The search for Leo Kemp was abandoned after three days. Monomoy Island and the surrounding coastline had been scoured by teams from the police and coastguard, aided by Institute students and staff. They had combed every inch of the island in case he had somehow dragged himself through the belt of dunes into the scrub of the interior. The sea search had also proved fruitless.
The coastguard wrote a report for the police, who handed it to the coroner’s officer. The file was headed ‘Missing at Sea, Presumed Drowned’. The coroner opened and immediately adjourned an inquest, setting a date for a new hearing in a week’s time. News of Leo’s disappearance and presumed death had made a brief story in the Boston Globe, but no more, although the Scotsman carried a long obituary by Professor Melrose Stubbs. The Cape Herald had not carried an obituary. The paper had published a premature obituary of a prominent Boston lawyer who had retired to the Cape some years before and had been sued for libel as a result. These days the editor wanted to hear a body had been found before publication.
Margot and Sam spent much of their time walking the beaches with Beano, the West Highland terrier Margot’s parents had given her two Christmases ago, to remind her of home, they said. Beano had been bought sight unseen from a Boston breeder over the internet, and shipped to the Cape on Christmas Eve in a large wire and wicker basket. Margot was amazed. It was the most original present her parents had ever given her, and also the most expensive.
Most beaches were filling up, although the main vacation period had not started yet, but like all Cape Codders, Margot knew where to find solitude on an out-of-the-way beach. On their walks she and Sam talked endlessly of Leo, and as they discussed the funeral arrangements they slowly allowed themselves to admit the fact that he was dead.
One morning Margot suddenly said, ‘If anyone says to me again that Leo has gone to join Julian, I am going to slap them good and hard.’
‘Who said that, Mum?’
‘That idiot priest who came yesterday. He wanted to talk about the funeral. I gave him a glass of wine and he came out with that bullshit.’
‘Mum, do you think you’re drinking too much?’
‘I’m not drinking enough, darling.’
Sometimes they would sit on Dad’s deck, as they called it, looking out over the sound and talking until the lights around the harbour dimmed at midnight. Sam believed in an afterlife, and one night she said, ‘I don’t care what you think, Mum, but what I think is that they’re all together, Dad and Julian and the seals.’
Margot sighed. ‘If you say so, darling.’
It was late. Margot was feeling sleepy and slightly drunk. Sam snuggled into her lap and whispered, ‘Can I ask you something, Mum?
‘Darling, it’s late. Let’s sleep.’
‘Did you love Dad?’
Margot opened her eyes, suddenly awake. ‘Of course I did, darling.’
‘Mum, I’m sixteen. I want to know, did you two just stay together for me? I mean, did you both have affairs and stuff?’
It’s like this with kids. They always ask awkward questions at the most bloody awful times, thought Margot.
‘Your father wasn’t interested in that sort of thing, or if he was he never showed it. His world was the Institute – you know that, darling.’
There was a silence, and then Sam said, ‘And you?’
‘Bedtime,’ said Margot, lifting herself from the chair and putting Sam on to her feet.
She watched her daughter as she fell asleep, the eyelids lowering, the breathing deepening. She went upstairs and sat on the deck listening to the faint childish snores coming from the bedroom below. No drink tonight, she told herself. She lit a cigarette and blew a perfect smoke ring up to the star-filled sky.
Her cell rang. She checked her watch. It was 11 p.m. His voice sounded strained and nervous.
‘I’ve got to see you,’ he said. ‘It’s important.’
‘Why? What’s happened?’
‘I can’t talk now.’
‘Tell me what it’s about. Is it your wife?’
‘No. I just need to see you.’
‘OK. Tomorrow night.’
Tom never called her. It was always the other way round. She decided to have a drink after all.
Margot met Tom at the usual time in the car park of the Squire. He seemed as nervous as he had sounded the previous night, which was not like him. He muttered a barely audible greeting as she got in his car. They drove down to the dunes in silence. She was right: something had gone wrong at home. He wouldn’t look at her, but stared straight ahead, driving much faster than was necessary. He parked badly, braking suddenly and throwing her forward against her seatbelt. He rested his head on the steering wheel, knuckles whitening as he gripped the rim.
