AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I didn’t know what was meant by that little remark, nor did I want to know. Yvette, sensing there was a much tougher conversation coming my way, declined a cup of tea, and after pecking the air between my cheek and her lips, she said goodbye and left me to deliver the news alone.
A wave of butterflies stormed my delicate belly. I couldn’t remember the last time I had been both excited and terrified. Probably when on board the corkscrew rollercoaster at Alton Towers, hovering at the top before the whooshing descent. However, a rollercoaster ride lasted only a few minutes; this crazy adventure would last over two months.
Seven
Learning from past experience, the artist wedged the easel’s legs between the rocks, leaving it precariously balanced, and hastened to complete his sketch before everything blew away.
He mixed various colours and kept a record of them on a scrap of paper, noting which smudges realistically reflected the ambient shades. He crossed out a couple with a pencil and wrote “sea” next to one.
Satisfied, he sketched out an outline on the paper, then swept the brush across the white canvas. The uneven line of Dunstanburgh Castle’s walls, with their jagged edges, gradually materialised.
Several times he paused, dropped his arm and tapped the brush handle on the side of his legs, ignoring the careless splattering of paint, and re-assessed the emerging illustration. He struggled with patience. A weakness of a restless body. When a gust of wind buffeted the easel, he steadied the tripod and muttered a curse. He repeatedly glanced from his wristwatch to the gloomy sky with its bustling clouds, then the white crest breakers of the sea, finally back to the painting.
A passer-by walking the path to the castle entrance stopped to admire his brushwork. The slightly wizened man, whose pewter-coloured hair flapped up and down in the wind, leant on his shooting stick and hummed. He muttered a few incomprehensible words, which were sufficient to distract the artist. He frowned and kept his back to the interloper.
‘Looking good,’ the pewter man murmured. ‘Watch your blue. Not enough azure, perhaps?’
The artist’s eyebrows rose into points. He ignored the suggestion.
‘Have you come with a group?’ Pewter man searched the empty hillside.
The artist hesitated; brush poised for another sweep. ‘No.’
‘It’s not a bad time to visit. You’ve had a good spell of weather these last few days. I sometimes come during May half-term and spend a little time on the coast.’
The artist turned. ‘Half-term. Are you a—’
‘Teacher? An art teacher, as a matter of fact.’ He crept forward and closed the gap. Peering at the detail in the picture, he nodded. ‘Such a popular castle to paint, Dunstanburgh. Very few get it right, in my humble opinion.’ He unfolded his shooting stick and perched on the seat.
The two men admired the view and talked, comparing techniques. They had a polite discussion about the best landscape artists. The connection forged, the artist returned to his work, unperturbed by his audience of one.
After half an hour, the man folded his portable chair and offered the artist a handshake in farewell. ‘You’ll be back in the summer, then?’
The artist wiped his hand on a cloth before clasping the firm hand. ‘That’s the plan. I’ve a schedule to keep, and limited time.’
‘Good luck with everything.’
Alone again, the side-tracked painter raced to complete his task. The clouds parted and a bright spotlight struck the distant stone walls and the sky beyond.
He stepped back, examined his scene, and the one above, and sighed heavily. In a blink of the eye, the sunbeams had altered the landscape. What was once grey and murky had transformed into sharply-focused stones, and saturated vivid colours, especially the turbulent sea, which now reflected the changing skies.
‘Azure.’ He picked up his palette. ‘Gonna need more of that for the sea.’
Later, in the evening, he called his contact and was greeted with a rude response.
‘What are you doing? You should have waited.’
PART TWO
‘It is advisable to play and spend good times.’
Lorenzo de' Medici
Eight
Bamburgh
Bamburgh manages to host an imposing castle and remain merely a village. A large village admittedly, but certainly not a provincial town. Built on an outcrop of seemly indestructible rock that forms a pier jutting into the North Sea, the castle’s location is ideal for demonstrable fortifications. Starting out as a six-century timber fort, each conquest brought new dimensions to the promontory, until the Normans arrived and claimed the castle as theirs.
