For the Sake of Elena (Inspector Lynley, #5)(153)

“All right,” he said. “I know.” The room was too warm. He needed to take off his coat. He couldn’t summon the will to do so.

She said, “Where have you been? What have you done with the car?”

“It’s at the police station. They wouldn’t allow me to drive it home.”

“They…The police? What’s happened? What’s going on?”

“Nothing. Not any longer at least.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” She seemed to grow taller as some sort of realisation dawned upon her. Under the fine material of her suit, he could imagine her muscles ripple and coil. “You’ve been with her again. I can see it in your face. You promised me, Anthony. Anthony, you swore to me. You said it was over.”

“It is. Believe me.” He left the study and headed for the sitting room. He heard the sound of her high heels tapping along behind him.

“Then what…Have you been in an accident? Have you wrecked the car? Are you hurt in some way?”

Hurt, an accident. There could be no greater truth. He wanted to chuckle at the grim, gallows humour. She would always assume that he was victim, not avenger. She couldn’t conceive that he might take matters into his own hands for once. She couldn’t conceive that he might finally act at his own behest, without regard for opinion or condemnation any longer, because he believed it was right to do so. And why should she, really? When had he ever acted on his own before? Other than to walk out on Glyn and he’d paid for that decision for the last fifteen years.

“Anthony, answer me. What’s happened to you today?”

“I finished things. Finally.” He went into the sitting room.

“Anthony…”

He’d once thought the still lifes hanging above the sofa represented his very best work. Paint something that we can hang in the sitting room, darling. Use colours that match. He had done so. Apricots and poppies. One could tell what they were at a single glance. And isn’t that what true art is all about? An accurate duplication of reality?

He’d taken them off the wall and carted them proudly to show her on the first night of class. No matter that it was life drawing she was teaching, he wanted her to know from the very start that he was a cut above all the rest, raw talent just waiting for someone to mould him into the next Manet.

She’d surprised him from the first. Perched on a stool in the corner of her studio, she began by offering no instruction at all. Instead, she talked. She hooked her feet round the rungs of the stool, put her elbows on her thoroughly paint-spattered knees, cupped her face in her hands so that her hair spilled through her fingers, and talked. At her side stood an easel holding an unfinished canvas, depicting a man sheltering a tousle-haired little girl. She never pointed to it as she spoke. It was clear that she expected they would make the connection.

“You’re not here to learn how to put paint on canvas,” she had said to the group. There were six of them: three elderly women in smocks and brogues, the wife of an American serviceman with time on her hands, a twelve-year-old Greek girl whose father was spending a year as a guest lecturer at the University, and himself. He knew at once that he was the serious student among them. She seemed to be speaking directly to him.

“Any fool can make splatters and call it art,” she had said. “That’s not what this course is all about. You’re here to put part of yourself on canvas, to reveal who you are through your composition, your choice of colour, your sense of balance. The struggle is to know what’s been done before and to push beyond it. The job is to select an image but to paint a concept. I can give you techniques and methods, but whatever you produce ultimately has to come from your self if you want to call it art. And—” She smiled. It was an odd, bright smile, completely without self-conscious affectation. She couldn’t have known that it wrinkled her nose in an unattractive fashion. But if she did know, she probably didn’t care. Externals did not seem to have much importance to her. “—if you have no real self, or if you have no way of discovering it, or if for some reason you’re afraid to find out who and what it is, then you’ll still manage to create something on canvas with your paints. It’ll be pleasant to look at and a pleasure to you. But it’ll be technique. It won’t necessarily be art. The purpose—our purpose—is to communicate through a medium. But in order to do that, you must have something to say.”

Subtlety is the key, she had told them. A painting is a whisper. It isn’t a shout.

At the end of it all, he’d felt ashamed of his arrogance in having brought his watercolours to show her, so confident of their having merit. He resolved to slink unobtrusively out of the studio with them safely tucked, in their protective—and suitable—brown wrapping paper, under his arm. But he wasn’t quick enough. As the others filed out, she said, “I see you’ve brought some of your work to show me, Dr. Weaver,” and she came to his worktable and waited while he unwrapped them, feeling as he hadn’t felt in years, in a welter of nerves and completely outclassed.

She’d gazed on them thoughtfully. “Apricots and…?”

He felt his face grow hot. “Oriental poppies.”

“Ah,” she said. And then quite briskly, “Yes. Very nice.”

“Nice. But not art.”

She turned her gaze to him. It was friendly and frank. He found it disconcerting to be engaged so directly by a woman’s eyes. “Don’t misunderstand me, Dr. Weaver. These are lovely watercolours. And lovely watercolours have a place.”