She stroked his back gently. ‘What is it?’
Tom didn’t look up. ‘There’s talk, bad talk.’
‘What – about us?’
‘No, about him.’
‘Him? Who?’
‘Your husband.’
‘He’s dead, Tom.’
‘No one ever found the body.’
‘What are you trying to say?’
She leant over and gently but firmly turned his face towards her.
‘What talk? Who’s saying what?’
He twisted his head away from her and gazed out of the window.
‘They say there’s a human out there among the seals off Monomoy. A man swimming with them.’
Margot suddenly felt very cold. She fumbled in her bag for a cigarette, and lit one.
‘Go on.’
‘Open the window. I can’t have the smell of smoke in here.’
She wound the window down and breathed out a plume of smoke.
‘Go on.’
‘There’s nothing more. That’s all.’
‘What man?’
‘It’s just that when the boats pass Monomoy there’s always seals about, and some of the boys say they’ve seen it.’
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake!’
‘I’m just telling you what they’re…’
‘Stop! “They”? Who are “they”?’
‘Guys down at the harbour…fishermen.’
‘You’ve seen this man?’
‘No, and I don’t want to.’
‘What does he look like?’
‘No one’s certain. It’s just that they swear there was a bearded face, a human face out there with the seals.’
Margot lit another cigarette, inhaled deeply and tried to be calm. ‘Seals look like humans, don’t they? Isn’t that why we love them so much? Warm-blooded, cute, cuddly creatures with big brown eyes? If spiders had cute furry faces like humans we’d love them too, wouldn’t we?’
Tom looked miserable, and mumbled that she was right; it was nothing to worry about. He was sorry he’d mentioned it, and would she just forget it?
Margot said of course she would forget it. There were always going to be rumours when someone went missing at sea and the body didn’t turn up. Leo, her husband, her late husband, was dead, and that was that. She released the catch under her seat to make it recline, and flicked the cigarette out of the window.
Margot had told Jenny Hathaway all about Tom. She worked on the principle that a secret is not really a secret unless it is shared with a trusted friend. When two people share a secret it somehow becomes a real secret, worth keeping. She told Jennifer everything: her decomposing marriage; every detail of her quickie sex sessions with Tom (In the car park in the dunes, said Jennifer, are you sure that’s wise?); and the pride she took in her daughter. Jennifer pretended to take Margot’s accounts of car-park flings calmly, like a woman of the world who had experienced many such illicit pleasures, but in fact she was riveted and just slightly envious.
Jennifer had never married, a fact that she accepted without self-pity and even with a certain relief. She told herself she was far too selfish to share her life, her cats and her money with anyone. She wasn’t lonely, or if she was she would never recognise that as a description of herself. She was a spinster, a word she hated, but what else do you call a single woman of 44? There were no children and right now no boyfriend, although ‘right now’ was a term that covered a period of several years.
She told herself she was lucky and happy. Lucky that she had the things that made her happy: her job, her two Burmese cats, her horse stabled at Falmouth, a circle of friends that provided her with pleasure, the enjoyment of the bridge table, a shared bottle of good wine and travel with a group of skiing enthusiasts, the book club.
The trouble was she could never convince her circle of friends that a single woman in her forties could be perfectly happy on her own. However much she told them (and she did so partially to convince herself) that she could happily live without someone else in her life, her married friends naturally thought otherwise. Married couples have always wished, and worked, to see their single friends, especially women, paired off. A married woman regards a single member of her own sex, especially one of her own age, as a challenge to her skills as a matchmaker. Is it not a truth universally acknowledged that a single woman in possession of her faculties and her figure must be in need of a husband?
Jenny was aware of the guile, not to say duplicity, with which her friends schemed to introduce her to suitable men. Charming bridge partners would appear who were entirely unfamiliar with the correct response to an opening bid of one no trump. Handsome men would surface at parties and reveal in casual conversation a remarkable knowledge of her love of horses, her annual ski trips to the French Alps and her appreciation of fine wine.
Jenny reasoned that this was the lot of a single middle-aged woman. (Well, perhaps not middle-aged, she told herself, that surely begins at 50?) And the occasional social humiliation was certainly worth the affection of her friends, who cared so much for her that they spent a great deal of their time trying to find her a husband.
