The Colour of Mermaids

by Catherine Curzon

  “So, we’re really lucky today! The artist whose exhibition is on here at the moment has made a special arrangement with the gallery owner so that we can visit. At the end, we’ll write some thank you notes to him.” Eva would be surprised if she managed to get thank you notes from half of them, but it was the thought that counted, after all. “And as I explained before, we can look at the paintings, but we have to stand this far away,” she held her hands a metre apart, “and we mustn’t touch them. Right. Are we ready?”

  “Or would we rather,” a familiar voice suddenly called, “get as close as we possibly can and feel the paint under our hands? Let’s not just look at them, let’s live them. Get our jammy hands on the canvas and make it all a bit less sensible.”

  Him.

  The man she had given up.

  Eva turned towards the door into the gallery space and there he was, clad in his black suit and his black shirt, sunglasses over his eyes. Her breath caught in her throat as all Eva’s desire for Daniel returned, heating her blood. But she had to ignore it.

  Before she was able to form a coherent response, one of the children shouted, “Oi, mister, you’ve forgotten your sunglasses!” And all the other children laughed.

  “Jayden, don’t be rude!” Eva couldn’t interpret the expression on Daniel’s face. Had he changed since their last encounter, or was he still on the verge of rage? The last thing she needed was for Daniel to erupt in front of the children. Some of them saw enough of that at home. “Sorry…he’s only pulling your leg. Bit of a joker.”

  “What’s your name?” Daniel asked Jayden, his voice calm. Was it the prelude to a storm?

  “Jayden,” the boy replied, scuffing his dusty trainer across Rupert’s expensive carpet.

  “Well, Jayden, when you’re nearly forty, you’ll totally get why I’m wearing sunglasses. I’m trying and failing to look younger than I am.” Daniel pushed the Wayfarers up into his hair. “Mind if I trail along?”

  The red, bulging eyes that Eva had seen a few days earlier were gone. There was still that intensity there, but softened somehow. Eva could hope that he had changed, that he wasn’t on the coke today, that the monster was contained. “No, I don’t mind at all. Seeing as you—”

  She waited by the door and waved the children through into the exhibition space. Three of them whooped loudly as if they were on a roller coaster.

  Eva rested her hand on Daniel’s arm. “I’m asking this as a friend. Are you okay now? I mean…you look better. I’ve been worried.”

  “Can we talk afterwards?” His voice was gentle, his gaze meeting hers. “I know you might not want to—”

  “I’d like that. I really would.” Eva stroked her hand down to his wrist. “I wish I hadn’t left you like that. I’m so sorry, I—”

  Maya, one of the group, tugged Eva’s sleeve, half-dragging her away in her excitement. “Miss, Miss, look at the paintings, look! They’re so big! Look, Miss!”

  Eva glanced at Daniel.

  “Are you going to introduce me to our guests?” he asked, then added with a mischievous look, “Miss?”

  Maya was now towing Eva with all her might, and Eva laughed. “Come along then, Daniel, you can join our group! Maya, you don’t mind, do you?”

  “No, Miss, no, I don’t mind. Miss, look at the paintings!”

  The last time the gallery had been packed with people, it had been filled with grown adults who were seven sheets to the wind and who had barely seemed to care what was on the walls. Today, half of Eva’s group were standing about looking up at the canvases, while the other half were doing laps around the room and trying out cartwheels.

  “Do you want me to blow your cover, Daniel?”

  “Yeah.” He nodded. “Because I want them to ask me questions and tell me what they think.”

  “Right, then.” She flashed Daniel a smile, then extricated herself from Maya and clapped her hands. The children almost stopped and paid attention. “I told you we were very lucky today, didn’t I? Because not only have we been allowed to see the exhibition, but who do you think has come to talk to you today?”

  A hand shot up at once and Eva nodded. “Yes, Jake?”

  “Your boyfriend, Miss!”

  The children laughed and Eva wished she was standing on a trapdoor which at that moment would open beneath her feet. “Well, today, we have Daniel Scott with us. And do you recognise his name?”

  Another hand shot up. “Kieran?” Eva asked.

  “He’s the painter, Miss.”

