Lamp Black, Wolf Grey (13 page)

As soon as Dan left for work she jammed her hair on top of her head with a wooden clip, slipped on a favorite painting shirt and jeans, and hurried to the studio. It was still basic and harbored a fair amount of dust, but it was a workable space. She had swept and scrubbed the cobbles of the floor so that they looked lovely yet they provided an unhelpfully knobbly surface on which to try and stand an easel. The original hay mangers were still attached to the walls, and served as useful places to store lengths of framing, old canvasses, and general materials. In time, there were improvements that could be made—more windows, more lights, heating—but such alterations could come later. For now, the old building, with its solid, ancient walls, and a sense of time passed embedded in every stone, gave Laura a sense of calm and of safety that was wonderfully conducive to producing good work. She felt certain of it.

She positioned her easel by the open door so that she had a clear view of the meadows sweeping down to the woods. The recent rain had washed grit and grime away and brightened the colors of the landscape. She selected her palette accordingly. Flake white, cadmium yellow, French ultramarine, alizarin crimson, burnt umber, and lamp black. The sight of the oils soothed her as she squeezed out generous splodges. She had already prepared a canvas, rubbing on a layer of burnt sienna mixed with a drop of turpentine. She always preferred to work on a somber background, traveling from dark to light as she built up the picture. She assembled her brushes—broad hog bristle filberts to give clear shapes with soft edges. As the smell of the materials filled her nostrils she felt a familiar excitement stirring within her. She had been away too long from what she did best, from her preferred way of relating to the world around her. It was good to be back in that creative space once more, and with such inspirational subjects for inspiration.

She gazed out at the landscape, looking with her painter’s eye, truly seeing the shape of the trees, the depth of their shadows, the myriad tones and colors that offered themselves to her. She paused, allowing time for the information to be processed somewhere behind her intellect, somewhere deep in her subconscious where her artistic intuition dwelt. She picked a palette knife and plunged it into the buttery paint, mixing ultramarine with a dash of crimson, working at the blend until she had precisely the hue she wanted. Selecting a brush, she took a breath, offered up a silent prayer as always to whatever god ruled her talent, and then pitched in with bold strokes.

Three hours later Laura sat cross-legged on the cobbled floor, her chin resting in her hands, staring at the disaster before her. It had been a long time since a painting had gone so completely wrong. There was no hope of saving it, despite her best efforts. It was a failure. All that remained to be done was clean the canvas with turpentine and begin again. Only she hadn’t the heart. That vital part of her psyche that made the difference between a mess and a masterpiece was refusing to come out to play. She knew herself well enough to recognize a hopeless day when she had one. To continue now would only frustrate her further. No good could come of it. She hauled herself to her feet and set about cleaning her brushes. Usually, when the work had gone well, there was pleasure to be had in caring for her tools; in restoring the natural luster to the bristles of the brushes; in watching the last of the colors smudge from her palette; in tucking the tubes of oil paint away in their snug wooden box. But that delight was fed by the satisfaction of progress, of a measure of success, of a knowledge of having set in motion a creation. Glancing now at the ugliness standing on the easel Laura battled with despair and could not even face tackling the canvas. She left it where it was and went outside, suddenly needing to be free of the pungent air of the studio.

The newly washed countryside was soft and calming. Though it was still warm, summer had had its finest moment and was winding down. Subtle changes were afoot, as the leaves began to lose their gloss, and colors started to fade with the waning of the year. Laura closed her eyes, choosing to experience her surroundings in any way other than as a painter. A zephyr rustled through the silver birch beside the house. Two jays quarreled somewhere in the branches. A laden bumblebee droned past her ear and away to its nest in the ground behind the house. She stood for a further calming moment, then strode down the hill toward the woods.

