Chapter 53
Gladdie decided the Old Bridge was the subject of the day, as it were, seeing as it resonated with Elisavet too.
‘Like its twin in Prizren,’ she added, to show Elisavet she’d remembered, so they were sketching it from a bench on the Tondu Road end.
Elisavet was, in Cora’s opinion, going rogue and filling in the sheet of paper with graphite. The pencil marks took on a metallic sheen in the sunlight. Every so often she would stop to sharpen the pencil.
Gladdie patrolled past the three of them, making noises over their shoulders that were meant to be encouraging but somehow reeked of critical disappointment.
‘Worried about your exhibition?’ Cora asked above the engine-loud roar of the river.
‘Our exhibition,’ Gladdie corrected her.
‘Ours?’ Megan said irritably, fastening her hair into bunches to keep it out of the paint. ‘Don’t blame us now. This is your vanity project and you forced us into it under the false pretences of showing Elisavet the sights. To be honest, we could have done that in a day.’
Elisavet looked up from her pencilling and twisted her hair around her hand. She looked holy and innocent. ‘It’s therapy, no?’ she asked seriously. ‘With a little psychology thrown in?’
The way she said it reminded Cora of her mother’s ‘sorry’.
You could read it any way you liked. She flushed as if they’d been caught out.
‘It’s boring listening to old stories,’ she said apologetically.
She looked at her own painting of the bridge, not abstract this time, because a bridge was basically stones and arches so it should have been easier to draw, and it was also a metaphor, if Gladdie asked.
‘I have a story,’ Elisavet said. ‘The story of how I got here.’
‘Oh, good!’ They sat up straight and looked at her expectantly, like obedient children.
‘You remember I told you I was in the back of a truck with many women,’ she said flatly.
‘After maybe an hour, the truck stopped moving and some soldiers in battle fatigues climbed in with torches to look at us. We guessed, no, we knew why they were here. Not this one, not this one, yes, this one. You know? The light shining in our faces so bright it hurt, and the girls are crying. Not me, not me, I hoped, but at the same time I thought, why not me? And one of the soldiers, he pulled me to my feet, took me outside the truck. My fiancé! It was crazy! He had come to find me. He took me on his motorbike to the United Nations safe area and from there I went to a refugee agency. And after a few weeks more, to here.’
Gladdie broke the silence that followed.
‘That’s a story,’ she said. ‘And then your fiancé—’
Elisavet shrugged. ‘I’m the enemy now.’
She was right, but although they remembered perfectly well what the fiancé had written in a letter, he had also helped her get away.
Elisavet ran her fingers over her mouth. ‘Also,’ she said, ‘I have something else to tell you. The International Red Cross is finding my family. I have hope at last.’
‘Oh, that’s good,’ Cora said with relief. She would send them a donation, she decided. Gwyn would know where to send it.
‘Always hope for the best. My father took credit for the war ending,’ Megan said to Elisavet, ‘because of the promise he made to God.’
‘You are strange people,’ Elisavet replied after a long pause. ‘This is a national characteristic?’
‘Probably,’ Megan agreed.
Elisavet went back to her artwork. In the middle of the page she had drawn a small circle the size of a sequin, and was shading carefully around it.
It was strange to be called strange by a stranger, in Cora’s opinion. She was squinting critically at the scene in front of her. ‘There’s something wrong with my bridge,’ she said, sitting back to look at her own effort.
Gladdie put her pad down and came rushing over. ‘Mmmm. You need perspective, Cora,’ she said. ‘It looks as if it’s levitating. The thing is, it’s not about painting what you know is there, but how you see it.’
‘You’ve been reading a book, haven’t you,’ Cora accused her. In her head the painting had been perfect, but somewhere between her brains and hand there was a serious flaw in translation.
‘It’s called teaching, Cora.’
‘I need yellow,’ Elisavet announced.
‘Cadmium yellow or yellow ochre?’
‘The brightest one. And a fine paintbrush.’
Megan swished her brush in the water and pinched it dry. ‘Here you are.’
Don’t ask why it seemed a momentous occasion, but the three of them watched Elisavet put a dab of yellow on her china plate paint palette and transfer the yellow blob to the circle with the paintbrush. ‘There! Finished!’ she said, sitting back.
It could pass for something modern and cutting-edge if you were feeling generous.
‘Lovely,’ Cora said.
‘The light at the end of the tunnel,’ Megan said dryly.
Elisavet wiped the fine paintbrush with a tissue and gave it back to her. ‘And now I must go. I’m meeting someone for a drink.’
‘Anyone we know?’ Cora asked.
Over the din of the water Elisavet seemed not to have heard. She put her bag over her shoulder and gave a little wave as she headed for the bridge.
‘She’s having us on,’ Megan said cheerfully, looking at the Elisavet’s picture again. ‘Humouring us with artistic irony.’
‘Look, she’s worn this pencil down to a stub,’ Gladdie added in dismay. ‘It’s not as if they grow on trees.’
Cora squinted at the picture. ‘It might be the torch that her fiancé shone at her.’
‘I was just going to say that,’ Gladdie objected. ‘Listen, we should give our pictures titles. We’ll have to, for the exhibition catalogue, in case people want to buy them.’
Megan snorted. ‘Gladdie! Nobody’s going to want to buy them! You and your artist’s eye! If you had any kind of an eye for art, you’d abandon the idea of an exhibition right now.’
Cora was still looking at the drawing. ‘He looked for her, he found her, and then he made sure she was safe. Despite what he told her, that sounds very much like love to me.’