That was Margot’s great strength as a friend. She was utterly uninterested in Jenny’s social life. She was far too focused on her own problems to worry about her friend’s matrimonial prospects.
The whole point of Margot was that she was not a kindred spirit but someone who made Jenny laugh and occasionally cry, someone she had grown to care greatly for. Margot reminded her of Mehitabel the cat in Don Marquis’s books. ‘Toujours gai’ was Mehitabel’s motto, a philosophy which sustained her through a series of disasters all carefully chronicled by a cockroach called Archy.
Mehitabel believed that life was to be lived, and there was no need to be crushed by the mistakes of the past, or even the memory of who we once had been in the past. Since she believed she had been Cleopatra in a previous life, she managed her transition to a mangy alley cat in this life remarkably well.
Jennifer had given Margot the Archie and Mehitabel books to read, but her friend saw neither the point of them, nor the similarity between Mehitabel and herself.
‘Look at me,’ Margot would say, raising her glass of Chardonnay. ‘I had a brilliant education and a loving family, and I did exactly what they wanted and wound up as a primary-school teacher. Absolute disaster. I should have been a wild child rock singer.’
‘It would certainly have suited your sex life better.’
‘Thank you very much, Jennifer. A little jalouse, are we?’
Margot and Jennifer met for their wine and laughter lunches in the Quarterdeck Bar and Grill on Falmouth’s Main Street. They liked it both because the restaurant cleverly recreated the interior of an old sailing ship, and because they usually managed to get a table at the back, which allowed them to observe the comings and goings of the customers while remaining largely unseen
Given the discreet setting and the confidential nature of their lunches, it was natural that Jennifer was the first person to learn that Margot intended to return to Scotland.
‘The big question I can’t answer,’ said Margot, ‘is whether it would be fair on Sam. She’s sixteen, happy at school, has lots of friends here. I mean, she’s American, dammit.’
‘That’s simple,’ said Jennifer. ‘No, it’s not fair on her, and you should wait a year or two before even considering a move. She hates Scotland, you’ve told me that.’
‘But if we stay here, she’ll grow up with the ghosts of her brother and her father,’ argued Margot. ‘Surely that wouldn’t be right? She’ll be reminded of them everywhere in this small, crowded place. She needs a new start.’
‘No,’ said Jennifer. ‘You mean you need a new start. Have you thought you might be acting a little selfishly here?’
‘Of course I’m being bloody selfish! I have a dead son, a missing, presumed dead husband, and no job. I can’t work here. My qualifications aren’t recognised, you know that. I can pick up a good job in Scotland. I can go straight back into teaching. I can get my life back on track. My family is there! That’s got to be more important for Sam than anything else.’
Jennifer bowed to the force of the argument. ‘All right, yes. On balance I suppose you’re right to go.’
Margot chose her moment carefully. She met Sam in the tea rooms on Falmouth Main Street, and ordered coffee for herself and melted fudge ice cream and hot chocolate for Sam.
Then she explained slowly and carefully that she had some news which would be good for them both in the long run, and would allow them to start afresh and put this terrible time behind them. Sam seemed lost in her ice cream, and nodded distantly. They would be returning to Scotland after the funeral, said Margot.
‘To visit?’ asked Sam
‘No, to live.’
Sam’s chair went over backwards with a crash as she got up, causing a woman behind her to spill her tea
‘Mum!! That’s not good news! I don’t want to go back to Scotland. I have my friends here. I’m American. I live here, this is my home.’
‘Listen, darling—’
‘I don’t want to listen. I’m not leaving! You can’t make me. I hate Scotland.’
Conversation at the tables around them was coming to a halt.
‘Sit down,’ hissed Margot. ‘You don’t know Scotland, darling. Be reasonable.’
Sam sat down, noticing with gratification that she had every ear in the café.
‘No, you be reasonable, Mum. I’ve been there. I don’t like it.’
‘You only went once, to visit Grandma and Grandpa.’
Margot realised that she had gained the attention of a café full of afternoon tea drinkers, but lost an argument.
‘I hated it.’
