Anneli the Art Hater Read online

  ‘You can see where you’ve gone over it twice.’

  ‘Only because you’ve been told.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘The worst,’ said Anneli, ‘was the geese.’

  ‘Yes, geese are difficult to paint,’ said Henry complacently.

  ‘It wasn’t that,’ Anneli assured him. ‘It’s just that I could hardly bring myself to do them. It was such a mistake, don’t you think, sticking them all over the grass and sky like that, flapping their wings.’

  For a moment, Henry just stared. But by the time he’d leaped to his feet and started after her, she was already half way towards the girls’ lavatories, and both the paintings had been whipped away by the wind.

  Mrs Pears was astonished that Anneli came to the front door.

  ‘Sorry to take such an age,’ she said. ‘I admit to waiting for you upstairs, by the hole.’

  Anneli went scarlet.

  Mrs Pears led the way into the sitting room, and sat on the sofa. She patted the space at her side, and Anneli sat down. A tray of tea things lay in front of them on a low table, and there were chocolate biscuits.

  Anneli told her everything. She told how she had lain in bed the night before and heard Jodie coming home from her meeting at Carrington Lodge. She told about the cracks in the bottom of the pool and the failing heating unit, the unsafe wiring and the mouldy changing room. She told Mrs Pears how the children so enjoyed their time in the water, and how the pool was going to be closed for a whole year.

  ‘A whole year?’ The old lady’s face softened with memory. ‘Why, it took only half that time to build in the first place!’

  Anneli was astonished.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because I remember very well. I remember as if it were yesterday.’

  ‘Were you there?’

  ‘There? I watched every day, from dawn till dusk. Behind my back, the workmen called me The Shadow.’

  ‘They let you in the garden?’

  ‘It was my garden.’

  ‘Your garden?’

  ‘My garden and my pool. The pool was built for me. It even has my initials built in it. When you were visiting, didn’t you ever notice the fancy initials on the side of the pool, down at the deep end?’

  ‘Those tiny blue and green tiles?’ Anneli recalled treading water and tracing them with her fingertips, wondering about them. Each letter was the size of her hand, so curvy and elegant and old-fashioned, it was hard to be sure which letter it was. ‘There was an A, I remember. I loved the curly legs on the A.’

  ‘C. A. M. C-S. That’s what the letters are. My name – or, rather, my old name before my marriage: Clarissa Amelia Mary Carrington-Storrs.’

  Anneli stared.

  ‘And now you’re Mrs Pears.’

  ‘And the house in which I grew up is a home for children.’

  ‘But it’s a lovely house!’ Anneli burst out. She remembered so clearly and with such pleasure her afternoons in its wild gardens. ‘Why did you ever, ever leave?’

  Mrs Pears sighed and smiled and inspected her fingernails closely.

  ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘And so we come back once again to the tale of my brother.’

  ‘Tell,’ Anneli said. ‘Please tell.’

  So Mrs Pears told.

  7

  ‘He was forbidden.’

  ‘When I was young,’ Mrs Pears told Anneli, ‘my father was very rich indeed. He ordered Carrington Lodge to be built. My mother designed the garden. Gardeners did the work, but my mother gave the orders: a summer-house here, a rose-trellis there, an orchard and tall holly trees to hide the stable wall.’

  She sighed.

  ‘It’s changed a lot. They’ve taken up the crazy paving and laid down concrete paths for the wheelchairs. And our old gardeners would have a fit if they saw the flower beds now. But the grounds are still lovely and you can still almost get lost in them.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Anneli. ‘I almost have.’

  ‘There were four of us in the family. My brother was called Tom, and he was older. He was away at school most of the time.’

  ‘Who did you play with?’

  ‘No one. I played alone. I wasn’t lonely, though. I made up friends, imaginary friends, and played with them.’

  ‘Were you happy?’ asked Anneli, remembering Tom’s Running-Away Box.

  ‘Oh, I was happy; but my parents worried so. They’d watch me offering to share my toys with empty air, or overhear me answering unasked questions, or catch me laughing at nothing, and they became so anxious, so anxious . . .’

