PAINTED

by Kirsten McKenzie

  “You said it was on the dressing table but I can’t see it anywhere, it’s not here.” Yvonne said to Anita, narrowing her eyes. She didn’t want to suspect a colleague of pocketing such a thing, but it wouldn’t be the first time someone had stolen a valuable item before it got to the auction room floor.

  “It was in a purse in the drawer. I tipped it out to look through it, then left it there, even the purse. Oh!” Anita broke off and was probing her foot.

  Distracted, Yvonne glanced at Anita’s foot, “That’s infected, girl.” Yvonne switched from heartless auctioneer to saintly nurse in a nanosecond, the brooch momentarily forgotten. “Lie down now, leg up.” She bustled around, calling for Callaghan and Scott to come and help.

  Callaghan appeared at the door, taking it all from the doorway. Unreadable as always.

  “Don’t stand there like a piece of furniture. Look at this and tell me what you think?” Yvonne instructed.

  Anita tried to object, but Yvonne shushed her. If Callaghan noticed the discomfort on Anita’s face at Yvonne’s words, he said nothing.

  “No wonder you weren’t looking well downstairs,” was as much as Callaghan offered, although to his credit he appeared concerned.

  “You can see the infection spreading up your ankle,” Yvonne said, prodding at the offending red lines radiating up Anita’s foot. “I guess we need to bathe it. Any thoughts, Cal?”

  “I’ll find a bowl of water,” Callaghan replied, before disappearing again.

  “Where the hell is Scott? I need him to light the fire.”

  “Why do we need a fire?” Anita asked.

  “Because it’s freezing in here that’s why.” Yvonne walked out to the hall, “Scott? Come and help you lazy bastard.”

  She stood there massaging her arms, the pain spreading further up, tightening its grip. The last thing they needed was for another one of them to get sick before they’d finished. She couldn’t wait to get out of this place. Once she found the brooch she’d be done, and when the packers arrived anything she hadn’t catalogued could be packed up and itemised by the team back at work. That’s what they got paid for.

  Chapter 33

  Anita couldn’t tell if Yvonne was more annoyed at Scott disappearing, at her injury, or whether it was the missing brooch which made the jewellery expert huff like a train as she tried to light a fire.

  Anita felt more light-headed in bed than she had working at the dining room table. Her leg was propped on a tower of old pillows Yvonne had nabbed from elsewhere in the house, so every time she moved her leg, the scent of neglect wafted through the room. The chilly air permeated her whole body, forcing involuntary tremors through her limbs.

  Anita watched Yvonne drop the matches at least four times while listening to her running commentary about the dearth of firewood in the house. She’d sent Callaghan to source wood, pinecones, paper, or anything she could use for a fire. The absent Scott bore the brunt of Yvonne’s vitriol and the colourful language a grateful respite from Yvonne’s earlier behaviour. This was more the person she knew.

  “Sorry about causing so much trouble,” Anita said.

  “Its fine, it is not your fault, it’s Scott I’m pissed at. You don’t just up and disappear because someone saw you in the nude. So childish. He’s avoiding us. It’d be helpful for him to show his face, no one cares about what’s in his pants that’s for sure.” She struck another match. This time the flame flared and, cupping it carefully, Yvonne lowered it to the paper she’d scrunched into the hearth. The fire caught, the draughts in the room helping fuel the flames as they took hold of the brittle newspaper. “Did it! Didn’t need a man,” Yvonne said sitting back on her heels. She gathered up the spent matches and threw them into the fire. “Nice tiles,” she remarked, before stretching the aching muscles in her shoulders and arms.

  Anita propped herself up to peer at the fireplace. The tiles were identical to the ones in the drawing room, decorated with pairs of ravens. Anita fancied the birds were whispering to each other before turning to look at her, hundreds of interchangeable heads swivelling her way, piercing her with their jet eyes. She tried to tear her eyes away, mesmerised by the glossy plumage leaping from the midnight blue tiles.

  “Are you listening?”

  Anita broke from her trance, “What?”

