The Arrogant Artist

by John Creasey

  “Didn’t you say something about art for art’s sake to my husband?”

  “If I didn’t I’ve no doubt I implied it,” Forrester conceded. “So in spite of my outrageous behaviour you will look at my work?”

  “Yes, of course,” Lorna said. “I may not want to be compliant but I can be flattered that you should want me to be.”

  “The incredible Lorna Mannering,” exclaimed Forrester, springing to his feet with startling agility. “Instead of crushing me with your refusal you make me feel both virtuous and virile; the virtue is not usually one of my moods, except of course in my work.” He held out one hand and she placed hers in it lightly. “Come into my bathroom,” he invited, his eyes gleaming, “and see the wondrous pictures on the loveliest loo in London.” They reached the door and he spread out both arms to encompass walls and bath, pedestal and ceiling. “Observe! And the police obligingly supplied a loft ladder, on loan, so that access to the attic is no longer difficult or, for the beskirted, indelicate. There used to be just a chair which could turn into a ladder of sorts. The nimble had no trouble, as witness yesterday’s intruder. Now while you’re appraising the gems artistic here I will go up and make sure no one is skulking in the attic this morning.”

  He bowed from the waist and turned and mounted the ladder which rose at a sharp angle from floor to hatch. He moved so lightly that she hardly heard him. And after a few moments she became so absorbed in the painting, of succulent breasts and enticing nipples, and, all around, the mouths of babes open in eagerness to suckle. Then she went into the kitchen and spent perhaps ten minutes in there. He had taken the murals at Pompeii for his models, she felt sure, but the subject matter concerned her less than the texture of the painting, and its style. One word occurred to her: relaxed. It was more than competent and had a quality of communication which was rare.

  When she went out, Forrester was sitting at the head of the ladder, his legs dangling; the bright red socks were obviously hand-knitted. He did not ask what opinion she had formed but sprang back, squatted, and helped her into the attic. There was more light than when Mannering had seen it, for cleverly concealed fluorescent lamps were switched on among the rafters, and here and there a floodlight, equally well-concealed, shone on a group of the small paintings. They were all faces; families of faces, of every size and shape and colour. John had told her of them and yet she had not even begun to understand the variety and the cleverness of the execution.

  “Mrs. Man—” he began.

  “Lorna,” she interrupted.

  “Thank you. For a square you are a pet! May I sketch you?”

  “Now?”

  “Please,” he begged.

  “If you really want to,” she conceded.

  “Oh, I do! There’s a stool over here.” He moved a leather or plastic seated stool close to a beam, and took her arm and drew her to the seat. “Just sit there and put your elbow on the rafter for comfort. And—keep still, won’t you?”

  She wondered how many hundreds of times she had said that to a sitter or a model.

  He had placed her so that she could see him working and he put up an easel and placed a piece of hardboard on it, took a palette and a brush, which he held up as if he were using it to help him get her face in focus. Then he began; and seemed to undergo a metamorphosis, much as John’s – remarkably like John’s when he was concentrating on a problem or examining some jewels which he hadn’t seen before. Everything else dropped away from John: and everything but what he was doing seemed to fade from Forrester’s mind. He worked quickly and with a sure touch; a professional’s touch. Certainly he was no dilettante, but then, the number of pictures in this flat proved that. Now and again he looked across at her, his eyes quite brilliant, his gaze so naked that he seemed to be stripping her of make-up of every kind and was seeing her as she really was.

  She began to feel stiff and uncomfortable but did not shift her position. She was aware of noises in the back garden, of distant traffic, high-flying aircraft, a car horn. She began to think of what had happened here yesterday and what John had told her, and she knew why she had really come and what questions she wanted to ask Forrester. But his concentration was so great, so fierce, that she kept silent; but she did not think she could keep still much longer.

  Then suddenly, he backed away and let his arms fall by his side; and he seemed to let the breath out of his body like the air hissing out of a punctured tyre.

  “Like to see it?” he asked, flatly.

