Read The Breaking Point for Free Online

‘You must never look at an artist’s work in the first rough stages.’
    She drew back, rebuffed. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, and then, with hesitation, added, ‘It’s very modern, isn’t it?’
    He stared at her, and then from her to the canvas, and from the canvas to Johnnie.
    ‘Modern?’ he said. ‘Of course it’s modern.What did you think it would be? Like that?’ He pointed with his brush to the simpering Madonna over the mantelpiece. ‘I’m of my time. I see what I see. Now let me get on.’
    There was not enough room on one palette for all the blobs of colour.Thank goodness he had bought two. He began squeezing the remaining tubes on to the second palette and mixing them, and now all was riot - sunsets that had never been, and unrisen dawns.The Venetian red was not the Doge’s palace but little drops of blood that burst in the brain and did not have to be shed, and zinc white was purity, not death, and yellow ochre . . . yellow ochre was life in abundance, was renewal, was spring, was April even in some other time, some other place . . .
    It did not matter that it grew dark and he had to switch on the light. The child had fallen asleep, but he went on painting. Presently the woman came in and told him it was eight o’clock. Did he want any supper? ‘It would be no trouble, Mr Sims,’ she said.
    Suddenly Fenton realized where he was. Eight o’clock, and they always dined at a quarter to. Edna would be waiting, would be wondering what had happened to him. He laid down the palette and the brushes. There was paint on his hands, on his coat.
    ‘What on earth shall I do?’ he said in panic.
    The woman understood. She seized the turpentine and a piece of rag, and rubbed at his coat. He went with her to the kitchen, and feverishly began to scrub his hands at the sink.
    ‘In future,’ he said, ‘I must always leave by seven.’
    ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I’ll remember to call you. You’ll be back tomorrow?’
    ‘Of course,’ he said impatiently, ‘of course. Don’t touch any of my things.’
    ‘No, Mr Sims.’
    He hurried up the basement stair and out of the house, and started running along the street. As he went he began to make up the story he would tell Edna. He’d dropped in at the club, and some of the fellows there had persuaded him into playing bridge. He hadn’t liked to break up the game, and never realized the time. That would do. And it would do again tomorrow. Edna must get used to this business of him dropping into the club after the office. He could think of no better excuse with which to mask the lovely duplicity of a secret life.

3
    It was extraordinary how the days slipped by, days that had once dragged, that had seemed interminable. It meant several changes, of course. He had to lie not only to Edna, but at the office as well. He invented a pressing business that took him away in the early part of the afternoon, new contacts, a family firm. For the time being, Fenton said, he could really only work at the office half-time. Naturally, there would have to be some financial adjustment, he quite understood that. In the meantime, if the senior partner would see his way . . . Amazing that they swallowed it. And Edna, too, about the club. Though it was not always the club. Sometimes it was extra work at another office, somewhere else in the City; and he would talk mysteriously of bringing off some big deal which was far too delicate and involved to be discussed. Edna appeared content. Her life continued as it had always done. It was only Fenton whose world had changed. Regularly now each afternoon, at around half-past three, he walked through the gate of No. 8, and glancing down at the kitchen window in the basement he could see Madame Kaufman’s face peering from behind the tangerine curtains. Then she would slip round to the back door by the strip of garden, and let him in. They had decided against the front door. It was safer to use the back. Less conspicuous.
    ‘Good afternoon,