A Night on the Orient Express (15 page)

She alighted at Trafalgar Square. In the back of her mind, she thought she could go to the National Portrait Gallery. Gazing at all those faces had always fascinated and inspired her; she tried to imagine their thoughts and feelings, their true sense of self as they sat for the artist. No one, after all, is really what they portray to the outside world. Today, she certainly wasn’t. She stood for a moment, watching the pigeons. On the surface she was nothing but a respectable, happily married mother of two who was treating herself to a day in town.

Had she turned left, she would have remained that person.

She looked calm and serene as she turned right to walk along the Strand, but on the inside her blood was simmering, like a pan of milk just before it comes to the boil. She walked into the Savoy as if she did so every week.

She glided into the restaurant, trying not to be intimidated by its glittering glamour – the chandeliers and the gold leaf and the sheer size of it. A white-aproned maître d’ came forward with a smile. ‘I’m dining with Mr Jack Molloy,’ she told him, and hearing herself say his name made her quiver inside. The maître d’ bowed, smiled, and indicated a table by the window.

Jack was sitting back in his chair, a glass of wine in his right hand. He was looking right at her and raised his glass. He had known all along she would come. She felt her cheeks catch fire. Her hands trembled. Why? she asked herself. She was, after all, only here to ask his advice. She felt her courage fail her.

She was always confident, in every social occasion. Was she going to make a fool of herself? Perhaps she already had, by turning up. Why hadn’t she torn up the letter and stayed at home? She could be making a ham sandwich for Mrs Morris, her daily help, right now. Dull, perhaps, but safe.

How enticing dull and safe seemed as she walked past the other diners.

He stood up as she reached his table. His smile wasn’t mocking, as she feared it might be. It showed genuine pleasure. He reached out and held her elbows in his hands as he kissed her on each cheek, a chivalrous gesture, not untoward. She sat, her tongue heavy in her mouth, not sure what to say.

‘I’m so pleased you came,’ he told her. ‘London has been so dreary lately. And I have a notoriously short attention span. I need novelty.’ He looked at her with delight, like a small boy who had just opened the birthday present of his dreams.

‘Well, I’m sure you will tire of me before the meal is out. I don’t know that I have much to say that would interest you.’

‘Never mind,’ he replied. ‘You are very beautiful and that will do for now.’

Her cheeks flushed. She hated herself for falling for his patter – she felt sure compliments fell easily from his tongue when it suited him. She knew perfectly well he was preying on her vanity. She knew the pains she’d gone to that morning to make herself look her very best without, of course, making it look as if she had done so.

Still, she would have been irked if he hadn’t commented on her appearance.

‘Thank you,’ she murmured, and took her seat opposite him, feeling his gaze drink her in. He poured her a glass of wine and she took it gratefully. Her mouth felt dry. She gathered up her nerve. She wanted to gain the upper hand. She wanted to make sure he knew she wasn’t easy prey. She wanted to turn the tables on him.

‘Actually,’ she said, ‘I want to pick your brain. I’m thinking of opening a gallery and I’d like your advice.’

She was secretly delighted at the surprise on his face. He hadn’t expected that.

‘A gallery,’ he said eventually. ‘Tell me more.’

‘Well . . . the coach house adjoining our house used to be William’s surgery, but it’s empty now. I was thinking about what I could do with it. I was going to turn it into an annexe for guests, but that seemed terribly dull. So I thought – what about a gallery? Just a small one, nothing too ambitious . . .’

She trailed off, gauging his reaction. He nodded for her to go on.

‘I think it would go down well in Shallowford. There are plenty of antique shops, lots of people with money. And it would give me something to do.’ She gave an embarrassed shrug. ‘With the boys away now, I’m bored. It would give me an interest. And I know William would be supportive.’

Somehow, she thought saying William’s name at this point would protect her in some way.

‘So,’ said Jack. ‘Does he know you’re here today?’

Adele looked down at the tablecloth. It was pristine, brilliant white. To her horror, she found herself smiling. She looked up, looked Jack right in the eye.

