Learning to Dance (17 page)

Had it been her mother? Had she given too much time to
Eunice? She racked her memory; once, before her speech finally disappeared, Eunice had found some words and told Judith she must let her go to a nursing home. Judith had told Jack, and he had been genuinely astonished.

‘Darling, we can get help here. Mum is our family. She keeps us together.’

Judith had wept then. But he had been right. The togetherness had gradually seeped away after Eunice’s death. That was the time she should have nurtured it. Then, out of the blue, she found herself remembering last Christmas. The office party hosted by the Whortleys. Jack, grinning, ‘Get something new, Jude. Go on, spoil yourself.’

And her response. ‘Darling, I simply cannot face an office party. Listen, why don’t you take Naomi? She’s such a good friend to me but you only see her when she’s leaving here. It would allow you to get to know her better and I’m sure she’d just love it.’

‘Don’t worry, love. I don’t need to go either. It’s just … I thought we might start getting back to normal.’

‘We are back to normal, Jack. It’s just that I’m so tired, I can’t make that sort of effort. Oh dear, I feel rotten about it but … say you don’t mind!’

He had rolled his eyes and intoned, ‘I do not mind.’

And in the end, he had agreed to take Naomi.

Had he felt pushed away then? He said he wished he hadn’t gone. The awful thing was that Naomi had not enjoyed it either. ‘It was OK.’ She had shrugged. ‘I didn’t know anyone, of course.’

Judith took a deep breath and came back to the present. She should have gone to that office party. She had known it at the time but suppressed it; now she knew it again. Behind her closed eyes she visualized letters and made them into
words. And the words all said the same thing, ‘I’m sorry … I’m sorry …’ They multiplied, and as they did she picked up the charcoal stick and started to draw. She recalled Jack saying, ‘I do my best stuff with my eyes closed.’

When her hand stopped moving, she opened her eyes and stared down at the page. A single hooked line made a nose, two lines level with the nose’s bridge became eyes, a lopsided slash beneath the nose made a mouth; finally a quiff of hair and, of course, protruding ears. More slowly, watching the charcoal as it moved, she circled the collection of features into a head.

‘My God, who is that?’ Sybil looked over her shoulder. ‘I had no idea you did caricatures too!’

‘I don’t. I never have. But this is Fish-Frobisher! I can’t believe it … he drew himself!’ She looked away from the page, eyes wide. ‘My God. It really is. Magnus Fish-Frobisher himself!’

‘Who on earth is Magnus Fish-Frobisher?’

‘You don’t know the Fish-Frobishers?’ Judith grinned suddenly. ‘You only looked at the Jack Freeman cartoon when he drew your husband! Free publicity, that’s what Jack called it. A week – maybe two – and that was that. But the Frobishers have been ongoing for years. They gave everyone a chance to see themselves, for better or worse. They really are awful. Snobs, unconscious racists, but underneath it all they can be kind.’ She puckered her mouth, considering. ‘A bit like Nat, I imagine.’

Sybil laughed and began to mix some paint. ‘Go on with it. Let me get to know them. Is there a wife?’

‘Certainly there’s a wife. Edith. And a daughter called Stargazer. Her school friends call her “Popeye”.’ Judith went on looking at ‘FF’, as Jack called him. ‘This is peculiar.’

‘No. No, it’s not. It’s true therapy. Representing the happy times?’

‘Probably. They were conceived when the twins were still at school and my mother was well. Twenty-three years ago, I suppose.’ She went on staring. The few lines in front of her which made up the face of Fish-Frobisher, were almost a facsimile of Jack’s popular creation. But they reminded her of someone else. The slicked-back hair, the long thin mouth, the considering eyes and – most of all – the protruding ears: they also belonged to Jack Freeman. Had he intended that?

Sybil leaned forward, applying paint from the very tip of a fine brush. ‘I’m doing the purples first, there were a lot of purples.’ She swung back and forth, looking then dabbing. ‘Moss made me promise to take my painting seriously after he died.’ She paused, brush poised high. ‘Oh my God, is that yet another reason I came to see Robert? To hang on to his coat-tails?’

‘You came to see Nathaniel Jones, remember?’

‘I didn’t think so. Not until later. Though when he was being so courteous in the coach coming here, I felt a real pang. He never understood Robert, nor me, but he was so loyal. He thought he was an outsider, but I see now he had a big role. He looked after us. Just as he went with Robert last night, to look after him.’ She leaned forward again and began on the beech trees, adding ochre to the crimson paint.

