by Peter Helton
‘Will I get to eat the food, too?’
‘Eventually.’
He rummaged around in his rucksack and pulled out his slightly damp jeans and a pair of underpants. ‘The things I do for money,’ he mumbled as he pulled on his clothes.
While naked, he had looked wild and slightly deranged; the addition of jeans and T-shirt made him look like any other ageing hippy who came to the Barge Inn. The inside of the pub had, according to Martin, recently been done up. ‘It used to have terrible artwork everywhere.’ The new look was darkly atmospheric, the lighting soft, with dark wood furniture and floors. The place boasted a huge array of beers, some local, and when we were eventually served by the slightly harassed-looking barman, we bought two and went outside into the beer garden, Martin carrying the menu, while I was lugging my drawing and watercolour gear. We were lucky to find a table that had just been vacated by a group of cyclists. The beer garden sported a rack for parking and chaining up bikes as well as a dumpy-looking monolith. ‘Fake,’ Martin assured me. ‘But you can see the white horse from here, and that’s not fake at all.’ He pointed it out and I could just glimpse the enormous Alton Barnes White Horse where it had been carved into a distant chalk hill a couple of hundred years ago. The pub seemed to do good business, though the staff who served food did wander about with a lost expression for a long time before matching dishes with waiting customers. The clientele were a mixed bunch, consisting of cyclists, walkers, boaters and people from the camp site. You get a lot of hippies come here too. The place is surrounded by stuff they go in for, Stonehenge isn’t far and there’s crop circles popping up, so you get the UFO believers and people looking for some sort of mystic experience. As if on cue, an otherwise completely normal-looking man in his fifties started walking around the fake standing stone with what looked like a bent wire coat hanger, probably looking for cosmic energies.
I had brought an ambitiously large sketchbook and a bulging bag of art materials. After having looked through the sketches that were already in the book, mostly of the landscape between Mill House and Bath, Martin seemed relieved, having assured himself that I was a bona fide artist and not just after his clothed body. I told him to stay exactly how he was sitting at that moment, with both arms on the table behind his pint of ale, and started my first sketch. Drawing people is among the more nerve-wracking things you can do with a pen. If you draw a tree or a street scene or a landscape, everyone accepts your view of it, but draw an actual person and you’ll be fiercely judged on your ability to render the likeness; only botanical art is scrutinized more closely. It helps if your specimen doesn’t move about. Martin’s idea of sitting still did not quite match mine. He fidgeted and scratched himself as though wearing clothes really was a chore for him. I had my back to the canal while he sat facing it, with his eyes nervously scanning everything that moved. After about ten minutes he was visibly sagging a little under the weight of immobility. ‘Can I take a drink of my beer?’
‘Sure, I drew that first.’ I was drawing with a dip pen and India ink, planning to use watercolour over the top once dry. I drew Martin and his pint, the pub building behind him, and was just reaching for my watercolour box when Martin lifted his pint again.
‘The coppers are here,’ he murmured, hiding his mouth behind his pint. His eyes and eyebrows semaphored that they were on his left. I pretended to rearrange myself on the bench with my sketchbook until I had them in view. They were standing on the edge of a disparate group of drinkers outside the pub – all the tables were taken now – and failed to look casual in a way only police officers can. Now that I knew they were CID, I naturally thought that everything about them screamed ‘Police!’ – from the way they pointedly kept their heads turned elsewhere while staring through their sunglasses at us to the slightly awkward, freshly ironed clothes and polished black shoes that I thought did not go with a boating holiday and pints of cider. They looked to be of equal height, about six foot, and both had short-cropped hair, which was fashionable among police officers to make themselves look tough (and to avoid having their hair pulled by suspects resisting arrest). They wore black T-shirts which still had creases from where they had been folded and black chinos which looked brand new and which no one in their right mind wore with regulation black police shoes. The slightly slimmer of the two, who seemed to have virtually no eyebrows, was vaping furiously from a red e-cigarette. I sketched a little cameo of the pair in a corner of the page.
