Guns in the Gallery

‘Yes, but suppose she was away one night and you weren’t there either and someone from the site came up to the big house wanting me to sort something out for them . . .?’

‘It won’t happen, love,’ he said, with a new harshness in his voice, and Carole realized that this was the type of argument they had had time and time again in the course of their marriage. She wondered what level of resentment Ned felt for his wife’s pussy-footedness.

‘Anyway, Carole,’ Ned went on, ‘it wasn’t Chervil I wanted to talk about. I wanted to apologize for her sister’s behaviour.’

‘Oh, I didn’t really notice it,’ Carole responded fatuously.

‘The fact is . . .’ A look was exchanged between husband and wife. Sheena was clearly urging Ned to stop, but he still proceeded. ‘The fact is that Fennel does have some mental health issues . . .’

‘I had heard that, yes.’

‘. . . and when she has too much to drink, she does things . . . well, you’ve seen what she does.’

‘Yes. Sounded like it was something she wanted to get off her chest.’

‘Mm.’

‘Had she been with Denzil Willoughby for a long time?’ Normally, Carole wouldn’t have asked such a question while its subject was still in the room, but the hubbub of conversation was so loud that she didn’t worry about being overheard.

‘We didn’t know she had been,’ replied Sheena, rather bleakly.

‘Fennel tends to play things rather close to her chest,’ Ned added. ‘Particularly when it comes to her love life.’

‘We kind of knew there was someone in her life, and from things she said, we thought it might be someone in the art world. But no names.’

‘Does she live with you down here?’

The Whittakers exchanged another look before Ned replied, ‘Not all the time. Mostly she lives in a flat we’ve got in Pimlico, but . . .’

He ran out of words and his wife filled the gap for him. ‘There are times when she needs to be with us. Not that we are particularly happy about that.’

‘Nor’s she, to be fair, Sheena.’

‘No, I suppose she isn’t,’ his wife conceded.

‘It’s just –’ Ned shrugged – ‘a difficult situation.’

‘Is she under proper medical supervision?’ asked Carole. The question, with its implication that there also existed improper medical supervision from people like healers, was not one she would have asked had Jude been present.

Above his glasses Ned Whittaker’s brows were raised heavenwards. ‘We’ve tried everything with Fennel. Paid for the best treatment there is available, right from the moment when she first . . . became ill. Everything seems to work for a while, but then . . .’

This time a look from his wife seemed to stop him from saying more. Carole wished she could read the couple’s private semaphore. She got the feeling the Whittakers didn’t see eye to eye over the treatment for their daughter’s condition. Maybe one of them sincerely believed that Fennel could get better and the other was less optimistic. But Carole couldn’t work out which of them took which position.

Further conversation was prevented by a sudden burst of shouting from the other side of the gallery.

‘How dare you say that! My artistic vision is at least as valid as yours is!’

The shouter was, perhaps inevitably, Gray Czesky. Carole should have remembered from their previous encounters how susceptible the painter was to the booze. From the security of his expensive seafront house in Smalting and the enduring safety-net of his wife’s private income, Gray Czesky loved presenting the image of the volatile, unconventional artist. Some local people might accept his work at his own evaluation of it, but clearly Denzil Willoughby had different views.

‘How can you call that art?’ he cried, pointing with derision at the framed watercolour of Fethering Beach that Czesky was holding. ‘A photograph’d be better than that. It’s just a representation of something you see in front of you. You haven’t added anything to what a photographer would produce, just made a considerably less accurate picture of some bloody beach!’

There was an indrawing of breath from the locals. Though they had carte blanche to moan about the oily fragments of plastic that piled up there, the dog messes and illegal barbecues, they didn’t like outsiders criticizing Fethering Beach.

‘There is no bloody artistic vision there,’ Denzil Willoughby continued.

‘Of course there is!’ Both men were now very drunk and squaring up to each other, as if about to start throwing punches. ‘What you see when you look at a Gray Czesky watercolour may look like an innocuous, innocent image, but there’s a lot of subtext there. There’s violence, there’s political dissent in there, if you only have the perception to see it.’

‘Crap!’ Denzil Willoughby countered. ‘I’ve got more political dissent in the fingernail of my little finger than you have in your entire bloody oeuvre!’

The denizens of Fethering watched these exchanges with the concentration they would apply to a Wimbledon final. Maybe this really was what happened at every Private View. They felt excited to be part of the action.