A Deep Deceit by Hilary Bonner Read Free Book Online Page A

out his arms in welcome. He was exceptionally tall, about six foot five, and spent most of his time in old St Ives ducking to avoid smashing his head – somewhat protected though it was by a thick, almost bouffant halo of silver hair – against doorways and low ceilings.
    He kissed me rather theatrically on both cheeks and his arms quickly wound themselves round my waist. I well was aware that Will grasped every opportunity to touch me with considerable enthusiasm. I wished he wouldn’t, but he didn’t mean any harm. He was just a tactile sort of person. Sometimes I quite enjoyed the attention, to tell the truth, and he never really took liberties. He looked a bit like Peter O’Toole with big hair, had a penchant for velvet jackets and capes, and was certainly the most unlikely shopkeeper. I suppose he reckoned he could at least look like an artist, although I always thought he resembled an actor playing the part.
    He was, however, physically overwhelming, partly because of his size and partly because of his personality. The bear-hug in which he grasped me took the breath from my body.
    â€˜Will, be careful,’ I admonished him.
    He backed off at once. ‘Sorry, darling, just so pleased to see you,’ he cried and winked at me in that way he had, which demonstrated that he wasn’t in the least bit sorry and would actually like to hug me again.
    I nearly always accompanied Carl to the Logan Gallery because I enjoyed looking around and I liked chatting to Will. He was the kind of man who accepted you for what you were and didn’t ask too many personal questions. I even liked the name he had chosen for his much loved gallery – Logan, after the famous Logan Rock, a sixty-five-ton hunk of granite balanced impossibly on a clifftop at Treen right down at the bottom end of Cornwall not far from Land’s End.
    â€˜As wondrous a piece of natural sculpture as you’ll ever be lucky enough to encounter,’ was Will’s opinion of the Logan Rock. And you had to warm to a man who could see the world like that. He was a true romantic, right enough, and I liked romantics.
    Will took the three wrapped paintings from Carl, but at first merely put them to one side unopened. ‘Coffee?’ he enquired. This was part of the ritual.
    While Will busied himself with the kettle in the little back room, Carl and I studied the work of the opposition, as it were. There was a small Clive Gunnell bronze called Windows – an abstract of intertwining ovals, their inner curves finished in a beautiful green patina – which I particularly admired, but Carl and I weren’t into buying other people’s art. Sadly, we could not afford to.
    â€˜Turn it round,’ instructed Will, when he returned to the gallery and noticed me studying the Gunnell. The bronze was mounted and balanced on a plinth, which allowed it to be rotated. Slowly I turned it a full circle.
    â€˜See, it looks right from every angle,’ said Will. ‘You should be able to do that with any piece of work that is truly sculptural. And if you can’t, then whatever it is and whoever it’s by, it’s too one-dimensional and not really a sculpture at all.’
    Will had a habit of always having to know more than you did and a rather condescending way of lecturing in a schoolmasterly fashion, but he did know his business, there was no doubt about that, which was why Carl had so much respect for him.
    Only when we were sipping our coffee from brightly coloured mugs did Will start to unwrap Carl’s paintings. Then he propped them one by one against a wall and stood back, hands on hips, head thrown back, legs akimbo. A flamboyant pose.
    The first he looked at was Balloons , black-edged and framed in white wood – Carl did all his own framing; he said he had no intention of sharing his meagre profits with anybody else. Balloons was a large painting, slightly more than three foot square, just a little