by Peter Helton
‘How does he do that?’ said Verity who was sitting at the table. She was a straw-blonde, almost pretty girl with the kind of body that doesn’t mind being stared at for hours on end by a dozen people because it knows it has nothing to hide. ‘He always turns up the moment the kettle is boiling.’
Annis was standing at the Rayburn, splashing boiling water from the kettle into a cafetière, filling the room with Blue Mountain aromas. ‘He’s had years of practice.’ I lifted the napkin from a large oval dish on the table. Two dozen pieces of lemon drizzle cake smiled sunnily up at me. ‘Hands off! Not until breaktime,’ warned Annis. ‘Verity can have some; she needs sustenance for her forthcoming modelling stint.’
‘I find sitting still much easier with some cake inside me,’ she agreed and helped herself to a slice, wafting it with an evil smile under my nose on the way to her mouth.
I had poached Verity from a fellow painter who himself had found her in a pub in Larkhall, cadging drinks and scrounging cigarettes (Verity, not the painter) and, seeing that she was obviously broke, paid her to sit for him. She was still obviously broke and I suspected that the four hours of modelling a week, though generously remunerated, were her only income, because I had never before witnessed any girl as thin as Verity eat everything offered to her with such voracious enthusiasm. I suspected that most of her money was not spent on food. I wondered where her parents lived and if they approved of her lifestyle.
‘Are you actually from Bath?’ I asked her.
‘Frome,’ she said through a mouthful of crumbs.
‘Do your parents still live there?’
She shook her head. ‘Died in a coach crash in Italy. Three years ago.’
‘I’m so sorry to hear that. Any other relatives?’
Verity swallowed down the cake and stood up to go. ‘One aunt. My dad’s older sister. She’s an ugly old spinster and lives somewhere in Belgium. Haven’t spoken to her since I was little. And have no desire to.’ She experimentally stretched out a hand towards the dish of lemon cake to see if anyone would protest and, when neither of us did, swiped a slice and with a big grin skipped through the door.
One by one the students arrived and made their way up the meadow to the barn. I called them ‘students’, Annis called them ‘artists’, Verity ‘punters’. All but one of them were women. I settled them in, made sure each of them had paper and charcoal and an easel to work from, then Verity came, changed in the cubicle I had bodged up for her from lengths of two-by-two and canvas, and the session got under way. We had a full house, the cake and tea during the break were much appreciated and it was a happy bunch of artists, punters, students and model who left Mill House at dusk that night.
So far so good.
The next morning I taught another class at Mill House, this time watercolour. The class consisted of five women and me painting views of Mill House in its setting or of Ridge Farm up the road. In inclement weather we stayed in the studio and did colour theory, colour mixing, wet-in-wet techniques (the roof leaks) and single-point perspective. It had been quite a wet summer so far and by now they knew everything I did. Clouds rolled in from the north but the weather held and another six versions of Mill House were painted, discussed and admired. Two of my older students were so good at watercolour painting that I was convinced they came purely for Annis’s baking. Once they had all driven off again in their sensible cars, I got behind the wheel of my utterly impractical DS 21 and drove across to the north side of town.
The grieving widow of Henry Blinkhorn was consoling herself with her £1.5 million payout in the six-bedroom house in Charlcombe Lane where they had lived together until his disappearance five years earlier. It was a large nineteenth-century house built of freestone and called The Chestnuts, of which there were plenty around. The original wall that enclosed the property had been partly removed to allow for a wider gate and a drive to a carport, built far more recently but in a sympathetic style. At the moment it harboured a small but perfectly expensive silver-grey Mercedes. Charlcombe Lane ran along the northern edge of the little valley, and its substantial houses looked disdainfully down on the suburban developments of Fairfield Park in the valley far below. The lane was shaded by overhanging trees and so narrow that passing places were needed to allow cars to squeeze past each other. This meant that parking up in the road was impossible. My sinister black Citroën was noticeable enough in a busy street; here it would attract immediate attention and block the traffic. I parked it in nearby Richmond Road. Fortunately, I never go far without my folding camping chair and my sketching tools – paint box, collapsible water cup, watercolour sketchbook and travel brushes. What could be less suspicious than a middle-aged watercolourist on a folding chair, squinting and daubing? I had used this disguise before and no one gave me a second glance. (NB: This may be less successful on a rundown council estate.)
