to keep everyone cheerful.
None of this explains it. Admit it, Lucia.
What happens is that Lucia says, ‘Honestly, Patch, couldn’t you have waited?’ and sees his poor face go still and white because she’s done it again. She put Ray first.
Someone calls from the front hallway: ‘Anyone spotted mine host?’
Martyn’s never seen Dr Mac this close up, like a celebrity. Jess says he has the face he deserves, puffed up with mistaken self-belief. He’s pink yet unwrinkled, like an old cherub, although his hair, still dark, still thickish, has abandoned his crown neatly, leaving a tonsure effect. It must be invisible to him, but it shines like a snooker-ball from above. As Martyn watches him barrelling off to Ray’s bedroom with his unprofessional-looking sports bag, he feels something like fear.
Luckily, when the phone starts ringing, Leah’s just back. She legs it upstairs but her father won’t look at her. ‘Tell whoever it is to fuck off,’ he says. He won’t even let her help him to his room to rest. But Dr Mac works wonders. In the golden time, when her father’s medicine and blood sugar and pain align, she will try to be forgiven. She picks up the phone. The accent is French; she is instantly on guard. ‘Hi, yes. It’s Leah. No, Mum’s not around. Why?’
Marie-Claude is a cow. She hasn’t offered any help with Leah’s father’s exhibition, even though he put her on the guest list. Leah’s mother keeps saying ‘there’s really no need for her to come’; last night she gave a little speech about it and Ray commented loudly ‘the thing about your childhood is you never learned to share’.
The French cow is giving instructions.
‘What? Look, I don’t know if you realize, but we’ve a major sh—’
‘Darling,’ says Marie-Claude, ‘stop talking. Please, find her for me.’
‘Her?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why not Ray?’
M-C speaks again, maybe in French this time, who cares, and Leah yells, upstairs, outside, barely bothering to hold the phone away. Like a cat, you never know where her mother will appear from. She comes in, looking knackered, which jogs Leah’s heart for a moment. Then she thinks: typical, on Dad’s day.
She holds out the phone. ‘For some reason,’ she says, ‘M-C urrrrgently needs to talk to you. What’s going on?’
Lucia emits a tiny gurgle. Leah raises her eyebrows. Gillian looks interested; Jess has her look of childhood distress, grey with the effort of not releasing tears.
‘Who’s that?’ says Martyn cheerfully, knocking over the salt. ‘What have I missed?’
Lucia takes the phone, waits for Leah to leave but she’s sorting out the fridge door and Lucia, who is so very tired, thinks: at least it’s not Priya, ringing to cancel tonight. I can deal with this.
‘Hi,’ she says, turning casually. ‘Marie-Claude? Yes, lovely. Sorry, we’ve been . . .’
‘So you are having celebrations?’
‘Not at all!’ murmurs Lucia, watching Leah’s suspicious shoulders. ‘How are you, anyway?’ she asks, lowering her voice but trying to sound normal. Normal is the thing.
‘Cherie,’ says Marie-Claude, ‘this is not reasonable.’
Lucia makes a stupid nervous sound in her nose.
‘Do not fucking tell me we’re out of butter,’ says Leah, who has never accepted the primacy of phone calls. ‘Mum?’
‘It is Saturday,’ Marie-Claude says.
‘I know.’
‘And? What is it I shall say to them? At the . . .’ Her voice seems to boom out of the receiver like a sports-day megaphone. ‘Biennale.’
Lucia gasps, coughs. Marie-Claude says, over the spluttering: ‘No, do not run away.’
Leah is staring hard at her mother; the red laser dot holds steady and true. Did she hear? Lucia smiles reassuringly, like a maniac, shakes her head, rolls her eyes.
‘They need you to confirm,’ says Marie-Claude.
Leah says: ‘Tell her we’re busy.’
‘Lucia.’
Venice wants her; it’s a conversation she has barely let herself dream of, more than the Turner, even the Tate. Which proves Ray’s premise: she is arrogant. And she realizes now that her plan, to tell him one day of a great loving sacrifice, was stupid. There could never be a right time; even if she did it on her death bed, with her absolutely final breath, he’d be sobbing and yelling about being ignored by the press: the last image as her brain folds into nothingness.