‘I know you did, and I understand. But this is different. We’re going to live there in a beautiful house, and your friends can come over.’
‘Come over? After school they’ll fly over and drop in for a chat? I don’t think so, Mum.’
Why are children so bloody difficult? thought Margot. So she explained about her need to work now that Leo was gone, her need to have her family around her. She had two brothers and six nephews and nieces back home. She could not stay here on the Cape. She had lost her son here, and her husband. She would be lonely and miserable, haunted at every turn by an awful past. This was the time for a clean break, time to move back home. ‘And I promise,’ she heard herself say, ‘I promise we’ll come back every summer for the whole school holidays, back here to the Cape.’
‘Lonely, Mum? You say you’d be lonely here?’
Margot was startled. She looked at her daughter carefully. Your children always know more about you than you could ever imagine.
Sam knew that her mother sometimes took condoms with her when she went out at night after a few muttered words on the phone.
Sex was a foreign country to Sam, but one she had visited so often in the virtual world all her age group inhabited that it held few mysteries for her. Girls in her class at school talked about it all the time, as if they were discussing a fast-food menu. The way they talked, sex seemed to occupy the same level of importance and pleasure as a takeaway pizza. It wasn’t true, of course. Fast food, music downloads, cool clothes and the occasional quick ciggie; they were the real deal. Sam and her friends might talk of sex as if it was a slice of pizza, but it was bravado – and they knew it. And Sam knew too that Mum’s visits to the Squire – oh yes, her school friends had told her she’d been seen there – weren’t about pizza.
They called a truce, and agreed on a visit to the cinema and supper afterwards. Sam’s choice. The film was Mamma Mia, two hours of shared pleasure and popcorn that repaired the rift between mother and daughter.
As they were leaving the cinema, Margot saw Tom in the crowd with his young and plumply pregnant wife. Their eyes met with a flicker of recognition, and they quickly looked away. Margot felt a surprising pang of jealousy. Her casual, throwaway lover with his blonde, swollen wife. He hadn’t told Margot she was pregnant. Or that she was so young. She stopped, half turned and bent down to adjust her shoe strap.
As she straightened up Sam said ‘Who was that?’
‘Who was who, darling?’
‘That man who looked at you.’
‘What man?’
‘Mum, stop it. I saw. You looked at him, too.’
‘Oh him. Just some fisherman. A friend of Buck’s.’
‘Oh yeah?’
Margot spun round and grabbed Sam tightly by the arm. ‘Don’t “Oh yeah” me,’ she hissed. ‘Skip the sarcasm. I have too much else to worry about.’
‘Sorry, Mum.’ Sam was visibly shocked by the sudden change in her mother’s mood.
Margot relented. ‘No, I’m sorry. This is a horrible time for both of us. We must be strong, be together.’
They entwined their arms and walked out of the cinema together.
Tom and his wife had vanished.
Leo Kemp’s funeral took place at 10 a.m. at St Barnabas’ Anglican Church on Falmouth’s Main Street, opposite the green. It was exactly three weeks since he had been swept overboard. The coroner had agreed to issue a death certificate at the request of the family, on the grounds that his disappearance had been witnessed by a number of his students, and that it could reasonably and legally be assumed that he had drowned.
Without a body there could be no coffin, and Margot and Sam had agreed with the rector’s suggestion that the service be conducted as a celebration of Leo’s life. All the same, everyone had dressed for a funeral, since there was general agreement that it was hardly appropriate to celebrate Leo’s life given that its ending had been so sudden, and was still so recent.
Neither Leo nor Margot had been churchgoers, but Sam had discovered a talent for singing at school that had led her into the church choir. As a chorister she attended the two main Sunday services, and responded to the inevitable teasing by her classmates and her younger brother by pointing out that the Christian message of love and forgiveness was actually pretty cool.
She had shut Julian up by telling him to listen to the lyrics of Arcade Fire’s album Funeral, which he regarded as the coolest album by the coolest group. ‘All about love and loss and redemption,’ she said, ‘which was why Christ was crucified.’ Julian replied, ‘Yeah, whatever,’ which was his standard response to any question or comment; but when he sat down to listen to the lyrics properly he was impressed. And then of course he died, and until now she had never been able to listen to the album again.