Judith turned a page and started to draw again. ‘It’s as if Jack has his hand over mine. This is Edith Fish-Frobisher. She was a good woman, actually.’ She gave her a perfect hairdo. ‘In between perms she did good works.’ She held the sketchbook away from her and looked hard. ‘Yes, that’s
Edith. I must have watched Jack working – watched every line he made – it is exactly Edith Fish-Frobisher.’ And it was modelled on someone; someone real.

Judith stared in disbelief; it was her mother.

Sybil was talking, as if to herself. She was deep into mixing paints; the trolley had half-a-dozen saucers full of wonderful colours. Judith turned to tell her about Edith Fish-Frobisher, alias Eunice Denman, and was completely distracted by the colours. She pushed her pad away and watched Sybil as she applied paint here and there and brought the beech trees to life.

Sybil started to speak again, almost to herself. ‘I was sixteen. Robert had got a place at the Slade, and he looked me up. It was wonderful to see him. I realized I had been homesick for him. I told him I loved him and would always love him.’

She looked up and saw Judith’s eyes on her, and said, ‘You’ve got the clearest eyes I’ve ever seen. Be careful. He’s fallen for you – because of your eyes, I think – and he could hurt you.’

Judith shook her head slowly. ‘It’s not like that. Not at all.’

Sybil made a face. ‘My God. You’re falling for him, aren’t you?’

‘Don’t be silly! Jack’s been … gone … two months!’

‘Quite. But this is something different. Be honest, I’m right, am I not? He’s not only a wonderful painter. He’s a tortured soul. And more than that, too. He’s a pirate!’ She laughed without humour. ‘You’re doing exactly the same as I did. I did it at ten years old, sixteen years old, and again when I got the invitation to come here for his retrospective exhibition! Don’t be such a fool, Jude! My God, you’re better than this! You’re practical, imaginative, caring. How can you
get a crush on Robert? You can see that wherever he goes he takes disaster with him.’

Judith said, ‘Not really. And of course he loves you. That’s why he wants you to be happy. I think he probably rigged this exhibition; all right, he knew it would help to get the castle started as a sort of cultural-weekend-away. But then he saw it could also bring you and Nathaniel Jones back together. You say you had an invitation. I didn’t, and I’m willing to bet neither did the Olsens nor the Markhams. What about Nathaniel?’

Sybil took a rag and cleaned her brush. ‘Yes. Yes, you’re right. Yesterday out on that dratted moor, Nat did say something.’

‘There you are! Your husband had only been dead two months, and Hausmann knew you would be trying to make a new life. The Markhams live in Bristol or nearby; they were probably looking for something they could do with their Scandinavian friends! Hausmann is known as a West Country painter, and as far as I know the weekend was advertised in the local press only.’ She shrugged. ‘You live in Surrey, and Nathaniel lives in Wales. I doubt Martin Morris’s advertisement got that far. There were just seven of us, that’s all. I think it was arranged for your sake, Sybil. Surely that is love?’

Sybil’s frown disappeared. She laughed and shook her head. ‘I suppose so. Not the sort I wanted, or thought I wanted. But I still think you should be careful; he certainly is very interested in you!’

‘Not really. It’s because of Jack. He … he admires … admired … Jack.’

Sybil stopped laughing and dried the brush with studied care. ‘But … sorry, Jude … but their stuff is so different, and I’m afraid would have come between them. In Robert’s
eyes, cartoonists are not painters, they are journalists. Sorry, but that’s Robert.’

‘I mean he admires Jack. The man. Not necessarily his work.’

‘He knew your husband. Personally?’

‘Yes.’

‘So you knew him, too: you came here to see him as well as his work?’

‘No. I didn’t know him, but I’ve seen a couple of his exhibitions and enjoyed them, and it seemed a good thing to do. I needed to do something, you see. I was gardening and cleaning and shopping for food I wasn’t going to eat, and it was all so pointless. Booking a weekend away was … was … meaningful.’

Sybil loaded the brush carefully with olive-green paint. She said, ‘Jude, if he engineered this weekend so that Nat and I would meet up again, don’t you think it is more than likely you were included in such cunning plans?’ She rolled her eyes and vowels on the last two words. But she was not smiling. ‘He kept his eye on the bookings. If you hadn’t booked a place I rather think you, too, would have received an invitation.’

