PAINTED

by Kirsten McKenzie

  Ducking into her room, she slumped against the door, her eyes drawn to the wall where the children’s portraits had hung only the afternoon before. The children wouldn’t have liked the lawyer, young people had an innate ability to judge those around them far better than adults.

  Dressing in sensible jeans and shirt she made her way downstairs.

  “How is a man meant to get a coffee round here? Where’s the bloody kettle?” Gates ranted as Anita fronted in the kitchen. Pastry crumbs adorned the florid man’s face making him even less attractive than when he’d ogled her at the bottom of the stairs.

  “By boiling the water on the stove,” Anita said, bustling businesslike in the dated kitchen, lighting the gas stove with a practised hand.

  “Jesus, the old guy was living in the past wasn’t he. So, found any Picasso’s yet?” Alan’s eyes shimmered with greed.

  It gave Anita no end of pleasure to dash his dreams of a payday paved with gold. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I’ve not found anything out of the ordinary. A few pieces by some well known artists, which will do okay at auction, but most are by an artist I don’t recognise. It’ll need more research when I have internet access, although the furniture should compensate for the lack of performance by the art. There are several rooms I’ve yet to catalogue, so you never know. But I have had a quick look around and nothing spectacular caught my eye apart from a Shishkin which should be impressive at auction but that’s all.”

  Gates looked lost at Shishkin’s name. Aware that he didn’t have the foggiest clue whether she was referring to a painting or a piece of furniture, Anita refrained from educating him.

  “I’d expected more from this old pile, gold hidden in the cellar, that sort of thing. Was also expecting you to know a little more about the art you’re meant to be cataloguing. Still, the rest of your team will be here soon and they’ll have a better idea of the true worth of the stuff, given their experience,” Alan laughed, slapping his thigh with the hilarity of his statement.

  Anita busied herself with the kettle, her mouth a thin line.

  “Its good of them to give you this experience. It’s not every employer who’d let someone so inexperienced do such a big job.”

  Anita clenched the edge of the stove, knuckles taut. She turned towards the lawyer to respond to his outdated viewpoint when a hammering reverberated through the house. Already on edge, Anita jumped, knocking the kettle, which spewed boiling water across the tired linoleum, and the lawyer.

  Alan leapt from his chair, the boiling water soaking his trousers, his face a twisted caricature of the amiable face he’d presented earlier.

  “Stupid woman,” he said, tugging the fabric away from his legs, trying to escape the scalding heat.

  The hammering continued.

  Anita dashed around the kitchen, filling a jug with water from the ancient tap.

  “Here, let me pour cold water over it, to cool it down.”

  “Are you crazy? You stupid girl, give it here. I’ll not have you throw more water on me. These are expensive shoes and you’ll ruin them if you get any more water on them.”

  Yanking the jug from Anita, he trickled water over his leg, trying to avoid splashing water on his hideous suede loafers. He looked like a toddler showing how a toad might hop from one spot to another.

  The hammering registered in Anita’s flustered mind, the front door. Leaving Alan to his theatrics she hurried to the door, wrenching it open before whomever was on the other side broke it down.

  The door opened to an apocalyptic scene, sheets of rain pounded the gravel driveway and the ocean blended with the smoke-coloured sky, the horizon invisible to all but God. And in front of her stood a man, his face as angry as the storm. His age indecipherable, he was wearing a heavy oilskin with boots gripping his calves.

  The verandah provided little protection from the weather and Anita shrank from the stinging rain. The tang of salt was all pervading and the shouts of the waves drowned out the stranger’s words, for he was talking to her.

  “Sorry I can’t hear you, please come in,” she said, taking a step backwards, the sanctuary of the entrance hall preferable to the frigid air outside.

  “I’ll not set foot inside thank you. I need a word with the driver of that car,” came the raspy response. The stranger motioned towards the sports car in the driveway, behind which idled an ancient tractor, its age somewhere near that of the man at the door.

  At an impasse, Anita tried again, the rain slicking the tiled floor. “Please, it’s pouring, there’s no point us both getting wet, come in.”

