The waitress knew Bonita’s order would be a large Americano without milk, and Carole asked for ‘just an ordinary filter coffee, black’. Bonita, confessing that she hadn’t had any breakfast, also ordered a pain au chocolat. Carole, who had long nurtured an atavistic taboo against eating between meals, said that she had had breakfast.
‘Did you know that girl well, Bonita?’ she asked, ‘the one who threw the scene on Friday?’
‘No. First time I’d met her. She’s the sister of Giles’s current girlfriend.’ The way she said the last two words did not suggest she was a great enthusiast of Chervil Whittaker, nor indeed that she expected the relationship to last very long. Carole also noticed her use of the present tense when referring to Fennel. So perhaps she didn’t yet know about the girl’s death. If that were the case, Carole had no intentions of being the person who told her the news.
‘Could you make head or tail of what the girl actually said?’ asked Bonita.
‘Not really. Clearly she had had a relationship with the artist, Denzil Willoughby, and it had ended badly.’
‘Yes. I pieced that much together.’
Carole was wary of admitting she knew more about Fennel and her family background. She’d bide her time until she found out how much Bonita Green knew. After all, it was the gallery-owner who had initiated their meeting. She was the one who’d suggested coffee, so maybe she had some agenda of her own. Carole was content to play a waiting game.
‘I think,’ Bonita went on, ‘that Denzil is one of those artists who regards mistreating women as part of the job description.’
‘He certainly gave that impression.’
‘No lack of them around in the art world,’ said the gallery-owner with a harshness that could have been born of personal experience. ‘Though it’s rather a pity in Denzil’s case because when I first knew him, he was quite a sweet boy.’
‘I didn’t realize you’d known him a long time.’
‘My husband and I knew his parents. Denzil and my son Giles have been friends since school. They were at Lancing together.’ Now Carole understood the all-purpose accent Denzil Willoughby had used to disguise his upper-class vowels. ‘Thick as thieves, they were. Shared everything. Even girlfriends, I think, at one stage. And when they went their separate ways, Giles to Leeds to read Economics and Management, Denzil to St Martin’s – that’s St Martin’s College of Art – they still stayed in touch.
‘Even at school, though,’ Bonita went on, ‘Denzil did have an amazing talent for art.’
‘What, you mean proper art?’ Carole couldn’t help asking. ‘Painting things that looked like things?’
The other woman smiled. ‘What a perfect definition. There were teachers I had when I was at the Slade who would have appreciated that description of “proper art”, Carole. But oh yes, Denzil could do it all. Still could, I’m sure, be producing conventional landscapes and portraits – and very good ones too – if he hadn’t been sidetracked by the siren call of “conceptual art”.’
Carole’s surprise must have shown, because Bonita went on, with a little smile, ‘I see. You thought that Denzil stuck photographs of black teenagers on guns because he wasn’t capable of doing the “proper” stuff.’
‘I had rather assumed that, yes.’
‘Maybe he’s found there’s more money in his new kind of work.’
‘Do you mean people would actually pay the prices that he was asking for that rubbish?’
Bonita Green pursed her lips in mock-affront. ‘Ooh, be wary of using that word when you’re discussing art, Carole. One day’s “rubbish” can so easily become the next day’s record-breaker at auction. Look at what’s happened to Andy Warhol’s prices since he died.’
‘But come on, you can’t have rated Denzil Willoughby’s stuff that highly. You’ve just cut short his exhibition and taken it all out of your gallery.’
‘Yes, I have. But my reasons for that were probably based more on emotion and business sense than on artistic judgement.’
‘Oh?’ said Carole, waiting to be told more.
‘Look, as you’d probably gathered, mounting an exhibition of Denzil Willoughby’s work in the Cornelian Gallery was not my idea. It was my son Giles’s initiative, and I had misgivings about it right from the start. But Giles had lost his job, he wanted to have some input into the business, and I thought I should give him the chance. He kept telling me I was far too conservative in the way I ran the gallery, and of course he was right. So I thought, let Giles have his head, what harm can it do?
‘Sadly, as I realized the moment the Private View started, the answer to that question was that it could do quite a lot of harm. Harm to my business . . . and harm to my relationship with my son.’ The emotion prompted by that second thought stopped her short.
‘I’m very sorry,’ said Carole, hoping that the flood of confidence had not been permanently stemmed.
Bonita Green was silent for a little longer, but then mercifully continued. ‘Giles and I had rather a major row on Saturday. I’m afraid it had been brewing for some time.’
‘Was it disagreement over the Denzil Willoughby exhibition? You said you wanted him to get it out of the gallery.’
‘That was part of the problem, yes. And Giles insisting that we had the Private View on a Friday, when he knows that Friday’s my day off. And then he said it’d be fine for me not to be there during the day on Friday, but of course things got out of hand and I had to change my plans and . . . Anyway, all kinds of resentments came to the surface on Saturday. He had a terrible hangover which didn’t improve his mood – I think he’d been drinking with Denzil most of the night – and . . . Anyway, some things were said that probably shouldn’t have been said.
‘Finally I told him I was going to send Denzil’s work back where it came from, and Giles said, if that was the case, then he was going to move out. I can’t pretend to be sorry that he’s moved out. That flat over the gallery is pretty cramped for two of us. But I hope the row hasn’t done permanent damage to our relationship. Giles is really all I’ve got now.’
‘I thought I’d heard from someone that you had two children.’
‘Yes, I have a daughter. But she’s a lot older than him. And I never see her.’ The subject was dismissed with flat, unemotional efficiency.
‘And their father . . .?’ asked Carole tentatively.
That question was given the same short shrift. ‘My husband died when we were on a holiday in Greece. He drowned. It’s a very long time ago. The children were very small.’ Whether or not she still felt any pain over her loss, she was certainly not about to show it to a virtual stranger.
‘So you brought them up on your own?’
‘Yes.’ Again no volunteering of further information. That was all Carole was going to get.
Time for a change of subject. ‘You say Giles has moved out. Where’s he gone to? Back to his wife?’ Carole wasn’t expecting an answer in the affirmative, but she saw another way of finding out a little more about the Green family.
‘Oh, I wish he had. I’m sure he will eventually. Nikki’s right for him, in a way that none of his replacements for her have been. This latest, Chervil –’ she loaded the name with contempt – ‘he’ll be bored with her pretty soon.’
‘I couldn’t help noticing on Friday,’ Carole observed, ‘that Nikki seemed completely at her ease, unworried by the fact that Chervil was all over her husband.’
‘Well, that’s just a mark of what a very sensible girl she is. Nikki knows that Giles will come back to her eventually, so she’s not going to get jealous of some little chit like that.’