Violet appeared in the hall just as Grace was finishing up and Grace registered for the first time that she was dressed. Had she been sitting up waiting for Gilbert to come home? Grace waited for some adverse reaction to the wet stain on the stair carpet and the lingering smell. Although if Violet really wanted to get upset about a stair carpet and a smell, she might like to pop round to Grace’s flat.
Violet didn’t say anything; she seemed to be listening to Tate upstairs. He was talking to Gilbert, saying, ‘OK now, that’s it, yup, better out than in,’ which Grace took to mean Gilbert was throwing up again and Tate was holding the bowl.
‘He’s had too much to drink, hasn’t he?’ Violet said. ‘My father used to do that. He’ll hiccup for a while and then go to sleep. Tomorrow he will be very quiet.’
Grace thought about Gilbert’s ‘Highlights of the Renaissance Tour’ the next day and wondered if Alistair would have to do it. Then Violet wrong-footed her completely.
‘When Gilbert is asleep, you may bring Tate down. He must sit with his feet on the paper and … if he could remain silent. I … I do feel fairly anxious about his lip.’
Grace nodded but did not understand Violet’s expression. It suggested that she was not particularly sorry about his lip but was occupied with some other idea that she wasn’t sharing and which was making her do that horrible agitating thing with her hands.
*
He had lovely manners. Stayed silent to begin with and then simply said, ‘Ma’am,’ and tilted his head when she talked as if he was really listening to her. Very neat with his tea. Hair needed a good cut, however, and a severe brush. It had been quite amusing when she asked if he’d prefer coffee and he’d said, ‘No, when in Rome.’ He wasn’t meant to talk, but by then she had got used to him and hadn’t minded. Grace had given him an awfully strict look and that had been quite amusing too.
He would do. After all, how many real live Americans
did she have passing through the house these days? Any days? It had taken her a while to pluck up the courage, but when she asked him he told her like a shot: ‘Rhode Island, ma’am,’ he’d replied. She had left him in the sitting room while she went to fetch the right scrapbook.
He was looking at it now, saying such complimentary things. Telling her bits of extra information she didn’t know.
She realised she hadn’t said sorry about his lip. It was somewhat swollen. She offered him more tea instead. And really, it was his own fault. It would teach him not to talk through letterboxes.
*
Grace was not sure who had got the worst deal. She was wrapped in a blanket on a chair while Gilbert took in squeaky breaths and snorted them out again. Tate was downstairs with Violet, being force-fed tea and shown her scrapbook on Rhode Island.
Well, it had been Rhode Island when Grace had returned upstairs to watch over Gilbert, but Violet might have moved on by now.
She hoped so.
The thought of Tate sitting downstairs bored out of his mind but unable to show it made her smile. Although she should give him points for playing a blinder with Violet.
Who knew he could sit still and not yabber on so much, or be quite so deferential in the way he treated her? He got the tone exactly right. Grace shifted around in the chair to relieve the numbness spreading up one thigh. She remembered how Tate had been all ‘ma’am’ and polite with Felicity too. Must have taken a lot of self-control not to shrink back into the sofa when Violet advanced on him with that dustpan and brush, though. All she’d spotted was a nervous covering of his lip with his hand.
She was smiling again, but this time it seemed more like a sign of support and so she scotched it abruptly.
Yes, he obviously did have some manners hidden away in there. Bill wouldn’t have been so polite. Never was. Not till the fag end of it all.
Grace looked around the bedroom. Framed prints of a couple of Titian’s religious paintings; a shelf of hardback art books. A teak table with more art books. Drab walls, drab curtains, hideous bedcover. Like an old man’s bedroom, or even a monastic cell. Poor Gilbert, where would he have been living if his mother hadn’t died just when she had? Would Tony and he have lived in a flat? She saw him in a modern flat, with nice sleek pieces of furniture, his Titian prints next to Tony’s Rothko ones.
She shifted again. Would Mark be in Kazakhstan already? She was too tired to work it out. More to the point, would
she have liked him to have cut short his visit to his friends and rushed to her when he heard about the robbery? To have moved heaven and earth to see her before he left? She guessed if she had to think about that, as if answering a quiz, the answer must be no.
Gilbert was still rhythmically pulling in air and then snoring it out again. Would he be safe to leave yet? She could barely keep her eyes open. It wasn’t physically possible that he had anything left in his stomach to bring up, not unless he was manufacturing the stuff in there somewhere.