  He mumbled under his breath but wiped his boots on the soaked doormat and shuffled inside, eyes downcast. Anita tried to close the door behind him but the wild wind caught it and slammed it shut, the echo reverberating around the cavernous house. The stranger stood motionless in the hall, his eyes fixed on the geometric patterns of the tiles, hands thrust deep into his pockets.

  “Is he here then? The owner of that car?”

  “He’s in the kitchen. Come through and have a coffee?”

  “I’ll wait here.”

  Anita shrugged. Her mind imagining no reason he’d need to speak with the lawyer but it wasn’t anything to do with her she reasoned and walked down the long hall to the kitchen leaving a salty trail of water in her wake.

  The kitchen was a scene straight out of an American sitcom. Alan had downed his trousers and was fussing over his scalded legs, the skin pinker than the rest of his body although hardly worthy of the performance he was making in her kitchen. Her kitchen? She felt an affiliation with the house and the last thing she needed was this buffoon ruining that sense of safety.

  “There’s a man here who wants to speak with you.”

  “Huh?” Alan looked up from his ineffectual dowsing of his leg. Anita tried concealing her distaste at the scene. She’d had little to do with men in any state of undress since her assault. She worked with men and lived with one, her father, but she saw none of them in their underwear. This was unacceptable. Her heart rate rising, the familiar tingle of adrenaline flinging itself around her body. There was no risk, but the fight-or-flight response was strong. She would not let him make her panic.

  “A man is at the door who wants a word about your car. Please pull your trousers up and speak with him.” Anita said, moving as far away from him as practical while remaining in the same room. Shaking, she leaned into the doorframe to steady herself.

  “Are you mad? You’re the one who threw boiling water over me. How am I meant to walk with these burns? First degree burns I’ve got. Tell him to come see me here. I can’t even walk. Damn near pulled my skin off when I took my trousers off. Got to it just in time.”

  Anita tried to hold back her tears, clenching her eyes shut, willing the man to put his trousers on. The image of his thick hairy thighs crawled through her, hammering against memories she’d fought hard to repress. Naked thighs pinning her onto the bed, scratching against her skin, bruising her.

  “Second thoughts, tell him to come back tomorrow. He wants to talk cars, in this weather? Muppet. Anyway, tell him it’s not for sale. What is he some country bumpkin? Got all excited about seeing a city car?”

  “Might be a country bumpkin but at least I don’t make girls cower in the corner. Stand up and pull on your pants,” said the farmer. He stood dripping in the kitchen doorway, glaring at Alan, who sat open-mouthed at the temerity of his words.

  Anita’s panic subsided and her body relaxed. The farmer was more a stranger than the lawyer yet he exuded the aura of a man of reliability. Unlike Alan, who was a worm and a bully.

  Alan couldn’t bluster his way out of this, not with his trousers round his ankles. Pulling them up, the belt buckle flapping around like a dying fish, Alan opened and closed his mouth like a fish too. His power of speech lost.

  “I don’t intend being here more than the minute it will take me to tell you this. I know you. You’re Alan Gate’s little boy, so you sit there shtum and listen. You near
killed me this morning. Forcing me off the road, screaming round the corners as if you were a rally driver, and in this weather. That tractor’s my livelihood and I’ll be billing you for the damage. You shame your father. If either of you knew what was good for you, you’d not stay here. Place isn’t right. Never has been.”

  Alan tried interrupting, but the farmer wasn’t having a bar of it.

  “I’ve warned you and now I’ll be sending my bill.”

  “Now hang on a minute you nutter,” Alan said, his cheeks reddening, but the old man had left the kitchen.

  Anita barrelled after him, almost colliding with him as he stopped to peer at the now luscious ferns adorning the hall.

  “He’s a bad apple that one. And this house. You watch the house. Sent Leo mad,” he said, turning to look at her. Shuffling to the door he pulled it open with ease. Anita’s last view of him was him making the sign of the cross before he bent into the sleet obscuring him.

