Currently a frowning Esther had her bottom lip scrunched up into a cupid’s bow between her thumb and middle finger as she examined the various pieces of material and carpet.
‘Pink, do you think?’ Bernice prompted, giving Esther a hacky look.
‘Oh yes, I like the pink. Very much,’ Grace said hurriedly and caught Esther give her lip a particularly hard scrunch.
Bernice nodded. ‘Good choice, Grace. That’s what I told Sol. He liked the chintz, but I said modern’s the look we’re after here, Sol. Not your auntie in Camberwell’s front parlour.’ Bernice’s voice had got louder as her speech had progressed, leaving Grace to wonder if Sol and his wife had ever had that conversation or whether Bernice had made the whole thing up to put that scrunched mouth in its place.
When the pieces of material and carpet were whisked back into the drawer, Bernice started to rummage around in a plastic bag on the floor while still keeping up her conversation with Grace. This necessitated much swivelling and talking over her shoulder on Bernice’s part as her hands continued to search the bag. For anyone else this might have been problematic, but it was a doddle for Bernice, who could carry on two or three conversations and any number of tasks at the same time. As if to prove that, she suddenly said, ‘Worse than toddlers, parents. Here we are: paint.’ She hauled a litre tin up on to her desk, along with a small buff-coloured cardboard box, before reaching for the phone. ‘Hang about, need to make a call.’ The computer screen was nudged round to the right angle.
‘Shouldn’t be on the sofa, Grace,’ she said as she tapped in a number. ‘If your dad’s all cosy in your room, he’ll be in no rush to get things sorted with your mum.’ A pause. ‘Yeah, Mr King, yeah, Bernice here. No, not bad, going to rain later. So, stopover at Dubai, twenty-two hours and a four-star hotel …’ Bernice held the phone a little away from her mouth and whispered, ‘Got an air bed you could borrow.’ The phone went back to her mouth. ‘No … no, five star’s going to take you over budget … unless you miss out something when you get to Sydney.’ Her hand went over the mouthpiece of the phone. ‘Sol says it makes him feel queasy when he sleeps on it, but then he gets seasick walking over Blackfriars Bridge …’ The hand came off the mouthpiece. ‘Yeah, what about dropping the sky walk, just doing the champagne sunset harbour tour?’ Bernice was reaching for a calculator, tapping in numbers, squinting at the computer screen. ‘Enough for one night in a five star. Sending you over some recommendations … there they go. So, talk to your wife, get back to me. ’S’a really good price … can’t guarantee it past eleven.’
The phone was put down. ‘Takes no time to pump up,’ she said without missing a beat.
It was the kind of performance that drove Gilbert mad. Multi-tasking was a jarring concept to him that smacked too much of the modern world.
Bernice was patting the paint tin. ‘Four-leaf clover green, but it’s hard to see how deep the colour is just from the label.’ For one horrible moment Grace feared that meant Bernice was going to prise off the lid and daub some paint up her arm to display it to best advantage. No, the tin was simply turned so the label was facing Grace. Bernice then made a big flourish of opening the buff-coloured box and when it had been tilted forward, Grace saw two stencils, one of a B and one of an S. ‘Sol’s idea. Finishing touch,’ Bernice explained, her face radiating something that might have been pride.
Grace had never met a straight man so interested in home decorating as Sol.
She sensed she was meant to say something at this point, so she said, ‘Wonderful.’
She hoped visitors to the morning room would understand B and S were Bernice and Sol’s initials and not abbreviations for something else. A quick check on Esther confirmed she had moved her fingers and brought her top lip way down over her bottom one. It gave her the appearance of a duck and suggested that she too had wondered about the BS motif and might even be finding that funny if laughter were not too physically exhausting for her.
Bernice was watching Esther too and was obviously suspicious of that mouth. She raised her chin before stowing paint and stencils back under the desk.
There was a hiatus where Esther stopped leaning on a filing cabinet and went to lean against her desk, and Grace was so engrossed in wondering how you could move that slowly without actually going backwards that she was not aware until Bernice spoke that she had, in turn, been studying Grace.
