Francesca and the Mermaid Read online

  ‘Very sensible,’ Agnes said, as they drove home. ‘There’s no rush. Sit in the sun and paint till something turns up, that’s my advice.’

  But there was no painting in the garden that Sunday for the weather changed overnight and when they woke it was pelting with rain.

  ‘It’s coming down stair rods,’ Agnes said, looking out of the kitchen window at it. ‘Which is good for the garden but not exactly the best thing for alfresco painting. I shall stay indoors and make cakes. What will you do? ’

  ‘Actually,’ Francesca said, ‘I’d rather like to sketch you - if you don’t mind. I’ve never tried my hand at a portrait.’

  ‘I’m flattered,’ Agnes said and looked it. ‘Just as long as you don’t expect me to stand still.’

  ‘It’ll only be sketches to start with,’ Francesca told her. ‘I’d like to see if I can catch you.’

  Agnes laughed at that. ‘You make me sound like a mouse,’ she said, pulling a mixing bowl out of the cupboard. ‘Can we have a bit of music or will that put you off? I usually have a bit of music when I’m baking.’

  They had Classic FM which they both enjoyed and for more than an hour they worked companionably together, while the rain pattered against the window and the roses were tossed about until they drooped and dripped and lost their petals. Francesca surprised herself by how easy it was to sketch her new friend. Her hands were wonderful to draw even though they were on the move all the time, creaming the butter and sugar together, beating eggs, sieving the flour into the bowl, pushing her hair out of her eyes. There was such strength in them now that Fran was looking at them closely. After a while, when she’d drawn Agnes’ hands several times and made a swift pencil sketch of her head, she remembered how she’d stood on that cliff on the day she saw the mermaid, with a bunch of wild flowers in her hand and brambles and burrs sticking to her skirt and the wind blowing her grey hair, and she knew she would like to do a full scale portrait of her just like that, burrs and brambles and all, and began a full length study there and then, while the thought was in her head.

  Neither of them paused in their work until the cakes and pastries were in the Aga and the outline of the portrait had been completed. Then Agnes made a pot of coffee and sat down at the kitchen table to see what Francesca had done.

  ‘Heavens above,’ she said, considering the portrait. ‘Do I really look like that?’

  ‘You do to me,’ Francesca told her, ‘although it might not be the way you see yourself. We all have our own ideas about how we look. I found that out at my first life class.’

  ‘I like those hands,’ Agnes said. ‘They look. . . .’ And she considered for a while before deciding, ‘I suppose competent is the word I’m after.’

  ‘Yes,’ Francesca said, looking at the models as they poured the coffee, ‘that’s exactly what they are.’ And she hazarded a compliment, for she felt she knew Agnes well enough by that time to be pretty sure she would accept it. ‘Competent and caring. I’ve never been so well looked after in all my life.’

  They smiled at one another like old friends. ‘I’m very glad to hear it,’ Agnes said. ‘We all need looking after now and then. And you more than most.’

  Francesca sipped her coffee and looked out of the window. ‘I do believe the rain’s clearing,’ she said.

  And it was.

  ‘I wonder what it will be like tomorrow morning,’ Francesca said fishing for an explanation. ‘When I get taken on my tour, I mean.’

  Agnes’ smile became a wicked grin. ‘You’ll have to wait and see,’ she said.

  ‘So it would appear,’ Francesca said.

  ‘Surprises can be fun,’ Agnes told her.

  CHAPTER 4

  Henry Prendergast actually gave some thought to what he was going to wear that Monday morning. It was a rare thing for him to do. He usually chose his clothes by simply skimming a hand along the rows of waiting garments until he came to a shirt and trousers he hadn’t worn for some time and then pulling them out to do duty for the day. All his clothes were good quality and they were always returned by the laundry spotlessly clean and well pressed so it really didn’t matter what he chose. Not now that Candida was dead.