  Chapter 11

  Anita busied herself with the art. With Alan looking over her shoulder it was a slow process. He fired a hundred questions at her as she worked and the incessant clicking of his pen more annoying than the inane questions he asked. The atmosphere in the house was heavy with an expected eruption, she felt her heart rate increasing with every moronic question, sapping her will to live.

  “Why don’t you know who that artist is? His signature is obvious, even an idiot could read it.”

  “Reading a signature doesn’t mean the artist ever became famous or even well known,” Anita said through gritted teeth. She had good manners and although the lawyer was a moron she tried to maintain the facade of civility. He was for all intents and purposes her employer, who’d engaged Nickleby’s and could disengage them. A common bully capable of petty retaliation if ever confronted.

  “Do you know the names of the artists in these local circles? Farmer Bumpkin and his band of merry pumpkin farmers or whatever they farm here. Nuts for a start,” he said, laughing at his own joke, oblivious that Anita hadn’t joined him in his mirth.

  Breathing deeply she tried to explain the art scene. How painters evolved and why their social standing more often than not influenced their style. How every small town had its own amateur watercolour group or oil painting club, older residents who encouraged and championed each other regardless of talent. They churned out dozens or even hundreds of pieces of mediocre art, spawning annual art shows in church halls and community centres the world over. Add in talented high school students, art graduates, and stay at home mothers who dabbled in their spare time and you have a market flooded, in an apocalyptic sense, with art. Valuable only to those acquainted with the artist, the name behind the signature. Occasionally someone with a rare skill; an indefinable something, emerged onto the scene backed by a mentor from the art world who had been at the right exhibition at the right time to take the genius under their moneyed wing. You could call it fate, timing or luck. Even Botticelli would have faded into obscurity if it weren’t for the Medici family.

  “If I’d wanted an art history lecture I’d have gone back to college. So are you saying you don’t know who these artists are because they’re local hacks or because you’re inept and shouldn’t be here in the first place?” he sneered, leg resting on another chair as if he were an invalid and the chair an orthotic stool and not an antique of exquisite age. “Which is it?”

  Alan sat there clicking his pen.

  Could she swallow her pride and allow him to treat her this way? Was any career worth being belittled?

  “I have my suspicions about who the artist is. But until I’m sure, I have to follow Nickleby’s guidelines-”

  “Which are?”

  Anita smiled her own spiteful smile, “Company policy is that until we’re certain or until we’re sure we don’t know, we mustn’t release the artist’s name. Its best to keep these things quiet. The art world is far more cutthroat than you’d be aware. Art theft is a profitable black market so I’m sure you, as a lawyer, understand the need for discretion.”

  Anita tucked her chin into her jersey, its woollen collar hiding the smile she couldn’t wipe from her face. The lawyer was silent. Score one for her. It felt so good and her mood lifted to dizzying new heights. It didn’t last.

  A few clicks of his pen later and he dropped a bombshell. “I think I should stay the night.”

  “What?” Anita dropped the battery she was trying to insert into her camera. It bounced on the hearth tiles. Her good spirit evaporated. “Why?”

  Alan shifted melodramatically in his chair, “It’s my legs, the burn from the boiling water you spilt. It throbs so much, it’d be unsafe for me to drive in this state. The pain would be a distraction. Better safe than sorry, you understand that?” He turned a pair of puppy eyes on her as false as a Louis Vuitton bag on sale in a Balinese market.

  Anita bit back what she wanted to say, choosing her words carefully. “It’s a big house, rooms are already made up. Up to you.” She retrieved the battery from the glazed tiles. Instead of the usual floral or geometric patterns, these tiles were pairs of ravens confined in a repeating diamond design, looking conspiratorially at each other. She sat on her haunches examining them. They were the distinctive blue used by Minton at the end of the 1800s, expensive and rare. There were similar ones in the British Museum but this was a whole hearth decorated with the creepy birds.

  She straightened, ignoring the probing eyes she knew were ogling her. The disturbing gazes of the children on her bedroom wall preferable to the salacious looks from the lawyer.

  “I need another battery, this one’s damaged,” she said and scooted past Alan’s chair to the safety of the foyer and the staircase.

