Unfinished Portrait (15 page)

‘You already mentioned the crew,' she said after a minute.

‘Apart from the crew. I've invited my daughter and her fiancé to join us.'

Lindsey froze. ‘Your
daughter
?'

‘I thought,' Dominic continued imperturbably, ‘it was a good opportunity for you and Olivia to meet, and for me to get to know Tristan. I've only seen him a couple of times.'

‘But you might have warned me! I—'

‘Why? Would you have brought anything different?'

‘No, but—'

‘Then what's the problem?'

Lindsey bit her lip. She'd not seen Dominic for over two weeks, and the prospect of having to share him appalled her.

‘Did you keep her in the dark too?' she demanded.

He said evenly, ‘She's aware you're coming.'

Lindsey looked at him quickly. ‘So she does . . . know about me?'

‘As much as she needs to.'

‘And what exactly does that mean?'

‘What it says.' He paused. ‘I hope you're not going to be this confrontational all weekend.'

There was a brief, pulsating silence. Then he put his hand over hers.

‘All right, I'm sorry,' he said quietly. ‘Perhaps it was unfair, but I thought you'd refuse to come if you knew Olivia would be there, and I . . . wanted to see you. I've missed you. Am I forgiven?'

She turned her head to look at him, and her heart, fool that it was, turned over. ‘I suppose so,' she said.

The play was good, the supper equally so. It was always a treat to come to Serendipity, Marsborough's newest and most exclusive restaurant. Part of its novelty was its layout, based on an Elizabethan knot garden, with a continuous waist-high partition snaking in and out around the tables, giving the illusion of privacy. Another was that counters displaying raw meat and fish stood either side of the room, and clients were invited to select their own, to be cooked on the grill behind the counter.

‘I meant to ask how your lunch went,' Rona said, as they embarked on their dessert. ‘Was Nathan pleased to get his canvas back?'

‘Hadn't even missed it. I can't say I'm surprised; he hardly knew what he was doing that weekend. He's far more interested in this painting everyone's talking about – an unknown Castillo, by all accounts. It's being auctioned at Meredith's next month.'

Rona cracked the sugar on her crème brûlée. ‘How do you mean, unknown?'

‘No previous record of it. It's of a lady at the Spanish court, Doña Inez de los something or other, who was apparently the artist's mistress. He was court painter to the King of Spain in the early seventeenth century. It's the old story – it had been in someone's attic for years and no one had a clue what it was.'

‘No provenance, then?'

‘The term is “uncertain”. In other words, it was probably looted by the Nazis during the war, and since no one's been able to establish a claim, the seller will get the lolly.'

‘We should have looked more closely when we were clearing the studio!' Rona said. ‘How was Nathan in himself, though? Did he mention Chloë?'

‘No, but I felt I had to, so as soon as we sat down, I said I was sorry to hear about her, he nodded, and that was that. But later he asked after you, and when I said you were doing a bio of Elspeth Wilding, he was obviously interested. So I added that you'd like a word with him sometime, since Chloë was her friend.'

‘And was he agreeable?'

‘God knows. He started talking about something else, as though I'd never mentioned her.'

‘Blast! I hope that doesn't mean he won't see me.'

‘He'll probably be OK. You're not ready for him yet anyway, are you?'

‘Not really, but I'm finding it increasingly hard to stick to my resolution to work chronologically. There are so many question marks about Elspeth's relationships with Chloë and with her family, not to mention, of course, where she's hiding.'

‘So Prue Granger was right; the detective in you is coming to the fore.'

Rona grimaced. ‘I was determined not to let it, but it's a losing battle. A compromise might be to see the family and let them talk freely about her, without trying to concentrate on her childhood. That way, I might get a more balanced picture of her as she is now.'

Max said musingly, ‘You know, I never thought of it before, but that phrase “a more balanced picture” brings it home. Writing a biography is much the same as painting a portrait, isn't it? We both work to build up layer after layer, until we have the complete person.'

