She took a few sips from her glass and brushed a strand of hair back from her brow. Roddy didn’t speak for some time.
‘What we should probably do,’ he said at last, ‘is take a look through the pictures tomorrow and see what we can arrange.’ Phoebe nodded. ‘Right now, I think we’d better go to bed.’ She looked up, questioning. ‘Separately,’ he explained.
‘All right.’
Together they climbed the Great Staircase, and at the entrance to the East Corridor, they kissed a formal good-night.
4
Phoebe felt tiny in the four-poster. Her mattress was soft and full of lumps, and although she had intended to lie to the side of the bed nearest the window, she found herself rolled by the weight of her own body into a deep valley at the centre. The bed creaked whenever she moved: but then the whole house seemed to be forever creaking, or groaning, or whispering, or rustling, as if never for a moment at ease with itself, and in an effort to close her ears to this disquieting soundtrack, she tried to focus her mind on the day’s strange events. She was pleased, on the whole, with the way things had worked out with Roddy. Even before arriving at Winshaw Towers, she had taken the reluctant decision to sleep with him if he made this his absolute precondition for promoting her work, but she was glad that she hadn’t been obliged to go through with it. Instead, something much better, and much more unexpected, was starting to emerge from their weekend together: a sense of mutual understanding. She even realized — very much to her own surprise — that she was beginning to trust him. And in the warm glow of this realization, she permitted herself a fantasy: the same fantasy to which all artists, however good their intentions, however unflinching their principles, have recourse from time to time. It was a fantasy of success; of recognition, and acclaim. Phoebe’s ambitions were too modest to encompass worldwide celebrity, or serious wealth, but she did dream — as she often had before — of having her work seen and appreciated by other painters; of touching the lives and colouring the perceptions of a few members of the public; of being exhibited, perhaps, in her home town, so that she might give something back to the people with whom she had grown up, repay her parents for the faith and patience which they had vouched her and which had been so valuable during her worst moments of self-doubt. At the thought that some — or even all — of this might now, possibly, miraculously, be about to happen, she stretched her legs beneath the grey, musty sheets and added a whole new chorus of delicious creaks to the furtive stirrings of the house itself.
But all at once she was aware of another noise, too. It was coming from the direction of the door, which she had taken the precaution of locking before getting into bed. She sat up cautiously and reached out for the table lamp, which cast a murky, ineffectual glow over the room. She looked towards the door. Suddenly feeling like the leading lady in some low-budget and none too original horror film, she realized that the handle was turning. There was someone out in the corridor, trying to get in.
Phoebe swung her legs out of bed and tiptoed towards the door. She was wearing a thick, striped cotton nightshirt which buttoned up at the front and reached down almost to her knees.
‘Who is it?’ she asked, in a brave, slightly quavering voice, after the handle had been tried a few more times.
‘Phoebe? Are you awake?’ It was Roddy’s voice: a loud whisper.
She sighed with exasperation. ‘Well of course I’m awake,’ she said, unlocking the door and holding it ajar. ‘If I wasn’t before I certainly am now.’
‘Can I come in?’
‘I suppose so.’
She opened the door and Roddy, who was wearing a satin kimono, slid inside and sat down on the bed.
‘What is it?’
‘Come and sit down a minute.’
She sat beside him.
‘I couldn’t sleep,’ he said.
No further explanation seemed to be forthcoming.
‘So?’
‘So I thought I’d come and see how you were.’
‘Well, I’m fine. I mean, I haven’t contracted any life-threatening diseases in the last half hour or anything.’
‘No, but I mean — I came to check that you weren’t too upset.’
‘Upset?’
‘By my sister, and … oh, I don’t know, by everything. I thought it might all have been a bit much for you.’
‘That’s very nice of you, but I’m fine. Really. I’m quite a tough little cookie, you know.’ She smiled. ‘Are you sure that’s the reason you came?’
‘Of course it is. Well, pretty much.’ He sidled closer towards her. ‘I was lying in bed, if you must know, thinking about that story you told me. About you burning all your paintings. I was thinking that — well, correct me if I’m wrong here — but that’s not the sort of story you would have told to just anybody. It occurred to me that possibly’ (he put his arm around her shoulder) ‘you must have begun to like me a little bit.’