The Colour of Mermaids Read online

  “After that show last year of the comedy seagull photos, I’m not surprised you find them a bit”—Eva glanced at her friend’s benign face, then up at a canvas of swollen, dark paint, which seemed to throb before her eyes—“unfathomable. You could see that one, for example, as…a bruise. An emotional bruise. We all have them. I suppose that’s what frustrates me. He’s putting all this emotion on canvas, and it could be dark and disturbing, but I feel almost as if he’s cranking them out to order. Do you see?”

  “I liked the seagulls,” Lyndsey smiled nostalgically. Then she glanced over her shoulder, satisfied that Daniel was at a safe distance, still surrounded by acolytes. “But when I look at this… It’s like there’s something wrong with him. What’s going on in his head?”

  “Who knows? Does he?” Eva tipped her head to one side, to see the painting from another angle. “But don’t you think that’s the point of art, really? I look at this and it makes me think of…well…splitting up with Miles. An emotional bruise, which faded. And everyone else looking at it thinks of something painful that happened to them. And maybe—maybe—he does it on purpose, but in his production line way, stirring those feelings up, forcing people to look at that pain inside them. Or maybe horrible things are going on in that handsome head, and he spills it out in paint.” Eva sighed. “Maybe it’s a cross of the two.”

  “Oh God, he’s looking at us,” Lyndsey whispered, quickly turning her attention to the painting. Years in gallery administration had left her with the talent for looking both interested and appreciative even when she wasn’t, a skill that Eva knew her friend was justifiably rather proud of. A skill that had saved her career on more than one occasion. “You’ve really upset him, Eva, so you’d better hope what’s in his head isn’t as horrible as his pictures.”

  Eva met his glance as she combed her fingers through her long hair with a careless swish. He was doing a very good job of not looking upset at all, despite what Lyndsey seemed to think.

  “He’s smiling, Lyndsey. He doesn’t look upset to me.”

  “I’m not going to look at him. He might put me in a painting if I do!”

  Eva nudged her, laughing. “Don’t be silly, you’d love it if he did that!”

  “Only if I could have bunnies,” Lyndsey told her cheerily. “But if he painted bunnies, he’d probably paint them with…I don’t know, horns or something. Horny bunnies, can you imagine?”

  “Horny bunnies?” Eva laughed loudly and hid her mouth behind her hand. “Is this a new ladies’ toy that’s just hit the market?”

  “I wouldn’t know.” Her friend laughed. “Go on, show me another Daniel Scott masterpiece, before he asks us what we’re talking about. I’m a teeny bit terrified of him!”

  They went on to the next painting, but all the while Eva was aware of someone’s gaze following her. She glanced over her shoulder, only to see Daniel again, assured and confident as he toured the room, watching her. Had she got under his skin?

  Good. Because he’s got under mine.

  “This one… It looks like a scream, doesn’t it? Not that you can see a mouth, as such, but it feels like a scream. There’s tension in it. You can almost hear, can’t you?” Eva gestured towards it, her silver bangles jangling on her wrist.

  “I wouldn’t want it in my loo! It’d scare my little Pears Soap children witless. They’d run out of their frames.”

  “At least you don’t have a crocheted crinoline lady on your toilet roll, or she’d faint!” Eva laughed. “But this sort of art, it’s not meant to be background noise. It’s not meant to be lift muzak. It’s supposed to challenge you. And it does…”

  Lyndsey nodded, her lips pursed as she considered the canvas. Then she admitted, “I think I sort of fancy him, though. Isn’t that awful?”

  “He’s a handsome sod, there’s no getting around it. He knows it too… But are you sure you find it attractive, all that intensely intense business?” With a return of her schoolgirlish mischief, Eva giggled. “I do hope he wears black underpants, though. Or perhaps none at all! If you found out he wore ones with cartoon characters on, it’d be pretty disappointing, wouldn’t it?”

  “Or horrid grey y-fronts.” Lyndsey gestured to a waiter and took two more glasses, handing one to Eva. “Or silky lady’s knickers! He’s too intense for me. I like someone a bit more…you know. A boy who’ll wine and dine me, not one with things like that in his head!”

