Landscape with Corpse, page 3
When she came wandering into the bedroom, I said, ‘I hope this won’t affect your painting.’ I was assuming she was in the painter’s group, as she knew Jennie so well.
She looked morose. ‘I’m a damned fool. Never think before I act.’ She stared at her hand. ‘And I’ll feel a worse fool if I can’t even hold a pastel.’
‘That’s what my husband is using. Oliver, his name is, and I’m Philipa. He’s going to try his hand at pastels—and he’s got a bit of a disability, too.’
‘We ought to get together,’ she said morosely. But she hadn’t missed his smile, and now produced a weak one of her own.
Then Oliver returned, his heavy suitcase under his left arm, my lighter one under his right. He dropped his case on to the bed, and had it open in a second, then fumbled round, and produced his tube of a special analgesic cream.
‘This’ll help,’ he said with confidence. He knew intimately its effect.
I massaged some of it into Pam’s wrist. It didn’t work immediately, but nevertheless she flexed her fingers and rotated her wrist. It seemed flexible enough to me.
‘Better?’ I asked.
‘A little.’
‘It takes a few minutes to get going,’ Oliver told her. Then, to me, he said, ‘I’ll just go and fetch the rest of our stuff.’ And I nodded.
‘Shall we bind it?’ I asked her, as the door closed behind Oliver.
‘Oh no! No.’ She was adamant about that. ‘It would show,’ she added, and I understood. ‘I think I’ll be able to manage.’ Her jaw was firm, and her lower lip thrust forward. She wasn’t going to let Jennie even so much as guess that she could have inflicted any sort of disablement.
‘We’ll be seeing you, then,’ I said. ‘Eight-thirty in the Glasshouse, as they call it. The studio, I suppose?’
‘Sort of, though we spend most of our time—weather permitting—outside. It’s always left open, so that you can use it any time, if you want to. And you can leave all your painting stuff in there, because nobody’ll touch it. Well…’ She lifted her shoulders. ‘There was one time…’ She allowed that to tail away, a curious, sour smile on her lips.
‘What was that, then?’
‘Better left unsaid,’ she assured me.
What an infuriating thing to say! ‘What is?’ I pressed her, but she merely said, evasively, ‘They’ve got special lights in there, supposed to represent daylight.’
I knew then that she was not going to tell me. ‘And are the lights as good?’ I asked. ‘As good as daylight.’
‘I’ve never tried painting in there with them on. I don’t think it’s a good thing. Colour tones, you know.’
‘But if you’re painting from a colour photograph, say, the light would affect the painting and the picture in the same way, so it would work out right.’
‘Geoff doesn’t approve. Says it’s sort of cheating, painting from photos.’
‘What does cheating matter, as long as you finish with something that gives you pleasure to look at?’
‘Geoff’s a purist, and he’s our tutor.’
She was relaxing now. I had deliberately kept her talking in order to calm her down before she had to face her husband again.
Already, she presented a less harried face.
‘And my husband is, too,’ she added. ‘A purist.’
‘Is he?’
‘Oh…yes. Indeed. Paul says—’
‘Paul?’ I interrupted. ‘With the white Citroen?’
My mind was connecting it with the one I had seen in the car park at Leominster.
‘Yes. That’s our car. But…how did you know?’
I’d talked myself into a difficult situation, and had to fumble my way round it. ‘Mrs…I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.’
‘It’s Pam. Pam Wilton.’
‘Well, Pam, you tell your husband, if he’s such a purist, that Canaletto cheated.’ That ought to distract her, I thought.
‘Did he?’ Her eyes were wide with disbelief.
‘Oh yes. He used a kind of camera obscura in order to throw an image on to a new canvas, and simply drew in all that lovely perspective, then painted it all in afterwards. Cheated. But does it matter? So long as your finished picture gives someone pleasure to look at, what does cheating matter?’
‘You’re still talking about painting?’ She said it with a wry twist to her lips. ‘But my husband—Paul—he cheats in a different way, and it gives me no pleasure at all. Him, yes. Me, no. One of these days I’m going to lose my temper, and kill him.’
