Free The Sea House by Esther Freud

herself in the mirror and her face softened as she smiled. Yes, it was much as she suspected. She didn’t mind him staying, it was simply galling to be in the company of someone who needed so little of her help.
    That night Max dreamt that he was measuring. He was measuring the grounds at Heiderose, scribbling the results on a piece of paper that continually blew away, and then, just when he had finished, had pocketed his notes, he’d found himself surrounded by a family pushing their way through his front door. A mother, large and ruffled, and four children with tow-coloured hair. Their father stood beside a car, unloading boxes. ‘I was just measuring,’ Max informed them, but no one saw him, no one noticed he was there.
Max sat late over his breakfast. He felt wound through with weariness, unable to control the page of Henry’s letter trembling in his hand.
‘Is it your day off?’ Gertrude asked him, and she sat down and poured herself some tea.
‘Yes,’ Max said, as if the thought had just occurred to him, ‘I think it may be.’ He laid his letter down beside his plate.
‘Important news?’ she asked, and Max very solemnly scooped the first page up and pressed it on her.
It seems scarcely worth doing , the letter started, as the discussion must have been set out more than a hundred times, but in my opinion the definition of Art is simply the way impressions are received and assimilated from the world outside . Gertrude looked up to catch Max’s eye, but he had turned away. Of course it is interesting to consider whether certain artists choose the right art in which to express themselves. Or by what peculiar gift, or train of events, anybody came to choose a particular form of art. But in my opinion the important thing is that you keep on. I expect if you left off swimming for long enough you would find your muscles were stiff. And if you left off drawing, the head, the hand, the eye would get rusty. If you left off long enough, you might find you couldn’t start again. But having said that, I know a man who drew, not very well, but in an interesting way, and then he went out to a farm in South America for six or seven years, and when he came back he started drawing again. I suppose he couldn’t help it.
Cuthbert Henry , she read. ‘Yes, I saw a show of his once. Is he still…?’
But Max was pointing to the date. May 15th 1938 .
‘I see…’ 1938 was on the other side of history. A time when you could assume men, grown silent, were at least still alive. ‘So how are your muscles? Are they very rusty?’
‘Yes.’ He smoothed the letter with such tenderness it gave his face a kind of glow. ‘I’ve been in South America for very many years.’
    The invitation was looped around with violets, the words formed in such elegant calligraphy they resembled lace.
‘I know it’s rather short notice.’ Klaus Lehmann stood at the front door. ‘But if you have nothing else planned?’
‘No,’ Gertrude said. ‘We’d be delighted.’
‘In that case, we can expect you tomorrow?’ And he nodded to her and walked back down the lane.
Gertrude examined the card. A woman with not enough to do, she thought, and she put the card in pride of place beside the clock.
Gertrude waited to see if Max would notice it. He came in at seven, just as the light began to change, sweeping long shadows across the ermine lawn. ‘Have you had a good day?’ she asked him, and, not seeming to hear her, he set down his scroll, his leather case, his bag of paints, and walked over to the mantelpiece like a man pulled by a rope. Mrs Elsa Lehmann requests the pleasure of Max and Gertrude at a lunch to be eaten in the garden .
Max turned. His face was still and questioning and it occurred to her he was about to ask permission to go.
‘I’ve already accepted,’ she said. ‘I hope you don’t mind.’
‘Yes.’ Max shook his head. ‘I mean no.’ He laughed at the confusion. No. He didn’t mind.
    The Lehmanns lived in the lopsided