The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood [92]
The colours never came out clear, the way they would on a piece of white paper: there was a misty look to them, as if they were seen through cheesecloth. They didn’t make the people seem more real; rather they became ultra-real: citizens of an odd half-country, lurid yet muted, where realism was beside the point.
Laura told me what she was doing vis-a-vis Elwood Murray; she also told Reenie. I expected a protest, an uproar; I expected Reenie to say that Laura was lowering herself, or acting in a tawdry, compromising fashion. Who could tell what might go on in a darkroom, with a young girl and a man and the lights off? But Reenie took the view that it wasn’t as if Elwood was paying Laura to work for him: rather he was teaching her, and that was quite different. It put him on a level with the hired help. As for Laura being in a darkroom with him, no one would think any harm of it, because Elwood was such a pansy. I suspect Reenie was secretly relieved to have Laura showing an interest in something other than God.
Laura certainly showed an interest, but as usual she went overboard. She nicked some of Elwood’s hand-tinting materials and brought them home with her. I found this out by accident: I was in the library, dipping into the books at random, when I noticed the framed photographs of Grandfather Benjamin, each with a different prime minister. Sir John Sparrow Thompson’s face was now a delicate mauve, Sir Mackenzie Bowell’s a bilious green, Sir Charles Tupper’s a pale orange. Grandfather Benjamin’s beard and whiskers had been done in light crimson.
That evening I caught her in the act. There on her dressing table were the little tubes, the tiny brushes. Also the formal portrait of Laura and me in our velvet dresses and Mary Janes. Laura had removed the print from its frame, and was tinting me a light blue. “Laura,” I said, “what in heaven’s name are you up to? Why did you colour those pictures? The ones in the library. Father will be livid.”
“I was just practising,” said Laura. “Anyway, those men needed some enhancing. I think they look better.”
“They look bizarre,” I said. “Or very ill. Nobody’s face is green! Or mauve.”
Laura was unperturbed. “It’s the colours of their souls,” she said. “It’s the colours they ought to have been.”
“You’ll get in big trouble! They’ll know who did it.”
“Nobody ever looks at those,” she said. “Nobody cares.”
“Well, you’d better not lay a finger on Grandmother Adelia,” I said. “Nor the dead uncles! Father would have your hide!”
“I wanted to do them in gold, to show they’re in glory,” she said. “But there isn’t any gold. The uncles, not Grandmother. I’d do her a steel grey.”
“Don’t you dare! Father doesn’t believe in glory. And you’d better take those paints back before you’re accused of theft.”
“I haven’t used much,” said Laura. “Anyway, I brought Elwood a jar of jam. It’s a fair trade.”
“Reenie’s jam, I suppose. “Out of the cold cellar – did you ask her? She counts that jam, you know.” I picked up the photograph of the two of us. “Why am I blue?”
“Because you’re asleep,” said Laura.
The tinting materials weren’t the only things she nicked. One of Laura’s jobs was filing. Elwood liked his office kept very neatly, and his darkroom as well. His negatives were placed in glassine envelopes, filed according to the date on which they’d been taken, so it was easy for Laura to locate the negative of the picnic shot. She made two black-and-white prints of it, one day when Elwood had gone out and she had the run of the place to herself. She didn’t tell anybody about this, not even me – not until later. After she’d made the prints, she slipped the negative into her handbag and took it home with her. She did not consider it stealing: Elwood had stolen the picture in the first place by not asking permission