Life Drawing for Beginners Read online

  “Well,” Irene said lightly, “Pilar is wrong.” She turned back to the coffee machine, conscious of the silence behind her. What was she expected to do, ignore her child’s broken English?

  She heard Pilar crossing the room and murmuring to Emily—​“Oh, that is very good. You are very clever girl. You like do it again?”—and she gritted her teeth and said nothing.

  “No—I want a story.” Irene turned to see Emily scrambling off her chair in search of a book as Pilar replaced the jigsaw pieces in their box. Great, now the written word was going to be mangled too.

  When the coffee was made she took a cup from the press and filled it. She leaned against the worktop and sipped the hot black liquid, watching as her daughter curled into Pilar’s body, listening as the au pair began to read The Three Billy Goats Gruff in the worst possible accent.

  After a minute she walked from the room, aware of the other woman’s eyes following her.

  —————

  They arrived back at five past seven. Michael let them in. “You have ten minutes before dinner,” he said.

  She nodded. She looked tired. “Where will we wait?”

  “In the bedroom.” He had no intention of giving them the run of the house.

  In the kitchen he lowered the heat under the potatoes and pulled out the frying pan to put on the sausages and filled a saucepan with water for the peas. He set the table with knives and forks, and put the butter dish and saltcellar in the center. He should be getting her to help, do a bit in return for her keep, but helping out might make her feel too settled. Better to maintain their visitor status, even if it meant waiting on them hand and foot.

  It was going to take roughly two weeks to discover if the child was Ethan’s. As soon as he’d gotten home from work Michael had applied online for a grandparentage test kit, which was supposed to arrive within three working days. Allowing for the vagaries of the postal service, he should have it by Wednesday or Thursday. The test results, according to the website, would be sent out seven to ten days after receiving the samples.

  Two weeks, give or take. Michael would put up with them till then, unless they gave him reason not to.

  And after that?

  He wouldn’t think about after that. He couldn’t think about after that.

  He drained the potatoes and added butter and black pepper and a splash of milk, and plunged the masher into them. As he filled a jug with tap water—if they thought they were getting Coke here, they had another think coming—there was a soft tap on the kitchen door.

  “Come in.”

  They ate silently and rapidly. Nothing wrong with their appetites. Michael had eaten before they arrived, but he sat at the table with them, pretending to read the paper. Out of the corner of his eye he saw her cutting up the boy’s sausages. Neither of them touched the jug of water.

  At one stage a few peas rolled from the boy’s plate onto the table and from there to the floor, and he looked immediately in Michael’s direction as his mother bent to gather them up quickly and lay them by her plate.

  They ate everything. When they’d finished she stood and took their plates and cutlery to the sink. “Is it okay if I wash these?” she asked.

  Michael looked up. Yes, better to let her do something. “Fill the basin. Wait till the water gets hot. Washing-up liquid is in the press underneath. Don’t use too much.”

  The boy remained seated at the table, as silent as ever. After their dishes had been washed and dried she hovered by the sink.

  Michael eventually lifted his eyes from the paper and looked at her.

  “I dunno where they go,” she said.

  Michael stood. “Leave them. You can go back upstairs now.”

  She lifted the boy from his chair and they walked to the door.

  “Thank you for the dinner,” she said. “It was lovely. Good night.”

  “Good night.”

  Michael replaced their crockery and cutlery and listened to the sound of their footsteps going back upstairs.

  —————

  As they queued for popcorn, Eoin suddenly said, “Hey.”

  “What?”

  “I see Charlie.”

  Jackie scanned the knots of people milling around the cinema lobby. “Where?”

  He pointed. “There. Can I go and talk to her?”

  There was a girl in the crowd with Charlie’s hair color, but it was impossible to make out who she was with. “Just for a second,” Jackie said. “If you’re not back by the time I get the popcorn I’m going in without you.”

  “Okay.”

  He sped off, threading through bodies, and she watched him until he vanished.