She closed her eyes and opened them again to check on him. Still snoring.
If she didn’t get up now, she’d fall asleep. But was it fair to leave Violet alone with Tate? Or did she mean Tate with Violet?
She heard a door open downstairs and the sound of Tate and Violet talking, their voices getting louder as if they were coming out into the hall. Violet was actually giggling.
‘Goodnight,’ Violet said and Grace heard footsteps on the stairs, the paper crinkling. The footsteps were too light to be Tate’s and, sure enough, Violet soon appeared in the bedroom doorway.
‘How is he?’ she said, looking with distaste at Gilbert.
‘Stabilised, I think, Violet.’ Grace stood up slowly, her legs feeling stiff. ‘I should probably head off now, leave you with him.’
Violet stepped back as if that thought physically hurt her. ‘Leave me with him?’ she said. ‘No, I’m afraid not, Grace. I can’t cope with anybody being ill. I mean, can you imagine if he woke up and instead of just doing that dreadful hiccupping he was actually sick?’
Grace did not have to imagine it; she could have drawn Violet some quite spectacular pictures from recent memory.
Violet was shaking her head particularly vehemently for someone who was meant to be delicate. ‘Oh no, I need to go to bed if I’m to be strong enough to deal with him tomorrow.’
Grace tried not to look put out. ‘Well, OK. You know best … but perhaps I could ask Tate to take over? I’ve got work tomorrow first thing and he hasn’t so—’
‘Dear me, no. No. No. No.’ Violet was shaking her head and flapping her hands and Grace wasn’t sure whether she was building up to something more unpleasant.
‘No?’
‘No.’ Violet brought her hands together with a clap. ‘I cannot be left alone with a strange man.’
‘He’s not strange … well, he’s … I’m sure he’ll be fine,
Violet. You’ve had a good chat with him downstairs, haven’t you? And his manners … he has nice manners.’
Violet was obviously not listening and Grace did not like the way she was starting to claw at her own hands. ‘It’s all right, Violet,’ she said quickly. ‘I’ll stay and keep an eye on Gilbert. I can go straight to work from here. You get some rest.’
Violet nodded, said a stiff, ‘Goodnight, Gilbert,’ and left. Grace sat back down and listened to her moving along the landing to the bathroom and then to her own bedroom. But she was also listening out for Tate, hoping that he was putting on his coat and getting ready to leave. What was it Violet had said?
I cannot be left alone with a strange man
. She was beginning to feel fairly jittery herself about that prospect. So jittery that she jumped when she heard footsteps on the stairs again, heavier this time, doing more damage to the poor paper.
Tate appeared in the doorway. He had his coat on.
‘Just off?’ she said.
‘Off?’ He came into the room and she nodded at his coat.
‘No, come to take over with Gilb. You can head home. You’ll get a couple hours’ sleep if you’re lucky. Think Vi will mind that I just turned the central heating back on?’
He seemed tired and subdued. There was no sign of the rock-kicking Tate. He lowered himself on to the edge of Gilbert’s bed.
‘How’s he doing?’
‘Been quiet for a while. Apart from the snoring. No more vomiting anyway.’
‘Gonna feel like crap tomorrow.’ With a movement that was almost tender, he rearranged the sheet and blanket around Gilbert’s shoulders and Grace looked away. ‘Should have known Gilb wouldn’t have had a duvet,’ he said, but when she expected him to laugh at the end of the sentence, he didn’t.
She remained quiet and they sat there with only the noise of Gilbert’s breathing between them and the light from the bedside table shining on them.
‘You want me to call for a cab?’ he said after a while, still looking at Gilbert.
‘No. I’ll stay for a bit longer.’
He raised his head and his expression brightened. ‘You will? That’s good of you, I mean, I don’t expect—’
‘Violet doesn’t want me to go.’ He looked quizzical and she took great pleasure in adding, ‘She doesn’t want to be left alone with a strange man.’
‘Strange?’ He rolled his eyes. ‘She didn’t think I was too strange to go through Rhode Island with her. And Maryland.
And Connecticut. And Vermont. Jeez, I thought we were gonna do the full fifty.’
‘Plus Washington DC?’
‘Yeah, smart ass, plus Washington D.C.’ She realised that, unwittingly, she had come very close to flirting with him. She pretended that she needed to shift position in the chair and spent a bit of time flexing her foot and rearranging her blanket.
