Dick Francis - In the Frame

‘Please, Don,’ I said.

‘Oh...’ A long sigh. ‘No. I wasn’t especially wanting to buy anything at all. We just went into the Melbourne Art Gallery for a stroll round. We came to the Munnings they have there... and while we were looking at it we just drifted into conversation with a woman near us, as one does in art galleries. She said there was another Munnings, not far away, for sale in a small commercial gallery, and it was worth seeing even if one didn’t intend to buy it. We had time to spare, so we went.’

Maisie’s mouth had fallen open. ‘But, dear,’ she said, recovering, ‘that was just the same as us, my sister-in-law and me, though it was Sydney Art Gallery, not Melbourne. They have this marvellous picture there, “The Coming Storm”, and we were admiring it when this man sort of drifted up to us and joined in...’

Donald suddenly looked a great deal more exhausted, like a sick person overdone by healthy visitors.

‘Look... Charles... you aren’t going to the police with all this? Because I... I don’t think... I could stand... a whole new lot... of questions.’

‘No, I’m not,’ I said.

‘Then what... does it matter?’

Maisie finished her gin and tonic and smiled a little too brightly.

‘Which way to the little girls’ room, dear?’ she asked, and disappeared to the cloakroom.

Donald said faintly, ‘I can’t concentrate... I’m sorry, Charles, but I can’t seem to do anything... while they still have Regina... unburied... just stored ...’

Time, far from dulling the agony, seemed to have preserved it, as if the keeping of Regina in a refrigerated drawer had stopped dead the natural progression of mourning. I had been told that the bodies of murdered people could be held in that way for six months or more in unsolved cases. I doubted whether Donald would last that long.

He stood suddenly and walked away out of the door to the hall. I followed. He crossed the hall, opened the door of the sittingroom, and went in.

Hesitantly, I went after him.

The sittingroom still contained only the chintz-covered sofas and chairs, now ranged over-tidily round the walls. The floor where Regina had lain was clean and polished. The air was cold.

Donald stood in front of the empty fireplace looking at my picture of Regina, which was propped on the mantelpiece.

‘I stay in here with her, most of the time,’ he said. ‘It’s the only place I can bear to be.’

He walked to one of the armchairs and sat down, directly facing the portrait.

‘You wouldn’t mind seeing yourselves out, would you, Charles?’ he said. ‘I’m really awfully tired.’

‘Take care of yourself.’ Useless advice. One could see he wouldn’t.

‘I’m all right,’ he said. ‘Quite all right. Don’t you worry.’

I looked back from the door. He was sitting immobile, looking at Regina. I didn’t know whether it would have been better or worse if I hadn’t painted her.

Maisie was quiet for the whole of the first hour of the return journey, a record in itself.

From Donald’s house we had driven first to one of the neighbours who had originally offered refuge, because he clearly needed help more now than ever.

Mrs. Neighbour had listened with sympathy, but had shaken her head.

‘Yes, I know he should have company and get away from the house, but he won’t. I’ve tried several times. Called. So have lots of people round here. He just tells us he’s all right. He won’t let anyone help him.’

Maisie drove soberly, mile after mile. Eventually she said, ‘We shouldn’t have bothered him. Not so soon after...’

Three weeks, I thought. Only three weeks. To Donald it must have seemed like three months, stretched out in slow motion. You could live a lifetime in three weeks’ pain.

‘I’m going to Australia,’ I said.

‘You’re very fond of him, dear, aren’t you?’ Maisie said.

Fond? I wouldn’t have used that word, I thought: but perhaps after all it was accurate.

‘He’s eight years older than me, but we’ve always got on well together.’ I looked back, remembering. ‘We were both only children. His mother and mine were sisters. They used to visit each other, with me and Donald in tow. He was always pretty patient about having a young kid under his feet.’

‘He looks very ill, dear.’

‘Yes.’

She drove another ten miles in silence. Then she said, ‘Are you sure it wouldn’t be better to tell the police? About the paintings, I mean? Because you do think they had something to do with the burglaries, don’t you, dear, and the police might find out things more easily than you.’

I agreed. ‘I’m sure they would, Maisie. But how can I tell them? You heard what Donald said, that he couldn’t stand a new lot of questions. Seeing him today, do you think he could? And as for you, it wouldn’t just be confessing to a bit of smuggling and paying a fine, but of having a conviction against your name for always, and having the customs search your baggage every time you travelled, and all sorts of other complications and humiliations. Once you get on any blacklist nowadays it is just about impossible to get off.’

‘I didn’t know you cared, dear.’ She tried a giggle, but it didn’t sound right.

We stopped after a while to exchange places. I liked driving her car, particularly as for the last three years, since I’d given up a steady income, I’d owned no wheels myself. The power purred elegantly under the pale blue bonnet and ate up the southward miles.

‘Can you afford the fare, dear?’ Maisie said. ‘And hotels, and things?’

‘I’ve a friend out there. Another painter. I’ll stay with him.’

She looked at me doubtfully. ‘You can’t get there by hitch-hiking, though.’

I smiled. ‘I’ll manage.’

‘Yes, well, dear, I dare say you can, but all the same, and I don’t want any silly arguments, I’ve got a great deal of this world’s goods thanks to Archie, and you haven’t, and as because it’s partly because of me having gone in for smuggling that you’re going yourself at all, I am insisting that you let me buy your ticket.’

‘No, Maisie.’

‘Yes, dear. Now be a good boy, dear, and do as I say.’

You could see, I thought, why she’d been a good nurse. Swallow the medicine, dear, there’s a good boy. I didn’t like accepting her offer but the truth was that I would have had to borrow anyway.

‘Shall I paint your picture, Maisie, when I get back?’

‘That will do very nicely, dear.’

I pulled up outside the house near Heathrow whose attic was my home, and from where Maisie had picked me up that morning.

‘How do you stand all this noise, dear?’ she said, wincing as a huge jet climbed steeply overhead.

‘I concentrate on the cheap rent.’

She smiled, opening the crocodile handbag and producing her chequebook. She wrote out and gave me the slip of paper which was far more than enough for my journey.

‘If you’re so fussed, dear,’ she said across my protests, ‘you can give me back what you don’t spend.’ She gazed at me earnestly with grey-blue eyes. ‘You will be careful dear, won’t you?’

‘Yes, Maisie.’

‘Because of course, dear, you might turn out to be a nuisance to some really nasty people.’

I landed at Mascot airport at noon five days later, wheeling in over Sydney and seeing the harbour bridge and the opera house down below, looking like postcards.

Jik met me on the other side of Customs with a huge grin and a waving bottle of champagne.

‘Todd the sod,’ he said. ‘Who’d have thought it?’ His voice soared easily over the din. ‘Come to paint Australia red!’

He slapped me on the back with an enthusiastic horny hand, not knowing his own strength. Jik Cassavetes, longtime friend, my opposite in almost everything.