Page 4 of The Christmas Invitation
River always went for the Monk’s Delight vegetarian option, then stole some of my shrimp. We were alike in that although lifelong abstainers from meat and poultry, we were not averse to the occasional bit of fish or seafood when away from the Farm.
‘Good idea,’ he agreed, and then added, ‘There’s a light twinkling on your phone. Perhaps there are messages with news of new portrait commissions?’
I glanced across at where the cradle of my cordless phone was indeed blinking a red eye. ‘I hope so. A commission for the New Year would be good. InJanuary,’ I clarified, for in River’s mind the New Year began the day after the Winter Solstice on 21 December. Sometimes I felt I was living with my feet in two entirely different worlds.
I suspected that at least half the phone messages would be from my ex-boyfriend, Rollo, deeply aggrieved by my lack of response to his latest catalogue of slights, affronts and occasional successes. He would have forgotten I’d had pneumoniaabout ten minutes after I’d told him, since over the six years since I’d ended our relationship he’d slowly become so self-obsessed I confidently expected him to implode one day with a loud pop.
‘I’ll go through all the messages in a bit and find out, but I’ll need to increase my prices for any future commissions if I want to keep this flat on without Fliss, and even then, it would be a struggle.’
‘You should move out of London now,’ River suggested, contemplating the air around my head with his clear blue eyes, as if evaluating something only he could see. ‘It’s not good for your aura to be here.’
‘I’m about as far out as I can get without actually leaving central London; I’m clinging to the edge of Greenwich by the skin of my teeth,’ I pointed out. ‘It’s handy, especially having the little lean-to at the back as my studio. But then, I do seem to be increasingly travelling to my sitters’ homes, so I suppose there’s no real reason for me to stay here any more.’
Without Fliss, it wouldn’t be the same anyway, for we’d been the last singletons in our circle of friends. It had been a bit of a shock when she had suddenly fallen in love and married in haste … though she definitely wouldn’t repent at leisure, because Calum was such a nice man that he almost deserved her.
The tiny sitting room was already warming up and I removed my coat and went through to the kitchen to put the kettle on and fetch the takeaway menu. River would want to consider all the options before plumping for the dish he always had. It was a ritual. He liked rituals.
While I was spooning coffee into the cafetiere I could hear voices from the sitting room and assumed he’d turned the TV on, another novelty, since they didn’t have one at the Farm(though they did have a laptop in the craft centre office now, and I suspected both he and Oshan occasionally watched programmes and films on that). But then, to my surprise, River called, in his beautifully posh voice, ‘Meg, there’s a visitor for you!’
I couldn’t think who would be visiting me at this hour on a Sunday evening, other than the landlord, who seemed to operate only within vampire hours, but it wasn’t him. The room seemed to be filled by a large, elderly lady who was wearing a voluminous heather-purple tweed cape. She had a mop of iron-grey curls streaked with silver, a bold Roman nose and dark, deeply intelligent eyes that appeared to sum me up at a glance: tall, too thin, pale as a wraith – in fact, colourless except for my hair, which one of the commune had rendered a verdant and interesting shade of deep green, using a natural vegetable dye. River had said I looked like a water sprite, but Maj had thought pink would have given my pale skin more of a rosy glow and, in retrospect, I thought she was probably right.
My visitor smiled, revealing a lot of strong teeth, and announced, like a particularly pessimistic oracle, ‘Maim-doom!’
The folds of the tweed cape billowed as she extricated a square, slightly gnarled hand adorned by a huge and ancient-looking carved carnelian seal ring and shook mine vigorously.
‘You must be Meg Harkness.’
Something about that deep, upper-class and resonant voice, together with the smile, struck me as familiar … and then it clicked.
‘You’re Professor Clara Mayhem Doome!’ I exclaimed. ‘I watched that TV series you did,Writings in the Sand.’
‘We pronounce our name Maim-Doom, and that programme title was ridiculous! They would call it that, eventhough the subject matter was the clay tablets we foundinthe sand.’
River had been looking on with interest. ‘Ah, the famous epigrapher,’ he said delightedly. ‘I have your book of essays,The Pre-Dawn of Written History.’
He never ceased to amaze me. Put him in a room with an expert in any field, no matter how obscure, and he’d always have something to say.
‘Oh?’ My visitor raised her dark, straight eyebrows. ‘You need the new, revised edition, because I’ve had to change course regarding one or two matters, after recently piecing together several fragments of an Assyrian clay tablet. You’d be surprised at the reluctance of museums and collectors to loan me their exhibits, even if I promise to work on them at the British Museum. But my days of constantly jetting round the globe are long gone and one can only do so much via computer graphics.’
‘How fascinating! I must get the revised book,’ said River.
‘I wish you would buy it and then maybe my royalties would go into two figures!’ She gave a deep chuckle.
I was fairly sure she hadn’t paid this visit to discuss ancient inscriptions with River, happy though he would be to oblige. I could only think of one other reason …
‘Do sit down,’ I suggested, ‘and tell us why you’re here.’
‘Oh, yes. Sorry to drop in on you unannounced like this,’ she said, sinking into the unexpectedly smothering embrace of the sagging velvet sofa and then fighting her way upright into a sitting position. ‘I got your email address and phone number from the Royal Society of Portrait Painters some time ago, but had no reply to my enquiries. The Royal Society just said you’d get into contact with me in due course and then babbled on about standard contracts and all that guff. So,being in London, I thought I might as well drop by and see if you were here. Obviously, it’s about a portrait commission. Pookie Longridge gave me your address.’
‘Would that be … Professor Priscilla Longridge?’ I ventured.
‘That’s her.’ She nodded and her springy dark grey and silver curls bounced vigorously, as did her earrings, which were in the form of tiny, brightly painted wooden parakeets in gilded cages. They swung mesmerizingly on their minute perches and I found it hard to drag my eyes away.
‘I knew when I saw her portrait – lizard personified, my dear! – that you were the artist forme.’
‘But I got the feeling that she didn’t like her portrait,’ I confessed, surprised.
‘Of course she didn’t, because it was a speaking likeness. You missed out only the forked tongue,’ she said. ‘But of course, it’s such a brilliant portrait that everyone raves about it, so she can’t say so! And it’s the kind of portraitIwant – a speaking likeness, warts and all.’
