The Painter Read online

  'Come on, you're coming with me. We have to go ashore quickly.'

  They helped me down into the boat, more, I think, because of the risk I would upset them into the water than for any great sudden onset of solicitude. Two seamen rowed us to the shore, where I could see a small landing stage.

  The passenger looked at me. 'I should explain,' he said. 'This is Paull Holme Manor, which is owned by Captain Dahl. It suits me to be put off here away from the questioning of the Burgers of Hull. It suits the captain to put you off here for two reasons which you must mark well. First, because this is where he wishes you to do the work you have promised. Second, and more importantly, you must be set ashore here because there are stories of the plague in Amsterdam.'

  'There have been only two cases,' I said, annoyed, 'and those are mere supposition. The disease is half a continent away and will come no nearer, I am sure.'

  'Two suspected cases or two hundred proven ones. It is all the same. As soon as it spreads, there will be a fresh ban on such voyages. It may already be in force for all we know. Dahl has no intention of saying his cargo comes from there or that he has even been there. We have come from Gottingbourg only. Remember that. If you say you came aboard in Amsterdam, you will find yourself spending two months at least in the Pest House and believe me, even if you go into that place healthy, you will be lucky to come out alive. Have you got that?'

  'I have.'

  'Now, when we arrive at the house, I will explain to the captain's wife why you are here. He will see his ship safe into Hull and when it is unloaded he will be back here for work to start. I shall be here from time to time should you need further translation. My name, by the way, is Marfel. I am well known in these parts.'

  He was looking towards the house with some eagerness on his face. 'Ah!' he said all at once. 'There she is at last!'

  There was a figure making its way down to the jetty. I could see that she was a woman, I could not see that she was to be both my inspiration and my nemesis.

  FOUR

  Sunday, April 8th, 2001

  Amy threw back her head and let out a shout of laughter. 'Come on Fate,' she said, 'give me a break.' The Fiesta snaked violently across the road.

  'So?' said Dennis. 'Are you up for it?'

  Amy loved irony. She hadn't been home in two years, had only phoned once in six months. That phone call had slid in two sentences from Happy Christmas to an intense critique of her whole lifestyle. She had treated her parents' house in Surrey as if it had a fifty-mile exclusion zone right round it but Paull Holme was nowhere near Surrey. Paull Holme was a mythical place, a concept. 'Maybe,' she said. 'What are the others like? Are they all guys?'

  'Oh yes.'

  'Are they nice guys?'

  Dennis considered. 'Define nice.'

  'Good-looking, tough, fit, caring, sensitive and artistic.'

  He shook his head, 'No, sorry.'

  'Any of those? Three out of six?'

  'Two tops.'

  'Two's enough.'

  He looked at her appraisingly. 'There could be trouble,' he said.

  'That sounds good,' she said and, foolishly, she meant it.

  They laughed most of the rest of the way to Hull. Then Dennis steered Amy down a maze of back roads past car lots and welding sheds to the end of the docks where, for the first time, she saw the great expanse of water, wide enough to give a hint of the earth's curve, which is the River Humber.

  Amy pulled over and stopped. 'The River Humber,' said Dennis helpfully as she stared across the vast rough river to the far shoreline of Lincolnshire, a mile and a half away. 'Never seen it before? A mud-shifting, iron-rusting brute. England's Mississippi.'

  They got out into a cold wind which carried a faint smell of gas.

  'I know that colour,' said Amy, looking at the water. 'That's the colour chocolate milkshakes used to be, before they tasted of chocolate. Light brown with a sickening touch of pink and orange.'

  'Drink that and die,' said Dennis. 'What you're looking at there is the top layer of Yorkshire being flushed out to sea. There's no arguing with the Humber.'

  'It's got a hungry look.'

  'Hungry? I should say so. It ate a whole town.' He pointed off to the left towards the North Sea. 'Ten miles down there, Ravenser. Great big place, the main port round here once upon a time. Then one day the Humber said I'll have you for my breakfast and there it was, gone. Just a mud bank out in the river, that's all that's left of it now.'

