Most Saturdays I left home an hour earlier than necessary. The front door needed a shove from my shoulder. Jojo padded down the hall holding his intelligent head high and greeted me like a butler, sniffing my hand. All part of the ritual greeting, miss, please follow me.
There he stood, dark cord trousers, shirtsleeves rolled up, one hand running through his hair, a slash of paint on one side of his hand, no sign of the heavy gold rings I’d seen him wearing at the party.
‘Rebeccah Budde, come to save me.’
‘Don’t think so.’
Alex March stood inches from my face. ‘Lucy’s buggered off so I need a life model. If you sit for me, I’ll pay you.
Cash. Deal?’
‘Depends.’
‘On what?’
‘How long I have to sit for. What you want to paint?’
‘Draw. I want to draw before I paint. Face and hands. Half an hour to start with. See how we go. It’s harder than you think, sitting still.’
‘Maggie says hi.’
‘Tell her hi back. Do we have a deal? I need your face in front of me, Rebeccah. Now.’
He sketched with charcoal and after a while his fingers were black and smeary. If he threatened to touch me I screamed. Not with those, not like that.
‘If you can’t draw the human body, then you can’t . . .’
‘Can’t what?’
‘Can’t paint. You have to know what’s underneath everything before you paint. The human body has every line and curve and angle.’
He had a beautiful way of sucking and biting his lower lip as he drew.
‘Tilt your head, bit more, hold that. I said hold it.’
‘Did you go to art school? Or college?’
‘The Slade. Probably doesn’t mean much to you.’
‘London?’
He nodded. ‘Left after two years. Ran away to Florence. Best place in the world to learn.’
Jojo sat beside me. I ran my fingers over his sleek light brown skin, over the tiny rolls of fat at his shoulder. I couldn’t imagine what Italy looked like.
‘Where’s Lucy then?’
‘With the boyfriend. She’s got a new one, so I hear.’
She’s chucked him. I didn’t want to know.
‘Sorry, just have to move a bit.’
‘You’ve only been sitting there for five bloody minutes.’
Tucked away in the corner of the room there was a portrait I hadn’t noticed before. Small painting, large frame. A man with one of those high-necked jackets (how well I knew them). His body ended at his thighs, his solid hand rested on a dog, runs in the family then. Underneath the painting in fine black letters: George Percival March, 1801–1837.
George March had dark hair combed into the most snug style possible around his head and down around his ears, longer on one side than the other.
Look at you, George—bad hair and bad behaviour.
‘Wild George, they called him. Love them and leave them. Half of Brightley probably has George’s blood in them.’
‘How did he die?’
‘Fell off his horse, found in a field with his neck broken. Lived hard, died young.’
‘You don’t mind that though, do you?’
‘There has to be an achievement in there, Rebeccah. George March did nothing except spend family money and make people miserable. You probably think the same about me, don’t you?’
‘Maybe. Don’t know yet. How do you make your money?’
‘I sell my paintings. Mostly.’
‘How much?’
‘More money than you’ve ever seen.’
‘How do you know how much money I’ve seen?’
He laughed, not altogether pleasantly. ‘Well your father’s a clergyman. I presume he doesn’t command a huge salary, or does he?’
‘He gets a massive amount of money.’
‘’Course he does. That’s why he drives that car.’
‘Nothing wrong with our car. Are your parents alive?’
‘No they are not and please sit back down again, Rebeccah. You’re a lousy model. Your mind is always somewhere else.’
‘What happened?’
He sighed. ‘This is like twenty bloody questions.’ He studied my face for a few minutes without speaking. ‘You’d think my father would have remembered where the bloody tree was. He drove past it every day of his life. Sophie was twenty-three, I was twenty-five. Everything came to us.’ He sighed again, as if there was a heavy weight attached to each word. ‘My mother, she painted some of these. I get it from her.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be. They lived a good life. They were happy. As far as I know.’
‘As far as anyone knows anything about anyone, really.’
‘Very profound, Rebeccah.’ He looked at me, back to his paper, looked up at me again. ‘So I am lucky to have had a good inheritance. Plus, as people have told me many times, I am the reincarnation of England’s most romantic poet.’
‘John Keats then?’
‘Not him.’
‘Only you don’t actually write poetry.’
‘It’s all bloody poetry, Rebeccah. All of it. Artists translate the unknown. The form it takes doesn’t matter.’
I watched the veins on the back of his hands. Blue, pounding, alive, alive, always doing something. A cigarette, a pencil, a paintbrush, a wine glass between the fingers. Artists translate the unknown. I wondered how long I could sit in front of him and not want to kiss him.