A Different River Read online

  4

  Eight thousand pounds AT THE bottom of her holdall, the remains of the beef in a Tupperware container on the passenger seat, Miriam set off to drive home. The sun had failed to break through all day and, within half an hour of leaving, the light had gone. Traffic was atrocious on Sunday evenings but she was familiar with the road, and with Radio 4 to keep her company, the miles were soon clocking up.

  She’d negotiated the weekend reasonably well. Better than on her previous visit, when she’d lost her temper with her parents for no reason other than their being old, frail and indecisive. This time she’d taken several deep breaths when they’d come out with absurd pronouncements. (Admittedly, ATMs weren’t without security issues but her father needed to face the fact they were here to stay, and using them had to be safer than stowing his cash in a shoebox at the bottom of the wardrobe.) They’d spent Saturday evening watching television, sticking with the safety of Strictly Come Dancing and Lucy Worsley. On Sunday morning she had, under her father’s instruction, doused the garden paths with MossKleer and pruned spindly rose bushes whilst her mother cooked ‘dinner’. The money wasn’t mentioned again and she decided to do as her father had suggested – hold on to it ‘just in case’.

  At the halfway point of her journey, the tug of filial duty gave way to that of maternal obligation. Naomi had been the result of carelessness and the assumption was that subsequent babies would come along to order, but several miscarriages had taken their toll and by the time Naomi started school, they had accepted she would be their only (much loved) child. Sam and Naomi had always been as thick as thieves. Three is a tricky number at the best of times and she’d often felt excluded. Now she and Naomi must find a way of talking to each other. Honestly and openly. It was easier to continue fumbling blindly along, skirting around the devastation that Sam’s death and addiction had inflicted upon them but it would surely damage them if they failed to address it.

  It was past the children’s bedtime by the time Naomi got back, but they were still rampaging around.

  ‘David winds them up then dumps them back on me,’ Naomi said. ‘He does it every time. It drives me crazy.’

  Abandoning hopes of an early night with her library book, she smiled. ‘How was your weekend? Did you have fun?’

  ‘I did. We got sooo drunk. And I spent sooo much money.’ Naomi frowned and pointed at the ceiling. ‘They’re bouncing on the bed. You couldn’t pop up…?’

  The children greeted her with great gusto. David and his parents had packed more than seemed possible into their weekend. Finally Miriam bribed them into bed with the promise of the next chapter of The Hobbit. Max soon drifted off but Rosa refused to let go and, lulled by the monotony of her own voice, Miriam was in danger of falling asleep before her granddaughter.

  Eventually Rosa’s breathing slowed to a steady snuffle. To be on the safe side, Miriam gave it a couple more minutes before easing herself up from her beanbag seat. She looked at her sleeping grandchildren. Max barely visible beneath a mound of soft toys. Rosa, arm flung back, parted lips revealing front teeth that looked several sizes too big for her petite mouth.

  She kissed them, switched off the bedside lamp and tiptoed to the door.

  When teaching had occupied too much of her life there were things she’d longed, but hadn’t the time, to do. Now Miriam was on the other side of the playground, the hours between drop-off and pick-up dribbling away in sham busy-ness. She was treading water and it was wearing her out.

  Jonathan Tate, her GP, had prescribed ‘happy pills’. Two weeks ago he’d reduced the dosage, congratulating her on progressing from ‘moderate’ to ‘mild’ clinical depression. Hoo-bloody-ray,she’d said, waving an imaginary flag. But Doctor Tate – a self-contained young man with shaky hands and scuffed shoes – hadn’t cracked a smile.

  To anyone encountering Miriam Siskin – or ‘Naomi’s mother’ as she was better known – she probably appeared busily and willingly occupied. Retired woman. Helping her daughter forge a career. Two beautiful grandchildren to look after. Must love every second of it. Was it selfish to want more? She berated herself. Come on, woman. Write a book. Learn Mandarin. Take up… bell-ringing. Makesomething – even if it’s a mistake.

