Page 141 of The Christmas Invitation
‘Ditto,’ he said, and smiled.
I thought it would be difficult to put the whole Sybil thing right out of my head over Christmas, but actually, at breakfast she was again so very ordinary that I found myself questioning my own sanity. Surely we wereallmad to suspect quiet, plaintive Sybil, with her faded prettiness, of doing something like that? But then, of course, she was a horsy person too, out in all weathers and hefting bales of hay about, not some fragile hothouse flower.
Tottie said that, Christmas Eve or not, Clara had been up and working long before I came down, while Henry and River had just gone into his study together, where River was going to read through the manuscript of Henry’s book as a final check.
There hadn’t been any further snowfall overnight and the farmers would have already been out gritting the road, so Zelda said she intended spending the day at Underhill again, which was no surprise. Sybil and Tottie decided to go down with her and hack around the estate, to give the horses a bit of exercise.
‘Would you like to go to Underhill with me today, Teddy?’ asked Zelda, but he looked dubious.
‘Aunt Clara said she’d teach me to read more hieroglyphs this morning,’ he said. ‘And Den’s got lots of cooking to do, so I need to help him. I think I’ll stay here, Mummy.’
‘Then I’ll see you at dinner, darling, and you can tell me all about it,’ she said, smiling at him.
‘Where’s Lex?’ I asked.
‘He and Den went out to start your van’s engine – you’d left the keys in the studio. They thought it might be an idea to run it for ten minutes, because it’s been standing there in the cold for a few days.’
‘I hadn’t given it a thought!’ I said, and thanked them when they came back in, before taking Lex off to the studio to give me the first portrait sitting.
He removed his warm fleece without my asking him and resumed the pose in his shirtsleeves and black jeans.
I checked the iPad photo, then took up my soft black pencil and began to sketch directly on to the canvas.
My concentration was intense and soon that hawk profile, half-turned away (the hardest of portrait poses to paint), took shape, the faint scaffolding of bones and tendons, the strong line of the neck rising up from the open V of his shirt …
Finally, I stepped back and stared intently from outline to sitter: this way of drawing straight on to the canvas without preliminary sketches was new but it seemed to be working well.
I’d been looking at him impersonally as a series of lines and shapes, but now, suddenly, I was aware of him as a man – the one he was now, damaged and haunted by his past, perhaps, but still sweet-natured, kind and with courage. There was humour in that arrowhead smile, too.
All that I knew of him, past and present, must somehow be distilled into paint. The mysterious alchemy between eyes, mind and hand had never failed me yet and I prayed (to theGoddess? Gaia? Whatever divine being happened to be listening?) that it would not fail me now.
Den broke the spell by coming in just then with coffee and a few of the cheese straws he’d been making for Boxing Day. Pansy was hard on his heels, though I didn’t know if that was from greed or whether she was in search of me.
‘That’s definitely ’is ’ead,’ Den said, pausing behind the easel.
Lex stood up and stretched slowly. ‘I don’t think I want to look yet, because you’ve been staring at me so intently that I’m afraid of what I’d see.’
‘It’s just the pencil sketch, anyway,’ I said. ‘I’d like to start putting paint on, but you might have had enough of sitting for one day?’
‘I don’t mind, so long as I can have a little break now and walk about first,’ he said obligingly. ‘I’ll probably need to go and do something physical afterwards, like chop logs, though.’
‘I’ll take this ’ound with me, shall I?’ Den said.
‘No, don’t bother, just leave the door slightly ajar, so she can get out if she wants to.’
I set out my palette while Lex was having his break and then he took up his pose again.
My hand, holding the small trowel-shaped palette knife, with which I could produce a line, a scraping, a smooth sweep, or a thick curl of paint, trembled slightly with excitement … and then that inner force took me over and the shadows, planes and angles of his face began to emerge.
Apart from the curve of his nose, it was mostly angles. His skin tone was a warm, pale olive, a family colouring he shared with Clara, Zelda and Teddy, along with the black curls. His dark eyes should have been brown, not that agate-dark green …
Lex’s voice, slightly plaintive, finally woke me to the present.
‘Meg?’
I blinked at him and then looked at the canvas before me, on which his face seemed to have materialized. How long had I been painting?
‘I think all of me has gone numb and Pansy’s been staring at you for the past half-hour,’ he said. ‘I think she wants her lunch – and so do I.Andsomeone to make soothing noises at me, because I feel like a scoured-out shell of my former self.’
