by Francis - TO THE HILT

'And to you? To Himself? To Sir Ivan?'

When I didn't reply at once, he said, 'Al, are you still there?'

'Yes… I don't know the answer, and I don't want to find out.'

On Tuesday morning a cold front swept the sky dramatically, clearing away the grey rain and leaving a high washed pale blue cosmos with a northern yellowish tint of sunlight. The bothy faced west, which often gave me long mornings of near-perfect painting light, followed by warm afternoon glows that I'd at first subconsciously translated into mellowing glazes and then, when I found out those pictures sold most quickly, into commercial technique. I did paint for a living: I also earned money so that I could paint to please only myself, when I wanted to.

On that Tuesday, on the grey-white underpainting, I lightly drew in pencil the head of a still-young woman, with a face already strongly defined by character, a face of good bone structure, of intelligence, of purpose. I drew her not looking straight ahead but as though she saw something to her right, and I drew her not smiling, not disapproving, not arrogant, not self-conscious, but simply being .

When the proportions and the expression were near to what I intended, I painted the whole head in light and dark intensities of ultramarine blue, mostly transparent, mixed with water. I painted dark blue shadows round the edges of the canvas, leaving light areas round the head itself, and worked dark shadows round the eyes and under the chin until I had a fairly complete monochrome portrait in blue on light grey.

She looked as I thought Dr Lang might have looked forty years earlier.

I had learned my trade from four different painters, one in Scotland, one in England, one in Rome and one in California, and had watched and assimilated and practised until I knew what paint would do, and what it wouldn't. Unable to afford art school, with a father dead and a mother newly married and rebuilding her own life, I had offered my services as cook, cleaner, gofer and dogsbody to the four accomplished painters in turn, asking only for payment in food, a patch of floor to sleep on, and scraps of paper and paint.

After three years of such profitable drudgery I'd received a surprise enquiry from my uncle: what, he wanted to know, would I like for a twenty-first coming-of-age birthday present? I'd asked for the use of a tumbledown shed on the mountainous part of his estate and a pass to give me an occasional game on the local golf course (which he owned).

He'd given me the use of the hut (once an overnight shelter for shepherds at lambing time), full membership of the golf club and some money for paints. Two years later he'd sent me to Lambourn to make portraits of the horses he had in training with Emily Jane Cox.

After I'd run from Lambourn he'd moved me from the hut to the sturdier but ruined bothy and had paid for it to be made habitable; and a year after that he'd asked me to take care of the Honour of the Kinlochs.

I couldn't have refused him, even if I'd wanted to, which I hadn't.

I had all my younger life been in awe of him. It was only during the last five years that I'd grown old enough for a more adult understanding. He had of course taken the place of the father I'd lost, but much more than that he had become friend, partner and ally: and never would I trade on that privilege, either with him or within the family.

Brooding over my blue woman, I ate a cheese and chutney sandwich and in the afternoon overpainted the background with browns and crimsons, glazing and rubbing together the colours in the method called scumbling until I had a deep rich background that wasn't identifiably blue or brown or red but which receded from the eye, leaving the face itself startlingly near and clear.

Tuesday night I slept again on the floor in the sleeping bag and dreamed of colours, and early on Wednesday, as soon as it was light, began overpainting flesh onto the blue bones, working from light areas to dark, giving her strength and brain but not a peach-skin luminous beauty. By afternoon she was a woman who would both excel in an academic world and comfort a strong man in bed… or so, in my mind, I saw her.

At about the time when every day Jed could be found in the estate office writing notes on current affairs, I phoned him.

'Are you OK?' he asked.

'Any news of Andrew and the Cup?'

'The poor little bugger swore he didn't take it. Himself says he believes him. Anyway, the damned thing seems to have vanished.'

'Are you alone in the office?' I asked.

'You guessed right. I'm not.'

'Well, listen. I'm going back to London tonight from Dalwhinnie. Can you meet me there, and if so, when? And could you bring with you an old bedsheet?'

'Er…'

'A bedsheet,' I repeated. 'People I see in London will know I am not in the bothy. While I'm in London, the bothy is as secure as one blow from a sledgehammer on that nice new lock.'

'Al.'

'I've been painting a picture that I really do not want stolen or ruined. Please could you bring a sheet to wrap it in? Please will you keep it safe for me?'

'Yes, of course,' he said hesitantly, 'but what about… anything else?'

'No one will find anything else. I just don't want to lose the picture.'

After barely a pause he said, 'How about nine thirty?'

'Perfect. Could you bring Flora, to drive your own car home? You can have the estate's Land Rover back.'

'How long will you be gone?'

'How long is a piece of string…?'

Reliable as always, he brought Flora and a bedsheet to the station, and drove away in the Land Rover with the well-wrapped picture and all my new climbing gear and paints and winter clothes (in duffle bag) and also my bagpipes, newly ransomed from the old fleecer, Donald Cameron, on his return from Inverness.

Jed swore on his mother's grave to keep my belongings safe (she was still alive) and Flora laughed and kissed me, and with minimum luggage I yet again rocked down the rails and hugged my mother before breakfast.

The Park Crescent house felt as claustrophobic as it had the previous week. The cleaner, Lois, relentlessly vacuumed, her expression mulish. She and Ivan's male nurse, Wilfred, had reached head-tossing terms. Edna the cook tut-tutted over the evidence of my hot fried breakfast. My mother put up with it all instead of chucking the whole lot out.

Although it was by then more than three weeks since Ivan's heart attack, he had still not summoned will or strength enough to dress in day clothes. As if time had been suspended since I'd left, I found him, in gown and slippers, looking equally exhausted in his armchair. He greeted me with a weak smile and an instant and relieved transference to me of all decision-making.

'That woman wants you to phone her,' he said, pointing at the tissue-box, so I turned it over and found Margaret Morden's number written beside the one-word message - NOW.

I phoned her 'now'.

'Sir Ivan said you'd be coming to London.'

'I'm here.'

'Oh, good.' She sounded relieved. 'Can you hop down to my office?'

'How did it go yesterday?'

'Quite well. I need Sir Ivan's agreement. If he can't come here, perhaps you could carry papers to London for his signature.'

'Great idea,' I said with enthusiasm, but Ivan flapped a no-no hand and said into the receiver when I held it out for him, 'Alexander will sign things. Advise him as you would advise me. He's fairly bright…' He waved the telephone away and Margaret Morden said in my ear, 'But your daughter…'

'You're talking to Al,' I said. 'What about Patsy?'

'She and that brewery manager, Desmond Finch, very nearly wrecked the negotiations yesterday by crashing the creditors' meeting. And she had her husband with her… he's a menace. I shouldn't say it, but if the brewery survives it will be in spite of Mrs Benchmark. I don't understand her. The brewery will be hers, you'd think she would be the first to want the rescue operation to succeed.'