Chapter 19 Puss in Boots
Puss in Boots
Over another delicious dinner, Evie told us about her discoveries earlier in the day.
Nerys now seemed less uptight about any mention of the subject, so I assumed Rhys had passed on my reassurance about Evie only being interested in what Arwen had done at Triskelion during the few weeks she had been here, and not at all in trying to prove that Cosmo Caradoc’s best works were painted by some other, female artist, for one of her TV exposés!
‘Sam, the local history museum curator, was very interesting and had a lot of material about the artistic colony, especially between the wars, which is what I’m most interested in at the moment,’ Evie told us.
‘Including lots of photographs. There is even one of Arwen on the steps of a cafe, the Blue Parrot, along with other artists, including one called Gwendoline Sutler, whom I’m going to feature in a future biography. ’
‘The Blue Parrot? We were in there today!’ I exclaimed. ‘I mean, I assume it’s the same one.’
‘Yes, apparently it’s always kept the same name.’
‘We?’ said Verity with an arch look, picking up on what I’d said. ‘I hadn’t realized you’d had company on your shopping trip, Ginny.’
‘I bumped into Ginny in St Melangell,’ Rhys said. ‘And it was just as well I did because she’d bought such a mound of shopping, she’d never have carried it all home on her own. We had coffee first, though.’
‘That was lucky,’ said Nerys warmly. ‘That’s my favourite cafe, too.’
‘I had bara brith and it was delicious,’ I told her. ‘I must find a good recipe for it.’
‘I’m sure Bronwen will have one,’ she said.
‘Sam is having copies of the most interesting photographs made for me,’ said Evie, reverting to the topic that most interested her. ‘Also a couple of documents. I feel I’m starting to get a grasp on what Arwen’s time here was like. She must have made friends among the local artists very quickly.’
‘They looked a jolly lot in the photo,’ said Noel.
‘The main thing I need to know is when Arwen left Triskelion. After your saying the other day, Nerys, that Caradoc was killed in an accident at about that time, I wondered if you could definitely confirm that it was the tragic death of her guardian that enabled her to leave.’
‘I … yes, I’m sure that was the reason,’ Nerys said. ‘My step-grandmother, Rose, gave me to understand that Arwen really wanted to live with her friend in Cornwall and there was no reason why not, after the accident.’
‘Then that solves the only mystery surrounding her, so all I need now is a little more information about what she was doing here, whether she was painting and, if so, where that work is now.’
‘Not here, at any rate. There’s nothing other than work by Cosmo and a few sketches by my grandfather, Hugh Jones, who became Hugh Caradoc-Jones when he married my grandmother, Beatrice Caradoc.’
‘Perhaps you could show Evie the family albums – and I’m sure Ginny would also like to see her distant relatives – when you have the time,’ suggested Noel, and Nerys said vaguely that she would, although perhaps after Christmas when she was less busy.
‘I’ve managed to track down one small seascape by Arwen on eBay, which looks similar to the two I’ve already seen,’ said Evie. ‘I don’t suppose it will arrive until after Christmas now.’
Then she added, to me, ‘Charlotte’s emailed me to say she’s finally found that precious box of papers and photographs of Milly Vane’s in her attic, while getting down the Christmas decorations. I’m hoping that fills in what Arwen’s life was like in Cornwall, after she left here.’
‘Great – it sounds as if you will soon have lots more information,’ I said.
‘But with Christmas coming up, perhaps none of it will arrive until afterwards,’ she said, then grinned. ‘I may as well just eat, drink and be merry till it does!’
She twinkled roguishly at Noel, who raised his glass in salute to her.
I looked from one to the other of them suspiciously. Evie’s penchant had always been for slim, intelligent men who didn’t tower over her and Noel certainly fitted that bill …
*
Next morning I woke early, warm and cosy in my very comfortable bed, thinking about yesterday and how quickly I’d got used to living with so many people, most of them strangers, after my previous, solitary existence.
Finding Rhys at Triskelion had been a bit of a shock, it was true, but I was over that now and prepared to be friendly …
just not, in the light of the past and Verity’s hints, too friendly.
And now I felt reassured that Evie wasn’t intending to go grubbing into Cosmo Caradoc’s life, perhaps dragging out some dirty family laundry, I could relax a bit about that, too. I was glad Nerys’s mind had been relieved on that score.
