French Blue (16 page)

“Sorry,” said Lisa, gathering stray charcoal from under the easel and table.

“Here, let me help you.”

Daisy picked up some pencils and whispered, “Is everything okay? Do you have all that you need?”

“Yes, I’m fine.”

“Only your paper is blank, and we’ve been here ten minutes.”

“I don’t know where to start,” she said.

Daisy smiled. “I know, your first life class can be a little overwhelming. Would you like a few tips? Although really, the only one is to simply enjoy yourself.”

“I’d love some,” said Lisa.

It was an amazed Lisa who heard Olivier say the class was over, yet a glance at her watch told her the class had lasted ninety minutes. She was exhausted. Olivier had really meant what he’d said about keeping them on their toes. Sometimes, they’d been limited to five minutes a sketch, and at others they hadn’t been allowed to even look at the paper while they drew.

Her sketch pad was full of drawings, some figurative, some wildly abstract. Olivier wrapped a towel around his waist and climbed off the dais to her. “I’ll get dressed and then come and take a look at your work,” he said.

“I haven’t finished. I thought we had ages left,” said Lisa, clenching her hands to avoid throwing them over her childish attempts at sketching him.

“Finishing isn’t the aim of the session, and it’s great you got absorbed in your work.” He planted a quick kiss on her cheek. “I’ll be back soon.”

Some students carried on sketching, rubbing at the charcoal, while some sat back and started discussing each other’s work. Lisa flipped through her sketches. Well, some of them looked like a man, and one or two even, to her lay person’s eye, resembled Olivier. She’d managed to sketch in some of his features and, amazingly, had been brave enough to draw his genitalia, but there were definitely things about her drawings that just didn’t work—and not because one or two had been produced using abstract techniques. The proportions weren’t quite right and there was no way she could claim it was a deliberate technique.

“You’ve done well.” Daisy spoke behind her.

Lisa sighed. “I’ve had a go, that’s all I can say.” She then made the mistake of glancing at Daisy’s easel. Her figurative drawing not only looked like Olivier and was in perfect proportion, but it had also managed to capture the restlessness beneath the relaxed exterior, the tension that underlay the charming facade.

She sat on her stool, cringing inside. “Oh fuck.”

Daisy patted her shoulder. “Stop! You’ve done your own interpretation. The proportions aren’t quite right, but I love the way you’ve interpreted the face and eyes. But Olivier will be able to give you some detailed feedback.”

“He told me.”

Daisy laughed. “You sound as if you’re waiting for the guillotine. He gives us all a critique, and we also critique each other’s work. Don’t be scared. He’s very supportive and insightful, and as it’s your first time, I’m sure he’ll be gentle.”

As she listened to his incisive but positive critiques on each of her fellow student’s drawings, Lisa could hardly believe he was the same man as the Dom who treated her with such strict severity. When it was her turn, he was firm but fair. It was obvious to the others that she was a novice, but he found aspects of her work to praise and gave some tips on improving her technique. Towards the end of the session, Lisa even felt confident enough to join in discussion of the others’ work. There were obvious points of technique that she was woefully lacking in, but it wasn’t about getting things right or wrong. The whole point was self-expression and process; true art for art’s sake.

After the class had finished and everyone had had lunch out in the chateau gardens, the students departed, and she and Olivier were left alone.

“Thank you for earlier. I really enjoyed the class,” she said as they strolled through the rose garden.

Olivier slipped his hand in hers, and a thrill of pleasure shot through her. “It was a pleasure, if only to see your face when I stepped onto the dais.”

“You’re very wicked.”

“I try to be. Did you really enjoy yourself, or are you just saying it to please me?”

“At first I was terrified. My hand cramped up at the thought of making a mark on the paper, and I wanted to die of shame at my work being seen, let alone discussed.”

Lisa hadn’t preplanned her words, but she noticed a flicker of recognition in his eyes. Was that how he felt now, unable to paint or sculpt?

“I thought I’d thrown a lamb to the slaughter at first, but then Daisy spoke to you, and I didn’t see your head rise up from the easel after that. I hope the movement techniques helped to free those nerves.”

“Oh yes. When you asked us to turn around and include all the other interesting elements we could see in the room, I was completely nonplussed, but it worked.” She almost blushed. “What came out was a complete hotchpotch, but it was fun. The whole thing was incredibly liberating.”

She thought of her own job, where a wrong choice of words, a lax comment could cause untold damage… The antithesis of liberating.

“What are you thinking?” he asked.

“That today I really truly felt happy. Perhaps it was relief at being able to free myself and try something I’m not expected to be great at, just for the sheer hell of it, and I also realised just how much pressure I’ve been under for the past few years.” And that a professional misjudgement in falling for Jody had made her life almost intolerable for a while.

“Today was pure pleasure, and you didn’t even need me to make that happen. You can join an art class anywhere. I don’t have to be in charge.”

She laughed and couldn’t let it pass. “But it’s so much more fun if you are. Did you mind posing nude?”

They reached the steps up to the terrace and stopped.

“No. I’ve done it before when I was a student, and Daisy warned my regular class, except you, of course. I thought I’d keep that a surprise. Posing nude and teaching at the same time was a challenge but helped me to see things from a different perspective. I hope now you can see being a model isn’t so scary, after all.”

“No. I can see that, but I’d still much rather draw you nude than vice versa. In public, anyway. In private would be a different matter. I’m glad you found it a challenge. I’m glad you find me a challenge.” He took both her hands in his. The perfume from the roses was so sweet, it almost overwhelmed her. He studied her as if he was searching for the meaning in her words. She plunged in. “You could paint me. No one need know or see the picture, if that’s what’s stopping you from painting again.”

