‘Look, Roddy – we have to talk about this.’
‘I know. There are hundreds of things we have to talk about. Prices, for instance.’
In spite of herself she responded to the movement of his hand, and stretched her legs even further apart. ‘… Prices?’ she said, with an effort.
‘We’ve got to get them as high as possible. I’ve got Japanese clients who’ll pay thirty or forty thousand for a big canvas. Seven by nine, something like that. Abstracts, landscapes, minimalism, anything: they don’t care. Does that feel nice, by the way?’
‘Thirty or forty …? But I’ve never painted anything that … Yes, yes it does, it feels very nice.’
‘Stay there a minute.’
He rolled off and took something from a drawer in the bedside table. Phoebe could hear the sound of a packet being opened and rubber being unfurled.
‘We’ll have to take the show to New York, of course,’ said Roddy, sitting with his back towards her, his fingers working with a dexterity born of long practice, ‘after it’s been in London a few weeks. I’ve got a sort of twinning arrangement with a gallery over there, so I don’t anticipate any problems.’ He replaced the packet and lay on his back. ‘Well, what do you think?’
‘I think you’re mad,’ said Phoebe, giggling joyfully. Accepting the invitation in his eyes, she raised herself and knelt over him, her hair brushing his face. ‘And I don’t think I should be doing this.’
But she did.
Roddy fell asleep soon afterwards. He slept on his side, facing the wall, taking up three quarters of the bed. Phoebe dozed more fitfully, her mind still dancing to the tune of his promises, awash with visions of the glories soon to come. At one point she was awoken by voices coming from the grounds outside her window. Pulling back the curtains she saw two figures wielding mallets and chasing each other across the floodlit lawn. Hilary’s piercing cackle merged with the more apologetic laughter of Conrad as he explained that ‘I don’t know much about croquet’. They both appeared to be naked.
Phoebe returned to bed, tried to get Roddy to move, failed, and then had little option other than to lie up against his back. For a while she tried putting her arm across his shoulder: but she might as well have been hugging a block of marble.
∗
She woke to the sound of loud groans coming from a distant room. She was alone in the bed, and the weather was grey and drizzly. She guessed it was between nine and ten in the morning. Hastily pulling a blouse and trousers over her nightshirt, and slipping shoes on to her bare feet, Phoebe went out into the corridor to investigate. Pyles was limping by, carrying a tray which contained the congealed remains of an uneaten breakfast.
‘Good morning, Miss Barton,’ he said coldly.
‘Is anything the matter?’ she asked. ‘It sounds as though somebody might be in pain.’
‘Mr Winshaw, I fear, is suffering the consequences of my carelessness yesterday. The bruising is worse than we thought.’
‘Has someone sent for the doctor?’
‘The doctor, as I understand it, prefers not to be disturbed on a Sunday.’
‘Then I’ll attend to him.’
This suggestion met with stunned silence.
‘I am a qualified nurse, you know.’
‘I scarcely think that would be appropriate,’ the butler murmured.
‘Too bad.’
She hurried off down the corridor, paused outside the room from which the groans were issuing, then knocked and walked briskly in. Mortimer Winshaw – whose pale and crooked face she had glimpsed behind his bedroom window when she arrived yesterday – was sitting up in bed, his hands clutching the blankets and his teeth clenched in pain. He opened his eyes when Phoebe came in, gasped, and pulled the bedclothes up to his chin, as if modesty demanded the concealment of his egg-stained pyjamas.
‘Who are you?’ he said.
‘My name’s Phoebe,’ she answered. ‘I’m a friend of your son’s.’ Mortimer gave a snort of indignation. ‘I’m also a nurse. I could hear you from my room and thought I might be able to do something to help. You must be very uncomfortable.’
‘How do I know you’re a real nurse?’ he said, after a pause.
‘Well, you’ll just have to trust me.’
She met his gaze.
‘Where does it hurt?’
‘All down here.’ Mortimer drew the bedclothes back and pulled down his pyjama bottoms. His right thigh was severely bruised and swollen. ‘That clumsy oaf of a butler. He was probably trying to kill me.’
Phoebe inspected the bruise, then pulled off his pyjama bottoms altogether.
‘Let me know if this hurts.’
She raised his leg and tested the range of movement of the hip.
‘Of course it damn well hurts,’ said Mortimer.
‘Well, there’s nothing broken, anyway. You could probably do with some painkillers.’
‘There are pills in the chest over there. Hundreds of ’em.’
She made him take two Coproxamol, with a glass of water.
‘We’ll make up an ice pack in a minute. That should help it go down. Do you mind if I take this dressing off?’
His shin was loosely bound with a yellowing bandage which should clearly have been changed some time ago. Underneath was a nasty leg ulcer.
‘What’s my treacherous little runt of a son doing bringing nurses up here, anyway?’ he said, as she unwound the dressing.
‘I paint as well,’ Phoebe explained.
‘Ah. Any good at it?’
‘That’s not really for me to say.’
She fetched cotton wool from the chest, water from the basin in an adjoining washroom, and began to clean up the ulcer.
‘You have a delicate touch,’ said Mortimer. ‘Painting and nursing. Well, well. Both of them rather demanding vocations, I would have thought. Do you have your own studio?’
‘Not my own, no. I share with another woman.’
‘Doesn’t sound very satisfactory.’
‘I manage.’ She took a strip of clean bandage and began to wind it around the scrawny, brittle shin. ‘When was this dressing last changed?’
‘Doctor comes about twice a week.’
‘It should be changed daily. How long have you been in the wheelchair?’
‘A year or so. It started with osteoarthritis: then these ulcers.’ He watched her working for a few minutes, and said: ‘Pretty, aren’t you?’ Phoebe smiled. ‘Makes a change to see a young woman about the place.’
‘Apart from your daughter, you mean.’
‘What, Hilary? Don’t tell me she’s here as well.’
‘You didn’t know?’
Mortimer went tight-lipped. ‘Let me give you a warning about my family,’ he said eventually, ‘in case you hadn’t worked it out already. They’re the meanest, greediest, cruellest bunch of back-stabbing penny-pinching bastards who ever crawled across the face of the earth. And I include my own offspring in that statement.’
Phoebe, who was on the point of tying up the bandage, stopped to look at him in surprise.
‘There’s only ever been two nice members of my family: Godfrey, my brother, who died in the war, and my sister Tabitha, who they’ve managed to shut up in a loony bin for the last half a century.’
For some reason she very much didn’t want to hear this. ‘I’ll go and get that ice pack,’ she said, standing.
‘Before you go,’ said Mortimer, as she made for the door, ‘how much do they pay you?’
‘Pardon?’
‘At the hospital, or wherever it is you work.’
‘Oh. Not much. Not much at all, really.’
‘Come and work for me,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you a proper wage.’ He thought for a moment, and named a five-figure sum. ‘They don’t look after me here. There’s no one to talk to. And you could paint. Nobody uses half of these rooms. You could have your own studio: a really big one.’
Phoebe laughed. ‘That’s very sweet of you,’ she said. ‘And the funny thing is that if you’d asked me yesterday I probably would have accepted. But it looks as though I’m going to be giving up nursing for good.’