  “I said, are you listening?” Yvonne replied, a towel slung over her shoulder and a bowl of water resting on a chair someone had dragged over to the bed. “I need to bathe your foot. Not the best job I’ve ever had, but Callaghan is useless, and Scott is having a tantrum somewhere, so you’re left with me - Florence Bloody Nightingale.” She dabbed at Anita’s foot with as much care as a rat catcher.

  Anita screwed her eyes shut, the minuscule splinter sending shots of pain through her whole body, as if Yvonne was stabbing at her foot with a hot poker fresh from the fire.

  “Have you nearly finished?” she asked through gritted teeth.

  “I think so, hard to know really.”

  The sound of Callaghan calling to Scott reached the girls.

  “He’s still sulking somewhere then?” Anita said.

  “No idea, he isn’t doing himself any favours behaving this way. He’s always been a bit special. If he wasn’t so good at his job Warren would’ve cut him years ago.”

  Callaghan’s voice had a distinctive angry edge to it now; the solid slamming of doors another clue their colleague was well past being entertained by Scott’s disappearing act. Every time another door slammed the glass rattled in the window frame and the delicate glassware danced on the dressing table and the pinecones in the fireplace jumped behind the iron grate.

  “If he keeps doing that the place will collapse around us,” Yvonne exclaimed. “Jesus, I can’t handle any more of this.” Thumping down the bowl of water, she stomped out of the room, adding to the cacophony echoing from the hall.

  Anita’s eyes returned to the hearth. The fire flared as it hit a vein of sap, and a pine cone popped and toppled from the fiery heap onto the tiles. The fire crackled and hissed, waking the ravens from their slumber. The ravens squabbled, feathers rustling like silk as they gambolled about the burning pine cone, the fire reflected a thousand times in their beady eyes.

  The portrait of the woman Yvonne had left on the mantelpiece shimmered, and the stones of the brooch luminesced in the firelight, throwing brilliant rainbows across the woman’s black dress. The painted dog whimpered, lifting its head to look up at the woman in the portrait who shuddered, her knuckles whitening in her lap. A tear trickled down her cheek. Her lips parted, whispering two words, “Help me.”

  Somewhere in the hall another door slammed shut and the ravens rose as one, their wings beating the air and fanning the flames of the fire, swooping and diving in furious coordination, amongst the maelstrom the gilt frame teetered on the mantel. And then it fell.

  “No!” Anita screamed, reaching for the painting. Everything happened in slow motion, right until the frame hit the tiled hearth. There was an explosive cracking sound. The force of the fall flicking the painting into the fire. The heavy oils caught at once and blue flames devoured the edges of the portrait before licking at the woman in the centre of the canvas. Her sad face twisted in agony and a deep keening filled the house, reverberating through the barren walls and the empty rooms.

  Anita blinked. The ravens vanished. A jet black feather floated to the ground. Anita watched it settle a breath away from the hearth. The door opened and Yvonne and Callaghan careened into the room. The sudden gust of air caught the feather and hurled it into the fire, where it caught alight, curled, and turned to ash.

  Chapter 34

  The farmer stalked across the barren fields, dog by his side. He cast the occasional glance up at the big house. Those kids were playing with fire up there. Nothing good came from that house. In fact, not much came out of it at all. He’d had few interactions with the old man but he’d seen him often enough up in the turret, hours on end, paintbrush in hand. He’d seen no one up t
here with him, just old Kubin and his easel.

  The farmer’s dog took off across the field, his loping gait leaving deep paw prints in the snow still hugging the earth.

  “Oi, Ace, come back here. Heel.”

  Ace paid no attention, bounding through the undergrowth separating the fields and the Kubin house, disappearing from sight. The farmer whistled. The sound shrill in the empty countryside, startling the ravens from their roosting place. They took to the air in alarm, flying circles above him. He scowled at them. Harbingers of bad luck. They pecked at his crops and scared his animals. He couldn’t remember them being around when he was a boy but they’d been a constant presence in the skies around the big house his whole adult life. There was no response to the whistle.

