Bone House_ A Novel - Betsy Tobin [44]
“The woman too,” he says, indicating the miniature.
“You know her?”
He shakes his head no. “But I have seen her likeness before. My teacher had another portrait of her, a full-size one, hidden among some old canvases in his studio. When I asked him who she was, he told me only that the portrait had not pleased her husband, and that in the end his commission had been withheld. I thought it strange at the time, for the portrait was exceptionally well-rendered, and the woman herself very beautiful.” He cradles the miniature in the palm of his hand and I feel a sudden stab of envy that I am not the one he speaks of.
“Perhaps there was something between them,” I suggest.
“Perhaps,” says the painter. “He was a married man, but his real devotion was to his work. Until that time I had no reason to suspect otherwise. Some time later I looked for the portrait and it had disappeared. I never knew whether he destroyed it, or removed it to some other place.”
We both stare at the woman in the frame. “She is indeed very beautiful,” I say.
“The woman’s family must have been wealthy for such a painting to be done.”
I think of the money hidden in the cottage: perhaps Dora had not earned it as I’d thought. But something in me resists the idea of her former life, for in my mind it feels as if she did not come across the water to us, but rather sprang straight from the sea.
“I know nothing of her family,” I say. “She never spoke of them.” The strangeness of this strikes me for the first time, for she herself had somehow disavowed her former life.
“She has a son?” he asks.
I nod. “In the village.”
“May I see him?” he asks. I pause, think of Long Boy and his glassy stare. But now he sleeps. There can be little harm in seeing him now.
“Come with me,” I tell him.
We walk in silence, the frozen soil hard beneath our soles. As we approach the cottage I grow uneasy, but when we enter I am relieved to find that he is fast asleep. I should not have worried; it is late and he is but a child. His giant frame seems to stretch endlessly across the bed, and I watch as the painter takes in his size, for I have given him no warning of this fact.
“How old is he?” he asks.
“Eleven,” I reply. “He is big . . . for his age.”
“For any age,” murmurs the painter, moving closer to the bed. “Still, he has the face of a child,” he says softly. After a few moments he takes out the miniature and compares the sleeping figure of the boy with the portrait.
“Which of them did she more closely resemble?” he asks in hushed tones. It is not an easy question: she was so much herself.
“The boy,” I say finally, for he is flesh and blood, and the other is no more than pigment, though I do not say this to the painter.
“What of the shape of her face?” he asks.
“Similar to his,” I say. “But broader in the cheeks.” He nods.
“And the mouth?”
“More like the portrait.” He studies it anew.
“And the eyes?” he says, after a moment. I hesitate: this is perhaps the most difficult, for our eyes define us more than any other feature.
“They are similar to both but not a match,” I say finally.
“May I keep this?” he asks, indicating the miniature. “Only until the portrait is complete,” he adds. I hesitate. It is not mine to lend, but I have already taken liberties, and Long Boy is unlikely to miss it in his current condition.
“If you wish,” I reply. He nods and stows it in his pocket. As I watch him, a thought occurs to me, and I move closer to the bedside. “There is something else,” I say. “A diary, written in her tongue.”
The painter raises an eyebrow.
“The boy keeps it hidden with him.”
The painter too steps forward and we both stand over the sleeping figure. “On his person?”
“Beneath the bedclothes.”
He watches as I kneel down and delicately slip my hands beneath the blankets. The boy stirs, and I freeze, but after a moment he is still and I continue my search. Slowly, methodically, I work my way around his body, moving from his head down to his feet, but I find nothing.
“It was here the other day,” I say, exasperated.
“Perhaps he has hidden