‘I don’t think so.’ It was getting too difficult. She was going to have to admit that Jack was alive.

Sybil gave a little snort of derision. ‘Sorry, but I know Robert through and through.’

Suddenly Judith was annoyed. She hated this conversation; the assumption that she could possibly be looking for someone else was disgusting. Sybil obviously thought she was a flirtatious widow. Yes, it was all disgusting.

She said tersely, ‘You need not worry about Robert and me. You must know he is gay.’

Sybil’s reaction was slow. She held her brush in mid-air while she stared at Judith with astonishment. Then she exploded with genuine mirth, somehow or other replaced the brush in its saucer, and lifted her head to the ceiling. She looked so like Naomi with the long throat exposed that Judith wanted to weep. All the good that she had felt emanating from Castle Dove – and Robert Hausmann’s work – was swept away. She looked down at her sketches: the Frobishers, one like Jack, the other like her mother. Now Sybil was reminding her of Naomi Parsons. All of them lost.

Sybil spluttered, ‘Did he tell you that?’

She said, hopelessly, ‘Yes. In a manner of speaking.’ She would have to confess that Jack was alive, and that would finish any kind of friendship she might have had with Sybil.

But Sybil was only interested in Hausmann. She controlled her laughter, fished for a tissue and wiped her eyes.

‘Jude. He is not gay. I can vouch for that. What sort of game is he playing now, for God’s sake? My dear, be more on your guard than ever. He is most definitely up to something!’

Judith was surprised at her own relief; Sybil was not going to cast her off after all. In that moment she almost told her about Jack and the other woman in Australia. And then she didn’t. Instead, after a while she said, ‘Thank you, Sybil.’

They went back to their work. They had no more to say; Judith’s feeling of discomfort, of insecurity, of imminent loss, grew steadily stronger. Underneath it all was a basis of guilt. She was living some kind of peculiar lie that was absolutely unnecessary.

At one o’clock Sybil sat back, satisfied. ‘I’ve got to a point that I can leave until after lunch. What about you?’

It was obvious that Sybil had not picked up any of Judith’s
discomfort. ‘I’m still working on the Fish-Frobisher strip; I can leave it at any time.’

Sybil said, ‘Let’s go, then. It’s been great, Jude. We’ve been so honest with each other. I didn’t offend you, did I?’

‘No. Of course not.’ Judith put away her things and stood up.

Sybil said, ‘I’ll leave our stuff on the trolley. We can push it out of sight and perhaps go on with this for an hour later.’

There was nothing of Judith’s on the trolley, and for a moment she wanted to say pettishly that it all belonged to Robert.

Instead she nodded. ‘Better put the sofas back, I suppose. The others might want to come and look at the paintings again.’

‘What? You must be joking. The Markhams are only interested in trying to make a baby, and the Olsens are thinking about a divorce.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘Not really. It’s much easier not to be serious.’

‘Yes.’

Sybil took her arm as they walked the length of the gallery. ‘It would be good to keep in touch, Jude. I’ve got a lot of room at home. You could stay … we could go and see what’s on at the Hayward or Tate Modern … that sort of thing.’

Judith closed her eyes for a moment. ‘Thank you, Sybil,’ she said. It would not happen, of course. But for the moment she was grateful to have a friend again.

They separated at the lift doors. Judith went into her room, and immediately settled at the table and spread out the sketches she had done. She began to jot down possibilities that could make one of Jack’s episodes. The daughter – Stargazer
– would have the punchline, as she so often did. She had never aged – none of them had – since the comic strip began. Her aim in life was to shower scorn on her parents. She was the stereotypical teenager. Judith nibbled her lower lip and considered. Jack would say, ‘Is that a pimple I see before me?’ and Eunice would say, ‘Omigod, and it’s the Dalrymples’ sherry party this very morn!’ and Stargazer would say, ‘You would do anything to be the centre of attention!’

Judith nodded to herself; it was so Fish-Frobisher – incredible – the whole thing could have been Jack’s. She read her notes and then read them again with one hand across her mouth. She had renamed Magnus and Edith. Stargazer was the only Fish-Frobisher there. She removed her hand and wrote the three parts again. And then she enveloped dialogue and sketches and stuck two first-class stamps on them and addressed the envelope to William Whortley at the
Magnet
offices.

The Olsens were in the sitting room drinking sherry and talking to Bart and Martin Morris. Bart immediately offered to post Judith’s envelope for her.