Drunk with fury and frustration for not defending herself against those arrogantly spoken words, she spun dizzily into the room, the clicking of the door behind her going nowhere near to snapping her out of her shock. Her head started to clear as Ellis Frazer strode across the room to a silver coffee-service elegantly arranged on a side-table by long French doors overlooking a rose garden.
The scent of roses was the first sensation that registered with Caroline, then the heat of the room from a blazing coal fire in the Adam-style grate. It was a warm September day and a fire was unnecessary; then Caroline noticed the wheelchair positioned in front of it.
There was a sudden whirring sound as the chair moved and slowly turned to face her and it was in that moment that Caroline swallowed down her anger and frustration with Ellis Frazer.
The fragile lady that focused her gaze on Caroline took her breath away. Once she had been a raving beauty, Caroline recognised that immediately, but she still was beautiful, in a hauntingly pale, luminous way. Her hair was snow-white, piled high on top of her head, her face, though ravaged by illness, was perfectly made up. She was dressed in pale lilac silk which added to her appearance of delicacy and her jewellery was the finest of amethysts set in platinum around her fragile throat. She was a lady, a true lady in spite of the clumsy wheelchair she sat elegantly in. A light blue cashmere rug was draped over her legs, legs which Caroline instinctively knew were of no use to her now.
Ellis Frazer’s mother stared at Caroline for a full minute, a minute in which Caroline sensed she was being coolly assessed but not appraised. When she spoke, to Caroline’s dismay, it was with the same arrogant coldness which characterised her son.
‘You look nothing like a sculptress,’ she stated positively, as if, since she said it, it must be.
‘Caroline is, I assure you, Mother, the best, so don’t give her a hard time.’
That was good coming from him, Caroline thought, at the same time wondering if she should step closer to the woman. She stayed where she was, midway between that formidable wheelchair and the door Ellis Frazer had just propelled her through.
‘My mother, Vanessa Frazer,’ he told Caroline, pouring coffee as he spoke. ‘You might be honoured by being allowed to call her Vanessa—if she likes you,’ he went on, adding cryptically, ‘But don’t count on it.’ He spooned sugar in a coffee-cup and added a few drops of cream before taking it over to his mother.
Wide-eyed, Caroline gaped at the two of them, knowing deep in her heart that if she stayed and did this job it would be the most difficult of her life..
‘So what does she call you?’ Vanessa Frazer directed at her son, meaning Caroline but ignoring her as if she weren’t even on the same planet, let alone in the same room. ‘Not darling already, surely?’ she went on bitingly. ‘She looks far too sensible to fall for your disputable charms like the rest of them do. Heaven knows what they see in an ugly, whip-cracking tyrant like you but then most of them have been mindless society beauties only seduced by your money and your connections.’
Caroline listened in fascinated horror at the cutting words that spilled from her mouth.
Vanessa Frazer suddenly looked Caroline directly in the eye. ‘You wouldn’t be swayed into his bed by the thought of his wealth, would you?’ She immediately answered her own question before it had barely registered with a shocked Caroline. ‘Of course you wouldn’t. Far too sensible. Come closer; let me take a good look at you.’
Holy Mary! Caroline thought in utter dismay. This was a scene out of Dickens’ Great Expectations!
‘It’s for Caroline to scrutinise you, Mother, not the other way about,’ Ellis told her firmly. ‘Drop the Miss Havisham act and drink your coffee while I pour one for Caroline. Milk or cream?’ he asked her.
‘Neither,’ Caroline uttered weakly, still reeling at his perception in likening this scenario to the one she had been thinking of. But it wasn’t so surprising, she supposed; the two of them were as eccentric as any of Dickens’ characters.
‘So I live in a world of make-believe,’ Vanessa Frazer mused on, talking to no one in particular. ‘It’s all I have these days, that and memories. Nothing to live for because it’s all gone. I’m going out with a whimper because to fight is too wearing——’
‘Get out the violins,’ Ellis interjected quickly and to Caroline so cruelly that her hand shook as she took the coffee he brought to her. ‘It gets worse,’ Ellis told her, loud enough for his mother to hear. ‘She eats nurses for breakfast but before she does she reduces them to nervous wrecks with her demands and her insults. She enjoys it too.’
‘The only pleasure I have these days,’ Vanessa said sourly, burying her nose in her coffee-cup as if sniffing for poison. She lifted her head and nodded towards her son. ‘He gives me nothing but heartache.’
I can’t bear this, Caroline thought. I’ll never be able to work for these two; they’re awful to each other and to anyone who comes into contact with them. They are poison.
‘Darling,’ Ellis drawled, and stepped towards his mother, squatting down and taking a small, limp, blue-veined hand in his. ‘I give you the adrenaline that keeps you going from day to day, not heartache. Without our daily crossfire you would have crumpled long ago. Now stop giving Caroline a hard time and let her get on with her work. You’re going to like her, I promise you.’
He dropped an affectionate lingering kiss on the back of his mother’s hand and in that moment Caroline saw the deep love and devotion between them. Harsh words had flown around this room and now Caroline could see how wrong she had been in thinking the worst of them both. This was a game of survival. Vanessa Frazer was obviously a very sick lady and her arrogant son was her life support; whatever they said to each other wasn’t what it seemed.
It set a whole new scenario for this commission. It set a whole new problem for Caroline as she watched Ellis Frazer take the coffee-cup from his mother’s fragile hands and set it down on the floor while he rearranged the cashmere shawl around her legs. He wasn’t a cold, hard, arrogant man. Well, he was actually but maybe with good reason. He had his hands full. He wasn’t a mother’s boy, though; a mother’s boy wouldn’t have the nerve to handle his sick mother with such determined capability. So the man might be human after all.
But she had known that before entering this room. That shocking kiss had shown her just how wretchedly human he was. The kiss hadn’t swayed her thinking about the man, however. His mother had. Difficult she might be, but putting aside those difficulties which were sure to arise when she started the bronze of her, she knew it would be a challenge she couldn’t refuse. Vanessa Frazer was a fascinating subject from an artist’s viewpoint; and her son? He was just morbidly fascinating, Caroline acknowledged in her heart. An acknowledgement she wasn’t at all comfortable with but it wasn’t a problem, just a warning.
‘DID you bring a portfolio of your work for me to see?’ Vanessa Frazer asked at last.
Caroline nodded and lifted her bag from the floor where she had dropped it.
‘Haven’t you got a voice, young lady? You haven’t said a word yet,’ the not so frail lady said bitingly.
Ellis Frazer gave Caroline an encouraging nod from the side-table where he was pouring himself a coffee, a nod that Caroline didn’t need. She stepped towards the wheelchair by the fire, set her coffee-cup down on the hearth and sat down on a wing-chair across from her. She took her portfolio, photographs of her work, out from her bag.
‘Mrs Frazer, I’ve hardly had space to get a word in edgeways.’ She sat with the portfolio on her lap and looked at the lady. ‘And I think there is something you ought to know.’ From the corner of her eye she saw Ellis Frazer frowning at her and wondered if he thought she was going to mention Martha. ‘I don’t talk very much