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Roddy snorted. ‘Well, that’s something, I suppose.’
‘Secondly.’ Phoebe hesitated, her eyes closed, and then took a breath. ‘I’ve never really been brave enough to say this to anyone before, but – You see, over the years, I have, with great difficulty, built up a certain … faith in myself. In my painting, I mean. In fact, it’s got to the point where I think it’s probably quite good.’ She smiled. ‘That must sound very arrogant.’
‘Not at all.’
‘It wasn’t always like this. There was a time when I didn’t have any faith in myself at all. It’s quite … painful to talk about, but – well, it happened when I was a student. I’d given up nursing for a while to go to art college, and I was living with some people in this house – we were sharing it – when someone came and stayed with us for a few days. A visitor. And one day I was out shopping, and I came back to find that he was in my room, looking at this painting that was only half-finished. Less than half-finished, really. And it was as if … as if he’d seen me naked, I suppose. And not just that, but he started trying to talk about the painting, and it was obvious that it meant something completely different to him, that I was completely failing to communicate anything through it, in fact, and I … It was very strange. A few days later he left without saying anything. Didn’t say goodbye to any of us. He left us all feeling … empty, somehow, and I couldn’t bear the thought of looking at those paintings again – of anyone looking at them. The upshot was that I asked the landlady if we could have a bonfire in the back yard, and I burnt everything I’d done. Every painting, every drawing. I dropped out of college and went back into nursing full time. And that was that for a while. I didn’t paint at all. Not that I wasn’t thinking about it. I still used to visit galleries, and read all the magazines and everything. There was this sort of – empty space, inside me, where I used to paint, and I was looking for something to fill it: someone, I should say, because I was longing just to find a picture – any picture – which would leap out at me and suddenly … co
She took a few sips from her glass and brushed a strand of hair back from her brow. Roddy didn’t speak for some time.
‘What we should probably do,’ he said at last, ‘is take a look through the pictures tomorrow and see what we can arrange.’ Phoebe nodded. ‘Right now, I think we’d better go to bed.’ She looked up, questioning. ‘Separately,’ he explained.
‘All right.’
Together they climbed the Great Staircase, and at the entrance to the East Corridor, they kissed a formal good-night.
4
Phoebe felt tiny in the four-poster. Her mattress was soft and full of lumps, and although she had intended to lie to the side of the bed nearest the window, she found herself rolled by the weight of her own body into a deep valley at the centre. The bed creaked whenever she moved: but then the whole house seemed to be forever creaking, or groaning, or whispering, or rustling, as if never for a moment at ease with itself, and in an effort to close her ears to this disquieting soundtrack, she tried to focus her mind on the day’s strange events. She was pleased, on the whole, with the way things had worked out with Roddy. Even before arriving at Winshaw Towers, she had taken the reluctant decision to sleep with him if he made this his absolute precondition for promoting her work, but she was glad that she hadn’t been obliged to go through with it. Instead, something much better, and much more unexpected, was starting to emerge from their weekend together: a sense of mutual understanding. She even realized – very much to her own surprise – that she was begi
But all at once she was aware of another noise, too. It was coming from the direction of the door, which she had taken the precaution of locking before getting into bed. She sat up cautiously and reached out for the table lamp, which cast a murky, ineffectual glow over the room. She looked towards the door. Suddenly feeling like the leading lady in some low-budget and none too original horror film, she realized that the handle was turning. There was someone out in the corridor, trying to get in.
Phoebe swung her legs out of bed and tiptoed towards the door. She was wearing a thick, striped cotton nightshirt which buttoned up at the front and reached down almost to her knees.
‘Who is it?’ she asked, in a brave, slightly quavering voice, after the handle had been tried a few more times.
‘Phoebe? Are you awake?’ It was Roddy’s voice: a loud whisper.
She sighed with exasperation. ‘Well of course I’m awake,’ she said, unlocking the door and holding it ajar. ‘If I wasn’t before I certainly am now.’
‘Can I come in?’
‘I suppose so.’
She opened the door and Roddy, who was wearing a satin kimono, slid inside and sat down on the bed.
‘What is it?’
‘Come and sit down a minute.’
She sat beside him.
‘I couldn’t sleep,’ he said.