  “Ace, heel!” he yelled, his voice hoarse in the cold air. He tugged the scarf tighter around his throat as he clambered over the stile at the back of the old house. His thick coat protecting his arms as he bashed through the thorny vines which grew unapologetically wild along the boundary. The farmer emerged on the banks of the icy pond, skirting the edge carefully.

  The pond built before Kubin’s time, back when planning permission meant getting approval from the lady of the house, or the man, before the work began. It certainly didn’t mean obtaining consent from the local council. As a result, there now existed this body of water with a folly in the middle. A summer house which saw no summer, surrounded as it was by old trees towering above the ramshackle structure. The bridge to the island had long since decayed. Even as a boy, on the odd times he’d snuck through the fence to cadge a swim in the fresh water, the place had an aura of malevolence about it, one which as a teenager, he and his friends ignored. Diving into the pond and swimming across to the old summer house a rite of passage for the local lads; daring each other to stay overnight in the wooden summer house, the biggest dare of them all. He’d never done it. One of his friends had though. He’d spent the whole night there. Wouldn’t talk about it afterwards and moved away a few months later. The local gossip was that he’d ended up in the loony bin. His own father caught him swimming there once. He’d received the biggest walloping of his life and was made to swear on the life of his mother, whom he loved more than life itself, that he would never swim in the pond again. It wasn’t till he was much older that he heard the scuttlebutt about the children drowning in it and how their mother had taken her own life afterwards. How the big house changed hands a dozen times before the old artist turned up, then never left again.

  “Ace, you come back here right now.” He could see the dog worrying at something in the reeds by the water’s edge. His whistle clamped firming between his teeth, he whistled again. Ace didn’t even look up.

  The farmer struggled around the edge of the pond, focusing on where he was placing his feet. Didn’t want to get into the same difficulties as the girl up at the house. Finally he reached the side of his faithful companion, the only family he had now. His wife moved into the city to care for her mother and had never come back, succumbing to the same cancer which stole her own mother. It was him and Ace and his cattle, with a smattering of goats and chickens rounding out his life.

  “What’ve you got there, boy?”

  Reaching down, he pushed the dog’s muzzle out of the way. The dog had been chewing at a pair of men’s shoes. The farmer stepped back, his breath wheezy.

  “Where is he then?” he asked Ace.

  The dog sat on his haunches and looked up at the farmer. He was a good dog, an obedient dog. But he couldn’t know what the farmer was thinking.

  The farmer turned around, confused. This wasn’t the spot where the girl had gone in, that was on the other side, the side closest to the house. But the ice behind him was broken, reeds floating at the water’s edge, their uprooted tendrils reaching out and the soil was a messy smear of mud and bare footprints. Whoever had gone into the pond had made it out again. So where were they?

  Bending to pick up the shoes, he pushed the dog away. Ace darted in again, barking, trying to get at the shoes, to bite them, tearing one away from the farmer’s work-hardened hands.

  “Stop it you daft creature, give me the shoe. Drop it.”

  Ace dropped it, but started barking again. A bark bordering on a whine. Ignoring the instincts of the animal, he picked up the shoes and made the precarious walk around the pond up to the big house. His father’s decades-old warning ringing in his ears.

  Chapter 35

  Callaghan and Yvonne ran into Anita’s bedroom in time to see the gilt frame engulfed in brilliant orange and blue flames.

  Yvonne grabbed the bowl of water and threw it onto the flames. The fireplace exploded with a hiss and acrid smoke filled the room.

  “Get more water,” Yvonne instructed, in a futile attempt to rescue the frame from the fire.

  Callaghan ignored her. There was no point going for any more water, the elegant woman who’d graced the canvas now reduced to bubbling pools of oil paint. All signs of the woman, and the brooch, lost. Only the lower half of the portrait remained free from damage. The old dog looking out from his edge of the frame, fur accented with purple streaks from the melted image of the day bed.

  Holding the charred frame, Yvonne looked incredulously at Anita, “What did you do?”

  “Me? Nothing, it fell off the mantelpiece. I think the doors slamming must have jolted—”

  “Frames don’t just fall,” Yvonne interrupted. “They get helped, by people who help themselves to valuable jewellery.” It wasn’t the heat from the fire making Yvonne’s cheeks flush. Anger poured off her. Irrational, all-consuming, anger.