  ‘They built the swimming pool, to distract you.’

  ‘How clever you are!’

  ‘Just a guess,’ Anneli said modestly.

  ‘I watched from the day the first men came to measure to the day the last coat of glaze was painted over the tiles. I was never allowed to sit on grass in case I took a chill. Colds could be dangerous in those days. So we sat on the bench – all my imaginary friends and myself – and watched our pool take shape in front of us.’

  ‘Didn’t Tom ever watch with you?’

  ‘Oh, no. Even during his holidays, Tom was always busy. He’d taken a passion for painting, and spent all day and evening in the conservatory, painting and painting. He’d leap off the school train acting like someone starved for the smell of oil paint and turpentine.’

  ‘Didn’t he paint at school?’

  Mrs Pears laughed.

  ‘They hadn’t much time for art in Tom’s sort of school!’

  Privately, Anneli thought this no very bad thing. But she said nothing.

  ‘The moment he came home, he snatched up his brushes and barely laid them down again till he left. He painted anything and everything. He even painted me. Do you remember the painting of a girl in frilly skirts sitting on a bench nursing a black and white rabbit?’

  ‘Yes. I saw that one.’

  ‘Well, that was me. I sat still for hours. The rabbit became quite testy, and nibbled me badly.’

  ‘Did you make Tom pay you?’

  ‘Pay me?’ Old Mrs Pears raised an eyebrow. ‘Heavens! It would never have occurred to me even to hint at the idea.’

  ‘Unless they were paid, no one in my class would sit still to be painted.’

  ‘Even by their own brother?’

  ‘Especially by their own brother.’

  Mrs Pears said, ‘How times do change.’ She stared down at the biscuits, remembering. ‘I think that I was very proud to be asked. Usually he painted other sorts of pictures entirely.’

  ‘Sunsets and rivers and battles and petunias and tigers,’ said Anneli, recalling some of the paintings upstairs.

  ‘Rivers were fine,’ said Mrs Pears. ‘There are three rivers within easy cycling distance of the Lodge.’

  ‘No tigers, though.’

  ‘No battles, either. But there were sunsets and petunias. And that’s how the trouble began. Because Father was a little uneasy about Tom’s passion for painting. He was a plain man, you understand. He’d mixed with plain men all his life, even though he had made money and he’d married more. And in those days a plain man didn’t think it quite right for his one and only son and heir to spend his days painting pink sunsets and petunias. It made Father most uncomfortable. He thought it girlish.’

  ‘Like thinking it was unladylike for girls to be explorers.’

  ‘Exactly. Though Mother, of course, wasn’t anxious about that. She was too busy fretting because her daughter sat on a bench the live-long day watching a hole dug deeper and deeper, and whispering to invisible people.’

  ‘You sat and sat?’

  ‘I sat and sat. And in the end Tom said: “If Clarrie’s just sitting on a bench all day anyhow, she can make herself useful and sit for me. I’ll paint her.” So he carried his easel out to the garden and ordered the maid to look out my frilliest dress. He fetched the most biddable rabbit from the hutch, and began to paint. And since I was determined not to stop watching the workmen, he had to set hi
s easel up beside the hole.’

  ‘Wasn’t that in the way?’

  ‘Indeed it was.’

  ‘Didn’t the workmen mind?’

  ‘Oh, they minded. But then, as now, a workman would put up with anything if he was glad to have the work. Both of us were in the way. Tom was a nuisance with his easel and clutter and fussing about shadows. But I was worse.’

  ‘How? You were only sitting there, after all.’

  ‘But if any one of those poor men stopped and leaned on his spade for a moment, I’d be calling: “Why have you stopped? What’s the matter?” It wasn’t that I minded their taking a break. It was that I was worried they’d come across some snag – bedrock, quicksand, a swamp – anything that might prevent my pool being finished. I didn’t mean to be forever urging them on. Lord, no. But I suppose I had the same effect on them as if I did. And gradually they became less friendly. Then almost sullen. And towards the end, though they were never actually rude, they took to getting their own back in quiet little ways.’