I set myself up by the side of the lane with my back to a tree. From here I could just see up the drive of the house and keep an eye on the front door and the car. Several tall trees towering higher than the house made me suspect that a substantial garden lay behind it. I would paint slowly. Very slowly. It goes much against my nature, but if I finished my sketch in half an hour and nothing had happened, then I might end up having to paint the same thing over and over, driving myself mad. I took out my ink pen and started my drawing. I drew every stone in the wall, every stonecrop leaf and flower, the weeds at the bottom of it; I drew the open cast-iron gate and the tiny flecks of rust near the hinges, the entire house, the trailing plants in the hanging basket by the front door, the blank windows reflecting the grey sky here and there. Then I drew every roof tile I could see. A thin line of smoke wafted from one of the chimneys; I drew that. I find cars hard to do but I drew the Merc and then in desperation started filling in the gravel on the drive, one stone at a time. Nothing happened. No one came or left; not a shadow crossed the windows. Perhaps this is why a painter is so eminently suited to this idiotic job: if you enjoy watching paint dry, you’re qualified. Then the heavens opened and by the time I had packed up and trudged back to my car I was drenched. It rained all day and the next and I didn’t go near The Chestnuts.
The following day it brightened up. Having taught the second watercolour class, I dashed across to Charlcombe Lane. I quite looked forward to the watercolour part of my sketch, as long as I didn’t get rained on. But when I got to the house, the Mercedes wasn’t there. Widow Blinkhorn was out, presumably spending the money. Not to be put off, I set up anyway and started mixing paint for my sketch and only fifteen minutes later was rewarded with the purring and hissing of a Mercedes engine. Janette Blinkhorn returned. She gave me a curious look and a benevolent smile from behind the wheel as she passed me and turned into the yard. My speculation had been spot on – from the boot she lifted four shopping bags with the logo of Bath’s finest supermarket and disappeared inside. I continued my slo-mo painting for another ten minutes before Mrs Blinkhorn reappeared and came over to see what I was up to.
‘May I have a look? I hope you don’t mind. Oh, you are painting my house! I thought you must be.’ Janette Blinkhorn was an attractive woman in her mid-forties, with dark eyes and static dark hair that just touched her shoulders. She wore a simple navy-blue knee-length dress, black three-inch heels and a lot of gold on her fingers, wrists and around her neck. Somehow I thought she dressed ten years older than she looked. I noted the ‘my house’. If she had her husband hiding in the attic, she might have slipped and called it ‘ours’. I didn’t mind her looking at the painting at all since that’s what they’re there for, but it meant that she also managed to take a good look at me which was far less desirable. ‘You’re very good, I can already see that. All that detail. But why did you pick my house?’
‘There’s just something about it. I myself live in a modern little house, far too drab to paint,’ I lied. ‘But when I walked around this bend, I just knew I had to paint yours,’ I enthused, ‘and the name really appealed to me too.’
/> ‘Yes, I’m very happy here. I only wish I lived closer to the river. But apart from that, it’s perfect.’ She nodded and turned back to the house, looking doubtfully up at the sky which was full of dark cloud now. ‘I hope the weather holds for you.’
Twenty-odd minutes after Mrs Blinkhorn had gone inside, her hopes were dashed and the first raindrops fell on my sketch. What to do with a wet watercolour sketch is always a problem, but when it rains, doubly so. Before I could even pack half my art materials, it was raining steadily. While I was still grabbing at things, knocking my chair over in the process, the door at The Chestnuts opened and Mrs Blinkhorn emerged with a large black umbrella, rushing to my aid. ‘Come inside while it rains – it’s only a shower, I think. It’ll probably be over in a few minutes.’ She kindly held the umbrella over me while I collected my painting gear, then we scooted side by side into the house. ‘After you,’ she said, ‘after you.’
