Elijah’s Mermaid by Essie Fox Page A

him.
    ‘Yes,’ the stern Mr Black went on, ‘that was the general consensus . . . that my work was too derivative. Not one spark of Turner’s genius.’
    ‘Forgive me, I meant no insult.’ Papa was clearly taken aback.
    ‘Oh, it is no matter,’ the artist replied. ‘Those critics were right. I need to expand my horizons, to create something different . . . something new.’
    While proclaiming this ambition, rather than following Samuel’s lead and taking one of the vacant seats, Mr Black simply lowered himself to the grass, stretching out his long and muscular legs with the trousers quite worn into holes at the knees – at which I began to consider that he must represent those impoverished types who live all their lives in a garret, starving to death for the sake of art.
    ‘Osborne has a calling, you see,’ Samuel Beresford was explaining. ‘He’s recently back from the Holy Land, having hoped to seek inspiration there . . . to work in the clarity of light that they say is so extraordinary.’
    ‘And has he returned with
extraordinary
works?’ Uncle Freddie’s tone was sceptical.
    ‘No.’ Osborne Black’s response was sharp, that single word spoken while looking down, thick fingers engaged in the delicate task of plucking a single blade of grass, which wasthen placed between his lips, upon which he sucked when he glanced back up, his eyes almost black between slitted lids. ‘But, I believe I shall make some . . . based on the time I spent at sea, not what I saw in that desolate land.’
    ‘Do you know Holman Hunt?’ Papa leaned forward with interest. ‘Those paintings he made in Palestine were . . .’
    ‘Cynical and commercial.’ Osborne Black exhaled a sigh while raising his eyes to the heavens, as if this was a subject that bored him to death. ‘I know him in passing, of course. But we have very little in common these days. The Brethren never accepted me.’
    ‘The Brethren?’ Did he mean priests or monks, what with all of this talk of the Holy Land?
    ‘The Brotherhood of the Pre-Raphaelites.’ Papa turned my way to explain. ‘You have seen some of Mr Hunt’s work, my dear . . . that print of
The Scapegoat
which hangs in our church?’
    ‘Oh, yes!’ That
was
a desolate scene. Such a sparse and barren landscape where you practically felt the white glare of the sun beating down on the back of the lonely goat stuck fast in some mud at the edge of a lake. Was Jesus, the saviour, waiting near by, about to help the goat escape – or was that goat a symbol of Christ, his life sacrificed for the sake of ours? I never could make up my mind, always thinking that painting less about hope, more about suffering and death, and I found myself speaking my thoughts aloud. ‘Mr Black, I hope that your new works will be happier than Mr Hunt’s.’
    ‘Who knows. I shall have to find my muse.’ He fixed me in his brooding stare and I felt myself somehow too exposed, as if he could see all the way to my soul, very glad when Freddie touched my hand, when I felt protected and safe again, when he said, ‘Don’t let Osborne Black bully you, dear. He is what they call a
serious
painter . . . and one who has the luxury of paying for any model he needs, of working whenever, wherever he wants . . . on
whatever
might take his fancy.’
    Freddie had stressed the word
serious
, and not, I felt, for praise’s sake but simply to highlight the irony of one whoseemed quite unable to do much more than glower belligerence, whose next response was equally blunt: ‘Mr Hall is correct. Happily, with my parents being dead, I have independence, and I have wealth.’
    He was certainly straight to the point! For a while, the conversation flagged with no one quite sure how best to respond, though Samuel Beresford did try, addressing Elijah more trivially, attempting to draw my brother out with, Have you been up in the hot-air balloon? I hear it affords the most wonderful view.’
    ‘No,’ was Elijah’s succinct reply, not