  Not gone away for the weekend then, like Charlie’s father had claimed. Of course they might be leaving in the morning, maybe he hadn’t actually lied—but he’d implied, hadn’t he, that they’d be gone all weekend? And even if he hadn’t meant to mislead her, he’d still been abrupt and dismissive, and hadn’t suggested any future arrangement. She hoped Eoin wouldn’t bring them back with him—the last thing she wanted was to have to make small talk with a man who’d made a very bad first impression.

  Her turn arrived and she bought the popcorn. As she replaced her purse Eoin reappeared, thankfully alone.

  “Just in time.” Jackie scanned the lobby quickly again. “Was Charlie with her dad?”

  “Yeah—they’re going to see Horrid Henry.”

  “Good for them.”

  She was glad Eoin had chosen a different film: Now all they needed was for the finishing times not to coincide.

  But even if she’d rather not meet him, you’d think he’d bother to come over to say hello to the woman who’d offered to entertain and feed his child and give him a few hours off on a Sunday afternoon.

  Talk about antisocial.

  Saturday

  James sloshed water around the bath, rinsing off the cleanser he’d scrubbed in. He wiped down the tiles around the shower and poured bleach into the toilet bowl. He cleaned the sink and swiped halfheartedly at the taps.

  He hated housework, hated the sheer pointlessness of it all. You cleaned everything, and it got dirty again, and you cleaned it again. The mind-numbing boredom of it all, the grinding monotony of it. He’d been happy to leave all that to Frances, and she hadn’t complained. It had made perfect sense to James—he’d been out working all day, she’d opted to stay at home and keep house and look after Charlie.

  Now, of course, James was doing everything. Working nine-to-five with the rest of the rat race, coming home and sorting the damn house. Cleaning, cooking, washing, ironing—somehow it all got done, albeit in his slapdash, amateurish way. The dust was ignored where he could get away with it, cobwebs gathered in corners and trailed from ceilings of lesser-used rooms. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d cleaned a fridge, or defrosted a freezer.

  His grasp of ironing was precarious. He’d lost count of the cotton shirts he scorched before his discovery of synthetic fabrics that felt awful but never needed ironing. For everything else he kept the iron on its lowest setting. Less effective, but far safer.

  Laundry was another disaster area, colors running willy-nilly into one another until he learned what went together in the machine and what definitely didn’t. A wool sweater of Charlie’s didn’t survive its first wash, barely big enough for any of her dolls afterwards. Like the iron, the washing machine temperature was set to just above cool, and rarely moved.

  James’s efforts at cooking were marginally more successful, thanks to a book he’d been given as a joke Christmas present by Frances, just a few months before her disappearance. Cooking for Dummies, it was called, and James had laughed and put it aside—and afterwards it had become his bible.

  This morning they’d had French toast, which seemed to have become their regular Saturday breakfast, and this evening he was planning a vegetable omelette. He wrote a shopping list in his head as he mopped the bathroom floor.

  “Dad.”

  He looked
up. Charlie stood in the hall, holding up two halves of a plate. “It fell out of my hands when I was drying it.”

  James dropped his mop and took the pieces from her. “Don’t pick up broken stuff, poppy—you could cut yourself. Just come and tell me, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “And you didn’t have to dry them.”

  “But I wanted to help you,” she said, and his heart turned over. She was a good kid, she was turning out fine, despite his parental fumblings, despite their awful tragedy.

  “Tell you what, let’s go to the lake when I finish the jobs,” he said. High time they saw it, and the day was fine.

  Her small face lit up. “Can we bring a picnic?”

  “Of course we can—have a look and see what we have in the fridge.”

  “And can we go to the park tomorrow?”

  He smiled. “Yes, if you want.”

  “Yaaay!”

  She spun around the hall, the broken plate forgotten. So easy to make her happy. He wondered how long that would last.

