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Life’s Broad Canvas

1

Jonas fretted. He knew that those attending these summer art groups in Cornwall’s premier art venue and gallery were those curious men and women who spent a few days in town, a few hours in his presence or that of colleagues who, like him, had a reputation to sustain, and would then return to their studios and resume work. Most attending would be enriched by the experience of tutoring other artists even if only a few would have truly succeeded in taking their skills to a new, and hitherto unvisited, level.

There was no time to develop a relationship of trust and understanding. Were it to happen, it would be stilted and formal with those he chose to devote his precious time to. He would have been taken away from his artist’s work. He could only take so many days at a stretch in such an environment.

He would then be overwhelmed by the need to break loose and, when he did so, he painted and sketched furiously, brooked no interruptions, and paid little heed to his appearance. He would behave like a man denied all food and drink, and work furiously, driven on by what he again saw all around him, most of all by the image that he carried in his mind of someone he had met in the most prosaic of circumstances. That image, grainy at best, would be committed to canvas. After such moments of denial, he would gorge on food and drink, rest, and then return to more known ways of daily life as others would see it.

His skills in portraiture, it was said, were mercurial, sometimes too direct, even cruel. The work on the canvas would reveal a person stripped of their confected, nurtured, glory. Instead, and to his critical eye, there would be revealed, clothed or not, the inner person.

One woman, who had been claimed, turned the tables on him, handed in a small sketch that she had created whilst away from the classes that she attended, those that he presided over. Megan…that was her name…horny, boney, Megan had been his name for her…she had captured the stare in his appraising eyes perfectly, that of a man as if he were a sailor scanning a distant horizon, hoping for the comforts of landfall and companionship. She had captured the set of his mouth, the bearded face of a man haunted by the unceasing demands placed upon him to produce work that sold, work that sustained his chosen way of life here. It was an artist’s life that was supplemented by only too-commercial work.

Megan had seen a man true to himself and his art alone, a maverick, a man who looked on women as his playthings, shared in the pleasure to be found in his bed, or theirs, before he then rejected them. Megan had painted a man versed in the modern ways of it, only she had discovered an emotion that did not belong in his selfish world. She had called it love; he had thought of it as bondage.

It had ended messily but his paintings of her, for he had produced several of her, had earned him a great deal of money, one of them bought by a Far Eastern collector.

Now, a woman quite different had engaged his attention, had inflamed his senses like no other had done for some time. She was not alone when he had seen her registering for the new course but two days ago. Her companion could be a lover, but was, more likely, to be a sister or relation, a woman not taken to art but who seemed to be supportive. She was always to be seen waiting for Vida, her notebook and pens in hand, as Vida carried her collected art materials and they were then seen to walk out into the sunshine once more, laughing and looking fondly at each other, a joke being shared, or comments made on how the hours had passed since they were last together.

Jonas caught her looking his way and smiled, chose to make his way through the throng as the class finished and she was seen to be gathering up her materials, her work still on the small collapsible easel that she would take away with her.

Vida’s sandy brown hair was a delight, the blonde strands within it like a halo, her skin a soft honey colour, her shapely, buxom, figure clothed in a white halter-necked top that complemented perfectly a grey, floaty skirt. What finally did it for him was her choice of jewellery, a starfish necklace, inset with blue glass, hanging over her freckled cleavage, and he had taken in her pendant, matching, earrings that were often to be seen entangled in her hair.

He had to engage with this woman somehow.

‘Don’t put your work away, Vida…not just yet.’

‘Oh, have I done something wrong…in my work?’

‘Not in the least. I want to see the finished piece again…you were ahead of all the others, and I recognised talent. I saw that as I walked around the room…but decided, then, not to say so.’

She knew it to be so. Jonas had spent more time talking to the others than with her. She had been taken by the somewhat dissolute look of the man and she had soon taken to wondering why that should be. It did not come across to her as being an act, but an expression of the man and his outlook on life.

She kaçak iddaa had worked on, the task that Jonas had set far from onerous but informative all the same.

‘May I walk with you?’ he asked, following her to the door of the room that the gallery had made available for the art classes. Jonas did so even when she offered no reply, walked beside her down the wide spiral stairs in the atrium and out into the blaze of sunshine, a brilliant blue and cloudless sky overhead. ‘Perhaps…we can have some lunch or a drink before you leave for the day?’