  “That’s right!” Eva’s children failed to look starstruck. They appeared to have never heard of him, until seeing his name on the front of the building ten minutes ago. “So…everyone, this is Daniel Scott.”

  Daniel took the sunglasses from his head and folded them into his pocket. He seemed far more at ease here than he had been with the great and good at the launch, no posturing or silent brooding in the face of the children who found him so underwhelming.

  “In a minute, I need to try and get all your names straight,” Daniel told them. “Then we’ll have a look around and you can tell me about the art you do and I’ll tell you about mine, and we’ll see if we can learn from each other. Ask whatever you want to ask, touch the paintings if you want to, and if you just don’t like them, I’ll live with it. But Eva—Miss Catesby’s put a lot of work into getting you this visit, so make the most of it. Deal?”

  The children nodded, but Kieran, Eva noticed, didn’t move. He only stared at Daniel, rigid. From experience, Eva knew this wasn’t a good sign, as Kieran was apt to have meltdowns and the prelude was usually blank stiffness. She put one hand on his shoulder but he didn’t respond.

  Maya stood in front of Daniel, toes nearly touching, her head tipped back as if trying to see to the top of a tall building. “Why are your paintings so big?” she asked the man who never gave interviews.

  “I don’t talk all that much,” he replied, looking down at her. Then he dropped down to his knees, reducing that seemingly unbreachable distance between them to nothing. “But when I work on a big canvas like this, I feel like the whole world can hear me shouting. Does that make sense?”

  Maya frowned, as if she was thinking, then her mouth fell open and she nodded. “Big is the same as loud!”

  Kieran shifted under Eva’s hand, so she stood aside and left him be.

  “It is for me.” Daniel nodded. “When I was a kid nobody ever listened to me, no matter how loud I shouted. They didn’t start listening when I kicked off either, but when I painted, suddenly they did.”

  A nod ran through the children like a Mexican wave, and Eva smiled at Daniel. He was the perfect person to speak to her kids.

  “I’m not standing—kneeling—here as someone who had it all, because I had nothing. Never passed an exam, kicked out of school, never went to uni,” he went on. “I didn’t even have a mum and dad, didn’t have a home, none of that. I didn’t have a Miss Catesby either. It doesn’t mean that’s the end of it. Things aren’t always great, but never think that’s it. Never think at your ages that you’re done. You’re never done.”

  Daniel’s words managed to reach all the children. The ones who had been excluded from school, the ones whose families were chaotic at best, or nonexistent. The ones who the police had already had stern words with. They drew nearer to Daniel, a step at a time. But Kieran hadn’t moved.

  Jayden put up his hand. “Mister, what was your first painting of?”

  “Call me Daniel,” was the reply. “It was a painting of Brighton pier, done from a memory from when I was little. Not great, but not bad. I put a stormy sky above it and whipped the waves up high. The more stormy I made it, the better it made me feel.”

  At last, Kieran nodded. But whether that was a good sign or not, Eva couldn’t tell.

  “What’s your favouritist painting in all the world?” a girl called Sam asked.

  “It’s the pier again.” Daniel smiled, his expression warm. “No storm this time, but a perfect blue sky
and waves that you just want to dive into, and there among them, mermaids. I’ve seen the sketches and studies and I can’t wait to see the finished painting. It’s actually by Miss Catesby. I hope she won’t mind me telling you about it.”

  A dozen little faces turned to meet her, and Eva realised where her sketchbook was. She had left it in Daniel’s palace.

  “That’s very kind of you, Daniel, but…it’s only a scribble!”

  “It’s not a scribble,” he confided to his new friends in a stage whisper. “Throw me those questions. Anything you want to know, that’s why I’m here!”

  “Do you like dogs?” Clara asked.

  “Love dogs.” Daniel laughed. “And now I’m settled in Brighton I hope to get at least a couple of rescue pups. Maybe I’ll teach them to paint!”

  “What’s your favourite colour?” Wai asked.

  “Royal blue, like my car.”

  The inevitable question to follow this, from Angel, was, “What’s your favourite car?”

