He came to meet her, this monday, the following monday, and then nobody knows when he started coming daily. Her faithful subject. He smiled with her when she was happy and held her arms when she was disturbed.At first, She was surprised that he had taken her worries to his heart, and wondered why he even bothered;if the situation were reversed, she certainly would not take his load on her back. That was when it became obvious:the boy was irrefutably, dangerously and insanely besotted with her. She smote her head in the awareness that she had no small hand to play in this love-locha. She had used every guile in the book to make him bring books from library with the provison that if ever brought her either Jane Austen or Charlotte Brontel, she would never allow him in this house again, for introducing the wags into this home whose only ambition in the life had been to marry well. She also directed him to pomade his hair. And yes, she had him mug up so much of Yeats that his mind was crammed with verses, he even said them aloud in his sleep, prmopting his mother to be believe their ancestral ailment - cian incurabilis - had, alas, infected her son.
Aware, that he will get to talk to her during those sittings, he endured the awkwardness of posing without his shirt. Every other day, he came to her.
A painters model.
With a dogged eye and a steady hand, she captured the colour of his edible lips;the solitude of his earlobe;the musky pink of his aureole.
The day when she was rather disturbed about the unfortunate events going on in this home, she sketched over sheet after sheet,thoroughly dissatisfied with every result, and frantically tore off the papers. And this all left him in knots, what was the matter with her ? He asked silently,"Something on your mind ?"
As usual, she told him half of what was happening around. How much this house was troubling her.
"Well, if it all gets too much.. then you know you can always come and live with us, can't you?" She could not explain why her heart beat so hard. Maybe because she was overcome with the simple nobility of his affections? She looked away at once.
"What will become of you?"His gaze was enquiring.
"Paris. That's my real destination. Where I belong.With all the other artists. But before that, I will marry well. Into some proper pedigreed family. With pots and pots of money!"
"You will marry?" he looked puzzled as he recalled her hatred of Jane Austen."But i thought you despised women whose only ambition was to find a husband?"
"Do you think this world would be half as interesting if we were all obvious?"she said, "sure, i want to do the struggling artist thingy.. but lets face it, me and penury does not tango too well."
The rattlesnakes of confusion and despair and envy stirred awake inside him because he had never even once thought that she would consider anyone other than him ( just how he was so sure that she would settle her easel and insanity with him, he never knew).
"No,No," he contested her designs on Paris. "One day, we shall be married.And you will live with me in Dublin."
If only she could explain why her heart beat so hardly once again.
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