  “Yvonne I don’t think Anita would do—” Callaghan started.

  “You know nothing about her. Go on, admit it. None of us do. We talked about it in the car up here, she never talks about her life. A closed book. A book where all the bad stuff is in the sealed section.” Yvonne stood over Anita, spittle forming as she spat the words out. “Bet they never even ran a police check on you, you little thief.”

  Anita sat up, “I left the brooch on the dressing table. I don’t know where it is now. Maybe Alan took it, or maybe Scott took it downstairs to give to you. The only thing I’ve ever stolen in my life was a butter knife from a hostel in Finland when I was nineteen, and I still feel guilty about that. The frame fell into the fire because this is an old house and you were both were slamming doors like it was an Olympic sport—”

  “Oh, pulling out the Alan card? The mythical Alan, who none of us met. It’s convenient to blame someone who was probably never here.”

  “His car is in the driveway,” Callaghan added.

  “We can’t even be sure it’s his car, Cal. So don’t defend this thief.”

  “That’s enough Yvonne, leave her alone. She’s no more likely to throw a portrait into a fire, than you would swallow a bag of loose diamonds. It’s an accident. One painting ruined out of the hundreds here will not make the slightest bit of difference to the price realised at auction for the lot. It’s not like it was a Matisse or anything, was it Anita?”

  Anita shook her head. “We’ll find the brooch Yvonne, but I'm one hundred percent certain it was paste and not real diamonds.”

  “As if you’d have any idea. Forget it. I’m going downstairs and don’t bother joining me, either of you.” Yvonne abandoned the frame back into the fire, where the coals flared with the fresh fuel.

  “How are you feeling?” Callaghan asked.

  “Woozy. I wonder if the infection is making me see things.”

  “Really?” He moved closer, until Anita flinched. It was the smallest of movements but he noticed it immediately, kindling its own frisson of excitement within him. Hands in his pockets, he sought the comfort of the smooth jade head. Moving to the hearth, he nudged the damaged frame further into the fireplace with his toe. He watched as the dog at the bottom of the painting charred, then disintegrated, the ash falling through the grate.

  Callaghan poked at the frame with a brass poker. “Why were you scream
ing? Was it because the painting fell in the fire?”

  “I wasn’t screaming,” Anita replied. “It was the woman in the portrait who screamed.”

  Chapter 36

  Yvonne locked herself in the bathroom where her tears flowed as water from the tap. She slammed her hands against the mirror; the face looking back at her twisted in anger. That stupid girl. Stupid, stupid girl. Wait till Warren heard about what had happened. She’d ring him as soon as she’d calmed down.

  She splashed water on her face, washing away the hot salty tears. Reaching for a towel, she rubbed at her face, mascara transferring from her stumpy eyelashes leaving black trails across the white towelling. Not her problem.

  “Why am I so upset about a bloody brooch?” she asked her reflection. No answer. Shame gripped her. She knew her behaviour was irrational, but the brooch was special. It was rare she came across a piece she wanted to own, and this one wasn’t even that spectacular. She’d dealt with plenty of far superior pieces in her time but this one she had to have. She closed her eyes. She felt like a fool, the way she’d just behaved. Idiot.

  With the hot tap on full, the ancient pipes protested at the amount of work they were doing. The bathroom filled with steam and Yvonne traced the shape of the brooch on the mirror. Without the portrait, her memory was already clouding over. Were there eight points to the brooch or twelve?

  The pins and needles started their march up her arms again. Turning the water off, she unlocked the door. She rested her head against the wood for a moment as she composed herself and tried to swallow down the pain. She’d take some painkillers, finish her work, find Scott and fill him in. Then she’d ring Warren. He needed to be here, she couldn’t let Anita get away with what she’d done today.

  She opened the door and stepped into the hall. The houseplants casting shadows as Yvonne walked to her room. She ignored them. She didn’t have the energy to jump at every shadow she saw lurking in a corner.