I tried to laugh that off lightly. ‘But you won’t, you know. I doubt you could do it.’
‘I’m strong enough.’
‘But you wouldn’t be able to screw yourself to the sticking place.’
‘I think you could be right, there. Well…I’d better get to our room. We’re right next door. I’ll have to find out whether my precious spouse saw that nasty scene out there. And appreciated it.’
I followed her out on to the landing. ‘As a warning?’ I asked.
‘Perhaps.’ She opened her door—so Paul was back with their key—and went inside. Turned her head. ‘And thank you for your help.’
Oliver came in a few seconds later. He had occupied himself by fetching up all our painting stuff, and had it piled outside.
‘Is she all right?’
‘Oh yes. So it seemed.’ Then I told him, as exactly as I could remember, what had passed between Pam and me, so that he wouldn’t say the wrong thing at the wrong time. ‘She was mainly concerned that she might not be able to handle her pastels,’ I explained. ‘You two ought to get together, Oliver.’
He raised his eyebrows, thought about it, then nodded. ‘Could be a good idea. In the meantime, the bar’s open. Dinner’s at seven-thirty this evening. Which gives us time—’
‘I’d rather not, I think.’
‘Oh? Not even a pre-dinner sherry?’ He seemed concerned.
‘It’s not that. It’s…oh, you’ll only laugh at me.’
He shook his head. ‘You know I wouldn’t.’
‘Well…it’s just that I’ve got an uneasy feeling…disappointed, I suppose. Expecting a quiet and relaxing week, and already it’s going all wrong. Oh damn it, Oliver—this Jennie and Pam Wilton business! It’s going to get worse, not better. I can feel it.’
‘Nonsense.’
‘It’s not—’
He put his good arm around my shoulder. ‘It doesn’t have to affect us, Phil. Now…come and have a sherry. We really ought to be sociable…and no, we’re not going to cut our week short, just because you’ve got a feeling.’
‘We could—’
‘And how would dear Jennie get home?’ he asked.
‘She could always cadge a lift from Pam and Paul.’
He laughed. ‘That’s more like it, Phil. Your old self again.’
So we went down to look for the bar.
3
We found it simply by seeking out the source of the noise. It was a strange U-shape, with the serving counter at the curved end, and with cosy recesses tucked into corners. The three groups seemed naturally to gather together, former students recognising each other, and for a few seconds I was at a loss. Then, in the far recesses, I spotted Jennie and Paul and Pam, not exactly together, but involved with a tight group, which seemed to be ours.
We stood there for a few seconds, undecided, until Oliver spotted a spare corner for me, while he edged his way to the counter for our drinks. It was therefore sheer chance that I found myself sitting next to our tutor, Geoff Davies, though I didn’t at first realise this.
‘Here she is now,’ called out Pam, raising her arm and rotating her hand, to demonstrate her wrist’s mobility.
The space I had on the settle was small, my companion seeming to loom over me. He half raised himself in a polite gesture, as we shook hands.
‘I’m your tutor, Geoff Davies,’ he told me, ‘and you must be Philipa Simpson. Your husband, Oliver, that’s the big chap getting your drinks, I assume?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s him.’
Oliver was now hovering with full glasses in his hands. I could detect no space for him, and there is a lot of Oliver.
I reached out to take the two glasses from him, for safety’s sake, and Geoff called out above the noise, ‘Shove along a bit, Philip. And Martin, you don’t need two chairs.’
Magically, a space appeared beside me, and Oliver lowered himself into it, making grimacing expressions of apology.
‘Welcome to Bryngowan Manor,’ said Geoff formally.
He seemed to me to be a cheerful man, somewhat lanky, with bright grey eyes and brown hair. Early thirties, I guessed. I wondered whether this could be a full-time job for him, tutoring art courses, but I wouldn’t have thought there could be enough of them, and our group seemed to be quite small, compared with the others. Yet he conveyed all the recognised attributes of an artist, the movements of his hands as he spoke, and the casual but all-over assessment to which he seemed to be treating me. He could go away from there and paint my portrait from memory, no doubt. Or even a nude study.