  ‘What ways?’

  ‘They’d pretend not to hear when I called out to them. And if they noticed me chattering to my secret friends, they’d mutter: “Soft in the head,” and grin and shake their heads, and screw their fingers to their temples. And whenever Tom came over to shake out the frills in my dress they’d smirk a little behind his back, and flex their huge bronzed muscles, and nudge one another knowingly.’

  ‘Making out Tom was a bit of a pansy.’

  Mrs Pears stared at Anneli.

  ‘Well, yes,’ she said after a moment’s pause. ‘I suppose you could put it that way.’

  ‘That’s certainly the way they’d put it at our school.’

  ‘Is it, indeed?’

  Blushing, Anneli prompted Mrs Pears to return to her story. ‘So the workmen were teasing you both.’

  ‘Just a little. But enough to cause trouble as soon as Father noticed. He must have been standing in the shadows for quite some time one day, watching quietly as the workmen sniggered because suddenly he strode out into the sunlight, startling everyone, and bellowing with rage.’

  ‘What did he bellow?’

  ‘I’ve no idea to this day. I was so terrified that not a word went in. All I know is, the workmen crept off with all their tools, scowling horribly. And on the next day there were four different men, and Tom never painted in the garden again.’

  ‘Never?’

  ‘He was forbidden.’

  ‘Forbidden?’

  ‘Forbidden entirely. Oh, it was quite unreasonable, everyone agreed, even my mother, though she only dared hint as much in a whisper. But it was final. My father was so angry that, weeks after, if he so much as came across one of Tom’s brushes lying about the house, he’d snap it in two directly. And Tom was told that he could never, ever paint in front of other people again.’

  8

  The Running-Away Box

  Anneli was so shocked. ‘Did Tom stop painting?’

  ‘Stop painting? Tom?’ Old Mrs Pears gave a wry smile. ‘As soon tell the wind to stop blowing. He simply set up his easel in his bedroom and started to copy a painting on the wall.’

  ‘Ah,’ Anneli said. ‘Started to copy.’

  This was the bit she wanted to hear.

  ‘That’s right. Lots of artists do it. It’s a way of improving one’s own work.’

  ‘I know,’ said Anneli. ‘I’ve done it. Mine improved a lot.’

  Mrs Pears looked a little surprised.

  ‘Yesterday you told me you didn’t take very much interest in art.’

  ‘I take a bit more now. Starting this morning.’

  Mrs Pears took a deep breath, and continued.

  ‘The house had quite a collection of paintings and drawings. Father bought huge ugly paintings cheap at auctions and hung the horrors all over, and Mother bought lovely delicate drawings from Paris to try to distract attention from Father’s worst choices. So there was plenty to choose from when Tom wanted something to copy.’

  ‘And he was good at it.’

  ‘Oh, he was very good indeed. He had a gift. He soon became so deft, so skilled, so good at copying, that apart from the fact that the ones on the walls were framed, it was difficult to tell which was which.’

  ‘How do you tell?’

  After the business of copying Henry, the question interested Anneli.

  ‘Tom always said: “The longer you look at the real thing, the richer and finer it seems and the more life you see inside it. The longer you stare at my copies, the more they seem to shrivel inside”.’

  ‘But if they’re both the same . . .’

  ‘But they’re not. The artist is painting in his own way, just what he wants, from his own soul. He can let go.’

  ‘And the copier can’t.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘So that was the trouble with my tree tops,’ muttered Anneli.

  Mrs Pears stared.

  ‘I beg your pardon. Did you mention tree tops?’

  ‘Yes,’ Anneli said. ‘No. Carry on, please. Didn’t Tom paint any more for himself?’

  ‘That painting of me on the bench with the rabbit was one of the last two real paintings that Tom ever did.’

  ‘Can I go up and look at it again?’

  ‘I’ll come too,’ Mrs Pears said. ‘Take my arm.’

  It took forever to get up the stairs. Like Josh, Mrs Pears had to take steps one at a time, and clutch the banisters to keep her balance. Anneli burned with impatience. She’d never thought she’d be longing to get a second look at a painting. But she could hardly wait to get up in the room and sort through the canvasses till she found it again.

