The Painting by Evelyn J. Steward (reading comprehension books txt) 📕

THE PAINTING.

The silence of the Gallery seemed strange to Rosie and Ed. How they had come to be inside was a mystery to both of them. They remembered the hot sunshine beating down and the fact that Rosie's legs, beneath her summer shorts, had been stinging. Not bad for twenty nine! Even though she had the whole of swinging London to compare them too.
The dark doorway, its smoked glass contrasting with the white columns, had been inviting. All they had wanted was somewhere cool to sit down and inside was at least out of that penetrating heat.
"Well, we're here now," said Rosie, as Ed complained that it wasn't his sort of place. He liked sports mostly.
They crept forward through several great rooms, each containing many large paintings. They were half afraid to breathe lest they shatter the silence.
"Not many people in here," stated Ed in a low voice. "I wonder how they keep open!" It was not a question. He did not want to know. The sun had tired him. Strange how your life changes, he thought!
The rooms were cool though, even Ed was happy about that.
"There's a seat," he remarked, his nerves quieted by the comfortable silence.
"Shsssh!" whispered Rosie, placing her right hand over his mouth in a bid to stop the reverberations.
They both sank onto the leather upholstered seat in the centre of the gallery, which squeaked and creaked. As Rosie turned to shssh her gentleman friend again, the movement of her sticky bare leg made the leather almost whistle.
Realising it was her fault this time, Rosie sat rigid, staring at the painting on the wall directly across from her. Then, when no one came to quieten them, she began to feel more at ease.
She stared hard at the canvas. Rosie had always liked pictures but had never been this close to a really large work of art on a Gallery wall. She squinted to read the plaque, but it was too small to decipher from her uncomfortable position. It was unlikely she would recognise it, she only knew one or two names of famous artists anyhow.
The name didn't really matter. The painting spoke to her, just as if the words came out of the picture itself. Rosie, it said, look deeply into the background. And Rosie looked.
The picture was of a man on horseback. A lady in a long flowing dress was seated behind him. The artist had painted these characters strongly. They stood out, as they were supposed to. But in the background all around him, small scenes were depicted. They blended away into the dark recesses and yet, became alive in her eyes.
Rosie relaxed and sat back, oblivious to the squeak and to Ed's deep breathing. He was dozing but she didn't care. The painting had blinded her senses to anything around her. She was caught up in it's enchantment. Completely engrossed now, she let herself glide towards it's depths, immersed in the story that was unfolding.
Village scenes of girls feeding chickens and ducks. A pond and a grassy knoll, around which were battered old hovels, their thatched roofs, down at heel. In another corner there was a meadow with a river running through, but the river looked dirty and it seemed as if dead fish floated upon the surface.
Rosie felt light, as if in a dream. Her eyes followed the river upstream to a forest where the water thinned to a trickling brook. Above the trees, dark birds flew in circles. As her eyes focused on the new scene, she realised that they were not crows but vultures wheeling above dead branches.
A slight shake of her head was all that Rosie could do as she began to sense something disturbing. Mesmerised, she was unable to turn her head away. Subtly, the voice seemed to move her on to a part of the canvas that contained no picture, just an area of dark paint.
It seemed to coax from her mind memories of things she had almost forgotten. Her childhood during the war, the time she had stumbled across the body of a woman, murdered in the darkness. How scared she had been when the shadow in the doorway moved and she had run screaming into the black night.
It seemed to her, that as she stared, the picture unfolded onto the painting, as if a transfer had been peeled and was being pressed upon the painted surface.
Rosie jarred awake from her dream-like state screaming. Ed grabbed her, his ears ringing from the raucous sounds that were echoing through the empty halls. Great sobs wracked Rosie as she clung to Ed with a ferocity he felt would crack his bones.
"Get........., get me out of here," she cried.
"All right! All right," replied Ed, his attention taken up with avoiding the staff member who was rushing to find out why all the commotion was disturbing the silence of their hallowed rooms.
Outside in the sunshine, the comforting heat gradually calmed Rosie to where she just sat and trembled.
"What happened?" asked Ed at last, when she seemed sufficiently at ease to answer questions.
"That painting," she gasped. "That painting was eating my mind."
"Eating what!" queried Ed.
"I said, it was eating my mind. There's no other way to describe it." Rosie shivered though the sun was burning her leg again.
"I don't understand," said Ed. A painting can't......."
"Yes it can. You were asleep," accused Rosie. "It drew me in, searched my mind. There was something bad I had put away, forgotten."
"I still don't understand!"
"You never will."
"Won't you tell me about it?" Ed inquired. Perhaps it would draw her closer to him if he understood.
"It sucked me in, stripped me of my worst nightmare."
"I shouldn't take you to see so many monster films. That's just like the one we saw last week," Ed laughed. Rosie pursed her lips. Just like Ed to make fun, but then, who would believe her?
"Some day," she replied with scorn, "some day I might just tell you, then you will understand."
Ed saw he had annoyed her. Frightened of losing the one woman he had found to love and whom he thought loved him, he continued to hold her tightly. It didn't matter what she thought or what had really happened. She needed him and at that moment he knew he was never going to let her go.

© Copyright. Evelyn J. Steward. October, 1995.

Publication Date: 07-19-2011

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