Pointillism
by Bill West © 2007
Tom entered the art gallery. He knew nothing about art, but it was raining and he had an hour to kill.
A few tourists, bored attendants, and room after room with walls lined with images of the past.
The last gallery seemed deserted, just paintings, Parisian scenes from the turn-of-the-century. Elegant sunlit scenes made with coloured dots.
One picture shocked him when he thought he caught a glimpse of someone he once knew. A painting of a girl in silhouette, back straight, arms to her sides, hands prim in her lap. A smudge of blue, fading to nothing.
A name, Madeleine!
Memories surged through him; an artist's smock, the smell of linseed oil, tobacco and coffee, his hand cupping a breast, Madeleine's head turning, her reproachful glance.
Summer picnics beside the Seine, Café-Concerts at the Ambassadeurs. Madeleine beside him, laughing, hand protectively on her belly.
Fear. An empty cradle. The hunched figure in the shadow, the curve of a thin back. The surly boatman on the quay beneath the Pont Neuf, his boathook dragging a blue shawl through the water. And something else.
The attendant's shoes squeaked as he re-entered the gallery. Tourists drifted in, the drone of their voices an unwelcome intrusion.
Tom touched the wall and leaned closer but the shape grew indistinct, broke up into separate dots of blue on an old canvas painted by a hand now long dead.
The rain pounded on the glass roof above.
Bill West lives in Shropshire , England . He is a member of the Bridgnorth Writers' Group, I*D Writers' Group and a number of on-line Writers' Communities. His work has appeared in Thirteen Magazine, FlashQuake , Mytholog , Heavy Glow, Right Hand Pointing, 21 Stars Review, Zygote in my coffee U-R Paranormal, Bewildering Stories and other places. http://www.writewords.org.uk/bill_west/