He saw her wave at the woman he had seen Vida with on every morning since the commencement of the course.

‘That’s Lucia…my sister…we’ve made no plans…Jonas, so maybe we can both be with you?’ she smiled, turning to him for an instant,

‘Let’s ask her then…if you will at least agree?’

‘Let’s do that…and yes I agree.’ Vida pushed down her skirt as the wind tugged at it, revealing more of her legs than perhaps she wanted. She clutched her art materials awkwardly.

‘Here…let me help you with those?’

‘Thanks, I should know by now not to take so much with me,’ she replied and soon regaining her composure as Lucia approached them.

There was no awkwardness in her greeting them. Lucia introduced herself, gave Vida a moment’s knowing look and the women then kissed each other on the cheek.

‘Have you had a good morning?’ she asked.

‘I’ll show you…want to do that over a drink or some lunch. Jonas has asked me if I could spare the time. I said that I could…’

‘And that you join us, if you wish?’ Jonas added helpfully. ‘Vida’s ahead of the others in the class…I guess the task I set was far too easy for her…so Vida made something of it.’

They stood on the sloping ramp and promenade walk outside the gallery, the stone wall just sheltering them from the breeze off the sea beyond. Surfers were seen to tumble off their boards or to ride the waves.

‘Was it…easy?’ Lucia enquired.

‘We were told to draw someone from memory. I did that of you, darling…’ Vida threaded an arm through her sister’s. ‘Where do we go, Jonas?’

‘Follow me…I know just the place.’

The women did so, exchanged silent glances, Lucia raising an enquiring eyebrow on learning, with little having been said, that Vida’s interpretation of the man’s behaviour towards her had been only too accurate. Behind his back, Lucia pouted, ran her tongue over her lips, felt a nudge from Vida to keep them from laughing out on all that had been suggested by Lucia’s actions.

They were on holiday, so why not see where the meeting with him took then…both.

 

2

It seemed that Jonas had the rest of the day to devote to his own work, that he would return to his studio and the small cottage that was his home a little way to the east of the town, an ‘often cold and desolate place,’ he had told them,’ in the heart of winter.’ It was at such times that he went abroad, worked on commissions that the sales of his work to others generated. It wasn’t quite a hand to mouth existence.

‘I’ll go and get us another drink,’ Lucia offered, unless it will interfere with your afternoon’s work?’ she asked of Jonas.

‘It often goes better with a few bevvies inside me,’ he smiled up at her, one strong hand pushing back at his long greying hair as the breeze caught it. ‘There’s a tab running…under my name…under ‘Everett.”

‘We’ll split the cost,’ Lucia assured him, and looked at Vida, ‘won’t we?’

‘Yes…fine,’ Vida agreed, somewhat distracted. She waited until Lucia was out of their hearing. ‘What you said about the picture I drew of her has set me thinking. What you made of it but didn’t really say…’

‘Only this…don’t be so closed in,’ Jonas demanded in a rush of sudden, and uncommon, anger.

‘I didn’t think I was being closed in, as you put it, when I drew her…’

‘Give me half a chance and I’d show you…’

‘You’d paint me, you mean?’ she said in some surprise, but soon realizing what those looks of his upon her had meant. ‘No, I don’t think so…’

‘Tell me why not?’

‘There’s nothing too remarkable in me to have someone show that on a canvas…’

‘That’s for me to decide, Vida…to capture the life and passion…that I see in te sitter, the object of my attention.’

‘Steady on!’ she laughed, her movements to brush away her windswept hair only serving to draw his attention upon her all over again. The man really didn’t make a secret of his interest in her now. To meet his look was to see his vivid blue eyes boring into her, seeking to persuade her to relent.

‘I’ll say it again. I want to paint you, and the longer that you argue with me, or refuse to say which way it’s to go, the less time there is…’

‘And so, it would be testing your true talents…’ she retorted on a pouted smile. She looked about for Lucia but there was still no sign of her.

‘There’s that!’ he couldn’t help but laugh. ‘Seriously though…you’ll soon be kaçak bahis gone, which is a matter of some regret to me.’

‘Gone and forgotten,’ Vida said lightly, but wishing it were not so. He really did make it far too obvious what he was after with her, painting or not.