‘You are not scared of them?’ asked Martin.
‘Beginning to be.’
‘What are they after, do you think? Are they following you? Have you done something?’
‘No, my conscience is clear.’ I thought for a moment about the revolver in the cutlery drawer but I forgave myself. ‘No, but I also sometimes do a bit of detective work and they might be keeping an eye on me. Just why, though, I haven’t figured out yet. But I will.’ I turned away from the pair again, feigning indifference. I was getting hungry and Martin said he was, too. I dispatched him inside – well, he was working for me – with some money to order us fish and chips twice and more pints of beer while I got my watercolours ready. It took him a long time to fight his way back through the crowd with our pints.
‘They’re now sitting two tables away,’ he said. ‘So what kind of detective work do you do?’
‘Oh, the usual, insurance fraud, mis pers …’
‘Miss Perrs?’
‘Missing persons – boring stuff like that.’ I wasn’t even going to mention iguanas. ‘Now get back into your pose; I’m ready to do the colour.’ I unstoppered my water container and opened my twenty-four-colour paint box.
Martin sat still again in roughly the same way as before, his restless eyes following my paintbrush as I mixed colours in my palette, darting furtively towards the police officers and sliding mournfully over his pint of beer. Eventually, I spotted a man in black jeans and trainers and a blinding white shirt walking about with two plates of fish and chips. I waved him over. ‘You ordered fish and chips twice?’ I nodded. Then he spotted the paints. ‘Oh, it’s you – you’ve finally made it, have you? We expected you three days ago; I’d almost given up on you. Rang you a couple of times but no answer. What kept you?’
‘The boat journey took longer than I had hoped,’ I said experimentally while wracking my brain as to how the chap could possibly have been expecting me.
‘Oh, you came by boat? You didn’t mention that. Slowest transport on earth. Why didn’t you come in and make yourself known if you’re here at last. You’ll start tomorrow, will you?’
I gave up trying to figure it out. ‘I didn’t make myself known because I don’t think I am who you think I am. Who do you think I am?’
‘Sam Gower. You’re not Sam Gower? The painter?’ He nodded his head hopefully at the paints on the table. ‘Come to paint the pub?’
‘No. Chris Honeysett the painter.’ His arms sagged with disappointment. ‘Why don’t you put those plates down before any more chips drop off?’
‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’ He set down the plates and let two sets of cutlery roll on to the table. Martin, released from his pose, grabbed the cutlery and started eating while looking up at the disappointed man.
‘You were waiting for a chap to paint your pub? Not with emulsion, I take it?’
‘No, no, he does paintings of people’s houses, to hang on the wall. I wanted him to do one of the pub. I’m John, by the way. I’m the new manager here. I wanted to surprise my wife with a painting; she loves watercolours. She’s away visiting our son in Australia at the moment but she’ll be back in four days and it looks like Mr Gower has let me down.’ He put his head to one side to get a better look at the sketch of Martin, which included part of the pub building behind him. ‘You’re very good, I must say. Can I have a look?’ The few dabs of colour I had managed to put down so far had dried so I handed him the sketchbook. ‘I like these a lot,’ he said. ‘I think they are better than Gower’s, from what I’ve seen on his websit
e. Are you moored up here? Will you be around for a bit?’ I nodded with a mouthful of haddock. ‘You wouldn’t be interested in doing a painting of the pub, would you? With the beer garden in the foreground, the standing stone and everything? In four days? I’d pay you of course. Gower charges four hundred. Unframed, that is.’ I pulled a face as though needing to think about it. ‘And we’ll feed you, lunch and dinner, and I’ll throw in a few beers.’
‘I’ll start tomorrow.’
‘Do you think you have enough time?’
‘It’s a bit tight but it can be done.’
‘Oh, that’s wonderful – such a relief. I thought it wouldn’t happen after all. I’m really grateful.’
‘I’ll do some preliminary drawings tomorrow and let you look them over, see which you like best, then do the painting based on that.’
