Silent Faces, Painted Ghosts

by Kathy Shuker

  She stood, unmoving, the significance or otherwise of the encounter below her still running through her mind. Her eyes refocused on a movement in the parterre where Sami was silently weeding one of the beds. He hadn’t been visible before, she could have sworn, so where had he been hiding? Tucked in behind one of the overhanging shrubs, listening in? He had always been like this, Sami. She thought of him as Peter’s spy, watching, listening, skulking around. He was devoted to Peter, would do anything for him, it seemed - presumably because he had no life of his own.

  She turned away from the window and went downstairs. Lindsey had arrived home some twenty minutes earlier and she found her in the kitchen, pouring chilled orange juice into a tall glass. The fridge door stood open.

  ‘Hello, darling,’ Angela said, walking across and giving her daughter an air kiss. ‘Don’t leave the fridge door open dear.’ She pushed it to. ‘Everything all right?’

  ‘Yes, thanks,’ said Lindsey listlessly. She replaced the juice in the door of the fridge and exaggeratedly closed it, glancing pointedly towards her mother.

  ‘Have you seen Terri?’ said Angela.

  ‘She’s just gone through to her room.’

  ‘And Celia?’

  Lindsey shrugged. ‘No idea.’

  Still frowning, Angela picked up the electric kettle and walked to the sink to fill it. She switched it on and turned, leaning her back against the unit.

  ‘How well have you got to know Terri?’ she asked.

  ‘Not very. Why?’

  ‘I have seen you together though.’

  ‘We’ve talked a bit.’

  ‘Do you think there’s anything...odd about her?’ asked Angela.

  Lindsey frowned, drank some juice and shrugged again. ‘In what way?’

  ‘She’s quite reticent usually isn’t she? But I’ve just seen her chatting to Celia.’

  ‘That’d be two odd people together then.’

  ‘Mm. Have you ever seen them together?’

  Lindsey pulled a face. ‘Maybe. I’m not sure. Does it matter?’

  ‘It might do. You’ve got to look after your own interests darling, I’ve told you before.’

  ‘Uh?’ Lindsey wrinkled her nose up, uncomprehending. She was worryingly naïve, Angela often thought.

  ‘Look darling, just let me know if you do see them together again, will you?

  ‘I do know she’s going out with Luc,’ Lindsey said moodily, wandering away to the door.

  ‘Really? Since when?’

  ‘Not sure. Maybe before she came here. But they’re an item, you can tell. I’ve seen them in town. You watch them together sometime.’ She left the kitchen.

  The kettle boiled and Angela distractedly poured water into the teapot. She had forgotten to put the teabag in. The image of Terri talking to Celia kept running through her mind.

  ‘So what are they up to?’ she muttered to herself.

  Chapter 9

  The idea that Madeleine’s attic studio still lay untouched somewhere in Angela’s chic, contemporary home was laughable. Terri shrugged it off as a bit of gothic fantasy, yet another of Celia’s bizarre flights of fancy. Even so, she caught herself glancing up to the top of the east wing each time she approached the house, unable to completely dismiss it from her mind. If such a studio did exist it might give an insight into the enigmatic woman behind the intriguing portrait. Her den, Celia had called it, so it would possibly also contain information which would throw a light on the mystery of Tom. But Terri repeatedly checked her curiosity. This was none of her business and, even if Celia were telling the truth, the studio was a forbidden place belonging to a woman no-one was prepared to discuss. Was that simply the result of a tragic bereavement? That seemed unlikely after all this time. So why the wall of silence?

  It was pointless to brood over it; she was unlikely to ever learn more. The house keys, including the ones to the studio, were all kept on lines of hooks in a shallow cupboard under the stairs. Glancing along the tagged keys one day, she’d seen none labelled as ‘Raphael’. Further proof, if any were needed, that Celia had made the whole thing up.

  The following Sunday afternoon however, stretched out reading on one of the sofas in the sitting room, Terri found herself alone in the house: Peter was in the studio; Lindsey was working and Angela had gone out. For more than half an hour after the last sounds of Angela’s shoes had faded on the terrace outside, Terri argued with herself about whether to take advantage of the opportunity or not. In the end the temptation proved too strong and she abandoned the book on the sofa and cautiously climbed the stairs to the first floor.

