‘You look a bit flushed, dear.’ Audrey greeted her at the door of the village hall. ‘Don’t worry, we’ve got everything under control.’
Ella wondered what she’d say if she knew what had put the colour on her cheeks and the warm tingle coursing through her bloodstream. Devon had stopped by as she was loading her pictures into the car and offered to take Tess for her for the afternoon and then they’d got a little distracted. Boy, was he a good kisser.
He was the one who’d convinced her to bring along her three new watercolours when he’d spotted them in her studio. She’d been dithering about whether to bring them along. Part of her didn’t want to share them with anyone yet. They were still too private. They were hers. Raw. Untried. She tilted her head to one side. How could she be objective about them? She had no idea if they were any good or not, couldn’t even say they were her best work. All she knew was that for the first time ever, she’d manage to faithfully reproduce the image in her head with such crispness and clarity it made her heart sing. The greens were exactly the right greens, the shadows had a depth to them she imagined losing herself in and the mist rising had a magical opalescence to it.
Before she could speak, Audrey’s team of helpers, primed to unload the pictures from the car, were soon carrying the pictures inside, ably directed by Audrey who coordinated her team with a voice as loud as a foghorn, dictating exactly where each one should go.
Within fifteen minutes the room had been laid out, a couple of easels at the front displayed the Cuthbert pictures she’d borrowed from her parents and then a makeshift gallery around the back of the room to the right of the refreshment table, displayed some of her recent sketches and pictures which Bets had helped her to hastily mount and put into cheap IKEA frames.
Ella scarcely had a chance to draw breath before the room began filling with a range of ladies of various shapes and sizes, all talking like vivacious parrots.
She stood at the front of the room, twisting her cold hands together. The words she’d rehearsed in her head were harder to recall now she was faced with an audience. Why had she agreed to do this? Luckily it seemed that everyone in the room had been in solitary confinement for the last six months – the nearest group of ladies fell upon each other with cries of delight and barely drew breath as they talked non-stop, completely ignoring her.
Audrey glided to the front to stand beside Ella. ‘Don’t worry, they’ll shut up in a minute,’ she whispered and sure enough the talk died away, which was actually far worse because one by one every head turned with intense, focused interest to survey Ella. If it weren’t for the fact that her feet were frozen to the floor, she might have made a run for it.
‘Ladies.’ Audrey signalled to the corner where Ella realised there was a woman seated at the piano. Everyone stood up. Ella shifted and looked behind her.
With more enthusiasm than skill, the woman began to play. Ella was no musician but she could tell that a few of the notes were off. At least she recognised the tune.
There was a lot to be said for starting things off with a rousing version of ‘Jerusalem’. It certainly engendered a positive atmosphere and as the last note died away, Ella’s confidence returned. She could do this.
‘Ladies, today I have the very great pleasure of introducing local artist Ella Rigden. Many of you may know her work from the popular Cuthbert Mouse series of children’s books, but she is also an accomplished artist, a winner of the prestigious Gerber Stein prize, shortlisted for the Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize and according to my sources, hard at work for an exciting new exhibition.’
Audrey had done her homework, although sadly most of it belonged to ancient history. Ella hadn’t been shortlisted for anything for a very long time, and she definitely wasn’t going to have an exhibition anywhere soon.
Everyone was looking at her expectantly. With a measured breath she scanned the audience and forced herself to smile.
‘Good afternoon and thank you for coming.’ Lots of heads bobbed up and Ella let out a breath. She held up one of her pictures and as she raised it up to show the audience, it brought back a vision of bringing the same picture down on Patrick’s head.
‘Do any of you recognise this little fella?’ she asked, beaming at the audience.
Heads nodded and bobbed in assent and she was off, up and running.
Once she started, there was no time to feel self-conscious or nervous. It was as easy as Devon had suggested. All she had to do was talk about things that she knew about and show the passion she had for her characters. That thought brought her up short and she almost laughed out loud in delight as it hit her that in recent weeks she’d fallen in love all over again with her characters.
‘For example, when I draw Cuthbert, I have a hat in mind for him. As a consummate show-off, he invariably adopts the characteristics of the type of person who would wear that type of hat.’ She showed them the picture of Cuthbert in his feathered Cavalier’s hat and his courtly bows and buckled shoes, pointing out the details to the appreciative audience. As she talked, Ella began to enjoy herself more and more. The WI membership was considerably younger than Ella had expected – some admittedly were pensioners but even they were of the youthful, enquiring, still full of beans persuasion. The audience asked lively and interesting questions and were incredibly complimentary about her mice.
In the second half of her talk, Ella introduced some audience participation.
‘You know each of the mice have their own character and,’ she gave the audience a conspiratorial smile, ‘I know I shouldn’t have favourites but I think Cuthbert might just have sneaked into first place.’ The audience, as one smiled and nodded. With deft strokes, she started to sketch an outline of Cuthbert. She’d been worried about stretching her talk out and this was the crunch point. She’d asked Audrey to prime her audience in advance and hoped that at least some of them had responded.