  'When was this?' asked Amy, thinking back through half-remembered TV news stories of crumbling cliffs and storm-savaged villages.

  'Oh, I dunno,' he said vaguely. 'Before my time. 1300 or thereabouts? That's why Hull's here. All the rich merchants of Ravenser grabbed what they could save and retreated to here, so they could hide their ships in a nice little side river.' He pointed to the right. 'That's the River Hull, you see, just up there. Too traumatized they were to make an honest job of it and call the new town Kingston upon Humber. They were trying to pretend the big, bad gobbler wasn't there any more so they called it Kingston upon Hull.'

  Amy was looking at a small orange ship butting its way upriver into the fierce wind with spray flying over its bow, Seagulls screamed over their heads. 'Oh yes,' she said, 'I know. My mother always insisted on calling it by its full name.'

  'Well, there's too many Kingstons, and life's too short for all five syllables, so Hull it is.'

  'All right then, Dennis. Let's go and confront my family heritage. Which way do we go?'

  'To the lost land of Holderness. East into the setting sun.'

  'You should get your compass seen to. Do you come from round here?'

  'That's the most horrible thing anyone's ever said to me.'

  From Hull it's another fifteen miles to the sea and the north shore is largely uninhabited. The river balanced the books on Ravenser by stranding other old harbours for ever behind new mud banks so that they silted up, their quays and jetties sinking back into the soil. Paull is the only riverside village left on the entire north shore between Hull and the sea. Dennis directed Amy down a tiny side road past a chemical refinery, a sprawling intestinal jumble of pipework spiralling skyward, polished steel flashing sunlight at them through disturbing clouds of vapour which drifted across the road ahead.'

  'Will it kill us?' Amy asked.

  'Pedal to the metal and hold your breath,' said Dennis. 'Into the Valley of Death. "Tis a far, far better thing that I do now than … Oh, we're through.'

  Through the steam cloud into a different, older world. The narrow lane was perched on a dyke, raised above drainage ditches. A partridge scuttled across the road and a vast sky opened up above, small puffs of cloud running like the partridge from right to left. Amy had a strong and oppressive sense that they were below sea level. This was low land reclaimed from the river long ago and the skyline ahead was a bank, holding back the water. Another mile brought them up out of that land and into hidden Paull, the street curving gently towards the still invisible river, bordered by a line of ancient terrace houses, irregular roof lines proclaiming their individuality. The Royal Oak on the right looked almost old enough to have been fresh-named for the famous tree which sheltered the Stuart king from his rebellious subjects. Two more pubs guarded the far end of the street, facing each other: the Humber Tavern, hung about with satellite dishes, and the dour Crown opposite, dull ochre, giving nothing outwardly away to the modern age. And that was where the sea wall started and the Humber opened itself to view from side to side and from here to there.

  There was no choice for Amy but to stop and get out and climb the sea wall because here was the whole thing demanding inspection, insisting she soaked it up with her eyes. Wavelets fizzed on the mud beyond, sizzling like chip shop frying vats. An old man on a bicycle with tiny wheels rode past slowly along the sea wall. There was a pistol-shot crack as his back tyre burst and he wobbled, then rode on even more slowly, ignoring the flapping rubber as if, on terrain as flat as this, it didn't really matter. />
  The river curved away from her in both directions like a reflection on the outside of a silver bowl. Steel buoys, green and red, heaved slowly in the waves. Far to her right she could see the long span of the suspension bridge reduced to a thread by the scale of the water it crossed. In the space between, two more ships were making their way upstream.

  She loved it. The raw power and the smell of it, almost untouched by the Lilliputian marks of man's navigation.

  A hundred yards along, where the road curved inland, was a low lighthouse attached to a Dutch-gabled house.

