Armitage looked around the lines of paintings hanging higgledy-piggledy in every available space on the walls. Most of them were dangling on strings from nails hammered into the beams. All were modern. Cubism, Joe noted, seemed to have broken out.
‘Any of this lot by your pa, miss?’ Armitage asked in a tone of studied lack of interest. Joe smiled. He knew that tone. Armitage would welcome another reason to despise Orlando and being the originator of any one of these modernist pieces would do.
‘Oh, no. Orlando doesn’t display his own work. He picked up most of these when we went to France. We took the caravan and went all the way down to the south coast. To Martigues and Toulon and Cassis. He met lots of other painters down there. They’re all very friendly and jolly. Some are skint like us but some have begun to do well and actually make some money. Orlando swapped some pictures. Others he bought when he could raise the cash. That one’s mine,’ she said, pointing to what Joe thought was probably the best of the display which were, on the whole, rather too free and modern for his taste. ‘It was a present from the artist.’
He looked more closely. A small girl in a white dress was standing on a Mediterranean beach, dark hair springing against a vivid blue sky, clutching a large shell and looking with intense enquiry at the painter. It didn’t take Joe long to recognize the subject as Dorcas but he was puzzled as to the identity of the painter and walked over to peer at the scrawled signature. P. Ruiz Picasso.
‘Pablo did it,’ supplied Dorcas. ‘Pablo Picasso. Orlando thinks he’s rather good. Do you like it?’
‘It’s wonderful! And how lucky you were to have caught him in a classical mood! You could well have ended up . . .’ He trailed off, fearing his next comment might give offence or reveal his artistic prejudices.
‘. . . like this stew?’ she said happily. ‘Bits and pieces all over the place!’
‘Cubed!’
They grinned at each other and Westhorpe again looked at her watch.
As they made their way back out into the garden Joe was aware of a surprising moment of communication between the sergeant and the constable. Tilly reached out and touched Bill’s shoulder. He leaned his head towards her and she whispered something which made him smile broadly and, with a darting look at his boss, nod in agreement.
Joe could interpret clearly the message: ‘Time the Commander was married and had children of his own, perhaps?’ Well, if ever the day came, he would make a much better job of it than the oaf Orlando, he thought resentfully. This bright little madam should be receiving a decent education which was obviously what she craved instead of being allowed to run around like a street urchin. But then, if the child’s awkward eagerness to communicate with anyone outside her narrow world – even a policeman – were to result in a rapprochement between his assistants, he could welcome that. He lengthened his stride and engaged Dorcas in conversation, leaving Bill and Tilly space to do what he knew the lower ranks most enjoy – sending up the governor.
He didn’t need to glance back over his shoulder to check the success of his scheme. After a long stare, Dorcas remarked, ‘She must be his mistress then. They seem to like each other.’
‘Oh, I don’t imagine so,’ something impelled him to say. ‘They only met yesterday.’
Dorcas gave him what he could have sworn was a pitying look.
Orlando and the rest of the tribe had gathered round his easel in a distant part of the grounds. A pregnant girl in a long skirt and a shawl, a scarf knotted casually around her head, was pouring out lemonade from a large jug and handing a glass to the artist. Two boys were laughing and wrestling in the grass and a small girl was whacking them both with a hazel switch. Joe paused to take in the idyllic scene and decided, with a flash of irritation and amusement, that it was surely posed, so perfect an image of English country life did it present. A green-painted gypsy caravan was parked in a stretch of wild, unmown orchard which linked the tended grounds of the house and the beechwood beyond, flowing seamlessly between them. A froth of waist-high Queen Anne’s lace under the apple trees merged in the distance with a mist of bluebells and the breeze wafting towards them from the wood was heavy with the almond scent of may blossom. Joe stood entranced.
‘England, ’ome an’ beauty!’ Armitage growled in his ear. ‘So this is what we were fighting for! Wondered if I’d ever see it. Was it worth four years of our lives to pay for it? Some people paid with their lives, at any rate, I seem to remember,’ he muttered.
Years of Flanders mud in a monochrome landscape followed by years in a city which he saw as black and grey, soot and fog, had left Joe with an unquenchable thirst for the healing greens of field and hedgerow. He didn’t want this moment of delight smudged by Bill’s prejudices, however justifiable. ‘Yes, it was,’ he replied simply. ‘And I’d do it again if I had to.’