‘Are you sure he’s gone?’ Leonora asked, crouching down beside her and placing her arm on her aunt’s.
Cicely smiled cynically. ‘Darling, he’s packed his bags and gone, there’s no doubt about it. He hasn’t hopped off on holiday, I can assure you.’
‘But didn’t he give any indication that this was on his mind?’
Cicely shook her head and squeezed out a few more tears. ‘We’ve hardly spoken recently. He’s been so grumpy. I just thought that if I ignored it, it would go away. It did. All of it.’ She chuckled sadly. ‘What a fool I was to believe that he loved me. He didn’t love me at all. He loved my cooking and my washing machine. I was convenient.’
‘Don’t be hard on yourself, Aunt Cicely. You were much more than that. He’s a rat.’
‘Yes. I wish I had known that. But he made me feel young again and attractive. After Hugh died I felt like an old woman. A stiff, conventional old bag. Marcel was like the Prince in Sleeping Beauty, one kiss and I came alive again.’ She took a deep breath then looked at her niece with weary eyes. ‘What is it with me? My lovely gypsies are leaving me too.’
Leonora made her aunt a cup of coffee while she snivelled into a hanky. She suddenly looked her age, as if Marcel had taken her youth with him. She wondered where he had gone and why he had left so suddenly. ‘Didn’t he leave a note?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Perhaps he left a message in that painting,’ Leonora suggested, pulling a chair nearer her aunt and sitting down.
‘Do you think so?’
‘Well, why else would he leave it? He took all the others, didn’t he?’
‘What others? I doubt he’s painted much in all the years he’s been sponging off me. What he did up there is nobody’s business.’
‘When was the last time you saw him?’
‘At lunch yesterday.’
‘He didn’t say a word,’ she recalled.
‘Not a word.’
‘But he was always grumpy. He never made conversation, just delivered monologues.’
Cicely laughed into her coffee. ‘You know you’re very sharp, Leonora. Alicia might have all the beauty but you’ve got all the wit.’
‘Thank you,’ Leonora replied, wishing that God had been a little fairer in distributing the beauty; perhaps if she were prettier Florien might have fallen in love with her instead.
‘You know what else?’
‘What?’
‘You’re getting better looking every day because your nature is beginning to show in your features. Alicia will end up looking as sour as her heart. You watch. Beauty only lasts beyond youth if one’s got the character to match it. I’ll confide in you now, because I’m drunk with grief. I’ve never liked your sister. She’s a nasty piece of work and always has been.’
‘She’s not a bad person. She’s just selfish. But I love her all the same,’ Leonora protested.
‘I know you do. The mind boggles . . .’
‘She’s my sister. We were sent away together, she was the only family I had.’
‘Poor old you.’
‘Not at all. She’s beautiful and gifted.’
‘What’s that got to do with it? She’s unkind and selfish. She’s been horrid to you and you’ve always taken it. She’d sell her own grandmother if she had to and she’d sell you too!’ But Leonora just smiled the smile of someone entirely confident with her own judgement. She’s bewitched you too, thought Cicely. Then her skin began to crawl.
She ran upstairs to the attic leaving Leonora sitting in front of the Aga, patting a very aged, nearly blind Barley. With a heart suspended with anticipation she hurried as fast as she could to Marcel’s small studio, terrified of what she would find. She turned the doorknob and walked inside. The room still smelt of him, that sweet scent of France mingled with the strong blend of paints and paper, dust and stale air, because he had rarely opened the window. She stood a moment, surveying the room, seeing him working there still in the dawn light that tumbled in through the glass. Her eyes rested on the painting that lay against the wall. It was large, painted onto hard canvas. She bit the skin around her thumbnail, scarcely daring to breathe. She feared she knew what was on it. If Leonora was right and Marcel had left the painting in order to communicate a message to her, then she prayed her fears were unfounded. Slowly she walked towards it.
With trembling hands she pulled the canvas from the wall and let it drop on the floor. She caught her breath. There in delightful abandonment was the luminous body of Alicia, as naked as the day she had been born. Cicely turned cold at the sight of her niece. She didn’t question her innocence or presume for one moment that the painting might have arisen out of Marcel’s imagination. A work of fantasy. She looked back to when Alicia had left and realized that it coincided with Marcel’s declining humour. Could Alicia have seduced Marcel as well as Florien? Why not Panazel as well? In her aunt’s mind Alicia rose up like Medusa, her hair a writhing mass of snakes and her eyes capable of enchanting anyone who dared look into them. She could have coped with Marcel leaving her for a younger woman eventually, but to leave her because of Alicia was more than she could take. With one kick her foot shot straight through the canvas, transforming Alicia’s beautiful, self-indulgent face into a ragged hole.