She handed them back.
Phoebe could feel herself shrivelling. Already she despised this woman, but she knew her own utter powerlessness.
‘But you’ve hardly seen them.’
‘I’m sorry. They’re not what we’re looking for at all at the moment.’
‘Well, what are you looking for?’
‘Perhaps you might care to try some of the smaller galleries,’ she said, dodging this question with an icy smile. ‘Some of them do rent out space to amateur painters. I don’t know what sort of prices they charge.’
Just then a tall, well-built man in his late thirties emerged from an open doorway at the back of the gallery and strolled over.
‘Everything all right here, Lucinda?’ he said. He affected to ignore Phoebe, but she could tell that she was being quietly examined and evaluated.
‘There’s been a small misunderstanding, I think. This lady, Miss Barker, was under the impression that she’d made an appointment to see you, and she’s brought along some of her sketches.’
‘That’s quite all right. I was expecting Miss Barton,’ he said, and held out his hand, which Phoebe shook. ‘Roderick Winshaw. Now why don’t you bring those things through here, and I can have a proper look at them.’ He turned to the receptionist. ‘That’ll be all, Lucy. You can go to lunch.’
Inside his office, Roddy gave the transparencies an even more cursory inspection. He had already decided what he wanted from this tantalizing new arrival.
‘Harry’s told me about your work,’ he lied, after a brief struggle to remember the first name of the old acquaintance he had done everything in his power to avoid for the last twenty years. ‘But I’m glad to have the opportunity to meet you in person. Establishing a rapport is very important.’
As part of the process of establishing this rapport, he invited Phoebe out to lunch. She did her best to pretend that she knew her way around the menu, and managed to refrain from commenting on the prices, which at first she thought were misprinted. He was paying, after all.
‘In today’s market, you see,’ said Roddy, his mouth full of smoked salmon blinis, ‘it’s naïve to suppose that you can promote an artist’s work in isolation from his personality. There has to be an image, something you can market through the newspapers and magazines. It doesn’t matter how wonderful the pictures are: if you’ve got nothing interesting to say about yourself when the woman from the Independent comes round for an interview, then you’re in trouble.’
Phoebe listened in silence. For all his avowed interest in her personality, this seemed to be what he wanted.
‘It’s also important, of course, that you photograph well.’ He smirked. ‘I can’t imagine that you’d have any problems in that department.’
Roddy seemed strangely restless. Although he was obviously trying to impress Phoebe with his charm and attentiveness, the restaurant appeared to be full of people he knew, and he spent much of the time looking over her shoulder to make sure that he made eye contact with the more important diners. Whenever she raised the subject of painting, which she assumed was at least one interest that they had in common, he would immediately start talking about something completely different.
Roddy called for the bill after about forty minutes, before they’d had time for either dessert or coffee. He had another appointment at two o’clock.
‘Bloody nuisance, really. Some journalist doing a feature on promising young artists: wants me to give him a few names, I suppose. I wouldn’t bother, only you have to cooperate with these people or the gallery never gets good write-ups. You can’t think of anybody, can you?’
Phoebe shook her head.
‘Look, I’m sorry this has been such a rush,’ said Roddy, lowering his gaze and modulating his tone to one of bashful sincerity. ‘I feel that I’ve hardly got to know you.’
She thought this a ridiculous remark, given that they had run out of things to say to each other after about five minutes, but found herself saying, ‘Yes, that’s true.’
‘Where are you staying in London?’ he asked.
‘I’m going home tonight,’ said Phoebe.
‘Is that really necessary? I was just thinking that you could stay at my flat if you liked. There’s plenty of room.’
‘That’s very kind of you,’ said Phoebe, immediately suspicious. ‘But I have to be at work tomorrow.’
‘Of course. But look, we must meet again soon. I want to have a really good look at these pictures of yours. You must talk me through them.’
‘Well, I don’t come down very often, what with work, and the train fare …’
‘Yes, I can see, it must be very difficult for you. But I do find myself in Leeds occasionally. My family have got a place up in that part of the world.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Damn this meeting. I’ll tell you what, though – why don’t you pop round to my flat now? It’s only just round the corner, and I could come and join you in about an hour or so. We could – sort of, pick up where we left off, and there’d be plenty of time for you to catch a train this evening.’
Phoebe stood up. ‘Nice try. If rather lacking in subtlety.’ She put her bag over her shoulder and said: ‘If I’d known that was the sort of rapport you had in mind, I could have saved you the cost of an expensive meal. Could I have my slides back now, please?’
‘I’ll put them in the post, if you really want me to,’ said Roddy, and he watched, fascinated, as she turned on her heel and marched wordlessly out of the restaurant. This was going to be more fun than he’d thought.
∗
‘He was a creep,’ Phoebe told her flatmate, Kim, over a disconsolate cup of coffee in their kitchen that evening.
‘Aren’t they all,’ said Kim. ‘The question is, was he a good-looking creep?’
‘That’s hardly relevant,’ said Phoebe. (To her own annoyance, she had found him rather handsome, although much too aware of it for his own good.)
She thought no more about Roddy until the weekend, when there was an excited phone call from her father, who asked if she’d seen Saturday’s Times. Phoebe went out and bought it, and found that she was mentioned as one of a handful of young painters whose careers looked likely to blossom in the coming decade.
‘I’m very wary of making prophecies: history can so easily prove you wrong,’ says top London dealer Roderick Winshaw, ‘but of all the new artists I’ve seen recently, I’ve been most impressed by Phoebe Barton, a young woman from Leeds who promises great things for the future.’
Kim thought that she should telephone Roddy and thank him, but Phoebe, who was trying hard to conceal her pleasure, didn’t bother, even though the first thing she said to him when he phoned a few nights later was, ‘I saw what you said in the paper. It was very nice of you.’
‘Oh, that thing,’ said Roddy dismissively. ‘I wouldn’t set too much store by that. I’ve had a few inquiries about you since it came out, but it’s early days yet.’
Phoebe’s heart was racing. ‘Inquiries?’ she said.
‘The reason I was phoning,’ said Roddy, ‘was to find out if you were doing anything this weekend. I’m going up to the old family seat and I wondered if you might care to join me: then we could have a good look at your work. I thought I might pick you up in Leeds on the Saturday afternoon, and we’d drive up from there.’
Phoebe thought about this. A whole weekend alone with Roderick Winshaw? Just having lunch with him had been bad enough. It was a terrible idea.
‘Fine,’ she said. ‘That would be lovely.’
2
Roddy took one look at the council estate and decided there was no way he was going to park the Mercedes Sports on it. He didn’t much like leaving it parked on the hillside, either, outside what seemed to be some sort of school or community centre: the two young thugs who watched him getting out and locking the doors looked as though they’d cheerfully smash the windows or let the tyres down the minute his back was turned. He hoped Phoebe would be ready and he wouldn’t have to hang around in this godforsaken spot a minute longer than necessary.