COPYRIGHT Copyright Epigraph Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty-one Chapter Twenty-two Keep Reading About the Author Also by the Author About the Publisher
Fourth Estate
A division of HarperCollins Publishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
Copyright © Lucy English 2000
First published in Great Britain in 2000 by Fourth Estate
‘Each Moment’ by the Incredible String Band. Words by Robin Williamson. Reproduced by kind permission of IMP Ltd. Lyrics from ‘Astral Weeks’ by Van Morrison.
The right of Lucy English to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
HarperCollins Publishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.
Source ISBN: 9781841152424
Ebook Edition © MARCH 2016 ISBN: 9780007485390
Version: 2016-03-23
EPIGRAPH Epigraph Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty-one Chapter Twenty-two Keep Reading About the Author Also by the Author About the Publisher
This was our dancing day
So even those with nothing to celebrate
Shook off their unfathomable gloom
And were lost with us in that meadow.
From ‘Albion’ in Spirit Level , a book of poems by Andrew Bell
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Keep Reading
About the Author
Also by the Author
About the Publisher
Bristol is built on several hills. In Totterdown there is a street that seems to cling to the steepest edge of one on a high embankment above Temple Meads Station. Tessa’s studio was on the top floor of a house in this terrace. From here it wasn’t difficult to entertain the idea that one was floating above the city like the hot-air balloons do on a fine day, but it also wasn’t difficult to imagine the whole street of houses slipping over the embankment; the gardens already lay at perilous angles. It was with this feeling of landing in front of the 10.45 from platform 6 that caused Tessa to stop working and look out of her studio window.
The ten forty-five gathered speed and whirred past harmlessly, but Tessa still felt she had fallen beneath its wheels. She also knew why she felt like this. She had that morning received a letter from her ex. It had just stopped raining and there was a break in the clouds. Sunlight fell onto the other side of Bristol, emphasising the lumpy forms of the university building, the glass edges of the city office blocks, and, pointing up between, the spires of Christchurch and St Mary Redcliffe; Bristol’s skyline was urban but not unpleasant. She could also see the parklands of Ashton Court and the gardens of Brandon Hill, for it was May and the trees were blossoming and fresh.
Smudgy sunlight on pinkish stone, pastel blue between moving clouds, it’s definitely a watercolour, thought Tessa turning from her window and back to her art, but her canvas was dark and red and large with jagged forms like a gaping dragon or a charred accident.
She poked at her work with a brush dipped in vermilion, but only half-heartedly. ‘It’s not savage enough, it’s blunted and dead.’ Letters from Murray always had this effect on her. Tessa’s walls were laden with other brooding canvases; she sold approximately one of these a year. The rest of her work lay in folders, because Tessa was an illustrator; watercolours of gardens, country scenes, Bristol sites, for calendars, birthday cards and coffee-table books. It was Murray who owned the gallery in Bath where she had first exhibited fourteen years ago and they had been lovers for eight of them.
Murray Maclean now lived in Edinburgh reinventing his Scottish roots. He had opened another gallery there, mostly for young Scottish painters. He still had the gallery in Bath but he showed only an indifferent attitude towards it, like he showed towards other left-behind projects. And Tessa was another project, she knew that. His letter was like a public relations handout, with a list of all the artists who would be exhibiting that summer, what cafés he had visited and who would be coming up for the Festival. His letter was like him, smart and to the point. Murray was in his fifties now, tall and elegant with thick grey hair. At the end he said, ‘If you’re up for the Festival Claudia and I would love to see you, that is if she isn’t too busy buying clothes at Baby Gap.’
Tessa stabbed at her painting again with red paint as thick as a placenta. Right from the start she had said to Murray, ‘I don’t want kids. Kids drive you mad.’ They had stayed with that but when he turned fifty women of child-bearing age became more attractive. Claudia was twenty-nine and had just had his baby in March. He met her some months after he split up with Tessa but that didn’t make it any better. ‘We’ll still be friends,’ he said, but he meant, ‘I’ll still sell your paintings.’
The other letter she had received that morning was from her agents and in an hour’s time she had an appointment to see them. Murray had introduced her to Wessex Artists so at least she could be grateful he had given her a living.
*
She left for her appointment on her bicycle and in her cycling gear. Her lodger in the basement, whom she had nothing to do with apart from collecting the rent, referred to her as ‘that dyke’; but what did she know, she was a chirpy English student, what did she know about sharp-looking forty-six-year-olds?
Tessa was sleek and wiry. Her hair, if it had been long, would have been corkscrew curly but she kept it short. It was dark brown, nearly black and the strands of grey at the front she dyed bright red. She wore black or grey, Trousers never skirts. Boyish casual clothes and sometimes a red velvet scarf. Her appearance was clean-cut and unadorned. She looked like she would prefer a day’s cycling to a morning in front of a mirror. She had the taut sun-touched skin of the very fit.
Читать дальше