Stone Angels

by Paula R. C. Readman

  The prestige of having an agent to sell my work excited me, but my series of land and seascape paintings was not the kind I wanted to build my reputation on. I should’ve been grateful, considering I was an unknown artist, but the money was the least of my problems.

  Prestige is a funny word. The Latin ‘praestigiae’ means conjuring tricks. It’s what we artists do. We’re a kind of magician, though we conjure with canvas, charcoal, lines, colours, and paints to create our illusions.

  I used more than a sleight of hand the night I made Candela disappear.

  Candela and I sat in my Ford Consul with its engine idling waiting for her to make her decision. Through the misty window, a streetlight flickered, highlighting the dreariness of the dead-end road where we sat away from the squat.

  “I can’t believe you had a car all the time you’ve been living with us.”

  She rubbed her wet hair with a towel. A growing puzzlement slipped across her face as we hastily load my sparse belongings into the car boot before the others returned. She hadn’t understood why I had left my paintings, brushes, paints, and most of my clothes behind. I had even waited for her to ask why, but it never came.

  Candela began to comb her hair as I climbed out of the car.

  “Tommy, where are you going?”

  “I won’t be long. There’s something I need to do.” I closed the door before she had time to protest.

  Back at the squat I set about making Tommy Blackbird disappear. Joe had always been secretive about his work-in-progress. Only Candela had access to his studio. I carefully lifted the knife, by its blade end, from where Candela had tossed it. I sliced the palm of my hand and dropped it back among the damaged paintings.

  After clenching my fist to get the blood flowing, I spattered the room, staining Joe’s paintings and made a trail towards the door. Upstairs I carefully unlocked my studio door, trying not to disturb Candela’s fingerprints. Once I had what I needed out, I got her to close the door behind us. I ignored the stinging pain and deepened the cut with a penknife. I splattered the doorframe, door and floor just outside Tommy’s studio hoping to eliminate him from police’s suspect list. Once I had stage-set the studio to have a look of expectancy, as though at any given moment the artist, Tommy Blackbird would return to finish the painting on the easel, I was ready to leave. I wrapped a rag around my hand so no droplets of blood would give me away. I locked the door and kicked the key under it.

  Relief washed over Candela’s face as I climbed in. She was eager to leave, but I wanted to be certain it was with me. I drove a few streets away and parked in a narrow back road.

  “So have you made up your mind?”

  She looked into the distance. The road before us was empty, though every now and then a brave cat appeared out of the darkness and sauntered between the pools of streetlights. When Candela spoke, her answer was noncommittal as though she wanted me to make the choice for her.

  “Home, or with you?”

  “What about your job?” I flexed my hand. It stung like hell. I saw the white rag looked darker in the semi light of the car’s interior.

  “I don’t give a shit.” Candela spat the words out. “And as for Joe — well, I’ve wanted to go home for quite a while now. I wrote to my family the other day saying as much. Mum was right. Men should look after us, not us them.”

  “So what’s your choice?” I focused on the water gushing from a broken drainpipe. I sensed her moving and turned. She sat with her legs under her, facing me. The force of her gaze woke sensations within me. The pounding of rain on the car roof mimicked the beating of my heart. Candela broke the spell as she twisted round to face forward again. “Can I tell you something, Tommy?” Her fingers played with the ends of her hair.

  “Sure. If you’ve made up your mind.”

  “Yeah, I’ll come with you.”

  I turned the key, starting the engine, and slipped the car into gear. As we left the dreariness behind, Candela said nothing. She settled into the seat with her eyes half closed as though needing a moment to process her thoughts. I drove on.

  At last she spoke. “Do you remember seeing a tall, good looking guy at the party, Tommy?”

  I laughed. “Which one, if you’re not including me?”

  She giggled. “Yeah, you’re handsome, but I meant the unmissable one. He towered over the rest of us, well-dressed in a blue and green striped blazer with shoulder length brown hair.”

  “Nope. Too many beautiful people. Why?” Outside, the streetlights reflected our journey back at us in the wet bonnet.

