Fascination Read Online Free Page A

Farde, Denton Feverall or Lucien Navarro.
    They shook hands, formally, and the painter wished Oliver a good end to the afternoon and thanked him again for his solicitude. Oliver looked back as he cycled away and saw the old man striding down the road, his canvas and easel under one arm, the afternoon sun striking his silver hair, making it flame with light.
    Lucien had a new car – a Lancia, whose roof came down. ‘Lucien and his Lancia,’ Oliver thought, a note of disgust colouring his reflections as he cycled off to Varengeville with his mother’s letter, ‘Lucien and his Lancia.’
    Lucien had not visited for some six days and Oliver had notedhis mother’s moods steadily deteriorating. One morning she had not descended from her bedroom at all, only the maid was allowed access, bringing up all manner of curious drinks. Even Oliver’s soft knock on her door in the afternoon produced only the moaned response ‘Darling, Maman has one of her migraines’ and he did not see her at all, he calculated, for a further thirty-seven hours.
    And then Lucien was coming and she was alert and agitated, changing her clothes, shifting vases of flowers about the drawing room, her perfumes more noticeably pungent, her affection for Oliver overt, falling upon him suddenly, with brusque, sore hugs and alarming cannonades of kisses and caresses. Oliver looked impassively out of the library windows as Lucien’s midnight blue Lancia crunched dustily to a halt and, for the first time, felt relieved he had to go to Varengeville and post a letter.
    But in the village, standing in front of the pale yellow post box he felt a sudden flow of anger at his ritual banishment. He tore open the letter – always to his mother’s sister in Paris – and, as he knew he would, discovered three perfectly blank sheets of paper. He folded them up, deliberately, slowly, and dropped them in a litter bin by a set of traffic lights. He cycled south out of Varengeville, towards the plateau, heading for Longeuil, not wanting a
diabolo menthe
, wondering how he was going to survive the two and a half weeks of August that were left, wondering how he could go through this pretence, this silly game, each time Lucien arrived. Why didn’t she just say she wanted to be alone. He didn’t care how long they kissed each other, or whatever else they got up to. He simply wanted summer to be over, he wanted to get back to school, he wanted his father to finish filming
Daughters of Dracula
.
    The painter was walking along the road with his usual light burden of easel, folding stool and long, thin canvas. Oliver slowed to a halt and they greeted each other, Oliver noticing that, although the day was hot, the painter was wearing a tweed jacket with a shirt and tie and a curious knitted waistcoat. Old men felt the cold, Oliver remembered, even on the warmest days.
    ‘Where are you going?’ the painter asked. He gestured at the flat, baking landscape inland. In the enormous sky a fleet of huge, burly white clouds moved slowly along, northwards, pushed by a warm southern breeze. A heavy flight of crows crossed the stubble field beside them. ‘It’s hot out there,’ the painter said.
    ‘I’m not going anywhere in particular,’ Oliver said, feeling unfamiliar tears sting his eyes.
    ‘Is everything all right?’
    ‘Yes, absolutely.’
    ‘Come home with me,’ the painter said. ‘Have a cold drink.’
    The painter showed Oliver into his studio: it was a large, tidy room with a Persian rug hanging on the wall. On an easel was a sizeable painting of a blue bird shape against a slate-grey sky. On tables and on the floor were rows of cleaned brushes laid on palettes, and others stuffed into ceramic pots. Small tables held neat rows of tubes of oil paint and on these tables were jars of flowers, many of them dried. Oliver was impressed.
    ‘You must have hundreds of brushes,’ he said. ‘Thousands.’
    ‘You may be right,’ said the painter, smiling, placing his small