Danuta Reah - Bleak Water

Jonathan Massey was the gallery director. Eliza had known him for years – he had been her tutor at college, and Maggie’s tutor as well. She hadn’t been expecting him in today. He’d had some kind of meeting at the education department.

She went into the gallery, nodding a hello to Mel, a young trainee Jonathan had taken on before Eliza’s appointment. Mel had dropped out of an art and design course at the local college. They couldn’t teach her anything, she’d claimed to Eliza. She was sitting on one of the window sills reading a magazine, More, or Hello!, Eliza assumed from past experience. She tried to suppress her irritation. Mel was supposed to be working on the opening today, checking the invitations, making sure the replies were in, checking the catering arrangements, while Eliza worked on the exhibition.

‘Have you finished checking the invitation list?’ she said as she pulled off her hat and unwound the scarf from round her neck.

Mel looked round and shrugged. ‘I was waiting for you,’ she said. She was affecting boho glamour today, Eliza noticed, a tiered skirt of leather and chiffon, an embroidered jacket, DMs. Mel made most of her own clothes. Her hair, which was currently black, was gelled severely back.

So that’s a ‘no’, then. ‘You don’t need me to do that,’ Eliza said shortly. ‘Next time you’re waiting,’ she began, then decided that she couldn’t be bothered. Mel’s contract only lasted for another five months, and then she would have to move on.

Jonathan must be in his office. She knocked on his door and went in. He was rummaging through his desk drawer, his back to her. ‘Jonathan?’ she said.

He looked round quickly. ‘Eliza! I didn’t…’ He pushed the drawer shut. ‘How did it go?’

Eliza shrugged. A funeral was a funeral. What did you say? ‘I thought I’d get on with setting up the exhibition. What have you lost?’

‘Oh, just a letter,’ he said. ‘I’ll ask Mel…There was a message for you earlier, about Friday.’

‘From Daniel?’ She’d last seen Daniel six months ago, a brief glimpse in a bar on her last night in Madrid. ‘What did he say?’

‘No idea.’ Jonathan began putting papers back into folders. ‘Mel took it.’

‘OK.’ The Triumph of Death. It was Eliza’s triumph as well, vindicating her appointment, relatively inexperienced, as curator of the new gallery. But Jonathan had been surprisingly unenthusiastic when she’d suggested that they try for a preview of Daniel Flynn’s latest exhibition. ‘Flynn?’ he’d said. ‘He’s overrated. And he thinks far too much of himself to come somewhere like this. What’s the point? He’s only ever been interested in London.’ Jonathan and Daniel had trained together at St Martin’s. Jonathan’s low-key response to the exhibition, the most prestigious the gallery had had since its opening six months ago, had been a constant irritation to Eliza.

The rationale of the Trust that funded the gallery was to bring important and innovative work to the provinces, breaking the stranglehold that London had on the arts scene. ‘Daniel Flynn would be perfect,’ Eliza said. ‘There’s a real buzz about his work – a lot of people will come. Look, The Triumph of Death is already scheduled for London, but I think he’ll agree to a preview. The dates are right and I know this is the kind of setting he’s thought about.’

Jonathan’s agreement had been grudging. She’d enjoyed showing him the letter agreeing to her suggestion: a one-week preview before the exhibition transferred to London. Even then, he’d had been oddly subdued. ‘Must be some kind of gesture towards his roots,’ he’d said. Daniel Flynn had grown up in Sheffield.

He was having problems with his own work – a series of photographs around the idea of social exclusion, photographs of children whose lives and origins more or less put them out of the race from the very beginning. The idea was good, but he had been working on it for the past five years, and it still seemed no nearer completion. Which would explain his rather sour response to the success of one of his fellow students.

He’d said, almost as an afterthought, ‘That was good work on your part, I suppose.’ She hadn’t told him about her personal connection with Daniel Flynn. It was good work. She was happy to accept the plaudit, tepid though it was. She looked quickly at the diary to see if anything had changed since yesterday. ‘I’ll get on with setting up the exhibition,’ she said.

Jonathan murmured something. He wasn’t really paying attention. Then he looked up. ‘Do you need me for anything? Only I want to get off early. I’ve got tickets for the theatre in Leeds.’

‘No, that’s fine.’ Irritated, Eliza went back to where Mel was looking through a list and ticking names off in a desultory way.

‘Daniel Flynn’s been in touch,’ she said. ‘He said he’s sorry he hasn’t been up before but he’s been stuck with something in London. Anyway, he’s coming in tomorrow.’

‘OK,’ Eliza said. She hadn’t known Daniel was back in England. There was no reason why she should. But she’d thought – somehow – that he was still travelling, that he’d gone to Tanzania where they had planned…

Mel was looking at her, and there was a knowing gleam in her eye that Eliza didn’t like. She shook herself. ‘Right, I’d better get up there. He hasn’t sent all the work yet.’

‘There’s some more coming in tomorrow,’ Mel said. ‘Didn’t you know he was in London?’ There was the sound of a door opening and she sat up and became more focused on her work.

Jonathan came out of his office, pulling on his jacket. ‘I’ll be off then,’ he said to Eliza.

‘Bye, Jonathan,’ Mel said brightly. They watched him go.

Eliza pulled on a smock to protect her clothes. She went quickly up the stairs, trying to put the irritations of Mel out of her mind and concentrate on the exhibition which combined interpretations of detail from Brueghel’s Triumph of Death, a vision of a medieval apocalypse, with modern imagery and icons that spoke compellingly to a twenty-first century audience.

The windows of the gallery looked out on to the canal: low, arched bridges, the water shadowy in the clouded afternoon. The reflection of the water gave the light a particular quality, pale and clear, and the orientation of the building meant that it was fairly consistent right through the day. As she looked round the long room, she forgot the events of the morning, the sense of oppression and incompleteness that Maggie’s funeral had left in her, and felt the work draw her in.

It was almost five when Mel came into the room to tell Eliza she was leaving. ‘Jonathan said I could go a bit early today,’ she said.

Mel had a habit of doing this – making requests of Jonathan without consulting her. Eliza had had to stamp quite hard on the ‘Jonathan said’ line that Mel was prone to peddle when she wanted her own way. But this evening, she wanted to be alone with the work, so she nodded. ‘That’s OK,’ she said. ‘I won’t need you till tomorrow.’

Mel seemed about to say something, then she stopped. ‘Shall I lock up?’ she said.

‘Lock the front entrance,’ Eliza told her. ‘But leave the galleries. I need to set the alarms.’

‘OK.’ Eliza heard Mel’s feet on the stairs, and a few minutes later, the sound of the outer door closing. Eliza hesitated, then went downstairs. She checked the doors – Mel had locked them. Now she was down here, she might as well set the alarm for the downstairs exhibition space. She punched in the code, hearing the beep beep beep and then the continuous tone that gave her about thirty seconds to get out of the room. She pulled the doors closed behind her, and the alarm fell silent. OK, that was dealt with and out of the way. She went back upstairs and lost herself in her notes.