The Harriet Bean 3-Book Omnibus Read Free Page A

to say—and then we all stood in two rows, with Majolica in the middle. The painter, who was an enormous man with a handlebar mustache, fussed and fiddled with his canvas and seemed to take an awfully long time to do anything. It was difficult for us—we had to try to keep a straight face and not to move, while all the time we could hardly keep our eyes off his mustache, which went up and down whenever he moved.
    “Your grandparents had hoped that the painting would be finished within three or four days, but unfortunately the painter took much longer than that. At the end of a week, as the painter was packing up and cleaning his brushes after the day’s work, your grandfather explained to him that he could no longer afford to pay him.
    “ ‘It’s taken so long,’ he said apologetically. ‘And as we have to pay you at the end ofeach day, I’m afraid we will have to stop today.’
    “The painter was very upset and threw his arms up and down in the air to emphasize his displeasure. But there was no alternative. He was not prepared to work without payment, and we didn’t have the money to pay him any more. So he left us with an unfinished painting. All the bodies were painted, up to the shoulders. But he hadn’t gotten around to even starting the heads.”
    I said nothing. I was trying to imagine what the painting must have been like. It must have looked very peculiar, with the six figures standing there, all with no heads.
    “Would you like to see it?” my father asked.
    “See what?”
    “Why, the painting,” he said. “I have it upstairs, you see. It’s in the attic. It’ll be dusty after all these years, but it’s there all right.”

The Search Begins
    Now this was exciting news indeed! Together with my father I made my way up into the attic, a dark and dusty place full of all sorts of bits and pieces that had been stored away over the years. In spite of the confusion, though, my father seemed to know exactly where to look. Muttering to himself, he gave a tug at a large square object and there, covered, as he had warned, with a thick layer of dust, was the painting.
    We took it downstairs and rubbed it down with a cloth. Clouds of dust flew up and slowly the picture on the canvas began to show itself. I peered at it as the figuresemerged. Yes! There they were, in two rows, surrounding the youthful figure of my father, my aunts! (Or, rather, parts of my aunts—up as far as their necks.)
    I polished away at the painting until it was as clean as I could get it.
    “Yes,” said my father. “There we are. And that’s one of the barns in the background. That’s me with the torn trousers. And that’s Veronica—can you see the strong arms? And that’s Thessalonika. She always wore that pink dress on Sundays although it had become very tattered.”
    It made me sad to look at the picture. If only there had been enough money to pay the painter to finish it, then there would at least have been a good record of the family. There were the photographs, of course, but you can’t really put photographs on your wall, and when they’re tucked away in an album they’re rather out of mind.
    “I wish it had been finished,” I said. “If only the painter had worked faster.”
    My father nodded. “Now it will never be finished,” he mused. “And it’s no good as it is, with blanks where the heads should be.”
    It was as he spoke that an idea occurred to me. Unfinished paintings
can
be finished, even if it’s years later. Perhaps I could trace my aunts. Perhaps I could get them all together again and we could have the painting finished at last. Although my grandfather was no longer alive, it would be a marvelous thing to finish off the one thing that he had wanted so much and that had not worked out for him.
    I turned to my father.
    “Couldn’t we get the painting finished?” I asked. “If we found my aunts again and got them together …”
    My father thought for a moment. He looked doubtful.
    “I’ve