Mirelle listened with one sane rebuttal running like a descant around Sylvia's unexpectedly impassioned arguments.
"Sylvia, I'm never going to shake the world."
"So you're no da Vinci or Michelangelo, who cares?" Sylvia gave a massive shrug. "And the Lucy's no Pieta, just a good friend of mine, but your work is no bundle of wires tied together with perforated metal strips. It's not holey blobs of concrete that resemble tortured bookends. There's humor in that silly little pig: great love in the Lucy and in that study of Howell. There's something… I'm running out of words. At any rate, I think it's worth goosing you. And besides," she cocked her head cheerfully, "I'm fresh out of causes. You realize, Mirelle, that my only talent is causes!"
They were facing each other, Mirelle on her work stool, Sylvia on the chair she had drawn up, leaning towards Mirelle with only the work table and the half finished sickpig between them.
"Your talent is caring when others can't be bothered," Mirelle said. "You're like Lucy in that respect."
"If I were half the woman Lucy Farnoll was…" Sylvia began with a bitter edge to her voice. Then she slapped her knees to indicate a change of mood and pushed herself off the chair. "Well, promise me this, Mirelle, if Mason Galway, that gallery friend of mine, wants to exhibit your work, you'll agree?"
Mirelle decided that that was a safe enough promise. Sylvia waggled a finger in her face. "You don't fool me, Mirelle. I know what you're thinking. That he won't buy. I bet he will. So there, too. Good God, it's nearly one o'clock. Goodbye!" And she dashed for the front door, slamming it behind her.
Mirelle sat still for a long moment, looking at the closed door, Sylvia's arguments reverberating in her head. She smiled, genuinely affected by such loyalty. Then she turned back to the sickpig. That night she dreamt of the hands for the first time.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Two days later, Mirelle brought the finished pig, some chrysanthemums from her garden and a pan of butterscotch brownies over to the Howells. When she drove up, a black Mercedes 420 was parked in the driveway. She hesitated about intruding but she had cut the flowers and the brownies wouldn't last long if returned to her house.
Margaret, looking harried, answered the door and made an effusive gesture of relief.
"He's impossible," she said in a stage whisper, jerking her thumb towards the music room. "His agent is here, Dave Andorri, and Dad simply isn't well but he won't listen to me or Dave."
Mirelle exhibited the sickpig to Margaret and the girl let out a whoop of laughter, suppressing it quickly in her hand.
"Well, Margaret? Who's badgering me now?" demanded Jamie from the music room. Mirelle could hear the rumble of another male voice, evidently placating the sick man.
Mirelle gave Margaret the brownies and the flowers, and walked in. She had a quick glance at the heavy-headed, grey-haired man sitting on the couch and then marched up to Howell who was slouched on the piano bench. He had shaved so part of the similarity between pig and man was eliminated. His expression of dissatisfaction, ill-health and gauntness, however, was perfectly captured in the porcine face. Jamie had risen from the piano bench as she entered. He sat down again as Mirelle placed the sickpig on the music rack of the grand piano. His eyes widened, his jaw fell open, and he began to sputter with indignation. The agent, who had also risen at Mirelle's entrance, had a view not only of the pig but of Howell's reaction. He burst into laughter, the contagious kind which can set off an entire room.
Howell, struggling against the infection of Andorri's laugh, his discomfiture and convalescent irritability, gave up and joined in wheezingly. Margaret, after watching apprehensively until she saw how her father was taking the joke, visibly relaxed.
"If you think, for one moment," Howell managed to say between wheezings, "that this is what I commissioned, you're crazy." He began to cough violently.
"Of course not," she replied blandly. "But when my children are ill and disagreeable, I found that if they had their 'sick' faces in front of them, they remembered to recover their good humor. The other nice thing about sickpigs is that they are breakable. It is so satisfying to temperamental patients to hear things shatter."
"Oh ho," said Andorri with a resonant crow, "she has you there, Jim. I'm Dave Andorri and you can only be Mirelle Martin," he went on, warmly shaking hands with her. "Your entrance couldn't have been better timed, Mrs. Martin. This idiot has been trying to prove to me that he's completely recovered. All he's succeeded in proving is how sick he still is."
Howell slithered around on the piano bench, the pig in one hand.
"The next time I'm ill-tempered, Margaret, just hand me my pig," he said, his long face repentant.
"Oh, you're all right, Dad. You just aren't as well as you think you are. I'm just scared you'll get sick again and not make the concert on the 18th. That's the important one, isn't it?"
When Howell graciously waved Mirelle to a seat, she could see that his hand was shaking and his complexion pasty.
"How about that tea you were threatening me with, Margaret? She makes a fair cuppa. Mirelle, will you join us?"
"If you promise to go back to bed immediately afterwards," Mirelle said, ruthlessly determined to extract that promise.
"But Dave just got here."
"And Dave can just go," the agent replied, getting to his feet, "unless you promise. Mrs. Martin is quite right. I'll stay for a cuppa to cheer me for the drive back to town. And we'll hear no more about how well you are. For that matter, I can get Nichols if I give Madame Nealy sufficient notice and enough rehearsal time."
"I've told you, Dave," Howell said, setting his mouth angrily, "that I'll be well enough to play for Madame Nealy on the 18th, but I simply cannot leave everything…"
"That's the last time we go round that argument, Jim," Dave replied with equal force. "Maggie, the tea!"
"I'd just brewed it," the girl said in Mirelle's direction, "and Mrs. Martin has brought us brownies to go with it," she added as she ran down the hall to the kitchen.
Howell glared at Mirelle. "How suburban! Brownies to the sick friend!" He appealed to the ceiling of the room.
"I wouldn't dream of forcing such suburbiana on you then," Mirelle said, blinking her eyes at him and turning to smile with exaggerated sweetness on the agent. "Mr. Andorri, Margaret and I will eat them all."
Margaret reappeared with the tray, depositing it on the music-strewn table.
"For God's sake, Margaret, watch what you're doing," Jamie said with sharp irritability.
"Don't be difficult," Mirelle suggested, motioning to Margaret to raise the tray so she could clear the music. "If you didn't spread out like an overweight rhino…"
When Howell opened his mouth to make a sharp reply, Mirelle pointed at the figure in his hand. He burst out laughing.
"You're right. I'm impossible. Forgive me, daughter dear. I must have been snapping your head off all day without realizing it."
"Well, not all day," Margaret said demurely and glanced up, surprised at the laughter from Mirelle and Dave. "As a matter of fact, this morning you had me wishing that you had been laid out as a corpse!" She made the confession with asperity and then, seeing his contrite expression, ran quickly around the table to plant an affectionate kiss on his cheek. "But you're never sick, Dad, so you've had no practice at being good and that cough would drive anyone up the wall."
She rumpled his hair, against his vociferous complaints, and then sat down, decorously, to pour the tea.
Howell fingercombed his hair down and settled his dressing robe over his shoulders. He snatched a brownie from the plate before Mirelle could carry out her threat and chewed it smugly as he eyed her.