‘I suppose we do, but you're more likely to achieve it than I am.'

Their coffee arrived, and Rona leant back in her chair. ‘So, have you enjoyed your birthday?'

‘Very much. Lunch with an old friend, great presents from the family, and to crown it all, an evening at the theatre, followed by a cordon bleu meal!'

‘There's more to come,' she reminded him, ‘from Pops and Catherine.'

‘I was rather hoping for more tonight!' Max said with a grin.

The rhythmic rocking of the boat, now at anchor, and the gentle slap of water should have been conducive to sleep, but Lindsey's brain was too busy analysing the events of the day. Dominic had told her, on the drive down, that he and his ex had finally managed to persuade Olivia, engagement notwithstanding, to stay on to take her degree. Though he'd not specifically said so, Lindsey gathered this weekend was by way of a reward.

What, she wondered now, was his verdict on the meeting between daughter and mistress? It had been awkward, there was no denying, not helped by Lindsey overhearing Olivia's reply to a sotto voce query from her fiancé: ‘One of Dad's girlfriends.'

God, was that all she was? Was that how he'd described her to his daughter? When she'd first met him, Lindsey recalled, she'd been warned on all sides that he was a womanizer; several names had been bandied about, including Miranda Barrington-Selby, daughter of the Earl of Roxford. Was she herself just the latest in an ongoing line?

Beside her, Dominic slept, soundly and silently. She turned restlessly on to her side, staring into the luminous dark. And what of Olivia herself? She was pretty, certainly, her long hair carelessly caught up with a comb, her eyes clear grey and challenging. Did she resent ‘Dad's girlfriends' on behalf of her mother? Or was she, as she somehow coolly implied, simply not interested?

The young man seemed pleasant enough, albeit, taking his cue from Olivia, slightly guarded towards herself. His main aim seemed to be to ingratiate himself with Dominic. It was clear the couple were very much in love, which, for all her reservations, Lindsey found touching.

Well, they had two days ahead of them in which to come to terms with one another. She could only hope harmony would prevail until they could all – surely thankfully – return to their respective homes.

Tom and Catherine's birthday gift was two bottles of vintage port. ‘We were just too late for the harvest,' Catherine said, ‘but we had a wonderful day visiting the Douro vineyards, with lunch up there, and, of course, a tasting.'

‘I'll make sure you're both present when I open a bottle,' Max promised.

They looked bronzed and well after their holiday, and Rona's anxiety about her father eased.

Later, when the men were talking, Catherine said to Rona, ‘I phoned my friend in Buckford about Miss Burbage, and she is still alive, though she's moved to a retirement home. I have the number, if you'd like to contact her.'

‘That's great, Catherine. Thanks.'

‘Obviously, she could tell you about Elspeth's early schooldays, but your best bet, surely, would be the High School, where they first spotted her talent.'

‘You're right, of course; I was trying to work chronologically, but as I told Max, it's getting increasingly difficult.'

‘You want to skip to her departure?'

Rona smiled. ‘How did you guess? After all, as long as the finished book's in sequence, it doesn't matter in what order I do my research.'

‘Of course not!'

‘You're laughing at me!' Rona accused her.

‘Not really, but your father and I had a little bet as to how long you'd be able to resist.'

‘How mortifying, to be so transparent!'

‘So how do you propose to go about it?'

‘By interviewing every single person she came into contact with, personally and professionally, right down to her cleaner and the person who cut her hair.'

‘In the hope of what?'

‘Uncovering something she might have said, some throwaway remark they'd not thought significant at the time. That she'd always wanted to live in Paris – that she'd like to visit Timbuktu – anything that might point me in the right direction and get this thing off the ground.' She gave a brief laugh. ‘The trouble is, I'm out of practice on bios, and the time they take. My articles for
Chiltern Life
, even those needing considerable research, could be finished in a matter of weeks, and the more straightforward in days. I'll have to relearn patience.'

