She smiled. “Yes, they’re real. If you mean are they actual paintings. Real paint. Not prints.”
“That’s what I meant.”
They were standing in front of a Peploe landscape. In the background she heard Charlie gurgling as Jamie uttered some nonsensical mantra. Eddie reached out as if to touch the painting, but checked himself.
“You can touch it if you like,” said Isabel. “It’s quite dry now.”
“Why are the hills blue like that?” asked Eddie.
She thought: Yes, that is a reasonable question to ask of the colourists, who saw the world in strong colours. Mull, and its hills, were blue; seen from the blue shores of Iona. “Because hills are often blue. Look at them. It’s the effect of the light.”
Eddie looked more closely at the picture. “Is this worth a lot of money?” he asked.
Isabel was momentarily taken aback. But she quickly recovered. She would have to be honest. “Yes, anything by Peploe is quite expensive these days. He’s a very highly sought-after artist. That’s what determines the price. Like Picasso. There’s nothing very special in a Picasso drawing, say, but it will still cost an awful lot of money.”
“How much?” asked Eddie.
“Picasso? Oh, well a drawing—a few lines dashed off on a sheet of paper—might be ten thousand pounds.”
“No, not that. This painting here. This Pep…Peploe.”
Isabel laughed, as much to cover her embarrassment as for any other reason. “I don’t think you should ask questions like that, Eddie. People don’t…don’t expect to be asked what things cost.”
She spoke gently, but her words silenced him. He looked down at the floor, and she immediately regretted what she had said.
She felt that she needed to explain. “Sorry, Eddie. You can ask me; of course you can ask me. It’s just that… well, you wouldn’t normally ask somebody else, somebody whom you didn’t really know.”
He bit his lip.
“I’ll tell you, if you like. Of course I’ll tell you. Although…” What would be the effect of his knowing? Envy? “I didn’t buy that painting; it belonged to my father. And he didn’t pay a great deal for it. Not in those days.”
He was still looking at the floor. She reached out and held his arm. “All right. If that went into an auction now, it would fetch more than one hundred thousand pounds. That’s what somebody told me, anyway.”
He looked up sharply. The offence that he had taken at her mild censure was now replaced by astonishment. “You could sell it for that? For more than a hundred thousand?”
She explained that she did not want to sell it.
“Why not? Think what you could do with a hundred thousand pounds.”
“Frankly, I can’t think of anything I’d spend it on. What do I need? I don’t want a new car. I’ve got a house. I’m lucky. I don’t need a hundred thousand pounds.”
She spoke freely, but as the words came out, again she felt that she was making a mistake. She did not need anything, but he did. He had no car, she assumed; and he certainly did not own a flat. I’m making it worse, she thought. But no, Eddie had not taken it in that way at all; he was thinking of something else. “So is that why you gave that man the cheese this afternoon? Because you don’t need to worry about money?”
She thought about this. He was probably right. If you had enough, you were more likely to be liberal to others; except, of course, as was always the case, for some. “Possibly,” she said.
“And what if I came to you and said, ‘Isabel, please give me five hundred pounds.’ What if I said that? Would you?”
She studied his expression, trying to work out whether he was asking for money. She decided that he was not.
“I’d give it to you. But I’d probably ask you first why you needed it. If you were in trouble, of course I’d give it to you.”
“Not lend it?”
“No. I’d give it.”
She watched him. His mouth twitched slightly; just slightly, at the edges of the lips. “Eddie? Do you need five hundred pounds? Is that what you’re telling me?”
She saw the pupils of his eyes; dark dots, but with light in them. She noticed that he had a mole, a tiny mole, just below his ear. Otherwise, he was perfect.
His lips parted, a tiny bit of spittle. He mouthed the word
She whispered, as she did not want Jamie to hear, and she suddenly knew that Jamie was listening from Charlie’s room, through the open door.
“Are you in trouble, Eddie?”
He said nothing, but his head moved slightly: a nod.
“And will you tell me what it is?”
Again a movement of the head, this time a shaking.
She made up her mind. Five hundred pounds was very little to her and would obviously make a big difference to Eddie in his difficulties, whatever they were. A fine? She thought that unlikely. Eddie was too timid to get into trouble with the law. Drugs? Debts to a pusher? There was no sign that he used anything, and she thought it unlikely; Cat had told her that he had expressed strong views against drugs some months before. So what did that
