Still Life (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #1) - Louise Penny Page 0,3

it was no time for speechifying.

He quickly turned back to the painting and whipped the brown paper off, revealing Fair Day.

Clara’s jaw dropped. Her head jerked down as though suddenly insupportable. Her eyes widened and her breathing stopped. It was as though she’d died, for an instant. So this was Fair Day. It took her breath away. And clearly the other jurors felt the same way. There were varying degrees of disbelief on the semi-circle of faces. Even the chairperson, Elise Jacob, was silent. She actually looked like she was having a stroke.

Clara hated judging other people’s work, and this was the worst so far. She’d kicked herself all the way there for convincing Jane to enter her first work ever for public viewing in an exhibition she herself was judging. Was it ego? Was it mere stupidity?

‘This work is called Fair Day,’ read Elise from her notes. ‘It’s being submitted by Jane Neal of Three Pines, a longtime supporter of Arts Williamsburg, but her first submission.’ Elise looked around. ‘Comments?’

‘It’s wonderful,’ Clara lied. The others looked at her in astonishment. Facing them on the easel was an unframed canvas and the subject was obvious. The horses looked like horses, the cows were cows, and the people were all recognisable, not only as people but as specific people from the village. But they were all stick figures. Or at least perhaps one evolutionary notch up from stick figures. In a war between a stick figure army and these people in Fair Day, the Fair Day people would win, only because they had a little more muscle. And fingers. But it was clear that these people lived in only two dimensions. Clara, in trying to grasp what she was looking at, and trying not to make the obvious comparisons, felt that it was a little like a cave drawing put on canvas. If Neanderthals had county fairs, this was what they’d have looked like.

‘Mon Dieu. My four-year-old can do better than that,’ said Henri Lariviere, making the obvious comparison. Henri had been a laborer in a quarry before discovering that the stone spoke to him. And he listened. There was no going back after that, of course, though his family longed for the day when he made at least the minimum wage instead of huge stone sculptures. His face now, as ever, was broad and rough and inscrutable, but his hands spoke for him. They were turned up in a simple and eloquent gesture of appeal, of surrender. He was struggling to find the appropriate words, knowing that Jane was a friend of many of the jurors. ‘It’s awful.’ He’d clearly given up the struggle and reverted to the truth. Either that or his description was actually kind compared to what he really thought.

In bold, bright colors Jane’s work showed the parade just before the closing of the fair. Pigs were distinguishable from goats only because they were bright red. The children looked like little adults. In fact, thought Clara leaning tentatively forward as though the canvas might deal her another blow, those aren’t children. They’re small adults. She recognised Olivier and Gabri leading the blue rabbits. In the stands beyond the parade sat the crowd, many of them in profile, looking at each other, or looking away from each other. Some, not many, looked straight at Clara. All the cheeks had perfect round red circles, denoting, Clara supposed, a healthy glow. It was awful.

‘Well, that’s easy enough at least,’ said Irenée Calfat. ‘That’s a reject.’

Clara could feel her extremities grow cold and numb.

Irenée Calfat was a potter. She took hunks of clay and turned them into exquisite works. She’d pioneered a new way to glaze her works and was now sought out by potters worldwide. Of course, after they’d made the pilgrimage to Irenée Calfat’s studio in St Rémy and spent five minutes with the Goddess of Mud, they knew they’d made a mistake. She was one of the most self absorbed and petty people on the face of this earth.

Clara wondered how a person so devoid of normal human emotions could create works of such beauty. While you yourself struggle, said the nasty little voice that kept her company.

Over the rim of her mug she peeked at Peter. He had a piece of chocolate cupcake stuck to his face. Instinctively, Clara wiped her own face, inadvertently smearing a walnut into her hair. Even with that hunk of chocolate on his face Peter was riveting. Classically handsome. Tall, broad-shouldered like