by Ann Swinfen
'I thought it was very striking. I liked the tonal effects of the orange and crimson together.'
Oh, Lord, thought Frances, that's what he is, is he? A rich private collector who wants to talk about Art with a capital A. Well, I'm the wrong person for him then. Natasha needn't worry that I'll be too nice to him; I'm more likely to be too rude.
She was quite glad when Alice attached herself to the guided tour and monopolised Simon's attention.
In the stableyard she showed them the coach-house that had been converted into a house for Nicholas and Sally, and the run of outbuildings with elegant arched doorways, each of which was now a studio.
'Sally has one, and Natasha used to have another, but she doesn't really paint any more, so Desmond Fraser has it for his pottery. I think all the studios are in use at the moment. It always depends on who's living here. And the upper storey – which was once haylofts and quarters for grooms and coachmen – that's been made into music studios. I remember when I was a child the awful trouble they had getting a grand piano up there. Eventually they had to hoist it up on the old tackle that had been used for bales of hay. It spun round and round and we all held our breath, thinking it was going to fall. I think Hugh and I – that's my brother – half hoped that it would! It belongs to Peter Kaufmann and is probably priceless, but we ghoulishly wanted to see all its innards fall out, little savages that we were.'
'And those two doors?' asked Simon, pointing to the wall at right angles to the studios.
'The left-hand door is just a small barn, where everyone stores their bits and pieces. There are probably things left there from fifty years ago. It tends to accumulate easels with broken legs that someone is always going to fix, and half-full tins of house paint, and bicycles with one wheel.'
'And the other one?'
'That's Gregor Baranowski's studio, in the old stables. It extends all along that side of the stableyard. He needs a lot of space.'
'I would be most interested to see –'
'I'm sorry,' said Frances abruptly, suddenly tired of his prying, 'but I'm afraid I can't take you in there. Gregor wouldn't like it at all.'
'What wouldn't Gregor like?' He had come up behind them from the garden. For a big man he moved quietly.
'You wouldn't like me showing people round your studio.'
'No indeed. Mr Frobisher, isn't it?' Gregor put his large, strong hand under the other man's elbow and began to guide him back towards the garden. Simon, as tall though not as broad in the shoulder, looked as though no one had ever dared to do that to him before, but he did not raise any audible objection.
* * *
Frances is sitting on an upturned orange box in Natasha's studio, watching her paint a still life. The still life was Frances's idea, and she has set it up. Together they have carried out the small fruitwood table from the kitchen – to squawked protests from Mum and Mabel – and arranged on it a white cloth embroidered with red chickens that Natasha bought in Italy before the war. Just off-centre, Frances has placed the green earthenware bowl she particularly loves. It has streaks and swirls of different greens, from a pale lime to a green that is almost black, and has reminded her, since she was very small, of the sea. It too came from Italy, and a small chip at the rim, from its long and busy life, shows the red earth of Umbria in the pottery beneath the glaze. She has piled up in the bowl (and allowed to tumble out of it) all the yellow fruits she can find – lemons, bananas, a grapefruit, and a bunch of very pale yellow-green grapes. Finally she has put a bunch of yellow ragwort, gathered from the hedge, in one of the plain glass kitchen tumblers, and stood it to the right and behind the bowl.
'Paint it crooked,' she suggests, 'from the corner.'
As she watches now, Natasha finishes laying out the underpainting and begins to mix more colours on her battered and paint-studded palette.
'You have a very good eye, doushenka,' says Natasha. 'It is a pity you will not paint.'
Frances smiles and hugs her knees. Natasha has tried very hard to make a painter of her, but she knows now, at fourteen, that she can never be good enough, and has abandoned it firmly. She does not want to settle for second-best. She will be famous in some other way, rather than hang on Natasha's coat-tails.
'It's going to be terrific, Natasha. I love the way you are handling the perspective – accurate but flattened out, if you know what I mean.'