  What she lacked was a friend. A candid, caring friend who demanded nothing of her. A confidante with whom she could speak freely and openly. Someone who wouldn’t judge her when she admitted she wished her parents would die (together, peacefully, in their own beds). Or that Naomi and David would get back together. Or bemoan forty years of marriage to the wrong man. Even confess that she’d flushed his ashes down the loo. In fact every single thing she felt guilty about admitting to herself.

  The silly thing was she had just such a friend but they had become disconnected. She and Frankie Slattery had met on the stomach-churning first day at grammar school when they were allocated adjoining desks. It shouldn’t have worked. Miriam Edlin, biddable, diligent, forgiving. Frances Slattery, sharp, witty, reckless. (Amoral, although Miriam didn’t recognise that until years later.) But it did work. Through those years of bras, periods, unreasonable parents, boyfriends and, eventually, sex, they’d shared the highs and lows.

  Frankie had gone through boyfriends at the same rate she went through stockings, never giving a thought to what lay beyond the next party or the next pair of heels. Miriam wasn’t good at flirting and consequently found herself with boys who knotted their school ties correctly and handed in homework on time. This natural division had eliminated competition – quite something at that critical age.

  They’d drifted apart when Frankie, no longer content with ‘boys’, had switched her attention to men. Once in a very blue moon, she received a postcard – from Amsterdam or Barcelona – ‘having a marvellous time’ or something similarly uninformative scrawled in Frankie’s flamboyant hand. Frankie had visited a few times, making sure to be out of the way before Sam came home as they didn’t get on. Miriam had mailed her when he died, and again when she moved in with Naomi. She’d heard nothing which was disappointing but not entirely surprising. Despite her unreliability, Miriam still considered her to be her best friend and when she next turned up, she would offload the whole lot.

  Miriam half-hoped she’d lost Callum Robertson’s card. It would rule out the crazy idea which had wormed its way into her head as she’d lain, sleepless, in her old bedroom. But there it was, in the fruit bowl, a small rectangular omen.

  She thumbed his number and he picked up right away, giving her no chance to waver.

  ‘Hello?’ he said.

  ‘Callum? This is Miriam Siskin. We met the other—’

  ‘Of course. Hello again.’

  ‘I’m not interrupting anything?’

  ‘Nothing important. It’s good to hear from you.’ His soft burr was more evident on the phone.

  Outside the window, a blackbird was mercilessly yanking a worm out of the lawn, persisting until its pinkish-brown victim lay squirming at its feet.

  ‘I expect you’re wondering why I’m phoning,’ she said. ‘I’ve an appointment near the art college tomorrow. Would it be okay to call in? See what goes on. That’s if I wouldn’t be in the way.’

  The bird was pecking at the worm, snipping it into pieces, each piece still writhing.

  ‘Terrific,’ he said, ‘I’d love to show you around.’

  She decided on her grey linen trouser-suit, teamed with a white shirt. Her size had remained constant for the past thirty years. There had been other changes, of course. Her hair, worn at the nape of her neck, Virginia Woolf-style, had turned from near-black to near-white. She had her share of wrinkles but dark eyebrows and strong, white teeth gave her a vigorous look. Her breasts were no longer firm, and the flesh on her arms was flabby, but she still looked reasonably okay in a swimming costume. She wasn’t vain but to have lost her looks as well as everything else would have been too cruel.

  The art school had once occupied an imposing Victorian building in the centre of town. The turquoise
patinaed dome and crisp, red brickwork had made it a distinctive landmark. But, as part of ‘essential cuts’, the council had sold the building to developers. It was now ‘luxury apartments’ whilst the art school had been relegated to what amounted to a warehouse on the outskirts of town.

  ‘Moving here must have been a wrench,’ she said when Callum collected her from Reception.

  ‘It was for me. I loved the old building but the students don’t seem bothered,’ he said.

  ‘I would have thought art students would be sensitive to their surroundings.’

  ‘Art students? Sensitive?’ He laughed. ‘Come and see for yourself.’