I got up and dressed warmly, then crept downstairs and out of the garden door, which was unlocked. There was no sign of Pompey or Snookums, so I wondered if Rhys had been there before me.
Outside in the chilly early morning air, I turned away from the direction of the cliff path – it would look too much as if I was hoping to meet Rhys if I went that way – and made for where Nerys had told me the walled kitchen garden lay, beyond the inner courtyard and garage.
And there, in my natural habitat, pottering around the greenhouses and cold frames, I let my imagination wander up the garden path and into the watery world of the next Mrs Snowboots book, remembering how inspired I’d felt up in the old oak grove by the pool, both for the board book and the next Hedgehoppers.
There were lots of possibilities … It was all rather exciting!
*
I was so full of my new ideas that I didn’t really take much notice of the others at breakfast, and immediately afterwards went up to my room and, temporarily abandoning my Wisteria Cottage book project, began sketching and then painting Mrs Snowboots in her new guise.
I dressed her in big seaboots with turned-down tops, a blue jumper and with a red-and-white-spotted handkerchief tied around her neck.
Perhaps later there would be a storm and she’d have to wear bright yellow oilskins and a sou’wester.
I worked with photographs of my beloved old cat spread out around me, and finally came back to earth a couple of hours later, with sketches littering the table and two line and wash paintings on the easels.
I made a cup of coffee and thought the notes I’d jotted down for the text of the book had legs: sea legs.
There was just time to wrap up all the presents before lunch, and I amused myself allocating the various symbols on the stained-glass hangings to the others – a Christmas pudding for Bronwen, for instance, a bright-eyed robin for my mother and, after a hesitation, one of the mistletoe painted hangings for Rhys, after all.
The rest I allotted randomly: Kate got a teddy bear, although cuddly she was not.
I made a label for Cariad’s toolbox saying, ‘Professional Archaeologist’s Excavation Kit’, and gift-wrapped the contents before putting them in. Trowels are surprisingly tricky to wrap neatly.
Luckily, I’d just piled all the presents back into the bottom of the wardrobe when Evie came in and plumped herself down on the velvet armchair, stretching out her long, slim, booted legs.
‘Well, Ginny, are you glad now that I persuaded you to come?’ she asked. ‘It was like prising a limpet off a rock to get you here.’
‘Yes,’ I admitted. ‘The moment I stepped into the house it just felt so … sort of familiar and welcoming. It was a bit of a shock being surrounded by people all the time, after the last few years, but I like the family atmosphere, despite one or two of the other guests not being very congenial.’
‘That’s typical of any large family Christmas gathering anyway, I think,’ she said. ‘Of course, we’ve never had a large family to celebrate Christmas with, even if I’d ever wanted to, so you soak yourself in it while you’ve got the chance, darling.’
‘I mean to. I suspect I won’t get much more work done now till after Boxing Day.’
‘I’ll constantly be working, since my scavenging for information comes under that heading. Like a magpie, I pick up a sparkly bit here and there and carry them back to my nest,’ she said, her dark eyes bird bright. ‘And I hope you find little snippets of interest for me, too.’
‘I don’t think there’s much more about Arwen to find out, is there? I mean, now we know she was freed to leave Triskelion by her guardian’s fatal accident.’
‘There has to be a little more about how she spent her time here. I’ve finally begun researching the work of Cosmo Caradoc online, too, and it’s no wonder his work fell out of fashion because, although his later paintings loosened up a bit in style, he was hardly up there with the modern movements of his time.
He carried on with the big landscapes and figurative set pieces he’d always produced. ’
‘They don’t sound very interesting,’ I said, ‘and that painting of his in the library of a half-naked woman draped in a piece of rich fabric doesn’t do a lot for me. It’s sort of sumptuous nothingness.’
‘A very good description,’ she approved.
‘I find the changes to Lewis Madoc’s later works more interesting, since they increasingly show a way of dealing with light that is shared with the two paintings of Arwen’s I saw at Charlotte’s.
I just wish I had them here now to study more closely!
But perhaps the one from eBay will arrive soon, and it looked very similar. ’
‘So, is your idea that she helped her father with his later work? She must have been very young, if so.’
‘I’m tending towards that conclusion, but I need more evidence. Perhaps Milly will have kept in her Memory Box some of the sketchbooks Arwen filled when she was staying here because there must be more than the ones in the trunk.’
‘It sounds as if your Christmas presents will be arriving late,’ I said.