With my bag, drawing board and chair, I clattered into the hall, making grateful noises while trying not to look as though I was registering every detail. The house smelled of a mix of floor polish and Mrs Blinkhorn’s jasmine perfume. All my things were quite wet and I was dripping all over the carpet. ‘Just leave it all here and come through,’ she said. ‘I’ll make us a nice cup of tea – or coffee, if you prefer. This way. I hope you don’t mind the kitchen – I was in the middle of something. I’m Janette, by the way.’
‘Chris. It’s very kind of you to give me shelter.’ From what I glimpsed through the open doors as we passed them, it looked as if her house was furnished comfortably in a flowery style, with framed prints of Dutch still lifes and porcelain figurines at regular intervals. There was no obvious opulence or extravagance on show. The kitchen was a 1980s farmhouse fantasy but was obviously being well used. Terracotta tiles on the floor, wine-red Aga and no microwave – I approved. The kitchen windows looked out over the large rain-lashed garden which consisted of terrace, a sloping lawn, several tall trees, two of them chestnuts, a few flower beds and an ornamental pond with a stone fish spouting water. On the terrace stood an enormous gas-powered barbecue; the rain drummed noisily on its stainless-steel cover.
If Henry Blinkhorn was hiding in this house, surely his wife would not invite a total stranger inside. Would she? As she busied herself with making coffee, I tried to find clues to multiple occupancy – pairs of cups and placemats, for instance, or decaf and regular coffee, gluten-free products next to regular ones – but could see nothing suspicious. I stood by a window while coffee was being procured. ‘I like your garden,’ I lied. ‘I’m not much of a gardener myself, though,’ I added truthfully.
‘Neither am I,’ she said happily. ‘I have whatever is the opposite of green fingers. I, erm, have a man to look after it.’
I was going to mention sheep but remembered in time that I had given the impression that I lived in a small suburban house. The coffee was excellent and the rain stopped before I had finished it. What Janette had been in the middle of when she rescued me was spiking a leg of lamb with garlic and bits of fresh rosemary. She smiled at me as she lovingly massaged seriously expensive olive oil into it. Judging by her figure, she probably wasn’t going to eat all that by herself, but as she chatted to me about the kind of art she really couldn’t stand (the Turner Prize, mainly) and about watching Watercolour Challenge on television (wasn’t it fascinating?), I missed my chance to enquire about her perhaps expecting guests. When I had finished my coffee, I asked to use the bathroom, hoping to find two toothbrushes (note the extreme sophistication of my methods) and was allowed to use the downstairs toilet which gave nothing away except the type of toilet paper she preferred (lightly scented with a flower pattern).
‘I’ll probably be back sometime soon to finish the sketch,’ I promised. ‘When there is no rain forecast. Thanks again.’
Walking back to the car, I tried to summarize what I had learnt. It didn’t take me long: Janette Blinkhorn was a conservative middle-class meat-eater who could now afford to spend dizzying amounts of money on single-estate organic olive oil. In furnishings, she had average taste veering towards kitsch; she wasn’t much of a gardener, wished she lived closer to the river (perhaps Janette fished, too) and she was kind to damp watercolourists. She had a man to look after the garden. Was she going to snaffle the leg of lamb by herself? Have friends round later? I would have no opportunity to find out since I had another life-drawing class to teach.