  Eva decided not to step in and demand that all their questions be about art. It was enough that the children, who were usually ignored or told to shut up, felt able to speak to an adult who was important but unknown to them. Seeing how natural Daniel was with them, how patient and how interested in them, Eva hoped that somewhere beyond his anger and the drugs, there would be peace for him.

  “This one!” He took out his phone, tapped the screen a few times and held it up to display a photo of a sleek royal-blue sports car, chrome gleaming in the sunshine and a white stripe bisecting the long, low bonnet. “My AC Cobra. It’s outside, so if anyone’s into cars, I’ll show you when we’re done.”

  Eva wasn’t sure that the liability insurance ran to sports cars, but several of the children were murmuring with interest.

  “How do you choose what to paint?” Jake asked. “Have you done a painting of your car?”

  As Jake only ever painted cars, his question didn’t come as a surprise.

  “I don’t really choose,” Daniel told him. “It’s more I get a feeling that tells me, paint this. Just now when I was waiting for you guys I was standing outside and, just for the hell of it, I did a quick sketch of the car for the first time. I’m doing some experimenting at the moment, drawing things around me a bit more, things I can see and touch.”

  Eva caught his glance and smiled.

  “Can we see? Can we see?” The children’s voices united in a chorus. Never mind that they were the envy of many with their private view and Q and A, they wanted to see Daniel’s sketch of a car.

  All except Kieran, who had taken himself off to look at the paintings. He paused before each one, tracing the paths of the paint over the canvas with his finger.

  Daniel took a small spiral pad from his pocket and handed it to Jake.

  “Pass it round, have a look through,” he told them. “There’s the car and some beach sketches, that kind of thing. Pretty rough, but it’s all part of creating art.”

  The children gathered around Jake, who stood in their midst like a king presiding over the sketchbook. Eva approached, ready to supervise, but she kept a cautious eye on Kieran. If he had an event now, he might put his fist through a priceless artwork.

  Daniel rose from his knees and strolled across to stand beside Kieran. For a long time he was silent, then he asked, “How would you do it differently?”

  Kieran shrugged but went on stroking the textured paint. Then he chipped a piece off with his fingernail. “I’d do that.”

  The world went into slow motion. Eva couldn’t believe what she’d just witnessed, and was waiting for Rupert to appear with security guards to hurl the lot of them out.

  “Why that piece, though?” Daniel pressed his own fingernail into a corner, leaving a crescent impression in the canvas. “Why not there? What does it do to the painting for you?”

  Kieran lowered his chin to his chest. “Dunno. It’s just better.”

  Instinct.

  “Do you paint?”

  Kieran nodded. “In Miss Catesby’s classes.”

  “What kind of thing do you do?”

  “Stuff,” he replied. “Miss Catesby shows us pictures and we just sort of paint.”

  “Works for me,” Daniel told him. Then he turned back to the group, watching them leaf through the pages of the book.

  Eva tapped Daniel’s shoulder. She’d meant it platonically but it was impossible to forget what had happened between them.

  “We’re doing some hands-on outside on the terrace. Do you want to join in?” She smiled at Kieran. “Do you want to come outside as well?”

  Eva didn’t want to leave Kieran to his own devices with the paintings, but he seemed fascinated by them. “You can come back and see them again before the exhibition ends.”

  “Come and fling some paint around?” Daniel offered, accepting the sketchbook back from Jake. “These aren’t going anywhere.”

  “Yeah, all right!” Kieran smiled at this, and, out of his vision, Eva gestured to Daniel the universal sign for phew!

  Eva shepherded the children outside. As ever, some of them got stuck in straight away and were already crayoning and sticking, whereas others were distracted, and the sea view caused a sensation. Why that should be when most of the children had been born on the coast, Eva couldn’t understand, but perhaps it was because they were seeing it from a new angle.

  Daniel paused beside her, his hands in his pockets as he watched the children. He turned to Eva and whispered, “Tell me you painted that pier and the mermaids? It’s not just a few studies?”

  It was odd, being out here with Daniel again in such different circumstances. All that lust. And standing here with him now, Eva had to convince herself that she didn’t feel it anymore.

  Even though she did.