“Nice try,” he said slickly, as if he’d seen her suggestion coming from a mile away.

“You’ve taken photographs of me. What difference is there?”

He laid his forehead against hers. She held her breath. “All the difference in the world.”

She smiled. “Olivier, there’s something else that was bothering me during the class.”

His brow furrowed. “What?”

“That there was no way I could do justice to your cock.”

“Then perhaps you should make a much closer study of it. Come to bed.”

Later that afternoon, as Olivier paid a visit to a gallery in the village, Lisa went to bathe in the claw-foot tub in the main bathroom. There was a text from him waiting on her phone, apologising that he’d been delayed in the gallery and promising to cook sole veronique for dinner as a consolation. Lisa threw on a robe and wandered from the bathroom, intending to dry her hair and get dressed in Olivier’s room, but as she walked along the corridor, a door at the end creaked in the breeze from an open window. She stopped and saw the door to the studio at the end of the corridor open a crack.

It was too irresistible an opportunity.

Maybe by seeing his unfinished paintings, she could know more about the man, perhaps glimpse the pain that had stopped him from creating any new art for the past few years. She skittered along the corridor, still in her bare feet and robe, and pushed the door open wider.

As before, his paintings were stacked with their faces against the walls or desks, and the cloths hung over the work on the easels. There were also a couple of sculptures on a shelf, also covered in dark cloths. Lisa had seen some of his earlier work in online galleries, where he couldn’t control its exhibition. Her knowledge of art didn’t extend to judging it with a connoisseur’s eye, but even she could tell it was not only the work of an experienced artist but one unafraid to experiment.

She lifted the corner of the cloth on one large easel and held it aloft. It was a Hockneyesque scene, centred on a swimming pool on a sunlit day in what was unmistakably Provence. His family home, perhaps? There were other landscapes in a style that reminded her a little of Van Gogh, with bold brush strokes and vibrant colours. There were a few abstracts too; portraits of various young women. His subs, maybe?

Lisa bent down for a closer look. One portrait of an intense-looking young woman with jet-black hair and deep brown eyes was framed and had a name on it. Gaby. Perhaps she could also see a family resemblance to Olivier in it. A cousin, maybe?

She carried on looking, transfixed by the beauty, the vibrancy, the emotion in all of the pictures, be they portraits, landscapes or still life. Most were finished, which hadn’t been what she expected. Why, then, were they hidden away from view? Had he not thought them good enough for public consumption? Had he lost confidence in them? She felt deeply sorry if that was the case.

In the corner of the room, more canvasses were stacked with their fronts turned away. She lifted the nearest. It showed a face. Not Gaby. This girl was a redhead with emerald eyes and a pretty upturned nose, but that was it. Half the face was completed, the other still a sketch.

Lisa turned the other pictures over. They were all of the redhead, some portraits, some figures, some—her heart rate leapt—were full-length nudes. A few were half completed, but most hadn’t gone beyond the sketch stage.

“What do you think you’re doing here?”

Heart thudding, Lisa turned to find Olivier at the door. Panicking at first, she realised there was no point lying to him or trying to hide the obvious.

“Looking at your work. It’s wonderful.”

He stepped into the room. “Didn’t I ask you not to come in here?”

“Yes, but…”

“You decided to invade my privacy anyway?”

“I decided that someone had to. Someone had to come out and say what I know many people must be thinking: that you have to face up to the reasons why you don’t paint anymore. You have to confront that dark place. Why deny yourself something that was obviously once a great source of pleasure?”

“I have other sources of pleasure now,” he said coldly.

“You know what I mean.”

“Can we leave now?”

Lisa’s pulse raced. “Yes, when you’ve told me what happened.”

The struggle on his face was painful to watch, and Lisa wondered if she’d gone too far. What if he threw her out, not only out of the chateau but from his life? Her stomach churned in panic. Even if—when—they had to part, she couldn’t bear it to be like this. Not now, before their time was up.

“Why does it matter so much to you?” he asked.

“Because…I can’t stand to see talent wasted, to see people not following their dreams. I’d have killed to have a talent like yours, and it would have killed me to waste it. What happened to stop you from working?”

He walked into the room and wandered over to one of the paintings, turning his back to her. She couldn’t see his expression as he faced the shrouded picture, his arms wrapped around his body.

“I got sick.”

Lisa frowned. “You got sick? I don’t understand.”

“Two years ago, out of the blue, I got sick—so sick that the doctors thought I would die. They diagnosed a rare form of cancer of the blood and said there wasn’t much they could do.”

“But you’re here.”

“Yes, I am.” He spun round, his face blank of any expression. “But not everyone is.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I had a girlfriend at the time, a long-term partner named Caro, and when she heard the prognosis, she couldn’t face the idea of living with a sick man and watching me die, so she left me.”

“Oh Jesus, I am so sorry.”

“Don’t be. I don’t blame her now. I did at the time, and for a long time. I felt as if I’d been handed a death sentence and lost the only woman I’d ever loved, but now…now I can see why she couldn’t cope. I can understand and even forgive her. She was young, like me. Who wants to handle that kind of shit? She was better off without me.”

“Now, though, you seem healthy. You are healthy, aren’t you?”

“Oh yes. Doctors aren’t infallible, and in my case, I’m delighted they were wrong. Alex insisted on me getting a third and a fourth opinion from some of his friends at Oxford, and after months of tests, they found I’d got an infectious disease that can mimic cancer. It was treated, and here I am.”

“And Caro?”

“She found out eventually that I was fine, and she came back to me, but it was too late. I told her it was over and I could never trust her again. After that, I decided that this type of arrangement—what we have—was a far simpler and less painful way to conduct my life.”