Read The Hand That First Held Mine Online
Authors: Maggie O'farrell
Tags: #Literary, #Psychological, #Family Life, #Historical, #Fiction
The Hand That First Held Mine (29 page)
She doesn’t move from her seat. She bites the end of her pencil; she pleats and unpleats a section of her slip. Any man who isn’t Innes would tonight be a travesty, a crime. She doesn’t know why but she’s felt him all day, hovering, slightly behind her, slightly to the left of her. She’s kept turning her head, as if trying to catch him out. She finds she wants to say his name aloud, here in this hotel room with its peeling furniture and stained bedclothes. The word swells inside her throat, her mouth, like a balloon.
The knock comes again. ‘Lexie!’ Felix hisses. ‘It’s me.’
A moment longer and he gives up. She hears him shambling back along the corridor, yawning. She moves to the bed and lies down on her back. She stares up at the ceiling. She closes her eyes. Immediately she is presented with an image of Innes, sitting on the dressing-table stool she has just vacated, here, in the room with her. She opens her eyes again. The tears run sideways down her temples, soaking into her hair, finding their way into her ears. She shuts her eyes again. She sees: the view from the window of their flat on Haverstock Hill. She sees: Innes’s hand and the way he held a pen, in a tilted, left-handed grip. She sees: him leaning against their bookshelves, searching for a book. She sees: him shaving at the kitchen sink, his face half lathered. She sees: herself, walking down a hospital corridor, dropping violets as she goes.
In London, a fortnight or so later, Lexie and Felix are walking together into the opening of Laurence’s new gallery. Something about Felix’s impeccable cuffs, his broad-shouldered blondness set against the crowd-pressed, wine-fuelled, frantic anxiety of the gallery makes Lexie want to laugh. But Felix, as ever, is striding into the room as if his place in it is assured, as if hordes of people are just waiting to make his acquaintance.
Which, annoyingly, they are. After the third person comes up to him with the words, ‘Sorry, but aren’t you . . .’ Lexie steps out from his encircling arm and begins making her way through the crowded gallery to where Daphne is standing with Laurence, at the side of the room, their heads inclined to one another’s. She knows they are talking about her, and they know she knows. They smile to see her approach.
‘Excuse me,’ she says, sliding sideways between a woman talking in a braying voice about Lichtenstein and a man knocking back a glass of wine.
‘Here she comes,’ Lexie hears Daphne say.
‘Hello, gossips,’ Lexie says, kissing first the cheek with which Daphne presents her, then Laurence’s. ‘Congratulations, Laurence. Good party. Good turn-out.’
‘Yes, it’s gone off rather well, hasn’t it?’ says Laurence, surveying the room. ‘So far.’
‘Don’t say “so far”,’ Daphne scolds. ‘It’s good. People came. People are buying. Be happy. Enjoy it.’
‘I can’t, though,’ Laurence mutters, running a finger around his collar. ‘I won’t be able to until it’s over.’
Daphne turns to Lexie and looks her up and down. ‘Anyway,’ she says, ‘we want to talk to you.’
‘Do you?’
‘Yes. Tell all.’
Lexie takes a swig of her cocktail. ‘About what?’
Daphne lets out a small noise of exasperation at the same time as Laurence says, ‘I like your get-up, Lex.’
‘Never mind her get-up,’ Daphne snaps, then seems to see Lexie’s dress for the first time, ‘although it is fab. Where did you get it?’ Without waiting for an answer, she shakes Lexie by the elbow. ‘We want to know all about it.’ She jabs a finger towards the door.
Lexie looks over at where Felix is talking to two women who are leaning keenly towards him. ‘Oh,’ she waves her hand, ‘that’s just Felix.’
‘We know who he is,’ Laurence says. ‘We’ve seen him on the box, braving the boulevards.’
‘And,’ Daphne cuts in, ‘we’ve just been putting two and two together. You must have been in Paris with him. How dare you not tell us? I mean, we knew you’d had a bit of a thing but that was ages ago. We didn’t know he was still present tense. Come on,’ she jabs Lexie in the ribs, ‘spill the beans. What’s going on?’
‘Nothing,’ Lexie says.
‘Nothing,’ Laurence scoffs.
‘It’s . . . on and off.’ Lexie shrugs and drains her glass. ‘Nothing really.’
The three of them stand for a moment, gazing down into their glasses, until David, Laurence’s lover, appears next to them. ‘What are you three looking so serious about?’ He puts a hand on Laurence’s shoulder. ‘And shouldn’t you be mingling?’
‘We were just grilling Lexie about her consort,’ Daphne says.
‘Her consort?’ David enquires, and Laurence nods towards Felix, who is now regaling a rapt group with some story involving expansive gestures. ‘Oh.’ David raises his eyebrows. ‘I see. You are a dark horse, Lexie.’
‘It’s nothing,’ Lexie says again, and tugs at the hem of her dress to straighten it.
‘It can’t be nothing,’ Daphne objects, ‘if you’re out and about with him like this.’
‘I’m not out and about with him. I just mentioned I was coming and he said he’d come along.’
‘Are you going to introduce us?’ Laurence says. ‘We promise to behave.’
‘Not now,’ David says. ‘Can’t you see the man’s busy furthering his career?’
‘I have one question,’ says Daphne, in a serious voice, ‘and then we’ll leave you alone. Why him?’
Lexie turns to her. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m intrigued. Why him, rather than any of the others who’ve beaten a path to your door?’
‘I can think of several reasons,’ David murmurs, looking Felix over, and Laurence laughs softly.