  “I started it, but I never got round to doing much more than a pencil outline,” Eva replied. “Why do you like it so much?”

  “Because I want to believe this place is magical.” He looked out to sea. “How much would you want if I were to commission it from you?”

  Eva spluttered with laughter. “You are joking, aren’t you? You want to commission my bosomy mermaids?”

  “It’s not a joke.” Daniel turned his attention to her again and smiled. “Name your price. I want it hanging in my house.”

  Eva ran her hand through her hair, self-conscious in his presence. She hadn’t a clue how much her work was worth, or how much she should charge a man who had once been her lover. “Erm…a hundred?”

  “Let’s talk size and money later? When you’re ready to make a deal and name a serious price.” He chuckled and strolled away to join the children in the midst of their artistic chaos.

  Eva followed, just in time to stop Maya from painting her own face.

  “But they do it on the beach!” the child protested.

  “We’re not on the beach,” Eva reminded her.

  It was just as well Rupert and Lyndsey had remembered her instruction to put several yards of plastic sheeting out on the terrace, as a pot of glue and several painty brushes had already fallen off the table. Eva crawled about trying to tidy up, and from under the table she could see Daniel’s progress as he went round the table from child to child. Or, at least, the progress of his legs.

  She thought suddenly of those paint-splattered feet of his, of the shared intensity of his work and their sex and how she would never see any of that again.

  But they weren’t enemies, and that was something at least.

  Eva could hear Daniel fielding more questions, everything from cars to collage, and answering each with the same patience and enthusiasm as the last. The man who had nothing and now had it all.

  Eva came out from under the table and found herself at Daniel’s feet. “Enjoying yourself?” she asked him as she got up.

  “Having a great time,” he told her, busy sellotaping several large sheets of paper together to form one big surface. “And about to give a demo of action painting. You’re teaching them we
ll!”

  “Big is the same as loud!” Eva laughed. “Go on, they’ll love it.”

  “Will you hold my jacket? Careful of the Wayfarers.” He winked and slipped out of his black jacket, holding it out to Eva. She draped it over her arm.

  “Your sunglasses are safe with me, Mr Scott.”

  “Call me Daniel,” he replied playfully. Then he rolled up his sleeve and spread the taped paper out on the plastic covering. As he went to work, flinging paint with abandon, she was reminded of that last afternoon when she had found him in his studio, a man possessed and out of control. Now he was anything but, his movements just as free, but without the edge of desperation. There was a joy in it instead, almost a dance here beneath the cloudless summer sky.

  What had happened after she’d left him? Had the ambulance come? Had someone calmed him?

  One by one the children stopped what they were doing to watch Daniel, some giggling, others cheering him on. Kieran watched in silence.

  “We don’t have to paint pictures,” Daniel told them as he threw down the colours. “It’s about making your mark on the paper, however you choose to do it. Art doesn’t have to follow the rules. Who wants to try?”

  “Me, me, me!” the children shouted.

  Eva touched Keiran’s shoulder and whispered. “Have a go, Keiran, show Daniel Scott what you can do!”

  Keiran didn’t say a word. He nodded to Eva, then raised his hand.

  “There’s time and paper for everyone,” Daniel told them. Then he spotted Kieran and raised his eyebrows, nodding the boy forward. “Come on up, Keiran, fling some paint for us.”

  Keiran, one of the oldest of the group, had developed the awkward, surly shuffle of a teenager. He came forward, stooping, his uncut hair in his face as if it were a disguise. He’d been labelled as difficult and challenging, descriptions which had equally been used to describe Daniel’s art.

  “Can I use my hand?” Keiran crouched down by the paint and swirled his finger in it.

  “Definitely!” Daniel enthused. “You’re the artist, follow your instincts.”

  Keiran grinned up at Daniel. A grin, from Keiran? Eva had never seen one before. The boy sank his hand into the bright blue paint—not just coating himself in it, but it seemed that he was feeling the texture of the paint as well. Then he jumped up to his feet and flung a handful of paint across the paper. He laughed at the blue spatter then got on his knees—Eva hoped the paint would wash out easily—and crawled across the paper, smearing the paint this way and that with his hand.