  When she was alive, he’d dressed to please her, or to earn her praise, which amounted to the same thing, for whatever pleased her she’d praised in that easy loving way of hers, inclining her elegant head towards him and smiling into his eyes. Dear God but he did miss her. Even now, after five empty years, the thought of her could make his body yearn with grief. He stood before the opened wardrobe door looking at himself in the long mirror where they’d so often stood side by side to admire one another in the halcyon days before she was taken ill, and he ached with the need to see her again, just once, just for five minutes. That was all he wanted. Just five minutes. It was all foolishness. He knew that, just as he knew he never could see her again. Never ever. His life with her was over and done with. But he grieved for her nevertheless. He couldn’t help it.

  He stood bleakly before the long, neat rails full of useless, expensive clothes and frowned at himself in the implacable mirror. There were things to be done. He must choose what he was going to wear, close the door on that awful empty reflection and get on with the day. The blue check shirt perhaps. But maybe checks wouldn’t look business-like. A crisp white would be better. With grey trousers and his grey-blue Pringle sweater. He remember that that was what he’d worn the last time he’d had a difficult buyer to persuade and it had worked well then. Not that he was expecting Aggie’s artist friend to be difficult. She seemed an amiable sort of girl. A bit shy but not difficult. But there were things about her that made him feel he should treat her carefully and it was as well to be on the safe side as far as possible.

  For a start, although she hadn’t made it explicit, he’d understood from her guarded body cues that she wasn’t particularly keen on selling her picture of the mermaid and the more he thought about that picture, the more he wanted to buy it. He’d had the strongest reaction to it the moment he saw it. A gut reaction, of course, but none the less valuable for that because he was sure it was right. This unusual beautiful image could be just the thing to restore the firm’s failing fortune. And with Candida gone, the firm was the most important thing in his life. But I mustn’t rush her, he told himself, as he buttoned his white shirt. She’s gentle and vulnerable and that wouldn’t do at all.

  When Jeffrey Walmesly set off for his tedious drive to Streatham he was in such a bad mood he didn’t stop to think how he should be dressed. It wasn’t until he was inching past the Streatham Home for Incurables that it dawned on him that he should have put on some style for a visit to a boutique and by that time it was too late for him to do anything about it. He sat in the long traffic jam, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel and scowling. Being constantly thwarted was making him irritable. He was beginning to feel that all the people he came into contact with were deliberately going out of their way to make things difficult for him. He was still simmering with resentment at the way that stupid green-nailed girl had treated him. And now he’d got to try and charm the truth out of that grisly old bat in the boutique without letting her know that Fran had walked out on him. Life was very unfair.

  The grisly old bat was stroking the gowns on one of her gilded racks when he walked in. She was so totally artificial that the sight of her made him wince. Artificial women always set his teeth on edge and this one was worse than most. She was wearing a powder blue trouser suit that emphasized how impossibly thin she was, her hair looked exactly like candy floss above her raddled face and she had far too many diamond rings on those bony fingers. Downright ostentatious and he wouldn’t mind betting half of them were glass. Turn on the charm, he reminded himself. You’re going to need every ounce you can summon up if you’re going to outwit this one. And he advanced towards her, smiling his practised smile.

  She turned towards the sound of his entry wearing her own professional face, complete with smarmy smile. Then she saw
who it was and changed her expression.

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘It’s you. I hope you’re not going to stay long. I’m expecting some important customers this morning.’

  ‘I was just passing by,’ he said, ‘and I thought, being in the area, I really ought to pop in and tell you how sorry I was to hear about your relation.’ And he gave her the benefit of his sympathetic smile. ‘Being so ill and all that.’

  She looked surprised, her painted eyebrows rising into the candy floss. Then she scowled. ‘What are you talking about?’ she said, turning back to the gowns. ‘What relation? I haven’t got any relations. Unless you count Francesca.’

  ‘The one who’s so ill,’ he explained. ‘In Sussex.’

  ‘You don’t listen do you,’ she said, not looking at him. ‘I haven’t got any relations. None at all. Not here. Not in Sussex. Not anywhere.’

  He tried to make a joke of it. ‘You must have had a mother and father. We all have a pair of those. Or did you spring fully armed from. . . .’ Oh shit where was it? He’d forgotten the story. ‘Some Greek god or something?’