‘Because . . .’ Lexie tries to think. ‘Because he doesn’t ask anything,’ she says eventually.
‘What did you say?’ David says, leaning towards her. ‘He doesn’t ask anything?’
‘Any questions,’ Lexie says. ‘He doesn’t ask anyone anything. He’s the most incurious person I’ve ever met. And that—’
‘That suits you,’ Laurence finishes for her.
Lexie half smiles at him. ‘Yes.’ She nods. ‘It does.’
There is a pause. Then Daphne leans back and seizes a bottle of wine from the desk. ‘A toast!’ she cries. ‘We haven’t drunk to your gallery yet.’ She slops wine into all their glasses. ‘To Laurence and David and the Angle Gallery,’ she says. ‘May they live long, happy and prosperous lives.’
The middle of the night, the dead of night, and not much is stirring in Belsize Park. A car sped down Haverstock Hill a while back. A squirrel – one of the rat-like, overfed grey ones – has just crossed the road, pausing in the middle to look around.
In front of the house is a small knot garden made of closely clipped box hedges. The children like to walk within its low spiral, turning and turning to its inevitable centre, although the mother prefers them not to. It weakens the roots, she says. Between this and the pavement is a low red-brick wall that was there in Lexie’s day. There’s a gatepost topped with a heavy white stone that glistens in frosty weather.
Lexie stood with her hand on this gatepost stone when she got back from the hospital after Innes died. It was early evening. Somehow she’d got herself to the flat, still holding the scarf and the magazines – the violets had gone by now – and just as she was about to go up the path, a man stood up from where he’d been sitting on the low wall.
‘Miss Sinclair?’ he said.
She swivelled towards him. Hand on gatepost.
‘Miss Alexandra Sinclair?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘I hereby serve you with these papers,’ he said, and held out an envelope.
She took it. She looked at it. Plain, manila, unsealed. ‘Papers?’
‘Eviction papers, madam.’
She looked at him, at his moustache. She thought how odd it was that the moustache was brown yet his hair was grey. She looked at the gatepost under her hand. It felt grainy, rigid with frost. She took her hand away from it and felt for the doorkey in her pocket. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘My client, Mrs Gloria Kent, requires you to vacate said property by tomorrow, taking with you only items expressly belonging to your own person. Should you remove anything belonging to the estate of her late hus—’
She heard no more. She ran up the path and into the house and slammed the door behind her.
Laurence appeared later. He’d been looking for her all over London, he said. He plucked the pink eviction papers from her hand and read through them. He swore several times, then said that Gloria was living up to her reputation. Lexie found out later that Gloria had already sent a lawyer’s letter to the
Elsewhere
premises, informing them the magazine was to be sold. But Laurence didn’t mention this at the time, or explain that this letter was how he and Daphne had learnt that Innes had died. He poured her a whisky, sat her in an armchair and wrapped an eiderdown around her. Then he set to work, dismantling the flat, her home, her life.
Elsewhere
premises, informing them the magazine was to be sold. But Laurence didn’t mention this at the time, or explain that this letter was how he and Daphne had learnt that Innes had died. He poured her a whisky, sat her in an armchair and wrapped an eiderdown around her. Then he set to work, dismantling the flat, her home, her life.
By the early morning, Laurence and Lexie were waiting outside the flat for a cab. Two suitcases stood next to them. Lexie was shivering or shaking or perhaps both, still clutching the eiderdown around her. ‘Do you think,’ she said, between her chattering teeth, indicating the eiderdown, ‘that this belongs to the estate of Innes Kent?’
Laurence glanced at the eiderdown, then up at the lightening sky. Clouds were streaked with gold above them, the trees still, black cut-outs. He let out a laugh but his eyes were brimming with tears. ‘Jesus, Lex,’ he murmured, ‘what a thing to happen.’
When a cab came past, they hailed it and Laurence loaded Lexie and the suitcases into it. ‘Wait here,’ he said to the driver, ‘won’t be a sec,’ and raced back into the house.
Lexie sat in the taxi, her belongings pressed together into two suitcases and a parcel or two, the eiderdown clasped around her. A long black car was pulling up and in it, at the wheel, was the unmistakable profile of Gloria. Lexie stared out at her. Those haughty lips, those arched brows. Gloria was snapping down the car mirror and checking her lipstick, saying something chattily, brightly to someone beside her. The daughter. There she was in the passenger seat, nodding, yes, Mother, no, Mother.
They were getting out. Gloria was settling her skirts clear of the car door, before slamming it smartly behind her. They were looking up at the house, at the flat at the top. Gloria suddenly frowned and shouted, ‘You! You there!’
Lexie turned to see Laurence hurrying down the steps, lugging something large and bulky, which was wrapped in blankets. Instantly, she knew what they were – Innes’s paintings. Laurence was saving the paintings.
‘Stop! I demand that you stop!’ Gloria shrilled. ‘I must know what you’ve got there!’
Laurence leapt into the taxi. ‘Go,’ he said to the driver. ‘Go, please!’
The driver let off the brake and then they were sweeping away from the house, down Haverstock Hill, and Gloria was running in her heels beside them, trying to see in, and the daughter was running the other side. She did a better job of keeping up. For several seconds, she ran alongside where Lexie was sitting, her face inches away on the other side of the window, her eyes never leaving Lexie’s. Her stare was unbroken, fathomless, the dull eyes like those of a shark, fixed on Lexie’s in – what? Accusation? Curiosity? Anger? Impossible to say. Lexie put up her hand to the glass to obliterate that terrible Medusa gaze. When she removed it, Margot had gone.
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