Still Life (A Three Pines Mystery)

'I'll tell you what the risk is,' said Irenee, the 'you idiots' implied as she plowed on. 'This is a community group and we barely make ends meet. Our only value is our credibility. Once it's believed we accept works based not on their value as art but because we like the artist, as a clique of friends, we're ruined. That's the risk. No one will take us seriously. Artists won't want to show here for fear of being tainted. The public won't come because they know all they'll see is crap like--' here words failed her and she merely pointed at the canvas.

Then Clara saw it. Just a flash, something niggling on the outer reaches of her consciousness. For the briefest moment Fair Day shimmered. The pieces came together, then the moment passed. Clara realised she'd stopped breathing again, but she also realised that she was looking at a work of great art. Like Peter, she didn't know why or how, but in that instant that world which had seemed upside down righted. She knew Fair Day was an extraordinary work.

'I think it's more than wonderful, I think it's brilliant,' she said.

'Oh, please. Can't you see she's just saying that to support her husband?'

'Irenee, we've heard your opinion. Go on, Clara,' said Elise. Henri leaned forward, his chair groaning.

Clara got up and walked slowly to the work on the easel. It touched her deep down in a place of such sadness and loss it was all she could do not to weep. How could this be? she asked herself. The images were so childish, so simple. Silly almost, with dancing geese and smiling people. But there was something else. Something just beyond her grasp.

'I'm sorry. This is embarrassing,' she smiled, feeling her cheeks burning, 'but I actually can't explain it.'

'Why don't we set Fair Day aside and look at the rest of the works. We'll come back to it at the end.'

The rest of the afternoon went fairly smoothly. The sun was getting low, making the room even colder by the time they looked at Fair Day again. Everyone was wiped out and just wanted this to be over. Peter flipped on the overhead spotlights and lifted Jane's work on to the easel.

'D'accord. Has anyone changed their mind about Fair Day?' Elise asked.

Silence.

'I make it two in favor of accepting and two against.'

Elise stared quietly at Fair Day. She knew Jane Neal in passing and liked what she saw. She'd always struck Elise as a sensible, kind and intelligent woman. A person you'd want to spend time with. How was it this woman had created this slapdash, childish work? But. And a new thought entered her head. Not, actually, an original thought or even new to Elise, but a new one for this day.

'Fair Day is accepted. It'll be shown with the other works of art.'

Clara leapt up with delight, toppling her chair.

'Oh, come on,' said Irenee.

'Exactly! Well done. You've both proven my point.' Elise smiled.

'What point?'

'For whatever reason, Fair Day challenges us. It moves us. To anger,' here Elise acknowledged Irenee, 'to confusion,' a brief but meaningful look at Henri who nodded his grizzled head slightly, 'to ...' a glance at Peter and Clara.

'Joy,' said Peter at the very moment Clara said, 'Sorrow.' They looked at each other and laughed.

'Now, I look at it and feel, like Henri, simply confused. The truth is I don't know whether Fair Day is a brilliant example of naive art, or the pathetic scrawling of a superbly untalented, and delusional, old woman. That's the tension. And that's why it must be part of the show. I can guarantee you it's the one work people will be talking about in the cafes after the vernissage.'

'Hideous,' said Ruth Zardo later that evening, leaning on her cane and swigging Scotch. Peter and Clara's friends were gathered in their living room, around the murmuring fireplace for a pre-Thanksgiving dinner.

It was the lull before the onslaught. Family and friends, invited or not, would arrive the next day and manage to stay through the Thanksgiving long weekend. The woods would be full of hikers and hunters, an unfortunate combination. The annual touch football game would be held on the village green on Saturday morning, followed by the harvest market in the afternoon, a last ditch effort to download tomatoes and zucchini. That evening the bonfire would be lit filling Three Pines with the delicious scent of burning leaves and wood, and the suspicious undercurrent of gazpacho.

Three Pines wasn't on any tourist map, being too far off any main or even secondary road. Like Narnia, it was generally found unexpectedly and with a degree of surprise that such an elderly village should have been hiding in this valley all along. Anyone fortunate enough to find it once usually found their way back. And Thanksgiving, in early October, was the perfect time. The weather was usually crisp and clear, the summer scents of old garden roses and phlox were replaced by musky autumn leaves, woodsmoke and roast turkey.