Rosie (78 page)

It took some time to find somewhere to park. Hampstead was always bustling, but on a Saturday night people came from all over London to eat in its many restaurants or drink in the quaint pubs. The streets were narrow and soon became congested. Rosie had never seen so many smart cars all in one place. But they eventually found a parking spot and walked back down Heath Street to the gallery. To their delight, by the time they got there at least twenty other people had arrived.

‘Your invitations, please, sir,’ said a small dark man in a dinner jacket as they walked in. ‘There is a cloakroom at the far end of the gallery for the ladies’ coats,’ he went on as he checked the invitations. ‘I hope you will have an enjoyable evening.’

Rosie’s first thoughts at that moment were that Thomas had held out on her. He had played down how swish this gallery was. It looked quite small from outside, but in fact the narrow part was merely an entrance hall, and a few feet further down it opened up into a much wider space. It was so very modern, like Scandinavian designs she’d seen in magazines, all white and chrome, with dozens of spotlights and a polished pine floor.

Her eyes darted this way and that. The walls on either side of her each had four small paintings. She wanted to examine them, but the entire crowd were standing shoulder to shoulder apparently gazing at just one picture in the middle of the gallery. Rosie could just make out the top of Thomas’s head behind their backs. She turned to Frank, who was just helping his wife out of her coat.

‘Do we wander about, or is that some kind of conducted tour?’ Rosie whispered, indicating all the people in the huddle. ‘Is Thomas talking to them?’

Frank looked and half smiled. ‘I think they are asking him questions. Give me your coat and I’ll try to catch his eye as I go past. They don’t normally have tours as such. I expect that particular painting is something out of the ordinary.’

As he went off with the coats, Donald, Rosie and Norah went over to look at the first group of paintings. ‘Look, that’s Sparrow’s Nest,’ Norah exclaimed. This was a pretty, white boarded cottage in the village. ‘And that one is old Jack Higgins’s tumbledown place.’

Rosie stared at them in awe. She’d been with Thomas when he’d sketched them both, but she’d never imagined they would end up like this. Sparrow’s Nest had a misty, early morning look about it, and he’d painted the minute garden in front of it just as it really was, a wild profusion of tumbling flowers. Jack Higgins’s place, however, was painted as at dusk, the long shadows giving it a sinister feel. Of the two she preferred the latter: she’d often got goosebumps as she walked by Jack’s place, and the painting achieved the same end.

‘Rosie!’

She turned sharply at Thomas’s voice. He was coming across the gallery towards her, with a wide smile on his face. He wasn’t wearing a dinner jacket like all the other men. She knew he didn’t own one, and he probably thought such things didn’t go with an artist’s image either. But he looked smarter than she’d ever seen him before in a light grey jacket, trousers of a slightly darker shade and a bright blue tie she’d given him last year on his birthday.

‘You look so gorgeous,’ he exclaimed, his eyes reflecting his joy at seeing her. ‘My wild rose has turned into a beautiful, sophisticated woman.’ He kissed her cheek and hugged her with one arm as he warmly greeted Norah and Donald.

‘I hope you won’t mind if I can’t spend much time with you this evening, but Paul Brett, the gallery owner, has warned me I have to mingle with all the guests.’ He glanced round behind him. ‘That’s Paul,’ he said, pointing out a thin, dark-haired, dapper man with a thin moustache who was talking to a small group of people. ‘I’ll introduce you to him once he’s free, but do you mind if I whisk Rosie away for a minute or two? I’ve got something to show her.’

‘Of course not.’ Norah put her arm through her son’s and smiled at him. ‘Donald and I will mingle ourselves, won’t we?’

Donald grinned. He looked entirely at ease. ‘I’ll look after Mother,’ he said. ‘I like parties.’

People were still standing in front of the same picture, but as Thomas came up behind them they parted, and Rosie gasped as she saw what they were all looking at.

The picture was of her. It was entitled ‘Wild Rose’ – a girl with a dirty face, tangled hair and a shabby over-large dress, looking out through a wild rose bush.

‘Oh Thomas,’ she breathed, suddenly overcome by a rush of half-forgotten memories. ‘It’s so, well… beautiful.’

