Return of the Eagles by James Follett

Author:James Follett [Follett, James]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2012-01-19T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 23.

HAUPTMANN ANTON HERTZOG was sitting before his easel and intent on a water colour at the approach road to Grizedale Hall. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and shook it twice. It was the signal to Willi to say that Carol Bunce had tired of waiting for him and had gone.

Willi was immensely relieved. He had two one pound bags of sugar hanging down inside his trousers which would fetch four shillings at a sweet shop in Satterthwaite, and he had business to discuss in the pub with a buyer for Berg’s cuckoo clocks. The village was a long walk for Willi but the money involved would make it a short walk. He emerged from the gatehouse and set off towards his lookout who was cleaning his brushes.

“She’s beautiful, Willi,” Anton exclaimed when Willi drew level.

“Who is?”

“Your Carol Bunce.”

“She’s not mine.” Willi was quite empathic on this point.

“But she adores you! She just told me before she got tired of waiting and went home. Willi –– you are so lucky. She’s a magnificent creature! Such breasts! Such thighs!”

Anton placed a sketching pad on his knee. A few fast strokes with a charcoal stick and there were Carol Bunce’s breasts.

“What I would give to paint such a woman,” he said as he worked. “Reclining on a chaise lounge. Her wonderful, full breasts spilling and heaving –– swollen like the sails of a war galley speeding across a wine-dark sea.” A few quick smudges with his fingertip and the picture had shading and shadows that accentuated the voluptuousness of Carol’s breasts.

“Her legs slightly apart, offering the promise of a sweet haven for exhausted sailors. Her belly a maelstrom of seething passions with her navel as its eye! With such a woman before me and a blank canvas, I would want for nothing.”

Willi wanted to be sick. Anton Hertzog’s passion for painting robust, massively proportioned Reubens maidens was well-known, and they didn’t come much more robust and massively proportioned than Carol Bunce.

Willi indicated the watercolour. “A nice painting,” he said to change the subject. He was about to set off when Anton said something that stopped him like an Austin 7 receiving a Sherman tank shell through its radiator.

“General Dornberger commissioned me to paint this picture for his room.”

Transactions in Grizedale Hall that did not concern Willi concerned him very much.

“He did?”

“Just a small watercolour to start with. He’s admired all my paintings in the hall. He’s paying me five pounds for this watercolour.”

The sum electrified Willi. Five pounds! He had no idea there was such money in commissioned works of art. He suddenly became very interested in painting, his meeting forgotten.

“Willi,” said Anton earnestly, “I’ve decided to become a commercial artist. Magazines, fashion, strip cartoons –– I don’t care –– just so long as I can make enough money to pay magnificent models to sit for me so that I can paint pictures like the great Reubens.” He handed the sketching pad to Willi. “Take a look.”

Willi leafed through the drawings.

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