Still Waters (Charlie Resnick #9)(62)
Grabianski willed himself not to look at his watch again, and lost; in any case, there was the clock beyond the square telling him past doubt that she was close to an hour late. Of course, she wasn’t coming, some emergency she had to deal with, one of the unfortunates she’d befriended had taken an overdose, thrown themself from a bridge; maybe one of the others, Sister Bonaventura or Sister Marguerite, had been taken ill. Or it could be simply the train, the train was late, seriously delayed, derailed, rerouted due to engineering works—wasn’t that always happening on a Sunday, engineering works?—he believed it was.
No. She had decided against it, pure and simple: decided, on reflection, it was not a sound idea, not pure and simple at all. Meet at the National Gallery, Sunday, to see the Degas. Innocent enough. He would give it another five minutes and that was all. Go round on his own. Except that would be too depressing. No, a movie; he could go and see a film, dozens of them showing five minutes’ stroll from where he stood. That slow jolt of pleasure, immersion in the dark.
The five minutes up and there he still was, fingers drumming the worn parapet of stone. Below him, buses crept past, red and green, some open at the top, Americans and Japanese craning their cameras toward the this and the that, guides blurred through their microphones; a bunch of dreadlocked, punked-up kids scrambling over one of the stone lions, pulling at each other’s legs and feet; a small boy, no more than four or five, running between the pigeons, clapping his hands so that they rose on grimy wings and resettled on the far side of the square; the slow bass shaking down from the open windows of slick cars as young black men anointed the afternoon with soul. Almost before he had time to register her presence, there she was, Teresa, Sister Teresa, smiling as she stepped over the outstretched legs of youths from Perugia or Milan.
“I’m sorry I’m late, so sorry. One thing after another.”
And Grabianski grinning fit to bust as, just to help her over the last hurdle, he takes her arm. “It doesn’t matter. Really, it doesn’t matter at all.”
The exhibition was in the Sainsbury Wing and the clock alongside the ticket desk informed them their entry was timed for forty minutes hence. The slightly harassed young woman at the entrance to the brasserie found them a table toward the far corner, almost with a view of St. Martin-in-the-Fields.
“Cream tea?” said Grabianski, looking up from the menu.
“Just tea, thank you.”
“You won’t mind if I do?”
Teresa smiled her permission. Unlike some of her calling, it rarely occurred to her to deny others those pleasures she herself abjured.
Order placed, Grabianski was content to sit back and look. Teresa was wearing gray, a color she favored, but today in softer shades which accentuated rather than diminished the slight plumpness of her lower arms, the green that loitered in her eyes.
She was telling him of diversions via Milton Keynes, the thirty or so minutes they had spent, shunted onto a side line north of Willesden Junction due to signal failure; Grabianski half-listening, more than happy just to sit there, watching, watching the tilt of her head, the slow curling and uncurling of her fingers, the movement of her mouth—she knew he was watching her mouth—the stir of other conversations sealing them in.
The tea was served in china pots, Grabianski’s scone a wholemeal disk studded with sultanas, harsh to cut and rich to taste, richer still once he had ladled it with jam and cream; the cream not of the clotted, Devon kind, but fluid enough to suggest it might easily slide off the blade of a knife, his half-moon of scone, his tongue.
“A good choice, then?” Teresa said, eyeing his plate.
“Oh, yes.”
She smiled a private smile and added water to the pot.
“How are the other sisters?” Grabianski asked, wiping his face.
“Well. Sister Marguerite sends her love.”
“Not Sister Bonaventura?”
“I’m afraid Sister Bonaventura regards this entire day as a foolhardy enterprise.”
“Because of me?” Grabianski grinned.
“Oh, no. Because of Degas. What does she call him now? An over-the-hill representative of a dying bourgeois art form, eking out a talent for repetitive misogyny.”
“She knows his work well, then. She’s been down already.”
Teresa laughed. “Not for Sister Bonaventura any of Thomas’ existential doubts. She’d no more need to see a Degas in the flesh than press her hand against Christ’s wounds before believing that he lived and breathed. Religion or politics, faith and dogma for her live side by side.”
“She sounds hard work.”
“Of course; it’s the life we’ve chosen.”
Grabianski finished his scone and washed it down with tea; summoning the waiter he paid the bill, careful to overtip generously.
“Shall we go?” he said, easing back his chair.
“Of course.”
The first room seemed impossible and Grabianski’s heart sank: what he had envisaged as an intimate afternoon, spent in close proximity and expressive silences, was instantly awash with earnest shufflers, shifting from painting to painting as slowly as breath would allow, parents with whimpering offspring dangling from backpack or sling, solitary listeners strapped into headphones listening to recorded commentary, girls from good homes sitting cross-legged, sketching.
Glancing around the walls, he glimpsed ballet dancers, bathers, hats, bouquets, a woman ironing, another standing, stern and staring out as if daring the artist to put a stroke wrong.