Carnforth's Creation by Tim Jeal Read Free Book Online Page B

Considering how enraged the woman had been only hours ago, it was strange to see them chatting so amicably. Quarrels followed by smiles, sunshine after storms: a well-known syndrome. Bridget felt breathless. Wasn’t it clear as daylight? The trouble Matthew had taken to explain away Gemma’s abuse was of a piece with the elaborate plausibility of recent excuses for plans overturned and unannounced latenesses home. How dare he, she thought, with a burning tightness in her throat: how dare he pretend to be pleased to be at Delvaux with me, when all the time he had seen this visit as an opportunity to be with her ? Too upset to confront them, Bridget hurried away.
    *
    By five o’clock, Cosmic Gloom (Paul’s nickname for his wife’s elderly lady’s maid) had laid out her mistress’s clothes ready for the evening. In response to Paul’s plea for ‘ something spectacular’, Eleanor and her dressmaker had obliged with an outfit combining Thirties’ Hollywood chic with oriental opulence. Yet gazing on these expensive fabrics, patterned with swirling dragons in gold-thread, she felt no trace of her usual delight in dressing-up. Alarmed by Paul’s preparations, she had considered telephoning some of the more straitlaced guests to warn them. But of what precisely? Plaster women? Cabaret acts they might find offensive? Fountains floodlit in the nauseating purples and greens normally confined to cinema foyers? Knowing that if questioned she would have no idea how to explain such things, Eleanor had remained inactive, feeling increasingly frantic.
    An hour later, wearing a close-fitting crepe de chine turban, she gathered up her gold and black skirt and sweptinto the Long Gallery, determined even in present circumstances to look and behave decorously, at least until the departure of the last guest.
    *
    ‘Holy smoke,’ gasped Bridget, rushing to the bedroom window. At the bidding of some hidden switch the entire east front, from the tallest Elizabethan chimney to the moat, was suddenly bathed in an aqueous glow of slowly moving colours. Matthew left the dressing table, where he had been wrestling with his double-ended black tie, and leant against a window-mullion.
    ‘It’s done by putting oil between plates of coloured glass, then revolving them in front of a few thousand watts.’ Bridget drew the curtains with a clatter of brass rings. ‘I didn’t mean to sound disparaging,’ he murmured.
    Since his talk with Gemma, Matthew had at last made up his mind not to go on seeing her. Whether Bridget knew anything definite, or merely sensed something wrong, it was useless pretending that Gemma had not been affecting their marriage.
    Looking at Bridget now as she crossed the room turning on lights, he was relieved to see an expression less pinched and vulnerable than earlier in the day. Recently she had been having problems at work; but he had been too absorbed with his own to be much help. In the aftermath of demonstrations and sit-ins at her college, she had been harder hit than many of her colleagues by the stream of questions about the ‘relevance’ of literature while B-52s were raining death on Hanoi. When they returned home, he would try to be more supportive.
    While fixing his cuff-links, he watched her examining a small seventeenth century landscape. Her concentration touched him. Considering how much he too had once enjoyed visiting galleries, it was pathetic how rarely they went.
    ‘Who’s it by?’ he asked gently.
    ‘Hobbema,’ she replied, still gazing; head slightly tilted. ‘Makes one long to walk through the frame, and sit in the grass by the waterwheel.’
    He nodded thoughtfully. ‘Strange to think of such a wonderful artist earning his living checking wine casks.’
    ‘Wouldn’t it be fantastic to own it?’ she whispered.
    ‘Wouldn’t one be tempted to sell?’
    ‘I expect so,’ she replied, surprising him with a brilliant smile.
    Since talk of money usually depressed her, Matthew found her