With more enthusiasm than skill, the woman began to play. Ella was no musician but she could tell that a few of the notes were off. At least she recognised the tune.
There was a lot to be said for starting things off with a rousing version of ‘Jerusalem’. It certainly engendered a positive atmosphere and as the last note died away, Ella’s confidence returned. She could do this.
‘Ladies, today I have the very great pleasure of introducing local artist Ella Rigden. Many of you may know her work from the popular Cuthbert Mouse series of children’s books, but she is also an accomplished artist, a winner of the prestigious Gerber Stein prize, shortlisted for the Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize and according to my sources, hard at work for an exciting new exhibition.’
Audrey had done her homework, although sadly most of it belonged to ancient history. Ella hadn’t been shortlisted for anything for a very long time, and she definitely wasn’t going to have an exhibition anywhere soon.
Everyone was looking at her expectantly. With a measured breath she scanned the audience and forced herself to smile.
‘Good afternoon and thank you for coming.’ Lots of heads bobbed up and Ella let out a breath. She held up one of her pictures and as she raised it up to show the audience, it brought back a vision of bringing the same picture down on Patrick’s head.
‘Do any of you recognise this little fella?’ she asked, beaming at the audience.
Heads nodded and bobbed in assent and she was off, up and running.
Once she started, there was no time to feel self-conscious or nervous. It was as easy as Devon had suggested. All she had to do was talk about things that she knew about and show the passion she had for her characters. That thought brought her up short and she almost laughed out loud in delight as it hit her that in recent weeks she’d fallen in love all over again with her characters.
‘For example, when I draw Cuthbert, I have a hat in mind for him. As a consummate show-off, he invariably adopts the characteristics of the type of person who would wear that type of hat.’ She showed them the picture of Cuthbert in his feathered Cavalier’s hat and his courtly bows and buckled shoes, pointing out the details to the appreciative audience. As she talked, Ella began to enjoy herself more and more. The WI membership was considerably younger than Ella had expected – some admittedly were pensioners but even they were of the youthful, enquiring, still full of beans persuasion. The audience asked lively and interesting questions and were incredibly complimentary about her mice.
In the second half of her talk, Ella introduced some audience participation.
‘You know each of the mice have their own character and,’ she gave the audience a conspiratorial smile, ‘I know I shouldn’t have favourites but I think Cuthbert might just have sneaked into first place.’ The audience, as one smiled and nodded. With deft strokes, she started to sketch an outline of Cuthbert. She’d been worried about stretching her talk out and this was the crunch point. She’d asked Audrey to prime her audience in advance and hoped that at least some of them had responded.
‘But today I’d like a bit of inspiration from you. I did ask Audrey if you’d bring along a few props. So did anyone bring along a hat?’
She need not have worried. The minute Ella launched this line, it was an instant success. The audience needed no further prompting and suddenly all the ladies sprouted headgear of all shapes and sizes. Huge floral wedding hats, saucy, sexy fascinators, a 1920s flapper girl hat, a full Indian feathered headdress, felt hats, tweed hats, deerstalkers.
‘Blimey, I’ve got enough inspiration here to keep me going for months.’
The Indian headdress on top of a lady of vast girth took the prize, and Ella could imagine Cuthbert halfway up the curtains with the feather headdress trailing around his tail behind him. Her mind took off. Quickly she sketched him, pencilling in the elaborate feather headdress, his tail coiled around one of the smaller feathers on the very end of the headband. As she made the deft strokes on paper, demonstrating to the audience how she worked, she gave a running commentary of her thought processes.
‘So, with this, I’d think the headdress might lose a feather that one of the younger mice might play with. A feather might tickle Catherine, his sister, and make her cross, or giggle, or she might pluck it from him to do some dusting.’
Before long she had quite a rapport going with the audience and it was Audrey that had to interrupt with a reminder that tea and cake would be served and that the audience could ask her any questions then.
Bringing the talk to a close, Ella was surprised by the enthusiastic three cheers from Audrey and the rapturous clapping.
As tea and an amazing range of cake was served, she was besieged with questions.
‘So how much would one of these cost?’ asked one lady, with an earnest piercing stare, as she balanced a huge slab of coffee cake in one hand, her handbag looped over her elbow and an elegant walking stick in the other hand, nodding towards one of Ella’s parents’ pictures. Ella stared at her hair, fascinated by the pearl-pink rinse which was lifted at the ends with a touch of purple.
‘Unfortunately these aren’t for sale, they belong to my parents. I gave them to my mother when I was first published.’ Ella explained. ‘And the others haven’t been published yet, so I can’t release them.’
‘Bet they’re worth a bit now,’ she grinned.
Ella nodded, hiding the nausea brought on by the question. Patrick had slapped quite a price tag on the ones he’d had in the gallery.
Another woman joined her. ‘I love your landscape. Are you selling it?’
Ella pulled a face. ‘To be honest it’s quite new, I’ve not even thought about it.’
‘You ought to, they’d be jolly popular round here. Wouldn’t they, Margery?’
She called over to a rather severe-looking woman who was studying the reservoir picture. The woman raised her head and looked over with piercing blue eyes and immaculately coiffured hair, there was no other word for it. She looked as if she’d just stepped out of the tea lounge in the Savoy rather than come to a village hall in Hertfordshire.
Without responding she carried on studying the picture, her eyes fixed on it with an unnerving intensity. Admittedly it wouldn’t be to everyone’s taste, not your typical landscapes and to a traditional eye, the trees were probably a bit abstract. Trying to steel herself not to care when this slightly scary woman denounced it as too modern, Ella turned back to the first lady who’d changed the subject and began talking about a friend of hers who wrote children’s books.
A tap on the shoulder made her turn and she found Margery standing there, the blue eyes intent and thoughtful.