  “May I?”

  “As a special privilege. And if I can rely on you not to comment.”

  She slid off the stool but didn’t move towards him; his manner was challenging again, the arrogance was back.

  “Not even if I like it?”

  “You would say you did whether you did or not. All kind-hearted people do. And in any case you would only form a quick impression, you would give me a reaction, not an opinion. I distrust reactions.”

  “I may want to ask questions,” Lorna said.

  “I think that will be all right,” he conceded.

  She was startled: “Only think?”

  “I don’t remember having been asked intelligent questions about my painting,” he said. “Certainly not just after I’ve finished a session. I am seldom watched, of course. Or scrutinised.”

  She moved across, without speaking. He was pale and there was a beading of sweat, a mass of tiny globules, on his forehead and upper lip. Tension? Reaction, once he had finished the sketch. She knew how quickly that could come after a period of concentration; how utterly exhausted one could feel. He moved aside to allow her to get in front of the easel, and he looked at the north light, as if anxious not to see her expression, but he couldn’t keep his gaze averted and although she couldn’t see them, the deep grooves were in his forehead and a network of crows’ feet was at his eyes.

  She looked at herself.

  The astonishing, the unbelievable thing was that he had caught her likeness exactly as she had been twenty or twenty-five years ago. The freshness, the bloom. The eagerness which was born of innocence. The features might or might not be right, but the expression was: it was like looking at her long lost, beloved past.

  She turned to look at him, and quickly he moved to the window. She shifted her position two or three times to see the painting from different angles. Soon, she crossed to the other paintings, so skilfully lit, and after a while, she asked: “Do you always have models?”

  “Whenever I can.”

  “These negroes,” she pointed.

  “Notting Hill or Hammersmith,” he answered, “or on the other side of Wandsworth Bridge Road. Sometimes I sketch. Usually I can keep the models in my mind’s eye until I get back here. Then—” he broke off, wiping his forehead with a tiny ball of a paper handkerchief.

  “Then you rush round here and get it on canvas or hardboard before the picture fades from the mind.”

  “So you know,” he breathed. “You know.”

  “I can see how much you take out of yourself,” she remarked gently.

  “Very few can. No one can. Julie pretends to but only because I keep telling her so. She really wouldn’t mind if I wiped my feet on her.” When Lorna didn’t comment, he went on: “I was pretty sure when I saw you in the hall. I was sure when I saw you sitting in the corner. You know what happens when one pours oneself into a creation. So you must experience it.” He moved nearer, still wiping his forehead. “It’s like—it’s like the way tension builds and leads to an orgasm. Did you ever think of that similarity?”

  “No,” she answered.

  “But you see what I mean?”

  After a few moments, Lorna said quietly: “Yes. All your strength, all your nervous energy, everything in your body and your metabolism are concentrated on what you’re painting, and nothing else matters.” After a moment she repeated: “And nothing else matters.”

  He gave her a strange look, and said: “Nothing else exists.”

  She thought: And it
doesn’t, with John and me. She thought again: And it doesn’t when this man is painting.

  “Tom,” she said.

  “Yes?”

  “Is it always like this when you paint?”

  “If it isn’t, I paint over the picture and start afresh.” He was much less exhausted now, and gave a fierce grin. “Mind you, some models arouse me to instant action more than others. As some women! You did both, which is quite remarkable. And I’m glad you weren’t—” he broke off, frowning, and then asked. “What was the word you used?”

  “Compliant,” she supplied.

  “I’m glad you weren’t, or all my energy would have been concentrated on you then and I’d still be exhausted now. We have something to show for this, not simply remembered pleasure.” He gave a short bark of a laugh and let his hands fall on to her shoulders as he went on: “I’m breaking all my rules today. I’ll break another one. Do you like this fantasy of you, or do you hate it? Do you think it’s the real you beneath the make-up and the sophistication, the worldly experience and the wisdom – or do you think it’s pallid and weak?” He stopped and held his breath, and then commanded: “Come on, tell me.” And then suddenly his tone changed, the arrogance faded into humility, and he pleaded: “Please.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Opinion

  The question had been inevitable, of course; there wasn’t an artist in the world who did not want to know what others thought of his work, and longed for approval and for praise. No one could be indifferent, and despite this man’s poise he was as eager and as vulnerable as any; perhaps more, because he tried so hard to conceal it.

