London Art Chase

by Natalie Grant

  Maddie shuddered. To her, being alone on the streets of London sounded the opposite of fun . . . terrifying, even.

  The double-decker bus pulled up the curb, every bit as red as the telephone booths.

  “To the roof!” Lulu said, leading everyone upstairs.

  It was the strangest sensation, climbing stairs on a bus and coming out on top. Maddie felt the slightest bit dizzy as they made their way to some open seats near the front. Even though she was sitting on the inside aisle, she could see down to the street. Looking down on the tops of all the cars made for an odd perspective. As the bus engine roared to life and they started moving, the buildings began zooming past. Up here, she felt like she was on a cloud ship, sailing through a foreign landscape, with the buildings rising above her head and extending down, down, down. Now the gargoyles and stone faces seemed close enough to reach out and touch. All around her, people snapped photos, pointing this way and that, making her feel she should look here and there and everywhere. Miss Julia snapped photos too, but Maddie was sure most of the picture would be taken up with her wild, red hair, rather than whatever she was trying to photograph.

  Mia pointed out a pigeon who had landed on the railing. “Look, he’s along for the ride!”

  Just then, one of Lulu’s favorite songs started playing over the speakers. She jumped up and started to dance and sing along.

  “Lulu,” Mia said, glancing back at the rest of the bus. “I don’t think . . .”

  Across the top level of the bus, everyone turned to watch and clap along with the music. Lulu wasn’t going to stop now with so many people egging her on. As she always did when she had a captive crowd, Lulu turned on her extra-special charm. She pranced up and down the aisle, singing specifically to one group and then to another.

  “Aren’t you going to stop her?” Mia said.

  Miss Julia snapped a photo. “She’s not bothering anyone.”

  “She’s . . .” Mia said, and then she looked over at Maddie and shrugged.

  The song rose to a crescendo, and Lulu’s voice rose along with it all the way to the end. Then she dropped into a low curtsey and started blowing kisses at everyone.

  “Tips, tips?” she called.

  “And that’s the end of that,” Miss Julia said, jumping up and sweeping Lulu back to their seats.

  “What?” Lulu asked. “What did I do?”

  “You can’t ask random people on the bus for tips, Lulu,” Mia said, eyebrows raised in what she probably hoped was an I’m serious face.

  Even so, Maddie could see a smile threatening to break through. Lulu got away with things by leaping into them so quickly that no one had time to stop her. And who knew? If Miss Julia hadn’t pulled her back to her seat, someone might even have given her a tip. That was just the way things went with Lulu—all part of the fun of having her for a little sister.

  Lulu climbed onto her seat, scooting close to Miss Julia. “How much longer?”

  “We’re almost there,” Miss Julia answered. “I think we’re just a few blocks away.”

  “What are you drawing, Maddie?” Lulu asked.

  Maddie turned her sketchbook so Lulu could see. She’d drawn her little sister, arms stretched up to the London sky, her mouth open as she sang, and the other bus passengers clapping along.

  “Can I have that one?” Lulu asked.

  “I don’t think she should pull out pictures from her sketchbook. Her drawings should all be together—a record of our trip,” Mia said.

  “Like a travelogue,” Miss Julia said.

  “I want one,” Lulu said, and then grinned at Mia. “A sketchbook, I mean, not the picture.”

  “You want to draw?” Miss Julia asked.

  Lulu bit her lip. “Well, no. I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “If you want a sketchbook, we might be able to find you one at the National Gallery. But maybe your travelogue could be different than Maddie’s. Yours could have photos with captions, for instance.”

  “Oh, yes, let’s do that!” Lulu said.

  “There’s an app I’ve been thinking about using,” Miss Julia said. “We could use it on my phone to take pictures and keep some notes about our trip.”

  For the next few minutes, Lulu and Miss Julia were busy with her phone, installing and trying out the app.

  Mia scooted over close to Maddie to look at her drawing again. “I like the way you sketched the faces—loose, but you can still see their expressions. Well, actually, it’s like you can see what they’re feeling, if you know what I mean.”