  The staircase emerged in the middle of a long, straight landing with doors to left and right and windows looking out to the rear and the woods. Reminding herself that she was looking for an attic room, somewhere in the old part of the house, she paused to get her bearings, examined the illustrated nameplates on a couple of the doors - ‘Vermeer’ and ‘El Greco’; they were impressively good - then walked the length of the passage and descended two steps down to the upper floor of the east wing.

  It didn’t look promising. To the front was a large bedroom - ‘Rubens’ - and behind it a walk-in linen store, but there was no obvious staircase to a loft. She glanced up at the ceiling; there was no trap door either. Still, something didn’t feel right. She looked back in at the linen store and then in the bedroom again where the en-suite bathroom extended back behind the wall of the corridor. Terri was a fair judge of size and distance and it didn’t look as if the two rooms between them were big enough to quite fill the space. So perhaps there was a passage between the two rooms after all? She examined the wall; it was smooth. She tapped it; it sounded solid. Clearly her imagination had been fed by too many films involving ancient houses and secret passages.

  Even so she walked into the linen store and clicked the light on. The room was lined with slatted shelves, each covered with stacks of towels and assorted bed linen. To the right was a gap in the racking where a long-handled brush and a small folding stepladder were propped against the wall, a laundry trolley roughly pushed in front of them. The ladder made Terri look up, hoping to see the trap door, but again the ceiling was unbroken.

  It wasn’t until she turned to leave that she saw the small, low handle on the wall behind the stepladder. And there was the unmistakeable outline of a door too, neatly flush with the wall. She dragged the ladder and trolley out of the way, turned the handle and the door opened smoothly away from her, into darkness. Leaning in, she could just make out the bottom of a flight of steps which turned and rose away to the left. Curiosity killed the cat, her grandmother had said to her once, finding Terri nosing through the contents of the old sideboard in the dining room. The back of the drawers had been full of all sorts of odds and ends she had never seen before. What does that mean? the young Terri had asked. It means people who go looking for things usually find out something they don’t want to know, had been the snapped response, and the drawers swiftly closed.

  Now Terri straightened up and listened, but could hear nothing save the thumping of her own heart. The house was still empty. She stepped into the darkened passage, flicked a switch which made a lamp glow dully somewhere up above, and climbed the stairs, each step groaning at the unaccustomed tread.

  At the top was yet another door and it had a nameplate – ‘Raphael’ - with a clever pastiche of one of the artist’s paintings of the Madonna. So Madeleine’s studio did exist after all. She tried the handle but it was locked, just as Celia had said it would be.

  Excitement quickly gave way to apprehension and she softly retraced her steps down the stairs to the linen room. Among all the confused thoughts which ran through her mind as she put everything back the way she’d found it, the most disquieting one was the realisation that the eccentric Celia had to be taken seriously after all.

  But more importantly, where would she find the key?

  *

  Having finished picking her way through the canvases, Terri now had
an office full of ‘possibles’, waiting for Peter’s final judgement. Pressed to engage in the decision – and bribed with coffee – she finally managed to persuade him to join her in her office the following Wednesday, where they worked their way methodically through each picture in turn for more than an hour. Terri made a second round of coffee to keep Peter sweet.

  ‘These are the last two.’

  She held up the final canvases, waited, then turned to look at him to find him staring at her face and not at the pictures.

  ‘So what do you think?’ she prompted, disconcerted.

  He switched his gaze to the paintings, studying each one with a glazed expression.

  ‘Put that one in.’ He pointed at a brooding image of Ste. Marguerite des Pins viewed from the bottom of the village, looking up to a twilit sky. ‘The other one can go in the bin as far as I’m concerned. I don’t know why we picked it out in the first place.’ He took a mouthful of coffee. ‘Thank God that’s over. So...have you tracked down all my choices?’

  ‘No, not all. There are still two I haven’t located yet.’ She hesitated. ‘Do you often bin pictures?’

