Bones Under The Beach Hut

'Look, you're only discussing the possibility of commissioning the painting. Obviously you don't go through with it.'

'But I can't raise this man's expectations about—'

'Carole, it's a commercial transaction. He's offering a service that you can accept or refuse. You're just checking out the possibilities. It's quite plausible that you could subsequently find another artist prepared to do you a watercolour of Fethering Beach at a much more reasonable price.'

'But I don't want a watercolour of Fethering Beach!' wailed Carole.

'It'll be fine.'

'It won't. Jude, you've put me in a very difficult position. I have to lie to this man about wanting a painting painted, and then I'll have to lie to him again about not wanting a painting painted.'

'As I say, it'll be fine. Trust me.'

'Huh,' Carole snorted.

Gray Czesky's studio was on the first floor of Sanditon, a large front bedroom commandeered for the cause of art. Carole and Jude could see why he had chosen it. A bay of huge picture windows meant that the light was excellent. The scene it illuminated, however, was one of total chaos.

Though the rest of the house, the hall into which the artist's wife Helga admitted them, the staircase and landing they were led through, was almost excessively neat, the studio was grotesquely untidy. Its bare boards and walls were deeply encrusted with spilled paint, the floor was a refuse dump of paint pots, broken brushes and soiled rags.

So total was the disarray that there was an air of parody about it, as though the artist had modelled his working space on images of Francis Bacon's studio. But here were no visceral canvases of tortured souls and twisted bodies. Instead, Gray Czesky's neat chocolate-box watercolours struck a discordant note in the surrounding squalor.

The artist himself also seemed a parody. His long, greying hair and paint-spattered clothing presented an image of someone who didn't care about his appearance, but a lot of effort had gone into creating that effect. It was in marked contrast to his wife's hausfrau look, her neat blue skirt and a pink blouse fussy with ruffles.

'If you'd like coffee — or a drink maybe — Helga'll get you some.'

Carole and Jude both refused the offer and Helga left the room, her husband hardly having acknowledged her presence. He reached for a whisky bottle fingerprinted with paint, and poured a good measure into a filthy glass. After a long swig, he gestured to a spattered sofa on to which Carole and Jude sat gingerly. Gray Czesky perched on a tall paint-covered stool.

'Alcohol is a good antidote to thought,' he observed lackadaisically. 'I find I often need to curb my thoughts. Otherwise they overpower me. My mind is so ceaselessly active. I suppose that is one of the penalties of the artistic temperament.'

To Carole's mind instantly came a quotation from G.K. Chesterton that one of her former colleagues at the Home Office had been fond of: 'The artistic temperament is a disease that affects amateurs.' But she didn't say anything, just let the self-appointed genius maunder on.

'There's a common misconception that, if one has a talent to produce work quickly, that must mean that it comes easily. But no, art is never easy. Art is a very hard taskmaster — or taskmistress is perhaps more accurate.' He gestured across the explosion in a paint factory to his own tidy little creations. 'Each one of those watercolours is torn from my soul, you know.'

This time Carole felt she had to say something. 'Well, they look very nice.'

'"Nice"? "Nice"!' Gray Czesky flung a hand up to clutch at his forehead. '"Nice" is the accolade of the bourgeoisie. And of course the aim of the artist is to épater le bourgeois. Call my work anything you wish — challenging, controversial, incompetent even — but never condemn it to the mediocrity of "nice"'.'

'All right, I won't say it again,' said Carole through tightened lips.

Wishing to move the conversation into less hazardous waters, Jude observed that the studio had a splendid view.

'Yes. Though of course I never look at it. An artist does not look outside himself. The art is inside. The art has to be quarried out from within, like a rich seam of ore.'

'But surely,' said Jude, reasonably enough, 'when you're painting a landscape you have to look at it, don't you?'

'I don't look while I'm painting. I look before I paint. I memorize, I store the image within my mental gallery. For me the act of composition is always an act of recollection.'

Carole hadn't liked the lie that had brought them into Gray Czesky's studio, but she reckoned it was time to play along with the subterfuge. 'So have you ever memorized Fethering Beach?'

'No. Why should I have done?'

'Oh, of course Sonja Zentner didn't mention the subject of the commission I'm thinking of. I'm looking for someone to do me a watercolour of Fethering Beach.'

'Ah. Well, no, I haven't memorized Fethering Beach, but it would be a matter of moments for me to do so. I could go along with my camera any day.'

'Oh, so you take photographs of the views you're going to paint and work from them? Is that what you mean by "memorizing"?' asked Jude.

This did rather dilute the magic of the creative process that the artist had described, and Gray Czesky seemed to acknowledge that he'd lost ground as he mumbled a yes.

'Well, I've seen examples of your work, which I like a lot,' Carole lied, 'so the question really is: how much would I have to pay to commission you?'

Now it came to money, Gray Czesky was suddenly a lot less airy-fairy. He reeled out a list of prices which seemed to vary according to the size of the picture required. And the smallest option would cost over two thousand pounds.

Carole disguised her real feelings — that if she had a spare two thousand pounds she could think of many things she'd rather spend it on — and said she'd have to mull over her next move. 'I will be checking out the rates of some other artists.'

'Other artists? Other so-called artists, I think you mean. I know the work of most of the so-called artists in the area, and there are few who aspire to being above competent draughtsmen. If you are looking for a mere wallcovering, you would do better to buy a poster or a reproduction than one of their efforts. If you want your wall to have a work of art hanging on it, then you need to commission Gray Czesky.'

Jude saw an opportunity to move the conversation in the direction of their investigation. 'You say you know all the local artists. Do you know Mark Dennis?'

'Yes, of course I do. Good bloke, Mark. Not much talent as an artist, I'm afraid, but still a good bloke. He didn't buy into all the bourgeois crap you get in a place like Smalting any more than I do.'

'I gather he's left Smalting,' said Carole.

An expression of crafty caution came into Gray Czesky's face as he responded, 'Yes, I'd heard that.'

'We know Philly, his girlfriend,' said Jude. 'She's terribly cut up about Mark leaving.'

The artist shrugged. 'Man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. Can't be tied down by bourgeois morality if you're an artist.'

Carole bit back her instinctive response to that remark, instead asking, 'I don't suppose you have any idea where he went?'

Gray Czesky grinned roguishly. 'There is a kind of freemasonry among men, you know. We support our mates, but we don't get involved in their love lives. If a bloke splits up with a girlfriend, not our problem. Doesn't matter whether we like the girl or not, we know where our duty lies. We'll support him, go out for a few drinks, help him forget, but we won't offer advice or comment. He's done what he wants to do, he no doubt had good reasons for doing it, it's his business.'

'You're saying you don't know why Mark walked out on Philly?'

Another shrug. 'Presumably he didn't want to stay with her any more.'