‘Excellent. Is your name really Honeysett?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s just the village here is called Honeystreet. It was meant to be – that’s obvious.’
‘I can see that. Is there any ketchup?’
‘Of course, be right back.’
Martin looked impressed. ‘So this is how you make your money.’
‘Very rarely,’ I admitted, but he looked at me as though I had conjured wads of banknotes out of thin air. With the parlous state of my present finances, of course, a few hundred pounds plus free meals and drinks for a couple of days was a very welcome development, as was the eventual arrival at our table of every conceivable condiment, from ketchup via tartare sauce to mustard, just in time to anoint my last five chips with it.
In the fading evening light I finished the drawing I had started. Martin pronounced it excellent. ‘No one’s ever painted me before. Tell you what, instead of paying me, do you think I could have the painting? You bought me food and drinks, too …’ I was more than happy with this currency arrangement and carefully eased the painting out of the sketchbook. I had feared that now his stint of wearing clothes for me was over, he might strip off immediately at the table, but he walked off with the rolled-up painting to his tent fully dressed.
When I casually looked about me, I found that the Free Spiriters had disappeared. As I packed up my painting gear and stood up, I realized that I had probably not counted my pints as closely as I should have. Normally, this would not have overly worried me, but my mind was windmilling with theories all the way down the pitch-black towpath towards Dreamcatcher. It didn’t help that I hadn’t thought of bringing my torch. Several of the vessels along here lay completely dark and silent. I padded along towards one boat that showed a dim light behind one curtained porthole and from there moved on towards a wooden butty that sported a single ghostly solar-powered lantern that illuminated virtually nothing but itself and faded as I approached, but I knew Dreamcatcher was moored not far beyond it in the darkness. As I passed into the gloom beyond the butty’s glimmering lantern, I heard a sudden commotion in front of me, and muffled swearing followed by receding footsteps of at least two people, moving rapidly away from me without the aid of torches, which was unusual on the towpath after dark. Overhead, clouds had been moving in all evening and by now there were only a few stars in the sky to help me find the silhouette of my boat, clatter on board, get the door unlocked and myself inside. There was nothing to suggest that what I had heard had anything to do with me or even Dreamcatcher, but I made doubly sure of the doors and windows anyway. Then I built little teetering towers of pots, pans and crockery behind both doors which would crash to the floor if they were opened from the outside.
ELEVEN
It was mid-morning when I awoke to the engine sound of a hire boat chugging too fast past the moorings, sending Dreamcatcher rocking and swaying and my pots-and-pans alarms crashing down, proving that they would be one hundred per cent effective if triggered by an intruder. This cheered me enough to jump out of bed, take the revolver from under the pillow and return it to its home in the cutlery drawer. Having collected my pots and crockery from the ends of the boat and reinstalled them in the galley, I toasted two slices of bread under the grill and then buried them under a mountain of fried onions and mushrooms and a poached egg dusted with cayenne pepper and celery salt. Then I carried it with my mug of black coffee up on deck.
Warm sunshine was drying up the moisture from an earlier shower, and already there was traffic on the water and cyclists and walkers on the towpath. What had felt sinister and unsafe in the darkness of the previous night now looked joyful and benign. We had successfully turned what was once an industrial highway – where boats heavily laden with stone, coal or agricultural produce were drawn on long ropes by horses – into a holiday destination and playground, delicately scented with diesel fumes. And I had been commissioned to paint the Barge Inn. My breast swelled with pride as I drove from my mind the sensible objection that I had more or less ditched a job that could net me thirty grand to end up painting a pub for four hundred. At least I was going to enjoy this job and, most importantly, Annis was no longer the only one with a commission. I called her to let her know. ‘Free food and drink, too.’
‘But no swimming pool. And you do realize I get paid ten times as much.’
‘Yes, but you have to paint twenty times as big.’
‘How’s the rest of canal life?’
‘Full of little oddities.’ I told her about Martin, the naked walker. She had heard of him. ‘He’s not as mad as the papers make out. And there are bigger oddities. I think I’m being followed.’