  “Tom,” Lorna said, “a sitter is no better judge of a portrait than the painter. I like this. I’m astonished you did such a finished picture so quickly, without a sketch or drawing to base it on, and I’m not sure whether that’s a good thing or a bad. Do you always work so swiftly?”

  “As I told you, if it’s any good, yes,” he answered. “You—you like it?”

  “Very much. I think John will, too. I’d like him to see it without being prepared – reactions can be valuable.”

  Forrester laughed in a slightly embarrassed way.

  “Touché,” he said. “The—” he waved his arms about, and mumbled a question she could guess rather than hear. “The others?”

  “You certainly have an original style which comes from an original mind. I think you could become a fashion. I’d need to see more range of work over a longer period before saying whether I think you’ve even a touch of genius. But whatever the galleries and the experts say, you are not wasting your time and you are—as an artist!” she added with a smile—“worth helping.”

  He stood very still before he said: “Thank you. Thank you very much.” And the humility was again quite unmistakable.

  “And both my husband and I will try to help,” Lorna went on. She stopped, and for once he seemed incapable of words, so she changed the subject completely, by asking: “Tom—why did someone try to kill you yesterday? And why did someone try to kill John?”

  She put the questions very directly, as if she knew that he could answer if he would. And she had posed them when he was in a gentler mood, perhaps a mood in which to answer.

  He stood more stiffly. His eyes narrowed and his lips tightened, until suddenly he said with harshness and antagonism in his voice: “Nonsense. No one tried to kill me, I tried to kill myself. As for what happened to the great John Mannering, I neither know nor care. And if you gave me a lot of bull about my work in the hope of softening me up, you wasted your time. I don’t need help. I should have listened to Julie and not gone to see your precious husband. You can take it from me I’ll never go again.”

  He was flushed with anger and his eyes were feverishly bright. She realised even as he was talking that this was no time to try to persuade him that he was wrong, every comment about his work had been genuine although he thought she had been simply breaking down his resistance so that he would talk. Every moment she spent here now would be wasted, so she turned away and stepped to the top of the ladder supporting herself by holding a rafter, then started backwards down the stairs.

  She was nearly at the foot when she realised that someone else was there, and she glanced round to see a man in a well-cut Edwardian suit of khaki colour, black, shiny hair, dark eyes bright with obvious admiration. She couldn’t be sure, but she thought this was the neighbour, Clive Paget.

  She wondered what he was doing here and why he had come in so quietly. She wondered how much he had heard of the conversation. And she wondered in the back of her mind why Tom Forrester had denied that someone had tried to murder him, preferring her to think that he had tried to kill himself. She was beginning to feel a kind of delayed shock after what had happened when she had first arrived, and her legs were unsteady.

  The man put out a hand to steady her as she reached the floor. It was a firm, cool hand.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “My pleasure.” He gave a bright smile and did not hesitate to show his admiration but there was nothing overbold in his manner. “Is Tom – Mr. Forrester – coming down, do you know?”

  “I should doubt it,” Lorna answered.

  “I just nipped in for a quick word with him,” said the other man. “My name is Paget, Clive Paget. Er—will you be staying?”

  “No, I’m about to leave.”

  “Tell you what,” replied Paget, leaning close and touching her arm lightly, “will you tell Mr. Mannering I’d like a word with him sometime soon? Thanks a lot.” He moved to the ladder and raised his voice. “Tom! Tom! I’m coming up.” He went nimbly up the ladder and Lorna saw his shiny black shoes almost twinkling; it was hard to think of anything more different from Forrester’s red socks.