  Eva took the glass. He was watching again, she knew, and the thought of it made her burn inside. He was playing with her, though—of course he was. The man could have anyone he wanted. And, if rumour was to be believed, he regularly did. But it was exciting to think that Daniel Scott, of all people, was flirting with her. As she sipped her drink, she caught his glance again, so she ran the tip of her tongue across her lip. “Oh, I don’t know, I think he’d be rather fun.”

  He lifted his hand and brushed it through his dark hair, catching his sunglasses in his fingers as he did so. Still holding her gaze, he slipped them into his jacket and raised one eyebrow, as though to ask, happy now?

  “I bet he’s really dirty.” Lyndsey giggled. “In the bedroom, I mean.”

  Eva raised her hand casually to her hair but shielded her face from Lyndsey as she gave Daniel a wink in response that her friend couldn’t see.

  Then she turned her back on him. “Dirty as in covered in paint?” She laughed. “Oh, but I know what you mean. I bet a man like him would be incredibly naughty!”

  “You fancy him!” She took a sip of Prosecco then whispered through giggles, “Eva and scary artist sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g!”

  Eva blushed as red as her satin dress. “Well? And so what if I do? Tons of other people do as well. He’s hardly going to be interested in me, is he? Especially not after my terrible review of his paintings!”

  Lyndsey glanced at her watch and pouted. “I have to leave you alone and round up the punters. Rupes wants to do a little talk and pay homage to the great man in our midst. Promise me that you won’t insult anybody while I’m gone?”

  Eva patted Lyndsey’s arm. “Worry not, I’m on my best behaviour.”

  “I was going to say enjoy the artworks, but”—Lyndsey gave a theatrical shudder—“maybe not!”

  The she trotted away on her ballet flats, quietly ushering the patrons towards the centre of the gallery space. Lyndsey Davis was perfectly suited to this sort of schmoozing, petite and smiling and neatly turned out in her rose-patterned sundress, a red cardigan over her shoulders. She gave her boss and his guest a wide berth, concentrating instead on the great and the good who had been invited to this monumental occasion in the history of the gallery. Of course she would leave the guest of honour to Rupert’s care, because nobody loved the limelight like Rupert Hawley.

  Eva stood in the crowd of dinner-jacketed men and women in their evening gowns, of artists so dedicated to the cause that they had turned up in ripped jeans and raggedy knitwear, of reporters tapping notes on their phones. But she didn’t pay any attention to them. Her entire focus was absorbed by Daniel Scott. The handsome sod.

  She fanned herself with the exhibition programme that she hadn’t got round to looking at and waited.

  Rupert moved to stand beneath the largest painting, a canvas drenched in reds of every imaginable hue, thickly coated with streaks of paint, the textures leaping from the surface as though it were an alien landscape.

  Blood by numbers.

  Daniel stood ten feet or so to the side, his arms folded across his chest, his face unreadable because, for reasons best known to him, he was wearing the Wayfarers that had been nestled in his hair.

  Indoors. Because of course, he was Daniel Scott, who had made art the new rock ‘n’ roll. Allegedly.

  He wouldn’t be giving a speech—Eva knew enough about him to know that. She also knew enough about Rupert to know that he would have more than enough to say to make up for Daniel’s avoidance of the limelight. He was just that sort of man.

  “Ladi
es and gentlemen.” Rupert clapped his hands and glanced back at Daniel, as though seeking some approval. He didn’t receive it, Eva noted, as Daniel merely waited, arms folded, his mouth set in a tight, serious line.

  “Ladies and gentleman,” Rupert began again, not at all deterred. “Please join me in welcoming Daniel Scott not only back to the UK, but to Brighton and the Hawley Gallery.”

  He turned to Daniel again and applauded, joined by the enthusiastic audience. Every eye in the place fell on the bad boy of English art and he rewarded them with the briefest, most cursory tip of the head that Eva had ever seen.

  ‘Was it the Met or the Tate Modern?’

  But the applause just went on. And Eva didn’t join in.

