Fascination Read Online Free Page B

canvas on an empty easel and stepping back to contemplate it. Oliver circled round to stare at it, glancing at the picture of the bird and thinking that he, Oliver Feverall, could paint a better-looking bird than that.
    The small canvas looked like a sodden field beneath winter skies, three uneven stripes of brown, green and grey, the paint thickly smeared, but quite dry.
    ‘I’m having real problems,’ the painter said. ‘I don’t know what to do. I did one like this before and put a plough in it, and it seemed to work.’
    ‘What about a man?’
    ‘No. I don’t want people in these pictures.’
    ‘What about some crows?’
    ‘It’s an idea.’

    As they were going outside to the terrace to have their cold drinks, Oliver heard a woman’s voice call out ‘Georges? Are you back?’ The painter excused himself and went upstairs, returning a minute later.
    ‘It’s my wife,’ he said. ‘She thinks she’s getting flu.’
    They sat outside at a metal table under a small canvas awning which provided a neat square of shade and sipped at their cold drinks, fetched for them by a plump, smiley housekeeper. Oliver was introduced as ‘Monsieur Oliver, my English friend,’ and his hand was shaken. The painter drank mineral water, Oliver an Orangina, and they both sat there silently for a while in the relentless afternoon heat, staring out at the big, solid clouds steaming towards them, northwards. Oliver thought that the painter had a sad face and noticed how the lines that ran from his nose to his face were particularly marked, casting, even in this shade, dark sickle shadows.
    ‘It’s an interesting idea that,’ the painter said, ‘crows.’ He turned to Oliver and continued, ‘So, when’s your birthday?’
    ‘Next week. Wednesday.’
    ‘Come by. We’ll have another drink. I’ll drink your health. No, I mean it, if you’ve nothing better to do.’
    Oliver thanked him. Wednesday was usually a Lucien day – Wednesday and Friday.
    They were silent again for a while, together.
    ‘Do you know what a “love affair” is?’ Oliver asked.
    ‘Yes,’ the painter said, ‘I certainly do.’
    ‘Do you think that if you’re married you should have a love affair with someone else?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ the painter said.
    ‘Isn’t it wrong?’
    ‘It depends.’ The painter sipped at his mineral water. He held up his glass as if to look at the sky through it. ‘Sometimes water is the best drink in the world, isn’t it?’
    He walked Oliver to the road and watched him as he crouched to undo the padlock on the chain that Oliver had threaded through the rear wheel as an anti-theft device.
    ‘Do you think someone will steal your bike?’ the painter asked.
    ‘You can’t be too careful. In London I’ve had three bikes stolen.’
    ‘But this is Varengeville, not London. Still it is a splendid machine, isn’t it, wonderfully built.’
    ‘I wish it had drop handlebars,’ Oliver said. ‘I think it looks a bit old-fashioned.’ He kicked up the stand with his left shoe. ‘I’d better get home,’ he said, ‘my mother will be waiting.’
    ‘See you on Wednesday,’ the painter said.
    On his birthday his mother gave Oliver a very crumpled ten-pound note and promised him a proper treat when they returned home. Oliver said he was going to see a friend in Varengeville and set off up the drive a good half hour before Lucien was due.
    The housekeeper was watering some pots of geraniums by the front door as Oliver approached.
    ‘He’s not here,’ she said. ‘They had to go back to Paris yesterday. Madame has bronchitis, we think.’
    Oliver pursed his lips and pushed his spectacles up to the bridge of his nose. Damn, he thought, bloody damn. He looked about him, hands on his hips, wondering resentfully what he would do for the rest of the day – maybe he should just go to the beach.
    ‘He’s left a present for you,’ the housekeeper said, disappearing back into the house and re-emerging with a long, thin