A Sight for Sore Eyes (19 page)

Chapter 22

The young man with the horrible voice was sitting in the bus shelter. He was there again, in spite of having been warned off by her and by Noele. Julia watched him from the window. She had to be sure he was the right one. By that, of course, she meant the wrong one, everything about him was wrong, his voice, his appearance, his manner, his insolence. But was he the one who phoned Francine, talked to Francine and called at Noele's? If he had a car, why was he waiting in a bus shelter? That was easy, he wasn't waiting for a bus, but for Francine. He would have parked that car somewhere. Julia put on her coat and ran across the road, having to stop in the middle for cars going the other way to pass and hear a driver swear at her. By this time the young man was standing up, pretending to read the bus timetable on the shelter wall. Julia sat down on the seat and studied him. She wanted to make sure she would know him again. His black hair was curly, which she hadn't noticed that first time, and his eyes were brown. Probably he was Asian or half Asian. The fact that he talked cockney meant nothing. No doubt he had been born here. He was dressed in a suit, dark blue with a pinstripe, and he had a white open-necked shirt on. A ridiculous combination, Julia thought. She would have liked to ask him his name, but she lacked the nerve. There was hardly anything Julia would not h2ve done to save Francine and protect her from harm. Still, going up to a stranger and asking who he was daunted her. If the time came when she had to she would, but not now. A complete picture of him imprinted on her memory, Julia walked round the corner into the street which turned off this main road just past the pedestrian crossing. She was looking for the young man's red sports car and she had to walk quite a long way before she found it. The street climbed up a fairly steep gradient and she climbed with it and on top of the hill she found a red sports car parked. It didn't surprise her, she had known it would be somewhere. There was no one about. As is usually the case the street was populated with cars, not people. She walked round the car, looking in at the windows. On the dashboard shelf lay a brochure, a railway timetable and on top of them an envelope with an enclosure. The name typed on the envelope was Mr Jonathan Nicholson and the address was Fuiham, 5W6. Julia returned home well-satisfied with her detective work, but otherwise deeply troubled. She wondered where Francine had met this man. Been introduced to him by one of those friends of hers, she supposed, one of the Hollies or the Mirandas. She acknowledged to herself that Francine had won a great victory that day she left Noele's and for the first time, when told to go to her room, disobeyed. Since then she had gone out when she pleased, her only concession to authority that she still came home reasonably early. How had it happened? How had she allowed it to happen? As surely as she knew her own name and where and who she was, Julia knew that through this freedom Francine had snatched for herself she would come to grief. It would be the ruin of her. She would be destroyed and if not die, eventually be confined in a psychiatric ward. Julia would do anything to avoid that. Francine was up in her room. If only she, Julia, could just go up there and lock the door. Francine, after all, had her own bathroom, she wouldn't be put to any undue suffering. She could use the bathroom and get water. Julia imagined having a new door fitted to Francine's room with a window and a hatch in it. She had seen such arrangements in programmes about prisons on television. The hatch door could be opened and closed only from the outside. The aperture would be big enough for Francine's meals to be passed through. You read stories about people being shut up in their rooms by anxious parents and such incarcerations enduring for years. Julia had read them and thought such things outrageous, but now she was less sure. The phone rang. It was her friend Laura who had won the Lottery. She and her husband were setting up a business on the proceeds, an hotel and restaurant, and hoped to open in a month's time. If Julia was still looking for a job for Francine, there might be an opening for a good-looking well-spoken girl as a receptionist. Julia thought of the people Francine would meet in such a situation, of how attractive she would have to make herself to the male guests, and she said a decisive no, trying to keep the shudder out of her voice. She found herself pacing the floor. It happened a lot these days. The only benefit derived from it might be a weight loss but Julia was not losing weight, rather the reverse. She paced, not because she wanted to but because she couldn't keep still. Her restlessness wore her out. She often wished she smoked or had recourse to some other prop to the nerves. After a while Francine came downstairs, wearing her black leather jacket and with her