‘Well, today it’s early closing. I’ll be shutting the shop in ten minutes.’
‘Oh, good. So we can have lunch together.’
‘Oh! . . . yes . . . all right’ – he had no other plans, but this one was a bit of a jump. ‘If you don’t mind waiting.’
‘Not a bit,’ she said, and sat down unnervingly in Cyril’s chair.
‘I suppose, um . . .’ – but anyway he got on with fixing the gilt slip, with the feeling, as she watched him, that he was acting out his own job. He didn’t want to refuse her, that was the thing.
She got up after a minute, and looked into the small glass-windowed cubicle, like the office in a garage, which was where Cyril did the books and where there was a square safe under the desk. Johnny had never had more than a glimpse into the safe, last thing on Fridays, which was when the week’s takings were carried in Cyril’s briefcase to the safe deposit chute at the bank, and when Johnny himself was paid, with an odd little cough on Cyril’s part, as if to counter any hint of warmth or congratulation. He had seen that the safe had things in it other than money. ‘Is this him?’ she said.
‘What’s that?’ He was worried about her making trouble for which she, at least, would not be punished. He put down his brush and went over. She was looking at the framed photo on the wall above the filing cabinet, Cyril thirty years ago, with another man, looking at a picture, which Cyril was holding in his hands. ‘Yes, I don’t know who the other man is.’
‘Oh, well, it’s John,’ said Francesca, ‘John Rothenstein. Daddy knows him – and Evert, all that lot. Evert used to work with him at the Tate.’
This should really have been Johnny’s territory. ‘Oh, did he?’
‘John used to run the Tate,’ said Francesca, masking her impatience with a sentimental smile at his pug-like Mandarin face and circular horn-rimmed glasses. Beside him Cyril, looking not a day younger, was wearing a remarkable canvas garment with buttons up to the chin and no collar. Its cuffs too were buttoned back, perhaps to save them trailing in paint and glue. It gave him a specialized, ecclesiastical air.
‘Cyril hasn’t changed,’ said Johnny.
‘He’s still got that silly coat on,’ said Francesca, and the joke was funnier than it should have been – a first break in the high-pitched tone.
The bell jangled again and Johnny went through to see who it was. To his horror it was Cyril, closing the door and turning towards him with a picture in a carrier bag under his arm. ‘Success?’ said Johnny eagerly, stepping forward as if expecting him to unwrap it and share the joy at once. There was no way Francesca could be smuggled out of the back room, but his instinct, even so, was for delay.
Cyril’s response was a clearing of the throat suggesting it was none of Johnny’s business. ‘Anyone been in?’ he said.
Well, it was a chance. ‘Actually, Sir George Skipton’s daughter came in. Francesca, you know?’
‘The one you’re scared of,’ said Cyril.
‘Well, not really,’ said Johnny, ‘no, no. In fact she’s here now.’
Cyril stared. ‘Where is she then?’
‘Well, she wanted to see the Maitland that her father’s interested in, so I said—’
‘I’m here,’ said Francesca, looking round the door, and coming towards Cyril with her head on one side as if at the great pleasure of meeting him at last. ‘Francesca Skipton.’
‘How do you do,’ said Cyril.
‘My father’s always talking about you,’ she said.
‘Well . . .’ said Cyril, and with a little nod at them both he went past her and into the workshop. Johnny followed a few seconds later. A dread of almost parental disapproval was mixed with a feeling of defiance that was just as childish. The music carried on, a harp concerto now, and he hovered by the radio, unsure whether to turn it off. Cyril went through to the office, where Johnny saw him stoop to unlock the safe and slide the white carrier bag and its contents into it, and lock it up again.
‘Have I dragged you into the mire?’ said Francesca when they were out on the pavement – ‘I wasn’t quite sure.’
‘I’ll let you know tomorrow,’ said Johnny. And now there was the more pressing thing of lunch to cope with. They went up Old Church Street, both slightly self-conscious.
‘Ivan’s going to join us later,’ said Francesca.
‘Oh . . . OK,’ said Johnny, and his relief that he wouldn’t be alone with Francesca was mixed with relief that he wouldn’t be alone with Ivan. Again he had a certain flustered feeling of being talked about: Francesca seemed to have a plan. ‘I don’t know about Ivan,’ he said.
‘Oh, Ivan . . .’ – she chuckled in an odd way that suggested no friend of hers could be safe from ridicule. She glanced at him narrowly. ‘No one’s quite sure what’s going on between you two.’
‘Well, nor am I!’ said Johnny.
Francesca had a judicious look. ‘You don’t fancy him.’
‘No, he’s extremely attractive . . .’
‘Just not your type, then.’ It was as if Johnny was spoiling things.
He blushed. ‘I’m just not his type, I think.’
But it seemed she was on his side. ‘Well, you’re far more attractive than he is,’ she said.
‘I think he likes me,’ said Johnny, laughing in his surprise at her remark.
‘Hmm,’ said Francesca. ‘So you mean you’ve never done it with him?’
Johnny had done it with few enough people to feel reluctant as he said, ‘We kissed, you know, but that’s about it.’
‘Well, he’s sillier than I thought,’ she said, and as they turned the corner on to the busy street she took his arm, as though to reassure him. They were astonishing questions from someone he hardly knew, but they showed she had got his number: she wasn’t taking him out with any designs of that kind herself – and at this he felt suddenly light-headed. ‘We’re going to Bond Street,’ she said, looking over her shoulder. ‘Blast, that cab’s gone.’ She left him and went back past the turning to get ahead of the shoppers spaced along the kerb but the only cabs that came in the next few minutes were already taken too.
‘If we’re going to Bond Street,’ Johnny said, ‘we can get the 14 bus.’
Francesca blinked distractedly at this. She even ran thirty yards, to catch the eye of a cabbie emerging from the mews opposite, but he turned right, very slowly, ignoring her in his turn. ‘Wanker,’ she said.
‘There’s a 14 coming,’ shouted Johnny, running the other way, towards the stop, and raising his hand.
They sat at the front of the upper deck, the one place of notional privilege on a democratic bus, amid the sour fug of smokers past and present. Francesca had nothing smaller than a five-pound note, but she paid for them both, when the conductor at last came upstairs. ‘This is on me,’ she said. ‘Well, this is fun.’ Of course Johnny felt responsible for the bus, and for the heavy delays it fell into by some clumsy instinct. Francesca watched its progress, and watched the black cabs slipping past it and darting ahead and out of sight. Now the bus lumbered to a bus stop where a large group of tourists in bright rainwear almost blocked the pavement as they massed and funnelled in at the rear. At last the conductor pinged the cord, and they edged out five yards into the traffic backed up at the lights; which, on account of a blockage beyond the junction, changed twice before they passed them, the brief roar of progress braked immediately as they homed in on the person with arm raised at the next stop along.
‘I mean, it’s hopeless if they’re going to keep stopping,’ said Francesca.
‘Well, it’s sort of how it works, I suppose,’ said Johnny, with a little shrug at its undeniable drawbacks.
‘Do you do this a lot?’
Johnny knew the rhythms and speeds of London transport, knew his Tube lines and four or five bus routes, and in the routines of waiting, letting one bus dismissively go and nodding satirically at the long-delayed sight of another, he still sensed the original beauty of living here. ‘Every day,’ he said. ‘To get to work, you know.’ He was pretty sure Francesca didn’t go to work herself. ‘Do you have a job?’