Read Online Prospero's Children by Jan Siegel - Free Book Online Page B

made her fancy these feather-touches contaminated her. Alison managed to adore everything without quite crossing the line into effusion, drawing Will out on his attic researches so skillfully that his sister grew anxious, throwing her arm around him with unaccustomed affection and digging her nails into his shoulder to silence him. The only thing that checked Alison’s flow, just for a moment, was the main drawing room. She hesitated on the threshold, glancing round as though something were missing, her smile blurring; and then she seemed to regain her self-command, and the charm was back in play. Afterward, pondering that temporary glitch in her manner, an explanation occurred to Fern, but she discarded it as too far-fetched. Alison had never been in that room before. She could not possibly be disconcerted because the idol had been moved.
    “I’ll help you bring your things in,” Will offered, clearly reserving judgment.
    Alison, just grateful enough and not too grateful, passed him a valise and a book of carpet patterns and began hefting the boxes herself. “Most of the pictures can stay in the car,” she said. “One of our artists lives in York: I picked up a load of stuff on my way here to take back on Monday. There are just a couple of mine I’d like to have in my room; I never go anywhere without my own pictures.” The sweep of her smile deprecated affectation. “Some people won’t travel without a particular cushion, or a bag, or an item of jewelry. With me I’m afraid it’s paintings. It’s disastrous on planes: it makes my baggage so heavy.”
    Fern went to assist her, largely out of curiosity. The paintings in question were propped up against the bumper, shrouded in a protective cloth. Alison vanished indoors and Fern lifted the material to steal a glance at the topmost canvas. She had been expecting an abstract but this work was representational, though it struck her as strangely distorted, not for effect but because of some clumsiness on the part of the artist. It showed a horse’s head peering over a stable door, a conventional enough subject, but there were bars impeding it and an odd discoloration creeping in from the borders of the image like mold. The horse’s mane was unnaturally long and tangled and its forehead seemed somehow misshapen, as though its creator had made no real effort for verisimilitude, yet its eyes were intensely alive, heartbreakingly real, dark wild eyes gazing out at Fern with a mixture of pleading and defiance. Being in London most of the time Fern had had few opportunities to ride, but she loved horses and still dreamed of having the chance to learn. She found herself reaching out to touch the canvas, her hand going instinctively to the lock on the stable door; the paint felt rough and hard, like metal, like rust. “Leave it!” The voice behind her was Alison’s, almost unrecognizable in its abrupt alteration.
    Fern jumped. Her hand dropped; the cloth slipped back into place. “I beg your pardon,” she said with exquisite politeness. “I wasn’t aware the pictures were private.”
    For a second, she thought Alison was discomfited; then both curtness and awkwardness melted away and a thin veil of warmth slid over her face, leaving it as before. “The paintings are old,” she explained, “and very fragile. If you touch the paint you could damage them. I’m keeping them for restoration work: my own personal project. As a matter of fact, I think that whole scene has been applied on top of something else. The layers have to be removed very carefully. As you saw, I’ve only just started.” The area that looks like mold, Fern thought, only half satisfied. “A lot of stolen masterpieces get painted over to make them easier to hide or transport. I keep hoping I’m going to come across something special.”
    She carried the pictures upstairs herself. They had installed her, by common consensus, on the top floor—“Out of the way,” said Will—in a room that felt