She found the proximity of the trees and the otherworldliness of the woodland helpful in dispelling the bleakness of her mood, if only a little. It was hard not to be comforted by the cheerfulness of the young birds darting and dipping, the glow of the sun through the leafy boughs, and the smell of wild honeysuckle and damp moss. The noise of her own footsteps seemed brutally loud as she snapped twigs and scrunched dust and small stones along the path. She tried to tread lightly, but still felt clumsy. As she rounded a bend she glimpsed someone up ahead, someone walking away from her farther along the same path. She hesitated, remembering her last encounter in these woods. The farmer, whom she had later learned was known as Glyn the Bryn, had warned her off walking here, and the last thing she needed right now was a dose of his surly rudeness. But as she squinted through the undergrowth she could see this was not the old man but someone younger, taller, and stronger looking. He had dark hair, was wearing dark clothes, and carried a heavy stick. A movement to his left caught Laura’s eye. A dog, large and grey, was following the man. Now she realized this was the same figure she had seen that first day at Penlan. It hadn’t been Rhys after all. Laura sped up, curious to see who this stranger was. A rambler, perhaps? He certainly did not look the type. Nor a farmer. Who then? Laura all but broke into a trot, stumbling on the uneven ground. The man seemed to glide over the forest floor with his surefooted, long stride. Try as she might she could not gain on him, and he kept vanishing behind the trees. She thought of calling out, but what would she say? Then, as suddenly as they had appeared, the man and his dog merged with the trees and were gone. Laura stood, peering into the woods, but she had lost him. She had come to a part of the forest she had not visited before and had reached a field. Looking across it she could see a small farm. There was a scruffy stone house and a collection of equally dilapidated barns and sheds forming a muddy yard. An engine roared and Glyn the Bryn pulled out of one of the buildings, his dog barking beside him. He swore at the animal, and it leaped onto the back of the quad bike. The farmer revved up the machine and tore out of the yard and off down the lane, away from the woods, much to Laura’s relief. She waited until he was well out of sight and then climbed the fence and headed for the farm.

Close up everything was just as unkempt and shabby. The yard was covered in a layer of mud and sheep dung and must have been a mire in the winter. The barn roof was of rusty corrugated iron, as were some of the stable doors. Skeletons of ancient farm machinery lay about the place. A pigsty housed nothing but an elder tree, which had long ago forced off any roof there might have been. Laura was about to explore the barn when a tinkling laugh from behind her made her jump. She wheeled around to find an old woman watching her. If this was Glyn’s wife, then she was his physical opposite in every way. She was round and plump with a smiley face and bright, sparkling eyes. Her skin was not so much lined as creased and dimpled, and her abundant silver hair was tied back in a low, loose bun. Her ample body shook as she laughed. She wore a spotless white blouse and a long, heavy skirt over which was an ample apron, the strings of which tied her all together like a butcher’s parcel. On her feet were heavy boots that looked almost as aged as the woman herself.

“Oh,” said Laura. “I’m sorry, I…”

“… thought there was no one here.” The woman laughed some more. “Don’t fret, Glyn won’t be back before his stomach tells him it’s time for tea. Anyway, his bark is worse than his bite. Not that you can say the same about that dog of his!” She laughed again.

“Thanks for the warning.” Laura smiled and stepped forward, holding out her hand. “I’m Laura, from Penlan.”

“Of course you are,” said the old woman, her accent swooping and soaring like one of the woodland birds. She took Laura’s hand in her own pudgy one and squeezed it warmly, “You can call me Anwen.”

“I’m sorry. I was snooping. That was really rude of me.”

“Oh, don’t you worry about that, now,
cariad
. No harm done. You come and sit down with me, ’ave something to drink. I was just going to open a bottle of my elderflower cordial. Such a fine crop of blooms this year. Nothing like it on a dusty day. Come along.”

She led the way on painful legs to a warped, wooden seat at the front of the house. She gestured for Laura to sit and went inside. Laura wondered how such a mean-spirited dry stick of a man could have such a warm woman for his wife. Anwen reappeared moments later with two tall glasses. She handed one to Laura.

“Here you are. You try that and tell me if it’s not the best elderflower you’ve ever tasted.”

Laura sipped thoughtfully, deciding not to let on it was the only elderflower she had ever tasted.

“Delicious,” she declared, meaning it. “Absolutely delicious.”

Anwen shook with more gleeful laughter. “There we are, then. You want to try making some yourself. You’re still young. You might get it right by the time you’re an old crone like me.”

“I’m sorry, but I’ve never met anyone less cronelike in my life.”

They both laughed at that, then sat enjoying their drinks for a moment. Laura felt wonderfully at ease with this cheerful neighbor, and a little of the morning’s disappointment began to lift. It occurred to her that Anwen must know everyone local, including, perhaps, the man she had seen in the woods.

