The Blue Cat by Roland Graeme

Author:Roland Graeme [Graeme, Roland]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Adult, Erotic Romance, Gay, GLBT
ISBN: 9781771118590
Publisher: eXtasy Books
Published: 2014-10-01T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

The Man Who Came With the Place

I had been in San Floriano less than a week when I met a compatriot of mine, named Rupert.

Rupert was a strongly built man of middle age, sun bronzed and wearing when I first met him a fisherman’s blue-and-white striped jersey. I was in the art supply store, purchasing a few tubes of paint, when he overheard me carrying on a conversation in English with the clerk at the cash register.

“You’re an Englishman!” he exclaimed.

“Guilty as charged,” I replied.

“But I know you. I know your face. I’ve seen your photograph somewhere. No, don’t tell me. You’re some sort of an aristocrat who paints…aren’t you?”

I burst out laughing. “That’s a perfect description of me.”

“I didn’t mean to give you any offense.”

“Oh, none taken.”

“You see, I paint a little myself.”

This turned out to be a considerable understatement. When Rupert and I finally got around to exchanging our full names, I recognized his at once. He was a fine portraitist and landscape painter. We already knew each other—by reputation.

Over lunch at The Blue Cat, we became better acquainted. Rupert had lived in Italy for several years. He now owned a house in San Floriano.

“It’s an old wreck of a place, but it suits me,” he said. “At least I have enough room to store all my unsold pictures,” he joked.

We discussed mutual acquaintances in the London art world. I found out that Rupert and I had a teacher in common, although Rupert, who was nearly two decades my senior, had studied painting with the man long before I had.

We reminisced about our teacher. During class, he invariably kept handy a bottle of gin and a glass, from which he imbibed at regular intervals. This steady intake of alcohol never seemed to have any adverse effect on his teaching—quite the contrary. What he didn’t know about painting wasn’t worth painting

“What that man could do with tone!” Rupert said. “It was practically a religion to him.”

I agreed. Drawing, colour and every other desirable attribute could be added later, our instructor had assured us, if only we first got our tones right. He nearly drove us to despair whenever he gave us a demonstration of what he meant. He could accomplish, with a few swipes of his brush and using only the relative values of black and white, what we struggled to put down in colour.

“He told me I was good at colour, but not a great draftsman,” Rupert recalled. “So my drawing was what I was going to have to work on.”

“My God. I remember him telling me exactly the same thing.”

“Luckily for us, his advice didn’t fall on deaf ears. We both had the good sense to do as he said.”

Rick, who came over to our table to ask if everything was all right, interrupted us.

“It couldn’t be better,” Rupert informed him. “Not only has Francesca surpassed herself in the kitchen—I’ve found a charming companion, as you can see. You’ve been holding out on me, Rick. Why

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