And yet, she was taken by the man’s rough ways but undoubted skills, all of them seen in that exhibition two days ago on their very first day, his subjects, presumably, given so little time for many to lose their inhibitions and, instead, to enjoy whatever came their way, and with the company they kept.

Both she, and Lucia, had settled in, had fallen in love with the place, could work with the warmth of the sun on their skins and pay little, or no, heed to the loosening of any bonds with life away from here, the undoubted sense of having their spirits freed after the emotional wrench of divorces they had both gone through.

He drew closer, she saw his large toed feet poke out from under his baggy chinos, saw the flap of his denim shirt, the whiteness of his hair, his stubbled beard and the hair on his tanned chest, the continuing appraising glance of his eyes upon her. It felt as if she had been undressed already…by the man and not the artist.

‘I want to paint you, Vida…capture the life in you and do that as a head and shoulders portrait…also to capture the look of those wonderful eyes…the voluptuousness of…’

‘You want me to strip…’ she said flatly. ‘Just ask it of me, Jonas! I could always say ‘no’…if you asked that of me.’ She was proud of their firmness, no children or the passing of the years making them sag.

Jonas moved to sit closer on the bench-seat that was a part of the table, the parasol flapping not so far above their heads. He was close but did not touch her, he chose not to do that and still be able to study her face, to also think of a possible pose.

‘You are direct….’

‘I’ve learned to be honest in everything…so has Lucia.’

‘This concerns just you and me…’

‘Perhaps,’ she answered coyly, ‘we’ll have to see, won’t we, Jonas?’

Vida knew that she could make her demands, express the conditions for acceding to his request that she posed for him. They would be conditions that she felt Lucia had to be a party to. They had grown too close, over recent times, to have a man…any man…get in the way of that renewed bond. They had each come out of their marriages, bruised but unbowed.

He eased away from her, but his look demanded that she give an answer, a ‘yes’ or a ‘no,’ any conditions that she might demand for agreeing to his request to be considered.

‘Well?’

‘Well, Jonas…I’ll agree on one condition,’ she told him, her voice dropping to let the idea take a hold in him.

‘And what is that?’ he asked, wearily.

Vida gave him a wicked grin. ‘That you sleep with me…Lucia too, if she asks it of you. The skills you have will be put to the widest possible uses…’

‘Well I never!’

She smiled on seeing his obvious surprise, was captivated by that smile of his. ‘You’ve never done it or never been asked…as you just have been by a woman, not the other way about?’

Jonas again snorted a laugh of disbelief that the wondrously made woman before him had been so direct. Vida was no emaciated waif, but a fleshy, broad-hipped and large breasted woman with a captivating smile and brave look in her eyes. She was also a gifted artist. Who would he claim if they did end up in bed together, two or three?

‘Now I really have heard everything, even in a place like this…Vida. Your name seems to capture your nature perfectly. Has it been part of a plan all along…and however it came about?’

‘Certainly not, in my case. But you have made no secret of your interest in me. So, I decided on a new take on an only too common feeling…’

‘If you want to take someone to bed, you just ask it straight out?’ Jonas had forsaken any discretion and now cast overtly appraising glances on her body, delighted in Vida’s voluptuousness.

‘Yes. We are in a place where almost anything goes…’

‘Yeah, sure, almost ‘anything’…Vida.’

If Lucia offered the same fleshy delights, he would have to consider whether to paint them both, have the women pose for the same picture. Only a few discreet customers for his work had learned of a speciality in suggestive, rather than overtly erotic, pictures that he could produce. Some had even been painted to order. One such request still languished in his ‘in tray,’ and the client was only too patient, if something of interest, and out of the ordinary, was produced. These two women, that he had met, might just be the subjects of such a work.

Vida closed the space between them and to sit close to him. As Jonas moved to face her, and to determine what she would now say, Vida brazenly put a hand to his chest, touched him where Jonas’s shirt was unfastened.

‘Who is so closed in now?’ she challenged him on a soft wondering look and a stroke of her hand that soon caressed his throat illegal bahis in a light fingertip touch. ‘Your art can follow life…’

‘Mimic life…mimic it!’ he answered and holding her arm to still Vida in her touches. It would be only too easy to caress the warm skin of her thigh, by her knee, and he suppressed a shudder of longing for the woman. He had also felt her breasts press against him, Vida making no effort to draw away or to restrain him as he leant in closer, oblivious to those around them.

