‘I’m sorry, I’ve just packed virtually all of what I have out here for a show,’ he said evenly, as Sonja came back with glasses and a bottle. What a surprise, Lorraine thought, but decided to have one last try at getting into the studio.
‘I’d love to see any of your work before I go, Mrs Nathan,’ she said, ‘Though, of course, I know all artists are very private.’
‘I’m afraid even I wasn’t allowed to see the last thing Sonja did,’ Arthur said. ‘She kept me right out of the studio for a month. Fortunately I have another room at the top of the house.’
‘Do you work mainly to commissions, or speculatively?’ Lorraine asked Sonja.
‘I rarely work to commission — or, at least, not to an exact commission,’ Sonja answered, carefully opening the bottle. ‘This last piece is to open a series of shows — a women’s thing, in the new gallery in Berlin. They indicated a few months ago that they would appreciate it if I had something new, but it was up to me what it was.’
‘And what will you do next?’ Lorraine said, conscious that she sounded like some vapid celebrity interviewer. ‘Do you have any plans, or will you just wait and see what comes?’
‘I have stopped working,’ Sonja said, in an odd, unnatural tone. ‘That part of my life is over.’ Suddenly she gave a light, sweet laugh. ‘It went on far too long.’
‘I’ll drive you back into town, Mrs Page,’ Arthur said quickly. ‘I think you said you had to go.’
‘Arthur!’ Sonja said, now laughing as though she hadn’t a care in the world. ‘That’s not very hospitable — I’ve just opened the wine.’
‘No, I really must be getting back — and, in any case, I’m sorry, I don’t drink,’ Lorraine said, getting up. ‘Thank you so much for your time — and it’s been wonderful to meet you.’
‘Goodbye,’ Sonja said simply, with a slow, almost childlike smile.
Arthur led Lorraine out to an old Blazer jeep, and began to make determined small-talk as they drove the few miles into town.
‘Will you be returning to New York tomorrow or staying over?’ he said, as they pulled into the Maidstone Arms car park.
‘I haven’t decided,’ Lorraine said. ‘I may stay another night.’
‘It’s just that if you were thinking of seeing Sonja again, we do have to pack to go to Europe and Sonja needs to prepare for Berlin — she’s expected to make a speech and she needs to concentrate on that.’ It was more than apparent that he was trying to deter Lorraine from making any further visits.
‘She’s a very unusual woman,’ Lorraine said, unable to resist the temptation to fish just a little.
‘She certainly is,’ Arthur said carefully, pulling up. ‘I’m sorry if I seemed rude, hustling you away, Mrs Page, but the truth is, Sonja is not quite... herself at the moment. You know that she and Harry parted on bad terms, and she pretends that his death didn’t touch her — but, of course, that’s not true. She has been very shaken. She cared deeply about him, and, God knows, sometimes I think he was the only man she ever loved.’
Lorraine was surprised at this personal and clearly heartfelt revelation. She realized that Arthur did not dislike her, he was merely trying to protect Sonja.
‘For that reason she is blocked in her work and she imagines she will never work again. As her work is everything to Sonja, she is in a low state of mind at the moment. So, please, if I can ask you a favour, she needs to avoid strain. Going over all this stuff about Harry is just about the most painful thing there is for her. If you’ve asked her everything you need to know I’d be grateful if you’d just leave her be.’
‘I don’t think there’s anything else,’ Lorraine said, preparing to get out of the jeep. ‘Goodbye — it’s been nice meeting you.’ She smiled and waved as she watched him drive out, wondering what exactly he and Sonja Nathan had to hide.
Sonja was still sitting at the table when he returned. ‘I’m tired. I think I’ll go and lie down for a while.’
He looked at her, saying nothing, though he hated the hours Sonja spent locked alone in her room. Then he reached over and touched her face lovingly. ‘If you should see Mrs Page again, don’t talk too much.’
‘I won’t,’ she said, tilting her head like a little girl making a promise, suddenly seeming young, vulnerable.
‘I love you,’ he said softly, and she smiled. He adored the way she smiled, and it always made his heart lift, even though he knew that though she was with him and was caring and loving towards him, he was not her true love. Arthur envied Harry Nathan even though he was dead, envied that he had shared Sonja’s youth, that the mere mention of his name made Sonja’s face fill with darkness and grief.
‘You know, I think I’m too tired to go to the deer meeting tonight,’ she said. ‘I don’t really feel like going into town.’ Arthur’s heart sank: sometimes Sonja would not leave the house for weeks, withdrawing into her private shadowlands in a way that frightened and excluded him. He had been counting on the deer, a cause she cared about, to get her into town: social interactions with neighbours would do her good. ‘You go, though,’ she said, with a smile, already moving towards the stairs. ‘One of us should.’
Arthur knew, too, what that meant: she wanted to be alone, and if he didn’t leave the house she would go and range about alone outside, or take the car and drive. She was gone increasingly often, sometimes disappearing for a couple of days at a time.
‘Sonja,’ he called after her, ‘did you say you’d finished packing your thing for Berlin? If you have I’ll call the freight company — the paintings are ready to go.’
‘Yes,’ she said, with a smile. ‘Take it.’
She disappeared from sight and he heard the door of her bedroom close.
She stood at her windows, which overlooked the bay, where she watched the sun rise each morning. Another bedroom had windows that captured the sunsets and the moon’s rising: to see the beginning and end of the day made each day special, each one different. She tried to convince herself that that ought to be enough for her — just to enjoy the beauty of the seasons, to drift along with the current of time instead of trying to hold it back.
Certainly she had no intention of taking any more steps to reverse the physical signs of ageing, and booking into the clinic had been an act of folly induced by Harry’s leaving her for Kendall. She had fought the impulse to recapture physical youth for some time but finally she had chosen a surgeon and clinic with care, had known exactly what she needed doing. She had wanted a complete face-lift but with a small implant in her chin, and her nose lifted.
The clinic had been discreet, but Sonja was confident anyway that no one knew she was there because, under heavy bandages and dark glasses, she had been unrecognizable. However, the name of one patient had stuck in her memory. She had discovered that the woman was a private investigator and although she never spoke to her, she had heard a good deal of a conversation the woman had had with someone else. When she had come across the advert in Variety for Page Investigations, she had been amused by the coincidence.
She reached for the silver-backed mirror to check her profile. She was fifty-two years old and should be content to spend her time surrounded by this beautiful calm. She should be glad that the compulsion to work fifteen or sixteen hours a day was now gone, that the long torment was over. Odd that she had never realized she would miss it so much. She would go down to the studio later in the day and see if perhaps she couldn’t do something about that.
Chapter 14
Lorraine walked back into the hotel, cold despite the warm sunlight, after the encounter with Sonja Nathan. She had been chilled by the woman and her obsession with the past. If it was a kind of death to be unable to move on from one stage of life to another then Sonja Nathan herself was dying by inches.