  The building was a series of featureless, interconnecting spaces. In the first, three boiler-suited youngsters were struggling with rusty metal rods and a girl was fiddling about with wire mesh. In the next a man was tearing up pieces of foam rubber whilst another filmed him. There was a strong smell of adhesive. The sound of metal striking metal and classical music filled the air.

  ‘It’s not at all as I imagined,’ she said. ‘None of it.’

  ‘No? You weren’t expecting easels and canvas were you?’

  ‘I’m not sure what I expected. I must admit I can’t see where life drawing fits in.’

  ‘Making marks on paper is vital to the process. “Drawing makes you see things clearer, and clearer and clearer still, until your eyes ache”,’ he said.

  ‘Gosh. How very poetic.’

  ‘I’ll come clean,’ he said, ‘Hockney said it. But it’s absolutely true.’

  She followed him down a corridor and he explained that, as well as studios, the college had suites of rooms dedicated to video and audio projects.

  ‘So does no one paint anymore?’ she said.

  ‘I do. But best not tell anyone.’ He pointed to a door. ‘My room’s through here.’

  They entered a pokey room with frosted glass windows. A leather armchair occupied one corner and the walls were a chaos of posters, photographs and drawings. A mobile consisting of geometric shapes dangled from the ceiling.

  ‘This is homely,’ she said.

  ‘My retreat from the twenty-first century. Coffee?’

  He motioned her towards the chair and she watched as he filled the reservoir of an espresso machine and slipped a capsule into the compartment.

  ‘Did you have any luck finding your model?’ she said.

  ‘Afraid not. I can fake something up for this week’s classes. I’ll get them each to pose for five minutes. Sketching the human form quickly and accurately is a useful skill.’

  She cleared her throat. ‘Actually I know someone who might be interested. In life modelling, I mean.’

  He looked up. ‘Really?’

  She was poised on the highest diving board, raised on her toes, ready to launch herself into the unknown yet still able to take a step back.

  ‘Me.’ Her voice was barely loud enough to hear, let alone believe. ‘I don’t have any experience but…’

  She felt shy. Embarrassed. Exposed. If talking about it made her feel this way, how would she feel standing naked in front of strangers? Why didn’t he say something? Maybe she’d got it wrong. Maybe he was looking for a lissom young thing with pert bosoms and buttocks and perfect skin.

  At last he spoke. ‘Why would you want to do this, Miriam? It’s exhausting. Boring. The money’s rubbish. Six hours a week. Ten pounds an hour. It’s hardly a fortune.’

  ‘That’s sixty pounds more than I’m earning now.’

  How had she expected him to react? Certainly not by warning her she would be bored. To her it seemed the least boring thing that she could possibly do.

  ‘Aren’t you going to mention the nakedness aspect of it?’ she said.

  ‘Do I need to? You’ve looked at paintings of nude figures. The first thing you must have considered was “the nakedness aspect”. Assuming, therefore, that you aren’t horrified by the idea of nudity, you need to understand what else the job entails. It’s not as easy as you think. Models sometimes faint from standing still. And it can get bloody cold in the studio.’ He handed her a cup of coffee. ‘Yours is black, if I remember.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she said.

  He slotted another capsule into the machine. ‘Has this got anything to do with what you were telling me the other evening?’

  ‘Of course it has. I want to do something… brave. To test myself. To see myself differently. I want to become a different person. I wouldn’t tell my family. Does that sound bonkers?’

  He threw his head back and began to laugh.

  ‘Why are you laughing?’ she said.

  ‘No one says “bonkers” these days.’

  ‘So you’ll let me give it a try?’

  ‘Let’s both mull it over for a few days. Talk again at the end of the week.’

  5

  ‘You look… different,’ NAOMI SAID.

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘I don’t know. Perkier.’

  ‘Maybe it’s these.’ Miriam rattled a tub of vitamin tablets. She did feel ‘perkier’ but she doubted it was a result of vitamin pills. ‘I’m going swimming after I drop the children off.’

