Can I even begin to answer that question in a way which will not make me sound intrusive?
“I saw one of your paintings,” she said. “A recent one. My curiosity was aroused.”
For a moment he said nothing. “So it’s just curiosity?”
Isabel nodded. But in what light did that show her?
McInnes sighed. “I should not have agreed to their being sold,” he said. “I have sold nothing by . . . by McInnes since he died.”
“He died?”
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He turned away. “Yes. He did. The man who was McInnes died.”
Isabel was about to say something, but McInnes continued:
“It may sound odd to you, but that’s what it felt like to me.
Everything seemed hopeless, tainted. I decided to make a fresh start.” He paused and looked at Isabel as if to challenge her to refute what he had to say. “And I’ve been perfectly happy, you know? Living here as Frank Anderson. Doing a bit of painting.
And I’ve even managed to earn a living looking after sheep and driving a tractor for two of the farmers up here.”
Isabel waited for him to say something more, but he became silent. “I can understand,” she said. “I can understand why people might want to reinvent themselves.”
“Understand, but not approve?”
“That depends,” said Isabel.
“You disapprove of what I did? Misleading everybody into thinking that I had drowned?”
Isabel shook her head. “Not really.”
“There was no insurance, or anything like that,” said McInnes. “I did no wrong.”
“You were presumably mourned,” said Isabel. “Somebody must have suffered.”
“No,” said McInnes flatly. “I had no close family. My parents were dead. I was an only child.”
Isabel spoke gently. “But you had a wife.”
“Had,” said McInnes. “She . . . she went off with somebody else. And anyway, she hurt me more than I hurt her.”
There was silence for a moment. Isabel wondered whether McInnes knew that his wife had herself been left by her lover.
And if he did know, would it make any difference?
She looked at him. He was standing in front of the window, his crop of unruly hair outlined in the afternoon light. There was 2 4 0
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h something about him that was indisputably the artist; however hard he sought to change his identity, she thought, that part would remain—that hair, and those eyes. It was the eyes of the artist that could be so very powerful, as they were with Picasso.
She had read about one of Picasso’s friends telling the painter not to read a book lest his eyes burn a hole in the paper.
For a moment she said nothing. Then, very quietly, “And a son too.”
“A son.” It was not a question; just a statement.
“Yes,” said Isabel. “Magnus.”
“That’s the child she had by him,” McInnes said. “Not my son.”
Isabel was surprised by his response. “You knew about him?”
When he answered, McInnes’s voice was full of disdain.
“She came to see me,” he said. “When her boy was quite small.
I told her that I did not wish to change my mind.”
It took a few moments for Isabel to digest this. So Ailsa knew all along that her husband was still alive; that surprised her. That made at least two people who knew his secret: his wife and Mrs. Buie. And now her.
McInnes seemed eager to change the subject. “It was Flora Buie who persuaded me to sell those two paintings. I didn’t want to. She went on at me. I have some medical expenses, you see . . .”
“I know about that,” said Isabel. “But I suspect that everything will be taken care of.”
He looked at her quizzically.
“You see,” explained Isabel, “Walter Buie bought one of the paintings and another collector bought another. Walter Buie knows that the painting is by you . . . in your posthumous period.” She could not resist the joke, and she was pleased to T H E C A R E F U L U S E O F C O M P L I M E N T S
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