Altered Images

by Maxine Barry

  ‘Let go of me,’ she hissed, snatching her arm out of his hand, once they were out into the stairwell. She cast a final, puzzled glance behind her as Reeve shut the door of the flat behind them.

  ‘You know what curiosity did to the cat, don’t you?’ he asked her drolly. He had the feeling that, whatever Ray’s problem was, they didn’t want to get caught up in it. Suddenly, and for no reason other than instinct, Reeve began to wonder about Ray. Good ol’ Ray.

  ‘But don’t you want to know what that was all about?’ she asked in frustration.

  ‘No. And neither do you, Nosy,’ Reeve said, with just enough bite in his voice to surprise her. ‘If Ray’s having money trouble, the last thing he needs is for us to get in the way. Just think about your pay cheque and what happened to the cat.’ He stopped in the middle of the busy pavement to give her nose a pinch. Annis brushed his hand away, putting her sudden breathlessness down to the stifling city heat.

  ‘Clown!’ she scowled. But she was smiling as she followed him into the blissfully air-conditioned pub, and carried one of the six-packs he handed over to her without complaint. By the time they had returned, Ray’s mysterious visitor had gone and the rest of the cast had arrived. They fell on the beer like desert travellers spotting an oasis.

  If Ray cast the two of them the odd, anxious look, Annis didn’t notice. But Reeve, though he gave no sign of it, definitely did. He made a mental decision to keep a close eye on Annis during their weekend in Oxford. Just in case. Then he quickly forgot his unease as they knuckled down to work, going right through the scenes, from Friday to Sunday.

  ‘Right then, I think that went well,’ Ray said when they’d finished. ‘Now, accommodation. I’ve booked rooms for everyone in a small lodging house in Headington. It’s in the suburbs, but only ten minutes’ bus ride from the centre of town.’

  John Lore and Norman Rix exchanged knowing looks. ‘I can see it now,’ John said. ‘No hot water, but plenty of cockroaches and a landlady whose speciality is liver and onions.’

  ‘Oh don’t,’ Julie shuddered, whilst Reeve coughed apologetically.

  ‘There’s no need to book me in Ray,’ he said with pseudo-regret. I’ve got a friend in Oxford who’s off to the Caribbean next week. He’s asked me to house-sit. I know, it’s a rotten job, but someone’s gotta do it. I can’t have the swimming pool, hot tub, Japanese garden and king-sized bed left feeling all alone, can I?’

  There were even more riotous cat-calls at this announcement, and on that happy note, the rehearsals broke up.

  Annis was not surprised to find him waiting for her in the hall this time. When he fell into step companionably beside her, she tried to tell herself that it meant nothing. That she felt nothing. It didn’t do any good, but she tried telling herself so anyway.

  ‘This place of my friends,’ Reeve began casually as they stepped outside into the dark, warm night. ‘It’s got two en-suite rooms. If you want, you can have the other.’

  Annis stopped dead in her tracks. She looked at him, or rather stared at him, her breasts heaving as she fought back a wave of anger. And desire. Oh yes . . . definitely desire.

  ‘Well that was quick work, even for you,’ she finally managed to say.

  Reeve sighed heavily. ‘I said it has two en-suite bedrooms Annis,’ he reminded her, his voice heavy with irony. ‘As in, one for you, and one for me?

  Annis snorted. ‘Huh. And you’re seriously trying to tell me that, during the wee small hours of the night, you won’t come tip-toeing into my room? Getting lost on your way to the bathroom, perhaps?’

  Reeve smiled at her savagely. ‘And, of course, you’d really object if I did, isn’t that right, Annis?’ he challenged her.

  Annis remembered her earlier, very vivid fantasies about him, and flushed angrily. Because he was right, damn him! From the very first moment he’d mentioned having a house to himself during their Oxford break, she had been wondering if he’d ask her. She took a deep, deep breath that seemed to originate from somewhere in her shoes.

  ‘Reeve,’ she said sweetly, ‘you can take your offer of accommodation and . . .’

  ‘Ah-ah-ah,’ he interrupted her. ‘No bad language please. Remember you’re a lady.’

  Annis nodded. ‘You’re right. And when a lady’s been propositioned by a self-satisfied jerk, there’s only one thing left for her to do.’