  'Where's Paull Holme Manor?' she said to Dennis, who was smoking a roll-up. He had made it so badly that the burning part flew off in the wind every time he relit it.

  'A way along yet,' he said. 'Hold your horses. First there's Paull Battery then there's Paull church, then if you're very, very good, there's the old place. That's if you're sure you want to go there?'

  'Of course I am. Why?'

  'Ah. Well, I'm a racing man, you see, and if I saw a horse looking at the jumps the way you're looking up this river, I would not be at all sure that horse wanted to start the race.'

  'It's not that. I've had pictures of this place in my head all my life and so far, this doesn't feel anything like it.'

  'What were you imagining?'

  'Buckingham Palace in the country, I suppose. Thousands of acres of lawns all trimmed with nail-scissors. Deer and flamingos.'

  'Prepare yourself for a major disappointment. There's fourteen hungry builders living in there. They already ate the flamingos.'

  'No lawns?'

  'There's grass.'

  'Well, that's halfway to a lawn.'

  'Only if you think a wolf is halfway to a poodle.'

  Amy drove on in silence past the walls of the old Battery, past the isolated church and down the long straight road after it, looking ahead as far as she could see for the first signs of the home of her father's forebears. Ahead of her there was a sharp left bend. On the outside of the bend was a broken gateway where a rough track led into a small, deeply gloomy wood.

  'That's it,' said Dennis. 'In there.'

  She searched inside herself for a sense of anticipation or even mild disappointment but all she found, to her intense irritation, was a rising interest in the builders, not in the house. Oh God, she thought, three months since my last man and my body's on the look-out again. Stop it. Then they bumped round the corner of the track, out of the far side of the little wood. For the first time, she saw Paull Holme Manor, watching the river as it always did for returning ships, for news of trade or for tidings of war. It was astonishingly unlike the house she expected but she knew in the same moment that she had seen it before.

  FIVE

  When Amy Dale was still very small and her father's head was in the sky, offering a hand she had to reach right up to hold, there had been places he had taken her to, just the two of them together. Mostly, they were places where pictures were hung. She would stare up at the frames and he would talk about them so that the figures in them began to move for her. All those places were lost to her now, leaving only a faint general sense of stone steps too high for her legs with that strong hand from above coming to her rescue.

  What she saw at the end of the track through the wood ambushed her. For one short moment, the sight of the house pulled out a matching memory from those times before the new overpowered and dissolved the old. It was gone and she could not be sure it was not just déjà vu, a mistake of the synapses. In either case, it marked a passage for her. There had been a mansion-shaped bogeyman in her head, full of oppressive family history. The first sight of the house wiped that away.

  They came to it from behind, and saw it standing on its low hill with the land around it falling away towards the wide, wide Humber. There must once have been gardens and no doubt there would be again, but for the present it stood in the middle of a large, grassy field, approached by a rutted track. The house was half-hidden inside an encrustation of scaffolding but its shape was still clear and that shape was a bizarre collection of three disparate parts. The centre section was a graceful two-storey building but it was wedged between two hulking and dissimilar structures serving as crude book-ends to what lay in between. The nearer of these was a squat, four-square tower of dark brick. It looked medieval, much older than the central range. The further book-end might once have been the same but something disastrous had happened to it along the way. One wall, the wall against which the central part of the house stood, was still standing, but the rest of that structure had utterly collapsed, falling away into an irregular heap of masonry.

  That was Paull Holme and all around was the chaos of a busy building site – mobile cabins, piles of timber, old caravans and heavy machinery. If she had been here before, back in that childhood before her mother ground her father down into a withdrawn and sullen echo of her own prejudices, she could remember nothing more about it.

  A large sign stood next to the track. 'A Millennium Project from North-East Heritage' was lettered in gold on a blue background. Underneath, in smaller letters, it said, 'Supported by …' and there was a long list of organizations.

  'It's a bit late for the millennium,' she observed.

  'The contract didn't say which millennium,' said Dennis. 'We could still be all right for the next one.'