hair tied back. Julia asked her where she was going and Francine said, 'To the shops.' Even a few months ago that could never have happened. Julia went upstairs and watched her departure from the bedroom window. She expected her to cross the road to where Jonathan Nicholson was waiting, but Nicholson had gone and the bus shelter was empty. Francine had remained on this side and was walking in the direction of the High Street. Julia left the window and went into Francine's bedroom. She had once been an honourable woman, but now had no compunction about searching Francine's room and prying into her things. The mobile phone was there, on charge, plugged into a socket by Francine's bed. Bitterly, Julia saw that this object, which had been bought and bestowed to ensure the girl's safety and to keep tabs on her, now had its backlash. Because of it Francine could make private phone calls in secret. Julia opened drawers, looking for she hardly knew what. She found an address book and scrutinised it but, strangely perhaps, jibbed at looking inside Francine's engagement diary. A hot wash of shame flooded over her at the thought. She went into Francine's bathroom, noticing how clean and neat it was. And this, obscurely, added to her discomfiture. But she opened the cabinet over the basin to see what was inside. Although she possessed a diaphragm, Julia had never taken oral contraceptives and didn't know what the pill looked like. The only item in the cabinet that might possibly be the pill turned out to be paracetamol. She had heard there were some brazen girls, that Holly, she was sure, who actually carried condoms about with them for their boyfriends' use, but those she would have recognised and there was none in Francine's room. She closed the door behind her, found that she was shaking all over and going downstairs again, clinging to the bannisters, poured herself a tot of brandy. This was almost unprecedented. Julia didn't drink. The brandy burned her throat and filled her head with fire. Food provided greater comfort. She went to the fridge and stuffed into her mouth a slice of cheesecake, a piece of pizza and some potato salad, devouring it in gulps as if speedy eating would lessen the quantity and its effects. She sat down on the chair in the hall, the one by the telephone. There, rabked by the burning sensation of heartburn, she wrung her hands and moved her head from side to side. Francine came back after she had been sitting there for about an hour. 'Is something wrong?' she said. Julia stared at her and at the small gold studs in her ears. 'You've had your ears pierced!' 'That's right.' Francine smiled. 'About time, don't you think? My friends had it done when they were twelve.' 'I suppose you realise you'll get AIDS?' 'No, I won't, Julia. They use a fresh needle from a sterile pack.' 'I don't know what your father will say.' Francine went upstairs. Still sitting in the hall, Julia wondered what she would do if Francine came down again and accused her of searching her room. Of course she would justify herself, she could do that, she had every right when it was a question of Francine's protection. But Francine didn't come and eventually Julia began to think that she should get lunch for the two of them. She was as hungry as if she hadn't eaten that pizza and that cheesecake. She pottered about in the kitchen, making a salad, cutting bread and almost cutting herself. Two o'clock had come and gone before it was on the table. Julia called upstairs in a tremulous voice and Francine appeared, looking calm and happy. She began talking about Holly, who was moving out of her parents' house and into a flat which she would share with another girl, and about Isabel's trip to Thailand. Julia said, 'What are you trying to say, Francine?' Francine looked at her in bewilderment. 'If you are hinting in a roundabout way that you should be allowed to do those things I wish you wouldn't, I wish you'd come straight out with it. I hate this deviousness. You've become very underhand lately, did you know that?' Instead of getting up from the table and leaving the room, Francine forced herself to stay there and speak gently. 'Julia, I was making conversation, that's all. I thought it was interesting.' 'Please don't feel you have to make conversation with me.' 'All right. Let's leave it, shall we?' They separated for the afternoon. Music could be distantly heard from Francine's room, Oasis and then Elton John. The sound of Richard's key in the lock brought Julia rushing out into the hall. He closed the front door behind him and she threw herself into his arms, crying and sobbing, beside herself with inexplicable grief. Teddy was waiting for her on the steps of the Tate Gallery. She had wondered how to greet him, what she should do and what he would do. Would he kiss her? Embrace her? The memory of that long passionate kiss came back to her with a strange unfamiliar thrill of excitement. He surely wouldn't kiss her like that now. She walked up the steps towards him. He smiled, held out his hand, took hers and pulled her to him. They stood close for a moment, looking into each other's faces. Then, 'Come on,' he said. 