  —————

  The girl wasn’t really trying to hide what she was doing. Maybe she didn’t realize that you weren’t supposed to pick flowers in a public park. Audrey wondered whether she should say anything. Could she point out politely, in a nonconfrontational way, that the flowers had been planted for the enjoyment of everyone?

  The girl wasn’t taking very many though, just the odd one here and there. She wasn’t leaving any gaps in the display. And Audrey was well aware that her remarks, however well meaning, could be resented. Someone who looked quite harmless, like this girl in her baggy skirt and long cardigan, could turn on you and become quite nasty.

  And there was a little boy with her, which you had to take into account too. He might be upset if Audrey intervened, she might startle him if she approached them. Such a small, pale little child, no bit of life about him at all.

  Audrey would leave them alone. What were a few flowers? It wasn’t as if the girl were snatching handbags or breaking into houses.

  She pulled gently on Dolly’s leash and walked on.

  —————

  Irene waited until Martin’s program had begun before opening her sketch pad and pulling her pencil quietly from the little zipped case she kept it in. She hated using the charcoal, blackening fingers and clothes and anything you touched afterwards. Luckily, Audrey left it up to her students to use whichever medium they preferred.

  From her position on the smaller of the two couches Martin’s profile was clearly visible to Irene, and she could work unobserved by him. She sketched him in quickly, trying to remember Audrey’s instructions. He leaned back against the couch, hands resting loosely across his abdomen as he watched the television screen.

  His lips were parted, a tiny space between them. His long legs extended, knees bent slightly, one ankle resting on the other. He wore sweatpants and a T-shirt, socks but no shoes. At one stage he reached up to rub under his nose with an index finger.

  Irene mapped in the overall shape of her husband. She positioned his head, indicated the angle his torso made against the back of the couch, scribbled in his arms, his pelvis, his legs. She regarded the drawing, and decided it was what Audrey had asked for: a quick pose with no detail.

  She turned a page and studied what she could see of Martin’s face. She drew the curve of his cheek, the upward tilt of his top lip, the line of his near-side eyelash, the globe of his eyeball. She rounded out his head and sketched in his chin, added his ear and shaded in his hair.

  The man in her drawing looked nothing like Martin. Her proportions were off, his features all wrong, his nose too long, his eye too small. She turned a page and began again, and her second attempt was only marginally better.

  She tried his hands, and then his feet. By the time his program ended, ninety minutes later, she’d filled a dozen pages with her useless, yearning drawings.

  He glanced across as he picked up the remote control. “Want to watch anything?”

  Irene shook her head.

  He noticed her sketch pad. “What are you at?”

  Irene closed the book. “Nothing much, just scribbling.”

  —————

  “How you want me?” Pilar lay on the couch. “Like this?”

  “Yes, okay.” Zarek’s charcoal flew across the page. Pilar lay placidly, humming a tune Zarek didn’t recognize. He mapped her form in quickly.

  “Okay,” he said, “now you change.”

  Pilar lifted her head. “Change? You finish so quick?” She sat up. “I see.”

  Zarek held out the pad.

  Pilar regarded it doubtfully. “This is me?”

  “Just quickly,” Zarek told her. “Is short pose, no small detail.”

  “Where is face?”

  “No face with short pose,” he explained. “Just some shape and line.” He turned the page. “Now you sit, please. Just few minutes.”

  Pilar sat stiffly on the couch, arms folded, a small crease in the skin between her eyes. No humming.

  Zarek sketched quickly. “If you want,” he said, “I do better drawing of you another day.” He assumed next week’s homework would involve a more detailed study.

  “With face?”

  “Yes, with all things.”

  “And color?”

  “Yes, if you want.”

  She considered. “Yes, I like.” She thought some more. “I wear my new dress. And hair up.”

  “Okay.”

  “And not on couch; outside, in garden.”

  “Okay.” He looked up. “I finish now, thank you.”

  Better stop before she thought of anything else.

  —————

  “A gym? You?” His wife laughed. “That’s a good one.”

