Free A Sight for Sore Eyes by Ruth Rendell Page A

through the Neasden letter-box and now here it was again, as large as life up on the screen: Music in Hanging Sword Alley. Come Hither again, this time the four musicians leaned languidly against a concrete wall of the building where the recording studio was, their instruments at their feet. Marc Syre, the lead guitarist, had his mouth wide open, his head hanging backwards and his long hair steaming down his back. The date of the painting, Professor Mills said, was 1965. 'My murn's got all their old singles,' whispered the girl. 'She was a Come Hither groupie - can you believe it?' Teddy shrugged. He wasn't interested in music of any kind. All those people were probably dead by now, anyway. People recorded in paint, that was another thing. Like this next one, Aipheton's masterpiece, the most famous of the Joyden School, the one that was in the Tate, the one that was in all books of modern art and found its wax' into superior calendars. Until now Teddy had only seen it in that Sunday magazine, but it was really on its account that he had come to this lecture. Marc and Haji-jet in Orcadia P/ace. The two young people were in a sunlit garden or courtyard in front of what looked like a tree. But a tree without trunk or branches, more a curtain of leaves. All this was mere background to the man and the woman who stood a little apart, joined to each other by his extended right hand, her left, the fingertips lightly linked. He was dark, bearded, long-haired, dressed in dark blue, she a red-haired beauty, with a russet curling mane, the precise same shade as her long Regency dress. Their eves were concentrated on each other with, it seemed, a tender love and yearning. Passion informed the painting so that after all these years and in spite of the million eyes that had looked on it and the thousand commentaries made on it, this couple's love remained fresh and eternally enduring. 'Marc Syre, as your parents no doubt could tell you,' said Professor Mills, 'was a member of Come Hither and as such made himself a fortune which enabled him, as early as nineteen sixty-five, the date of this work, to occupy this house in St John's Wood and enjoy this ri's in urbe. Believe me, there is a Georgian house behind all those ivy or vine leaves, or whatever they are. Harriet Oxenholme was what we should call today his live-in girlfriend. 'But we need not concern ourselves unduly with these people, who are important only insofar as Simon Aipheton was their friend and they became, by a most happy chance for subsequent generations, his subjects. What we must look at is Aipheton's arresting use of colour, his subtle handling of light and his curious ability to convey with extreme economy powerful emotion and, indeed, sexual passion. He had in mind, of course, as template or exemplar, Rembrandt's The Jewish Bride, but before we discuss that, let us first look at the play of light and shade...' Teddy decided to take himself down to the Tate Gallery and confront the real thing. He thought about leaves and carving leaves, something like what Grinling Gibbons did, but modern, leaves for today. A picture frame of leaves or a mirror - yes, why not make a mirror? When the lecture was over and the lights went up again the girl next to him looked at the notes she had struggled to make. 'Would you call that picture erotic?' she asked him. 'Mills did.' 'Did he? Then I will. I'm Kelly. What your name?' 'Keith,' said Teddy. 'What happened to your finger, Keith?' He said gravely, 'My uncle bit it off.' This time she didn't believe. She giggled. 'Would you feel like coming out for a drink, Keith?' 'I've got a tutorial,' said Teddy. He got up and walked away without a backward glance. Why had he lied instead of just saying no? He'd say~ it next time. Of course he hadn't a tutorial and he had no essay to write. No one seemed to care in his course whether you ever wrote anything or not. He was going home to perform a task, or begin to perform a task, he had for several