'I want to show you a picture.' Marc and Harriet in Orcadia Place. She read it aloud from the description on the wall. 'Simon Alpheton,' she said. 'Didn't he paint a picture of a pop group?' 'They were called Come Hither,' said Teddy. 'The painting's called Hanging Sword Alley.' She looked away, said in a troubled voice, 'My mother had a CD of Come Hither,' and then, 'No, it wasn't a CD, not then, it was a record. I broke it. I didn't mean to, but she was awfully upset. "Mending Love", it's called.' He didn't see the tears in her eyes. He wasn't interested. No kind of music meant anything to him. 'What do you think of it?' he said, directing her attention once more to the girl in the red Fortuny dress, the boy in the blue suit, the house behind in its glowing cloak of green. 'I don't know anything about painting.' He began explaining, recalling what Professor Mills had said, talking about its accuracy, its breadth of construction and Alpheton's treatment of light and shade. For her there was only one thing to be noticed. 'You can see they were in love,' she said. He made no reply. For a few more minutes he continued to gaze at the painting. Then, 'I wanted to show it to you,' he said. 'I've been to that house. With all the leaves. We'll go now. We'll go and fetch my mirror.' Someone had packed it very carefully and boxed it in hardboard. She expected him to have a taxi to take them and the mirror to his house, she was used to taxis, but they took the bus to Sloane Square station and then the tube. He wouldn't let her help him with the mirror. She could see by the ease with which he carried it that he was very strong. 'My dad and my stepmother have gone out for the day to friends,' she said. 'I wouldn't go. I wanted to be with you.' 'It's a dump I live in. I'm warning you, so don't be surprised.' But it wasn't a dump. It was the cleanest, neatest place she had ever been in. Everywhere was painted in soft, pale colours, the windows shone, the floors, of plain wooden boards, had been stained and waxed. Of furniture there was very little, most of it being in the downstairs front room, where clean faded cotton curtains hung at the window. Teddy's drawings, in black frames or frames of natural wood, hung on the walls, designs for the mirror, designs for a table, line-and-wash representations of great houses, pastels of statuary. On the table, spread out, portrait drawings. 'You are very clever,' she said. 'Those drawings are me, aren't they?' 'Yes.' 'No one ever drew me before.' She went into his own room where his bed was and the coffee table he had made and his bookends, where his tools were and where the flaring rump of the Edsel pressed up against the window. 'Can we go outside and look at it?' 'If you like.' She didn't find the car ugly. Her enthusiasm for it seemed to him to open a gulf between them. The pouting mask that was its bonnet made her laugh. She walked round the car, admiring its size and its colour, but when she laid her hand on the boot lid he couldn't restrain himself. 'Don't touch it!' He had spoken so roughly that she pulled her hand away as if the yellow metal had burnt her. 'I'm sorry, I didn't mean 'It's dirty,' he said. 'I don't want you to get dirt on you. While she was looking at the rest of the house he unpacked the mirror. She came downstairs and went into the front room and there it was, propped on a chair. He said, 'It's for you.' 'Oh, no, I couldn't!' 'I want you to have it. You must have it.' He put his arm round her and led her to the mirror. She remembered what he had said about giving it to his woman for her to see her face in. A deep blush spread across her cheeks and up to her forehead. She looked at the blush in the mirror, at her fiery face, her shining eyes, and then she turned to him. He kissed her, the way he had under the trees. He pulled her down on to the settee. Her body felt weak and a wave of heat came over her as if it were a hot summer's day. 'I've never done this before,' he said. 'Nor have I.' He took the white dress off her. He pulled her underclothes off as if he disliked them, as if they were too functional. She covered her breasts with one arm, laid her other hand across her pubic hair, then seeming to realise the absurdity of it, pulled her hands away and showed him. He was trembling, she could actually see him shake. She wrapped him in her arms and lay down with him. 'You must show me how to do it right,' he whispered. 'But I don't know myself.' Then she found she did know. 'Like this - is that right? And this? Tell me.' 'Yes, oh, yes...' 'And if I kiss you there, is that all right? And do this?' But she was becoming aware, without knowing what rightness would be, that this wasn't tight. His hands had been eager and his mouth urgent, but there should be more to it than the tender touch of fingers