'Yes. Artists began experimenting with perspective at the end of the last century – allowing you to see round the corners, you understand? Then Braque and Picasso took it further with analytical cubism. I like to use it some of the time, but I don't care for the extent of their fragmentation. If this turns out well, you can have it to hang in your room.'
'Can I really?' Frances is delighted. Natasha's canvases mostly have to be sold, for St Martins always seems to need money, however hard everyone tries. She will keep the picture always, if she is given it. It will remind her of this warm Saturday afternoon in autumn, with the leaves beginning to drift into the stableyard behind her, and the sound of Peter playing something exciting and crashing in his music room above their heads.
'I love the greens and yellows together, sort of fresh and spicy, and the bits of red embroidery adding little bits of warmth.'
'Perhaps you should think of a career in design –'
But Frances simply smiles again at Natasha's back, in its familiar paint-stained smock.
There is a clatter of boys' clumsy feet on the stone slabs and Hugh and Gregor darken the doorway.
'Light!' says Natasha imperiously, and they slink round the wall to Frances.
'We were sent to tell you it's teatime,' says Hugh. 'Iced buns from the village.'
'Some things, Hugh, are even more important than iced buns. The bloom on the grapes – that will be gone by tomorrow. I must finish them today. Sometimes, you have to seize the moment, or you lose it for ever.'
* * *
'Granny?' Chrissie tugged at Frances's sleeve.
'Hello, darling. Hello, Samira – are you enjoying the party?'
'Yes, thank you very much, Mrs Kilworth,' said Samira with her usual good manners. 'Thank you for inviting me.' She looked a bit tense, though, as though bursting to say something.
'Granny, you've got to help us!' Chrissie pleaded dramatically.
'What's the matter, have you broken something?' Frances smiled at them, both so earnest – Chrissie, fair, dishevelled, dungareed, and Samira, beautifully turned out, with white ankle socks that positively shone against her warm brown legs.
'Samira desperately wants one of Jeannie's puppies. I'm going to have one, and we could train them together, and take them for walks –'
'I'm sure she can have one. Sally's promised one to Miss Bagshaw. She says she'll feel safer with a dog, since that time the motorbike riders vandalised the bus shelter just along the road from her. But I don't think any of the others have homes yet.' (Miss Bagshaw, Frances recalled, had specified a lady dog.)
'My mother will not let me,' Samira burst out, love and desire overcoming her habitual politeness. 'Oh, Mrs Kilworth, he is so beautiful!'
'Please would you help, Granny? He knows her already. Tell Mrs Patel that Samira's got to have him. '
'I certainly wouldn't say that, Chrissie. But I will try. I'll talk to her some time this afternoon. I'm sure Samira would look after a puppy very well.' And, she thought privately, a puppy is just what that dear girl needs, to bring her out of herself a bit. She needs a companion, she can't always be up here with Chrissie. And she needs something she can get into a mess with.
'I promise,' she said firmly. 'I'll do everything I can.'
* * *
Lisa had dozed fitfully and woken again, thinking that she detected some movement from the baby. She lay now, watching the motes of dust swirling in the sunlight that poured in through the window and listening to the sound of voices in the garden. Children were rushing about making that noise you heard on a beach, a sort of sustained happy scream. Last night Sally and
Irina had had an argument about what to do with the younger children at the garden party. Irina wanted to shut them all away in a crèche set up in the old dairy, with a rota of volunteers to look after them. She was nervous of over-excited children, and worried about the damage they might do to themselves and the garden. Sally had been adamant that the party was as much for them as for the adults, and that they should be allowed to run about as they pleased. The rough grass on the lower ground below the ha-ha would come to no harm, she pointed out. From the sounds floating through the window, it seemed Sally had won.
Lisa remembered her mother talking about some of the scrapes she and Hugh had got into as children, and smiled. Perhaps Irina had a point. Though she herself would make sure that her own children had plenty of freedom and fresh air. She had always looked forward to the summer holidays of her childhood when Frances had packed them into the car and brought them down to St Martins. They had gone berserk, wild with stored up energy after a winter of confinement at the house in Reading, with its two medium-sized bedrooms and a single room like a cubby-hole, where she and Tony had for many years been squashed into bunk beds. When Anya left home for university, Tony had joined Nicholas in the larger room – previously divided with a curtain down the middle – and Lisa, at nine, had the tiny room to herself until Katya was born. She swore to Paul she would never put their children through the claustrophobia and lack of privacy she had endured.
