A Deep Deceit by Hilary Bonner Read Free Book Online

the eclipse of the sun on that dull August morning. And to be watching from the heart of Cornwall, this ancient county steeped in legend and mystery, added an extra indefinable magic to the whole experience.
    I clutched Carl’s hand even more tightly, feeling the tears welling. I can’t quite explain why I had been so moved, but there it was.
    â€˜I could murder a pint,’ said Carl.
    I swung to look at him. He was totally po-faced.
    â€˜You Philistine,’ I said. ‘Have you no soul? That was just amazing, wasn’t it?’
    â€˜Was it?’ he enquired guilelessly.
    I made a threatening gesture with the palm of my right hand. I knew he was joking, but even so . . .
    Carl relented. ‘Yes, it was amazing,’ he said, his face softening. ‘Of course it was. Makes all our problems seem so unimportant, doesn’t it?’
    I knew exactly what he meant. And I just hoped that our problems would indeed prove to be unimportant.
    One way and another the eclipse was the high spot of an indifferent summer, which turned gradually into a mild but exceptionally wet early autumn. During the torrential rain which drenched the south west through almost all of September the roof in our lean-to kitchen sprang a leak again. Carl tried to patch it as best he could. Our absentee landlord hadn’t raised our rent for almost three years and we didn’t want to jog his memory.
    Carl finished several of the abstracts I considered to be quite brilliant. He had taken to using oil pastels rather than paint. They didn’t fetch the price of oil paintings, but he could complete them much more quickly and in any case I knew that he enjoyed the medium. Also, the speed with which he could produce in pastels gave his work a spontaneity, which I thought added a distinctive sharpness.
    One evening I made pumpkin soup, one of his favourite dishes. I served the soup in deep round bowls, its vivid yellowish-red colour streaked with cream and dotted with chopped chives. Carl enthused as much about the look of it as the taste and as soon as he had finished eating disappeared into his studio, for once telling me not to follow him because he wanted to surprise me. Only three or four hours later he emerged with a splendid three-foot-square painting of my pumpkin soup. On it he had written ‘For Suzanne.’ It was the most wonderful present I had ever been given. The next day he framed it for me. We hung it in the dining room and it seemed to transform the room. It remains to this day my favourite of all Carl’s paintings, not least for the spirit in which it was painted and given to me.
    This was a prolific period for Carl. There was another piece, in brilliant primary colours, which I also thought particularly impressive. It consisted of a striking series of interlocking circular shapes, each one sharply defined in itself and yet also blending to be part of another. He called it Balloons .
    One afternoon, exceptionally dry and bright for November, we walked together to the Logan Gallery, the little shop up the hill that sold most of Carl’s work for him, taking with us Balloons and two other recent paintings. The owner, Will Jones, was a quietly spoken former schoolteacher with a real eye, Carl always said. Will had taught art for many years and dreamed of one day becoming a full-time painter himself. That dream never came true. Will said he guessed he’d never been quite good enough, although Carl and I didn’t believe he meant it. Artists never did. I had grown to understand that most unsuccessful painters were convinced the only reason they weren’t as big as Picasso was that there had been a conspiracy against them. But if Will had that bitterness inside him, at least he didn’t show it. Indeed, he insisted that having his own gallery was a good second best for him.
    He greeted us warmly as he always did, unfolding himself from his chair as we entered the shop and stretching