Page 50 of The Christmas Invitation
Since I half-suspected he’d invented the reason for his early return to the studio in order to remove himself from my vicinity, I hoped perhaps our next and final meeting might be on the night of the Solstice, when I’d have the comforting presence of River to fortify me.
But I wasn’t to escape another encounter before Lex left, because Teddy literally dragged him in to see Clara’s portrait first.
‘You don’t mind, do you, Meg?’ Teddy asked me anxiously, and I couldn’t very well say ‘Yes, I do!’ because Lex was already inside the door, held fast by a small, relentless hand.
‘Teddy insisted I—’ began Lex, then broke off abruptly as his eyes fell on the painting, which I’d propped on the old easel. There was a long, still silence, like the aftermath of an avalanche.
The portrait had quickly sprung into shape and already Clara’s face was leaping from the bones of the drawing, swirling into three dimensions with every slash and squiggle of paint. It seemed to be internally illuminated by the bright light of her intellect and character, rather than externally, from the screen of the computer.
‘It’s good, isn’t it?’ I said humbly, for a force outside myself makes that connection between my eyes and hands when I’m painting and I, Meg Harkness, am only the instrument it uses.
‘It’s not good at all – it’s better than that,’ he said at last. ‘In fact, if you don’t mess it up at the end with overpainting, it’ll be bloody brilliant!’
He managed to drag his eyes away and looked at me in a new way … or rather, in a way familiar to me before he started imagining I’d turned into some kind of Mata Hari and tempted him with the apple of infidelity when he was having a weak moment.
It was the look not only of recognition, but of the respect that one artist of equal stature gives to another.
‘Ialwaysknow when to stop,’ I said, and the expression in his agate-green eyes transitioned back to unfathomable again. Turning on his heel, he strode off without another word.
He’s very good at that. If I tried it, I’d probably fall over my feet, or get my scarf trapped in the door, or something.
Teddy, wearing the expression of one whose protégée had proved her worth, called breezily, ‘See you later, Meg!’ and rushed off after his idol to say goodbye.
He left the door ajar and Lass wandered in, wrinkling her nose against the mingled aromas of linseed oil and turpentine, which she evidently didn’t find as delicious as I did.
I remembered where there were a couple of biscuits, which had arrived with morning coffee the other day, and offered them to her.
She took them gently, one at a time, and ate them with appreciation. I expect she was hungry, for Den’s voice suddenly called her.
‘Lass? Din-dins!’
She paused only long enough to give my hand a hasty lick of gratitude and then left as precipitately as Lex had.
The kitchen door slammed a moment later and silence descended.
While Ikneweveryone was still in the house (apart from Lex), and busy as bees in their own little hive cells, I suddenly felt myself alone in it, shrunk to the size of a minute and oddly dressed porcelain doll in a gigantic Victorian doll’s house.
I relived again that moment when Lex had looked at me as one artist does to another, recognizing an equal, for his work had been brilliant at college and he’d been set for success until he dropped out before the second year of his MA.
I was glad I’d shaken him into realizing I wasn’t just some two-dimensional shadow-demon from the past, even if not shaken enough, perhaps, to make him open to the idea of listening to my version of events, otherwise known as The Truth.
But part of me was now sorry if my arrival had taken him back to a time of his life that was clearly still as painful to remember as ever, even if he’d got my small part in the tragedy completely wrong.
My reverie was finally broken by the door swinging wide open again with a creak, as if an invisible hand had pushed it, for there was no one there. Then the small wooden clock that sat on one of the bookshelves, and had been entirely silent until this point, suddenly began to tick loudly.
Weird.
I closed the door and was soon lost in the portrait again. It might be the best thing I’deverpainted …
I only emerged from the studio when I was summoned to dinner. The clock was still ticking, though the time was set for a parallel universe. Maybe it was the one Lex and Al lived in.
I wondered if I could face yet more food, but despite dinner being earlier because of Teddy having school tomorrow, my mouth watered when the fragrantly savoury nut loaf, roast potatoes, bright medley of home-grown winter vegetables and jug of onion gravy were carried in.
The starter had been melon balls, piled into old-fashioned shallow glass sundae dishes and topped with a swirl of raspberry sauce.
Teddy’s enquiry, ‘Aunt Clara, do melons have b—’ had been firmly quashed by Tottie before he could properly get going.
We were all tired and the conversation desultory. Tottie’s description of how she clamped her carrots in sand over thewinter and put polythene tunnels over the winter cabbage nearly sent me to sleep.
