The Devil's Feather - Minette Walters [45]
“OK, well, it’s a damn sight better than anything at Barton House, although I haven’t a clue what it’s supposed to represent. It has a surrealist feel to it. What I really can’t get my head around is how Madeleine lives with the artist who painted it. I mean, she’s so middle-class and conformist…and Nathaniel appears to be hovering off the planet somewhere. How does that work exactly?”
He gave a snort of laughter. “Nathaniel painted it before he married her. The stuff he does now is very tame. Jess describes it as marshmallow buildings with window-boxes. Which is about right. He hardly sells at all these days.”
“How much did you pay for yours?”
Peter pulled a face. “Five thousand quid eleven years ago, and it’s worth hardly anything now. I had it valued for the divorce. In terms of investment, it was a disaster…but, as a canvas, it still fascinates me. When I bought it, Nathaniel told me that the clue to what it represents is the repetitive Edvard Munch face—the angst-filled scream.”
I waited. “OK,” I said after a moment. “I recognized it in the faces…but it doesn’t help me much. Is it hell?”
“In a way.” He paused. “I thought you might recognize the emotions. It depicts a panic attack. Munch suffered anxiety most of his life and The Scream is usually described as an expression of intense anguish or fear.”
I lifted a wry eyebrow.
“You didn’t see that?”
“Not really. Why are the houses alive? Why make them unstable? I thought agoraphobics saw them as places of safety. And why put human faces on the animals? Animals don’t suffer anxiety…or not to the extent that humans do.”
“I don’t think you can apply logic to it, Marianne. Panic’s an irrational response.”
The “Marianne” caught me off-guard as usual. I still thought of it as my mother’s name and did a mouth-dropping double-take whenever it was used. I think it was on the tip of Peter’s tongue to admit he knew who I really was but I spoke before he could. “He can’t have painted it during an attack…it’s too detailed and meticulous. At the very least, his hands would have been shaking.”
Peter shrugged. “Who says it was his panic attack? Perhaps he witnessed someone else’s.”
“Whose?”
Another shrug.
“Not Madeleine’s,” I said in disbelief. “She doesn’t have the imagination to worry herself into a box. In any case, if she was his inspiration, wouldn’t he still be painting like that?”
“I don’t know what his themes are now. Madeleine talks about abstract reflections on the human condition…but I don’t know if that’s her or Nathaniel speaking. Whichever, it’s a fairly desperate spin to make up for a spectacular loss of talent. He makes a living from teaching at the moment.”
“How old is he?”
“Mid-thirties. He was twenty-four when he painted the picture I have.”
“And Madeleine’s what? Thirty-nine…forty? When did they marry?”
“Ninety-four.”
Ten years ago. I did a few sums in my head. “Which makes him a bit of a toy-boy. Perhaps she’s not as conventional as I thought. Jess said she has an eleven-year-old son. Is Nathaniel his father?”
“As far as I know. They married a few months after he was born.”
“What did Lily think about that?”
“Exactly what you’d expect,” Peter said with a smile.
“She’d have preferred a wedding and grandchildren in the correct order?”
He nodded.
“Most mothers would.” I gave a rueful shake of my head. “It just shows how wrong you can be about people. I’d have put money on Madeleine marrying a rich older man and popping her baby out after a respectable nine months. So where did she and Nathaniel meet? I don’t get the feeling she’s been hanging around art exhibitions all her life.”
“Here,” said Peter dryly, tapping the floor with his foot. “About where you’re standing. I was having a chat with Nathaniel when Madeleine turned up. He didn’t stand a chance once she found out who he was, although I don’t know what he saw in her…unless it was undiluted admiration. She couldn’t tell one end of a paintbrush from the other, but she certainly knew how to flatter