‘As you wish…’ she said on a light press of her lips to mouth, felt the prick of his moustache to her skin. ‘So…?’

‘So,’ he smiled. ‘We need to settle on this arrangement…’

Vida couldn’t help but wonder at his transformation, when he smiled at her like that. Yes, she would pose for him. And…and what was the word? Oh yes, she wanted to fuck with him. Lucia would understand, she still had her lovers. As for her, companionship came in so many guises, and sisterly comfort was but a surrogate for that. It was also to be found, as she had discovered from the very first moment that she had met Jonas’s appraising glances her way, in the unlikeliest of places and situations. 

3

The night was the warmest of their stay so far. It was only too easy to feel sweat on their skin, even under the softly billowing blouses that they had each chosen to wear with brightly patterned harem trousers, items of clothing bought when they had shopped together before the holiday.

They found him soon enough, Jonas the man who loved and painted, one act at the expense, or denial, of the other.

Vida had read the signs only too easily, but she had remained dismayed, and flattered, that she had been the one chosen by the man that she and Lucia had decided to research on the web, there to discover the range of his talents and the scope of his work. That they were to be in his company, and to do that together, had been agreed upon.

Jonas was engaged in a conversation on his iPhone and did not see them approach until they were standing by his side.

‘Can we sit with you?’ Lucia said on an impetuous and distracting touch to his neck. It made Jonas turn sharply and to close the call quickly.

‘Of course,’ he beamed, taking in their appearance in one sweep of his eyes. ‘You both look wonderful…’

The women’s skins were lightly tanned, bore the healthy glow of a moisturizing lotion generously applied, and it seemed to him that they could have been dipped in a vat of some perfumed and luxuriant oil. Their blouses flattered fulsome figures, hugged every curve. Lucia was fresh-faced and she wore little or no make-up. Vida was Vida, with her jewelled earrings and pendant necklace again on show, a soft pink lipstick complementing her wondering smile, the look of her eyes captivating as she came and sat down beside him.

‘Two ladies and one man,’ she now confided in a low voice, looking about them. ‘What will people say?’

‘There goes a lucky man,’ Jonas laughed softly. ‘And I think it’s true…and may take time to believe.’

‘Go on,’ Lucia urged, ‘we’re here and with you.’

‘Yes, I’ll go and get you ladies a drink. What will it be?’

‘That’s not what she meant,’ Vida chided, ‘that you’re a lucky man. Luck has nothing to do with it…’

‘I know, but I’ll soon run out of compliments…’

‘That’s true,’ Vida smiled up at him. She met Lucia’s look upon her. They both laughed at what seemed the unreality of their situation, but who was to know what was really at work in all of them now?

Jonas soon returned with a bottle of Prosecco and two glasses balanced on a tray, a small glass of beer to complement the one that he had been seen sipping on as they arrived. They were soon at ease with each other, and the conversation flowed, the women learning more of his work and successes, confirmed by their trawl of the web, and they enough to not have Jonas think that he was dominating these only too purposeful exchanges.

Unthinking on how it would look, Jonas glanced at his watch. The evening had turned decidedly cooler after the heat of the day.

‘I was thinking the same…perhaps we should leave…go back to our cottage, Jonas? It’s closer than your place…I think.’ Lucia felt a moment’s cautionary touch to her arm.

Vida, it seemed, wanted to string things out a while longer, even if it had been her suggestion that the sharing in a tryst, with the man, was the price to be paid for him to be allowed to paint them. ‘It’s your call…’

‘I thought it was yours, or Vida’s’ he laughed, ‘but yes, let’s got to your cottage and see what plays out…’

‘Love and artistry,’ Vida smiled at him as she felt Jonas take hold of her arm and was drawn to his side. ‘You won’t paint us from memory, will you?’ she teased as they began to walk along the promenade and to the turning need to take them up the hill and to their cottage.

‘Vida, really!’ Lucia laughed in some dismay, but she also threaded her arm through Jonas’s.

‘I think that’s what you asked for and of me…love and artistry to excess,’ he corrected on a deep laugh, his hands drawing the women closer to his sides, each clamping them and entwining their fingers with his.

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