The Sea House by Esther Freud Read Free Book Online Page B

house in a flat deserted scrub of shingle, up the ridge and down past the pub. Ethel would know from just one look at her how cowardly she had been, and she imagined how she would feel if her whole body was lit up like her legs. She walked faster as she approached the corner of the lane and quickly, using the side door, slipped inside.

9
    ‘Am I in your way?’ Gertrude asked him, when to her delight she found Max at his easel sketching in the outlines of her house.
‘Yes,’ Max said, and then he saw that, of course, he had offended her.
‘It’s quite all right.’ Gertrude had her book in one hand and was tugging at the deckchair, pulling it with her to the back of the lawn. ‘I’ll move.’
Max wanted to explain his unease over the human form, how if she was there, even on the edge of his eye line, he would feel compelled to paint her in.
‘Really, it’s perfectly all right,’ she said, when, between them with great awkwardness, they had succeeded in moving the one flimsy chair.
‘I suppose I could have worked around you.’ Max was able to breathe again now she was out of his view, but Gertrude looked up sharply.
‘I said it was all right.’
Max sketched roughly with a soft thick pencil. The beauty of Marsh End, he realized, was not in its actual features but the way it rested on the ground. The texture of the lawn, the old, old earth, and the way the bench belonged there, tucked into the wall. The house was almost square, and he began inching sideways to feel its corner, to get at the side view.
Gertrude’s head jolted up from her book. Where was he going? She could see him, his canvas abandoned, sidling away. She exhaled deeply and let her shoulders drop. They had the rest of the summer. What difference did it make? If he wanted to ease his grief by wandering, then who was she to fail to understand.
Max was examining the grained glass of the porch. It was clear to him now. Lehmann must have built it. Ruined the old line of the house with his vision and his lines. Well, Max would make a sketch of it, show him in a picture how ludicrous it looked. He went inside for paper. He’d used up the loose sheets he’d brought with him, used them all up on making Steerborough maps. He looked around the living-room. Surely Gertrude must have some paper hidden somewhere, and, not wanting to disturb her, he opened the walnut bureau, peered into its cupboards and drawers, but found nothing but a sewing basket and some supplies of sugar and salt. The compartments of her roll-top desk held only stationery, too small and dainty to be of any use, and even the larder, which he opened in desperation, had nothing but jars of chutneys and stewed fruit. Unable to stop looking, he tugged at a small door under the stairs, and as if it had been waiting there, a roll of paper fell out and unravelled at his feet. It was lining paper, dusty round the edges, the outer layer mottled yellow with disuse, but it was strong and plain and perfect. He took a board to rest it on, and hurried back outside. But without a knife or scissors to cut the paper, he simply chose the first clean section and let the rest flow over the edge of the board, cascading down his legs and out along the ground. Quickly he sketched in the old front of the house. He did it easily, like a boy released from school, taking pleasure in each stroke. Say something. He thought of Henry, and he smiled to think that for once he did have something to say.
Max was so pleased with his drawing that he crept round to the back garden, purposefully not looking at Gertrude, who was still intent on her book. Very gently he picked up his box of paints. He took a sheaf of brushes, his palette and a flask, and, leaving only the canvas on its easel and his bag of oils, he tip-toed back to the front. Each brick, or the impression of each brick, each reddened tile, each leaf of ivy clinging to the wall, he would put them in. He worked on through lunchtime, through the afternoon, until