Free The Hardie Inheritance by Anne Melville

colleges at the moment if you haven’t been in touch with what’s going on. I’m not saying that the shows of the modernists are popular. Far from it. The people who write letters to the newspapers protesting about them have a vocabulary range which goes from contemptible to disgusting.’
    â€˜Thank you for the comparison, then.’ Not in the least offended, Grace laughed.
    â€˜I’m not quoting my own opinion. Although I confess that I do prefer representational art, I find this new work immensely powerful. Expressing emotion rather than depicting nature.’
    â€˜Yes! That’s exactly right.’ All Grace’s favourite pieces of her own work had been inspired by some overwhelming emotion, whether of grief, fear or love, but she had never expected that anyone else would understand that. Absorbed in the conversation, she picked up as much as she could carry of Ellis’s equipment as soon as he indicated that he was satisfied with the views he had taken from the south-east, and followed him to his next position.
    â€˜I was thinking last night,’ he said. ‘I would very much like to take some photographs of your sculptures. An album. As a token of gratitude for your co-operation over the house. There won’t be time during this visit. But if I might be allowed to return, in five or six weeks, say …?’
    â€˜I’d like that very much indeed. How very kind. Tell me about some of these modernist sculptors.’ She still could not think of her work as sculpture, and certainly not of herself as a sculptor, but that might be only because she had no mental picture of what a sculptor might be. In the course of an inadequate education her governess had told her about Michelangelo but had never been able to produce any illustrations of his work. Now she felt enraged by her own ignorance, and passionately interested in whatever her guest could tell her.
    No longer did she feel regret at giving up her own work for a day, or guilt at not doing more to help her mother. This was the first time in her life that anyone had talked to her in such a way – willing to instruct without showing any condescension to such an unsophisticated listener. Ellis even taught her some of the techniques of photography, allowing her to take a few exposures herself. She had expected her heart and mind to be troubled by thoughts of Andy throughout the day, but instead discovered when evening came that she had not given him a thought since the Faradays arrived.
    For the first time in many years, the evening meal was takenin the dining room. Ellis had uncovered its mahogany furniture in preparation for the next day. Trish had already been given a high tea and put to bed, her father guaranteeing that she would feel no nervousness at finding herself alone in a strange room. ‘It happens too often, I’m afraid, and she’s learned to treat it as an adventure. My housekeeper in our London flat is always willing to care for her when I have to travel, but I feel easier to have her in my sight.’
    â€˜Your wife –?’ asked Mrs Hardie.
    Grace bit her lip in self-reproach. She ought to have mentioned to her mother in advance that Mr Faraday would not want to discuss his wife.
    â€˜We’re divorced,’ Ellis told her.
    â€˜Forgive me. I shouldn’t … In such cases, I’ve heard, any child usually stays with the mother, so I thought …’
    â€˜My wife was adjudged to be the guilty party.’ Ellis raised his chin to show that he was resolved to make the situation plain. ‘In fact, though, the fault was mine. I had been inattentive, so it was hardly surprising that she looked for pleasure elsewhere. But the man she wished to marry had no desire to bring up someone else’s child, so it seemed simpler for her to accept the blame in order that the custody of our daughter should be awarded to me. All past history now.’
    Mrs Hardie hurried to