She couldn’t say more, for she was carried right back to that day over three years ago. She could feel the sun on her bare arms as she hung out washing in the orchard, hear the clucking of the hens, smell the scent of meadowsweet as she watched the man with a limp and a walkingstick coming up the lane. She remembered everything so distinctly, his open-necked shirt, his tilted hat, a knapsack on his back and jacket slung over one shoulder. Heat shimmered on the road, and she felt his weariness. Even before she heard him knocking on the front door or calling out, somehow she sensed he wasn’t going to pass by.

Over the years she had often recalled every detail of that day, sometimes with regret that she’d unwittingly been the cause of such an avalanche, but more often with wonder that, after all the horror and shame, he’d become her dearest and closest friend.

Now, as she gazed at this painting, she was staggered that Thomas had kept that first glimpse of her tucked away in his head, that he loved her enough to be able to paint her there, just feet from where his sister lay buried. It wasn’t a twee, sugary painting destined for a chocolate box; he had managed to convey the feeling that something dark was going on behind the scenes. It was simply a masterpiece.

Turning to Thomas with brimming eyes, heedless of all the curious glances around them, she stretched her arms out for him. He held her silently for several minutes. She could hear his heart beating and sensed he was trying to find the words to explain why he’d never told her about this picture, and what it meant to him.

Lifting up her chin, he looked into her eyes for a moment, then smiled. ‘It represents a new beginning,’ he said softly. ‘That moment when you came through the weeds was the start of a new era for me. There was terrible pain to come, great anger and hatred, yet through all that I found myself again. Through you, seeing your courage and determination, I was able to really live. It’s what started me painting again, and stopped me seeing myself as a cripple. So no more tears. Tonight’s another new start. A bright, sparkly new future for both of us.’

Rosie found it hard to contain her tears many more times that evening, seeing paintings which she knew were glimpses into Thomas’s very soul. A tenement building with washing hung across the yard was his early life. A woman dozing in a chair was his mother. A jungle scene was part of his memory of Burma, perhaps a view from beyond the barbed wire. Whitestone Pond was there too, and with small children sailing their boats it somehow reflected the optimism he’d felt once he’d arrived in Hampstead. Yet the crippled ex-soldier selling newspapers was how he’d feared he would end his days.

Her heart swelled with pride as she saw that people were spellbound by his paintings. She listened as Thomas spoke shyly to reporters and wished she dared interrupt and inform them what a brilliantly funny man he could be too. When she overheard a couple of art critics pompously speaking of his ‘raw talent’ and ‘primitive technique’, she felt like steaming in to give them a mouthful of the kind of primitive abuse she’d learned as a child from her father.

But as the evening wore on, she realized that such criticism was actually praise, for they mentioned Thomas in the same breath as Van Gogh and Monet. Her excitement grew each time she saw Paul Brett cross the room to place a Sold ticket on one of the frames. She heard plummy voices lavishing unstinted praise, and she knew they weren’t phoneys only here for the free wine and canapés, but people who truly appreciated art. A little old lady whom she later discovered was Lady Elizabeth Huntingdon said she could hardly wait for the exhibition to close so she could take her painting of Sparrow’s Nest home and hang it.

But the picture Thomas had named ‘Wild Rose’ was still unticketed. Paul Brett was jotting down offers for it; the highest bidder would get it at the end of the week. Rosie didn’t dare to even think of asking Thomas how high the bids might go. She had overheard the sum of forty guineas mentioned at one time, and that stunned her.

Paul was the only person to realize ‘Wild Rose’ was Rosie. He took a step back when Thomas introduced them and smiled at her as if he’d just solved a mystery.

‘Now I understand,’ he said, his cool blue eyes twinkling. ‘When Thomas showed me that picture, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I don’t often react to art in that way. When I do it’s because I know I’ve found something really special. I believe you were the catalyst which unlocked Thomas’s latent talent. I must take you and Thomas out to dinner one night next week. Perhaps then I can persuade him to paint you as you are now, for me.’

As the evening progressed Rosie found herself losing her nervousness, to the point where she introduced herself to people not just as Thomas’s girlfriend, but as a gardener. She soon found that art lovers were invariably garden people too, and when she said she was thinking of moving to Hampstead shortly, several people gave her their cards and asked that she contact them.