  It was too warm in the gallery, too many overdressed people packed in together. Too much free booze. And far, far too much sycophantic twaddle. Eva made for the French windows at the back of the room and headed out onto the terrace. A cool breeze came in from the sea and fluttered the pages of her programme open on a moody photo of Daniel. A gushing blurb, doubtless penned by Rupert, filled the opposite page. Eva read it under her breath.

  “Autodidact… Self-taught genius… No formal training. Raised in care. Visceral…controversial… Cocking a snoot at the Art Establishment…the Met…Tate Modern…Pompidou…BBC 4 documentary…household name.”

  It told her nothing new about the man. These were merely the same facts that were always trotted off about him with the ease of myth. The man who had upset the art establishment apple cart, then been taken for a lap of honour in it.

  Eva took her time leafing through the programme. The photos really didn’t do justice to Daniel’s paintings. They had to be seen in person, to stand under them and take in their size. But if only… If only he’d push himself.

  Inside, she could hear the steady drone of Rupert’s speech, the occasional burst of polite laughter or applause, but out here, all was calm. The sun was setting over the ocean, reflecting red on the surface as the heat of the day bowed to a sultry night. Eva took a deep breath of fresh air, her only companion a distant yacht sailing a peaceful horizon.

  There was another rustle of applause from inside, this one going on longer, signalling the end of the speech. Tribute had been paid to the man who wore sunglasses indoors and was, she imagined, being adored by his public even now. Standing beneath his paintings and silently preening, the quintessential man in black.

  She vaguely heard the sound of a cigarette lighter igniting close by but didn’t pay her fellow escapee any attention. She wasn’t in the mood for sharing platitudes about how marvellous it was to welcome Daniel Scott to Brighton. Besides, Lyndsey would be back with more Prosecco soon enough—all she had to do was wait.

  “I’ve wracked my brains,” she heard a man say. “Was it the Moscow Modern?”

  Daniel Scott himself.

  Eva slipped the programme into her handbag. “Yes. And MOMA in Glasgow.” She raised her eyebrow at him. “And my most famous work, the border of dancing cakes on every page of a bestselling cookbook.”

  “That was you?” Daniel took a long drag on his cigarette. His eyes were still hidden behind the lenses of his Wayfarers, but she sensed his gaze was on her. “You must be due a retrospective?”

  “Put it in your diary, you won’t want to miss it, it’s next month at the South Bank Centre.” You infuriating, good-looking bastard. “You’re not annoying me, you know. You are outside now, so I won’t complain about the sunglasses. Although once the sun’s set, they should really come off again.”

  “Call it the Daniel Scott Method,” he suggested, repeating Eva’s own words back to her. “Should I include a sunset in my landscape? The Haywain, with Sunset and Dancing Cakes.”

  “Don’t you even want to try?” Eva’s gaze drifted down from the sunglasses, which only showed her reflection, to the triangle of exposed skin peeping out from his unbuttoned shirt. The man radiated sex, and standing out here on the terrace with him—and only him—Eva was deeply aware of her attraction to him, of every reaction in her body at his closeness. She was at risk of making a fool of herself, she knew, but…she wanted him.

  “Do you think I should?” He held out the cigarette to her. “It’s a genuine question.”

  Eva took the cigarette and placed the filter, damp from his mouth, between her lips. She coughed on the first puff, then took another, inhaling deeply. She breathed out slowly, the smoke carried away on the strengthening breeze, and passed him the cigarette back.

  “Yes, I think you should.” Eva pushed back her loose hair, her bangles clicking. “You are an exceptional artist and you know it, but I just feel that you could go that little bit further. Don’t you like a challenge?”

  Daniel didn’t answer. Instead he put the cigarette between his lips and allowed himself the time to take a leisurely draw. When he removed it, he still didn’t speak for a long moment. Finally he broke his silence to tell her, “The first twenty years of my life were one long challenge.”

  “Yes…so it says in the programme.” Eva wasn’t unsympathetic towards what must have been a difficult childhood, and one so different from her own middle-class Home Counties upbringing. But she had heard Daniel’s myth so often that it had become a cliché. “But your work goes for thousands now, millions. You can do whatever you bloody well like.”