‘Look tired, Grace. You need to show your dad how selfish he’s being, so that’s why an air bed’s ideal.’ Bernice nodded at her own wisdom. ‘You can’t just dump some pillows and a duvet on it and call it a bed like you can a sofa. You got to find room for it. Pump it up. You got to put a bottom sheet on it. Next day you got to unmake it. Deflate it. Stow it away.’ She pointed at Grace. ‘It all shows him how he’s putting you out. Makes him uncomfortable up here,’ she pointed at her forehead, ‘without making him uncomfortable here.’ Bernice seemed unsure what to tap so just pointed over her shoulder and down her back.
Esther was tapping her lip with a forefinger. Did that mean she agreed with Bernice or thought she was being too tough?
‘But he’s sixty, Bernice,’ Grace said, hesitantly, ‘I’m not—’
‘If that fails, make up a story about some visitors coming to stay … Oi!’
This last word didn’t seem to be addressed to either Grace or Esther. Who it was addressed to was clarified
when Bernice got to her feet and rapped on the window. A man leaning against it, wearing what looked like an RAF greatcoat, exhaled a big feathering of cigarette smoke and turned round, his blond hair ruffling in the breeze.
He squinted at Bernice, who was now telling him to shove off and stop lowering the tone, and with the cigarette still in his mouth, lifted both hands in a ‘don’t shoot me’ gesture. Then he spotted Grace, took the cigarette out of his mouth and threw both arms wide. ‘Gracie, baby,’ he shouted, ‘no good hiding. I’ve fought a hangover to get here early, make a good impression on you.’
‘You know him?’ Bernice looked uncharacteristically confused.
Grace nodded, and just at the edge of her vision she saw Esther tilt her head and bite her bottom lip with her little pointy teeth.
CHAPTER
11
It was a good twenty minutes later that they climbed the stairs to the Picture London office, Grace seething quietly about what Tate had just done in Far & Away.
He’d started by bursting through the door to introduce himself before she’d been able to head him off because, as he said, ‘I bet Gracie hasn’t told you about me yet. Likes to keep me as her dirty secret, does Gracie.’
Esther had found the energy to shake his hand, limply, before retreating into lip-biting silence. What she was thinking either involved savaging Tate or nibbling him. Grace did not want to picture that second option, but would have quite happily bought tickets to watch the first.
Bernice’s opinion of him was easier to read. She had started off as outraged shop owner and stayed in that mode to lecture him about lolling against her window and tut at his smoking habit.
‘Gotta die of something,’ he had said earnestly and then undercut it with one of his laughs.
Bernice hadn’t liked that and she hadn’t liked his clothes either. Sol, whenever Grace saw him, was dressed in a manner that placed him neatly among the ranks of the safe and dull, where many thousands of men, even here in London, were happy to loiter. There had been a tie he’d once owned that had caught Grace’s eye, but other than that her overall impression was of grey and white; sharp creases at the start of the week and crumpled ones towards the end.
Tate, on the other hand, was today wearing black jeans with a white shirt tucked into them that might previously have been the property of a consumptive poet. It may have even been filched from his lifeless body. It had flounces and when he took off his coat it became obvious that it also had voluminous sleeves, the cuffs of which came down over his knuckles. The neckline, a flapping, deep V, would have shown a distracting amount of chest were it not for the black scarf wound round his neck, with the two ends left dangling.
Bernice couldn’t stop staring at the ensemble when she wasn’t staring at his eyes because, unmistakably, he was wearing a smudge of kohl on the outer corner of each one.
Bernice was clearly thinking
dissolute
and possibly also
questionable sexual orientation
. God knew what Esther was thinking.
Grace dared her brain to engage with how Tate looked or what he wore, although some part of it registered that despite the billowing and eyeliner and scarf, the reading coming off him was still resolutely, disconcertingly male. Perhaps it was the biker boots.
Grace was pleased at Bernice’s negative reaction – it confirmed that the Tate worship which had infected Picture London had not spread downstairs. And it made her feel as if she had an ally; they could talk about it later and reinforce each other’s views. If she was really lucky, Tate would call Bernice ‘Berni’ like he called her Gracie and blood might be spilled.
Tate was walking over to the display of brochures. ‘Good range of stuff here,’ he said. ‘Looks small from the outside but you’ve packed a lot in.’ He reached out and grabbed a brochure and leafed through it. ‘Like that tardis thing. You know … ?’ he turned to them. ‘You have that TV programme over here?’
‘We invented it,’ Bernice said tersely, watching Tate as if she expected him to pocket the brochure.
