The Potter’s House

‘It would be a wonderful picture. When I first saw Cary I was almost too afraid to speak to her.’

‘Why is that?’ I asked, in spite of myself.

‘Because of the way you look.’

There seemed to be a shift in air pressure, as in the seconds before the sound of an approaching tube train becomes audible. Thewayyoulook. When I was much younger I possessed an outlandish kind of beauty. I was six feet tall, with a smooth face that make-up artists could paint over with a hundred other faces. I used my appearance to earn money as a photographic model. But I was past forty now and what was left of my extreme looks had been for a long time more an affliction than a blessing because they were at odds with what I felt inside. It was like having always to wear a mask, only it was also a mask that age kept on distorting.

‘I remember that you talked quite a lot, in fact,’ I said, recalling the confidences about Baz and his new girlfriend and the pregnancy.

There was that change in air pressure again, a movement of the atmosphere that made you suck in a breath to reinflate your lungs. In the sudden silence that was broken only by the clink of cutlery I realised that the new atmospheric component was hostility. It had replaced the oxygen.

Lisa and I were still looking at each other, the glance twisting between us like razor wire. Peter sat in his place at the head of our table, his eyes still mild behind his glasses, maybe unaware of the arrow pointed at him. But I think he did feel the tension of the bowstring. This was about him. Lisa Kirk believed that she had spotted Baz’s replacement.

‘Oh yes, once I knew you,’ Lisa said softly.

My body went stiff. That this child should think she knew me on the basis of a couple of encounters, when I had devoted so much and so many years of effort to concealing everything. Everyone in the room, it seemed, immediately began talking very loudly about the first thing that came into their heads.

Mark adjusted the already perfect folds of his turned-back shirt cuffs. He had smooth wrists, lightly tanned from the latest trip to Kerala. And then he reached out to touch Lisa’s handbag that was lying next to her plate.

‘I read somewhere that women’s bags actually represent an intimate portion of their anatomy. Do you think there’s any truth in that, Lisa?’

Dear Mark, kind and vicious in the same breath. Tonight’s little bag was in the shape of a pink satin heart, sequinned and beaded, and certainly quite anatomical if you chose to look at it that way.

‘If it is true, I’m in the right business, aren’t I?’ She smiled. ‘Even if it is only a representation. Dealing in a commodity that is so constant and yet so sought after.’

Lisa was utterly self-possessed. I had the sudden certainty that nothing would deflect her and nothing would disconcert her. She wore her youth and sureness and desirability like armour plating.

Peter’s American associate was giggling at this risqué turn in the conversation, and Lisa lifted up the bag and gave it to her to examine.

‘What do you think, Jessy?’

‘It’s certainly pretty enough.’

‘Thank you.’

I slid out of my chair and began to collect up the plates from my end of the table, moving very deliberately and with a smile nailed to my face.

The evening came to an end eventually. Lisa rested her fingers gently and briefly on my forearm as she kissed me goodnight and then gave exactly the same attention to Peter.

When Peter and I were left on our own we stacked the plates in the kitchen, blew out the candles, retreated to our bedroom as we had done so many times before. I lay very still in our bed and he put his arms round me, which made me conscious of how brittle I felt.

I wasn’t ageing well, I thought. Now that I no longer had it, I wanted my weird beauty back again. I wasn’t a model, I had failed to become an actress – which had been my subsequent intention. Another strange choice for a woman who doesn’t like to be looked at. Much uneventful time had elapsed and I didn’t know what I was any longer. Except that I was Peter Stafford’s wife and a resident of Dunollie Mansions, for now.

‘Catherine, what’s wrong?’

He doesn’t often call me by my full name.

‘Nothing. Did you enjoy the evening?’

He shifted a little on his hip, considering, and I felt the warmth of his breath on my face.

‘Yes. I think it went quite well. Clive was in good form.’

Tenderness towards him spread beneath my breast-bone like heartburn. Peter always considered his judgements, and tried to be fair and objective. How had we lived together for so long and been so different, in our chalk and cheese way?

Lying in the dark I found myself thinking of the night we met and fell in love, standing under the ribs of a spiral staircase while a procession of models went up and down past our heads. Lisa Kirk told me about watching her Baz falling in love at a party in just the same way and I was sure I had witnessed the same flash of lightning tonight, between Lisa and my husband, even though I didn’t think they had exchanged a word in private or even an unwitnessed glance. The three scenes made a bright little triptych in my mind’s eye.

I moved an inch closer to Peter and kissed his closed mouth. At the same time I lifted and crooked my upper knee. One of those signals that long-time couples read so well. He put his hand over my ribcage and splayed the fingers over the bones, as if he was fingering piano keys.

‘I love you,’ I told him, which was the truth.

‘And I you,’ he answered politely. ‘And I worry about you.’

I didn’t press him to explain the dimensions of his anxiety. ‘What did you think of Lisa Kirk?’

‘I liked her.’

‘I thought you would.’

I exhaled and his fingers moved again.

We made love, a little awkwardly, as if there were a sheet between us.

After that, it was only a matter of time.

Two (#uc5fb50be-85bc-5b9a-ae6c-5df99e1d21a1)

Every day of each season on the island of Halemni had its own perfection, but to Olivia Georgiadis autumn was the best time of all.

The heat of summer was contained in the brazen midday, while the chill mornings and evenings gave a taste of the coming winter. There was a smell of woodsmoke and burning pitch as the fishermen overhauled the boats, and the houses and tavernas around the harbour wall lost their wide-eyed summer expressions as shutters were nailed in place. The last of the holidaymakers were carried away on ferries and hydrofoils towards Rhodes, or distant Athens, and their flights to Munich or Stockholm or Gatwick. There was a collective sense of relief at the season’s end as the little community prepared to turn inwards.

Olivia was thinking about autumn and other things, as she made her way down the hill to her house. Her two boys were running ahead of her, their brown legs twinkling in the sunshine as they leapt the rocks. Olivia walked more slowly, with empty baskets in both hands. She had been to take cake and flasks of coffee to her guests who were at their easels in the shelter of a band of stunted trees near the top of the hill.

‘There’s Pappy!’

Georgi, the older child, balanced on a cone of rock and pointed. His brother Theo immediately ran up and pushed him sideways. Georgi toppled off and Theo leapt on to the rock pinnacle in his place.

‘I am the leader,’ he crowed.

‘Mummy, Mum, did you see what Theo did?’

The two of them spoke a mixture of Greek and English that Olivia and Xan always enjoyed. Xan’s Greek mother was less admiring.

‘They sound nothing like little Greek boys. They sound like nothing on earth,’ Meroula Georgiadis complained.

‘Take it in turns,’ Olivia told them automatically.

She dismissed the thought of her mother-in-law and watched her husband walking back along the harbour wall instead. He was looking over the turquoise water, past the moored caiques and the smoking tar barrel, but she could see the way the wind blew his hair into a crest, just as it did with Georgi’s. Her heart’s rhythm altered for a second or two as it always did when she caught sight of Xan after a separation, even if it had only lasted for an hour.