  ‘They’ve been dead long since,’ she said. ‘And good riddance to them.’ Then she gave him a sly look. ‘I’d have thought Francesca would have told you that.’

  ‘No, no,’ he tried to murmur, hoping she wouldn’t notice the implication. ‘We don’t discuss our relations. We’ve got better things to talk about.’ And when she gave him a scathing look, he pushed on, trying to keep his voice light. ‘Anyway, I’ve only just heard about it and I thought it being your relation, and me being in the area, so to speak, I’d just pop in and see how . . .’ was it a he or a she? This was getting worse and worse, ’um, they were.’

  She was as sharp as a razor. ‘You haven’t talked to Francesca about it, have you?’ she said. ‘I’d have thought she’d have been the first person you’d have asked. Or aren’t you on speaking terms? Is that what it is?’

  ‘No, of course it’s not,’ he said crossly. ‘Of course we are.’

  ‘Then you should have asked her before you came barging in here.’

  ‘Well, I like that,’ he said, now thoroughly riled. ‘I didn’t barge in. I never barge in. Never. Anywhere. I went out of my way to commiserate with you. That’s what I did. Out of the kindness of my heart. And you just . . .’ He was spluttering but really this was too much. ‘You just cast aspersions.’

  She gave him a really evil grin. ‘You don’t know where she is, do you?’ she said.

  He answered her sharply. ‘Of course I know where she is. Don’t be ridiculous. She’s at work.’

  ‘Um!’ she said. ‘Could you just step a bit further away from that rail? I’ve got some very expensive gowns on that one and you’re making me nervous.’

  Damn the gowns, he thought. There’s more at stake here than a line of expensive tat and he was just opening his mouth to say something really cutting to her when another grisly old gargoyle strode into the shop and the bat leapt forward arms outstretched to greet her. He left – quickly. There was nothing else he could do.

  And then, to add insult to injury some moron had given him a ticket. ‘Oh for Christ’s sake!’ he said glaring at the fucking thing. First that stupid girl and then the grisly old bat and now this. It was too much. Well that’s it, he thought as he got into the car. I’m not wasting any more time on that stupid Fran. She can go to hell in a handcart for all I care, stupid silly woman. I’ve got a life to lead. And he put his hand on the gear lever expecting to slip into gear in his usual quietly competent way and managed to grind the bloody things. Wouldn’t you know it?

  That stupid Fran was checking her appearance in the wardrobe mirror and feeling quite pleased with what she saw. She’d decided to wear her best pair of jeans and her favourite shirt for her mystery tour and had flung her cream jacket over her shoulders as a last minute addition. It was the only one she’d unpacked so it would have to do. She knew she really ought to get around to sorting out her tumble of belongings and putting everything away, if only to make her bedroom look more homely, but there’d been so much going on in her life she hadn’t had the time for it. I’ll do it tomorrow, she promised herself, as Henry’s Merc purred into the drive. Now, with her folder under her arm, she was the intrepid traveller again, off to adventure and mystery.

  It was a luxurious ride. Henry drove smoothly, just as she’d expected, there was very little traffic on the narrow roads and the CD he was playing was something rhythmic and gentle that she’d never heard before. She would have liked to have asked him what it was, but thought better of it in case he was one of those men who didn’t like to talk while they were driving. So she simply sat beside him and listened to the music and watched the rural world go by and didn’t speak.

  Her quietness gave Henry pause. On balance he would have preferred it if she’d made conversation. That way he might have found out more about her which would have made it easier to negotiate with her. But she was obviously a private person – or shy. Either way, once they’d started their journey in silence, he couldn’t break in on her reverie. It didn’t matter. In another twenty minutes they would be at the workshop and there would be plenty to talk about then.

  Past the roundabout, left at the trading estate and there it was. Prendergast Pottery, its well-designed sign clean and elegant above the entrance. It gave him the usual, familiar kick just to see it. He parked the car in his designated space and glanced at his passenger to see what impression it was having on her.

