'Do you know that the Mona Lisa has no eyebrows?' she asks him. She puts her serviette down onto the table and joins her hands together. 'That's what makes her enigmatic. It's not the smile; it's the lack of eyebrows. She's missing a feature.'
'Hmmm.' He begins to chew more thoughtfully.
'Have you ever noticed that?' she says. 'The lack of eyebrows?'
He swallows. 'No, not as such. But now that you mention it I can't imagine her with eyebrows.'
'Apparently they were there. Da Vinci did paint them in- the eyebrows and the eyelashes- but they've faded with time.'
'How do they know that they were there?'
'A French engineer produced a high- resolution photograph of the painting. He magnified the Mona Lisa's face twenty- four times. When he examined it he found a single brushstroke of a single hair on the left brow.'
'And from that he concluded that she had eyebrows?'
'He also saw some fading around the eye area which he said was indicative of cleaning. A restorer or curator could have washed off the eyebrows and eyelashes. I've seen a virtual restoration of the painting. With the eyebrows put back in.'
'And? What does she look like?'
'She doesn't look like the Mona Lisa.'
'She doesn't look like the Mona Lisa only with eyebrows?'
'No, she looks like someone else.'
She sprinkles a small amount of salt onto the tablecloth in front of her and makes a circle in it with her ring finger, first clockwise and then anticlockwise. He takes a sip of his drink. He watches her. She's about to say something when the waiter comes to clear their plates. 'Yes, I'm finished,' she tells him. 'Thank you.'
He nods to the waiter for the bill. When the man's left he says to her, 'You didn't eat very much.'
'I wasn't hungry.'
'Are you ill?'
'No, I just wasn't hungry.'
'You like this restaurant.'
'I do like this restaurant. I wasn't hungry today.'
'You would tell me if you were ill wouldn't you?'
'Of course.'
'What were you going to say?'
'When?'
'Before the waiter came. You were going to say something.'
'I don't remember.'
He looks up. 'Here he comes again. What should I tip him? We come here often.'
She shrugs.
He gives the waiter his card and the man takes it to the front desk. 'Let me help you into your coat,' he says to her. 'While we're waiting. I'll help you to put it on.'
They stand up together and he comes around the table to stand behind her. He helps her with the right arm first, then the left arm, and then brings the coat up over her shoulders. She buttons it up while he puts on his own coat. 'I wonder if they'll bring mints,' he says.
'How much did it come to? The lunch.'
'It doesn't matter.'
'What did you tip him?'
'The usual.'
'What's the time?'
He looks at his wristwatch. 'Two thirty. You really should get a watch.'
'Why? Does it annoy you when I ask for the time?'
The waiter comes and he signs the slip. Then he says to her, 'They did.'
'What?'
'They brought mints. Do you want one?' He holds one out in his hand.
'No,' she shakes her head.
He puts one in his mouth and the other in his coat pocket. He turns to her. 'Should we go?'
'Yes, it's getting stuffy in here.'
He takes her arm and they move towards the door. The maitre d' says, 'See you,' he says, 'Yes,' she says, 'Thank you,' and they leave the restaurant.
She stands a moment on the step outside. He steps down so that they're the same height. 'What?' he says to her.
'My shoes. They're a bit tight.'
'What are we going to do?'
'Nothing. I'll manage. It's only a few blocks.' She steps down next to him. The wind stirs and she takes his arm to steady herself. They begin to walk.
He points out a child on a bicycle. The girl's father is running behind her. 'This is not the place to teach your daughter how to ride a bike,' he says.
'Where would be better?'
'Somewhere more secluded. This is a public street. There are cars driving up and down here all the time. It's dangerous.'
'He's watching her. He's right behind her.'
'Still.'
She puts her free hand into her coat pocket. 'You sister Catherine is coming to us for tea tomorrow,' she tells him.
'Why?'
'She wants to see you.'
'She wants to see you.'
'She wants to see both of us.'
'Will Thomas come?'
'No, he's away.'
'Away?'
'Away on business.'
'I never knew that he travelled for work.'
