LITMIR.BIZ

       10

      Walter Wells was gratified. Grace Salt wanted to buy his portrait of Lady Juliet, and for such a sum! It occurred to him that she must have money to spare and that was no bad thing because he was certainly short of it.

      Lady Juliet had jumped up and down with pleasure when Barley Salt came in and said ‘Now we’ll see some real action. But if they meant to come why didn’t they say so, and I wouldn’t have asked Grace. How embarrassing!’ Apparently the telly diva Doris Dubois – for Walter recognised her: her programme which had started with a book bias was increasingly casting its eye over the visual arts – was his new wife in place of Grace. He could see the attraction – he would quite like to paint her, he thought: the definitions of her outline were interestingly hard, sharp and clear: most people tended towards such fuzziness of being it was hard to tell where the edges were. His attention drifted towards Barley Salt, who had come into the bidding as well; he and the wonderfully louche South African, Billyboy Justice, were fighting it out.

      ‘Twenty thousand,’ said Grace. Walter turned to look at her; blushing, he saw, from nerves?

      ‘How disgusting,’ said Doris Dubois, rather loud and clear. ‘That must be a hot flush. Can’t she even take hormones?’

      The bidding stopped, as if having startled itself out of existence.

      The hammer fell.

      ‘Sold to Mrs Salt,’ said the actor-auctioneer, who had dined at the Manor House once or twice in the old days, and clicked that he recognised his one-time hostess. He remembered her with affection. She would serve prawn cocktails followed with steak-and-kidney pie when you were grimly resigned to another dose of sun-dried tomatoes, rocket salad, and seared tuna.

      ‘I’m Mrs Salt,’ said Doris Dubois.

      ‘My name is Grace McNab,’ said Grace, firmly.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ said the actor-auctioneer, confused, but everyone makes mistakes, and it wasn’t as if he was being paid for this.

      ‘Sold to the lady in the red velvet dress.’

      Walter Wells heard Barley Salt say to Grace, ‘You can’t afford it, Gracie. You’ll have to touch your capital. Let me do it.’ He heard Grace say, ‘No. If I have to live my own life not ours I’ll live it my way. Go away.’ Walter knew then he would have a hard time wresting her emotions away from Barley and towards himself; but he also knew he meant to do it. ‘Please can we go now, Barley,’ said Doris Dubois. ‘I really can’t waste any more time.’

      ‘Why, Doris,’ said Grace – McNab or Salt? – sweetly, ‘the price tag is still on your dress.’ And so it was, saw Walter, a much bar-coded card hanging out the almost-collar at the back of the orange silk. Doris was a rose unfurled and bright, not blown, like Grace: the kind his mother sometimes bought at Woolworth’s. ‘To add colour,’ she’d say. ‘Cheap but cheerful – they’ve had such a struggle against odds to live, they sometimes do it very well.’