‘No,’ she said. ‘No, he doesn’t.’ Jack smirked, and she leant forward. ‘Because I want to do my research thoroughly. I don’t want to go to him with a half-baked plan that makes me look like a silly housewife playing shop. I want it to be a credible proposition.’

Jack nodded. ‘So you want me to give you all my trade secrets? Is that what you’re saying?’

Adele laughed. ‘You needn’t worry that I’m going to be any sort of threat to you. I’m not going to be dealing in grand masters and the next big thing. I just wondered . . . if you thought it was viable. Or if you think it’s a silly idea.’

Jack picked up his glass. ‘I think it sounds a perfectly respectable way for a bored housewife to keep herself out of trouble.’ He took a sip of wine and locked his eyes with hers.

For a moment, she contemplated throwing the contents of her glass over him. He was infuriating. Patronising. Yet she knew this was how she was supposed to feel. She refused to rise to the bait.

‘Of course, if you’re too grand to share your wisdom, I apologise for being presumptuous. I’ll merely have to learn by my own mistakes.’

There was silence for a moment. Adele recognised that she had outmanoeuvred him and he wasn’t sure what to say or how to proceed.

‘I would be absolutely delighted to give you any advice you need,’ he said finally. ‘Of course I would.’

‘Thank you,’ she replied. She picked up the menu and studied it so he couldn’t see her smile. She felt rather elated, and wasn’t quite sure what she had started. The idea of a gallery had started as a whim, a passing fancy, but suddenly, with Jack’s validation, it became a bona fide proposition. She started to visualise it. The coach house was a lovely building. It would be easy to convert. It was near the high street, with good pedestrian access. The venture wouldn’t have to interfere with their private life. It actually made sense. She felt a leap of excitement deep inside her as the possibility came one step closer to reality.

Lunch was sublime. They had lemon sole and
iles flotants
and drank far too much wine while they discussed the possibilities. Jack was inspirational and enthusiastic and full of ideas that Adele hadn’t thought of. He told her of sales he would take her to, and contacts he would let her have, and promised to let her in on all the tricks of the trade – some of them scrupulous, some of them not so.

Adele warned herself not to get carried away, yet somehow nothing Jack suggested seemed impossible. Far from it. After all, she had the premises. She had a little bit of money – a legacy from an aged great aunt – and she felt fairly certain that William would give her some to invest. He shouldn’t take long to talk round. He would be glad she had found something to keep her busy, as he seemed reluctant to let her get involved in the surgery.

By the time lunch drew to a close, she felt curiously light-headed and effervescent.

‘I can’t thank you enough,’ she told Jack. ‘This is going to be unbelievably thrilling.’

‘Your eyes have gone all sparkly,’ he observed.

She laughed. ‘It must be the wine. I’ve had far too much.’

Jack signalled to the waiter to bring him the bill. The restaurant was beginning to empty – around them people were pushing back their chairs, looking slightly glazed from the food and drink.

Adele picked up her handbag and her gloves and looked round for the waiter to call her a taxi. They had been talking for hours. She couldn’t remember the last time an afternoon had gone so quickly.

‘We’ll go to my club for coffee,’ Jack said.

She hesitated. Coffee was probably just what she needed, she told herself. She felt a bit unsteady, if she was honest. She would have one cup. She could be back at Paddington for six o’clock. All perfectly respectable.

‘Lovely,’ she said. He slid his arm into hers. It felt quite natural.

It was a business meeting, she told herself. But she wasn’t fooled. Not really.

They walked. Up through Covent Garden and along Shaftesbury Avenue and into the grimy, hectic mayhem of Soho, into the little maze of streets that were so hard to tell from one another. Snack bars and advertising hoardings and Coca Cola signs converged on one another. It smelled of coffee and cigarettes and decadence. Adele felt slightly bewildered. There was an air of people doing the wrong things at the wrong time of day: drinking when they should be sleeping, sleeping when they should be eating, eating when they should be working . . . A sleepily salacious girl in a red silk dressing gown yawned in a doorway. A drunk rolled out into the road and narrowly missed being run over by a young boy on a moped. A cat on a windowsill seemed unperturbed by any of it. Adele clung onto Jack’s arm, not sure whether to be afraid or beguiled. This was not her world. Far from it.