There was a good turnout from the Institute. Tallulah Bonner was in the second row, flanked by the vice president in charge of academic programmes, the Dean, and senior members of the marine biology department. Buck, bulging out of the only suit he possessed, was accompanied by Renee, a tiny, birdlike woman who clung to his arm throughout.
To Margot’s surprise a small group of older fishermen from Chatham were gathered at the back. Sandy Rowan represented the Herald, but Kemp’s father, now in his late eighties, was not well enough to make the trip from Australia. Jennifer Hathaway was there, wearing a dark suit and a black beret. Mrs Gulliver sat at the back in a black skirt and T-shirt and a black leather jacket.
Sam chose the music: the old slave spiritual ‘Shenandoah’, which the choir would sing in church and which would leave her in tears at the end. Then she chose the hymn ‘To Be a Pilgrim’. Tallulah Bonner read lines from Tennyson’s ‘Ulysses’, chosen by Margot, and Sandy read from an anonymous Indian prayer chosen by Sam.
‘When I am dead cry for me a little.
Think of me sometimes,
But not too much.
Think of me now and again, as I was in life,
At some moment it’s pleasant to recall,
But not for long.
Leave me in peace and I shall leave you in peace,
And while you live let your thoughts be with the living.’
The closing hymn was ‘Dear Lord and Father of Mankind’.
Woven into the service were two tributes. The first was from Leo’s postgraduate class, jointly written by all the students and read by Gunbrit: ‘Leo Kemp was different from any teacher we have ever met. He liked to surprise us, to make us think a little differently. He wanted us to question everything, to take nothing for granted. I suppose he was a bit of a rebel, and I guess we liked him for that. So look, this is a really dark day for Mrs Kemp and her daughter, and we don’t want to go on too long, but we do want to give you this, Mrs Kemp.’
The whole class rose to their feet, leaving the rest of the congregation uncertain as to what to do. Gunbrit walked over to Margot with a framed watercolour painting of a godwit.
‘This was Mr Kemp’s favourite bird, a godwit. We can tell you why later, if you like.’
Margot thanked her, wondering what on earth a godwit had meant to her husband. He had never mentioned the bird. Just another one of his secrets, she supposed. Secrets always come out at funerals, isn’t that what they say? The mistresses, the missing money, unknown children claiming a relationship with the deceased. Trust Leo to have made a secret of a bloody bird called a godwit.
Gunbrit kissed Margot, and spontaneously the students began clapping, and then everyone in the church got to their feet and applauded.
As they all said afterwards, it was an emotional moment.
Margot’s address was not a comfortable one for anyone present, especially as Tallulah Bonner was so prominently seated with her senior colleagues around her. Everyone agreed that Margot should not have said what she did, and that it would be best for her to leave as soon as she could, and to take Sam back to Scotland. That was what she wanted, wasn’t it?
Margot read from a prepared text, rarely looking up at her audience. She had written it the night before, and had refused to let Sam see it.
Leo’s was a good life, she said, devoted to a cause he believed in: the search to unlock the secrets of our oceans and the mammals that live in them. He always said that if you believed in something deeply and sincerely, you should fight for it. He believed the fishing industry and its lobbyists were working to repeal the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 to allow the slaughter of seals and other sea mammals to start anew. And he believed that the Coldharbor Institute should stand up to the big money behind the industry and expose that campaign for what it was, an attempt to turn the clock back to a barbaric age.
‘Leo Kemp was an awkward, challenging individual,’ Margot continued. ‘But that’s what made him a great teacher. And that’s why he was not afraid to say that his own field, oceanography and the marine biology that underpins it, is growing fat and lazy on the hundreds of millions of dollars of funds it raises with such skill.
‘My husband used to say that if you dropped a baited hook three kilometres down into the ocean – and that is less than the average depth of all our seas – there was an even chance you’d pull up a species of fish unknown to science. I can hear him say this now: “How can it be that we know less about the bottom of the sea than we do about the dark side of the moon?” That’s why he thought modern science was failing to ask the right questions.’