  “Oh, well. It was crowded,” she said.

  “What about him?”

  “Well, according to Joe he’s an agent. To me he was a dirty old git. The bastard hit on me. Do you know what Joe said when I told him?”

  “What?”

  “Sleep with him, and while he’s fucking you, tell him what a brilliant artist I am. He simply must see my paintings!”

  Unsure whether she wanted my opinion on Joe’s behaviour or not, we drove on in silence. When she spoke again it was more to herself than to me. “Joe and his frigging free love. Got a bloody nerve to say I do fuck all for him. Bloody cheek! Whose sodding money has he been living off all this time! Unlike Dor and Trudy, I haven’t slept around until now.”

  “Sorry —” I kept my eyes on the road ahead.

  “Don’t be. It’s what I want.” She brushed her hand across my leg. “Only you haven’t shown much interest in me until now. Why?”

  “You were Joe’s.”

  “I’m not now.” She giggled.

  The rain, heavier now, slowed our progress as we hit the A12. All I could think about was how much I needed to lose the car and find a replacement. It reeked of her cheap perfume and Camel cigarettes. I needed to put some distance between Candela, the squat and myself.

  By the time we left the A12, Candela’s constant chatter about her hatred of Joe had died away along with the rain. When I switched off the wipers, I realised she had fallen asleep. In the silence, my mind had free rein to bounce a few ideas around for the sort of painting I hoped to create using Candela as my model. Soon I pulled the car off the main road and onto a rough lane that led to the old Halghetree Rectory. As I swung the car round, Candela stirred, stretching like a cat.

  “Where are we?” She stepped from the car and looked up at the house. “Is this where you live, Tommy?” Silhouetted against a full moon, its buttresses and pinnacles shone in the moon’s light after the heavy rain.

  “Yes.” I lifted her bags from the car and set them down at her feet before taking out my boxes and carrying them to the house. I placed them on a seat in the porch while I unlocked the door and switched on the hall light. Candela seemed reluctant to follow me.

  “I’ll soon have the place warmed up,” I called over my shoulder. I placed the boxes on a hall table, went through to the drawing room, and switched on a light. The room was dusty after my time away.

  Other homecomings had been full of delicious smells like homemade bread, cakes furniture polish and bees wax when the house sparkled. Then it echoed to the sounds of Mrs Page’s laughter as she welcomed me home from school.

  “At last, Master James. Put your case down, wash your hands, and come into the kitchen. Tea’s ready.” Dear Mrs P. She possessed the magic to turn a sad, cold house into a happy home.

  In the hall, Candela held her hair back from her face as she studied a framed photograph hanging in an alcove. “Do you live here alone?”

  “Yes, all alone.” I opened the cupboard door under the stairs and pulling out some old newspapers. In the drawing room, I set about working building a fire. Candela hovered in the doorway.

  “Come in.” I added coke to the fire. “Once it really gets going, I’ll light the Aga in the kitchen. That heats the whole house. There’ll be hot water too. You okay?”

  Candela studied me for a moment. Then I knew it wasn’t me she was studying, but something over my shoulder. She began to gesture wildly. “W
hat I don’t understand is why you pretend to us you were penniless if you have all of this. You could’ve easily got into the party with the mere hint of your mother’s prestige. Hell, you could have bought yourself a first-class ticket to the New York opening.”

  I tried not to let my annoyance show. “My Mother’s—”

  “Why the hell not?” She came further into the room. “Bloody hell, Tommy. Everyone else in the squat would’ve done it. What leverage! Shit, you could be anyone you want to be.”

  I added another log to the fire before facing her. “You know nothing.”

  “Bloody men!” She shook her head. “Get this; I’m not a dumb blonde. Yes, I worked as a picture hanger, but I have aspirations too. No fancy education, but then I didn’t have a mother who could afford to pay for one.”

  “And, your point is?”

