‘This place looks great,’ said Finn, ducking to avoid hitting his head on the doorframe as they went inside.
The bar was laid out like someone’s living room – albeit one in a house belonging to an eccentric kleptomaniac with a penchant for hoarding, thought Pepper – and every available surface was piled high with an astonishing array of ornaments, pictures, candles, framed photos, records and postcards. Someone had fashioned a disco light out of a gramophone, and the furniture was a jumble of mismatched pieces in varying states of disrepair. Pepper pointed to a mirror-fronted cabinet in the corner that someone had decorated in stick-on goggly eyes, a battalion of costume dolls on one of the wooden shelves above. There were shisha pipes stacked against the walls, a rickety table groaning under the weight of board games, and a large grandfather clock with graffiti-green chimes.
After ordering two cans of beer from a red-haired woman who was manning the kitchen-cum-bar area, they sat down on a chintzy sofa that promptly coughed out a fog of dust.
‘Obrigada,’ said Finn, thanking the same woman as she plonked a small basket of nuts down on the table in front of them.
‘So,’ said Pepper, pouring her beer from the can into a glass.
‘So,’ said Finn, following suit.
Before she had time to conjure up something interesting or witty to say, he had plucked a dog-eared menu off a nearby shelf and began reading the cocktail list aloud.
‘Sloe comfortable screw?’ he suggested.
Pepper choked as her beer went down the wrong way.
‘Nein? OK . . . Perhaps, then, a Climax?’
‘Stop!’ Pepper laughingly poked his leg. ‘You’re lowering the tone.’
‘Between the Sheets sounds good, ja?’ he teased. ‘White rum, cognac, triple sec and a splash of lemon juice.’
‘Very nice,’ she said obediently. ‘But to be honest, I’m more a simple beer or wine girl.’
‘Yes,’ he said, putting down the menu. ‘That is why we get along so well, I think. You like the simple things in life, and I am simple.’
‘Simple suggests you’re not interesting,’ she pointed out. ‘And I would argue that you are.’
‘Ja?’ He was fishing now.
‘You co-own a bar and a restaurant and you’re launching your own website. You apparently speak at least three languages – including Portuguese – and spend the majority of your time travelling around the world. Oh, and there’s also the fact you accost strange women in the street.’
As she talked, Pepper ticked each attribute off on her fingers, watching in amusement as Finn’s smile grew wider and wider.
‘Given all the evidence,’ she went on. ‘I would say that you’re extremely complex. Not simple at all – the very opposite of simple.’
‘I don’t talk to every woman I see,’ he assured her, taking a swig of his beer. ‘Only those that are wearing pelicans.’
‘Toucans, actually,’ she corrected. ‘But I’m glad they made an impression.’
‘The birds did catch my eye,’ he admitted. ‘But it is the rest that keeps me here still.’
Pepper shifted position on the tatty sofa. As much as she wanted to be seen by him – really seen – she was unused to being scrutinised so openly. Finn was staring at her now as he might a work of art. He was not afraid to make his feelings known, and Pepper wondered if her own features were giving away even half as much. Being this close to Finn had heightened her senses, and every nerve ending seemed to be pulsing at once.
‘Tell me more about your work,’ he said now, scooping up a handful of nuts. ‘Do you teach only adults, or is it children, too?’
‘I’ll teach anyone who wants teaching,’ she said simply. ‘Anyone who wants to learn. Adults are more difficult, because they invariably come with a bag of bad habits and a very firm idea of what they want the finished creation to look like, even if it might be beyond their reach in terms of skill.’
Finn had finished his beer, and in a bid to keep up, Pepper downed what was left in her glass and went up to get another round. She couldn’t resist turning back to look at him as she waited, the pull between them like that of a tow rope, connected to the centre of her chest.
‘Teaching children is better?’ he asked when she returned, picking up the conversation where they had left it.
‘I guess so.’ Pepper thought for a moment. ‘Children are great, because you really feel as if you’re helping them to see the world differently. You ask them what colour the sky is, and they say “blue”, so you take them to the window, tell them to look a bit harder, and then suddenly they can see greys and pinks and smears of white. Only once I get them to that point do I feel satisfied, because only then do I know for sure that I have given their lives so much extra colour.’
Finn stretched an arm around the back of the sofa, his hand coming to rest on the cushion behind Pepper’s shoulder.
‘I think we can all be guilty of that,’ he said. ‘Sometimes we can stare so hard at something, yet still never see it. That is why I love art – it gives you permission to stop and look.’
‘You need permission to do that?’
‘Perhaps permission is the wrong English word,’ he allowed. ‘What I mean is that it reminds us. We all learn that a painting, for example, deepens the more you examine it, and gives away more of itself.’
‘I would agree with that.’
‘What I try to do,’ he went on, ‘is apply the same rule to everything I come across in my life – not just art or nature, but people. I try to look beyond what someone is showing me on the surface and see what is hidden underneath.’
Taking a deep breath and raising both her eyebrows in appreciation of how deep their conversation had become, she said lightly, ‘Remind me never to show you any of my darker work in that case. It’ll scare you right off.’
Finn removed his arm from the back of the sofa, and even though he hadn’t been touching her, Pepper still felt suddenly colder.
‘I would like to see it,’ he said, going in for more of the nuts. ‘Can you show me some pieces? Do you have any photos on your phone?’
Pepper shook her head. ‘I told you yesterday. I don’t do much of my own stuff. I’m too busy teaching.’
‘I don’t believe that you do nothing.’ Finn gave her a sidelong look. ‘You must have one picture you can show me.’
‘I honestly don’t,’ she insisted. And it was true – she never photographed her work, never kept it long enough to do so. The examples of art on her website were those done by her pupils, and anything she created as part of a session, she invariably gave away, painted over, or broke down into pieces to use another time. None of it warranted showing off – it was never good enough.
‘OK,’ he said, swilling beer around in his glass. ‘But how can I hope to find out more about you if you refuse to show me?’
Pepper uncrossed her legs, the skirt of her white dress falling between her thighs. The red-haired woman was humming as she mixed drinks for a couple that had just arrived, a tune that felt familiar despite being indistinguishable. There was chatter and laughter coming from other tables, and the dancing lights of the gramophone disco ball were playing a fruitless game of chase on the far wall.