To Fear a Painted Devil Read Free Page B

on everything, making sure she looked her best.
    She went into the bedroom with the balcony and looked at herself in the glass. That was all right, justthe way Patrick liked her to look, the way he had liked her to look once … The sun—she had spent most of the day in the sun—had done wonders for her dark honey hair. No make-up. To have put on lipstick would have been to spoil the image she liked to create, the facsimile of a smooth teak-coloured mask, straight nose, carved lips, cheekbones that were arched polished planes.
    Her hair hung quite straight on to her brown shoulders. Even for him she refused to cut it short and have it set. The dress—that was all right at any rate. Patrick hated bright colours and this one was black and white. Plain as it was, she knew there might be something too casual about it, too suggestive of a uniform for emancipated women. O God, she thought, making a face at her own image and wishing for the first time in her life that it could be transmuted into the reflection of a brisk blonde
Hausfrau
.
    Downstairs the table was already laid for dinner: two place mats of blue linen—he had made her give up using the big damask cloths—black Prinknash plates, a long basket of French bread, Riesling dewed from the refrigerator. Tamsin gasped aloud when she saw that she had forgotten to throw away the vaseful of grasses. She grabbed them, scattering brown reeds, and rushed to the kitchen. The dog now, had she fed the dog?
    ‘Queenie!’
    How many times in the past months had he scolded her for failing to feed the dog on the dot of five? How many times had he snapped at her for wasting her days dreaming in the garden and the fields, learning country lore from Crispin Marvell,when she should have been at home keeping up with the Gages and the Gavestons.
    But she must have done it and, in her panic, forgotten all about it. The plate of congealing horsemeat and biscuit meal was still on the floor, untouched by the dog. Flies buzzed over it and a single wasp crawled across a chunk of fat.
    ‘Queenie!’
    The bitch appeared silently from the garden door, sniffed at the food and looked enquiringly at Tamsin with mournful eyes. She is the only thing that we have together now, Tamsin thought, the only thing that we both love, Kreuznacht Konigin, that we both call Queenie. She dropped to her knees and in her loneliness she put her arms round Queenie’s neck, feeling the suede-smooth skin against her own cheek. Queenie’s tail flapped and she nuzzled against Tamsin’s ear.
    Of the two female creatures desirous of pleasing Patrick it was the dog who heard him first. She stiffened and the swinging lethargic tail began to wag excitedly, banging against the cooker door and making a noise like a gong.
    ‘Master,’ Tamsin said. ‘Go, find him!’
    The Weimaraner stretched her lean body, cocked her head and stood for a moment poised, much as her ancestors had done listening for the huntsman’s command in the woods of Thuringia a century ago. The heavy garage door rumbled and fell with a faint clang. Queenie was away, across the patio, leaping for the iron gate that shut off the drive.
    Tamsin followed, her heart pounding.
    He came in slowly, not looking at her, silent, his attention given solely to the dog. When he had fondledQueenie, his hands drawing down the length of her body, he looked up and saw his wife.
    Tamsin had so much to say, so many endearments remembered from the days when it was necessary to say nothing. No words came. She stood there, looking at him, her hands kneading the black and white stuff of her dress. Swinging the ignition key, Patrick pushed past her, shied at a wasp that dived against his face, and went into the house.
    ‘She hasn’t eaten her dinner,’ were the first words that he spoke to her. He hated dirt, disorder, matter in the wrong place. ‘It’s all over flies.’
    Tamsin picked up the plate and dropped the contents into the waste disposal unit. Meat juice rubbed