Read Online Conversations With Mr. Prain by Joan Taylor - Free Book Online

left of the portrait of Mrs. Marshall, reminiscent of Claude. At first, the painting appeared to depict a group of trees, which dominated the foreground, but the subject of the painting lay beyond, over the side of a cliff or ridge. Mountains rose in the distance behind a dark sea. The outline of a castle with numerous round towers was silhouetted against the dusk sky. In the middle foreground a path wound down from these hilly slopes through groves of trees. A cottage, with pigs, sheep and chickens scattered about it, was in the middle ground. At the centre of the painting the small, animated figure of a woman, arms flailing as she rushed along the path, contrasted with the peace of the rest of the picture. And yet, as I looked at it, the whole scene became strange and ominous. The woman rushing down the path was the only human being represented. She was quite alone, abandoned. Gradually, it seemed to me that she was overpowered by the dreadful sky above her. It pressed down on the pastoral landscape, as if suffocating the breath of a summer day, and the woman was not hurrying home but dashing, oblivious, to a murky fate that awaited her beyondthe confines of the frame. Was she escaping? Was she meeting her lover? Bruised black and blue, the delicate pink sky was fading, and a darkness was coming, a darkness without stars or moon. A blush of light clung to the long horizon of the sea, but it was being squeezed dead by an oppressive pillow of clouds. I sensed the cold silence as the birds stopped singing, a silence disrupted only by hissing waves along the shore. The hills undulating down toward the ocean were like a sleeping female form, heavy and unsuspecting. I was watching, hidden by a cluster of trees, from a vantage point high above.
    I was standing before this painting when Mr. Prain returned. I heard his footsteps coming down the hall, and then the door swung open. I stood there with my arms behind my back and my heart racing, managing, I hoped, to appear composed. He seemed to be the sort of man who appreciated cool women. I tried to smile without tremor. It is one of my most perfected illusions, a strategy of survival to cope with a mind that ducked into fancy at the slightest nudge, and a tendency to over-react to paintings and films. Despite people believing me easy-going, this is in fact the last thing I am. It is not fashionable to feel too much. This is not a romantic age.
    “You have so many interesting things here, Mr. Prain,” I said. “Have you collected them all yourself?”
    He smiled a relaxed smile. “Good Lord, no. My grandfather collected a few odds and ends, but a lot of it has been in the family for generations. My grandfather was themain one interested in amassing old books.” He gestured with a nod to the bookshelf. “I have a man who bids for this and that occasionally.” Before, at the Market, I would have teased him about saying this. Mr. Prain had “a man.” Mr. Prain has many people who do things for him, I thought. Monique, for example.
    “Have you sorted out the problem?” I enquired.
    “Oh.” He smiled again, a little nervously. “For the time being. It’s a trifle really. The gardener has been here since I was a boy, but he has developed, with age, a bit of a temper.”
    We were speaking of the man who walked from the lawnmower in a fury. I put the two together. “Can the mower be fixed?”
    His gaze froze in response to the fact that I had understood the substance of his conversation with Monique, which of course I had not. It was as if I had trespassed. He had, correctly, assumed my French would not be up to the standard of the language they had employed so fast and fluently, and perhaps things had been said that it was improper for me to have overheard. I felt that I should quickly put his mind at rest. “I saw the gardener through the window,” I said. “He seemed to be very upset about the machine.”
    Did I detect relief in his face? He turned away. “The