  ‘To judge from this studio, not enough of them. Are all the paintings coming here?’

  Terri put the pictures to one side, sat down and picked up her coffee, but didn’t reply.

  ‘Terri? Pay attention. What’s the matter with you?’

  ‘Hm? Nothing. Er...yes, I’m going to get all the pictures collected here and check them over, then I’ll ship them all to Nice nearer the time. That’s why I suggested you fit a burglar alarm. Have you thought about it?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ he muttered grudgingly. ‘I suppose we should. You can arrange it...for what it’s worth. It never stops the big galleries from being targeted.’

  ‘And insurance?’

  ‘Yes, if it’ll shut you up. I’ll speak to my insurer.’ He glanced down through his spectacles at the calendar on his watch. ‘First of June. No hurry. Lots of time still before the exhibition.’

  ‘Yes, but lots of things to do too. Restoration, framing, photography, publicity. And there’s the catalogue to write. I wanted to talk to you about that.’

  ‘I don’t want any personal mumbo jumbo in the catalogue.’ He regarded her beadily over the top of his glasses. ‘The exhibition is about the paintings, not me.’

  ‘It’s usual to have a biography though. People will expect it. They like it.’

  ‘Maybe. Something simple. But, remember, I want to see the catalogue before you have it printed.’

  ‘Of course. But I haven’t started writing it yet. I need to ask you some more questions.’

  ‘Questions, questions,’ he grumbled, without malice, sipping his coffee.

  ‘For example...’ She cast about for something to draw him out. He was in a surprisingly genial mood; it was too good an opportunity to miss. ‘...was painting your first love?’

  ‘Yes, definitely.’ He paused. ‘Of course there was cricket. When I was a boy I was quite good at cricket.’ He formed his hand into a cradle for an imaginary ball and twisted it over his head. ‘A fast bowler. I had the height you see. And I was pretty nippy in those days.’ His lip curled with amusement. ‘To judge from your blank expression, I guess you’re not a cricket fan.’

  ‘No, ‘fraid not. But tell me: what about your family - what did they think about you painting?’

  ‘They were pretty good about it. My father was a successful businessman. He’d assumed I’d follow him into the family business. Even so they were supportive when they realised I was serious. Fortunately I had a brother who wanted to work in the firm. Or at least he couldn’t think of anything else to do.’

  ‘Was there anyone else in the family who’d been artistic?’

  ‘An older brother of my father; he died in the First World War.’

  ‘And I believe Celia paints too?’

  Peter looked at her pityingly. ‘Have you seen her work?’

  ‘Not really. Just odd bits when she’s out with her easel. She seems very passionate about it.’

  ‘Oh, I’d give her full marks for enthusiasm,’ he said dryly.

  They both fell silent. Terri cast about for another question. Her mind was full of Tom and Madeleine but neither were subjects she dared broach. It was hard to focus anyway because he was studying her face again with a strange intensity as if she were a model whose planes or tints of colour he couldn’t get quite right.

  ‘What does your mother do?’ he said suddenly. ‘You said your father was a restorer. So is she artistic too?’

  Terri hesitated, examining the remains of her coffee. ‘She made hats.’

  ‘Hats?’ Peter looked surprised, or perhaps disappointed. ‘Past tense, I see. Doesn’t she make them any more then?’

  ‘She died.’ She looked up to find him frowning at her. ‘Why do you want to know?’

  He lifted the mug and tipped back the last of his coffee.

  ‘You ask a lot of questions,’ he said, putting the mug down with a flourish. ‘I think I’m allowed to ask some too.’ He drummed the table with his middle finger. ‘What was her name?’

  ‘Her name?’

  ‘Yes, you know, her given name.’

  ‘Susan. Why?’

  ‘Just curious. Do you paint?’

  ‘Not at all. I’m useless.’ She finished her coffee too and hugged the empty mug, determined to regain control of the conversation. She didn’t like the way it was going. ‘So you studied in Italy. What made you settle in France?’

  ‘The south of France had attracted so many artists. It seemed the obvious place for a young man to learn his craft.’