  It was in the corner, behind one just the same size of a middle-aged man with a floppy velvet hat and merry eyes. Compared with that, it seemed a dreamy sort of painting. Gently, Anneli slid it out and leaned it against the desk, in the light from the window.

  The little girl seated on the bench in the sunlight looked anxious and forlorn. Her face was pale under her bonnet, and her slim white fingers dug in the fat rabbit’s fur in a rather desperate way, as if she feared that he, like everybody else, might hop away from her at the first chance. A slight flush on her cheeks hinted to Anneli that the dress must have been a horror to wear – all stiff and stuffy. And there was something else. A little ring of rash circled Clarissa Amelia Mary Carrington-Storrs’ narrow neck.

  Anneli said:

  ‘The lace round the neck of that dress was all prickly!’

  ‘So it was! How I remember! However did you know?’

  Anneli leaned forward and pointed to the tiny rash ring.

  ‘My heavens!’ said Mrs Pears. ‘You’re sharp enough to be an art historian!’

  ‘Is that a job?’

  ‘It certainly is.’

  ‘That might be fun,’ said Anneli. ‘See what people had for supper four hundred years ago.’

  ‘And if they had rats running round the kitchen.’

  ‘And if they wore any clothes in bed. And what they kept for pets.’

  ‘You can even work out what people thought from a painting. Once, women’s bodices were worn very low, so people painted them that way. Then people who lived later were so shocked by the old paintings that they paid artists to paint curly ringlets of hair falling over the bare skin, to cover it up.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have needed any extra ringlets,’ said Anneli. ‘Your dress was almost up to your ears. Why do the trees behind look funny like that?’

  ‘Tom never managed to finish the painting.’

  ‘What a waste! Was he angry with your father?’

  ‘Angry? He was so angry he started the Running-Away Box. He said he wouldn’t stay in the house a week longer than he had to. He was so desperate to make a start saving, he even bullied me into giving him my two gold sovereigns in return for his cricket bat and his stamp collection.’

  ‘But you didn’t play cricket!’

  ‘I didn’t collect stamps, either. But he was desperat
e. And he was my brother.’

  Anneli wiped the look of amazement off her face. If being brought up rich enough to have a private swimming pool built for you meant you were also brought up to wear heavy prickly dresses in a heatwave and give your treasures to a brother without even thinking to grumble, then she’d give up the pool and take T-shirts and Josh.

  ‘How much were two gold sovereigns worth?’

  ‘They were valuable even then. Nowadays, they’re precious.’

  ‘Precious,’ repeated Anneli. ‘That’s what I’m supposed to be after, something precious.’ Her face fell. This need to spend her time thinking of ways to raise money kept nibbling at her good spirits. ‘It’s a real pity your brother spent it all, running away.’

  ‘Ah, that’s just the mystery,’ said Mrs Pears. ‘It seems he didn’t.’

  ‘He didn’t?’

  ‘As far as we know, Tom never took any of the money with him when he disappeared.’

  Anneli could bear it no longer. She reached out and took Mrs Pears’ hand in her own. Tugging gently, she steered the old lady towards the armchair.

  ‘Sit down,’ she begged. ‘Oh, please sit down. Sit down and tell me how Tom ran away.’

  9

  ‘Nonsense!’

  By summer, the pool was finished. It wasn’t all closed in with walls and a roof, as it is now. It was open to the air, and fringed with bushes and climbing plants that the gardeners put in to hide the mud the workmen’s boots had stirred up. Tables were laden with wonderful dishes. The champagne flowed. And everybody we knew from miles around was there to celebrate and admire.

  Father strode round the gardens, his bushy red beard and whiskers waggling, hearty and welcoming. Mother stood, pink with pleasure, greeting friends and relations. Everyone said how fine the pool and gardens looked. Ladies strolled about under their parasols. Small children raced around the shrubbery bushes, ignoring their nannies.

  And Tom stood at his window upstairs, in shadow, watching. He was in no mood to come down and join the celebration.