  She swung her arm like a cricketer about to bowl a blinder, and carefully angled her open palm with the smooth plane of his right cheek. Unfortunately he was a little too quick for her and ducked at the optimum moment.

  Annis found herself swiping air, spinning around and staggering to regain her balance.

  Then she heard his rich deep laughter as, once again, he left her alone, gaping and rattled, on the city’s pavement.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Frederica awoke, stretched, yawned extravagantly, and lay grinning up at the ceiling. It was four days since her date with Lorcan Greene, and still she couldn’t seem to get the smile to leave her face. The ride in the silver sports car—surely the best stand-in for a knight’s white steed?—the romantic Inn, with its rushing trout-filled stream, candlelight and delicious liqueurs. Then the stroll back through Oxford’s moonlight streets. And the man . . .

  The man who was everything any woman could ever dream of. A real man, who was also many other things—rich, handsome, cultured, clever, witty and charming. A man who shared her passion for art. A man who wanted to buy her work. A man who could teach her everything she could ever want to know—from how to make love, to speaking Italian, from appreciating good wine, to making love, from teaching her how to drive, to how to make love.

  Frederica sighed and got dressed, then made her way to breakfast in Hall, smiling at the scouts who served the toast and marmalade, at her fellow students, smiling even at the painted portrait of a previous Principal, centuries dead. Life, there was no getting round it, was looking good.

  She’d even telephoned her father yesterday, asking him to look out the diaries of one of their ancestors, Francis Delacroix, a competent biographer of the artists of his day.

  As she tucked into her cornflakes, she dragged her mind from Lorcan Greene back to her current project. The old canvas was now clean and nearly dry and she was ready to begin. And having Lorcan hovering in the background gave an added piquancy. It was the feeling of beating him, without hurting him, that was so thrilling. He was so much more than she was. More experienced, older, more confident. And whilst that delighted her, in some strange, utterly feminine way, it also made her ache to put just a slight dent in that armour of his.

  She was due at one of his lectures on Friday, and kept imagining the way their eyes would meet across the crowded studio. Could almost see the way his hazel eyes would turn more emerald, becoming smoky as she smiled at him.

  Pulling herself together, she finished her toast and walked to the lodge to collect her mail, surprised to find that the diaries had already arrived for her via special delivery. Back in her room, she lay on the bed and reached for the top copy.

  The diaries vividly conjured up the mind and mood of an early Victorian gentleman, but it was when she got to the technicalities of life as an artist, that she began to get really excited. Nearly two hours later, she was still making copious notes, and was relieved to discover that she had cleaned the canvas exactly as she should have done.

  ‘So you won’t be able to tell from the age and state of the canvas that it’s a fake, Lorcan darling,’ she murmured, her voice lingering caressingly over his name, and tinged with triumph.

  The imaginary game she was playing with him was intoxicating. Should she let him view the finished painting when it was hung up back in Rainbow House, just to see whether he spotted it as a forgery? No. Too dangerous. And yet . . .

  She read on, forgetting lunch, and then suddenly sat up with a lurch, hardly daring to believe what she was reading. Paints. Her good old great-great-great grandfather was going into details about paints, and she co
uld have kissed him for his pernickety attention to detail. She’d never expected to be given, on a plate as it were, the recipe for early nineteenth-century oil paints.

  As she stared at the faded blue ink on the diary page, she recognised the name of a shop Francis Delacroix had mentioned. One of Oxford’s oldest speciality artists shops, she’d heard of it, but had never been there. She quickly reached for her copy of the University Prospectus, turning to the map on the back. She memorised the shop’s location and snapped the Prospectus shut with a grin. This was such an unbelievable stroke of luck she could hardly believe it. Of course, the shop wouldn’t sell Victorian-style paints ready made. But now she had the recipe, as it were, she would only need to do some experimenting, to get the mixes right. Colours could be opaque, semi-opaque, transparent and semi-transparent. The trick was always in the mixing. She’d just have to keep at it until she was confident she’d got it right.

  But during her research, she’d discovered that there was another Forbes-Wright picture, right here in Oxford, in a college not far from her own. That would give her a better idea of how the man himself preferred to apply his paints.