  She pulled off the track and stopped where other cars were parked on the grass.

  'Might just be in for a bit of trouble now,' said Dennis. 'Get ready to block your ears.'

  'Have you been a naughty boy?'

  He glanced at her and for the first time he looked completely serious. 'I had someone to see. Family business, you know? It mattered.'

  He got out and immediately there was a bellow from the door of a nearby hut. 'GREENER! Where the FUCK have you been? One day, you said. One day meant you were due back here yesterday. Saturday not fucking SUNDAY! We're on penalties, you know that. I'm fucking docking you, right?'

  'Ladies present, guv. Credit where credit's due. I've had your interests in mind.'

  The man on the other end of the stentorian voice stepped out of the hut. His figure was much less alarming than his voice, being so small and wiry that Amy wondered where he could possibly have stored the wind to fuel his shout. He wore bib overalls and a very old bowler hat.

  'First time ever Dennis, if so.'

  'You needed a painter. I got you one.'

  'You got yourself a fifty-quid hole where your bonus was, is what you've got. Where's this painter anyway? I got painters.'

  Amy climbed out of the car.

  'Not this sort, you haven't,' said Dennis. This is her. Hawk. Just what you wanted.'

  The man called Hawk looked at Amy and then looked quickly away as if the sight of her had burnt his eyeballs. 'Bloody mad,' he said. 'Sharkbait.'

  'She'll be all right,' Dennis said.

  'Oh yeah? You'll be responsible, will you?'

  'If you like.'

  Amy listened to the exchange with a growing sense of irritation.

  'Hello,' she said. 'I am still here.'

  'What sort of painter?' Hawk's question was addressed to the space somewhere between Amy and Dennis. One of those, thought Amy wearily. They don't like looking straight at you.

  'Any sort,' she said. 'I paint landscapes, I paint people, I paint houses. I'll even spray your car if you want me to.'

  'Restoration?' asked the foreman, looking quite definitely at Dennis, not at Amy.

  'Absolutely,' said Dennis, 'No question. Restoration through and through.'

  Now Hawk finally looked at her. 'They need a renovation artist who can work on seventeenth-century ceiling decorations. That you?' He had spoken the words of the job description as if he'd had trouble learning them.

  Amy turned to the concrete mixer next to her and addressed it. 'That's me,' she said, in tones of absolutely convincing certainty though she had never done anything quite like that in her life before.

  'Live round here?' asked Hawk.
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  'No,' Amy told the concrete mixer.

  'Why are you talking to that machine?'

  'It seemed appropriate.'

  The foreman looked at her with deep suspicion. 'There's rooms in the roof. Got a sleeping bag?'

  'I have.'

  'Well, you'll have to see the Heritage bloke. He's inside. If he says all right then it's eleven quid an hour plus bonuses.'

  'That's more than I get,' said Dennis.

  'You're a fucking plasterer. She's an artist. Anyway, if he hires her and she stays hired you get your bonus back so shut it. Go on. Take her inside and find Parrish for her. It's his call. Oh yeah, Greener, fix her door up with a bolt, will you?'

  'On the inside or the outside?'

  'Inside. You stupid or what?'

  'Might change your mind when you know her better, Hawk.'

  The foreman stared at Dennis blankly, lifted his bowler to scratch his head and went back inside the hut without even asking for her name.

  'Nice to meet you,' she said into space when he'd gone. 'All right then, Dennis. Let's go, I'm right behind you.'

  Dennis looked troubled. 'Don't mind him,' he said, 'He's all right. It's good working here. Good crack, good money. You can do thirty hours' overtime easy and there's bonuses for getting ahead of the schedule.'

  'Did he mean it about your fifty quid?'

  'Yeah.'

  'That's not why you're so keen on me working here, is it?'

  He put on an expression of comical astonishment. 'Now then, Amy. In all the long years you and I have known each other, have I ever done anything that would give you grounds for doubting my sincerity?'