Rocks, The by Peter Nichols Read Free Book Online Page B

Embankment on so many evenings early in the war.
    He looked at the other studios surrounding the courtyard, the glass atriums, the spiral staircases. She’d been awfully clever, Aegina. With several other artists, she’d purchased a former women’s prison, a quadrangle of brick buildings with courtyard and garden space between two streets in Fulham, not far from Bishop’s Park on the Thames. The core purchasers had sold off sections of the prison, now called Burlington Lodge, as artist’s studios, at considerable profit. Odyssey, Aegina’s shops of imported clothes and fabrics—now with branches in Manchester, York, Birmingham, Bath, Norwich, Falmouth, Plymouth, Southampton, as well as the original in Covent Garden and elsewhere in London—had made her rich (or so it seemed to Gerald); but she’d done as well buying and selling property. Yet she wasn’t painting much anymore, which made Gerald sad. She’d taken him to lunch at the Chelsea Arts Club, small rooms crammed with paintings where all the arty-looking members knew her. “No, he’s a writer,” she said, beaming, when she introduced her father and they asked if he too was a painter. “He’s got a book coming out tomorrow. The publishing party’s at the British Museum.” Gerald had smiled wanly in embarrassment.
    “Papa, you look fantastic!” Aegina said, as she came out of her studio into the courtyard. She’d also taken her father to Harrods to look for clothes suitable for an author at his book launch party. They chose a navy blue linen blazer, pale khaki trousers, dark blue socks, brown loafers. Gerald had bought some cotton briefs too, which looked better than those he usually found in Mallorca. Aegina tried to pay for everything but Gerald wouldn’t hear of it with his thousands of pounds idling in the bank. The bill was £435, more, he was certain, than he had cumulatively spent on clothes in his entire life. It made him feel absurdly grand, but Aegina saw that he enjoyed it. He’d brought his Tonbridge School tie to London, which she’d sponged clean.
    “I mean, look at you,” she said. “You’re slim and tan.
Very
well dressed. Totally dishy!”
    “Anybody would look good alongside you,” he said. “Well, no one would notice anyone else, for a start.”
    She was wearing a sleeveless, brick-red, long narrow cotton dress that showed off her dark hair and eyes, her Mediterranean complexion, lithe brown arms and calves.
    Gerald’s face softened. “Of course, you always remind me of your mother.”
    Aegina smiled. “That’s a compliment, thank you.” She took a small disposable Kodak camera from her bag. “Now, stand there by my front door.”
    “Oh, come on,” pleaded Gerald.
    “No, this is a treat for me, having you here. Please. Don’t look so grim!”
    Gerald moved to her door and tried various squinting smiles. Aegina clicked. “Nineteen ninety-five,” she said, looking through the lens, “Papa came to London for his publishing party.”
    In the car, Aegina swung them quickly out of the courtyard into the street and they tore away.
    Gerald had once known London well—up in the holidays from school and again with friends from university, leave during the war; the thrilling sense of limitless possibility awaiting one in the greatest of all cites, even (especially) as it was being bombed . . . and then he’d gone away and spent his life on a small island and never come back. He recognized most of the route up Fulham Road, through the edges of Knightsbridge and Belgravia, but then he became disoriented by new buildings and the one-way system, and finally, though he knew approximately where they must be on the map of London in his head, he was lost. But Aegina was marvelously sure and wove through traffic with what seemed a rally driver’s expertise. She was so astonishingly accomplished, he thought. All from her mother, of course.
    “Do you see much of Fergus?” he asked her.
    “Sometimes. When he comes to pick up