For a second, Athreya was confused. But light dawned the next moment. Abbas had mistaken him for the art valuer Bhaskar had invited to Greybrooke Manor.
‘I’m afraid I’m neither of those, Mr Abbas,’ he said good-humouredly. ‘I do sketch a bit and fool around with pencils and pens, but I am not an artist by any stretch of the imagination. I’m visiting Mr Fernandez casually.’
As he spoke, he caught a flash of puzzlement on Michelle’s face, and recalled the question she had blurted out unintentionally: ‘Why are you here?’ She had mistaken him for a lawyer or a policeman, and Abbas had now assumed that he was the art valuer.
Michelle intervened to change the topic.
‘You sketch?’ she asked enthusiastically. ‘I would love to see one of your sketches. The vale abounds with excellent subjects for a sketcher. The eastern side of the mansion, which faces the hills, presents a lovely scene.’
‘Perhaps I’ll try my hand at it,’ said Athreya, smiling. ‘The afternoon may be a good time, with the sunlight falling on the hills from behind the mansion.’
‘If we have sunlight,’ she said with a nod. ‘Even otherwise, it’s a fine sight. Oh, Abbas will be joining the party too. It’s going to be great fun with a dozen people. Bhuvana, our cook, is outdoing herself for the party. I’m really looking forward to it.’
Athreya wondered how true that was. With her husband staying fifteen minutes away at the Misty Valley Resort, she must be torn between the two places. On the other hand, being alone at Greybrooke Manor might be a welcome sojourn away from her badgering spouse.
After some more pleasantries, they said goodbye to Abbas and went farther down the valley. Half an hour later, they turned back and headed towards Greybrooke Manor. The walk in the vale, preceded by the discussion with Bhaskar, had stimulated Athreya’s appetite. He now looked forward to lunch.
When they reached the mansion, a little later than expected, lunch had been laid out and the others were waiting for them. Dora and Manu were arguing about some trivial matter as cousins and siblings often do. Sebastian and Varadan were discussing a pair of colonial-era swords mounted on one of the walls of the dining room. Bhaskar was in his wheelchair, talking to a bearded, bespectacled man with unruly, grizzled hair. Bhaskar broke off as they entered and hailed Athreya.
‘There you are,’ he said. ‘Enjoyed the walk?’
‘Yes, thank you,’ Athreya responded. ‘The valley is beautiful. Almost as if it is frozen in time. I can’t believe that we are just an hour away from crowded Coonoor. We may as well be on a different planet.’
‘That’s true,’ Bhaskar agreed. ‘That’s precisely why some of us have decided to settle here. Let me introduce you to my friend and neighbour, Phillip. You would have walked past his cottage on your walk. Phillip, this is Mr Athreya, who has very kindly consented to visit me.’
Phillip ambled across and took Athreya’s hand in a firm grip. His long artist’s fingers curled around Athreya’s palm and gave it a brief squeeze; and though they looked fragile, they exerted more pressure than Athreya had expected.
‘Pleasure to meet you, sir,’ Phillip said shyly in a gentle voice, with a wide smile.
‘Same here,’ Athreya replied. ‘Michelle showed me your cottage. A very pretty place, I must say. Did you come by the same path we took?’
‘No other way unless you take to the woods,’ the artist said laconically, the wide smile still in place. As Michelle had said, here was a man who smiled more than he spoke.
‘Phillip goes around on his mountain bike,’ Bhaskar chimed in, expertly piloting his wheelchair into their midst, avoiding Dora by a whisker. ‘It doesn’t take him very long to get here. You must have been farther down the vale when he left home.’
Athreya recalled seeing a high-end mountain bike outside the mansion’s front door. That explained why he had not seen Phillip entering Greybrooke Manor. The conversation moved to mountain bikes, and how they were so useful in the vale. Most well-to-do people in the valley had one, including Manu, Sebastian, Abbas and the retired army major. Phillip, it turned out, was an avid cyclist, testimony of which was borne by his muscular shoulders and arms.
As they partook of the informal buffet lunch, conversation meandered and finally came to the topic of art and paintings. Phillip lost his reticence and spoke at length about the various forms and styles of paintings, and how watercolours were very different from oil paints. He and Bhaskar argued like schoolboys over matters of detail.
‘The trouble with Phillip,’ Bhaskar grumbled to Athreya as they finished lunch, ‘is that he has very little imagination for an artist. But to his credit, he is the first one to admit it. His fingers, however, weave magic on the canvas. There are over a dozen of his paintings in my art gallery. All of them are of scenery or people; none are abstract or from his own imagination. Come, let me take you around my gallery.’
Flanked by Phillip and Athreya, Bhaskar careened his way to the hall. The wide corridor that ran the entire length of the mansion, from the front door to the rear one, had been converted into the art gallery. Mounted along the entire length of the long corridor, except where doors pierced the walls, were paintings of different shapes and sizes. Along the walls were glass display cases that flaunted antiques and smaller works of art—figurines, sculptures, tablets, fine china, jewelled daggers and miniature paintings.
They stopped at a large painting of a mountain scene that dominated the wall near the front door. The familiar-looking scene was done in strikingly vivid colours that seemed to