‘We do our introductions after dinner,’ he told me. ‘In the Glasshouse. That’s our studio. But there are only eight of us, nine with me, and the rest of our group are all old-stagers here. It’s just like a friendly get-together.’
Friendly? So far I had seen only aggression. But the general atmosphere amongst us was warm, and when the others were now identified to me, they looked friendly enough.
Pam Wilton and her husband, Paul, I already knew, though Paul only by sight, and that distant. And yes, we had met Jennie, I told Geoff, as we had given her a lift to here. But Elise Harcourt I did not know. She was the happy little brunette, whom Geoff indicated by lifting his glass to her and receiving a wide grin in response. Barely out of her teens, it seemed to me, and full of vibrant energy. She had wide brows, across which her hair danced, and beautiful brown eyes, which sparkled in my direction as she waved at me. Which left two men, to make up our eight. They were brothers, Geoff told me. He pointed them out, slim and placid men, who—and I realised this with a sudden jolt of surprise—were identical twins. Catching my eye, they inclined their heads towards me, smiling hugely at my response, which they must have encountered all their lives. Thirty years, I guessed.
Observing my interest, Geoff said, ‘They always come together. Philip and Martin. One’s acrylics and the other’s watercolours. And they claim they’re married to twins.’
‘Surely not!’
‘So they said, but they both share the same dry sense of humour. Ask either of them if they ever get confused, and take the wrong wife home from the pub, and they’ll only say that it wouldn’t matter—would it? They take nothing seriously, except their painting. Can I get you another drink?’
‘No. No, thank you. It’s not worth the struggle to get it.’
‘Later, perhaps,’ he said. ‘The bar’s open again at nine.’
‘And is it always so noisy?’ I asked, raising my voice.
‘Well…no. But our group—well, after a full day of peace out in the wilds, with not much sound apart from the birds—then the bar doesn’t sound so bad. Welcoming, in fact.’ Musingly, he added, ‘They’re a strange lot, our painters.’
‘Strange?’
He smiled. ‘Wrong word, perhaps. But all artistic people are a bit strange. It’s their lives, you see. They have to excel, reach for something they’ll never quite achieve. All the arts, that is. Actors, musicians, writers—and painters. Their own speciality overrides everything. It’s a perpetual striving to achieve…well…perfection. And jealous!’ He grimaced.
‘You’re making me uneasy, Mr Davies.’
‘No, no. Sorry. But you’re new to this—to all painting courses, I’d guess. And it’s Geoff.’
I nodded.
‘I’m just preparing you,’ he said. ‘Oh yes, you can look round, and they’re as matey as anybody could hope for—but each and every one of them strives, every time, to produce something no one else can match. And it matters to them. Oh…friendly and chatty now, but oh dear me…they all have to be the best. It’s nonsense, really, because it’s all in…’ He snapped his fingers, lost for a word.
‘The eye of the beholder?’ I suggested.
He nodded. ‘Exactly. And I’m the official beholder. It’s the devil of a game, the way I have to watch what I say. Damn it, I don’t want to bring on another—’ He stopped abruptly. ‘I’m talking too much…sorry.’
‘Another what?’ I asked gently.
‘Incident.’ He was reluctant to say it.
‘Do you want to tell me, or not?’
He shrugged. ‘You’ll no doubt hear about it, anyway, so I might as well get it said. Two years ago, this was. Elise Harcourt, our lovely little brunette—she is lovely, isn’t she—she’d been concentrating on the harbour, or estuary if you like, the moored boats and the river, and she’d really worked hard at it all day. I could tell that she was producing something very special. The light, you see. The light on the water, and the way it glanced off the boats, and the reflected ripples on their sides. That’s a very difficult effect to lay down on canvas. It was lovely, lovely painting. But she ran out of time, and the light was getting poor. The weather forecast for the next day was for cloud and rain, and she was afraid she wouldn’t get the same light, and might not get it for the rest of the week. But she had her little camera with her, and she got a few shots, and had them done at one of those fast-service places, and…well…’
He stopped. His face was drawn by the memory.
