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No response from David. I contacted his faculty. He’s not expected back after his holiday. He’s retired.
Retired! Talking to her wouldn’t alleviate my concerns. I was utterly alone, abandoned, it seemed, to my own devices, and worse, I wasn’t finding one jot of comfort in photography.
I stuffed the memory stick in a jiffy bag along with a scrawled abbreviated index of the photographs, and tossed the envelope into a post box. There, David, do what you want with it, assuming you’re bothered.
Twenty-Six
Helmsley
Ihadn’t told her a substantial thing about myself, not really. I considered this an insurance policy just in case things took a wrong turn. I was adept at reversing myself out of dead end relationships. Dad once said I was a quitter, like Mum. He knew how to hurt me. It wasn’t said out of hatred, only fear, the fear of losing all three of his sons. I had fought against him for a while, refusing to visit, then one day, I turned up on his doorstep with a pack of beer. The walls of the sitting room were bare. He had removed the photographs and the one painting I had done of my brothers when they were last together. We watched the football on TV, sprawled on either end of the sofa, as if the two of us could comfortably share those kinds of moments. We hadn’t, and we never would. But I kept turning up even though he had nothing to say to me.
Robyn has no skeletons in her cupboard. At least not the kind that gave you nightmares and flashbacks. But something troubled her in a different way. She had gone pale when I mentioned what had happened at the top of the tower. And then I had witnessed something equally odd at Rievaulx Abbey when I found her amongst the ruins looking like she’d had some kind of seizure. Given the state of her, she couldn’t blame me for thinking that she was scared of something, and the tremble of her lips only added to my suspicions. Should she even be driving if she had fits? The car wasn’t hers; it was a lease or something. Perhaps she had lied to get it?
My car was filthy, inside and out. I had to keep the canvas safely apart from the camping gear. Dried mud flakes covered everything from the water container to the boot liner. The painting stuff I stored on the back seat, but dust moved, especially after a few rainless days. Fresh water was a problem. I had two containers, one for drinking and washing, the other smaller one just for my brushes, to avoid contamination. Fortunately, spending a few summers in hot countries had prepared me for this heatwave. Perhaps Robyn struggled to cope with the oppressive, unnatural heat, and hence the dizzy spells.
Arriving at Helmsley Castle, I scanned the car park for her little red car; it wasn’t there. She had to drive up from Thirsk, which wasn’t an easy road – winding and steep, one of the steepest roads in the country. I considered waiting for her, but I had to press on. I packed my rucksack, then hooked my fingers around the easel like a claw crane, and walked briskly to the ticket kiosk. I had become efficient in what I carried; a beast of burden drawing on hidden sinews. Even so, the easel knocked painfully against my thigh, adding to the bruise already there.
The diffuse sunshine and gentle breeze were a welcome change of weather. The heat was there, but not sticky and humid, which was the benefit of being on the edge of the North Yorkshire Moors. I paid for my entrance ticket, another expense I had to cover until my final fee, and smiled and answered the usual questions about what I was going to paint, and why, and would I sell it, blah blah. I lied copiously. In fact, I made up a different story every time. I was an adept liar, a habit of my upbringing; it helped to be someone different and not have your identity known.
Today I told the ticket man that I had lived in Paris and studied at the Sorbonne.
‘Really, I lived near there for a few years. Which street?’
My adeptness quickly fell apart. I mumbled something French like, and took the ticket out of his hand.
‘Must get on,’ I said, cocking my head at the ruins. ‘Light and everything.’ Most non-painters assumed light was critical, but a canvas wasn’t film, and a brush didn’t need light meters and filter lens to compose a picture. If necessary, I could artificially brighten a painting, or darken it. I had some imagination with which to play. But for this project, the criteria was to be as natural as possible, whatever the weather.
Having dumped my burden in a discreet location, I circled the castle a few times, following the curtain walls. I tried to take a leaf out of Robyn’s book and embrace the history of the place rather than see shapes and patterns, the spaces between the walls. If I unintentionally picked latrine chutes again I was going to be ribbed no end by her. I smiled at the thought.
The ideal vantage point for making a choice should be on top of a tower. It wasn’t going to happen; looking up and beyond to the skies and church beyond rather than down to foundations and ditches was fine with me. I had actually had Camilla add a clause in the contract that prohibited the necessity to climb to roof top level. Writing it down in her notebook, she had tut-tutted at the condition with a lop-sided smirk on her face; I regretted telling her why I was afraid of heights. We hadn’t spoken much since. She could be a bitch sometimes.
Thinking about Camilla only added concern to the stream of inexplicable emotions that had begun the moment I had woken up in my tent. Best policy was to put my agent out of my mind. I fetched my gear and chose my spot. With everything set up, I picked up the finest pencil and touched the paper.
‘Hello!’
I clutched my chest and nearly stabbed the pencil point in my neck.
‘Jesus. You can’t half creep up on somebody.’ I turned to face her.
Robyn beamed from ear to ear. ‘Revenge,’ she said. ‘You did it to me at Rievaulx.’
‘I thought you were ill.’
She shrugged. ‘Well, I wasn’t.’ She was determined not to talk about it.
There was another matter to discuss, one that she was bound to ask me. I decided I had to go for a pre-emptive strike.
‘I haven’t got hold of Camilla. Still no answer.’
If I had to describe the emotion on her face, the way it drained of warmth, I would paint it as fear.
I wished I’d kept my mouth shut.
Twenty-Seven
My mouth opened and shut like a guppy fish. What the heck was going on? Joseph spoke with the pretence of nonchalance, but his pensive expression said otherwise. Glancing away, he opted to examine his shoes. I felt utterly dejected. I had checked that morning before leaving Mrs McDougal’s cluttered establishment and neither Medici nor David had replied to my emails, and now Joseph had had no contact with his agent either. It had to be the same person, and that control freak had silenced his agents, leaving the pair of us in the dark. But why?
I lowered the camera bag, its weight too much to bear on top of the hurt that gnawed away at me. How many possible ways could this project go wrong before I jacked it in? Joseph’s hooded eyes dimmed further into the shadows. He carefully rested the pencil on the easel and moved toward me. I should have instinctively stepped back, but I didn’t. The gap closed but he didn’t touch me. I looked over my shoulder to the scene Joseph had picked. It was good, encompassing several features, and full of potential unlike my bizarre lists of architectural quirks.
