The Drowning River by Christobel Kent Read Free Book Online

yesterday, or maybe it had been the day before. The day the rain started; they’d been eating their sandwiches at the table, listening to it fall on the glass roof. He’d shown no sign of surprise when Iris had told him, under her breath, that she’d taken a little holiday. ‘Somewhere hot, I hope,’ he’d said, nodding at the rain. Iris had grimaced, thinking of how mad Ronnie would be, no chance of swimming pool action at the Chianti castle.
    Antonella hadn’t really gone over the top about it, either. Iris pondered if this always happened, the parents coughed up for the course, and the students just quietly drifted off to do their own thing after a week or two. Nice enough for the teachers; maybe that was why there seemed to be an etching school or a life class around every corner in Florence; she passed at least five brass plaques on her way in every morning. You ended up with a handful of committed students, and a nice quiet studio.
    Iris yawned; she’d slept like a log last night, in the huge cold flat with its blackout curtains and shutters and cavernous spaces, but it had left her feeling even more tired than usual. She squeezed her eyes shut and when she opened them again she found herself looking at a drawing that with a sick feeling she recognized as one of hers. It had been pinned up on the wall, by Antonella, Iris assumed. It was a sketch she’d done of Ronnie lying on her back, hands behind herhead, one knee up and the other leg slung over it carelessly, a book resting on her thighs. She’d handed it in at the end of last week to be marked.
    Flushing, Iris found herself glad Ronnie herself wasn’t here to remark on it, to say something languid and sarcastic, her voice floating through the studio. The space had deceptive acoustics, transmitting sound around corners and into alcoves; the higher registers carried a long way under the lofty, vaulted ceilings. Iris turned away from the picture; she wished Antonella hadn’t put it up.
    The model this morning had been a man for once – she thought Sophia and Ronnie might even be pissed off to have missed him. He’d been young too, in his twenties perhaps, but it had been hard to tell because he was very thin. Iris had wondered if he had something the matter with him, he’d seemed unnaturally knobbly, all bones and joints, and although he had black Italian hair, his skin was whiter than any she’d ever seen, his chin blue with stubble. He hadn’t said anything but, then, the models often didn’t. He’d been very good at keeping still, on a wooden chair, knees apart and elbows resting on them.
    They didn’t have a live model every day. They spent a lot of time drawing from jointed figures and photographs, which Iris thought at first was a bit of a cheat but when she kept at it she could see it helped. She liked drawing from life, though; after the first week she had started looking at clothed people, people in the dark streets or in bars, and imagining drawing them in the studio, undressed, how their flesh would sit on their bones. Fat was hard to draw. It was a weird feeling, interesting, not for any pervy reason but because it made them all equal, somehow, and in addition it seemed to qualify her to examine people shamelessly.
    Going into the studio’s small kitchen to wash up her plate, Iris found herself wondering what Paolo Massi would be like to draw, and just at that moment he walked in. She felt herself blush, turned slightly so he wouldn’t notice her and her hot cheeks, and made a lot of drying her plate then putting it away. He didn’t say anything – perhaps he hadn’t registered she was even there – but began to assemble the pieces of the aluminium coffee pot, and she quickly went out.
    Iris seated herself at the table as the blush subsided, scrabbling inher bag for her sketchbook. Perhaps it was because he’d been away that she was noticing Paolo Massi suddenly, wondering about him. He’d been there all the time their first three