'It's a wonder you are all still speaking to each other,' he had laughed. As an only child, much cosseted by elderly parents, he had no real understanding of what she was talking about.
Listening to the sound of the children, Lisa fantasised about coming to live at St Martins. Whenever she arrived, even now – grown-up and with a pleasant terraced house of her own – she felt herself relaxing into a state of contentment. Lucky Nick and Sally! If only Paul could get a job nearby – or if he would consider driving to Worcester every day . . . No, that wouldn't be fair to him.
She was half dozing again when there was a hesitant tap on the door.
'Yes?' she murmured sleepily.
Tony put his head round the door, followed, at ankle level, by Seurat. 'How are you doing?'
'OK,' said Lisa, heaving herself up, and surprisingly glad to see him.
'I thought you might like something to eat.' Tony disappeared into the hall again, then reappeared with a tray. 'I've brought a bit of everything I thought you'd enjoy. No cold sausages, I know you can't stand those. These dolmades Spiro made are great. And the honey cake is brilliant.'
He put the tray down on the bedside table and scooped Seurat out of the door. 'Oh, no you don't, my lad. You've had your share already.' He closed the door firmly on the cat and plumped up Lisa's pillows behind her head with more kindness than skill.
Looking at the food as he balanced the tray on her almost vanished lap, Lisa felt suddenly greedy. 'Do you know,' she said, 'I'm starving!'
'Good. I'll stay and talk to you while you eat.' He perched beside her on the bed.
'How's the painting going? Have you sold anything recently?' Lisa asked, picking up some leaves from one of Sally's multi-coloured salads and nibbling.
Tony looked glum.
'Only one, about six weeks ago. If I didn't have that one morning's teaching a week at the art college, I'd be starving to death.'
'Thank heavens for teaching! Paul and Anya make their living at it. It keeps you off the streets, and without Mum's part-time lecturing we would all have been in dire straits years ago.'
'I don't think Anya really does make a living at it, you know. Grandad has been helping her out. Now he's had this stroke, I'm not sure what will happen. Nick has power of attorney.'
'He wouldn't hold back the money, would he, if Grandad wanted her to have it?'
'Oh no, but Nick's a great believer in self-reliance. He might put the pressure on her a bit, to get a viable job. I've had the odd lecture from him myself.'
'Has Grandad . . .?' asked Lisa delicately.
'No. He did offer. But like Mum I'm a bit pig-headed, I suppose. I said I was determined to make my own way. He was always there as a back-up, of course.' He grinned, and picked bits out of Lisa's cheese. 'Mum's giving up her lectureship at the poly – at the end of this term. Katya told me in the car, coming down yesterday. Did you know?'
'No!' Lisa stopped eating and stared at him. 'I never thought she'd do that. I suppose Dad must be making a lot more money now, with that sitcom thing.'
'You know Dad. Easy come, easy go. I'll bet he's spent most of it already. Savile Row suits, lunch at the Savoy Grill, a few crates of expensive bottles.'
'I thought Mum liked to have some money of her own anyway, even when Dad is doing all right. It gives her some independence.'
'Lisa, you are an idiot,' Tony said tolerantly. 'She's spent every penny she earned on all of us. She's been keeping us off the breadline for years. You didn't really think she's ever saved anything up for herself, did you?'
'I don't know. I suppose I never really thought about it. She always seemed to have enough to see us all through college or university, and get us started. What about Katya, though? She's got another five years at school. And university afterwards – she's bound to want to go, whatever she says now. She's brighter than all the rest of us put together. That's been her big problem at school.'
'Mmm.' Tony chewed on a stick of celery. 'You're right. I don't know what Mum's planning to do about Katya. Someone needs to do something. She's pretty miserable at the moment, poor thing. I don't know about you, but I've been feeling a bit guilty lately.'