‘You’re being followed? You’re supposed to be doing the following.’
‘I know. But it appears someone is also following the follower. Two chaps on a cabin cruiser are keeping an eye on me, and last night I found out they were police.’
‘The rozzers are following you in a boat?’
‘I think so.’
‘Sure they’re police?’
‘They flashed their warrant cards at Martin. Perhaps they want to find Verity after all and think that I might be on to something.’
‘If Needham wanted the girl found and thought you could do it, he would either ask you to do it or tell you to keep out of it. I don’t think he would have you followed.’
In the light of day, some of my paranoia evaporated. ‘They could just be on holiday together,’ I admitted, ‘but they refuse to overtake me. I moor up, they moor up.’
‘You’ll be at that pub for a few days. If it turns out they stay put too, then perhaps it’s time to get worried.’
‘You’re right. For all I know, they may have moved on already.’
I didn’t tell Annis about the night noises or what I thought had been blokes on bikes, possibly trying to break into the boat the other night, nor did I mention the floating coffin that was Moonglow which also seemed to have followed me, for the simple reason that I had forgotten all about them. As it turned out, I shouldn’t have.
The pub was open. True to his word, as soon as he saw me setting myself up in the beer garden, John came outside and asked me what I wanted to drink. He wiped the bench and table dry for me and furnished me with a pot of coffee. ‘Can you make sure you get the standing stone in? My wife adores that thing. Cost a fortune to stick that there, but the punters love it. She would have liked a whole stone circle, but you can’t imagine the price of stone. Stonehenge must have cost a fortune to put up. Anyway, I can see you want to get started so I’ll leave you in peace.’
For a long while I just sat and studied the house and adjacent buildings, drank my coffee and made friends with the rather uninspiringly utilitarian edifice. I decided not to romanticize it but let it speak for itself and concentrate on the varied stonework, the shrubs and picket fence along the front to soften it. I fitted the standing stone into the front left as though I was sitting close to it. Then I counted the panes on the sash windows (helps to avoid embarrassment later), measured the distances between all the features with a pencil and outstretched arm (this makes you look daft but it works) and started the first sketch. Th
ere were a few people in the beer garden and more were arriving towards lunchtime, but the natural reserve of the British public meant that I worked undisturbed for two hours. I had nearly finished the first draft when someone did come up to speak to me. A thick-set man in his mid-fifties stood behind me and to the right, just close enough for him to see over my shoulder and for me to be aware that every pen stroke was being watched. He remained perfectly quiet until I had stopped drawing for a while and only spoke when he saw me screw the lid back on the ink bottle.
‘That’s amazing how you do that straight with ink, without first doing it in pencil,’ he said. He came closer. He wore a straw hat that failed to shade a very large nose, which went some way towards explaining the redness of it in an otherwise untanned face, its paleness accentuated by a pair of sunglasses. He looked faintly familiar, but right now I could not place him.
‘It’s just a preliminary sketch,’ I explained. ‘I’ve been commissioned to paint the place. I’ll be using a pencil when I come to do the painting, to make sure I get it absolutely right.’
‘You do commissions, do you?’ he asked. ‘Are you any good at doing boats? I mean, sorry, silly thing to say, I’m sure you must be, the way you dashed this off.’
I was slightly miffed at the ‘dashed off’ since I had been working solidly for two hours, but I decided to take it as a compliment nonetheless.
‘You wouldn’t be interested in doing our boat? Not a painting – just an ink drawing like this. How much do you normally charge?’
The ‘normally’, you should note, is always the opening of a client’s negotiations, where he naturally assumes that you will charge him less than you do ‘normally’, since his is a special case. The way to counteract this is to name a price in excess of what you do normally charge, which then allows you to give him a generous discount. He thinks he got a bargain and you know you haven’t been taken advantage of, though not for want of trying. ‘I charge a hundred and ninety pounds for an ink sketch this size and four hundred and fifty for a watercolour.’