That day Annis made scones for the tea break, which I find even more torturous to wait for than lemon drizzle cake. Verity arrived later than usual but still managed to cram two of them into her mouth with half an inch of clotted cream and a tottering mound of raspberry jam on top. Halfway through the drawing session the rain returned, this time in earnest, and the forecast was for much of the same over the next three days. It was too wet for Verity to cycle back. Annis was having a serious conversation with someone on the phone, but I managed to wrestle the keys to the Land Rover from her and gave Verity and her bicycle a lift into town. I had done this before but was still no wiser as to where she lived since she was deliberately vague about it and always asked me to drop her off in front of the Bell Inn in Walcot Street; today was no exception. While she locked up her bike outside, a bearded, tousle-haired young man who had watched us arrive through a window came out to greet her. He wore big muddy boots, jeans and a faded waxed hunting jacket with too many pockets. When Verity straightened up from locking up her bike, he planted a kiss on her cheek which Verity ignored and did not return. She gave a quick wave in my direction, then dived through the door into the dry, followed by the bearded greeter. A moment later she appeared near a window, exuberantly greeting a young woman with pink hair, and then I lost sight of her.
The rain had lessened somewhat but not enough to stand outside The Chestnuts hoping to learn more about Janette Blinkhorn’s social life. I compromised by driving home via Charlcombe Lane. The lights were on and the curtains drawn at the house but there were no additional cars, motorcycles or bicycles. Perhaps her guest(s) had arrived on foot, been fetched, came by cab or had left already. Perhaps she had shared the leg of lamb with her supposedly dead hubby in the attic. I had a mental picture of her sitting by herself at the kitchen table, with nothing but the bone left, unable to move, burping delicately. There was an outside chance Janette had scoffed the leg of lamb all by herself.
The next day, which was gloriously free from teaching classes, was a complete washout. It was already raining heavily when I woke up. There was an uncharacteristic void in the bed next to me where normally a red-haired Annis, buried under pillows to ward off the advance of day, would either be snoring or demanding to know where her breakfast was. When I eventually found her (Mill House runs over three floors and has cellars), it was on the little covered verandah at the back where there lives a barbecue on which we sometimes allow Tim to incinerate our supper. She was wearing her painting gear and was watching the rain while listening to someone on the phone again. When I went to kiss her good morning, she silently shoved her empty coffee mug at me for a refill. Annis runs on coffee. I myself run on croissants and quince jam, which is another reason why we take different dress sizes. I shoved a couple of croissants in the oven to warm them up, assembled breakfast, brewed Annis-strength coffee and handed her a mug. She was still listening, punctuating her frankly out-of-character silence with attentive grunts and polite utterances like ‘I see’, ‘naturally’, ‘no problem’ and, most worryingly, ‘I’d be delighted’.
The rain meant no surveillance on the Blinkhorn residence, and with no classes to teach today. I could theoretically have gone and done some painting of my own. Only I had launched myself into a project I had already begun to regret, and that was to paint a series of views that had started at the house and would eventually take me into the centre of Bath itself, all done en plein air, naturally. In my megalomaniac imagination I had seen them hanging all together at a one-man show at Simon Paris Fine Art and naturally all had red dot
s against them. The reality was that the demands of teaching and the vagaries of the English weather had slowed me so much that I had made very little progress, although I was now completely sold on painting outside. Sitting in the dim studio, with the rain hammering noisily on the patchwork roof and the odd drip from a leak plinking into an empty paint can, I brooded on the distinct possibility that somewhere in Italy or Spain or Greece happy and undoubtedly tanned painters were working in uninterrupted sunshine all day. What I needed, I concluded, was a mobile studio, a painting van perhaps, from which I could work whatever the weather. My gloomy musings were interrupted by Annis, who came in, whistling. Whistling?
‘You are delighted?’ I asked.
‘Am I? Oh yes, I suppose I am,’ she said dreamily.
‘You are “delighted to …”?’
‘To what?’
‘That’s what I’m asking.’
‘Oh, that. I’ve got another mural commission,’ she admitted.
‘Another one?’ I said accusingly. I hadn’t had a commission since I gave up abstract painting, which explained Annis’s reticence. ‘Not another rock star?’ Annis’s first mural commission had come about when Mark Stoneking, the sole survivor of the rock group Karmic Fire, wanted to commission me to paint a mural in his pool house. But since my style had changed so dramatically, I handed him over to the supremely talented Ms Annis Jordan. She had since been paid a small fortune to paint another mural for an equally rich musician living in the next county.