They stopped outside a green door. Jack gave two sharp raps and it opened immediately. A rather dishevelled creature in a white ball dress fell out onto the steps in front of them, collapsing in a pile of taffeta. She stared up at the sky, her eyes blank, streams of flaxen hair falling over her shoulders, looking for all the world like a mermaid who had been washed up on the shore. It was three o’clock in the afternoon.

‘Hello, Miranda,’ said Jack mildly, and stepped over her. Adele followed him down a set of narrow stairs. She was no longer quite sure what to expect. When Jack had said ‘club’ she had imagined leather armchairs and a book-lined library where women were allowed by invitation only. The sort of place where William might go with one of his consultant cronies.

This club couldn’t have been further from that. Inside, it was mayhem. A veritable bear garden.

Behind the bar was a black woman, over six feet tall, her hair piled high on top of her head, stunningly regal in a green dress with a man’s jacket over the top, the sleeves rolled back, every one of her fingers jammed with gold rings. She was serving drinks as quickly as she could to the rabble. As far as Adele could see no money seemed to change hands, and the only drink on offer came from a dubious bottle with white liquid she sloshed into mismatched glasses.

Everywhere people were arguing, laughing, smoking, dancing. Miles Davis spilled out of a pair of loudspeakers. In the darkest corner, a lone woman sobbed. She was wearing a tangerine polo-neck sweater and black-rimmed glasses; occasionally somebody patted her on the shoulder or topped up her drink. Elsewhere, an enraged Irish girl was berating a trio of middle-aged men, who listened to her tirade agog.

In the midst of it all, a baby sat bolt upright in a pram, smiling and clapping, a rabbit-fur cape around her shoulders, gold hoops in her ears. It was anyone’s guess to whom she belonged. Every now and then someone scooped her up and kissed her before plonking her back down.

‘Welcome to Simone’s,’ Jack smiled.

‘Is that Simone?’ asked Adele, rather dazed, pointing to the giantess behind the bar. Jack just laughed.

Adele felt as if she had stepped into another world; as if, like Alice, she had fallen down a rabbit hole and entered a kingdom where nothing made sense. Yet she didn’t feel an outsider, for there didn’t seem to be any rules about the sort of person you needed to be to belong here. The only rule appeared to be that you had to be drunk, which she already was, a little. Jack gave her a stool, and a very dirty glass filled with some clear liquid that set her insides on fire. Within moments any discomfort she felt had evaporated and she felt part of the crowd. There was no stuffiness or standing on ceremony. No one judged or made assumptions or cared two hoots about who she was or where she was from. They seemed to take her on face value, which was very refreshing.

In Shallowford, she was the doctor’s wife. This gave her a high social status, but no one was ever actually interested in what she had to say, not in the way they hung on to William’s every word. She hadn’t minded until now. She was used to her role. Suddenly, though, she was being asked for her opinion on everything from the best way to eat artichokes to Che Guevara’s antics in Cuba. The only subject on which she was any authority was the artichokes (with vinaigrette; she was very definite about this) but it didn’t matter – her opinions were valued regardless. Everyone was in a pleasant state of inebriation. Relaxed and convivial.

‘This girl has got a simply wonderful eye for a masterpiece
,’
Jack told anyone who would listen. ‘I’m going to train her up. I’ll regret it, because the last thing I need is competition. But you watch . . .’

Adele felt a glow inside, unused to the attention and the flattery. She felt herself unfurling, becoming someone else: a sophisticated, metropolitan art dealer. She’d never felt the need to be someone else before, but now the desire had been awoken, she indulged it, playing the part, playing off Jack’s vision, telling everyone the plans she had. But Simone’s was like that. She sensed everyone in there was playing a part, living out a fantasy.

Lying to themselves.

She chain-smoked cigarettes all afternoon, which was unusual – she occasionally had one after dinner, but it seemed de rigueur to light the next before the one you were smoking was finished, and she was so caught up in the spirit of the place she joined in.

She felt glittery, languid. A sense of expectation throbbed inside her: her future unwound in front of her, shimmering like a silver thread, unlike the grey vacuum that had stretched in front of her until now. Never before had she felt as if she could do anything. She was elated.