Ray, who wouldn’t refuse anything for her. Who deserted her, at such a time of darkness.
‘If,’ says Marie-Claude, ‘you say no, again, then I arrive at his little show today and I tell him everything.’
‘You can’t, no, pl—’
‘Tell him what?’ says Leah, right at her elbow.
She looks her daughter straight in the eye and says to Marie-Claude: ‘Never mind. OK, come tonight and find me. Please. We will talk then.’
26
Something is growing inside Jess. It is doubt.
Martyn’s being peculiar, smiling hard, looking around like a politician about to give a speech. Can he have guessed? She’s avoided being alone with him all afternoon, changed upstairs when he was talking to Eric Nakamura and Ray, but he catches her in the end.
‘Why are you running away?’ he asks. ‘Don’t you want to hang out with me?’
Astrid Pringle believes he must be able to sense that her heart’s not in it. ‘You’re waiting for him to give you permission to dump him,’ she says. ‘Not going to happen. He’s already talked you out of it, what, twice?’
‘Three times. Look, I want to behave decently, to other people. Not be like you know who. Splitting up with Martyn would feel . . . violent.’
‘Well, you might have to be violent then,’ says Astrid blithely, before heading off to teach thirteen-year-olds to hire cars in Spanish.
‘I’m not running away,’ Jess tells him weakly. ‘You look smart.’ He has been planning his outfit for weeks, discussing it loudly in the staffroom: his Parents-Evening jacket, the patterned shirt Ray once told him was ‘natty’.
‘Do you like it?’
‘How does Dad seem? He’s already told me off for eating one of Leah’s, apparently, special biscuits. Like she’s a baby . . . So was he OK?’
‘Yes,’ he says, nodding, like someone making a decision, ‘and we were catching up.’
‘On what?’
‘What? Oh, so you’re wearing that dress. I thought you said your dad hates it. Never mind. Have you talked to Leah? Patch around?’
‘Isn’t he over at the Hall? If the pictures aren’t all up by now, it’ll be bedlam.’
‘Don’t think so. Leah’s in a flap. Do you know this catering fellow? Pablo.’
But Jess is thinking about her brother. Patrick needs to be OK. She can’t save him.
Christ, she thinks. What if I need to rescue Leah too?
At long long last, it’s almost time to leave. Martyn drifts into the kitchen, feeling handsome, looking for provisions. Funny to be so nervous; I suppose, he thinks, that’s being part of the team.
‘Let’s open the wine,’ says young Jake, as if it’s a question, corkscrew already in hand, and Martyn grabs a glass. Gillian pretends not to hear but she is always alert, assessing. Martyn is scratched by Paisley but tries to be brave as, with a weird electronic swishing, Ray begins to descend the staircase; not on foot, or even with a stick, but strapped into a chair-lift, like a game Hollywood star for her final curtain.
27
‘I’m still shaking,’ says Martyn, which is true, internally.
Jess clearly hadn’t trusted him to understand, which makes him angrier. His shock was so obvious; Ray and Leah and even the Gillians laughed at him.
‘But how didn’t you notice the track?’ asks Jess. ‘You must have seen him do this before.’
‘Never. I swear on my life.’ Even as Leah came forward to ease him into the wheelchair at the bottom, manoeuvring it awkwardly between the book piles in the hall to steer him into the living room, what Martyn was witnessing still did not quite sink in. Then he saw Ray’s bony hands pushing down on the wheel rims.
The wheelchair isn’t even a proper one, just a rickety reject with: PROPERTY OF NHS WHITTINGTON HOSPITAL CASUALTY DO NOT REMOVE stencilled on the canvas back.
‘Shouldn’t he be electric?’ he whispers to Gillian, who merely raises her eyebrows. She seems not to understand the gravity of the situation. ‘This is appalling. Isn’t it? If I’d known he was this bad, I—’