  She went downstairs, still feeling a little breathless; she seemed only now to be realising exactly what had happened between her and Forrester; was only now beginning to recall the impact he had made, the way she had been so vividly aware of his masculinity. She had a feeling that she had only managed to save herself from a situation as compromising as one could be; that he had set out to seduce her from the moment he had realised who she was.

  Then, like a thunderclap, came another realisation: the girl Julie might be attempting to seduce John!

  “Good gracious!” Lorna exclaimed aloud.

  She opened the door of the Elf, and at the same time looked over the top of the car. A young woman was coming out of the door of a brightly painted house opposite Number 17. She was fresh and attractive in a pale green blouse and a dark brown mini-skirt, and she had beautiful legs sheathed in flesh-coloured nylons. She did not glance across at Lorna, only up and down as if to make sure the road was clear, then hurried to Number 17 and went inside.

  So now Forrester, Paget and the girl were together.

  “I wonder what John would do in these circumstances,” Lorna asked aloud and laughed. “I know what I’m going to do!”

  She got into her car and drove off.

  After a few minutes she felt a slight prickly sensation in her arms and legs, like incipient pins and needles. She began to shiver. A car, passing on the inside as she turned out of Wandsworth Bridge Road into New King’s Road, made her jump so much that her heart began to hammer. She drove very carefully, telling herself that she must concentrate, after all it wasn’t far to Green Street. Had she much further to go she would have pulled into a side street and parked until she felt calmer. This was delayed shock, of course. She had never known a man behave as Forrester, but that was far from the most significant factor; far more astonishing was her own response, the inner struggle she had been forced to make against the impulse to be ‘compliant’.

  She turned the wheel towards Green Street, and a car horn blared; a small pale blue car with a dark-haired man in it roared past, the man glaring. Very carefully she turned into the street and pulled up outside their house. A few people stood about, a tall policeman was in the doorway. With another sense of shock she re
alised that she had left from the Club that morning, and she shouldn’t have come back here.

  But she wanted rest; she needed some aspirins and some tea.

  The policeman came towards her.

  “Can I help you, Mrs. Mannering?”

  “Yes, I think so. Is my flat free, yet?”

  “Yes, madam. There’s a sergeant and a detective officer upstairs, but they’ll be through in a few minutes. I’m sure you can go up.”

  “Thank you,” she said, as he opened the street door for her.

  The sergeant and another man, whom she had seen last night, were about to close the lift door as she reached her landing, and the sergeant drew up.

  “Good afternoon, Mrs. Mannering.”

  “I’m very glad you’ve finished,” Lorna said.

  “All except for one thing,” the sergeant told her. “I hope it won’t be an inconvenience but the Chief Inspector asked us to lock the study door—the room where the intruder spent most of his time.”

  “I should think it will be all right,” Lorna said, dubiously.

  The sergeant frowned as he looked at her. Her headache was worse and she sensed that she was pale; obviously he had noticed that. He turned into the hallway with her, and asked in his deep but unmistakably Cockney voice: “Are you all right, ma’am?”

  “I—I’m a little overtired,” Lorna admitted. In fact she had suddenly recalled what had happened when she had last been here alone; remembered opening the door to the masked man with the gun. She had not really thought about that before; it seemed to have happened only a few minutes ago. “I’ll make myself some coffee and lie down for a while.”

  “Let us make the coffee, please,” the sergeant offered, and beckoned to the man outside. “You’ll be much better if you sit down for half an hour before you do anything at all. Which room would you prefer?” She led the way into the bedroom, too tired to stand on any ceremony, and dropped into a chaise-longue.

  “You’re very kind.”

  “Glad to be of help, ma’am.” The man was so broad and chubby and earnest and had the most attractive curly brown hair; and he had eyes more red than brown, and very shiny. Then suddenly he stiffened and alarm flared up in his eyes. “Nothing else is wrong, is it?” he asked. “Mr. Mannering’s all right?”