  “What I do—everything I do,” he replied, holding out the cigarette again, “Is instinct. I don’t plan, I don’t think about tomorrow. Maybe I’ll wake up one day and give you your landscape, maybe I’ll work through the night and paint you. My instincts tell me what’s right and I don’t argue with them.”

  Eva took the cigarette from him. The filter was still tinged red with her lipstick, and this time when she puffed, she shaped a perfect smoke ring. “What if you told your instincts to give you a shove? Or doesn’t it work like that?”

  “How does it work for you?” His voice was a little lower and she felt his gaze on her again. “What do Ms Catesby’s instincts tell her?”

  “Do you mean in my studio…or do you mean right now?” She held his gaze for as long as she could, then stared off at the horizon. “Do you suppose my instincts aren’t worth a damn because I’m not an art world bad boy?”

  “I’m asking you as one artist to another,” he clarified. “I don’t care if you’re a bad boy or a dancing cupcake.”

  Eva chuckled at that. “You must have seen me in my costume! That lot in there, half of them won’t speak to me because I’m commercial. It’s not proper art, according to them. But it still comes from in here.” She placed her hand on her chest, her heart’s determined beat thudding beneath her palm. “Instinct, perhaps. Even if it’s a dancing cake.”

  “Nobody has any right to tell an artist what constitutes art,” Daniel decided, in the way that only someone who charged millions for a work could. “And they’ll all want to talk to you now, because here you are with Daniel Scott. Exchanging philosophies of proper art.”

  Eva dropped her hand from her chest and held it against Daniel’s, his heart under there somewhere beneath layers of clothes. “Is this where your instincts live, Daniel? Like mine?”

  “You found me out.” He smiled. “What do your instincts tell you right now?”

  “They’re telling me to run away from the bad boy,” Eva whispered. “But I don’t want to.”

  “Tell me what you want.”

  Desire rose inside her with such strength that Eva could barely speak. “I want you. I want— Oh, fuck it, I’m making an idiot of myself, but…” She tipped her face up towards him, trying to seek out his lips with her own. Yes, she was an idiot, even more of a fawning fan than the people she had earlier mocked. An art groupie, was that it? If he pushed her away and someone saw, everyone would find out, the commercial artist rejected by the man who created proper art.

  “Can I get anybody anyth…” Lyndsey’s words trailed away as she realised that she had interrupted a moment. She just about managed to stifle her awkward giggle a
s Eva and Daniel looked her way. “Excuse me, I didn’t—”

  “Is there anywhere private we can go?” Daniel asked.

  Eva smoothed down her hair. “To discuss something.”

  Lyndsey bit her coral-pink lip and Eva could see the worry in her eyes, even at this distance. She glanced back into the gallery then quickly took her identity laminate from around her neck, holding down her wooden necklace to keep the two from tangling as she did so.

  “Buzz through the fire door at the end of the terrace.” Her voice was hushed, but Eva saw something else in her friend’s eyes, the excitement of a secret shared. “Up the steps and buzz through the first door into Rupert’s office. Just… Leave it as you found it?”

  Daniel took the laminate from her and pressed his other hand to the small of Eva’s back. He didn’t thank Lyndsey, just wordlessly urged Eva to move.

  What the hell am I doing?

  But she couldn’t stop. She didn’t want to. When they reached the fire door, she whispered, “Are your instincts telling you to fuck me?”

  “They’re telling me that you want me to.” He pressed the laminate to a small box beside the door. It gave a low beep and she heard the sound of the lock springing back a moment before Daniel pulled the door open and followed her inside. A flight of steps stood before them and the door slammed behind them.

  “Then they’re right.” They went up the steps, and Eva saw the office door with Rupert’s nameplate on it. The man who had taken her on one date and hadn’t got any further than a kiss. Sorry, Rupert. “And do you want to fuck me?”

  At the office door he caught Eva’s wrist in a gentle grip and turned her to face him. He was still wearing the sunglasses, of course, because— Why? Because he was as infuriating as he was attractive.

  “You know I want you.”

  Eva stroked her other hand down his cheek, then gave him a soft peck on the chin as she caressed lower, over his torso and down to his groin. She breathed out in surprise as she touched his erection through his clothes. “Oh, I most certainly do.”