Chapter 60
Daisy wasn’t a portrait artist. She never had been. During A-level art, she’d had to practice drawing faces and limbs and she’d done it well enough, but her teacher had always said the same thing – there wasn’t enough expression in her work. At the time, she had thought the comment was ridiculous. After all, how did you get expression into a picture of a hand? Now she was older, she knew how ignorant she’d been. A good artist could get emotion into everything, just the way she could do it with a stormy sky or even a field of flowers. Even so, she’d treated portraits and life drawing almost as an invisible nemesis to her artistic self. She’d dropped out of art college before they started the life-modelling modules and she’d been relieved that she’d saved herself the constant criticism of her work there too. But this was different. Because Daisy didn’t want to draw just any face, and she knew exactly what emotions she wanted to convey because she had been there in the moment. She had seen it all with her eyes, and now she wanted to capture it with her paint. She wanted to draw Yvonne.
‘Are you planning on staying out here, or are you going to head into the cabin and read?’ Daisy said with a hint of pointedness. Normally, she was fine having Yvonne in the living room while she worked, but this time, she wanted to hold off sharing the painting until it was done. Particularly as she had no idea how it was going to turn out.
‘Well, I was going to make us some breakfast, if that’s okay?’ Yvonne said. ‘But it can wait. I can make a cup of tea and head into my room and read if that’s what you’d prefer.’
Daisy chewed on the inside of her mouth. There was no way she could reply that yes, she’d rather be left on her own. So she nodded.
‘I’m sure this rain isn’t going anywhere for a while. Why don’t I fix us both some toast, then I can get on with my painting afterwards.’
It was a full twenty minutes before breakfast was made, eaten and washed up and Daisy finally sat down, ready to paint. Johnny had fallen asleep under the table and she didn’t have the heart to disturb him. But there wasn’t any need. It wasn’t like he was in the way.
The rain was also continuing to pelt down, although there were some hints of blue sky streaking between the clouds – a sign the rain probably wouldn’t last forever. They would need to get moving as soon as it was good to go, which meant that she was on a deadline. At least to get the painting started.
The moment from the day before was seared into Daisy’s memory. The far-off gaze in Yvonne’s eyes as she mused over the last few years of her life. All the things she had done and not done. The way everything had changed after Harry’s death. That was what Daisy wanted to convey in her art, and as her pencil scraped across the paper, she found it was coming to life bit by bit.
Colour was paramount to Daisy’s paintings. The greys and purples of a storm. The yellows and oranges of a sunrise. Colour allowed her to express the warmth or chill of a landscape as if she were there in the moment. It also added a vibrancy to her animal characters which art of that type needed. But as the sketch took a deeper and deeper form, Daisy found herself sticking to pencils and staying clear of her trusty watercolour palette. Even Yvonne’s pink hair she implied only with simple waves in deepening shades of grey. It would be near impossible to find the exact shades she wanted, anyway. Doing it like this, she didn’t need to. Besides, it hadn’t been a moment full of colour. It had been a moment full of greyness and sadness.
Ninety minutes later, Daisy sat back in her chair to see the first portrait she had done in seven years there on the paper in front of her.
Pressing her lips together, she tilted her head and considered the drawing in a little more detail. It was far from perfect. Daisy knew she’d not got the angle of Yvonne’s nose right, or her chin. But with a bit of work, and maybe a couple of photos to act as guidance, and she would get there.
‘Looks like the rain’s stopped.’
Daisy jumped on the spot, banging her knees on the underside of the table and causing Johnny to bark in surprise.
‘Sorry,’ Yvonne said, standing in the doorway to the cabin. ‘I didn’t know if you’d noticed or not. The rain has just about stopped, which means we should probably get going. If you’re ready, that is? I don’t mind hanging on for a bit if you’d rather, but the locks can get busy here.’
Daisy nodded, glancing quickly at the picture in front of her before slipping it under another piece of paper so it was no longer visible.
‘No, you’re right, we should get going now,’ she said, standing up and smiling. She would show Yvonne the picture at some point. But not yet. She wasn’t ready for it yet.