Peter Carey - The Chemistry of Tears

“Dear Jesus,” he said. His tenderness was all-engulfing. I had the sudden sense of a secret life. “Did she attack you?”

I would not let him touch my face.

“Take a tissue anyway,” he said.

“Get rid of her,” I said.

There was an armchair filled with bubble wrap. He cleared it for me and I sat. He wheeled the chair from behind his desk so we were almost knee to knee.

I said: “You put people together like you run a bloody stud farm.”

For a second he revealed that slightly dangerous Crofty air, as if he was considering which card to play. He offered tissues once again. I was rather pleased to discover how much blood there was.

“Catherine, what on earth do you mean?”

“You have been an awful meddler.”

I thought, he will make tea now.

“Have I, really?” He folded his arms and I saw the Rolex peek from beneath his cuff like a mark of corporate corruption. “I’m sorry you think that, Catherine.”

“Amanda is the granddaughter of your friend. Lichfield, yes? Lord.”

“That was the photographer, darling. Gerald is actually a baron.” He stood. “Hang on a second.”

He disappeared and I thought, now he will make his bloody tea. It will be lapsang souchong and he will ask do I mind not having milk. But when he returned it was with elastoplasts and cotton wool and various dark bottles. He made a mess pouring alcohol onto a swab. He intended to clean me up, but I took charge.

“Might sting.”

Of course it stung. “In any case,” I said, “Amanda Snyde is the granddaughter of your friend.”

“Not a friend exactly.”

“A board member then.”

“A collector, darling. Quite a different beast.”

I permitted him to accept the bloody swab. I took a fresh gauze in return.

“But still you engineered it?”

“Catherine, I’m terribly sorry this has happened. Of course it is unpardonable, but it does our cause no harm when collectors feel connected to the museum. And besides, she is exceptional. You saw her transcripts. The Courtauld people raved about her. There was a three-page letter from West Dean. She’s clearly brilliant.”

“But perhaps a little unstable?”

“My understanding was that she’d been very good.”

“Can you see my face? Can you see what she did? I do not want her in my studio again.”

“Catherine, let me at least get a nurse to look at that. I will explain. It is not simple to fire someone these days.”

“Oh Eric, dear Eric, what is she? What did you not tell me? Is she bipolar?”

“Do we really need a clinical label for enthusiasm?”

“This is not enthusiasm.”

“Obsession then. My understanding was that she was a hundred per cent functional. Is that not so?”

“No, she’s nuts.”

“She’s upset about this oil spill, apparently.”

“What!”

“I said she is upset about this BP business.”

“She’s upset. That’s it.”

“Darling, do you read the newspapers? Do you watch television? There was a big feature in Slate . Do you read Slate ? About the psychological damage caused by the oil spill. Her feelings are normal. She’s upset.”

“Well so am I. Does that give me permission to assault you?”

“I am only reporting what I know. There are hundreds of thousands of kids who spend their day watching the nightmare webcam of oil pouring into the gulf. It is an addiction. I understand she has been producing the most terrifying drawings. Really, they’d make you want to top yourself.”

“Drawings of what?” I asked, thinking this was a slip-up.

“Of course something must be done. It’s awful. She is clearly not herself. This is gross misconduct.”

“Thank you. So she can be fired.”

“If she is, as you suggest, unwell, we have, legally, what is called duty of care. So there is a procedure which is horribly ugly and time-consuming. We would have to produce two doctors to confirm she can’t work responsibly, and then—I don’t know—she may get it in her head that we’re discriminating against her.”

“For being posh?”

“For being posh if you like. Don’t joke about it. She could argue that we were pursuing a course of constructive dismissal.”

The girl got in a fury because I refused to X-ray something, which was not her business or within her field of expertise, and now I was conspiring to dismiss her for being posh. Jesus help me, I thought, while Crofty, who was meant to be my friend, explained the procedure, trying to put me off because he didn’t want to lose a benefactor.

“Do you have the patience for it, Catherine? Would you really do that to someone who was unwell?”

There was the slight interrogative tilt of the head. “Oh,” I said. “You’re thinking about me?”

“No, not at all. Not in the slightest.”

“I have been unwell, that is what you mean?”

“Let me make some tea.”

“No, don’t run away. Why do you go running around, doing things behind my back?”

“Darling, you haven’t always minded so very much before.”

“You’re discussing recreational drugs?”

He stood and shut the door and came back looking very serious indeed. I was chastened, as I should have been. “Sorry. What have I never minded about?”

“Well, I have truthfully always imagined it was my talent, my gift to introduce my friends to each other. Not one I could ever use for my own happiness, I must say.”

I didn’t know what to say. I was rather frightened of where this was going.

“You don’t remember, of course, who it was who put you to work with Matthew?”

“No!”

“But why are you upset? Would you rather I hadn’t?”

“Please, please, don’t do this.”

“Oh Cat, you were truly the most gorgeous elegant creature I ever saw, there was nothing about you that was not perfect, really.”

“So you pushed me at a married man.”

He spun on his chair and went to fiddle with his electric kettle. I was not sorry his back was to me.

“He was so miserable, and so sad,” he said. “That awful woman with her sordid affairs. It was too horrible for such a lovely man.”

“Did you really set me up? Did he know?”

“His life was awful. You knew that of course. Everything about her was cruel. She still is cruel. The younger boy can deal with her very well. He’s comparatively safe.”

I was staring out the window at the chestnut tree remembering Noah drinking scotch.

“But the older one …”

“Angus.”

“Yes, Angus is put in the awful situation of being the man of the house.”

“And you’re going to rescue him.”

“He has to do that himself, of course.”

“But you fixed him up with Amanda.”

“Not really. They have a tennis court in Walberswick.”

“Walberswick? Walberswick. So she’s practically my bloody neighbour. Thanks a lot.”

He said nothing until he returned with his lapsang souchong. He had sliced a lemon somehow. “Catherine, will you please stop this? There is nothing wrong with making people happy.”

“Might she be just a little schizophrenic?”

“Have you seen her drawings?”

“Of course I’ve seen her fucking drawings. She is doing them for me .”

“Sorry. Quite right.”

“Although when I asked her that very question, she said you had never seen them, and this is really what I don’t like about this set-up, Eric. Everyone is running around whispering behind my back. You push the boys at me, you send them to my house, at night, and then you get one of them to sleep with a mad girl who you’ve arranged to work for me. I feel a total fool.”

Finally he had his own tea and although he now sat opposite, there was a greater separation.