Page 19 of The Blue Hour

They come to an agreement: the testing will go ahead but Becker will be there when the case is opened. That, Sebastian reckons, is unlikely to be for a few weeks at least. It’s not a priority case.

‘We’ll need to let the insurers know,’ Sebastian says to him.

‘And Grace Haswell,’ Becker replies.

Sebastian shakes his head, bemused. ‘It’s none of her business, Beck.’

They finish their whisky and Sebastian says goodnight. Once he’s gone, Becker does the washing-up, tidies the kitchen and puts everything away save the whisky bottle and a glass. He pours himself another drink, turns off the lights and sits in the darkness in front of the dying fire.

He didn’t argue about Grace Haswell, but now, sitting staring into the embers, he makes his case in his head. Itisher business. If you’d talked to her, if you’d listened to Grace talk about Vanessa’s fingerprints, her DNA, her breath – you’d think so, too.

He didn’t argue because he doesn’t want to argue with Sebastian, just as he doesn’t want to alienate Grace. He wants to please everyone. He does not have ice in his veins.

Here’s the crux of it: he already feels guilty, and he doesn’t want to exacerbate his guilt. He has behaved badly in the past; he wants somehow to balance the scales, though he knows full well he cannot. He cannot turn back time. He cannot go back to his early college days, when he befriended Sebastian not because he liked him – back then, he regarded Seb as just one among the herd of entitled, public-school mediocrities that populate Oxford colleges – but because he knew that Sebastian was DouglasLennox’s son, and that Douglas was Vanessa’s gallerist. No more can he go back to the afternoon when, just three days after Douglas’s death, Becker brought Helena back to this house and spent the afternoon in bed with her.

Nor would he want to.

But he can do this right. He can do the job that Sebastian has given him as well as he possibly can; he can make a success of the museum, show the collection in its best light, he can honour Vanessa’s work and his mother’s memory.

He will do all this, for Sebastian and for Grace, and for Vanessa, too.

Vanessa Chapman’s diary

I have mice.

Mice, a leaking roof, rotting floorboards and damp. The electrics are lethal and there is a foul smell from the septic tank.

I’ve not felt this happy in years.

The Aga works, so I live in the kitchen and work outside when Ican. I paint all day – yesterday the light was good until almost ten o’clock. I climbed up to Eris Rock – the highest point of the island. An extraordinary soft sunset, sky fondant – pale greys and soft whites at first, then came dusky pink and amber turning darker, an orange fit to eat, a molten yellow almost the shade of a Van Gogh sunflower. Icould barely get the paint on to canvas quickly enough. The sky is one thing; the sea a different beast. The sky challenges but the sea confounds: restless, ever-changing, the deep round swell of it, the violence!

Impossible to capture.

I have been going to the beach to make studies of the sea, not terribly successfully. I can make out the wave, the drag of a current, the build of swell, but it is the critical moment that eludes me, the moment of breaking, when all that stored power is unleashed, that moment of terrible chaos.

Impossible.

There was a violent storm yesterday, water pouring in through the roof in the kitchen and living room. Everything shorted. Candles only now. I’m unable to get to the mainland and I think the weather is set to last two to three days. It’s frightening and exhilarating – I’ve been sketching constantly. There is something in the sketches but I cannot quite get at what. Whenever I try to grasp it, it moves away.

I have biscuits and a bottle of whisky and enough tobacco to last two days. Three if I’m careful.

Work has begun on the house: roof first, a new window in the kitchen to let in more light. Replace floorboards in bedroom, deal with damp. New kitchen to go in. Whole place to be rewired.

Then the barn. Large picture window looking south, widening doorway on the east side – that end will be almost entirely open when the door is rolled back, so the space becomes three-sided, light from the south & east & plenty of ventilation.

It will use up the rest of the money from J. But since the house went for more than we thought, he still owes me 15k. I also have two completed paintings to give to Douglas – South and Low Tide – and another of the barn with the wood behind which is not quite finished. I will tell him to get what he can for them.

Squalls blow in and out, threatening to rip the roof off and making it impossible to paint outside. I keep busy: the wood is thick with finds: cones and seeds, teeth and old bones. The beach is fruitful, too. Sumptuously rounded pebbles in dusky pinks and terracotta and purest white. Jellyfish! Shells of course, kelp in rust and the most lurid green, bright blue glass. At low tide you can walk the seabed, more than half a mile out to sea. I come back with pockets bulging.

I feel overwhelmed with ideas.

The sheer expanse of landscape – sea and sky – is invigorating.Theair so unleaded! It lends itself to a completely different aesthetic. Ino longer feel hemmed in by dusty plane treesand houses and hedges. I no longer feel weighted down by England’s dreary white skies. Here the sky is miraculous azure or threatening gunmetal, glorious orange and peach and primrose.

Getting things done. Drove into Carrachan to see the dentist. Crown fitted. This afternoon I’m seeing a man about a quad bike so I can transport canvases up the hill more easily. The man in the village shop (Sandy?) is trying to sell me a boat. I think I prefer to remain at the mercy of the tide – and in any case, I’m not sure I’d ever feel brave enough to use a boat – the currents here are terrifying. One of the reasons I rarely paint on the beach – I’m afraid of getting caught.

Douglas came on Thursday, stayed the weekend. I enjoy him but hedemands a lot – body and mind. He wants me to start thinking about a solo show – he worries I will be forgotten out here … I’m not ready. I want to allow myself to settle here, to enjoy this feeling of vibrancy and creativity without having to think conceptually, without having toplan.

A journalist from the Sunday Telegraph came yesterday. Douglas’s idea. For a feature on ‘how artists live’. Not at all the right time for me – the studio is not finished and I have no work I want to show – not to a journalist in any case.

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