  “Really?” Maddie asked, warmth spreading through her despite the wind. “That’s exactly what I was going for.”

  “Do you think there will be any paintings that we like at the National Gallery? Won’t all of them be old?”

  “I love seeing old paintings. I’d like to try to draw some of them.”

  “But sometimes old paintings are weird, like in colors I wouldn’t choose, or . . . well, sometimes, they’re naked people.”

  “True,” Maddie said. “I’m not sure why artists were always painting naked people.”

  Miss Julia looked up from her phone. “Artists have always been fascinated with the human form. It wasn’t meant to be about the nakedness. They were trying to capture what the human form truly looked like, on canvas.”

  “Well, I prefer seeing what they truly look like with clothes on,” Mia said. “Just sayin.’ ”

  At this, Miss Julia burst out laughing. “You girls are the best.”

  The bus came to a stop, and over the speaker, the driver announced, “The National Gallery.”

  “This is our stop,” Miss Julia said, herding Maddie and her sisters toward the stairs.

  “Bye!” “Have a fun trip!” “Nice singing!” the other passengers called.

  Once they were off the bus, Miss Julia snapped a photo of the waving passengers for her new travelogue.

  “We’re back at Trafalgar Square!” Mia said.

  “Race you to the lions!” Lulu said, and took off running.

  NINE

  Maddie tried to be patient while Lulu insisted on Miss Julia taking more pictures of the girls riding lions, this time for the travelogue. Then Mia and Lulu tossed coins into the fountain and made wishes.

  “Why don’t you make a wish?” Mia asked.

  Maddie shifted from foot to foot. “Can’t we please go into the gallery now? Please??”

  “I think it’s time, ladies,” Miss Julia said. “Let’s see what kinds of adventures the National Gallery has to offer.”

  “Last one there’s a rotten egg!” Lulu shouted.

  Miss Julia caught her mid-step. “Lulu, we need to talk about your running off. I know you’re excited, but we’re in a strange city and we’re halfway around the world from home. In fact, even if we were at home, it would be important for us to all stay together.”

  “But if we’re all racing, we’ll be together,” Lulu said. “Come on, please, please, please, can’t we just race to the steps?”

  “She can’t outrun me,” Mia said.

  “Can too!”

  “Can not!”

  “Wanna bet?”

  “Girls!” Miss Julia said. “All right. I’ll count you off and you can race to the steps, but then you have to stop and we’ll all go together. And no plowing into tourists, okay?”

  “Okay!” Mia said. “Maddie, are you going to race too?”

  Maddie looked down at her bag with sketchbook and pencils—not exactly convenient for racing. “Not this time.”

  “Okay, girls,” Miss Julia said. “Ready, set, go!”

  Mia and Lulu stayed neck and neck all the way across the square, but then at the last minute, Mia fell a few steps behind. Maddie was pretty sure she’d done it on purpose—sometimes Mia did the just-right thing.

  “I won!” Lulu gasped, smiling ear to ear.

  “Thank you,” Maddie whispered to Mia.

  “Today’s going to be the best day ever,” Mia whispered back, and then shou
ted so the world could hear, “Today’s going to be the best day ever!”

  A few tourists turned and smiled at this. One even snapped their picture.

  “They’re going to put that in their travel album with the caption: Crazy girls!” Maddie said.

  The girls giggled their way up the huge stone steps. Inside, the National Gallery was just as impressive as it looked from the outside. They didn’t have to pay, but they did have to walk through a metal detector before stepping into the echoing lobby. Steps led from the wide-open lobby to the second floor.

  Miss Julia circled the information kiosk. “There’s a special concert later today . . . Oh, but it’s about the time we’ll need to leave for your mom’s concert.”

  “What kind of concert?” Lulu asked.

  “It’s a small orchestra—it seems they play every Friday and Saturday night.” She studied a museum map. “Looks like most of the paintings are upstairs. Oh, and there are a few audio tours. Would you girls like an audio guide while we explore the museum?”