‘And?’ I asked, as it seemed he was now regretting he had told me this.
He shrugged, pouting. ‘She went on with it, after dinner, working from her photos in the Glasshouse. It’s always left unlocked, you know, and we’ve got special lights in there—5,000K, whatever that means.’
‘Like daylight?’ I offered.
‘Yes. And she went on with it. Into the night. We all knew about it, but we left her to it. I mean…what else could anybody do? And it really had me worried.’
He paused, picked up his empty glass and put it down again.
‘I can see you’d be worried,’ I told him, prompting him to continue.
‘On and on, she went. I couldn’t go to bed. I can see the Glasshouse from my cottage, you know. And I waited. Waited. I mean…I wouldn’t have dared to interfere.’
‘Oh no. Of course not.’
‘And at about two o’clock,’ he went on, frowning at the memory, ‘the lights went off…’
He stopped. I waited. ‘So now you could get to bed,’ I prompted. ‘Yes. I could get to bed.’ He sighed. ‘In the morning…this painting was in acrylics, you see. On canvas. Did I say that?’
‘You mentioned canvas.’
‘Yes. Well it was. And the first thing in the morning, I went in to see it. I mean…I wanted to see the finished job. And then…when I went in there…’ He drew a deep breath. ‘It was slashed across and across. Viciously. A wicked attack.’
‘Oh heavens!’
‘Jealousy, of course,’ he said morosely.
‘I suppose,’ I replied numbly. ‘And poor Elise? When she saw it…’
He tried to smile at me, realising he should not have told me all this, when it might send me running for my safe home…for all he knew.
‘She was in hysterics,’ he said flatly. ‘We had to get the doctor to her, and she spent the day under sedation. In bed. It was a terrible, terrible thing.’
I couldn’t think of anything to add. The sheer black malice of it appalled me. Then I managed to say, ‘But she seems cheerful enough now. That’s Elise, isn’t it? The bright little brunette.’
He tried to smile at me. ‘Yes. She thinks that this time she’ll do it again—capture the same magic as she did before. But…’ He shook his head solemnly.
‘But you don’t think so?’ I asked.
He shook his head stubbornly. ‘I think she’s beginning to realise that she never will.’
‘How sad. But why have you told me this? I can assure you now that neither Oliver nor I will produce anything worth slashing. Probably, not even anything worth looking at twice.’
‘There is no point in being too modest,’ he said severely. ‘We’ll see about that, later on, no doubt. But I wanted you to hear it from me, not one of the others. I suppose…what I was trying to get across to you…I simply wanted to persuade you not to allow yourself to get too involved with comparisons and what the others might be able to produce. You’re supposed to be here to enjoy a week’s painting…
‘Which I’m sure we will.’
‘I just want you not to take it too seriously.’
‘You can depend on that. We will not.’
‘Because’, he pressed on, determined to say it, ‘what starts out as a pleasant occupation can easily become an obsession—and possibly it can end in disillusionment.’
‘We don’t have any illusions about our abilities, I can assure you.’
‘We’ll see about that.’
So Geoff Davies cared about his work—which, though he obviously didn’t realise it, had become his own obsession.
At that point the dinner bell rang, and people began getting to their feet.
‘And you’re telling me…what?’ I asked.
‘To enjoy your week here, and if you go home with something that pleases you—something good enough to frame and hang on your wall—then you’ll make me very happy.’
I smiled at him. ‘And here endeth the first lesson?’
‘The most important,’ he assured me, sliding back his chair. ‘Don’t be late. Eight-thirty in the Glasshouse.’
Oliver and I followed the crowd. The dining room was located in an annexe, which also housed the single rooms, built as an extension behind the main house. The tables were rectangular, each seating eight. The meal was really excellent—three courses prepared by a first-class cook.
I found myself sitting between our little, bright Elise and Oliver, who became happily involved with his female partner on the other side, who was trying to converse with him in German. I left him to it, and devoted my attention to Elise, who proceeded to make me welcome.