  “Guess what, Tommy Blackbird? Or whatever you call yourself. I know who Jane Elspeth Maedere was. I guess you would see my art as daubs the same as Joe did.” She narrowed her lovely eyes. “I guess you men feel threatened by us women, but we just want recognition as much as you do. Only the establishment doesn’t take us seriously. We have to have more than just talent, as your mother found out. It’s all down to how we look rather than our talent.”

  “Do you want a drink?” I held up a bottle of whiskey.

  “No— thank you. The photo in the hall is of you with your mother?”

  “How observant of you. Take a seat.” I gestured to the sofa.

  “I’ve never seen any photos of this one before—” She nodded in the direction of the painting above the fireplace. “It’s an amazing self-portrait.” Candela sat on the edge of the sofa closest to the door.

  “Please relax. You’re making me nervous.” I poured myself a large whisky, glad it wasn’t the crap I’d been drinking for the last six months. As its burning quality slipped down my throat, I became aware that Candela’s nervousness had returned. She perched uncomfortably on the sofa’s edge, like a bird hanging on to a branch in a strong breeze. It was as if she was about ready to make a quick dash, not that she was ideally dressed to run across muddy field in her Mary Quant pale yellow trouser suit and flat green suede shoes. Even so, she wouldn’t get far as the surrounding Suffolk countryside outside the rectory laid in pitch-black, unlike the streets of London, with its streetlighting.

  “Why all the pretence, Tommy?” Why not just use your given name, Tommy Maedere, the son of the great artist, Jane Maedere?”

  “My father was Donald Ravencroft. Maedere is my mother’s maiden name. I’m James Ravencroft.”

  “Raven— Blackbird. I get it, but it makes no sense. Why not call yourself James Maedere, if Tommy isn’t even your real name.”

  I gulped more whisky before answering, “Then you understand nothing. Why should I use my mother in the same way others did?”

  “But why lie?”

  “Did I lie?”

  She pondered the question.

  “Exactly.” I set my glass down and dropped into my father’s chair. “You never asked. I never said. End of story. Anyway, what about you? For all I know, you might be a poor little rich girl— Daddy drives a ‘Roller’”

  “Nope. Daddy drives a taxi! Mummy is a cleaner. My parents couldn’t afford to send me to college. I read about your mother while working full-time to pay my way in life. She’s so talented—”

  “Was,” I snapped. She flinched as though I had struck her. I softened my tone, trying to keep calm. “She isn’t anymore.”

  “I’m sorry. Of course there was some sort of an accident.”

  I reached for my glass in an effort to block out the image of my mother with the knife and the sound of father’s pleading voice. As I fell silent Candela studied the room, while I studied her. The tilt of her head and the shape of her profile against the flickering fire light made me want to pick up a pencil and capture her, to strip back the layers of eye make-up to bring out her real beauty, the raw beauty that only I saw.

  “Please feel free to look about,” I said softly, though still managing to startle her. The make-up that already widened her eyes now exaggerated her agitation. “I won’t be long. I am just going to light the Aga. The house will soon warm up.” I left and went through to the kitchen.

  Like the rest of the house, the kitchen was covered in a film of dust. I should’ve hired someone to clean while I was away, but it would have been impossible to trust anyone not to snoop around when all they needed do was clean the kitchen and bathrooms. I washed the dried blood and the coke dust off my injured hand. I’d just finished redressing it when Candela appeared in the doorway.

  “What happened to your hand?”

  “Nothing. Just caught it on the coal scuttle.”

  She stepped forward, keeping the table between us. “Do you want me to take a look at it?”

  “No, I’m good.” I held out my bandaged hand.

  “Well, if we’re going to eat in here, I better give it a clean.” She opened the cupboard under the sink and began looking for cleaning products without even asking where they were kept.

  I watched her closely. She washed down the surfaces, ready to prepare our meal. I took in her loveliness, noting that she seemed to have lost her apprehension. Every muscle in her body relaxed into the task. Candela was city made. Her knowledge of the metropolis, like that of her father and all London cab drivers, would be useless in the vast countryside that I knew like the back of my hand.

