One Day in May - Catherine Alliott [109]
‘I cannot work with this man!’ Maggie was bright red in the face, fists clenched. She glared at Ralph, who looked similarly ruffled.
‘And I cannot work with this woman!’ he growled furiously. He threw his shoulders back and strutted across the room to take up a position by the sink. Spinning on a sixpence to face us, he folded his arms and tossed his head back. ‘She’s ignorant.’
‘Ignorant!’ Maggie roared.
This was possibly the worst insult you could hurl at my highly intelligent, supremely cultured friend. ‘I’ll tell you who’s ignorant. Anyone who hangs a streak of unframed dirt on the wall and calls it art, or – or puts a ridiculous lump of rock in the middle of the floor and calls it a table. Anyone who hoodwinks people, basically. Deceives them into pouring good money into pretentious crap. Who proselytizes phoney rubbish and gets their clients to adopt it like the emperor’s new clothes – that’s ignorant. It’s despicable too!’
‘Oohh…’ Ralph seemed to shudder from the top of his beautifully coiffed hair, right down his skinny spine to his toes. ‘As opposed to borrowing some tired, whimsical ideas from a clichéd, hackneyed parody of a bygone, pastoral era, perhaps? Ooh, let’s have another set piece, with a pair of Louis Quinze chairs, and yet another bit of artfully draped antique velvet over a rickety iron table. No innovation, no flair, and, most importantly – no ideas!’
Maggie’s face was suffused with rage. ‘I’ll have you know it is entirely the innovative twist I put on my classics that reinvents them, that brings them right up to date. That bergère with the scorched wood frame, for example, or… or the chaise with arms painted matt black in the study – all the things you don’t see because you’re blind to anything that wasn’t made five minutes ago. Just because it’s contemporary, doesn’t mean it’s good, you know.’
‘And just because it’s old, doesn’t mean it’s attractive,’ he spat back. He sucked in his cheeks and looked her up and down. ‘You’re an excellent case in point, if I may say so.’
Maggie’s breath was rarely taken from her, but it seemed to have been sucked right down to her elegant black patent boots. Not for long, though.
‘How dare you? You’re about as antique as they come, pulling in your middle-aged stomach and posturing away with your tired old luvvy manner. Dyeing your hair and—’
‘I do not dye my hair. This is entirely natural!’
‘You’ve got roots!’
‘Which is more than I can say for you,’ he snarled. ‘My family, I’ll have you know, are descended from the very French salons you crave to imitate: from the de Granvilles of Allègre with a beautiful château in the Loire that you will never in your wildest dreams re-create!’
‘My wildest dreams would certainly never include anything of yours.’
‘Except my Peruvian Rouge, of course. You couldn’t help yourself, could you? Little tea-leaf.’
Maggie gave a howl of rage. Hands raised like claws, she launched herself, harridan style, across the room. Luckily Laura and I, who’d been watching this exchange like a Wimbledon final, heads swivelling this way and that, were alive to it and instantly between them, backing them away, calming and cajoling whoever we felt we had the most influence over, making soothing noises the while.
‘Come on, Maggie, this is no way to behave,’ I implored her.
‘I’m sure we can resolve this and all play – work – together,’ my sister soothed Ralph.
‘She stole my paint! My rouge!’ Ralph pointed furiously over Laura’s shoulder. ‘I have twenty-two essential colours in my range, mixed exclusively to my own palette and specifications, and what do I find as I stroll through one of her bourgeois little room sets, tripping over yet another hideous chaise longue? My Peruvian Rouge on its arms and legs!’
Maggie turned her head away, arms folded defiantly, and in that gesture, I knew: knew she was guilty. ‘Did you, Maggie? Did you take his paint?’ I found myself asking, as one would a child.
‘As if,’ she spat disingenuously.
‘Why can’t you share?’ my sister enquired of Ralph in a motherly fashion. ‘Let her look at your colours, and maybe