Blood on the Wood Read Free Page A

me that there are old men in some of the workhouses who know an astonishing number of songs that will be entirely lost to the world unless collectors can write them down in time. He’s been spending most of the summer doing field work in Wiltshire and Berkshire.’
    That at least got us back on safe conversational ground. I had several friends who were interested in the folk-song and dance movement, going along as it did with many of the left-of-centre political causes. Neither morris dancing nor ‘here we come a-wassailing’ were great interests of mine, though I’d been coerced into the occasional session. So we talked about that until Mr Venn, at long last, suggested that I might care to come up to his study and see Philomena’s picture.
    As I followed him up the beautiful curved staircase, something odd struck me. As fiancée of the missing Daniel, you might have expected Felicia to put in a word or two about him and his folk-song enthusiasms. She hadn’t. Not one.
    *   *   *
    The picture was facing us when he opened the door. Standing on the floor, it was propped against a chair. I admit my first reaction when I saw it was: Well, we couldn’t have hung that on the wall of the office. The woman in the picture was as naked as a baby, sprawled stomach down on a cushioned sofa, with one knee bent and the sole of her foot upturned. It rested on its own velvet cushion, offering a curve of little pink toes like sweets on a plate. Her rounded face, turned over her shoulder towards the artist, was part welcoming, part petulant as if she reserved the right to sulk but might be kissed out of it. Her flesh was as pink and puffy as cumulus cloud at sunset. You had the impression that if lawn tennis had existed in eighteenth-century Versailles it wouldn’t have been her game. I felt Oliver Venn’s eyes on me, sensed his anxiety.
    â€˜The model was a young lady who, um, gained quite a reputation at the French court. There’s a more famous version, of course, La Blonde Odalisque at the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. Unmistakably the same model and much the same pose, but the angle of the head is different.’
    He wanted me to like it. I did, in a way, only I’d expected something more in the line of swains and shepherdesses and didn’t know what to say.
    â€˜She looks very, er, at ease with herself.’
    He nodded several times, as if the comment had been sensible.
    â€˜Philomena and I spent our honeymoon in Paris. I bought it as a surprise for her.’
    Surprise for me too. It was hard to connect the veteran campaigner I’d met or the decent elderly man standing beside me with a young couple of nearly half a century ago who’d carried this back as their souvenir.
    I said, ‘You’ll miss it.’
    That aspect of Philomena’s bequest hadn’t struck me until then. A glaze of tears came over his eyes. Quickly I turned back to the picture.
    â€˜She’ll be doing good work for us, I promise you. We really are most grateful to Mrs Venn, and to you.’
    There was a clean linen tablecloth lying folded on a chair. He picked it up and began to wrap the picture, as if he didn’t trust himself to look at it any more. When I knelt to help him, I could feel his whole body shaking.
    â€˜Cord, on that table there, if you’d be so kind.’
    Soft cord, so as not to damage the frame, everything carefully prepared. I felt guilty depriving him of his treasure, and tried to console myself by thinking of all the campaigning she’d pay for. How much for a picture like this? A thousand? Five thousand? Once we’d got her decently covered and corded up we wrapped her in another layer of brown paper and the job was done. He suggested sending for Joseph – the groom, presumably – to carry her downstairs but I thought we could manage. He walked down backwards, none too steadily, while I tried to take most of the weight. It was