Songs of Blue and Gold Read Online Free PDF Page B

you.’
    Elizabeth hardly looked at the vibrant swirl of colour on the front. It slipped like water from her fingers.
    After half an hour, Bill left them alone. ‘I’ll wait in the car park,’ he said.
    She joined him twenty minutes later. Elizabeth had closed her eyes and gone to sleep, her breath whining and wheezing. Touched that he had cared enough to come, and wanting in some way to make up for her mother’s reaction, Melissa asked Bill, ‘Shall we have a drink?’
    Melissa remembered there was a cosy pub on the way back into town. She suggested it, but he said, ‘I’m not much for pubs these days. Too noisy and full of machines. But if you’ll risk it I could make you a cup of coffee at mine if you want to follow me back.’
    â€˜If it’s no trouble, that would be nice.’
    They made for their separate cars, Bill to a well-maintainedblue saloon of some Japanese design and Melissa to her mother’s small white Fiat. Windscreen wipers flapping against the intermittent drizzle, they headed into a gusty wind towards Tunbridge Wells.
    Skirting the common, maples were shedding bark in thin shavings of coppery curlicues. A witch hazel dangled flowers of orange sea creatures and spiders. Melissa followed Bill to a house hidden in an enclave of its northern side. Edwardian, spacious and detached, with a hotchpotch of timbering apparently designed to add a rustic touch, it was set on a lawn ringed with dense shrubs. They drew up on gravel, just enough space for two cars.
    Standing in the tidy hall, Melissa felt an airy hollowness stretching up the stairs. He led the way into a high-ceilinged sitting room. All was neat in there too, the furniture old but comfortable, the shelves crammed with books and a collection of unexpectedly vibrant paintings on the walls.
    A room leading off was evidently a study. Here walls were entirely lined with books and a handsome desk stood in a bay window overlooking the garden. An angle-poise light had been left on by a photograph of a war memorial. The statue of a soldier, his stone form grey and lichen-mottled, half kneeling, bayonet ready, was framed by a fire of red and gold foliage behind it, as if the imaginary guns and grenades were bursting into crimson leaf and flowers.
    â€˜I’m sorry about . . . how she was. It was so kind of you to come. What was it you had been keeping for her?’
    Bill picked a printed card off the desk and handed it over. It was a notice advertising an art exhibition in Brighton.
    â€˜I was sent some of these. Thought we might take a trip together, make a day of it. I didn’t realise she was as bad asshe is, you see. I’d ring and she didn’t sound like herself. I was getting so worried . . . that was when I decided to knock on her door.’
    â€˜I’m glad you did.’
    â€˜Obviously she can’t go now. But she might like it anyway for the picture on the front. I think she will.’
    â€˜Thanks.’
    The clouds darkened outside, weighted by rain.
    â€˜She didn’t react to anything I took her yesterday,’ said Melissa.
    Bill went over to one of the bookshelves. Many of the books, she saw now, were volumes of art history; serious publications on photography, large slabs of printed pages. He pulled out one: it was a huge tome titled Art of the 20 th Century. It had an index which took up almost a quarter of its pages. He dragged a slightly tremulous finger down a column and began flipping pages.
    â€˜There,’ he said. ‘That’s the picture. Do you know it?’
    She drew close enough to see where he was pointing.
    An abstract picture of the sea was captioned with the artist’s name and dated 1967.
    â€˜No,’ said Melissa.
    Bill picked up the gallery invitation. She looked at the card more carefully this time. The painting on the front was very similar to the picture in the book. And there, in small print below, was the name