‘There are days like this,’ she said, ‘that I wish could go on for ever.’ She poured us each a glass of water, struggling a little with the weight of the unwieldy jug. She glugged her glass and smacked her lips. ‘Please eat,’ she said. In her own habitat, she seemed much more relaxed. Gone was the haunted expression in Reede’s office, even the debonair diffidence she sometimes employed for me and Pamela. I took up a quarter of the pork pie and began to eat it with a piece of bread roll. It was a good pie; the pastry melting away, the cool of the jelly, the rich shock of pig.
‘I hope we’re not giving you too much to do at the office?’ she asked.
‘Oh, no,’ I said. ‘It’s all manageable.’
‘Good.’
‘How’s your married friend?’
I looked at Quick, worried she was a mind--reader. ‘Fine, thank you. She and her husband have moved to Queen’s Park.’
‘You’re not lonely?’ Quick said.
‘No.’
‘Writing anything?’
‘A little.’
‘Can I read it?’
‘Read it?’
‘Well, that’s what -people usually do with writing, isn’t it?’ She looked amused.
‘I don’t—-’
‘I’d be honoured if you showed me.’
‘It’s not very good,’ I said.
She pulled a face. ‘Does it matter whether you think it’s any good?’
‘Of course.’
‘Why?’
‘Well – because – because I have to be critical of it, to make it better.’
‘Well, that’s a given. But isn’t writing something as natural to you as breathing?’
‘In some ways. But I have to work at what I write,’ I said, my voice rising. ‘Every writer does.’
‘But you pick up a pen and write without much preamble.’
‘I suppose.’
‘And are you proud of breathing? Do you revere your ability to breathe?’
‘It’s who I am. So if it’s not any good, then neither am I.’
She stared at me. ‘Do you mean as a person?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh, no. Don’t be moral about this, Odelle. You’re not walking around with a golden halo beaming out of you depending on the power of your paragraph. You don’t come into it, once someone else is reading. It stands apart from you. Don’t let your ability drag you down, don’t hang it round your neck like an albatross.’ She lit another cigarette. ‘When something is considered “good”, it draws -people in, often resulting with the eventual destruction of the creator. I’ve seen it happen. So whether you think it’s “good” or not should be entirely irrelevant, if you want to carry on. It’s tough, but there it is. And of course, whether I think it’s good should also be neither here nor there. Even more so, in fact. I think you’re worrying too much.’
I was silent. I felt like I’d been shot.
‘Do you want to publish your work, Odelle?’ she went on, as if we were talking about nothing so substantial as a train timetable.
I dug my shoes into the grass and studied the tips intently. ‘Yes.’
Surprisingly, my honesty created a companionable silence, a moment of reprieve. To publish my work was what I wanted; it was the only goal I’d really ever had.
‘And do you hope to marry one day?’ she asked. ‘Have children?’
This was a swerve, but I had grown used to her staccato, jumping thoughts. Often with Quick you got the sense there was a whole other conversation going on underneath her words, one that only she could hear. The idea of being a wife was vaguely odd to me; the thought of being a mother, completely alien. Even so, the mind is elastic, so I thought of Lawrie and leapfrogged prematurely into the future. ‘Maybe one day,’ I said.
‘The only problem is, children grow up. Or maybe that’s a good thing, in your case. They can look after themselves, you can look after the words.’
‘Can’t I look after both?’
‘I couldn’t tell you. I’ve never tried.’ I considered the house behind us; Quick had no sign of a family, children or otherwise. I tried to imagine Quick as a child, and I couldn’t do it. She was too sophisticated and strange to ever have been such a rudimentary being.
Quick placed her cigarette in the ashtray. She readjusted her glasses, and forked a tomato with such expert precision that not a seed escaped. She plunged it into her mouth, and swallowed it. ‘Mr Scott brought his painting to the Skelton because of you,’ she said. ‘Didn’t he?’
My stomach flipped. ‘I – what? – I—-’
‘Don’t worry, Odelle. You haven’t done anything wrong.’
‘He didn’t – it wasn’t me, it was the Skelton’s reputation – he—-’
‘Odelle,’ she said firmly. ‘I saw you kissing in the reception.’
‘I’m sorry. We shouldn’t have – I don’t want—-’
‘Oh, don’t worry about that. Are you happy?’
I thought about this. ‘Yes.’
‘Just be careful of him.’
I sat back in my chair, overwhelmed. ‘Do you – know him?’
Quick lit another cigarette, her fist gripped so tightly round the lighter that her knuckles had turned white. She breathed out the bluish smoke. ‘No, I don’t know him. I’m only looking after you. That’s my job. I recruited you, and I value you, and I want you to be all right. Men are not always – well – just make sure you don’t do anything you don’t want to do.’
I realized then, that Quick was not a person to make herself vulnerable. That in fact, she would do anything to avoid such a predicament. ‘I won’t,’ I said. It felt like Quick was admonishing me; this flash of a harsh demeanour had curdled the garden’s lovely atmosphere, where even the bees seemed to fall silent. ‘He’s not like that.’
She sighed. My bones felt like lead. But I could have got up, I could have thanked her for the pork--pie quarter and the bit of bread which was all I’d managed to eat, and walked through the cool bare corridor, back out to life and Lawrie and Cynth and the future, and never have talked to Quick personally again. Things might have been easier if I had.
‘Has he told you anything about the painting?’ she went on.
‘Only that he’s pleased it might be an Isaac Robles,’ I said, dully.
‘But he’d never heard of Isaac Robles before this?’
‘No.’
She looked thoughtful. ‘Why do you think he wanted a copy of that photograph?’