Silence set in again, for a while, until she realised she hadn’t told him it was pretty pointless them both staying. He simply replied, ‘Doesn’t seem right, leaving you here.’
‘I’ll be fine.’
‘Yeah, I know, but I got Gilb into this state and you … well, you were the one told me to keep an eye on him. Poor Gilbert.’
‘He’ll be all right,’ she said, trying to chivvy him out of an expression that was doing unfortunate things to her ability to resist looking at him. ‘There’s no lasting damage done.’
‘I didn’t mean just about tonight. I meant … about Violet. No idea about her.’ He dropped his voice ‘She’s a sweetie, but boy …’ He seemed unsure how to finish the sentence for a few moments until he added, ‘She’s complicated. Must be difficult for him?’
Grace made a neutral sounding noise, something between a ‘we-ll’ and an ‘umm’.
‘And you know anything about this Tony guy? Gilb mentioned him a lot, ’specially later on – well, while he could still speak. What’s that all about?’
Grace tried the same neutral sound again and Tate watched her for a while. She expected that he was going to criticise her again for being too buttoned up, but he was smiling and she couldn’t help looking into his eyes. Warm, reaching out for her.
‘So … Tony?’ he prompted.
‘You’d have to ask Gilbert about that.’
He was still smiling. ‘See, that’s what I like about you, Gracie. You’re still looking out for Gilb. Still watching his back. Covering his ass.’
Gilbert shifted in the bed and muttered something, and Grace had the impression it might have been ‘if you’ll pardon the pun.’
‘Yeah. Loyalty’s good,’ Tate went on. ‘And keeping a secret. Well,’ he shot her a look, ‘keeping other people’s secrets.’
‘There really is no need for you to stay any longer.’
He nodded slowly. ‘Don’t blame you for trying to get rid of me. Not gonna make you like me any better this, is it?’
When she didn’t answer, he said, ‘I’m taking that as a no,’ and went quiet.
The longer they sat there, the silence around them, everything dark outside the pool of light, the more she
felt the intimacy of this shared watch, as if they were parents caring for a sick child.
She was worrying away at this feeling when he surprised her by saying, ‘Fliss, she reminds me of someone else.’
Grace tried to read his face. It looked innocent enough. ‘Really?’ she said, ‘I thought she was a one-off.’
‘Nope, got one just like her at home.’ He looked slightly sheepish. ‘My mom. Her and Fliss could have been separated at birth. My mom might even be more out there.’
Grace sifted through that new piece of information and decided that another noncommittal noise would be the safest response.
‘Not gonna say anything, huh? Probably best – don’t know what to say about her myself a lot of the time.’ He was scrunching up strands of his hair with one hand as he talked. ‘She’s a free spirit, Mom.’
Despite determining not to ask any questions, Grace said, ‘Is she an artist too?’
Tate’s grin looked like an apology. ‘Kind of. Bit like my cousin George … you remember, the actor? Mom tries hard, got the temperament, but … Parents, eh?’ He stopped messing with his hair and did a theatrical palms-up shrug. ‘What can you do?’
‘And your dad?’
‘My dad grows apples and pumpkins.’
She was so surprised that she couldn’t immediately respond to that. She tried to imagine Tate surrounded by red, shiny apples and orange pumpkins but could only see him smashing them with a hammer and getting someone to film it.
‘Sounds idyllic,’ she said off the top of her head, but knew immediately that she’d caused him pain.
‘Yeah, it was,’ he said, looking sadly at Gilbert but, from the expression on his face, seeing something else entirely. ‘Yeah, I remember it was. Still is, whenever I go back. See Dad. The rest of them. I mean, I don’t see myself as an apple farmer, but maybe when I’m older. Bit of land …’
Grace realised she was now the one trying to fit the pieces together in the jigsaw. Then she reminded herself that she didn’t care about Tate, his mother, his father or their bloody apples.
She heard Tate sigh. ‘You’re not gonna ask me what happened, are you? Is that ’cos you’re being polite, being English? Or you’re keeping me at arm’s length again?’ She opened her mouth to deny both, but he carried on, ‘Mom hooked up with a younger guy when I was ten. Left my dad and took me off to Chicago along with her.’ Tate regarded his boot. ‘Her and Dad never had much in common, except us kids. Oh, and a love of nature … although he
was always kind of taming it while she was trying to be at one with it.’