2

Stella was up early the following day, dabbling with her painting. On the beach five men were launching a boat for a trip, the tourists standing in a disorderly queue as the sea tried to reach their feet.

Lena came out of the chalet with two cups of coffee, setting them down on the table near her sister. A couple of lone joggers ran along the wet sand and a woman in her early twenties worked through yoga poses.

‘Right, of course — We should paint—’ Lena said.

Their easels stood behind them on the veranda, their paintings still up overnight.

‘Coffee first.’ Lena was reluctant to get into it. ‘Anyway, Arun will be here soon—’

‘To clear up the mess we’ve created on canvas.’ Stella mocked herself as she sat with a shudder in front of her work. ‘It makes you wonder what it’s all about—’

‘And then you find yourself having another gin—’ Lena laughed.

‘You know your trouble, Lena, ’ Stella joked.

Lena shook her head and gave her sister a wry scowl. ‘You know me so well.’

‘You’ve never really grown up,’ Stella finished.

‘Why not?’ Lena sipped her coffee and settled by her painting. ‘Everyone should know the child inside themselves.’

Stella gave a short grunt, then angled her brush and thrust a cross through the lower section of the painting. ‘We never did see eye to eye did we? I could never discover why. Even when mum lost it with you I kept trying—’

‘Maybe you should stop trying now, and just start being yourself.’ Lena shrugged. ‘When things get bad I just sing the blues.’

‘That’s a good way out for you.’ Stella tried to disguise the rising feelings of resentment she felt: it did not seem like Lena appreciated any of the lengths she had gone to in the past to help her. Until Stella too, like her mother, could do no more and left Lena to drift away into her own world.

‘There’s nothing easy about the blues. Bessie Smith singing on street corners when she was a girl to make ends meet, being ripped off by managers and flooring them with her fists. Ma Rainey hiding being a lesbian by marrying a bloke. The blues is the blues, it’s life. You’re not the only one who’s been there. Even Lena Horne—’

‘Your namesake.’ Stella turned back and started to rub out the angry cross with a rag.

 

It was too hot to paint in the afternoon, so they snoozed over gin and read used books from a shelf in a restaurant facing the sea.

By half four the sun was low enough for Stella to be drawn back to her painting, encouraging her sister, who moaned at first, to join her. They settled at their easels and began silently. After half an hour of intense brushwork, Stella leaned back, shaking her head. ‘Damn, damn, damn.’ She felt Lena watching her.

‘Let go of the inner critic and just do it,’ Lena said.

‘What do you mean?’ Stella replied sharply.

‘You know, the one that’s always telling you you’re no good — like mum.’

Stella stared at her. Lena could always dress well. Her golden yellow top and long loose skirt accentuated her shape. Nothing fitted Stella properly. Diets were a failure. And somehow the bright reds and maroons she was attracted to tended to exaggerate her size rather than shape it. ‘She loved you.’

‘Pity she didn’t have the hands and heart to show it then, because all I got was ice.’

Stella raised her tone in defence. ‘She was gentle and generous — in all things.’

‘Are we talking about the same woman?’

‘She was always good to me.’

‘To you — maybe,’ Lena said.

Stella shuffled uncomfortably. This felt like old times with Lena, the tension in the verbal exchanges. ‘And when do you open your inner eyes and let it flow,’ Stella said pointedly. ‘Where’s your blues gone?’ Stella pushed her brush through the beach area on her canvas. ‘If it was only that easy. If my hand would just do that, it would be all right.’

‘That’s what art is — taking risks.’

Stella frowned at her. Lena could sound superior and condescending sometimes. ‘It must be like life, then.’

‘Even doing nothing’s a risk.’ Lena shrugged and went back to her images. ‘You’re the one, you’re the success.’

Stella wanted her to be quiet. ‘I’ve got the money, you’ve got the talent. You call that success?’ Stella scoffed at her picture. ‘Things just come naturally to you. They always have — although you block them. Ever since—’

‘What?’ Lena scowled.

Stella found she could not go forward and putting her brush down, she fanned herself with a piece of card. ‘The mountains keep coming back to me. I was with my first husband up near Badrinath as the flowers were coming out in spring. The snows had thawed and we were so high up and in love. I want to go there again. I can’t tell you how much you would enjoy it, the snow hanging over the summits like lace—’

Lena leaned forward and slipped her hand into her bag on the floor, pulled out a silver flask and took a swig.

‘Not again.’ Stella caught her. ‘You had so much this afternoon, Lena. I thought you’d given all that up—’

‘It keeps the throat lubricated.’

‘Honey and camomile is what you need.’ Stella watched her sister looking up the far end of the beach to where a little river fanned out to the sea. Beyond it an island seemed to float around the edge of the mainland. ‘Let me look at yours then.’ Stella came over to Lena’s canvas and gawped a second. ‘There you see, it works. You’re so damned natural at everything. It’s all so easy for you.’ Stella stood in the way of Lena looking at hers. ‘Don’t look at mine. No, no, you mustn’t.’ But Lena eased herself past.

‘You can work on it,’ Lena said.

‘Never picked up a paint brush before and look at you,’ Stella nodded at Lena’s landscape. ‘The sheen of light around the island, even the specks of people have shape and movement. Not like mine — and I seem to need to get every bit of detail—’