A Brighter Tomorrow - Maggie Ford (thriller novels to read .txt) 📗

Ellie had never heard of them. Her gaze was blank as heon, ‘My name is Hunnard – Robert C. Hunnard. I own a gallery. If when I return I find you’ve done nothing more than those two remaining works you have left, I shall assume you to be one of these artists who are too indolent to recognize that success only comes with dedication and sacrifice. This doesn’t mean dashing off a few dozen paintings just to sell to the public; it means putting your soul into each brush stroke, even if it takes half a lifetime. If you are of that mind, you will go far. If not…’ He shook his head then gave an exaggerated shrug and, walking off very swiftly and elegantly for one of his build, left her staring after him.

‘God, I wish I had your luck!’ came a voice beside her. She turned to see the scruffy young man, Felix, now gazing at her last two paintings as if totally absorbed by them. ‘Do you know who that was?’

Ellie shook her head and Felix went on, ‘He owns one of the finest private painting galleries in London. My God, girl, consider yourself made!’

Twenty-Two

New Year’s Eve. Ellie was alone, just as she had been at Christmas. At that time she’d missed the good company, celebration, laughter, good food, and had felt sad and lonely. Now, she told herself, all that was out of her system.

She stood now gazing at the half-finished painting she’d been working on. Her back was aching. With her mind riveted on the canvas, she’d let the fire die, and although she wore the thin blanket from the bed around her shoulders, her fingers were stiff from the cold as well as from gripping her brushes.

Her feet were freezing and when they warmed again would itch with chilblains. She’d have to stop, relight the fire, brew some warming tea and find something to eat. She didn’t feel hungry but knew she needed to eat.

She had gone over this painting so many times, but it refused to go the way she wanted. For days she’d stood staring at the blank canvas, with nothing in mind but the words of that Robert C. Hunnard: ‘Paint from the soul!’

She supposed she had painted from the soul when she had worked on those three other paintings, a soul full of hatred interpreted on canvas – of Bertram Lowe’s scheming wife, of her own loathsome father, of herself and the way she felt about her life.

Now that she was on her own, trying to recapture that feeling was proving virtually impossible. A need to make money from her work was not enough to instil into her that clawing anger she should be feeling. She had tried hard to recapture it, but it just wasn’t there. Hunnard’s fear was right: when it came to it she was, after all, just one of those people who were ready to sit back on their laurels after one brief bout of inspiration.

But she was working hard. Usually cold, tired, hungry, aching from standing in one position all the time but unable to tear herself away from this present painting, she was trying so hard to reflect a bit of her inner self.

Surely that was dedication – giving of herself, her soul, to her talent. Yet there was something missing. There was no longer the stimulation that had come from desperately wanting to escape, live her own life, follow her quest for her father, seek revenge.

She still had every intention of finding him and her need to make more money in order to do so was there, but it wasn’t enough. Something had gone out of her and she wasn’t sure what it was.

Ellie shivered, the cold eating into her young bones. Putting down her brush and palette, she went over to the fire. There was the briefest glow from one of the coals. Gathering up a piece of newspaper, she coaxed it under the live coal and blew gently on it. It began to flare. She added a couple of thin sticks of firewood, and as they caught, laid some of the still-warm coals on top. Before long there was a bright fire again.

Sufficiently warmed, she made some tea. She would make herself a fried egg on fried bread. There was enough money left from the sale of her paintings before Christmas for her to eat and be warm. But it wasn’t going to last much longer.

Since selling her so-called self-portrait she had only gone to her pitch three times with a few rushed landscapes done in watercolours. Oils took a long time to dry and varnish and people seemed to like her little landscapes, which she sold cheaply to keep herself going. But although conscious of what sold well to the general public, it was sapping her will to do the one she was at present struggling with. She was slowly losing that inner self this Mr C. Hunnard had spoken of. She’d not seen him since that first day. Maybe he had come while she wasn’t there and had given up on her, assuming that he had been proved right about her.

That evening she and Felix Reese had gone off to the art shop he knew of, her day’s takings of four pounds fifteen shillings burning a hole in her pocket.

It had been nice having a young man walking with her through the dark streets, even though he was thin and scruffy, so different from the young man who had once walked beside her. Michael – immaculately dressed and well-spoken but under the thumb of wealthy parents, destined to follow his father’s illustrious footsteps into the medical profession – knew which side his bread was buttered on. All the more reason to let her down. Her heart still felt dreadfully empty without him, but she had to put him behind her, telling herself that that part of her life was over.

Felix, with a cheap room not far from where