  “Let me see!” Lulu said, pulling on the map to see the list.

  “Art Detectives,” Mia read over Lulu’s shoulder. “That one sounds fun.”

  “Whoa, really?” Lulu asked, and then she spotted the title for herself. “Yes! The Glimmer girls have a new case!”

  Maddie had to admit, it sounded fun to be an art detective, but what she really wanted was time to look at the art. Maybe the detective tour would help keep Lulu interested. If so, Maddie would have more time—hopefully enough to sketch too.

  Miss Julia rented audio tour headsets, and they all listened to the introduction. The audio tour told the story of two special agents uncovering clues about the meanings of some of the most mysterious paintings in the collection. Maddie, Mia, Lulu, and Miss Julia climbed the marble stairs and then followed the tour from painting to painting. While Lulu looked for clues in each painting, Maddie sketched what she saw. The questions in the tour were actually pretty interesting. Maddie liked thinking about why a painter might have painted a specific image, or what the painting might have meant to him or her.

  They wandered from room to room, each one painted a different color. Most of the rooms had about thirty paintings on the walls, even though the rooms were large enough to hold many more. Maddie liked the way each painting had its own space with lots of wall around it. She thought about what Dad had said at tea—that she and her sisters each had their own space in the Glimmer family. If she and her sisters were each paintings, Lulu would be bright colors—fireworks, maybe. Mia would be leading a charge, maybe not in a battle, but her painting would definitely be bold and brave. Maddie wasn’t sure what kind of painting she’d be. Maybe she’d be one of the calm landscapes with trees and lakes and mountains.

  “Come on, come on!” Lulu crowed, tugging on Maddie’s arm.

  Soon, they were in Room 43 with the Impressionist paintings. Maddie thought the Gallery should call the rooms by their colors. If they did, Room 43 would be the Purple Room, which sounded much nicer to Maddie. As she glanced around the walls, one of the paintings caught her eye.

  “Look at this one!” She moved in closer to study the image.

  “I like the colors—the blues, purples, and pinks,” Mia said, joining her. “And it has just the right amount of detail.”

  Maddie tilted her head one way and then the other. “I like the way the paint is so textured, with all the mixing in the clouds and the water and the rocks.”

  Miss Julia came over and stood next to Maddie, reading the plaque. “It’s called Moulin Huet Bay, Gurnsey. It’s by Renoir.”

  “I don’t think that’s the right name for this painting at all,” Maddie said. “It should be called something like . . .”

  “Beachside Blues!” Lulu suggested.

  “Maybe . . .” Maddie said. “But when you have the blues, you’re sad. In the painting, the people are playing in the ocean and having a lot of fun.”

  “So what would you call it?” Mia asked.

  “Something that describes the way the paint is done in all of those splotches, like, I don’t know . . . maybe ‘Sun-Splattered Afternoon.’ ”

  “I like that,” Mia said. “Like Starry Night. A painting’s name should describe what the painting is all about.”

  “Too bad Renoir isn’t here so you could suggest that to him,” Miss Julia said. “What else do you like about the painting, Maddie?”

  “Well . . .” Maddie started.

  “What’s that?” Lulu asked, loud enough to stop everyone in the room.

  “Hush, Lulu,” Mia said.

  “No really, what is that?” Lulu pointed to the oddest painting in the room. It was a face, or something like a face, but everything was in the wrong place.

  “Lulu, you’re being rude,” Mia said, pulling her away from the painting.

  “Stop pulling me.”

  “Well, stop shouting. You’re making everyone look.”

  It was true. Everyone in the room was looking. In fact, a security guard had started toward them, probably to tell Lulu it wasn’t appropriate to shout in a museum.

  “You know what, girls,” Miss Julia said, redirecting them toward the gallery door. “Maybe it’s time for lunch. There’s a dining room here at the Gallery that has excellent reviews.”

  “But no one has answered my question,” Lulu said. “Why is everything in the wrong place on that painting? Why would a painter do that?”