  Smiling and humming to herself, Frederica left her room and walked out into the bright May sunshine.

  She’d have to ask the Bursar if she could ‘stay up’ for another month. Like all Oxford Colleges, St Bede’s did a lot of conference trade in the summer, and she didn’t want to get thrown out until her canvas was finished. Working at home would be impossible—her mother was so nosy.

  She walked to St Giles and hailed a taxi.

  * * *

  Lorcan cruised down the Woodstock Road, keeping his eyes firmly averted from the entrance to St Bede’s. He’d been out that morning to a country house sale and had bought a simple little painting, unsigned, of an apple orchard. He had a few good ideas about its provenance, and its style was of the Newlyn School. So when he pulled to a stop at the junction of St Giles his mind was, for once, a long way from Frederica Delacroix. When he saw her getting into a taxi, his hands tightened ominously on the steering wheel. The sensation of soft lips clinging to his rose into his mind, making his heart thump, and his loins tingle. And before he knew it, he found himself following the taxi out of the centre of the city.

  As it led him to the old suburb of Holywell, he felt grimly ridiculous—like a weary gumshoe tracking a femme fatale to a hideout. But when she got out in front of a rickety, dirty windowed shop named ‘The Painters’ Emporium’, he nevertheless parked out of sight and made his way back to the shop. There, a dirty coat of arms informed him that the shop had been established in 1799. And it looked it.

  Through the grimy windows, he could see that the interior was stacked high with plain easels and donkeys: those easels with a built-in seat and painter’s box, jam jars full of brushes, and a large array of artists’ palettes.

  What was she doing here, in an out-of-the-way, old fashioned, speciality shop? But in his heart, he knew there could only be one answer. He paced restlessly, getting angrier and angrier. With her. With himself. And, alarmingly, with Detective Inspector Richard Braine of the Art Fraud Squad.

  He told himself that he’d forgotten that Friday-night kiss.

  He told himself that this feeling he got whenever he was near her, meant nothing more than the arousal any man would feel when close to a beautiful young woman. He told himself he should go back to London and forget that he’d ever seen her face. But still he waited. Like a kestrel, hovering, awaiting a glimpse of a field-mouse, chained to a predatory nature and unable to prevent himself from closing in for the kill.

  * * *

  Inside the shop, Frederica waited for the ancient proprietor to come back from the depths of the cellar, where he’d gone in search of one of her rarer requests, and idly inspected some brushes. There was everything an artist could want, from the expensive Kolinsky, a Siberian mink brush which tapered to such a beautiful dark point, to red sable, weasel, polecat, goat, camel, ox and hog’s hair. Frederica could have spent over a thousand pounds here on brushes alone. When she sold her first painting to Lorcan, she promised herself, she was going to spend every last penny on setting up a really good, well-equipped studio.

  The proprietor, eighty if he was a day, and as bright as a button, returned. Frederica had all but fallen in love with him the moment she’d stepped inside.

  ‘Here we are, miss. Mind you the solution is so very old . . .’ he trailed off anxiously, staring doubtfully at the ancient, brown-stained bottle in his hand. Could he really sell it to her, in all good conscience? He only had it at all because he was too old and too lazy to clear out the cellars. But the beautiful young lady only smiled at him. ‘No, no, that’s fine. That’s just what I want in fact.’

  Finally satisfied that she had all she needed, Frederica paid the man, wincing at the sum and determined to ask her father for a bigger allowance next year. After this, he owed her big time! When she left the shop, her bag of precious goodies hugged close to her chest, she now had the ingredients to copy Forbes-Wright’s paints right down to the finest detail.

  She was so excited by this prospect, that as she hailed and climbed into another taxi, she didn’t even see the golden-haired figure that watched her go, then enter the art shop she’d just left. The old man inside looked up, surprised by the tinkling of the door bell.

  The man who walked in instantly had the old owner smiling in pleased recognition. A gentleman! He served so few of those nowadays. ‘Good afternoon sir. Unseasonably warm for the time of the year,’ he murmured.

  Lorcan smiled and nodded. ‘It certainly is.’