  ‘And yet you stayed. It’s a long way from all the big cities: London, Paris, Berlin, New York. Didn’t you think it might be difficult to get noticed here?’

  ‘No, not really. They’re good places to visit but you can’t work in that sort of environment; at least I can’t.’ He paused, studying the fingers of his left hand and flexing them. ‘Besides,’ he added slowly, ‘I met someone.’ He raised his eyes to study her face again. ‘You must have seen the portrait in the sitting room?’

  ‘Yes.’ She wondered what was coming, was almost holding her breath.

  ‘Well, she was my first wife: Madeleine.’ He said the name oddly, as if it felt strange to actually hear it said out loud.

  ‘It’s a stunning portrait; she was beautiful.’

  ‘Yes.’ Peter nodded. ‘Yes, she was.’

  ‘And...was she an artist too?’

  ‘She was an art student when I first met her.’ Peter’s eyes developed a faraway look and he was silent so long that Terri began to wonder if he was all right. Then he started talking - in a soft, gentle voice she’d never heard him use before. ‘She came to an exhibition I’d put on with some others. Told me what she thought of it...just like that. And it wasn’t all good. Oh no.’ He snorted and smiled indulgently. ‘And yes, she painted. All sorts: people, still life, views, buildings. So many influences. She was really eclectic in her taste: she loved Turner, Caillebotte... Caravaggio...’ His voice drifted away.

  ‘And Raphael, of course,’ said Terri, barely conscious of having vocalised the thought but becoming aware of a growing, deafening silence in the room and Peter, eyes now alert and angry, staring at her, brows furrowed.

  ‘Who told you she liked Raphael?’

  ‘Lindsey did.’

  ‘Lindsey? Lindsey? What were you doing talking to Lindsey?’

  ‘We were just talking.’

  ‘About Madeleine?’

  ‘I asked her about the portrait.’

  ‘And have you been going round everyone asking questions?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘And I suppose you want all this for the catalogue, do you?’ he demanded.

  ‘No...’ Terri hesitated, sure that whatever she said now would be wrong.

  ‘I believe I made it clear to start with: I will not have my private life put on record. That is not what I employe
d you to do. Who else have you been talking to?’

  ‘I’m living here. Who do you expect me to talk to?’

  ‘I expect you to do the job I’m paying you to do...the way I want it done. Nothing more.’

  He got up, glaring at her, and abruptly left her office, slamming the door. The door failed to catch and it bounced open again, just as Terri was doing a military salute to his departing back. So much for the good mood. She saw Luc looking across the studio and met his eyes briefly before stepping forward quickly to close the door.

  *

  On the first Saturday in June, Angela organised a barbecue and, for the first time, Luc was invited. Peter passed the message on when Luc was about to leave the studio one afternoon.

  ‘I gather you’re dating Terri,’ Peter said. ‘So Angela thinks it only makes sense to have you there too. Place’ll be swarming with people anyway – biggest event on my wife’s calendar.’

  ‘Is Terri going then?’

  ‘How should I know? I imagine so. Everybody goes. Anyway, why don’t you ask her yourself? You do talk I assume?’

  ‘I’d love to come. Should I let Angela know?’

  Peter shook his head. ‘I’ll tell her.’ He studied Luc morosely. ‘Don’t be too pleased: it’ll be boring as hell. A load of people all trying to look wealthier and more fashionable than everyone else. Tsch. Idiots.’ He studied Luc’s face, expressionless. ‘Brave chap, aren’t you, dating Terri I mean.’ He trudged away.

  Peter was right: the party was enormous, spread the full width and depth of the terrace and spilling out beyond, with a team of outside caterers providing the food and waiters serving wine from long trestle tables. It was already in full swing by the time Luc made his way there, the babble of chatter reaching him as he cut through the olive grove. He could hear music too, the resonant tones of Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney ringing out in the smoky, fragrant evening air. There had been noise and activity round the house all day, vans grinding up and down the track from the road and sounds of hammering and voices from the terrace. Getting closer he could see lights had been strung across the front of the house and between posts erected at the edge of the terrace. It was still light and they twinkled insignificantly.