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Authors: Francis King
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colleague, to agree at the last moment to show a Hampstead house, several months now on the market, to a prospective buyer from France. He was conscientious about his work. He knew that a partnership in the long established firm of estate agents was almost in his grasp. He must not jeopardise that.
He thought of the Sunday but Carrie was due to spend it with him, as she did once every four weeks. Couldnât he put her off? No. He was conscientious not merely about his work but also about his erratic and often clumsy relationship with this nine-year-old girl who could never forgive him for, as she saw it, abandoning not merely her mother but also herself. So it had to be the following Saturday.
Of course he took his two favourite cameras, the ancient Leica and the new digital Canon, a scientific miracle. In his biography, Millaisâs son had quoted from a letter written by his father to a woman friend. In it, the painter described how, day after day, he had sat in extreme discomfort under an umbrella, âbeing blown by the wind into the waterâ, and so gradually becoming âintimate with the feelings of Ophelia when that lady sank to muddy death.â But as Luke stepped off the train at Ewell â a totally unremarkable place, he thought â there was not a breath of wind and the sun was hot and dazzling. He felt a surge of excitement flood through his body, making his cheeks flush and his finger-tips tingle. He might have been on his way to some long awaited, desperately wanted assignation.
He knew by now that a young and beautiful woman had lain for hours on end in an enamel bath tub filled with water inadequately warmed by a lamp placed beneath it, to model for Ophelia. She had caught pleurisy and it was thought that that might well have precipitated the pulmonary tuberculosis from which she had suffered for the rest of her cruelly short life. Nonetheless, Luke all but expected to come not merely on the reach of water that had provided Millais with his setting but also on Ophelia herself, her eyes wide open, her lips slightly parted, and one of those white, raised hands grasping a water-lily.
He repeatedly paused as he followed the winding course of what often became little more than a stream. Could this be the place? This? This? Each time he decided: No. One curve seemed exactly right. But in the distance some youths, most them stripped to their waists, were playing football, shouting to each other in a language that Luke could not understand or even identify. Their strident voices and the thud, thud, thud of the ball robbed the location of any intimacy or peace. It was the same at a stretch where the foliage was particularly green and luxuriant and the trees arched over the water exactly as in the picture. But on the opposite bank two people, a girl and a boy, were lying out on the lush grass with a transistor radio blaring out. A male voice seemed to be bawling âWow, wow, wow!â endlessly over and over again. Luke hated that sort of music. As students and later in the first years of their marriage, he and Lydia had stood stoically evening after evening at Promenade concerts throughout a whole scorching summer. At each â Wow!â something huge and cumbersome jarred within him, making him feel vaguely giddy and nauseous.
Then at long last, sweat darkening his pale blue shirt under the armpits and glistening on his forehead, he suddenly reached a place, shadowed by overarching trees and the grass almost waist-high, that made him at once say to himself, with a mingling of relief and triumph, âYes, yes, this is it!â He had searched in vain in books and on the internet for the exact location at which Millais had sat on his stool before his easel. But he had absolutely no doubt that this was where it was.
Here the often narrow river was unusually wide as it curved in its negotiation of a dumpy hillock surmounted by three elder trees. The contrast between the emaciated
He thought of the Sunday but Carrie was due to spend it with him, as she did once every four weeks. Couldnât he put her off? No. He was conscientious not merely about his work but also about his erratic and often clumsy relationship with this nine-year-old girl who could never forgive him for, as she saw it, abandoning not merely her mother but also herself. So it had to be the following Saturday.
Of course he took his two favourite cameras, the ancient Leica and the new digital Canon, a scientific miracle. In his biography, Millaisâs son had quoted from a letter written by his father to a woman friend. In it, the painter described how, day after day, he had sat in extreme discomfort under an umbrella, âbeing blown by the wind into the waterâ, and so gradually becoming âintimate with the feelings of Ophelia when that lady sank to muddy death.â But as Luke stepped off the train at Ewell â a totally unremarkable place, he thought â there was not a breath of wind and the sun was hot and dazzling. He felt a surge of excitement flood through his body, making his cheeks flush and his finger-tips tingle. He might have been on his way to some long awaited, desperately wanted assignation.
He knew by now that a young and beautiful woman had lain for hours on end in an enamel bath tub filled with water inadequately warmed by a lamp placed beneath it, to model for Ophelia. She had caught pleurisy and it was thought that that might well have precipitated the pulmonary tuberculosis from which she had suffered for the rest of her cruelly short life. Nonetheless, Luke all but expected to come not merely on the reach of water that had provided Millais with his setting but also on Ophelia herself, her eyes wide open, her lips slightly parted, and one of those white, raised hands grasping a water-lily.
He repeatedly paused as he followed the winding course of what often became little more than a stream. Could this be the place? This? This? Each time he decided: No. One curve seemed exactly right. But in the distance some youths, most them stripped to their waists, were playing football, shouting to each other in a language that Luke could not understand or even identify. Their strident voices and the thud, thud, thud of the ball robbed the location of any intimacy or peace. It was the same at a stretch where the foliage was particularly green and luxuriant and the trees arched over the water exactly as in the picture. But on the opposite bank two people, a girl and a boy, were lying out on the lush grass with a transistor radio blaring out. A male voice seemed to be bawling âWow, wow, wow!â endlessly over and over again. Luke hated that sort of music. As students and later in the first years of their marriage, he and Lydia had stood stoically evening after evening at Promenade concerts throughout a whole scorching summer. At each â Wow!â something huge and cumbersome jarred within him, making him feel vaguely giddy and nauseous.
Then at long last, sweat darkening his pale blue shirt under the armpits and glistening on his forehead, he suddenly reached a place, shadowed by overarching trees and the grass almost waist-high, that made him at once say to himself, with a mingling of relief and triumph, âYes, yes, this is it!â He had searched in vain in books and on the internet for the exact location at which Millais had sat on his stool before his easel. But he had absolutely no doubt that this was where it was.
Here the often narrow river was unusually wide as it curved in its negotiation of a dumpy hillock surmounted by three elder trees. The contrast between the emaciated
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