Angel by Colleen Mccullough

Author:Colleen Mccullough [Mccullough, Colleen]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Romance
ISBN: 9780007199754
Goodreads: 986192
Published: 2003-12-31T13:00:00+00:00

Friday July 22nd, 1960

I’ve finally seen Toby. It’s worried me that he’s kept himself completely invisible. When I’ve gone up the stairs to Jim and Bob and Klaus’s level, his ladder has always been pulled up to the ceiling and his bell’s been disconnected. Jim and Bob haven’t changed toward me, though there’s a certain sorrow present for my obtuseness in choosing a man, and Klaus continues to tutor me in the kitchen every Wednesday night. I can now fry and grill as well as braise and stew, but he won’t teach me how to make puddings.

“The stomach has a separate compartment for desserts,” he said earnestly, “but if you train that compartment to close down now, dear Harriet, you will benefit when you get to my age.”

I suspect, however, that he hasn’t managed to close his own dessert compartment down, judging by his figure. I didn’t go up to see Jim and Bob or Klaus tonight, I went up to see if Toby’s ladder was down. And it was! What’s more, the bell was back on its string.

“Come up!” he called.

He was wrestling with a vast landscape he couldn’t fit on his easel, and so was attacking it on a makeshift frame-painted white, of course-rigged on top of the easel. I’d never seen him paint anything like it before. If he did a landscape, it was always some blast furnace or dilapidated powerhouse or smoking slag heap. But this was a stunner. A great valley filling up with soft shadows, sandstone cliffs reddened by the last light of the sun, a hint of mountains that went on forever, endless still forests.

“Where did you see that?” I asked, fascinated.

“Up the other side of Lithgow. It’s a valley called the Wolgan, cut off all around except for one four-wheeldrive track that winds back and forth down a cliff and ends at a pub that’s a real relic. Newnes. They used to mine oil shale there during the War, when Australia was desperate for fuel. I’ve been spending every single weekend up there, doing sketches and watercolours.”

“It’s a beauty, Toby, but why the change in style?” “There’s a contract being let for paintings in the foyer of a new hotel in the City, and this is the sort of stuff the management is looking for, so Martin says.” He grunted. “Usually the hotel’s interior designers have a graft going with some gallery owner, but Martin wangled me a chance at it. He can’t landscape, he’s purely a portrait man when he isn’t into cubism.”

“Well, I think this one should hang in the Louvre,” I said sincerely.

He flushed and looked quite absurdly pleased, put his brushes down. “Want some coffee?”

“Yes, please. But I really came to ask if we could make a date for you to taste my newfound culinary skills,” I said. “And disturb you when the boyfriend might turn up? No, thanks, Harriet,” he said curtly.

I saw red. “Listen, Toby Evans, the boyfriend doesn’t intrude unless I want him to intrude!

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