The Restoration Artist by Lewis DeSoto Page B

to forget, unless my mind was numbed by alcohol?
    The biscuit tin was propped open, the inner lid reflecting the daylight from the open door behind me, and I shifted it slightly so that the glare wouldn’t be in my eyes. I leaned closer to the painting, carefully working away the grime. The next step in the process was to dip a soft sable brush into the turpentine. With light, feathery motions, I stroked the painting, wiping the brush frequently on a rag. I wanted to soften and dislodge the yellowed varnish and reveal the true colour of the pigments underneath.
    The danger in any restoration was always the possibility of disturbing the original paint layer itself and removing it along with the dirt. Such an error would be irrevocable. Without any real knowledge of restoration, I was relying instead on my own understanding of the science of painting.
    I worked on, feeling a sense of kinship with Asmodeus, the original painter, as my brush followed his dabs and strokes.The smell of oil paint and the piney turpentine, pungent and familiar, prompted a faint stirring of the old excitement that painting used to bring. It was like rediscovering the taste of a long unavailable fruit. I wasn’t exactly painting, but at the same time I was creating an image, or at least revealing one.
    The tide was out and the chapel was silent—I was astonished at how silent. My movements—of the brush tapping against the glass jar of turpentine, the creak of the board I was sitting on, or the rattle of something in my paintbox when I reached for it—sounded amplified. From outside came the high piping sounds of the curlews I’d seen on the sand earlier.
    Just as I was rubbing cautiously at what was slowly becoming a patch of bright green, I became aware that the birds had fallen silent. In the reflected image of the room behind me, visible in the lid of the biscuit tin, a stealthy flicker of movement caught my attention as a shape darkened the doorway. A different kind of picture showed on the bright metal, like a mirror, but clouded as if seen through a mist. Framed in the light was a human figure. A boy.
    My heart started racing, but I pretended to carry on working, dabbing at the painting, reaching for the bread and rolling a pellet, all the while watching the reflected image and trying to contain my excitement. More than anything, I wanted to turn around. But I was afraid—not that the figure might disappear, but of what I might see.
    At last, slowly, I turned my head and looked back over my shoulder. I saw only a silhouette because of the bright sunshine around the child. Then, as my eyes adjusted, another pair of eyes met mine, round and serious and unblinking.
    “Hello?” I whispered.
    At the sound of my voice, the boy flinched and sprang backwards through the doorway like a shadow and was gone. The door banged shut, and the interior of the chapel was plunged into darkness.
    By the time I had climbed down from the scaffold and hurried outside there was nobody in sight. I was about to re-enter the chapel, when, on the steps just in front of the doors I saw an extraordinary thing—two things, rather—my shoes, the ones I’d lost on the cliff. I picked them up.
    Here was proof of the boy in the mist. He had been there. He’d seen me. Strange, though, that he had not gone for help when I fell. Maybe he’d been frightened and had run away. But at some point he obviously went back and climbed down to the ledge and retrieved my shoes. It wouldn’t have been difficult for someone young and agile. But whatever his reasons, I now knew that he was as real as the shoes in my hand.
    I unlaced the boots the priest had lent me and slipped my feet into my own shoes. They had been wiped clean, I saw. I stood up and turned once more to scan the landscape. Was a pair of eyes watching me from the trees?
    Lifting a hand, I waved a thank-you.

C HAPTER 9
    “W ELL?”
    “It can be done.”
    “And you will do it?” Père Caron asked.
    I shrugged.