One Day in May - Catherine Alliott [79]
She strode out through the French doors to continue her conversation on the terrace. Greg straightened up and showed me the tin.
‘Gustavian bleeding Grey.’
‘I know,’ I muttered. We’d mixed it specially for her. Or had our mates at Perfect Paints do it for us.
‘What on earth will my husband think?’ we heard her say as she paced up and down, one arm clenched around her minuscule waist. ‘It’s for tomorrow night!’
‘Her husband won’t give a monkey’s,’ remarked Greg. ‘He’s in a maisonette in Battersea most afternoons after work, with his secretary.’
‘How d’you know?’ I said, appalled.
‘I’m painting her kitchen, aren’t I? Lilac Wine. Recognized him.’
Lucinda was back and Greg sank gnomically to the skirting again. She tucked her phone in her jeans, so tight over her skinny hips she could barely get it in, and turned to me. A fine fretwork of lines framed the azure eyes that gazed from a once very beautiful face.
‘Well?’ she demanded. ‘Any ideas?’
Happily I had.
‘The skirting boards and ceiling are brilliant white,’ I explained, ‘and they need to be softer. Off-white certainly, or even palest grey, or taupe.’
‘Oh.’ She blinked. ‘But I always do them white.’
It was as if I’d suggested a radical rethink of her underwear drawer or something equally personal.
‘Yes, but in a French themed room like this, they need to be more muted, otherwise the contrast is too stark. Too Dulux.’ This had the desired effect. She froze. Dulux, to a woman like this, was a worse word than fuck. ‘All the colours need to blend in,’ I went on, ‘so you don’t notice them. One of these will be fine.’ I fished in my bag and pulled out a National Trust colour chart – always useful in extremis – flopping it open on the table.
‘Something like Pontoon,’ I pointed. ‘Or even Dead Salmon.’ Greg smirked, but then decorators always did: at the bloody silly names, and the hated paint that went on like water, and needed three coats, not having any plastic in it.
‘Oh, I see.’ She peered. ‘I rather like Muff.’
‘Don’t we all,’ Greg muttered.
I shot him a look.
‘Muff’s a bit dark,’ I told her.
‘Beaver’s nice, though,’ Greg couldn’t resist, mouth twitching. ‘I reckon your husband would like Beaver too.’
‘I can’t see Beaver,’ she frowned.
‘It’s been discontinued,’ I said quickly, rolling up the chart. ‘But if you’re not sure about these, I can get one mixed specially for you, if you like? Something that fits in exactly?’
‘Oh, would you?’ Suddenly she was all charm and smiles, and I wasn’t an annoying interior designer who’d got it wrong, but a magic wand waver, who really was awfully clever. ‘Thank you so much. I’d be so grateful.’
‘Not at all,’ I murmured as Greg smirked into the skirting some more. He knew full well I’d pop a splodge of colour into a pot of cream paint, shake it up, put a homespun label on it, and charge her eighty pounds, which, with two hundred for the house call – house calls were pricey – plus VAT, netted a clear three hundred pounds. By anyone’s yardstick it was a rip-off, but then, as Maggie said, women like Lucinda Carr deserved to be ripped off. She wanted to tell her friends her paint had been ‘specially mixed’ and she certainly didn’t want me charging her twenty quid for it, either.
I sighed as I bid her goodbye and went down the steps to the street. I wouldn’t tell Maggie about the husband, I decided. She’d love it too much. Maggie had recently become more gleeful about our friends’ marital disharmony, and although a bit of me in the past had secretly exulted too, these days I felt uncomfortable with it. Surely women – all women – deserved our loyalty? Our support? Somewhere within me, I realized, I believed in something woolly and indeterminate called the sisterhood: I didn’t want to be rubbing my hands at my married friends’ misfortune. If I said as much to Maggie, though, she’d say sharply, ‘Why not? They deserve it. They bring it on themselves.’
‘In what way?’
‘By not doing anything with their lives. By relying on a man.’
But what could they do? I thought as I walked on. Women like Lucinda