Хилари Боннер - A Deep Deceit

The other two paintings, smaller but equally original and striking, also met with the gallery owner’s approval.

‘You’ll take them all?’ queried Carl anxiously. He knew that his abstracts weren’t easy to sell.

‘Of course I’ll take them,’ said Will. ‘I just wish I could sell them for what they’re really worth, that’s all.’

Carl and I knew exactly what he meant. Art is a world of great contrasts, like show business really. Those at the top of the tree are mega-earning superstars and those at the bottom barely make a living at all – particularly if they try to be original.

Carl’s name was not well known and two or three hundred pounds was the most that Will could ever ask for one of his paintings – even those large abstracts he sweated blood over. Not a lot for something Carl had worked on over several weeks.

Nonetheless we left the gallery in high spirits.

‘How about a little celebration in the Sloop?’ Carl asked, clutching my hand and swinging both our arms. I happily agreed and we began to amble down to the harbour.

Although for various deep-seated reasons neither Carl nor I approved of excessive drinking – we had each in different ways seen the damage it can do – we both liked pubs. Carl had the fascination common among Americans for English pubs and I think we both saw public houses as somewhere we could enjoy a certain conviviality without involvement. Mind you, perhaps to ensure we didn’t get too involved, once a week was about the limit of our pub-going, more often than not at a lunchtime rather than the heavier evening session. However, the promise of a decent sale changed things.

It was late afternoon, almost five o’clock. The day had been quite glorious and the setting sun glowed amber and orange. Carl actively disliked going down to St Ives harbour or to the beaches during the tourist season when the place was overrun with people. He had made an exception for the eclipse, partly because I had been so determined that we should watch it from the waterside, but normally he preferred to remain in our little bit of town, up on the hill and way back from the harbour and the beaches, which stayed much the same throughout the year. I wasn’t quite so fussy, but he did have a point. I remembered my noisy summer lunchtime visits to the seafront with Mariette and thought how there was just no comparison with the joy of being down by the waterside on a fine, holidaymaker-free, November day like this one. In the quiet off-season times Carl and I loved to walk together along the beach at low tide and, indeed, to visit the Sloop, which was one of the places we avoided in high season because it was always packed with tourists.

As we approached the famous old waterside inn, a familiar figure emerged through the pub doors and began to totter somewhat unsteadily towards us.

‘Oh, no,’ muttered Carl. ‘I really can’t stand that woman.’

‘At least she’s leaving,’ I said in his ear.

‘Whisky must have run out,’ Carl responded uncharitably.

We both half stopped in our tracks, wondering if we could turn round and escape notice, but by this time Fenella Austen was already upon us. In some ways I was less concerned by this than Carl, because in the six years we had lived in the town Fenella, still widely regarded as the matriarch of the local artistic community even though her fortunes as a painter and sculptor had fallen dramatically in recent years, had totally failed to recognise my existence. I was actually quite relieved by this since, although I tried not to let on to Carl in case he thought I really was a complete and utter wimp, the bloody woman scared me to death – particularly when she was drunk, which seemed to be most of the time nowadays.

Fenella walked straight up to Carl, ignoring me as usual, and flung her arms round him, possibly to ensure she remained upright. Nonetheless it annoyed me.

‘And so how’s our new bright young thing,’ she bellowed, slurring her words only slightly. Fenella had only one level of speech – full volume.

‘Fenella, I’m neither new nor young, I’m forty years old, I’ve lived in St Ives for six years and, although you and I may think I’m bright, the rest of the art world is showing no sign of catching on,’ said Carl in a tone of exaggerated patience.

Fennella was probably only in her late fifties but had been playing the part of cynical elder for many years, certainly ever since we had moved to Cornwall. She leered at Carl. Maybe it was supposed to be a smile, I really didn’t know. She carried with her a strong stench of beer and whisky, and her hair looked as if it could do with a wash. She dyed it a mid-brown colour but not nearly often enough. A grimy yellowish grey displayed itself in a two-inch wedge at the roots. Come to think of it, her face looked as if it could do with a wash too. She wore heavy black eye make-up which had become badly smudged. Her skin was pale and blotchy. I suppose you had to admit it was all a bit of a shame, really, because Fenella still had striking dark-brown eyes and the remains of what must once have been a formidable high-cheeked bone structure. We had seen a sharp deterioration in her looks even in the few years we had been in St Ives.

The local perception was that she was killing herself with drink. She also smoked like a chimney and if one didn’t get her before her time it seemed inevitable that the other would.

‘You’re just a lad to me, Carl, sweetheart,’ continued Fenella in that deep, throaty voice which was the product of her sixty-fag-a-day habit.

She was, as usual, overplaying her hand – literally as well as metaphorically, as it happened. Her right hand had closed itself around Carl’s left buttock. I watched as her fingers squeezed him.

He winced and removed the offending hand smartly from its target. ‘If I did that to you it would be sexual harassment,’ he said, lightly but unwisely.

‘Harass away, darling,’ invited Fenella, as Carl managed to manoeuvre his way past her. ‘I can hardly wait...’

Having lost her support she staggered dangerously and for one lovely moment I thought she was going to fall over. She didn’t, of course.

‘Don’t turn her down for me, Carl,’ I whispered in his ear as we hurried along the promenade to the steps.

‘D-do me a favour,’ muttered Carl. The slight stammer meant that the woman had definitely got to him. Certainly he was no longer amused. I suppose you couldn’t blame him. She was a pest.

He took my hand as we jumped from the quite high bottom step on to the beach. The tide was out and the sun had almost dropped from the sky and hovered deeply golden now, glowing the last of its fire just above the horizon, bathing the entire bay in a truly wonderful light. I was a Londoner born and bred but I had grown to feel a sense of belonging in Cornwall greater than anything I had known before. Its past and its present both suited me. I liked to imagine the harbour in the great days of pilchard fishing when the whole town was kept alive by its one industry. The huge shoals of pilchards that used regularly to frequent the north Cornwall coast in the autumn, were caught by net in shallow water, a process known as seining. Great mountains of the small silvery fish would be dumped on the harbour side, then salted in big wooden tubs and exported to the Mediterranean in sailing ships. I could see the scenes so clearly: the men on their boats emptying their nets and on shore women, children, the elderly, picking up the fish, sorting them, carrying them to the salt vats, everyone involved in gathering this extraordinary autumn harvest. Maybe I romanticised it inside my head, but I couldn’t help it. Neither could I help being enthralled by the tales of the wreckers and smugglers whose wild exploits form such a part of Cornish history. St Ives had relied almost entirely on its tourist industry for decades but, in my opinion anyway, the old fishing port had not to lost its unique character, its special magic.