  She looked him, clear-eyed in the morning sunshine. ‘A pottery,’ she said. ‘You want to put my mermaid on the side of one of your pots, is that it?’

  Her face was showing so little expression he couldn’t tell whether she was pleased or annoyed by the idea. ‘Among other things,’ he told her, rather ambiguously and swung his long legs out of the car onto the gravel. ‘Let me show you.’ Then he walked round the car and opened the passenger door for her, giving her a little bow as she eased out of the car, partly to reassure her and partly to soothe himself. Having reached this point, he was actually feeling nervous but he certainly wasn’t going to let her see that.

  They walked into the building side by side and even despite her misgivings Francesca was impressed by it. When she’d seen the word ‘Pottery’ over the door, she’d expected a dusty hut with one or two potters hunched over their wheels, the way she’d seen them in documentaries, probably wearing aprons spattered with clay, with a few pots on a shelf behind them and the odd kiln here and there. What she found was a factory and a kiln that ran the full length of the shop. She saw at once that moulded utensils were being put into it at one end and being taken out of it, newly baked, at the other. There were men and women in green aprons stacking cream coloured cups and plates in long rows on wooden racks. ‘Among other things’ is about right, she thought. There were jugs, plates, teapots, vegetable dishes, vases of every size in bright swirling colours, even a huge soup tureen with a green turtle as a cover.

  ‘What do you think of it?’ Henry asked, feeling more hopeful now that he’d watched her surprise.

  ‘Extraordinary,’ Francesca told him, still watching as the work went on. She caught sight of Molly, checking the cups and plates, and the two of them waved to one another. ‘Where do you sell all this stuff?’

  ‘Department stores mostly,’ Henry said. ‘And shops that specialize in fine china. Your mermaid could be seen all over the British Isles, if you let me have her. Come and see the sort of things I hope to do with her.’

  They progressed through the shed and Francesca noticed that he was greeted by all his workers ‘morning Mr Prendergast’ and that he seemed to know all their names and had something to say to each one of them. ‘Morning Joe. How’s the baby?’ ‘Morning young Sarah. Was it a good party?’ They like him, she thought, and he likes them. He’s a good boss. Then they walked through a door at the end of the shed and were in the relative peace of a computer room. There was a young man sitting in front of a screen full of shifting p
atterns.

  Henry introduced him as ‘the whizz-kid of computer enhancement’ and said his name was Paul and the young man looked up from the screen and smiled.

  ‘This is Francesca,’ Henry said to him. ’She’s an artist. If I can persuade her, I hope she’ll agree to be one of our artists. Perhaps you’d like to show her the sort of thing you do.’

  ‘Geometric designs at the moment,’ Paul said, pressing keys, ‘like this one for a vase. It’s mostly squares and oblongs – d’you see? – but they work better with rounded sides to fit the shape of the vase, which is there in outline – d’you see? Now like that it doesn’t fit, but if I change the line here and here, it does.’ He rotated the design on the screen so that she could see the vase in three dimensions.

  The easy way he manipulated the shapes made her worry. What if they wanted to change the shape of her mermaid? She couldn’t bear that. Not now she’d finally caught the creature as she was, she didn’t want anyone to change her.

  ‘Francesca has designed a superb mermaid,’ Henry said. ‘The colours are spectacular. I think we should show her what it would look like were we to use it. On a dinner plate perhaps.’ And he turned to Francesca and added. ‘Would you be happy to let Paul see it?’

  She hesitated, loath to agree because it was her mermaid and she didn’t want anyone to mess about with it, but in the end she took her painting from the folder and handed it to the young man.

  His reaction was immediate and gratifying. ‘Wow!’ he said. ‘Now that’s something. Really something! What gorgeous colours! Love the golden eyes. And those scales. Wow! A dinner plate did you say, Mr Prendergast?’

  The picture was carefully positioned in a scanner, a white dinner plate appeared on the screen and was enlarged until it filled the entire space and seconds later the mermaid was swimming in the middle of it, the blue-green of the sea flowing right to the edges of the plate. And watching Francesca’s face, Henry knew that a deal could be done.