‘It'll be worth it in the long run,' Catherine said comfortingly.

Citing the aftermath of seasickness, Lindsey left for work on Monday having skipped breakfast, and Rona, who'd not had a private talk with her since her return, feared the weekend afloat hadn't been an unqualified success.

‘What are your plans for today?' Max asked, breaking into her thoughts.

‘I really ought to track down Elspeth's paintings, which means a trip to London. I'll need to see as many as possible before I can write authoritatively, though I might need you to talk me through them.'

‘Why not just go along to the Beaufort?' he asked, spreading marmalade on his toast. ‘They've got two or three there.'

Rona stared at him. ‘Why on earth didn't you tell me?'

‘I thought you knew. Didn't you see them when I had my exhibition?'

‘I might have, but they wouldn't have meant anything then.' She sat back. ‘That's good; I didn't really want to trail into London, though I'll have to eventually. You wouldn't like to come with me to the Beaufort, would you?'

‘I would, but sadly I can't. I'm expecting a delivery from Amazon this morning. Another time.'

He pushed back his chair and bent to kiss her. ‘Have fun. Speak to you later.' And he, too, was gone.

The Beaufort Gallery adjoined the Memorial Gardens, and as she passed them, Rona glanced at the stone column listing the dead of two World Wars. Within a few days, new wreaths of poppies would be laid on its steps.

At the entrance to the Gallery, she tied Gus's lead to a convenient post. ‘I shan't be long,' she promised him.

The ground floor had been given over to a temporary exhibition, and she went up the open staircase to the rooms housing the permanent display. It was quiet this early on a Monday morning and she took her time, pausing in front of each painting and trying to see it through an artist's eyes.

The first Wilding she came to was on her right as she moved into the second room. It was titled Cloudscape 4, painted in 1990, and measured eighteen inches by twenty-four. Photography was prohibited, but Rona took out a notebook and tried to put into words the overall impression it gave, a feeling almost of doom as heavy storm clouds banked over a darkening sea. It was not a comfortable picture, and she wasn't sorry to move on.

But if she'd hoped for work in a lighter vein, she was disappointed. Elspeth's second painting, farther down the room, was a still life, but not in any sense a straightforward one. While at first glance the subject appeared, conventionally enough, to be a selection of fruit heaped in a bowl, a second, closer look revealed that the bowl was cracked, most of the fruit rotten, and maggots were crawling over it.

Rona shuddered, turning with relief to a sunny landscape by an artist whose name she didn't know. The last of Elspeth's canvases was a portrait of a young girl in a party dress, and, bending to read the plaque, Rona saw it was titled
Gillian
,
1999
. So the sitter was Elspeth's niece and god-daughter, Gillian Harris, on whose seventeenth birthday she had left home. As with the portrait in the Buckford studio, it radiated personality and, in this instance, the child's excitement, so that although Rona had never met the sitter, she immediately felt she knew her.

A couple had come into the room behind her and were studying the cloudscape, discussing it in low voices. As Rona passed them on her way out, she heard the woman say, ‘Didn't she disappear or something?'

Indeed she did! Rona thought emphatically as she went back down the stairs; she only wished she knew why. At a desk in the foyer, postcards of assorted paintings were on sale, and she bought one of each of Elspeth's. She'd ask Max what he thought of them on Wednesday.

Gus greeted her with relieved tail-wagging. She untied his lead and they started back along Guild Street. Elspeth's paintings had depressed her, and she wasn't ready yet to return to the empty house. She'd stop for a coffee, she decided; with luck, she might see someone she knew.

But although the coffee was warming on a cool morning, and the general atmosphere relaxed and cheerful, none of Rona's friends were there, and she sat alone, Gus's head resting on her feet under the table.

Mentally, she gave herself a shake. It was pointless to let the paintings get to her; she must use them as a means of entering her subject's head and discerning her hopes and fears.

Having regained her sense of balance, she went home to the papers awaiting her.