Chapter 16 #2
“You’ve got awfully dramatic in the years we’ve been apart.”
“It’s you. You bring it out in me.”
His eyes show pleasure, but he wisely says nothing. Instead, he says mildly, “We’ll drive over there. I can drop the stuff off, and we can have some lunch.”
“Fried in animal fat, I suppose.”
“Only if you ask very nicely.”
I bite my lip to hold in a laugh. “And then what? Come on, I know there’s exercise in your itinerary somewhere.”
“We can walk on the beach.”
“Aha.”
“It’s a very pretty beach. Thought you might like some fresh air.”
“Why? Is the five million gallons of it I’ve had so far this week not enough?”
“So many words,” he says. He prods the sketchbook I’d left on the table last night. “Have you used it?”
“Haven’t you opened it?” I say, astonished.
“Of course not. It would be like looking in someone’s underwear drawer.”
“Well, you’ve probably seen most of my new underwear already.”
“I have composed a voicemail to Dean thanking him.”
“They are all a bit slutty.” I shrug. “I’ve been drawing a bit. It helps when I feel wired.”
“The doctor says that feeling will pass.”
I shrug. “Not much I can do about it.”
“Have I ever told you that I admire your nihilistic mind?”
“No, because you know I don’t know what ‘nihilistic mind’ means.” I point at the sketchbook. “You can look if you want.”
His eyes light up, and he pulls the book towards him.
I stand up and start to gather the pots.
I don’t want to see his face when he’s looking at my stuff.
It makes me feel curiously naked. I also don’t want to see politeness.
That would hurt more than dismissal. I rattle around at the sink, clattering pots so loudly that at first I don’t hear him speak.
“Xavier?” I look around and swallow. His face is lit up like Christmas morning. “These are brilliant.”
“R-Really?”
He nods. “You were amazing when you were nineteen. This is even better.” He touches a picture of Mrs Mac’s cat sleeping in the sun on a wall.
I spare a moment of thanks that I burnt the one of Reuben’s face that I drew last night.
“You must have done a lot of sketching over the years. That makes me so happy.” He smiles.
“You were always so content when you drew.”
“I haven’t picked up a sketchbook since the Cotswolds,” I say, and immediately want to pull the words back when his face falls. “Not because of you,” I say quickly. “Just because I’ve been too busy.”
Silence drops because we’re both studiously ignoring the fact that I was mainly busy fucking myself up.
In the end, he offers me a gentle, crooked smile. “Well, I’m going to buy you a crate of arts supplies, and I really hope you use them. Don’t ignore a talent like that.”
I stare at him, stuck for what to say, and then the moment is lost as he stands up, setting the book down as carefully as if it were a holy text. “Leave the pots. We’d better be going. Grab your coat and hat.”
I grimace. “Not the hat.”
“Xavier, it is a perfectly functional beanie.”
“I am a supermodel. There is not an inch of my body that should be adorned by functional clothing.”
“Hat,” he says firmly, so I grimace and do as he says, ramming the hideous brown wool beanie he gave me down over my head and following him down the garden path towards where his garage is situated.
The Sound is glistening in the early morning sun, and a ferry is chugging solemnly across it. The sky is a clear, cold blue, and the pine trees look deeply green against it. The air is so clear, and it feels like it could wash your whole body clean.
“It’s so pretty here,” I say.
He shoots me a look of startled pleasure. “One of the best views I’ve ever seen.”
We approach a stone outbuilding at the bottom of the garden. My interest stirs. I haven’t been in this one yet. Despite some heavy snooping, I hadn’t been able to find the keys. As if prompted, Reuben fishes a key out of his pocket and opens the door, gesturing me gallantly in.
“Is this like Bluebeard’s lair?” I ask.
“Hardly. I haven’t got the time for multiple uxoricide.”
“How reassuring that you not being a serial killer comes down to a scheduling conflict.” I step inside and stop dead. “Wow.”
It’s his studio. The walls are plastered and painted white, and the floor is flagstoned, the stone worn shiny through the years of use.
I turn in a circle, looking at the pictures on the walls.
They’re huge, black-and-white canvases of his photographs, but there doesn’t seem to have been any effort to categorise them into collections.
Therefore, pictures of plants and flowers share space with views of sun-bleached landscapes and strangers whose only similarity is that something about them once interested Reuben Langley.
The place smells of paint, wood, and some kind of chemical. “You know for a war journalist, you’re a fucking amazing photographer.” I shake my head in amazement. “You finally found your beautiful, then.”