And then she came out with it: on the day before his death Leo Kemp had been dismissed from a job he loved, not for talking to the media, but for challenging the status quo, questioning the cosy corporate world into which oceanographic science in general, and by implication of course the Coldharbor Institute and its Board of Governors in particular, had sunk.
Dean Bonner sat tight-lipped and grim-faced as Margot went on to say how Leo had used Hoover the talking seal to poke fun at the pomposity of the science establishment.
‘Now, let me tell you, I understand that was not an ideal position for a member of the Institute’s teaching staff to take. But Coldharbor is a great, big, grown-up organisation, is it not? It can surely accommodate a few voices of dissent. Anyway, who knows? Maybe Leo was right. All he wanted was for the science establishment to admit that it doesn’t know it all yet.’
There was no formal gathering afterwards, although the Institute had offered to lay on a small reception. Margot and Sam stood on the church steps shaking hands with the mourners, or celebrators. Most had a word or two with them, but when Tallulah Bonner came out she offered Margot the briefest of handshakes, kissed Sam gently, and left.
She was furious, and rightfully so, she told herself. To have the Institute publicly pilloried at a service to remember the life of one of its senior staff was intolerable. Margot Kemp had told her she was leaving the Cape: the sooner the better.
For old times’ sake Margot asked Buck, Sandy and Jenny Hathaway for a drink at the Dark Side. Buck’s wife came too and sat by his side saying nothing. Once everyone had settled into their seats and ordered, she asked if she had gone too far in her address. Buck and Sandy muttered feeble reassurances, but Jenny said, ‘Of course it was the wrong time and place to say that, and of course it upset Tallulah Bonner. But there was never going to be a right time to get that off your chest, so what the hell?’
Everyone agreed. Margot looked pleased, and amid general relief the conversation turned to that staple of post-funeral parties, the merits of the various tributes and readings. Buck sank into silence, staring into his drink. His body hunched forward and he began to rock slowly back and forth on the chair, his knuckles whitening as he gripped his glass. Renee began stroking the back of his head murmuring something in his ear. The conversation died around him. Margot suddenly thought that this big man, a lifelong fisherman well used to the casual violence of the sea, was about to cry. Instead Buck straightened up, raised his glass and said in a hoarse voice, ‘Here’s to the best friend I ever had.’
When Margot had to leave, prompted by a call from Sam, she expected Jenny to come with her. But her friend seemed strangely reluctant. Sandy was at the bar ordering another bottle of wine, she explained, and he had promised to tell her the secrets of his blend of Syrah and Viognier grapes. She smiled and said. ‘I’m enjoying myself. You go home to Sam.’
That night Margot and Sam started packing. Margot watched her daughter carefully, but she seemed to have weathered the emotional storm, or its first wave, anyway. The fact that Sam had done so much to organise the service had really helped.
Sam’s friend Mona phoned and asked Sam how she was, and whether she would like to chill for an hour over at her house if her mother didn’t mind.
‘Are you sure, darling?’ asked Margot. ‘I mean, we only had the service this morning.’
‘Mum that was a service to celebrate Dad’s life. I loved it. I loved what everyone said, and the music and the readings. I’m fine about Dad. Maybe I won’t be tomorrow or the day after, but right now I’m OK, so don’t worry about me. But I do worry about you.’ Sam gave her a big hug and a kiss. ‘Why don’t you ask Jenny Hathaway over?’ she said, looking positively cheerful as she skipped to the door. ‘I’ll only be gone for an hour. Take care.’
God, she’s looking after me, thought Margot, and suddenly she felt very alone. I’ll soon lose her. In a year or two she’ll go to university, maybe St Andrews, and I’ll be all alone. They will all have gone.
Gloria Gulliver left the service realising how much she missed the man in whose memory it had been held. It had not occurred to her that what had felt like a brief and casual affair was anything other than that, a little warmth blown in on a chance summer wind. She had not taken it seriously. But listening to his students and to Margot’s excoriating address, she realised how much Leo’s passions and beliefs had touched those around him.
