Anneli the Art Hater

by Anne Fine

  ‘See!’ she said, laying the box down on the hall table. ‘See what I found! Surprise, surprise!’

  Mrs Pears gasped, and Anneli knew from the look on her face that even after so many years she’d recognised the little rosewood box at once.

  Surprise indeed! Mrs Pears ran her fingertips over the tarnished silver shield with T. W. H. C-S. engraved upon it. A small tear glistened at the corner of her eye. Even before she lifted the lid, she was crying gently.

  Anneli leaned over and tipped the sovereigns out on to the table.

  ‘See?’ she said. ‘Hidden at the bottom. A letter from Tom. To you.’

  It was faded and stained. But written quite clearly on the front in that old-fashioned curly handwriting was: For Clarrie.

  ‘He certainly cared about you,’ said Anneli. ‘I’m not sure that either Henry or Josh would ever bother to write a letter to me. But then again, I wouldn’t sit still for them in a prickly dress to be painted, like you did.’

  She slipped away upstairs, before the tears could fall faster, to fetch down Tom’s last proper painting. She wanted to explain to Mrs Pears how she had noticed there was a mystery, and how she had worked out the puzzle.

  She pushed open the door to the room full of paintings. Though it was filled with evening light, from the moment she stepped in she had the sense that she was being watched and, nervously, she left the door open.

  Anneli looked round at all the paintings. Horses still cantered down leafy lanes. Water droplets still spun in sunlight over waterfalls. Ladies still strolled arm in arm between roses.

  Anneli gave herself a sensible shake. No one was here. No one was watching.

  Carrying a little wooden chair to the fireplace, she climbed up to reach Tom’s last painting. Gently she lowered it to the floor, then jumped from the chair. Again the sense of being watched swept over her and, quickly, she spun around.

  There, still leaning against the legs of the desk on the other side of the room, was the painting of Clarrie sitting on the garden bench in the white dress, clutching the rabbit.

  Anneli stared. It was so strange to think that Clarrie and Old Mrs Pears were one and the same person.

  The pale, grave little face stared back.

  Anneli suddenly said aloud:

  ‘That’s how he saw you, isn’t it? And that’s how he must have remembered you later, when he was scared and miles from home.’

  She came a little closer. It was a fine painting. Every pearl button on the frilly dress was gleaming. Clarrie’s hair glinted in the sunlight. The rabbit’s fur shone.

  ‘If I had any money,’ Anneli told Clarrie, ‘and if you were not too precious to be sold, I’d buy you for myself since I’m not really much of an art hater any longer.’

  She picked up Tom’s last painting and turned to leave. Just as she did so, Mrs Pears appeared in the doorway. All signs of tears had disappeared. Her old face was glowing. Smiling, she stepped in and swung the door back on its hinges behind her.

  And there, suspended from a clothes hanger and hanging in dreamy white billows and flounces and gathers and ruffles, was Clarrie’s best dress, the dress in the painting, the dress from that summer long, long ago.

  ‘I wanted you to have it,’ said Mrs Pears. ‘I know it’s prickly round the neck and you won’t ever want to wear it. But still I wanted you to have it.’

  Anneli reached out and took a little of the material between her fingers.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ she said. ‘Quite beautiful. It’s something precious.’

  And she did wear it. She wore it all one sunny summer afternoon, sitting on the bench in the garden of Carrington Lodge. The dress was hot and heavy, and prickly round the neck, but Anneli sat still and upright, running her fingers down the fur of Henry’s black and white rabbit, keeping him happy in her lap. Around her, children were busy painting. Some stood, some sat on chairs, some were strapped into wheelchairs; but all were working hard, frowning with concentration, sucking the ends of their brushes as they thought, or squinting around the edges of their easels.

  It had, of course, been Henry’s idea: a painting competition at Carrington Lodge’s Summer Fair. Tom’s painting would be propped up beside the bench to encourage everyone who entered. Mrs Pears would judge the winner. And at the end of the afternoon there would be a Grand Auction of all the paintings in aid of the new school art room.

  ‘Who’d buy them?’ Anneli had asked.

  ‘Mothers,’ said Henry. ‘Mothers and fathers and grannies. You wait and see.’

  As usual, Henry was right. Straight after the judging, Jodie climbed on the wooden ramp that came with the brand new minibus Mrs Pears had bought with money from Tom’s sovereigns. She held up the first of the paintings – the one done by Josh. Anneli stared. In it, she thought, she looked like a dirty white maggot with stick legs. The grass was grey and covered with thumbprints. The rabbit was a large splodge in the sky.

  ‘What am I offered,’ Jodie asked the crowd, ‘for this very fine painting?’

  Henry opened the bidding by offering ten pence. Anneli’s mother bid thirty. Henry and Anneli’s mother bid against one another till Henry dropped out at three pounds fifty after catching a rather stern look from Miss Pears. Anneli’s mother bid ten pence more, and just as she began to smile triumphantly, Jodie broke the only rule of auctioneering that Anneli knew by bidding ten pence more than that herself, and promptly bringing down the hammer.

  ‘Three pounds seventy for that,’ said a very complacent Henry. ‘Not bad.’

  Josh stood by shyly and proudly, pressing his new velvet cloth to his cheek.

  Anneli said suspiciously to Henry:

  ‘I never knew you even had three pounds fifty.’

  ‘I don’t,’ said Henry. ‘I am penniless.’

  ‘But you just bid that much for Josh’s painting. It might have been knocked down to you.’

  Henry stared.

  ‘Knocked down to me? What? With his mother standing there?’ He snorted loudly. ‘I was just doing my bit to raise the proceeds a little.’

  ‘What a great fizzing cheat!’

  Henry grinned.

  ‘There’s a lot more to this art business than you think,’ he said Anneli.

  And he lifted his hand to enter the bidding for the next painting.

  Anneli looked at it. It was even worse than Josh’s. Her eyes looked like giant nostrils. The dress was one large shapeless blob. The rabbit was falling off the edge of the paper.

  Just at that moment Mrs Pears came up, resting on her daughter’s arm. Though they spoke softly, Anneli couldn’t help but overhear her teacher saying:

  ‘Oh, that is truly awful.’

  Old Mrs Pears was smiling. ‘It is terrible,’ she agreed. ‘So it’s a pity your grandfather isn’t still alive. He would have bid a lot for that painting.’

  But even as it was, with a bit of help from Henry bidding up the price, the painting went for over four pounds.

  Anneli was still standing shocked at Henry’s cunning when the photographer from the local newspaper came over to take her picture. Obediently she seated herself once again on the bench, the rabbit in her lap, Tom’s painting propped beside her.

  Henry ran forward to shake out the frills in her dress. A smile crossed Mrs Pears’ face, as though she were remembering something private and pleasant, and long ago.

  The photographer focused her lens. Here was a lovely photograph, she thought, but the dress looked a nightmare to wear in such hot weather.

  ‘You must be quite an art lover,’ she said to Anneli, and was astonished when they all burst into laughter.

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