  Candela fell easily into playing the part of the wife in unfamiliar surroundings as she finished cleaning the kitchen. I put away the few groceries I had brought from London. We sat down at the freshly scrubbed pine table in the kitchen and dined on cheesy baked beans and toast. Candela chatted about her plans to clean the rest of the house, while I was busy contemplating plans of my own.

  With my first serious collection of paintings Of Land and Sea almost finished, I was on the search for something new. My time in London had eaten its way into my soul. The architecture had made the biggest impression on me, especially St Paul’s Cathedral. As Candela waited for the sink to fill enough to begin the washing up, she leaned forward slightly. The light in the kitchen gave her face the appearance of stone. The words urban landscapes filled my mind with new possibilities.

  Candela’s appearance reminded me of the statues on St Paul’s the Golden Gallery. They stared unseeing with vacant eyes across the city while far below people hurried ant-like, with their heads down, focusing on nothing else but making money. Even when Hitler’s bombs destroyed the heart of the city, those stone figures watched unmoved by man’s inhumanity. As Candela washed our plates, she became my first muse, and my first stone angel.

  The next morning I was up early, desperate to begin working on an idea that had come to me in the early hours. In the kitchen, I added coke to the Aga to build up some heat while waiting for the kettle to boil. Candela had put me off the idea of going to my studio after I heard her snooping around in the drawers and cupboards of my sister Lydia’s old bedroom.

  It’s funny how things happen. No matter how well you may make plans there’s always an element of the unexpected. It’s like looking at a blank canvas. In your mind’s eye, you know what it will look like once you’ve finished. The hardest part is finding the best starting point, and then planning your route to your final destination. You can do as many preliminary drawings as you want to find the best route to take, but once you lift a paint-filled brush and make that initial stroke, the painting takes on a life of its own.

  Everything fell into place at breakfast. I gazed across the kitchen table into Candela’s beautiful but sad green eyes and knew I had found my starting point.

  Chapter Three

  Candela gathered up the cleaning products from under the sink and nipped through to the utility room just beyond the kitchen.

  “Are you sure you want to clean?” I called after her. “You could come with me.”

  “No, I’m fine. How long are you going to be?” s
he asked, stepping back into view. She looked every inch the domestic goddess, with her hair braided and tied back into a ponytail. Even her smile reminded me of a washing powder commercial.

  “I’m not sure.” I leaned against the doorjamb. “The car was making a hell of a din last night.”

  “I didn’t hear anything.”

  “You were sound-o. It’s a wonder it didn’t wake you. It happened mainly when I accelerated. Anyway, I need to get it checked out. Living out here, I don’t want the car dying on us.”

  “Oh, right.” She checked Mrs P’s tidy-box before looking up. “Do you want me to fix lunch or just wait and see what time you get back?”

  “Best wait.” I crossed to the pantry. “We’re getting low on milk, butter, eggs, and potatoes. I’ll pick them up from Jimmy’s on my way back.”

  “Jimmy’s?”

  Candela came towards me. “Yeah. It’s a smallholding not far from here. If I see anything we need, I’ll just buy it. It shouldn’t take me all day. Please just stick to the rooms I’ve said if you’re up to cleaning, but if you just want to sit and read in the library, or do some drawing, you can. I could sort out a canvas, and some paints, before I go. The light in the lounge is good, if you want to paint.”

  “No, it’s all right. I’m looking forward to putting a shine on the house. Maybe tomorrow I’ll do some painting. I noticed a statue in the garden, this morning, a stone angel of sort. If it’s nice tomorrow I might sketch it.”

  “Okay. I better get going. Remember, you don’t have to do any cleaning. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  It was crazy to think I could trust her, but what else could I do? The car had to go. I couldn’t risk her coming with me. I drove like a man possessed to Shottisham to pick up the car I had phoned about yesterday evening. Soon after our arrival I disconnected all phones, not wanting to risk Candela telling anyone where she was or having someone phoning to speak to me and Candela picking up.