“I saw someone, as I was walking from Penlan. A man. Tall, dark, with a grey dog. Does he live around here?”

Anwen’s face altered minutely. She still wore her habitual smile, but a shadow of seriousness fell over her eyes.

“Oh, you’ve seen him, then, have you?” She looked at Laura differently now, as if studying her, trying to get the measure of her. After a moment’s silent consideration she nodded, to herself it seemed, and then sipped her drink. She leaned back on the seat, causing it to creak alarmingly, and stretched out her legs stiffly, letting out a deep sigh before speaking.

“You don’t wear a watch, Laura,” she said, looking ahead into the middle distance now.

“No. As a matter of fact, I never have.”

“And do you have to look at a calendar to know which day it is?”

“Pretty much, yes.”

“You see, there are some people who live their lives by time. A time to get up. A time to go to bed. A clock on every wall. A date for this and a day for that. Those people wouldn’t know how to go on without an hour chiming or a watch watching them. Other people, people like you, Laura, well, they live their lives to the rhythm inside themselves, not the ticking of a clock.”

As the old woman paused Laura struggled to find the relevance of what she was saying. It was observant of her to notice Laura wasn’t wearing a watch, and it was an accurate description of the way Laura lived, inasmuch as she didn’t follow a nine-to-five workday. But what had any of that to do with the stranger in the woods?

“Such people have a way of looking at the world,” Anwen went on. “A way of seeing things that is sometimes a little bit different to the rest.” She turned to face Laura again, her expression gentle but earnest. “There is plenty in this world to be seen by those who are able to look,
cariad.
You are one of the lucky ones.”

Laura felt her scalp begin to tingle. Was the old woman talking about ghosts? Surely not. Laura had never been even remotely susceptible to such things. She was the only girl at a séance at school to get a hopeless fit of the giggles and had never found ghost stories the smallest bit scary. There were those strange, unexplained experiences in the house. Those sensations, and the thought that she wasn’t alone somehow, but she had already dismissed the idea of ghosts. It just wasn’t her. An echo of past inhabitants of the house, maybe. She could accept that. As if their voices and deeds might be somehow held in the walls of the ancient place. Recorded, in some way. But dead people wandering about in broad daylight? No, definitely not. Laura fidgeted on the wooden slats of the bench. She did not want to offend Anwen, but there had to be a more mundane explanation as to the identity of the unknown walker.

“I know the air is pretty thin up here, but I really don’t think I’ve started seeing ghosts,” she said with a smile.

“Ghosts! Did I say they were ghosts?” There was an edge to Anwen’s voice now. “That man you saw was as real as you or I. As real as you or I. Not dead. Not imagined. Not a will-o’-the-wisp. All I’m saying is not everyone would have seen him. And you did. Was this the first time?”

“No. No, I saw him when we first came to the house. He was in the distance, so I didn’t get a good look. But I’m sure it was the same person. Actually, at first I thought it must have been our neighbor, Rhys, but it wasn’t. You know, from the croft up the hill?”

“Ty Bychan, you mean?” Anwen looked away again. “There are those who can not be seen clearly, even when you are standing toe to toe. Look closely, girl. Look with that artist’s eye of yours.”

Laura’s mouth dried. She stared at the old woman.

“How did you know I was an artist?”

Now Anwen laughed again. “Well, it could have been village gossip, but let’s say your clothes gave you away this time.”

Laura looked down at her paint-splattered shirt. “Oh, of course.” She felt Anwen was trying to change the subject, but she couldn’t really make sense of what she had told her. She tried a different tack. “I’ve started doing some reading about the area. It’s another world, isn’t it, out here?”

“You’re used to city life. It will take time for you to slow down to the rhythm of the countryside, but you will. Eventually. Let the seasons be your calendar.”

“I so want to paint the landscape, but I don’t seem able to settle. So far all I’ve produced is a mess. So much for my artist’s eye.” She waited, hoping Anwen might offer something more about ghosts that weren’t ghosts and the mysterious walker, but nothing came. The old woman seemed tired now, distracted, and barely aware of her visitor anymore. Laura felt she had overstayed her welcome. She stood up. “I’d better get back. Thank you so much for the drink. Please, call in if you find yourself up near Penlan.”