Natural History by Neil Cross Page B

office
    3) again
    He thanked the keeper, scrunching up the note, then headed down the hill, finishing his sandwich. He walked past the new children’s climbing frame, erected not far from the entrance, then past the food vans and the visitor lavatories and into the office.
    He nodded curtly to Mrs de Frietas, who thought him work-shy and scruffy, and squeezed past her desk into his office.
    In there was a woman. She had her back to him, watching the punters eating their hot dogs and cones of chips—and she turned at the sound of the door opening.
    Pixie face, pixie hair. She wore tennis shoes, paint-spattered jeans, a man’s checked shirt over a Gap T-shirt. And she wore delicate, wire-framed spectacles. The way the light fell, her eyes were half-obscured behind smudged finger- and thumbprints.
    From behind one ear, past her clavicle and into the neck of her T-shirt, ran a twisting rope of scar tissue. Its nudity was shocking, but Patrick recovered well enough by moving his gaze to the painting the woman carried under one arm. It was wrapped in brown paper.
    She said, ‘Hi,’ and shifted the painting to offer her hand. ‘Sarah Lime.’
    He shook her hand. ‘Patrick. Pleased to … you know.’ Then, hasty and apologetic, he invited her to sit.
    She thanked him and did, setting the painting against his desk. She laced her hands in her lap.
    He sat with elbows on the desk, playing with a Biro.
    She said, ‘Actually, I was hoping to see Jane. Your, um … She came in—to my shop. A while ago. To have a look round. And she …’ She nodded at the brown paper square. ‘She bought this. She decided she wanted it on the spot. It wasn’t actually finished.’
    â€˜That sounds like Jane.’
    â€˜So—is she? Actually around?’
    â€˜Actually, no. She’s in Zaire, of all places.’
    â€˜Zaire?’
    â€˜Hunting monkeys.’
    She knotted her hands. ‘Okay. Well, not to worry.’
    â€˜Right,’ said Patrick. ‘Well, thanks for dropping it off.’
    â€˜Right, then.’ Sarah stood, putting her bag on her shoulder.
    Patrick stood, too.
    She said, ‘Best be off.’
    â€˜Okay. Thanks again.’
    â€˜No problem. I expect I’ll see you again.’
    â€˜Absolutely. I must drop round the shop. Gallery. Shop.’
    â€˜Quay Lime.’ She jerked a thumb over her shoulder, like someone dancing the hitch-hiker. ‘On the front. By the chip shop. Can’t miss it.’
    â€˜I’ll do that.’ He spread a hand to show her the small office crammed with old desks and crappy old filing cabinets and dusty piles of paper—stuff he was supposed to have read and never would, stuff he was supposed to sign but didn’t bother. ‘This place could do with brightening up.’
    â€˜Excellent.’
    â€˜Excellent.’
    She hesitated in the doorway, about to say something, but instead she said, ‘Cheers,’ and on the way out she struck her hip on the corner of Mrs de Frietas’s oversized and malevolent desk.
    He heard Sarah’s yelp and her wounded apology, and finally the door closing. When she had safely gone, he fiddled with the Biro and let the awkwardness work its way through his system and drain away.
    All it was, Jane had bought a painting without telling him. She’d done worse things; spending all their money on a chimpanzee sanctuary, for example.
    But, before getting back to avoiding work, he lifted the painting, still wrapped. Probably, the polite thing would have been to examine it in the artist’s presence. Instead, he’d shown no interest; and it wasn’t Sarah Lime’s fault that he didn’t get to see villainous monkeys mugging a duck.
    Deep in the piles of crap on his desk, he found a letter-opener. Its handle was in the shape of a Scots Guard playing the bagpipes. He’d never seen it before, and wondered briefly where the hell it had