“What?”
I turn and give him a wry smile. “In the Cotswolds, I told you to find your beautiful. I suppose you forgot all about that.”
“I could never forget that,” he says, like it’s an absolute fact. The earth is round, the stars are bright, Xavier Conway once gave me unsolicited career advice. His eyes search mine, and the uncertainty I see in his gaze makes my stomach hurt. He hadn’t expected me to bring up the past.
Then he says, “I’d already found my beautiful when I met a sassy boy in a little bar. I just never realised it in time.”
“What?”
His response is to disappear through the door with the alacrity of the white rabbit taking a shortcut. He meant me, didn’t he? There’s no other way to interpret that statement.
Startled pleasure warms my belly. I examine the feeling and then mentally shove it into my emotional waste disposal unit and press the button. Then I move around examining the photos.
I’m looking at a picture of children playing football on a dirt road when the door opens, and he appears with a large canvas padded bag.
After crossing to a wall where a load of canvases have been stacked, he starts rifling through them, occasionally stooping to take out some images and slide them into the bag.
I drift closer, as unable to stay away from him as ever. “How do you know which ones to pick?”
“Some are for the gallery, and some are for an exhibition next year in London.” He rolls his eyes. “A retrospective exhibition of my past work.”
“Oh, dear. Hope they don’t ask me to star.” He snorts, and I look at the pictures he’s holding. “Are they ones you don’t like anymore?”
He smiles, puts the pictures in the bag, and then carries on flicking through the pile. “I’m not attached to any of them,” he finally says.
“Really?”
He looks up, startled, and I gesture at a picture of the Sound. He’s captured a moment during a storm when a ray of sunlight escaped the clouds and illuminated the water. It gleams golden where everything else in the picture is turbulent layers of darkness. “I’d definitely keep that.”
“Why?”
“It’s beautiful but threatening at the same time.”
He chuckles. “I can see why that would call to you.” He hands it to me, and I automatically grab it. “It’s yours.”
I blink. “Erm, no, I don’t think so.”
“Why? Don’t you like it after all? Was all that blarney?”
“I love it,” I say awkwardly. “But you can’t give me things, Reuben.”
“Why not? I gave you that hat.”
“This hat is awful, and you didn’t give it to me. Just shoved it on my head and grunted something about cold ears.”
His mouth twitches. “Well, I’m giving you that picture.”
“Why?”
He shrugs awkwardly and looks down at the rack of pictures. “Because I like the idea of you having something of mine.”
I sigh. “Reuben.”
“Anyway, I don’t keep anything for long. You’re doing me a favour.”
I think about asking why but I don’t want to know the answer. Instead, I say lightly, “Well, I haven’t got a house to hang it in, so you’ll have to keep it for me a bit longer.”
He stops and stares at me. “What?”
“A house. I haven’t got one.”
“You’re homeless?”
I snort. “Not quite as dramatic as that. I stay in hotels or short-term rental flats. I’ve just never found anywhere I want to stay permanently. Everywhere gets boring after a while. I like moving around.”
He’s silent for a few seconds. “Well—” He stops to clear his throat. “I hope you finally find your stopping place at some point.”
“Maybe I never will,” I say airily. “It’s not a bad existence, is it?”
“I’d have said that a few years ago, but not anymore.”
“Now you have this place?”
He nods. “It’s home.”
There’s a deep peace in his voice that I’ve never heard before.
I stare at him for a second and then move jerkily away, pretending to look at the artwork.
Now I know what bothers me about the cottage.
It’s his home. It’s where he’s finally chosen to be, and it’s not with me.
A pang of ridiculous grief hits me. It’s like he finally grew up and left me behind.
I have no place in his life now except maybe as a small footnote when once I’d thought I’d be a main chapter.
It’s the way it should be, I remind myself.
It’s the way I thought I wanted it, so the grief startles me.
“Xavier.”
I startle when I realise he’s said my name a few times. “Yes?”
“Look at me.”
I turn reluctantly from my blind study of the pictures. “What?”
“There will always be a place here for you.”
“What are you talking about?”
His face is grave and still, but his eyes are turbulent.
“I made a home here, but there is a place for you too. It’s always been here.
It’s a gap, an empty seat at the table that will never be filled unless it’s by you.
It’s just waiting for you to turn up, unpack and stay, and that will never change. ”
I swallow hard. “But that’s ridiculous,” I whisper. “We were never anything that—”
“We were always something,” he says firmly. “Always.”