She looked forward to Tuesday evenings. They helped to dim the unpleasant, lingering memory of what had happened to her recently, though it dimmed none of her bitterness towards her father.
Drawing always helped her to lose herself. Alone in her room she’d sketch endlessly, her pencil moving at ever faster speed, often until what she had drawn became overlaid with increasingly wild and heavy strokes, as her feelings of humiliation, hatred and revenge came creeping back.
When working about the house, her thoughts concentrating on jobs to be done, it wasn’t so bad; but once she was alone, her mind began to seethe. Her only relief from it seemed to be to immerse herself in sketching, sometimes little landscapes she’d seen in books or rough portraits of those around her – that was, until things in her head made her practically obliterate them. These she never showed to Doctor Lowe. Naturally he wanted to know how she was progressing. After all, he was paying for her tuition, for which not only was she thankful but also aware of a feeling of satisfaction. But if he had seen these other sketches, he would have been shocked. She shocked herself sometimes.
This evening, having finished her half-hour elocution lesson with the painful effort to pronounce words correctly, as out came pencils and paper and the box of paints Doctor Lowe had provided for her, the interest of both pupil and tutor perked up considerably.
‘You know,’ he remarked as he helped her get the correct perspective of the country cottage she was sketching ready for painting, ‘you could go a long way once you’ve mastered a few more techniques. You have exceptional talent, Miss Jay.’
She wished he wouldn’t keep calling her Miss Jay. It sounded so formal. She pursed her lips and studied the drawing. ‘I won’t ever be that good.’
‘I’m sure you will be,’ he said absently, falling silent to study the picture as, having now finished the sketching, she began mixing colours, applying a blue wash for the sky, several greens for fields and a rough suggestion of trees and bushes, and greys for the lane that would be filled in later, before she began on the cottage itself. It wasn’t a large scene. The background work had taken some five or ten minutes before he spoke again.
‘You’ve a fantastic insight into how things feel. Good artists need that, and you have got it.’
‘What do you mean – feel?’ she asked, paintbrush poised over her work as she studied what she’d done so far. ‘Cottages don’t feel.’
‘What I mean is…’ For a moment he seemed lost. ‘How can I put it? It’s like…’ Again he paused, then pointed to the several bricks on the cottage wall she was colouring in. ‘Look, you see these? Anyone can paint a brick. It’s oblong, it’s brownish, it sits straight in a wall. But it’s more than mere brick – it has life in it, and you see that life, Miss Jay… Ellie.’
Her eyes widened at this sudden use of her Christian name, but he had his eyes trained on the cottage she was painting. His voice rose in a burst of enthusiasm.
‘Don’t you realize what you’re doing? You’re not painting every brick brown; you’re instinctively adding different tints, touches of blue and ochre and umber – as if you feel what they are like: the texture, the roughness, the imperfections of brick. It’s the only way I can describe it. Often something like that has to be taught, shown. You’re doing it instinctively.’
‘All I’m doing is painting!’ she said, a little irked by the observation interrupting the flow of her brush. All she wanted to do was paint, not to be told the blessed ins and outs of what it all meant.
‘No, don’t you see what I mean, Ellie? You are those bricks.’ He looked at her and noticed the pursing of her lips in confusion. ‘Let me explain if I can. When I am painting, say, a horse, you know this soft part of the head?’ – he touched his temples. ‘When I am painting the head and my brush begins to perfect that part of the animal, I actually sense the brush against my own temple. Do you see what I mean?’
‘I think so,’ she said hesitantly. In fact, she had grasped what he was getting at. Her own temples seemed to sense something as he spoke.
‘And what you feel is sympathy for the thing you are painting. You are one with what you are making on plain paper with a bit of paint. It becomes real to you.’
‘Yes I see it,’ she cried, and he laughed.
‘Everything you paint will feel like that to you, Ellie: an animal, a human being, whatever – a leg, an arm; you’ll sense those brush strokes on the exact area on yourself, like this.’ To her surprise, he had reached out and put a hand lightly on her upper arm, letting it slip over the material of her sleeve. He stopped, realizing what he was doing. She in turn felt her breath go for an instant and the warmth of the touch reached her flesh. Instinctively she stepped back.
‘Ellie… Miss Jay,’ he gasped. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…’ Ellie lifted her head and shrugged. ‘It’s nothing.’
‘I was carried away – trying to explain.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said sharply. ‘Look, let’s get on with this. The time’s nearly up.’
He took out his fob watch, as if looking for something to distract him. ‘So it is. We might as well leave this to dry and have a go at it next week.’
Ellie nodded, but something inside her had stirred. The pupil-tutor relationship might very