  In the octogenarian he instinctively recognised a dying breed—a true shopkeeper. Moreover, one who knew his art from his elbow. He would have to be careful, if he was to get the information he needed. ‘Good afternoon. I’m a Visiting Tutor at the Ruskin,’ he established his credentials right away, pleased to see the old man stiffen and look even more alertly impressed than before. ‘You’ve been here for some time, I see, by the crest outside?’

  The old man’s face radiated with pride. ‘Indeed we have, sir. My family first opened the doors back in 1799. In our time we’ve sold paints to all the greats.’

  Lorcan nodded. ‘I can well believe it.’ The shop was impressive. ‘I suppose you get quite a few of my students in,’ Lorcan murmured mendaciously.

  The old man sighed. ‘Not as many as once before, sir, I’m sorry to say. Still . . .’ He brightened. ‘These things are like fashion trends. We’ll be popular once again some day, no doubt.’

  Lorcan nodded. ‘I’ll be sure to mention your shop in my lecture on Friday,’ he promised, and meant it.

  The old man’s face flickered at such good news, and he took a quick, happy breath. ‘Will you sir? Well, now, thank you very much.’

  Lorcan smiled. ‘One other thing I’ve noticed about Oxford,’ he smiled, leaning a little closer to the twinkling-eyed proprietor, ‘is how many pretty girls there are here.’

  The old man beamed. ‘Ah yes indeed. I met my Muriel here—having tea in the Raleigh Hotel.’ He sighed heavily.

  Lorcan, feeling like all kinds of a heel, nodded, but carried on relentlessly. ‘That very beautiful red-headed lady who was going out just as I was coming in, for instance. If I wasn’t a Tutor I’d have been inclined to ask her to tea at the Raleigh.’

  Knowing instinctively that the old man wouldn’t approve of an Oxford Don acting like an Oxford student, he kept his voice purposely respectful—but with just a tinge of we’re all-men-together in his voice.

  ‘Ah yes. A very beautiful young lady, and a real artist.’

  ‘Really? How can you tell?’ he asked, looking intrigued.

  The old man’s chest swelled with pride. ‘Well, sir, from the things she asked for,’ he replied innocently. ‘Real paints, not these modern mixes.’ And, before he knew what was what, found himself listing all the young lady’s incredible purchases.

  Lorcan listened and smiled, and nodded, and fel
t a cold hard fist forming in his stomach. Frederica Delacroix had just bought everything she might need if she was going to try to forge a painting of the 1860 period.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said at last, his voice curiously lifeless now. ‘That’s the shopping list of an old-fashioned painter. But I would have thought such items like that were obsolete now.’

  ‘Ah yes sir, but this is a speciality shop, sir. I have things in the cellar that were around in Stubbs’s day,’ the old man said, and Lorcan didn’t have any difficulty in believing him.

  When he walked miserably back to his car, he carried a big bag of expensive paint-cleaning materials in one hand. The Gallery’s restorer could always do with them, and after the bonus the old man had given him, he hadn’t wanted to leave without spending a fair chunk of money by way of recompense.

  He got into the Aston Martin and drove slowly through the town. As he approached Carfax, at the bottom of the High, he saw her. Just for a moment, bobbing along with the crowds of shoppers and tourists. Her auburn hair was loose, and swung around the dusky orange of her blouse. She was smiling, but as he was obliged to turn up the High—Oxford’s one-way system was a killer—he didn’t get to look at her for more than a second.

  He drove home, feeling oddly deprived. And still furiously angry. Had she listened to nothing that he’d said on Friday night about keeping her reputation spotless? Damn the woman, couldn’t she take a hint? He slammed into the house on Five Mile Drive, went straight to the kitchen and poured himself a large glass of rich, red Burgundy. He took it into the living room, where he sat down on the sofa, trying to force himself to relax. He spread one arm across the back of the sofa and drank the wine grimly, hardly tasting it.

  ‘Damn it Frederica,’ he said softly, staring at the ceiling. ‘I’d have made you famous. I’d have exhibited every canvas you ever painted.’ He’d have done more, so much more than that . . . He shook his head. No. That was dangerous. So incredibly dangerous. Besides, all of that was over now. The dream, barely begun, was shattered for ever. He reached for the phone and angrily dialled a familiar number.