Read Online The Restoration Artist by Lewis DeSoto - Free Book Online

“I don’t think I have the skills. Not for a proper restoration.”
    “But you said it could be cleaned. You showed me.”
    “That much, yes.”
    “You obviously have the skills for that.”
    “It’s a long job. And I don’t know if I’m staying.”
    “No?” He studied me for a minute. “Do you have somewhere else to be?”
    It was the second time he’d asked me that, and I had the impression he knew the answer already. I shrugged again.
    We were sitting in the last light of the day at a table in the garden of the hotel with a bottle of Ricard pastis between us, our glasses filled with the pale milky yellow liquid. The air carriedthe licorice aroma of the anise liqueur. On the grass next to the wrought-iron legs of my chair sat the brown paper bag I had brought down from my room.
    Earlier, the priest had come by the chapel and I’d shown him the area I’d cleaned on the painting. “Remarkable,” he’d said. “I would never have thought it was so bright underneath. All these years I’ve thought of it as a dark painting. And it’s gotten darker gradually, without me even noticing. Life can be like that,
n’est-ce pas
?” He’d then invited me to join him for dinner later in the garden of the hotel.
    The door to the kitchen swung open and Linda appeared with a tray. She set down a plate containing small black olives and slices of dried sausage. “Since you are drinking pastis I thought you should have it the way they do in the south, where I come from, with salty olives and dried sausage. This one is flavoured with thyme.”
    “Why don’t you and Victor come and join us?” I said. “There aren’t any other guests for you to look after, are there?”
    “No. But we’re cooking. Père Caron ordered the specialty of the house tonight. We’ll sit down and eat with you later.”
    The priest smiled and rubbed his hands together.
“L’agneau pré-salé
. You’ve tasted it?”
    “I don’t think so.”
    Linda said, “
Pré-salé
lamb is fed on the salt marshes, where the grasses are often covered by the high tides. The marshes are on the other side of the island, near the lighthouse. You might have noticed them?”
    I shook my head.
    “You are in for a treat, young man,” the priest said. “There is nothing better than our own island lamb.”
    As Linda left, her foot knocked over the paper bag next to my chair. “Sorry.” She bent to set it upright before continuing to the kitchen.
    I picked up the bag and handed it to Père Caron. “These are the boots you lent me. Thank you.”
    He leaned over and looked at my legs.
    “I found my own shoes,” I said.
    “You found them?”
    “Yes, on the cliff. I don’t know how I could have missed them before.”
    There was a disbelieving expression on his face, and I was on the verge of telling him about the boy, but I decided not to.
    He lit one of his Caporal cigarettes and dropped the extinguished match on the lawn, lifting his face to the last rays of the sun. Just beyond him a honeysuckle bush was lush with blooms on the verge of opening, the closed flowers like thin red flames in the fading light.
    Without looking at me, he said, “I think you should tell me why you are here, Leo.”
    “I told you, to look at the landscape. To paint it.”
    “Yet you said to me that you are not really a painter. ‘Not any more’ were your words.”
    “I’m not a desperado, Père, if that’s what you’re thinking. The police aren’t after me. Nobody is, for that matter.”
    Something about his silent scrutiny made me nervous and I blurted out, “Let’s just say I am running from the past.”
    “And your ‘accident’ on the cliff?” He accented the word, but without irony.
    I put an olive in my mouth and chewed it before dropping the pit into the saucer. I took a sip of pastis. “It was misty. I lost my footing.”
    “Those things you said earlier,” the priest continued, “the questions you asked, about the dead communicating with us. What was