Jenny looked around the crowded room, at those who sat or stood at their easels and gazed thoughtfully at their work in progress. She had retired early when still in her 'prime', and she had the means to attend Artistic Flair, an art club that met every Wednesday and took over the village hall for a morning and afternoon session. A wide range of artistic skills was deployed by all who attended, but for many that wasn't the point of being there.
Its members came from far and wide in search of company, to share in their passion for creating something of interest on what was a blank canvas, carving a lump of wood, sculpting a small piece in clay, or fashioning a jumble of items into a 3D mosaic, all of it colourful and inventive. Pursuing your craft, or art, could be a lonely pastime, so members came to chatter, encourage, offer advice, or simply be there and not be isolated, alone, with only the radio or music on a CD to break the silence. Some thrived on it, others did not.
She attended regularly, the village hall but a short drive away from her cottage that had been her home for more than ten years, most of them lived as a singleton, no one capturing her heart and, equally important, her mind. Marriage had eluded her, or the man to persuade her to take that step not chanced upon. Her many friends kept her active, their circumstances much like hers. Sometimes, they even took holidays together and the arty ones among them would learn something of famed artists whose work was often displayed in the larger galleries they visited.
'Is there anything you don't know?' she would often be asked about an artwork, the artist, or its history. Those that did so admired her for her widely read knowledge and encyclopaedic memory.
'I'm interested in learning about the artist and how he does it, or did, not that it does me any good in what I produce,' she would laugh and there was some truth in what she had confessed to, only too readily. She was competent, that was all that could be said of her landscapes and attempts at abstract art.
The same could never be said of a man she now looked at across the room. He was dressed so casually smart that you might be forgiven for thinking he had turned up at the wrong place. Malcolm Finlayson had reappeared like a ghost out of the mists, his absence explained but not to be talked of within his hearing.
There were some in the art group, women mostly, who regarded him warily. It was not difficult to believe that a good-looking man, with his mop of swept back greying hair and bearded face, furrowed brow and lively appraising eyes was a womaniser and that his stellar gifts as an artist, a member of the RA, set him apart from them all. But Malcolm did not behave arrogantly or haughtily; he passed on his knowledge to those who sought it of him. He even held an artist's hand, the paintbrush shaking because of his closeness to them, as he showed them how it could be done. Malcolm would then step away and his attention would again revert to his work, a frown of deep concentration to be seen.
His home and studio were some miles away, up on the escarpment and in a village smaller than where the group met, but he attended meetings every week and chatted amiably enough with those around him before they set to the task for their day.
Malcolm's marriage to Imogen Withers, an artist in ceramics, had withstood its strains on account of him, and everyone was surprised when he failed to attend meetings. They read of his attendance at a London exhibition in the art magazine many subscribed to, but the accompanying pictures of him showed more haggard features than before. And then the news came to them, by word of mouth and in the press, that Imogen had died quite suddenly, from a hitherto undiagnosed and virulent cancer.
From an ordered and creative life had sprung chaos and introspection, even doubts. They weren't the emotions to sustain the endeavours of less gifted artists for some time yet, but here he was again, back in the groove some would say, and she thought that painting and art, his ways of it, were the best route to his emotional recovery.
She gazed over the edge of her canvas and Malcolm sensed that she was looking at him, for he turned. A moment's smile creased his face and the slightest tilt of his head seemed to suggest that she joined him so that they could talk. Her interest in the man and artist, never to be denied and not made known or even hinted at, now prompted her to do as he suggested.
Perhaps she might play a part in his recovery and a gap in her life made good.
♥
'Tell me what you think, Jenny,' he asked as she stood by his shoulder and looked at a painting of a water pump, the three blades of the windmill at the top of a lattice mast rusty and deformed. It stood in a pasture, close to a water trough meant for livestock. The pasture was bounded by woodland. 'I intend to call it 'Redundant Technology'.
'It suggests so much to the viewer,' she marvelled. 'Do you take in the scene that you've painted or what lies behind it, the message it contains?'
'Both, I hope,' he smiled. 'I think it's done so I won't look for any flaws there may be...'
'There aren't, I assure you.'
Malcolm looked at her and then decided to stand up from his canvas-covered artist's stool. 'I haven't spoken to you for quite a while...'
'No, and I thought it best not to intrude, Malcolm.' She spoke in a low voice and looked about them in case others were listening in.
'Well, I must admit that I'm glad we can talk for a moment. I can't go on being the recluse some thought I'd turn into if I kept my head down. I've got to earn a living after all.'
'You had every reason to do that,' she smiled considerately, 'and to wait until you were ready.'
'Yes, thank you for putting it that way,' he replied with the faintest of sighs. 'Listen, can we talk as we grab a drink, coffee or juice? There's something that I have been meaning to ask you these last few days.'
He took the juice, in a plastic beaker, that she held out to him, a questioning look to be seen in her wonderful eyes and Jenny's eyebrows arched in enquiry.
'Well, what did you want to ask me?'
'Let's go outside for a moment, grab some air?' he suggested on a fleeting touch to her arm that prompted Jenny to look his way again, only this time deeply involved with what was at work between them. 'Sorry for doing that.'
'Don't be,' she answered, instinctively.
Jenny was only too easy on the eye, her seemingly natural blonde hair falling lazily on each side of her oval face and he had noticed her lightness of step as he followed her to the counter, her flouncy blouse and washed-out jeans looking uncommonly good on a woman of her age. Jenny's fingers, he noted were somewhat short, stubby even for a slender woman, but her fingernails were varnished a soft pearlescent pink, the colour matching the soft smear of lipstick she would have applied before coming to the art club. She smiled beautifully, restrained but engaging nonetheless, and her sculpted hourglass figure had not gone unnoticed, it never had been, but he had not given any sign of his engagement with the woman he now wanted to talk to.
'I've had an invitation to an RA event in London and...and I wondered if you would like to go? It's an invitation for members and a guest. I have two entries in an exhibition and received the invitation a day or so ago. We could make a day of it.' He paused on seeing her startled reaction to what had been said. 'It's out of the blue, I know...'