  ‘Lucky you.’ Naomi was, as usual, flicking her phone. ‘Could you collect my coat from the cleaner’s, Mum? The ticket’s on the fridge.’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  Naomi glanced up, but Miriam offered no explanation for her uncertainty, the first small but significant marker in her self-rehabilitation.

  She didn’t care for the leisure centre. It was unwelcoming. An intimidating fervour prevailed. People in clingy sportswear, gripping holdalls and ‘power’ drinks, stomped about, grim-faced, as if under military orders. They tended to be on the thin side, too – an endorsement of what they’d achieved here or, as she was more inclined to think, testimony that the people who should be here, weren’t.

  She paid her money and pushed through the turnstile. After the crisp November air, the heat was sapping. The acrid smell of chlorine and the echoing shrieks of swimmers filtered through from the pool, catapulting her back into the panic of childhood swimming lessons and eroding the courage she’d spent hours summoning up.

  The changing room bustled with strident women (young, old, middle-aged) and a crop of noisy, uncooperative toddlers. Her impulse was to find a dimly-lit corner in which to wriggle out of her clothes and into her swimming costume. But that would defeat her objective.

  Numbered lockers lined the Spartan room. A bench with coat-hooks above and a shallow gutter beneath, ran down its centre. She stationed herself at the midway point and, looping her rucksack on a hook, began to undress, slowly and methodically. Jacket. Shoes. Socks. Cardigan. Jeans. Shirt. Until she was left in her underwear.

  The heat was overwhelming and, as she removed her bra and knickers, she was overcome with giddiness. Breathing deeply, she grasped the rail, steadying herself and waiting for the wooziness to pass, acclimatising to public nakedness as her breasts, thighs, buttocks came in contact with the dank air.

  The women continued nattering, taking no notice of her. Maybe they were being polite. Discreet. Or maybe they thought her unhinged. (She might have thought so too had she found herself standing next to a naked woman.) So far, so good. But for this to be a true test of nerve, she needed these women to look at her. Engage with her.

  She made a neat pile of her clothes and transferred them to a locker. Fishing out two fifty pence pieces from the zipped compartment at the front of her rucksack, she walked slowly towards a gaggle of women, all fully clothed.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘Would you by any chance have a pound coin? For the locker?’

  They seemed unfazed by her nudity and one of them took a handful of change from her pocket and sifted through it. ‘There you go, love.’

  Miriam swapped the two fifty pences for a single coin. ‘Thanks.’

  She donned her black swimming costume, locked the locker and fastened the key-strap around her wrist. Then she went through to the pool and stood
in the shallow end, waiting for her heartbeat to return to normal.

  Next day she spent an hour in the art gallery which was part of the town’s museum. Sometimes she brought the children here but they preferred the natural history section with its mangy stuffed rabbits and animal skeletons and she had rarely had a chance to study the paintings in detail. She dawdled past uninspired landscapes, characterless bowls of fruit and stuffy-looking military men whose gaudy medal ribbons were the only relief to their khaki uniforms and brown leather armchairs. She wouldn’t have given any of them wall space.

  She was heading for the café when, in a side room, she spotted what she’d hoped to find. A painting of a nude woman. In fact two of the same woman. In one, she was coming down a very ordinary flight of stairs. In the other, going up.

  She consulted the card fixed to the wall alongside the canvases. ‘J. L. Knox (1899-1943). Oil on canvas. 1934.’ The woman was naked apart from a pair of red pumps. Her short, dark hair, cut in a bob, bore out the date but the titles ‘Woman on the Stair – I’ and ‘Woman on the Stair – II’ gave nothing away.

  At first glance, they were purely studies of a nude woman. Yet, take a few minutes to consider, and the pumps and lack of any other artefact (even a stair carpet) created a conundrum. Were she pushed to concoct the narrative, it might be a summer’s morning, the woman pausing on her way downstairs (to boil the kettle or feed the cat), pausing again on her way back to bed or to get dressed. Miriam had never wandered downstairs naked but it wasn’t unthinkable. The unimaginable factor was that someone would be waiting at the foot of the stair, ready to capture the moment in oil paint.