Page 138 of The Christmas Invitation
It was some time before I surfaced again and the garden was empty, the daylight fading into darkness.
‘I think it’s finished, Tottie,’ I said.
She came over to look, stretching as she did so. ‘I look quite exotic, don’t I?’ she said, in a pleased voice.
‘You were the perfect sitter,’ I told her. Then she pottered off in the direction of the garden hall while I moved the easel and my painting gear back into the studio, and propped the portrait up to have a good look.
Three portraits, all – even if it sounded immodest of me to say so – very good. I’d produced my best work here and I knew who Ireally, reallywanted to paint next.
Lex.
I tracked him down to the kitchen, where he was with River and Teddy, making what River always calls God’sEyes: odds and ends of coloured wool woven on to a frame of sticks.
Pansy woke up and hurtled towards me as if she hadn’t seen me for a week, yipping round my ankles till I picked her up.
‘We’ll have to clear up soon,’ said River. ‘It’s not long till tea. Cheese scones, they just want warming.’
‘Lex,’ I said abruptly to him, ‘can I paintyounext?’
He looked up at me for a moment, seeming slightly surprised and then said, ‘Of course. When do you want to start?’
‘Tomorrow … though perhaps we could set the pose now? I seem to be on a roll after not being able to paint for so long and I just want to keep on going.’
‘All right, just let me wash this glue off my hands and I’ll come to the studio.’
When he joined me, I’d arranged the dais and chair the way I wanted them.
He stopped dead in front of the old easel on which I’d placed Tottie’s portrait and said admiringly, ‘Wow! You’re right, you really are on a roll. All three portraits arebrilliant.’
‘I think I’m doing my best work here and though I usually do paint quickly, here it’s been fantastically fast.’
‘Let’s hope mine doesn’t break your run of success, then,’ he said with a grin. ‘Where do you want me?’
I suppressed the unsettling image that popped into my head and said, ‘On the dais – if you could just go and sit down, I can fiddle with the lighting a bit.’
I’d already put a fresh canvas on my easel – I’d soon run out of large ones at this rate – and thought I’d draw straight on to it. I’d already done a small sketch of him anyway, without him knowing, as a gift for Clara …
He sat in the tall, carved chair looking as if it had been made for him. He’d taken off his green fleece in the kitchenand one arm, in a loose white shirtsleeve, lay along the padded armrest, his hand, with its long, mobile fingers, relaxed.
I studied the pose, angling the lights. ‘I like the white of that shirt you’re wearing and the way your throat rises from the open neck …’
‘I’m flattered.’
‘Topaint,’ I said pointedly. I rearranged the drapes behind him, but it needed something more.
‘I wonder if Clara would let me borrow the totem pole from her study. If it was turned so that the hawk head was just behind yours, I think that would give me what I need.’
‘The beak echoing the curve of my big hooter, you mean?’
‘It’snota big hooter, it’s a very fine aquiline nose, like Clara’s. But yes, one shape echoed by the other.’
‘I’ll go and ask her, if she’s in the study,’ he offered, and came back a few minutes later, carrying the heavy wooden post as if it weighed nothing. He arranged it as I directed until I was satisfied and had taken a few pictures of him sitting in front of it.
‘There,’ I said, ‘that will do for today.’
‘Then if you’re done, Clara and Henry want us to go into the drawing room before tea.’
I looked at him with sudden suspicion. ‘You’ve snitched about Sybil, haven’t you?’