  The mechanic pulled off his T-shirt. “I’m serious.” He balled it up and aimed it at the laundry basket in the corner of the bedroom. “They’re offering free workouts, not every day you get something for nothing.”

  She plumped up her pillow, still smiling. “Yeah, but a workout—​when have you ever gone near a gym?”

  He unzipped his jeans and let them drop and stepped out of them. “First time for everything. Just thought I’d give it a go, that’s all.”

  “Fine—go ahead. Just don’t come crying to me when you can’t walk the next day.”

  He pulled off his underpants and stood, hands on hips, before her. “Want to draw me?”

  She giggled. “Not just now, thanks.”

  He lifted the duvet and slid in beside her and slipped a finger under the strap of her nightdress. He pictured the rich blonde woman in bed. Bet she wears nothing at all. “Exercise gives you more energy,” he said softly, sliding the straps off her shoulders. Bet she’d love this, bet she’s gagging for it. “You won’t be able to keep up with me,” he murmured, easing the nightdress down, imagining other, fuller breasts. Bet she’d like my hands on her, bet I’d drive her wild. “I’ll drive you wild,” he whispered. “I’ll be after you day and night.”

  His wife drew in her breath as he dipped his head. “In that case,” she said, her hands gripping his dark hair, “forget the free workout—just join up.”

  Sunday

  Carmel loved the first few seconds after waking, when the miracle of it hit her afresh, even before she opened her eyes. The sheets that smelled of flowers, the soft pillow under her head. The wonderful peace, broken only by birdsong from the garden just outside the window.

  She breathed deeply, stretching her legs under the duvet, luxuriating in it all, feeling the warmth of Barry’s small body pressed up against her, the rapid breathing that caused his chest to rise and fall under her hand. She could stay in this bed nonstop for a week, no problem.

  She opened her eyes slowly and saw the soft white glow of his hair in the dim light that filtered through the curtains. She bent and put her nose to his head and inhaled the minty shampoo smell of him. Her gaze traveled around the room, taking in the dark bulk of the wardrobe, the che
st of drawers that held their clean clothes (clean clothes!), the little press by the bed on which she’d set Barry’s book and her treasure box, the pale ribbons of light that framed each window.

  She had no idea what time it was—her watch had been exchanged, years ago, for a Saturday-night fix—but she figured it was still early enough; she never slept that late. Another hour she might have, maybe more, of simply lying here with her son safe beside her. Ethan’s father would call them in due course, she had no doubt of that, but until then they could relax.

  And maybe, since it was Sunday, he’d let them stay in the house, maybe he wouldn’t kick them out. Maybe they wouldn’t have to walk the streets all day, with security men giving her filthy looks whenever they went into a shop. Maybe for once she wouldn’t have to ask the time from people who walked past as if they hadn’t heard her.

  She’d offer to clean the house for him when they were having breakfast. Clean, or cut the grass, or pull weeds, or anything he needed doing. She knew he might take it the wrong way, he might get offended at her offer, thinking she meant that the house was dirty or the garden was neglected, but that was a chance she’d have to take. She wanted to pay him back in some way, and this was the only thing she could think of.

  She turned slowly onto her back, trying not to wake Barry. She lay looking up at the white ceiling with the fancy lamp shade over the bulb. She listened to the repeated chirruping of a bird that must have been just outside the window.

  He was checking out her story, he wanted to know if Barry was his grandson. She’d thought he didn’t care, that he didn’t want to know, but he did. He was letting them stay here until he found out, and they hadn’t even done the test yet. It mightn’t come for another few days, and then it had to be sent back and they’d have to wait some more. They could be here for ages.

  She could still hardly take in what had happened. When she thought about sleeping in the shed—lying on the newspapers, listening to people screaming in the nearby houses and hoping to God none of them found her and Barry—it was like a miracle that he’d come along. He was like some kind of superhero who had rescued them. She pictured him flying through the sky like Superman, and smiled at the ridiculous image.