I got so caught up with the shapes on the walls that it took me a while to work out why I found the images disturbing. I mean, they were attractive, pleasing, so why did they make me feel uncomfortable? Because they weren’t real. Even when I recognized the place in the picture, the sense of place was wrong. I thought it wasn’t true that the camera never lies. I mean, the physical shape of the landscape was true, but the viewer’s response to it had been manipulated. Perhaps that’s what art’s all about. Perhaps I was being naïve. But I’m straightforward. I don’t like being messed with.
The pictures of the coast, for instance. In a storm like that, there’d have been litter blown against the grass. There’s always litter. In the distance there should have been one of those concrete bunkers they put up in the war to stop the German tanks rolling up the beach. Even further away I’d have shown the cokeworks at Lynemouth or the chimneys of Blyth power station. And none of her farmhouses had satellite dishes, or scrappy machinery in the yard, or black polythene covering silage. There was no sign of foot and mouth, no Keep Out police notices. If this was a threatened landscape, why hadn’t she shown that dump at Widdrington, where the carcasses were buried and the lorries leaked blood? What I’m saying is that this isn’t a pretty landscape and she’d made it look pretty. It made me think she had a fairy-tale vision of how the world and her life should be. Philip’s illness and death must have come as a shock. She wouldn’t have been expecting something like that.
I turned away from the picture I’d seen on Ronnie’s wall and there was Howdon, standing in a corner with a glass in his hand, talking in a low voice to a man I’d never met and a little woman in a purple jacket and a purple skirt with thin pleats, like the umpires at Wimbledon wear. She had a thin rat-like face and a complexion drained of all colour. She shouldn’t have worn purple. She had a long-suffering look, which made me think she was Howdon’s wife. He hadn’t noticed me and suddenly he began to laugh. It wasn’t loud. A restrained chortle which he held in with his handkerchief. Perhaps the man had told him a joke. Perhaps he’d told one himself. Anyway, that laughter pushed me over the edge. I could believe it was me he was laughing at. I lost it.
‘What the fuck do you think you’re playing at?’ I’ve told you I don’t usually swear. I like to think I don’t need to any more. But I needed to then. The words rang out in that quiet room. I could imagine them bouncing off the walls and the high ceiling, the sound waves like ripples, but getting bigger not smaller. No one intervened. Thank God for English embarrassment.
He looked over at me. He could hardly pretend I didn’t exist. Not with such a big audience. For a moment he didn’t know how to respond. He stood with his mouth open – a cartoon fish.
‘Who is this, Stuart?’ The woman. She thought I was his mistress. Perhaps he had a history of screwing around. I wouldn’t have been surprised. If he felt the need to justify the affairs, he’d have told himself he’d lost the love of his life to Philip Samson, and he needed the comfort. That was the sort of pathetic man he was. ‘What’s going on?’
Her voice was firmer than I’d have expected from her appearance. She might put up with infidelity but not with a scene at a friend’s party. Not a grand friend like Joanna. And she’d sensed that he’d recognized me. I could tell. She wouldn’t let him pretend otherwise.
‘Stuart?’
I wanted to scream, Christ, I’m not his girlfriend. Credit me with some taste. But that would have implied that she had none and my quarrel wasn’t with her.
‘Your husband lied about me to the police,’ I said, lowering my voice, keeping it calm, fuming inside.
‘Stuart?’ she said again, impatient now. She might have been talking to an annoying and not very bright child.
Still he couldn’t find the words to reply. I yelled at him, ‘I was arrested for murder. And it’s all your fault.’ Pathetic. Like a kid in a school playground. But the scary thing is that if I’d had a knife I’d have had a go at him.
At last he regained his powers of speech. ‘No, no. I never meant that.’
‘Well, what did you mean?’
‘He was trying to protect me.’ It was Joanna in 1930s film-star mode. Every time I’d seen her, there’d been a different style. I couldn’t get a grip on her. Tonight she was in a long sheath dress. Her lipstick and nails were red, the red of fresh blood. It was quite an entrance. Everyone was looking at her. They pretended to stare at the pictures, but none of us were fooled. I thought then that she was enjoying the attention, but perhaps I was wrong, because she took my arm. ‘Let’s find somewhere to talk,’ she said. ‘Somewhere quiet.’
There was a little room off the main space, an office with a desk, a computer and a couple of chairs. No window. She must have changed there; someone had propped a full-length mirror for her against one wall and there was a make-up bag on the desk. She showed me through the door and disappeared. I wondered if she wanted Stuart there to hold her hand, but she returned almost immediately with a bottle of wine in a cooler and two glasses.
I told her I was driving but I took one glass. That was all. When I left her later, the bottle was nearly empty. She must have been drinking steadily, though I didn’t realize at the time. Her voice was quite reasonable throughout.
‘Did you know he was married?’ she asked. ‘In Morocco.’
‘I guessed.’ Immediately. In the bus.
‘Look, I don’t blame you for what happened. I just wondered if he mentioned me.’ Her eyes were hungry.
He’d said she’d deny him nothing. I wasn’t sure that was what she wanted to hear. He’d said she was a saint and even then I’d thought I’d heard an implied criticism.
‘It was just one night,’ I said. Not lying.
‘You made an impression all the same.’ She was trying to make a joke of it, but there was still that look in her eyes.
‘How do you know what happened in Marrakech?’
‘Philip told me.’ She stared at me steadily over her glass. ‘I didn’t mind. How could I? He knew he was dying. It was only natural that he would want to have as many experiences as possible. I should be grateful to you. I find that difficult, of course, but I certainly don’t resent you.’
‘Did you know about Thomas?’
‘No.’ It seemed hard for her to admit it. ‘I never even guessed.’ She refilled her glass. ‘Stuart explained it all this afternoon. It unnerved him bumping into you at Wintrylaw. He told me about the instructions Philip left with the will, about the boy being murdered.’ She looked up at me again. ‘Stuart was distraught. Really. It can’t be easy for a solicitor to lie to the police.’
I didn’t say that in my experience solicitors lie all the time. She was an innocent. She probably even believed in God.
‘He didn’t want me to find out that Philip had had an affair in Morocco and he didn’t want me to know about the child. He was thinking about me and the children. Our children. Honestly.’
Like I said, she was an innocent.
Chapter Twenty-three
Inspector Farrier rang at lunchtime the next day to say that as far as he was concerned I was no longer a suspect in the Mariner murder. Joanna had promised that Howdon would go to the police, but it had happened more quickly than I’d expected.
‘Stupid prat,’ Farrier said. ‘I’d like to do him for wasting my time, perverting the course of justice, but he’s persuaded someone more important than me that it was some kind of mistake. A misunderstanding.’
Joanna had said ‘misunderstanding’ the night before at the exhibition, but I’d heard the quotation marks. We’d both taken the irony as read. Just before I’d left the room in the gallery, where she’d sat like a leading lady before opening night, drinking the last of the wine, I’d asked, ‘Why do you put up with him?’