To her further delight, Rosie’s fears that Donald might show himself and his parents up were unfounded. He took only one glass of wine and moved around with his parents, chatting to people quite comfortably. At one point Rosie heard him telling a middle-aged couple about how Jack Higgins, the man who owned the tumbledown cottage Thomas had painted, had once chased him right through the village when he was a small boy because he thought he’d been scrumping in his orchard. He told them he was too scared of the place to even set foot in the garden. The couple laughed with him and must have been touched by the story, because later Rosie heard they’d bought the painting for twenty guineas.

By ten o’clock, as the last of the guests left, only four paintings remained unsold. Frank and Norah were slumped wearily on a settee, and Donald was still wandering around staring at the paintings. The two waitresses were collecting empty glasses.

Paul Brett was standing in the middle of the gallery, beaming at all the sold tickets. ‘Well, Thomas,’ he said. ‘What am I going to sell for the rest of the week? Couldn’t you rustle up another couple for me tomorrow?’

‘And on the seventh day he rested,’ Thomas chuckled. ‘Not to mention spending the day with Rosie. And you’ve still got “Wild Rose” to auction off, so don’t be greedy.’

Paul turned to Rosie, took her hand in his and lifted it to his lips. ‘I wish you both every happiness. Thomas is a great artist, Rosie, and I’m quite certain that you’ve been his inspiration. I can’t thank you enough for that.’

Frank insisted Thomas came home with them. ‘There’s a spare bed in Donald’s room,’ he said, winking at the younger man to remind him that for tonight there had to be some propriety, at least until he and Norah had gone home. ‘I’ve got some champagne chilling. We’ve some serious celebrating to do.’

‘Do you know what was the nicest thing tonight?’ Norah said much later that evening, back in Piccadilly. Donald had gone to bed – one glass of champagne and he was almost asleep in the chair.

‘What was that, my dear? That our bid for fifty guineas for “Wild Rose” has almost certainly been beaten by someone?’ Frank said, slurring his words slightly.

Rosie gasped. She knew they had put in a bid for it, but she hadn’t known for how much.

‘No, dear, not that. And I did tell you to buy the little girls with the pram, just in case, but you didn’t listen,’ Norah said reprovingly.

‘I wouldn’t have let you buy one of my paintings,’ Thomas said with a slight hiccup. They were all a little tipsy but he was the worst, as people had been plying him with glasses of wine all evening. ‘I’ll paint one specially for you.’

‘You can’t give your work away,’ she said indignantly. ‘That’s like asking Frank to give you a tractor for nothing!’

‘What would I need a tractor for?’ Thomas laughed. ‘Besides, I know you’ll show it to everyone and I might get a few commissions. But to get back to what you were saying, what was so nice about tonight?’

Norah looked a little embarrassed now. ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t bring up the subject, but it was just that absolutely no one mentioned the murders.’

Rosie had also noticed this and been surprised by it. She and Donald had had their faces appear in enough newspapers, and Thomas’s connection hadn’t gone unnoticed by the press either. She had braced herself for someone to bring it up. But there hadn’t been even the vaguest allusion to it.

‘Arty Hampstead people are too polite,’ Thomas said. ‘Or maybe they just don’t read newspapers.’

‘I don’t think it was that at all,’ Norah retorted. ‘It’s because it’s all forgotten. No one talks about it any more in Mayfield either. It’s finally over.’

Rosie didn’t comment for a moment. She wanted to believe Norah was right. ‘Don’t you think it’s more likely they forgot because Thomas was the star of the evening, and he’s such a fascinating man in his own right?’ she suggested. She had seen the wealth of human interest in every single one of his paintings. Each one had a story behind it, enough to keep anyone’s interest well away from her and her family. ‘We’ll have to wait and see before we get too complacent; we don’t know what the press will drag up yet.’

‘None of them asked me anything about it’ Thomas said. ‘I was prepared to snap their heads off if they did, but there was nothing. In fact they didn’t even drag up the old stuff about me being a prisoner of war.’

Frank stirred in his chair. He looked sleepily content, his fat belly bulging over his cummerbund. ‘I think you two should stop fretting about the past and look to your futures,’ he said. ‘My Norah’s always right, or so she’s very fond of telling me. The whole business is forgotten. The Suez crisis and the sale of premium bonds are the only hot news now. If you want my advice, you two should get yourselves married and concentrate on living happily ever after.’