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...'
Her answering laugh conveyed both her delight and surprise.
'I'd love to do so. There are thousands of entries but only a fraction get chosen. I would be interested to see what gets through for others to pay and see.'
'True, and you know your stuff,' he smiled, his bearded face creasing as he did so. 'I've taken the two works down already so we could go by train...at my expense...avoid the hassle of driving in London now. I'm just glad that you've agreed. I need the company, truth be told...'
She was taken by his honesty, and also by the stilled look that Malcolm now gave her. Perhaps they were seeing each other in a new light, but she had not gone through the turmoil that Malcolm had done, so it was a harder decision for him to reach, that of moving on and to do so with someone else...if that was where his invitation might be taking them. It occurred to her that there were similarities between her and his late wife. Apart from a little thickening around her waist, she had retained a shapely hourglass figure for a fifty-three-year-old woman who might yet be seduced into taking and giving some loving attention once more. She hadn't given up on that happening again.
'Well?' he shrugged.
'Yes, well...we'd better go back in,' she smiled, her look upon him quite different now and she saw that in Malcolm's eyes too. 'Call me and tell me the arrangements, won't you?'
'Of course, I will. We'll make a day of it, Jenny.'
♥
He couldn't keep his eyes off her and she was pleased. Such a look had not been upon her for so long that she thought of it as a first time. Her wrap-around cream dress flattered her figure, clung to her hips and shaped her thighs. She had seen how her breasts were lifted and rounded by it and had wondered, as she waited for him to arrive and collect her, whether it wasn't a bit too provocative or revealing. But, she had decided on wearing a cream-coloured summer coat, little more than a shower coat of a similar colour to her dress, so he and anyone else, would get only a passing glimpse of her figure. She wore a little more makeup, a light brush of blusher to her cheeks and pearly pink lipstick. Her honey-blonde hair had been studiously plaited and Malcolm now looked on a different woman from the one usually seen dressed down for the art club.
She was going out, to London and the RA no less, and she would make a day of it and with a man whose reputation followed him around, both in his private life and in his art, in the creative circles that he moved in. But he was modest, and if he was lustful or desired her he had yet to give any overt sign of such an impulse.
'What's going on behind those eyes of yours?' she murmured, the rush of the train on its tracks, and its swaying, making them bump together at times and for her to meet his look upon her.
'It comes along with what I do in my painting,' he answered, 'and I also see a different woman from the picture I have of you in my mind.'
'We're going out together and we're going to have fun,' she laughed softly and intent upon doing just that as she had given voice to.
♥
After the wonderfully chatty, engrossing and informative day that she had spent with him, she knew that she needed to feel a man's touch again. While the water was douching over her beautiful skin, Jenny pictured in her mind how last night could have gone if she had invited Malcolm into her home. Instead, she had sent him away after the briefest of kisses, a touch of her lips lacking any lustful intent. Her hand moved slowly over her breasts and she started caressing her hard nipples while thinking of him. She had never touched herself thinking of someone else other than in preparation for the lovers she had become involved with, but they had been few, Now, different and self-induced sensations were taking over. The water combined with the warm feelings of her lust was too much for her and she was ready to give in to her raging, desiring thoughts about a man who had been in her life but on the edge of it until the cruellest of misfortune had changed everything. Her hand was moving lower and lower, she could now feel the warmth between her legs and that's when she heard her iPhone's trill, the volume set to maximum so that she could hear it over the noise of the shower.