  “We can talk about it later,” Mia said.

  It had to be a pretty embarrassing moment to make Mia turn bright red, and her cheeks were flaming. Maddie would have been embarrassed too, if she weren’t so frustrated. She’d really wanted to look at “Sun-Splattered Afternoon” and to answer Miss Julia’s question. Sometimes in this family there wasn’t time to think. Every time she started to think about something for real, someone interrupted and they were off again in some new direction, leaving Maddie and her thoughts behind.

  Miss Julia and her sisters were nearly out of the gallery. Maddie had to jog to catch up, glancing back one more time at the painting. Her head filled with the words she would have liked to say to Miss Julia about what she liked about the paint and the figures and the artist’s style. Renoir’s style.

  “When we come back, can we still be art detectives?” Lulu asked.

  “We can,” Miss Julia said, leading the way downstairs to the dining room.

  Maddie had to admit her stomach was growling. Maybe she could bargain for another look at “Sun-Splattered Afternoon” after lunch.

  TEN

  In the National Gallery Restaurant, the waiter gave them their choice of seats, because the restaurant hadn’t filled up yet for lunch. They chose a table near the windows where they could look out over Trafalgar Square.

  After looking over the menu, they chose Shirley Temples with cherries on top to drink, a couple orders of fish and chips to share, and a salad, which they all promised to eat a few bites of—even Lulu.

  As Miss Julia took out an activity book for Lulu, Mia slid over close to Maddie.

  “What’s the matter?” Mia asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re so quiet. You’ve barely said three words since we sat down to eat.”

  Maddie shrugged. “I’m okay.”

  “Come on, Maddie. I know you. You’re obviously not okay. What’s wrong?”

  Maddie glanced over at Lulu, but her little sister and Miss Julia were too busy with the activity book to listen to their conversation.

  “I was in the middle of talking with Miss Julia about that painting—you know, ‘Sun-Splattered Afternoon,’ and then Lulu made all that commotion and we had to leave.”

  “Did you really like the paintings, though?” Mia asked. “I mean, most of them were . . . I don’t know . . . old, don’t you think?”

  “Well, yes, they’re old, but isn’t that what people like about them?”

  “Is that what you like about them?”

  “No. I
don’t know. It’s interesting that they’re old. I like thinking about the painters who lived a long time ago and painted them.”

  “Would you want to hang one of them in our house? I mean, if we could actually do that?”

  “Not most of them, no. But maybe ‘Sun-Splattered Afternoon.’ I liked the colors and the texture of the paint. If you looked at the painting one way, it was just a bunch of splotches, but together they made such a beautiful picture of the sand and the sea. You know how when you’re at the beach and there’s sand and salt water and wind, and the air feels thick, like it has texture . . . Do you know what I mean? That’s what the painting made me think of—the way the air feels at the beach. I wanted more time to look at it, maybe even time to sketch it.”

  “Lulu’s always interrupting, Maddie. You should be used to it by now,” Mia said.

  “It’s not her fault. I know I shouldn’t be upset. I’m fine.”

  “You’re not,” Mia said. “Just because Lulu is younger doesn’t mean she should always get her way.”

  “I don’t want to fight about it,” Maddie said.

  “You never want to fight,” Mia said. “But then you don’t stand up for yourself and you end up not getting to do the things you really want to do.”

  “But I don’t actually need to look at that painting,” Maddie said.

  “I know that, but you want to. We should go back and look at it.”

  Before Maddie could stop her, Mia turned to Miss Julia. “We’re looking at more paintings after lunch, right?”

  “We certainly have more paintings to see,” Miss Julia said.

  “And we haven’t finished solving the art detective mystery,” Lulu said.

  “Could we go back to Maddie’s painting?” Mia asked. “The one she was just looking at?”

  “Well, of course,” Miss Julia said.

  “Do we have to?” Lulu asked. “We’ve already seen that one. I want to solve the mystery!”

  “How about we finish solving the mystery, and then go see Maddie’s painting as our final treat of the day?” Miss Julia suggested.