gimmick.’
‘Just pictures of me?’
‘It’ll be a sell-out. I’ll do a fantastic poster. ROSAMUND, and then in small letters at the bottom, THIRTY PORTRAITS BY ASH—THE VANGUARD GALLERY.’
Still, after so many years, he could hardly believe that he really was the kind of successful painter who could get away with an idea like this: little Johnny Ash from Romford (East End indeed!) Not that he’d found success right away. Following Art School, there’d been a long, at twenty-one an endless, period of rejection and disappointment. Every artist can do with a lucky break, and Johnny Ash had eventually stumbled over one; but he still woke up in the night, sweating, because he had dreamed of the time before, dreamed that he had never been recognized and never would be. The very thought of it urged him to go and get his easel and to start, without further preliminary work, on Rosamund No. 21. His model embarked on ‘Honoria Temple’s’ final x, y, and z.
In his studio next door, Ben Elliston sat sunk in hangover and guilt. He was a big, big-bearded man, but his paintings were surprisingly small and detailed. He had sprung to eminence in his twenties when there had been a vogue for his exquisite icon-like works; now, when he was thirty-seven, the pendulum of fortune or fashion had swung the other way and he found himself ignored, forgotten, and geographically placed so that he could neither ignore nor forget the close proximity of a younger man who, it seemed, couldn’t put a foot or a brush wrong. To make matters worse, Johnny had Rosamund, so kind and beautiful, whereas Big Ben (how bored he was with that old joke!) had no one. In certain ways he had to admit that having no one was an advantage, but there were times when he hankered after a steady girlfriend, and thought wistfully of Rosamund or lustfully of his other neighbour, Lisa Mac-Donnell.
Lisa was certainly a very attractive woman: Australian, in her early thirties, with dark auburn hair which tended to fall over her left eye unless, when working, she fixed it back with an elastic band. She also had the most remarkable greenish eyes: opal eyes. But on the only occasion Ben had grown overtly amorous, at last year’s Christmas party, Lisa had not been encouraging; in fact she’d recounted to him the grisly story of her marriage and the wreck of it. Even drunk, he could appreciate that the experience had made her cautious of emotional entanglements; she readily admitted that the caution was rather neurotic, but then Lisa was nothing if not honest. As a result, she had bruised an ego or two at Crestcote. Madame Vicky Lind declined to speak to her following Lisa’s contention, a fair one, that she ‘humanized’ her animals and thus demeaned them. She had also crossed swords with the resident musical genius, sharing the general opinion that three courting cats on a wall made better music than Edvard Kusnik. Since Edvard was trying to lure her into his bed, the criticism was doubly irritating.
It was because of such frank opinions that Ben had decided to search her out, hoping he had the courage to confess his guilt and seek advice. He found her in the coach-house/studio, already watched by Sam Langdale, the seven-year-old. She had started work on the Lavenham Memorial, a commission which had earned her much publicity. It was the most ambitious project she had ever undertaken, involving two great blocks of marble, one white, one black. As ever, she refused to discuss it with anyone, not even her good friend Ben. As ever, she kept all her drawings and maquettes well hidden. Lisa MacDonnell was a very private artist.
Watching her, Ben could tell that quite soon the door of the studio would be closed and bolted. When she began the detailed work, complete concentration demanded complete seclusion. One mistake might mean starting again from scratch: valuable time wasted, and a new beginning on a new and expensive block of stone. His confession would have to wait.
Seven-year-old Sam had come to the coach-house expecting magic: faces emerging from the rock, hands, feet; but it would be a long time, Lisa had told him, before she reached that stage. In fact she was by nature as impatient as the small boy, but had learned over the years how fatal it could prove. Impatience had driven her from a rich and comfortable home in Melbourne long before she was emotionally ready to leave, and sent her winging to London: Earls Court naturally; impatience had thus landed her in a succession of shared flats and squats, and a succession of equally disgusting jobs. She was too proud to send home for money. She had, through thick and thin, found ways to study her difficult art, and refused to give it up even when impatience finally drove her into that impossible marriage: no children, thank God.
She would doubtless have fled back to Melbourne, defeated, had her first two exhibits not earned her grudging praise from a couple of powerful critics. The Sunday Times printed a small story about her, and luckily accompanied it with a photograph; this was seen by a fashionable photographer who was unable to resist her looks, and who did two pages featuring the sculptress and her work for one of the glossiest of glossy magazines. Her first commission resulted.
Lisa could tell from the expression on Ben Elliston’s bearded face that he was hoping for a heart-to-heart, but this was one occasion when she was determined to evade him. She knew from past experience that his personal problems, and not least his protestations of love, could occupy an entire morning. She had no objections to being an attractive woman—there were times when it was fun, and times when it had practical advantages, but work was work and it came top of her priorities; she gave the big man a glassy, abstracted look and turned to her two blocks of marble; in her mind’s eye the finished piece was absolutely clear, the contrast of gleaming black and white, something new to her and also new, she was sure of it, to present-day sculpture.
So Ben’s problem, whatever it was, would have to wait; and she was praying that her last refusal of Edvard’s Kusnik’s ardent advances (no love there, just sex) had perhaps convinced him that she’d no intention of going to bed with him, in spite of the fact that she found him sexy. This contradiction he refused to accept: ‘Typical English crap!’: which gave her the chance to reply tartly, ‘I’m not English, I’m Australian.’ He had thrown up his hands in exasperation; for a Russian there was clearly no difference.
However, she smiled at the disappointed little boy and said, ‘Sorry, Sam, too early. Another five, six weeks, and there might be something to see.’
He sighed deeply. Weekends bored him, he really preferred being at school. Always polite, he said a punctilious Thank You and Goodbye, smiled shyly at Ben Elliston and trailed away to see what might be going on in his mother’s kitchen. Sarah Langdale was plump and tawnily, lazily attractive; on the far side of thirty, she didn’t mind the plumpness, better than being scraggy. Sam found her at the kitchen table, sharing elevenses with Mrs Merritt, the live-in housekeeper, and Kevin Short, the live-in gardener-cum-odd-job-man. Mrs Merritt was in her fifties and had worked at Crestcote all her life, having been handed on to Sarah, with the house and the money, by her Aunt Drummond-Fitch who had merely remarked vaguely, ‘You won’t be able to get on without her.’ Sarah had found this to be an understatement; in many ways Mrs Merritt (her name was Jane but nobody used it) was Crestcote: wonderfully efficient and, despite her long, severe face and neat grey bun, a source of constant laughter, much of it bawdy.
It was Mrs Merritt who commanded Crestcote’s platoon of helps and cleaning ladies, recruited from surrounding villages and lifted to and fro in a Volkswagen minibus driven by Kevin: with care, because he worshipped Sarah and wanted her chattering chars to survive in one piece. Otherwise he was a bit of tearaway, a local boy who had fled to Bristol when his mother died, had fallen in with the worst that city had to offer, and had been rescued from prison and a career in crime by Sarah’s intervention. Not for nothing was she born a Drummond-Fitch, not for nothing was she Lady of the Manor of Crestcote.
Kevin, now nineteen, wore his black hair cut short, flue-brush style; he had a pleasant, as yet unformed face, out of which stared quick brown eyes, alive with intelligence; these belied his half-open mouth and country-bumpkin way of laughing, her-her-her.
Sam said, ‘Where’s Dad?’
‘Buying a horse, you know he is.’
‘Why does it take days?’
‘Because the horse is in Ireland.’
Mrs Merritt and Kevin glanced away; they both knew a thing or two about Oliver Langdale, were both fond of Sarah, and both imagined that she knew nothing.