  “Can you make me a coffee while you’re at it?” Alan called behind her.

  Her skin bristled at the effrontery of the man. Moronic sexist prick she thought and stomped up the stairs. A childlike response but well suited to the situation. Reaching her room she shivered in the cold. The central heating clearly wasn’t on and it felt like worse weather was coming. Wiping condensation from the window confirmed her theory. Snow, billowing, brilliant snow. She’d been so engrossed in her work and her physical dislike of the lawyer, she hadn’t noticed the absence of the soothing cadence of the rain, which had been replaced by the eerie silence of snow.

  Anita rested her forehead against the glass, her breath fogging around her face. A small respite from the stress downstairs. Sighing, she retrieved the spare battery she’d come for and left the room, closing the door to trap a small measure of heat in the chilly room.

  Behind her, an unseen hand wiped clean the misty fog Anita’s breath left on the window. Tiny lines left by tiny fingers marred the otherwise clean window.

  Chapter 12

  Alan looked flushed, with a guilty aura surrounding him when she returned to the living room with her battery.

  “All okay?” she asked.

  “Yes, yes, it’s my legs. I tried stretching them and, well, the pain was horrendous. Attempted to ring my office to let them know I won’t be back in for a couple of days but I couldn’t get a signal anywhere,” he whined.

  Ignoring his words, she seized upon the only thing she could answer without strangling him, “You can get a signal in the study or you could try the landline there. I haven’t tried the phone because I assumed you had the services cancelled after the owner died?”

  “Cancelled?”

  “Yes, cancelled, so the estate doesn’t pay out more than it has to. That’s the usual way of things. Phone, power and water. Internet, gas, newspapers.”

  Alan laughed, “My office girl handles that drudgery. I focus on the more important aspects of estate management like building relationships and managing investments. Utility companies aren’t my remit.”

  Alan had no one to ring back in the office. He hadn’t replaced Alma but he needed to tell his golf buddy he might not make it to their game tomorrow. It was galling but keeping an eye on this inept, but pretty girl, was
more pressing.

  “And it’s snowing,” Anita added, pulling aside the curtains to look out the window. Fat snowflakes caressed the overgrown garden beyond the lounge window. “That’ll affect the signal no matter where you try ringing from.”

  Alan sniffed. Snow was an unfortunate byproduct of the location and the time of year. The call could wait. He’d sit here and allow the little thing to wait on him while she worked and milk the sympathy. It was a fine thing having a woman wait on you. “Did you put the coffee on?”

  Gritting her teeth, Anita didn’t reply. She lowered her camera and stomped out of the room. The second time in the space of twenty minutes she’d reverted to toddler-like behaviour.

  The rest of the day was arduous. She’d fashioned an acceptable meal once she lost the light she needed to examine the pieces she’d removed from the walls. The front foyer now resembled an art gallery waiting to hang a new exhibition. Small pictures jostled for space with larger frames. Gilt edging vied for attention amid glossy polished oak frames. Hand worked plaster frames adorned with cherubs and roses were out on their own. A large stack of art, yet only a fraction of what was still hanging on the walls.

  Following on from an uncomfortable dinner where Alan spoke and she didn’t, she made her excuses and escaped to her room. The unadorned walls and frigid temperatures more inviting than sharing space with the man she’d had to help climb the stairs.

  The touch of his skin against hers was as appalling as the sight of his hairy thighs earlier in the day. She’d bitten her lip so hard helping him, she’d drawn blood. The smear of red across the back of her hand and the taste brought back its own terrifying memories and she was a wreck by the time she closed her door behind her. She fumbled for a key, leaving a bloody smear. Nothing. She sank to the floor, tears threading their way down her cheeks. She tried to tell herself he was no threat and unlikely to open her bedroom door in the middle of the night, smothering her screams with his pasty white hands. For sure his injury wasn’t as serious as he made out but that didn’t make him a rapist. Even thinking the word rapist set off another round of tears which threatened to freeze on her face if she continued sitting on the floor.