He couldn’t turn, for he would be unable to speak. His face was beyond his control. It had grown stiff as a mask, and he had no idea how it looked. His lips felt like thick bars, imprisoning his tongue. His hand trembled in his pocket. It at least could move.
“ Are you a friend of Roy Craig’s?” the voice said.
Chapter IX
It was the first week of Fanny’s exhibition. She’d managed to bear the first days. Apart from interviews with the media, from which she’d emerged edited and contradicting herself, she had felt ignored. She’d stood like a wallflower, overhearing comments on her work. “Isn’t that sweet?”
“ Very Lowryish, aren’t they?”
“ Don’t you feel these naives are a bit limited?”
“ Aren’t primitives a little out of date?”
Two days had been enough. She’d felt pent up, unemployed. She ought to work instead of mooching in the hope of overhearing compliments.
A new painting grew in her mind: visitors to an art gallery. She would rather paint them than watch them. How many had visited the exhibition because they felt that they ought to be seen doing so?
It distressed her to dislike people. All the more reason to stay home and paint: she could feel more affection and sympathy for her subjects that way – these subjects, anyway. The third day she began sketching; by the fourth, her ideas were too urgent to wait for more sketches. Figures gazed at paintings and tried to imitate their poses. Some of the gallery visitors had white sticks, and were being escorted. One long-haired man scratched his head and poked his fingers in his eyes.
Just as she was painting most intensely, Roy Craig came to unburden himself to her. What he had to say disturbed her – but she couldn’t stay depressed for long while she was painting. When he left, she painted on. Some of the faces gazing at the pictures were rapt, wistful or absolutely calm, with great wide eyes.
Then, buttocksbumanarse, she ran out of some of the colours – just because she was painting so well! She sketched for the rest of the evening, to make sure her ideas didn’t vanish and to prevent herself from brooding over Roy’s tale.
Next day she went downtown early, to the artists’ suppliers in Bold Street. Shops displayed hats like pale blue wicker baskets. A delicatessen boasted caviar. A woman gazed at an overfed leather suite and said to her husband “Looks terribly cheap, don’t you think?”
Fanny was glad not to be trying to appeal to them. They must be locked into their opinions, their conviction of what was Art and Good and Tasteful. Perhaps they might even spare time for Art which had Something to Say. She giggled at herself: she sounded like Winnie-the-Pooh with a headache.
The bus home dropped her by the tower block. She glanced along Lodge Lane, towards the terraced houses huddled together, their only front step the pavement. There was the audience she wanted to reach – the poorer people. They would criticise her work honestly. She could seldom distinguish the genuine opinions of the gallery visitors, if they had any.
She’d displayed her work in some of the community centres, in a fish and chip shop, in the Upper Parly Arts Centre. But nobody had ever asked the price, though she’d hoped people would be pleasantly surprised: she had wanted them to be able to buy. Were they content with their garish lustre pottery, their 3-D religious plaques that performed a little dance when you moved, their portrait of a woman with a blue-green face that sold at Boots the Chemists in its thousands? Wasn’t there any way she could reach them?
There was only one way to try, and that was to keep painting. Figures came alive in her mind. They grew closer, more economically depicted. She knew exactly what she would paint as soon as she reached home. She strode eagerly into the drive.
A man was poking at Roy’s bell. He stood, head cocked – like what sort of bird? Now he was vainly shoving the front door. Of course Roy was at work; the civil service’s Christmas holiday was over.
Why was the man so impatient? She remembered what Roy had said about the police visit. Did this man have something to do with the persecution? “If you want Roy Craig,” she said, “he’s out.”
He didn’t turn, though his shoulder blades drew together beneath the grey dilapidated coat, making her think again of a bird. She must have startled him. Had she mistaken the bell he was ringing? “Are you a friend of Roy Craig’s?” she said.
Was he deaf? Had it been the intrusive breeze rather than her voice that had made his shoulders move? He seemed unaware of her. He stood motionless, his right hand bulging his coat pocket. Ought she to touch his shoulder? Somehow she must make her presence known.
Then he began to turn. He looked stiff as a dummy on a turntable. She was fascinated, and at the same time rather unnerved. Here came his face on his pivoting body: fortyish, bland and scrubbed, with protruding ears. Here came his eyes to stare fixedly at her. They were an astonishing baby blue.
His stare abashed her. It and his face were secret as a baby’s. Why didn’t she advance to the front door, or stand aside to let him out of the porch? The grip of his stare was forcing her to speak, yet she didn’t know what to say. She had never in her life felt so uncomfortable.
“ I’m sorry,” she managed to stammer. “I didn’t mean to pry. I’m sure you’ve a good reason to be here.”
A faint smile crept over his face, but left his eyes untouched; if anything, their scrutiny grew sharper. An insight seized her. She blurted “You’re a policeman, aren’t you?”
His face stiffened. His hand moved in his pocket like a Hollywood detective’s. He looked to be struggling to control his face. What could be trying to emerge? All at once a grin tugged his mouth wide. His eyes twinkled as though she were a favourite child. “Not quite,” he said.
She remembered what she’d meant to suggest to Roy, that he ought to hire – “You’re a private detective,” she said.
“ That’s it. You’ve got me.” His voice was light; the constant nimble changes of its tone made her think of a ballerina’s footwork. She heard how she had delighted him. “What a perceptive woman you are,” he said.
“ I have to be. I’m an artist.” For a moment, without any definable reason, she was uncomfortably suspicious of him. She’d told him what he was, instead of making him tell her. “Roy has told me all about the reason he’s hired you,” she said carefully. “We often talk. He lives just across the landing.”
“ Of course, the artist. Miss Frances Adamson, I believe.”
She was enormously relieved: she could trust him. “Most of my friends call me Fanny,” she said, “but Roy thinks it’s rude.”
He raised his eyebrows and smiled to himself. She noticed that his visible hand was trembling. And his shoulders had tried to shrug off the draught. “Sorry,” she said, closing them both into the porch. “It must be a cold job sometimes.”
“ I suppose so.” He was staring at the door as though she might have locked him in. “But the suffering’s worthwhile.”
“ I’m just going to make a cup of tea. Would you like one?”
Roy believed that it had been someone in the house who had called the police, because they didn’t like his living there. She found herself growing suspicious of people she’d taken for granted, and that distressed her. Perhaps the detective could prove their suspicions wrong, and rid her of her paranoia.
He was staring at the door. His hand stirred in his pocket. Remembering bad films, she had to suppress a giggle. Suddenly he smiled at her, eyes wide. “Thank you,” he said. “That would be very useful.”
In the hall she noticed he was limping slightly. His glance seemed to challenge her. “Is that real?” she blurted.
“ What do you think?”
When he walked upstairs ahead of her, slowly as a mannequin, the limp had vanished. “No,” she said admiringly. It was a subtle way for him to look less like a detective.