MORNING SERIAL

BEFORE she hung up there was a pause, as if she was going to say something else. But she didn’t.

The sun seemed to be setting early, and I went down to the pool to swim a few lengths before dinner. The girls were there, of course; Darya reading and Dina filing her nails, her hair wet and matted from a recent swim. We exchanged pleasantries – even Darya was in a good mood and made a few jokes about how her sister bleached in the sun. I swam my lengths, bade them farewell, and went back to the tower where the latest instalment of a new habit had taken place – my dinner on a trolley under a silver lid complete with chilled wine and carnation in a little porcelain vase. It was both delightful and lonesome.

The dinner was good but I wasn’t taking to it, and after a few mouthfuls I pushed the trolley to one side, poured another glass of the excellent wine and turned to face the canvas. I had already noticed that the effort from the previous night had gone. Illie had suggested I might find this to be the case from time to time. His plan – which he would not explain – could not wait for my permission. And besides, the paintings were his. He made that clear.

I mixed on the palette, scraped the blue grey black with the knife across the surface. It looked no different to the one before, the one that Illie had said was no good. He had said he wanted the right feeling, the right atmosphere, that there must be the whiff of smoke to the hue. I had already stopped pleading with him for clearer direction. I had stopped telling him that it would be impossible to see into his mind and pick out his dreams, because it was impossible to look at a dream even when it was your own. The mad man would be left to his own downward spiral. I had as good as decided this in my silence. Paint for him another dark night scene and put in the centre that pendulous child’s swing, in the dullness of its cherry red.