He grinned. ‘Yeah, I know. Just kidding.’ He replaced the brochure on a shelf and picked up one about Florida, opened it, closed it again and swapped it for another about California. Grace saw him do a quick check on Esther then a quick check on Bernice as if trying to work them out.
‘So, what’s the most popular place you send people then, Bernice?’ he said, waving the brochure. ‘The good old US of A, or more exotic?’
‘America is very popular.’ Bernice’s tone inferred that if more of her clients saw Tate they might not be in a rush to head there. ‘But the Far East, that’s up and coming. Cambodia, Vietnam …’
‘Unspoilt until you send the tourists there, eh?’
Grace watched Bernice’s spine straighten.
‘Not at all,’ she said, in what even Grace felt was a prim voice. ‘We stress the need for responsible tourism in this office.’
‘Good for you.’ The California brochure went back on the shelf, there was another check on Esther, and Grace was torn between wanting to see Tate get slapped down and trying to preserve the peace.
‘Perhaps we ought to head off upstairs,’ she suggested, and Tate did his soft laugh and said, ‘Hang on, Gracie. I’m not that kind of guy. You’re going too fast for me, honey.’
Grace smiled politely, remembering the promise she had made to herself in the bath, but it took a great deal of willpower, especially when she saw Esther press her lips together as if stifling a smile. Bernice had obviously spotted this bit of mutiny too and glared at Esther. She might even have been about to say something, but she was distracted
by Tate coming across and perching himself on her desk.
‘So, do you get to go any of these places?’ he said, putting down the brochure he’d been holding. ‘Don’t like to think of you just watching other people having all the fun.’ He was looking at her intently, his voice devoid of any of the earlier cheekiness, and Bernice gave him a nervous check, as if there were a trap lying somewhere in his words.
‘I … get to go to a few places,’ she said slowly.
He nodded. ‘Where?’
It was the tone of someone taking confession and Bernice’s posture, which had been all elbows and defensiveness, seemed to soften, but her voice still sounded guarded. ‘Well, I went to Bali – that was for my honeymoon. And we’ve done a lot of Europe, of course …’
‘Bali? Awesome. Go on.’
The tone was still gentle and encouraging, and the way Tate was looking at Bernice, as if she was the font of the greatest wisdom, the most spellbinding entertainment, was obviously confusing her. She darted a glance at Grace, as a person would reach for a lifebelt.
‘I used to go to Israel a lot, to see family,’ she said unsteadily. ‘And I’ve done the Rockies. California. Some other parts of the USA too …’
‘Not my part I guess? Rhode Island?’
Bernice shook her head and Tate gave her a forgiving smile before slowly leaning towards her.
‘But where would you
really
like to go, Bernice?’ His tone had a still intensity about it that was more entrancing because of the energy that had gone before. ‘If you could choose anywhere in the world, where would it be?’
‘New Zealand.’ Bernice had the appearance of someone going under anaesthetic and Tate nodded and said, ‘Good choice,’ patting her hand as if she’d done well.
Grace had no time to wonder if Bernice was climbing over the barricades and into the enemy camp before Tate had turned to Esther.
‘And you, Esther, what about you? Ever dream of heading off somewhere?’ He dimpled encouragingly, all blond hair and lively green eyes.
Bernice blinked, as if resurfacing. ‘Oh, Esther’s very shy.’ She waved a dismissive hand, but before that hand had finished its return journey to the desk, Grace heard Esther say, ‘No, I’m not. I’m just quiet. And it’s South America, actually. I would love to go there. Dream of it. Never had the opportunity. Never.’
Bernice did a lot more blinking. ‘You’ve never mentioned you wanted to go to South America.’
Out of a cat’s bottom version of her mouth, Esther said, ‘You’ve never asked me.’
‘I have, plenty of times … well, not asked exactly, but I’m always saying about South America, clients going there, and you’ve never shown the least interest. Not the least.’ Bernice sounded affronted. ‘And now you “dream” of going. Why keep that to yourself? You work in a travel agent’s, for goodness’ sake. Sol and me, we could have worked out a good deal for you.’ She looked at Tate as if pleading her case. ‘We could have got you the best deal around. Called in favours. You are family, after all. How do you think this makes me feel, saying that? You sitting there, “dreaming” of South America?’