For the past twenty minutes Keith had been explaining to Jackson Crane his philosophy of art, and how this was reflected in his own creative practice.
‘I would say I don’t really have a medium, you know? Painting, photography, poetry, sculpture – I’ve mastered them all. It’s not for me to call myself a Renaissance man, but . . .’ He shrugged. ‘It has been said. Really if I had to say what my art was about, though, it’s a celebration of the female form but also a rumination on the gaze. That’s why I only use the body, not the head, so they’re not looking back at you – there’s a purity there, you know? In the looking. Power in anonymity. I want to confront the viewer – but I’m posing questions. The viewer has to answer those questions themselves . . .’
Jackson Crane, his head on a cushion, drink still in his hand, appeared to be briefly resting his eyes.
Ned, standing by the fire, one elbow on the mantelpiece, the buttons on his shirt straining slightly to reveal little tufts of grey chest hair, was telling the story of how he’d first heard about this island, how he’d fallen in love with the idea of buying it. Freddie – Annie knew how thrilled and surprised he must be, to find himself in this company, to be able to tell people he was here – was sitting bolt upright in his chair, nodding along.
‘Wow,’ he kept saying. ‘Golly.’
Kurt, having wandered around the library and inspected some of the decorative books, was now perched on the end of one of the couches, listening to Ned, occasionally asking a question about how old something was.
Down at the far end of the library, a grandfather clock let out a whirr and a creak, gathered itself and then clanked flatly twice.
‘This house itself is 1723,’ Ned continued. ‘Modelled on Chiswick House, but without the dome, built by the family who used to own the whole place.’
‘One family owned an entire island?’ asked Freddie. ‘Wow.’
‘Yep – although from 1941 to 1991 half of it was leased to the Ministry of Defence. You should have seen the state of it when we first came down. The Boathouse really was a boathouse – a shed full of rotten hulls and broken oars. This place was half boarded up. I think the Bouchers – spelled B-o-u-c-h-e-r, pronounced Butcher, this is all Boucher’s Island, officially – lived in about three rooms. It was freezing, obviously. Damp. Holes in the roof. They showed us all these pictures of when it was a hospital in the First World War, of costume balls on the lawn in the twenties – and the wife served us incredibly strong gin and tonics, half gin, half tonic, the flat supermarket stuff, no lemon, no ice. Adam wandered off to find a loo at one point and I wasn’t sure he was ever going to find his way back. And then we had a drive around the island in their old Range Rover. Only one road, back then, of course. Deer crashing around in the woods. Crows starting. Now this is something that might interest you, actually, Kurt, if history’s your thing . . .’
As Ned took Kurt out of the room for a moment, Annie briskly suggested something to perk them all up a little.
‘None for me, thanks,’ announced Keith, who nevertheless swung himself up into a sitting position, as did Jackson Crane. Freddie eagerly pulled in his armchair closer to the table.