She returned to her studio and threw away the halffinished watercolour portrait. She decided to start again, in oil this time. Gloria loved watercolours because the technique was fast, immediate and unalterable. You just mixed water with a palette of colours and laid the images on paper with swift brush strokes. There was no going back with watercolours. The paint dried almost immediately, and the finished work was there before you. That’s why Gloria was a watercolourist. Once you began a painting you had to finish it quickly. There were no second chances with watercolour. She liked that. It suited her.
She had completed the watercolour of the godwit the students had commissioned in just over three hours. She knew the bird all too well. Leo had talked endlessly about the godwit, describing in detail its plumage, the long curved bill and above all its extraordinary strength, the power that lay in its wings. Gunbrit explained that the painting was a gift to Margot Kemp as a tribute from Leo’s students. Gloria had refused payment.
But the portrait of Leo was different. The beauty of oil was that you could build the painting over days, changing colours to alter skin tones, light and shade, altering the whole feel of the composition, which allowed you to explore the inner character of the subject. There was a deeper truth to be found and conveyed in oil. She mixed her paint with linseed oil, making the consistency more liquid than usual; the longer the oil took to dry, the more time there was to modify, adapt and strengthen the portrait.
She decided to turn the portrait into a statement about this strange man and the work that so obsessed him. It wasn’t that she disagreed with his views on the fishing industry and the science of oceanography. But she wanted to take him out of that world, make him laugh; make him realise that life did not have to be an endless battle with those of opposing convictions.
‘Someone should inject you with a joy drug,’ she had once told him. ‘Look at yourself! Sandwiched for a heartbeat of time between two eternities of darkness, and all you can do is put your fists up every day and fight. How about a little fun in this short life of yours? I’m going to show you how. I’m going to make you see there’s more to it than endless angst about those seals of yours.’
He didn’t object. In fact he laughed out loud when she made a quick sketch of two seals in copulatory position and gave him a mock lecture on their mating habits with microscopic anatomical detail – a perfect parody of the self-congratulatory pomposity that characterised so much academic teaching: probably including his own, he thought.
She decided early on in the portrait that Leo would be smiling that slow ironic half-smile that very occasionally creased his face when she said or did something outrageous. The first time that had happened was when she had placed a finger on his lips during a passionate discourse on Canadian seal-culling policy and told him to get into the bath.
‘What, now? Why?’
‘Go on, just do it.’
So he had undressed and got into the bath while she lit candles and placed them all around its edge. She put Ravel’s ‘Bolero’ on the tape deck and turned it up loud.
‘Remember Dudley Moore in the film 10?’
‘Remind me.’
‘Some gorgeous Hollywood actress is trying to seduce him, but Dudley Moore doesn’t want to know. She puts on this piece by Ravel – all men marching off to war with drumbeats and crashing chords, very sexy – and Dudley says, “What is this?” And she just comes out with it: “Music to make love to.”’
He smiled and said, ‘That wasn’t quite what she said, was it?’
‘No, but I don’t like four letter words.’
That had made him smile.
She finished the painting in three days, using a scalpel to work in new oils and scrape off the old. She put a closed sign on the studio door, turned the answer phone on and worked until her eyes blurred with fatigue. But she got what she was looking for: Leo on a rocky foreshore, binoculars strung around his neck, hands shoved deep in the pockets of an old anorak with a pod of seals scattered among the seaweed-covered rocks in the background. He was staring straight out of the frame, the blue-grey eyes looking out at eternity, the mouth creased in a slight smile as if a sudden pleasurable thought had interrupted the melancholic reverie that lay behind those eyes.
Gloria was a fierce self-critic. But she knew she had caught something of Leo and the world that obsessed him: refracted light from a sunlit sea playing on the rough texture of his face; that half-smile below those haunted eyes; the slick, blubbery bodies of the seals; and beyond them a sea churned to waves by a wind that whipped spume from the crests. The painting was an allegory, of course, but she wanted it to look more like one of those works of photorealism beloved by nature artists. She wanted it to smell and taste of the sea that Leo had loved so much.
She wanted to show him with feet planted firmly on land, a survivor of the sea and a violent and destructive marriage. Gloria knew this portrait was for Margot, Sam and the wider family, but it was also for her. She had a stake in Leo as well as they did. He had been hers as much as anyone’s. Yes, she told herself, perhaps she really had loved him.