‘But today I’d like a bit of inspiration from you. I did ask Audrey if you’d bring along a few props. So did anyone bring along a hat?’
She need not have worried. The minute Ella launched this line, it was an instant success. The audience needed no further prompting and suddenly all the ladies sprouted headgear of all shapes and sizes. Huge floral wedding hats, saucy, sexy fascinators, a 1920s flapper girl hat, a full Indian feathered headdress, felt hats, tweed hats, deerstalkers.
‘Blimey, I’ve got enough inspiration here to keep me going for months.’
The Indian headdress on top of a lady of vast girth took the prize, and Ella could imagine Cuthbert halfway up the curtains with the feather headdress trailing around his tail behind him. Her mind took off. Quickly she sketched him, pencilling in the elaborate feather headdress, his tail coiled around one of the smaller feathers on the very end of the headband. As she made the deft strokes on paper, demonstrating to the audience how she worked, she gave a running commentary of her thought processes.
‘So, with this, I’d think the headdress might lose a feather that one of the younger mice might play with. A feather might tickle Catherine, his sister, and make her cross, or giggle, or she might pluck it from him to do some dusting.’
Before long she had quite a rapport going with the audience and it was Audrey that had to interrupt with a reminder that tea and cake would be served and that the audience could ask her any questions then.
Bringing the talk to a close, Ella was surprised by the enthusiastic three cheers from Audrey and the rapturous clapping.
As tea and an amazing range of cake was served, she was besieged with questions.
‘So how much would one of these cost?’ asked one lady, with an earnest piercing stare, as she balanced a huge slab of coffee cake in one hand, her handbag looped over her elbow and an elegant walking stick in the other hand, nodding towards one of Ella’s parents’ pictures. Ella stared at her hair, fascinated by the pearl-pink rinse which was lifted at the ends with a touch of purple.
‘Unfortunately these aren’t for sale, they belong to my parents. I gave them to my mother when I was first published.’ Ella explained. ‘And the others haven’t been published yet, so I can’t release them.’
‘Bet they’re worth a bit now,’ she grinned.
Ella nodded, hiding the nausea brought on by the question. Patrick had slapped quite a price tag on the ones he’d had in the gallery.
Another woman joined her. ‘I love your landscape. Are you selling it?’
Ella pulled a face. ‘To be honest it’s quite new, I’ve not even thought about it.’
‘You ought to, they’d be jolly popular round here. Wouldn’t they, Margery?’
She called over to a rather severe-looking woman who was studying the reservoir picture. The woman raised her head and looked over with piercing blue eyes and immaculately coiffured hair, there was no other word for it. She looked as if she’d just stepped out of the tea lounge in the Savoy rather than come to a village hall in Hertfordshire.
Without responding she carried on studying the picture, her eyes fixed on it with an unnerving intensity. Admittedly it wouldn’t be to everyone’s taste, not your typical landscapes and to a traditional eye, the trees were probably a bit abstract. Trying to steel herself not to care when this slightly scary woman denounced it as too modern, Ella turned back to the first lady who’d changed the subject and began talking about a friend of hers who wrote children’s books.
A tap on the shoulder made her turn and she found Margery standing there, the blue eyes intent and thoughtful.
‘I run a gallery in Missenden. Have you got any more of these?’ She pressed a card into Ella’s hand. ‘Come and see me,’ she paused and gave the nearest mouse picture a rueful look,
‘The mouse ones, well executed,’ her face softened and with a distinctly naughty twinkle she added, ‘but not my thing. I leave the cute stuff to the old dears.’
Ella raised a brow and grinned with her. She was easily the same age as most of the other women in the room, although something indefinable set her apart.
‘And let me know when your exhibition is.’ Ella turned the smooth matt card over in her palm, dying to look at it but it seemed rude to pick it up and peer at it. No doubt she ran one of those lovely little home interiors type shops where you could buy candles and tea towels and calendars.
‘Margery, you’re not monopolising our guest, are you,’ Audrey bustled up to join them.
‘Wouldn’t dream of it.’ She looked down her nose so pointedly that Ella realised she was sending herself up. ‘You surpassed yourself this time.’
Audrey rolled her eyes with good humour. ‘I admitted the lady poultry expert was a bit dull.’
‘Dull!’ Margery gave a very unladylike snigger.
Audrey huffed in exasperation, ‘But there are lots of the ladies who are thinking of getting chickens.’
‘Thankfully they were bored into submission and the village won’t be overrun with chickens. Saves us being inundated with eggs at every meeting. We have enough baking competitions as it is.’
She walked off, leaving Audrey pursing her pink-lipsticked mouth. ‘Honestly, I admit we do get some duffers sometimes but she should try booking speakers. You were brilliant, and if Margery Duffle was impressed then you were good. She runs a very smart gallery in Missenden.’
‘Duffle, did you say?’ Ella’s pulse raced.
‘Yes,’ said Audrey with a complacent beam at her. ‘She’s very well known, I believe.’
‘Just a bit,’ said Ella faintly as blood rushed to her head. ‘Oh God, I’d never have brought those if I’d known.’