'Guilty?'
'Yeah.' He began to plait three spring onions together. 'When you and I both cleared out four years ago, I never thought about Katya being left behind. The last one of us. And you remember . . . There were always tensions. Dad and his tarty women . . .'
'She'd be better away from that awful school. I wasn't ever happy there, but at least I was boringly inconspicuous.'
'It's got a lot worse since we were there. It's really tough – bullying, drugs, you name it.'
'Poor Katya. She'd be happier in a nice quiet, non-confrontational school. Paul might have some ideas.'
'Yeah.' Tony looked at her sideways. 'But Mum – what do you make of her? Mid-life crisis? Change of life?'
'I wouldn't know,' said Lisa primly. 'Maybe she's had enough, now most of us have left home.' She couldn't imagine herself ever reaching such a state, but Mum was middle-aged – over fifty. Confidently Lisa knew that she would manage her own life better. 'You see her more often than I do, living in London and scrounging meals the way you do.'
'Well, why not? I've only mastered beans on toast and scrambled eggs, though Bill does an acceptable omelette. We eat out sometimes, but mostly we can't afford it. Our own cooking gets pretty boring.' Absent-mindedly he began to nibble one of the dolmades, dribbling bits of filling on Lisa's duvet cover. 'Mum does seem to have been in a funny mood lately. Restless and a bit short tempered, which isn't like her, is it? You know how she always used to be able to drown herself in a book, even when we were all crashing around, fighting and roaring. She can't even seem to read now. Just keeps jumping up and fiddling about. There's a kind of atmosphere about the house. It's worse when Dad's there, of course, especially when he brings his arty-farty friends.'
Tony, who knew he had genuine talent, even if he lacked the drive to make the most of it, had long been contemptuous of most of his father's theatrical crowd. 'I'm not surprised Katya's being so difficult lately. It must be awful, being the only one, with the rest of us gone.'
He had finished art college – commuting to London daily – a few weeks before Lisa had married. They had moved out of the mean little house in Reading in the same month. Now Lisa had a house bigger than the one she had grown up in, and his own big airy studio flat, though having to be shared with the amiable Bill, gave him a great sense of freedom. He felt nothing but pity for Katya. And for Mum, of course.
'I haven't ha
d a chance to speak to Alice yet,' said Lisa. 'Are you two serious about each other?'
'I'm serious,' said Tony, gloomy again. 'She thinks I'm a bit wet because I can't get my act together. We both had two years off after A Levels, but she went round the world while all I did was bum around doing part-time jobs in cafés and night-clubs. Now, four years out of art school and I haven't had a single one-man exhibition yet.'
'She's terribly successful, isn't she?'
'Yeah. She's got this creative artist fellowship, and she's had annual exhibitions for the last five years, ever since she left college. One of the posh Sunday supplements even did an article about her.'
'She's older than you are.'
'Only a year.'
'And she's got commercial sense. That doesn't mean she's the better artist.'
'Maybe not.' Tony was honest about this. 'But she's always going to be more successful than I am.'
'She certainly looks terrific. She makes me feel like a barrage balloon.'
'That's part of the trouble. All these millionaires keep falling for her. Right now she's in a huddle with that awful new man in the village – Simon Frobisher. I might as well not exist.'
'Poor old Tony.' Lisa had first been through a scene like this with Tony when he was fifteen, but the elegant, detached pose he had acquired at art college had meant that in recent years it was usually the girls who were in pursuit of him. This time he sounded as though he was in a bad state about this Alice. Privately, Lisa thought she looked a hard-faced woman.
She licked the honey off her fingers. Spiro's Greek cake was delicious, but something was troubling her insides. Perhaps she shouldn't have wolfed all that food down quite so fast. A sharp pain rose in her back, spread round her stomach like gripping hands and then subsided.
'Maybe you shouldn't look at her quite so much like Harry asking to be taken for a walk?' she suggested. 'Play a little hard to get. It's always worked in the past.'