Read Online The House at Midnight by Lucie Whitehouse - Free Book Online
Authors: Lucie Whitehouse
Tags: General/Fiction
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deeply could be offered up for the entertainment and self-satisfied judgement of those who had never even met Patrick. So what if he had been extravagant? He'd made a lot of money at an age where he'd wanted to enjoy it. What if his group had always been surrounded by women? And perhaps one of his artists had been a heroin addict; surely that couldn't have been unique in the art world?
We had all taken the day off work to support Lucas. Rachel and Michael were sombre but Martha was angry and I had to tell her to keep cool about the paparazzi standing on the pavement on the opposite side of the road, their cameras hungry for the famous faces they knew would come. 'Bloodsucking bastards,' she said. 'He's dead. Isn't that enough?'
I hovered near Lucas as he welcomed people and thanked them for coming. Among the impeccably dressed and wealthy, there were several prominent figures. I saw a very well-known Labour MP and a former BBC foreign correspondent, as well as Louis Finch, the hot black actor everyone was talking about. There were also a number of elegant women who looked familiar but who I couldn't name. III at ease in the formal clothes required by the occasion were a number of bohemian-looking types who I took to be artists, either Patrick's own or friends of his. There was also the cleaning lady from his London house whom I had met when I went to meet Lucas there once. She gave him a hug.
Danny was great that day, I had to admit. He was restrained but efficient, handing out orders of service and showing people to their seats, even if the level of his involvement did cause some confusion. 'I'm so sorry for your loss,' I overheard one of the glamorous middle-aged women say to him. 'I know how close you were.'
'Thank you,' Danny had said seriously before catching my look over her shoulder and hurriedly moving away.
Inside, a dim underwater light had filtered through the stained-glass windows but did little to illuminate the dark wooden pews and many unlit recesses. It smelt richly of dust and the Establishment; I could imagine Patrick undercutting the formality of it all with a levelling remark. Lucas gave a tribute and my heart had ached for him as he stood at the lectern in front of all of those people, holding it together for them when it was he who was most in pain, now left completely alone in the world by his family. I had tried not to notice the tremor in the paper on which he had written his notes.
I hadn't known much about Patrick's previous life apart from the few facts that had made their way into the newspapers; he seemed like someone who had been born just as he was. It had almost been a surprise to find that there had been a process involved in becoming that version of him. From Lucas's tribute I learnt that Patrick had grown up in Northampton shire, one of two sons of a local businessman, and had been educated at grammar school and then Cambridge, where he read English. Shortly after university he met Simon Harcourt, who had started work on his Elysium series of oil paintings. Patrick offered to represent him and when Harcourt became a success, other artists began to approach him. Lucas described Patrick as the first of a new breed of art dealer, an entrepreneur who had set up his gallery by his mid twenties, championing off-beat unknowns and making them stars. One of his proteges, as I had known, was Thomas Parrish, a major British player of the seventies and eighties, whose work hung in Tate Modern.
'Come on, wake up. You've got to stop daydreaming, Joanna,' said Stephen, as he dropped a batch of local-council documents on my desk. 'About the pedestrianisation of South Street. Not particularly exciting but all part of serving an apprenticeship, eh?'
I had to go, I thought, picking up the papers. This had to be the year I left the Gazette. My apprenticeship had become an elephant's pregnancy.
The place Lucas had chosen was in Soho. There was a small reception area at street-level but the restaurant
We had all taken the day off work to support Lucas. Rachel and Michael were sombre but Martha was angry and I had to tell her to keep cool about the paparazzi standing on the pavement on the opposite side of the road, their cameras hungry for the famous faces they knew would come. 'Bloodsucking bastards,' she said. 'He's dead. Isn't that enough?'
I hovered near Lucas as he welcomed people and thanked them for coming. Among the impeccably dressed and wealthy, there were several prominent figures. I saw a very well-known Labour MP and a former BBC foreign correspondent, as well as Louis Finch, the hot black actor everyone was talking about. There were also a number of elegant women who looked familiar but who I couldn't name. III at ease in the formal clothes required by the occasion were a number of bohemian-looking types who I took to be artists, either Patrick's own or friends of his. There was also the cleaning lady from his London house whom I had met when I went to meet Lucas there once. She gave him a hug.
Danny was great that day, I had to admit. He was restrained but efficient, handing out orders of service and showing people to their seats, even if the level of his involvement did cause some confusion. 'I'm so sorry for your loss,' I overheard one of the glamorous middle-aged women say to him. 'I know how close you were.'
'Thank you,' Danny had said seriously before catching my look over her shoulder and hurriedly moving away.
Inside, a dim underwater light had filtered through the stained-glass windows but did little to illuminate the dark wooden pews and many unlit recesses. It smelt richly of dust and the Establishment; I could imagine Patrick undercutting the formality of it all with a levelling remark. Lucas gave a tribute and my heart had ached for him as he stood at the lectern in front of all of those people, holding it together for them when it was he who was most in pain, now left completely alone in the world by his family. I had tried not to notice the tremor in the paper on which he had written his notes.
I hadn't known much about Patrick's previous life apart from the few facts that had made their way into the newspapers; he seemed like someone who had been born just as he was. It had almost been a surprise to find that there had been a process involved in becoming that version of him. From Lucas's tribute I learnt that Patrick had grown up in Northampton shire, one of two sons of a local businessman, and had been educated at grammar school and then Cambridge, where he read English. Shortly after university he met Simon Harcourt, who had started work on his Elysium series of oil paintings. Patrick offered to represent him and when Harcourt became a success, other artists began to approach him. Lucas described Patrick as the first of a new breed of art dealer, an entrepreneur who had set up his gallery by his mid twenties, championing off-beat unknowns and making them stars. One of his proteges, as I had known, was Thomas Parrish, a major British player of the seventies and eighties, whose work hung in Tate Modern.
'Come on, wake up. You've got to stop daydreaming, Joanna,' said Stephen, as he dropped a batch of local-council documents on my desk. 'About the pedestrianisation of South Street. Not particularly exciting but all part of serving an apprenticeship, eh?'
I had to go, I thought, picking up the papers. This had to be the year I left the Gazette. My apprenticeship had become an elephant's pregnancy.
The place Lucas had chosen was in Soho. There was a small reception area at street-level but the restaurant
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