Bone House_ A Novel - Betsy Tobin [52]
“You’ve been drawing.”
He smiles and shrugs. “It passes the time.”
“You do not tire of it?”
“Not really,” he says. “I do it without thinking.” He looks down at his hands, spans his long, slender fingers across the wooden table. “What my eyes see, my hands need to re-create . . . the urge to draw is part of me.” He smiles at me, then adds, “Perhaps they cannot bear to be idle.” I think at once of my mother: they share this need for constant occupation. What do they fear in stillness?
I indicate the sketches. “May I see?” I ask.
He nods and I take up the sheaf of papers and leaf through them. The sketches are rough and quickly rendered, but they are hauntingly lifelike. He has made several and each time the faces are shown in great detail, but the rest is hastily filled in. I glance around the room, identifying each of his subjects in turn: old men, mostly, their expressions marred by drink. But he has captured them on paper: frozen them in time.
“These are very fine,” I say.
“They are only sketches.”
“But they are very like.”
“I draw what I see.”
“And you draw only people?”
“They are all that interests me. Flesh and blood . . . and bones. And what happens when these things are brought together . . . the endless possibilities. But always what I seek to render is not the surface, but the life within. It is like a game. One must find the clues in the arch of a brow . . . or the set of the jaw . . . or the shadow beneath the eye. This, for me, is the challenge. I have no interest in emblems or allegory. The truth is there in front of us . . . we must only learn to see it.”
He speaks with great intensity, and as he does I continue to flip through the portraits. When I get to the final page I catch my breath, for there is Mary upon the paper. He has caught it all—the laugh within her eyes and the generosity of her expression. I stare at the sketch and then suddenly, disconcertingly, I hear her laugh. When I raise my head Mary is standing over us, her face brimming with delight at the sight of the drawing.
“Why, ’tis a mighty chin upon that lass!” she says teasingly. “Did she charge you for her service?” The painter smiles and shakes his head.
“She was very generous, and agreed to sit in return for a portrait,” he replies, and with that he tears the paper loose from the sheaf and hands it to her. For once Mary is struck dumb, but she is obviously pleased with the portrait.
“You are very kind,” she murmurs.
“And you have been very attentive in your service,” he replies with a smile.
Mary finally tears her eyes from the portrait and lays a hand upon his shoulder.
“That is because you are the only man worth gazing twice upon within the room!” She throws back her head with a laugh, and the painter flushes. She holds the drawing up next to her face. “I must find Samuell. Perhaps he’ll prefer the new one to the old, for she is quieter and less likely to abuse him!” She spies Samuell through the doorway then and disappears after him, waving the portrait over her head like a banner. The painter looks at me and gives an embarrassed shrug of his shoulders.
“I know no one in this place,” he says, by way of explanation. “And she has always had a kind word for me.” For the first time it occurs to me that his life must be a lonely one indeed. I slide the pages back across to him and he stows them in his satchel.
“You did not have to help me,” he says quietly. His honesty startles me. I feel the heat from the fire spackle my face, feel it too within me, rising slowly from my depths.
“I wanted to,” I reply. He nods then, just barely. A group of old men in the corner begin to sing, their voices low and thick with drink. The painter and I both turn our heads to watch, and while I see them clearly enough in the half-light of the fire, their voices come to me as if through water. After a moment I feel his