‘Yes. Sounded like it was something she wanted to get off her chest.’
‘Mm.’
‘Had she been with Denzil Willoughby for a long time?’ Normally, Carole wouldn’t have asked such a question while its subject was still in the room, but the hubbub of conversation was so loud that she didn’t worry about being overheard.
‘We didn’t know she had been,’ replied Sheena, rather bleakly.
‘Fennel tends to play things rather close to her chest,’ Ned added. ‘Particularly when it comes to her love life.’
‘We kind of knew there was someone in her life, and from things she said, we thought it might be someone in the art world. But no names.’
‘Does she live with you down here?’
The Whittakers exchanged another look before Ned replied, ‘Not all the time. Mostly she lives in a flat we’ve got in Pimlico, but . . .’
He ran out of words and his wife filled the gap for him. ‘There are times when she needs to be with us. Not that we are particularly happy about that.’
‘Nor’s she, to be fair, Sheena.’
‘No, I suppose she isn’t,’ his wife conceded.
‘It’s just –’ Ned shrugged – ‘a difficult situation.’
‘Is she under proper medical supervision?’ asked Carole. The question, with its implication that there also existed improper medical supervision from people like healers, was not one she would have asked had Jude been present.
Above his glasses Ned Whittaker’s brows were raised heavenwards. ‘We’ve tried everything with Fennel. Paid for the best treatment there is available, right from the moment when she first . . . became ill. Everything seems to work for a while, but then . . .’
This time a look from his wife seemed to stop him from saying more. Carole wished she could read the couple’s private semaphore. She got the feeling the Whittakers didn’t see eye to eye over the treatment for their daughter’s condition. Maybe one of them sincerely believed that Fennel could get better and the other was less optimistic. But Carole couldn’t work out which of them took which position.
Further conversation was prevented by a sudden burst of shouting from the other side of the gallery.
‘How dare you say that! My artistic vision is at least as valid as yours is!’
The shouter was, perhaps inevitably, Gray Czesky. Carole should have remembered from their previous encounters how susceptible the painter was to the booze. From the security of his expensive seafront house in Smalting and the enduring safety-net of his wife’s private income, Gray Czesky loved presenting the image of the volatile, unconventional artist. Some local people might accept his work at his own evaluation of it, but clearly Denzil Willoughby had different views.
‘How can you call that art?’ he cried, pointing with derision at the framed watercolour of Fethering Beach that Czesky was holding. ‘A photograph’d be better than that. It’s just a representation of something you see in front of you. You haven’t added anything to what a photographer would produce, just made a considerably less accurate picture of some bloody beach!’
There was an indrawing of breath from the locals. Though they had carte blanche to moan about the oily fragments of plastic that piled up there, the dog messes and illegal barbecues, they didn’t like outsiders criticizing Fethering Beach.
‘There is no bloody artistic vision there,’ Denzil Willoughby continued.
‘Of course there is!’ Both men were now very drunk and squaring up to each other, as if about to start throwing punches. ‘What you see when you look at a Gray Czesky watercolour may look like an innocuous, innocent image, but there’s a lot of subtext there. There’s violence, there’s political dissent in there, if you only have the perception to see it.’
‘Crap!’ Denzil Willoughby countered. ‘I’ve got more political dissent in the fingernail of my little finger than you have in your entire bloody oeuvre!’
The denizens of Fethering watched these exchanges with the concentration they would apply to a Wimbledon final. Maybe this really was what happened at every Private View. They felt excited to be part of the action.
‘So that’s what you think, is it?’ Gray Czesky spat out the words.
‘Yes, that’s what I bloody think. And if you want to make something of it—’
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, will you all shut up!’
The words were spoken in a shriek, and it took a moment before the spectators could believe that they had issued from the lips of Bonita Green. They turned in amazement towards the diminutive figure of the gallery-owner as she went on, ‘This entire evening has been ruined! Probably the Cornelian Gallery has been ruined by all this shouting and insults and accusations.’
She moved towards the back of the shop with considerable dignity. ‘I am going upstairs to my flat. And when I come down here tomorrow morning, Giles, I am relying on you to have all the rubbish in here cleared out.’
‘Just a minute,’ said Denzil, cheated for the moment of one fight but eager to find another. ‘When you use the word “rubbish”, do you—’
‘Yes, Mr Willoughby,’ said Bonita Green rather magnificently as she left the room, ‘I do include your work.’
NINE
‘I think we should go glamping,’ Fennel Whittaker announced, as Jude brought the Mini to a neat halt on the gravel in front of Butterwyke House.
‘I think we should get you to bed,’ said Jude, trying not to sound too much like a nanny.
‘Fine, but why not to bed in a yurt?’
‘Well . . .’
‘Go on. I want to.’ It was the urgent pleading of a small child.
‘But Walden opens tomorrow.’ Jude looked at the girl shrewdly. ‘This isn’t a plan to mess up Chervil’s big day, is it?’
‘No, of course it isn’t. I wouldn’t do anything like that. I’ve got nothing against Chervil.’
‘You seemed to have back at the Private View.’
‘What? When I . . .’ Her hand shot up to her mouth in consternation. ‘Oh my God! Did I actually slap her?’
‘Yes, you did. Surely you remember?’
‘It’s all a bit of a haze. I was so determined to be articulate in what I wanted to say to Denzil that I didn’t notice much else that was going on.’
‘You had also had far too much to drink,’ said Jude severely.
‘Yes, you’re right. I had,’ agreed Fennel, for a moment a contrite schoolgirl. But the mood didn’t last for long. Waving the nearly empty bottle she had brought from the Cornelian Gallery, she cried, ‘And now I need some more!’ She opened the passenger door and tottered out on to the gravel. ‘I’ll just go and raid Daddy’s wine cellar . . . and then . . . I’ll go and sleep in a yurt!’
Jude was for a moment uncertain what to do. She knew that, in her current mood, Fennel would not take kindly to being coerced into bed. But she also knew the fragility of the girl’s temperament. The high Fennel was on was a big one and when she came down from it she was going to have a nasty hangover, both alcoholic and emotional.
Jude decided the best thing she could do was to stay with the girl, try to be there to help when the mood changed, as it inevitably would. And if that meant spending a night in a yurt . . . well, she’d never spent a night in a yurt before and Jude was always up for new experiences. She hadn’t got transport back to Fethering, anyway.
She took out her mobile to tell Carole what she was doing, but was prevented by the return from the house of a meandering Fennel, clutching a wine bottle in either hand. It was the same Argentinian Malbec that they’d been drinking at the Private View. Jude got out of the Mini to greet her.