'Apparently he does.'
'Well that's why she's coming then. She's lonely.'
'That's alright.'
'She's afraid of being lonely. Not everyone gets lonely in the way that Catherine does. She gets nervous.'
'She's unsettled without him.'
A car drives past. 'Three cars have driven up the road since we left the restaurant,' he says. 'I'm not sure how many have driven down. This is no place to teach your child how to ride a bike.'
'Do you like Thomas?' she asks him.
His head's turned the other way. 'What?' He turns back to the front.
'Thomas. Your brother- in- law. Do you like him?'
'He's alright.'
'Alright?'
'He's bearable. He's not much company but he's a presence for Catherine. She's grown accustomed to having him around. He's comforting to her.'
'How long have they been married for?'
'Four years.'
'Do you think that they'll have children?'
'I don't know. What do you think?'
'I'm not sure either.'
'She'll smother them.'
'She'll be a good mother.'
'She'll worry too much. Like my mother did with us.' He looks up at the grey sky. 'It looks like it's going to rain,' he says. 'We better hurry. How are your feet?'
'They're fine.' She blows a puff of steam out of her mouth. 'You know that Dora Maar was barren,' she says. He stops and turns to her and their arms fall apart. 'Dora Maar,' she says. 'Picasso's mistress. She was barren. She couldn't have children.'
'I know what barren means.'
'Why are you so irritable? Are you still upset about that child on the bicycle?'
'What made you think of that?' he says. 'What made you think of Dora Maar?'
'I was just musing.'
'Catherine's not barren.'
'I never said that she was.'
'She will be able to have children.'
'I wasn't implying otherwise.'
'You made a perverse connection.'
'I never made a connection between your sister and Dora Maar.'
'How else could the conversation have turned in this way?'
'We were talking about Da Vinci, I was talking about Picasso.'
'You were talking about Dora Maar, the woman in tears. The woman with a cat.'
'Dora Maar au chat,' she says. 'Picasso bought her a cat. After her dog died, he bought her a cat. She couldn't stand it.' She brushes the hair from her eyes. 'Dora Maar, the weeping woman. Picasso said that she was always weeping.' He says nothing. 'Alright, come,' she says to him, 'let's change the subject. Let's talk about George Orwell.'
They walk on. She takes his arm. He hesitates but then lets her. 'George Orwell?' he says. 'What about George Orwell?'
'George Orwell married his second and last wife, Sonia Brownell, at the age of forty- six. He was suffering from tuberculosis then and the wedding took place by his bedside.'
'Did it last?'
'Orwell died three months later. Sonia said that the reasons why George married her were obvious but the reasons why she married him were not.'
'Did he love her?'
'His first wife died ten years after their wedding. He proposed marriage to four women after her death. Sonia accepted.'
'Sonia married a ghost.'
'That's what the writer Frances Partridge said. She said that marriage to a dying man is no marriage at all.'
'Had Sonia married before Orwell?'
'I don't think so.'
'Are you cold?' he asks her.
'No, I'm fine.'
'Here, put your hand into my pocket.' He takes her hand in his and puts their clasped hands into the pocket of his coat. 'Is your other hand in your pocket?' He leans forward to look.
'I haven't finished telling you about Sonia yet,' she says.
He moves back in line with her. 'There's more?'
'Yes.'
'I'm listening.'
'After Orwell died Sonia married Michael Pitt- Rivers, reportedly a homosexual, and later had affairs with Lucian Freud and Victor Pasmore.'
'How do you know all of this?'
'I like George Orwell.'
'I like Victor Pasmore.' They smile at each other. 'How are your feet?' he says.
'My feet are fine. Stop asking me about my feet. They're fine.'
'There's not much left to go. We're almost there.' It begins to drizzle and he opens up the emerald green umbrella that he has been using as a walking stick. 'Come closer,' he says to her and they huddle together underneath it.
'Now you tell me something,' she says to him.
'About what?'
'About anything.'
'Let me think.' He wrinkles his nose. 'What can I tell you? I can tell you about Francis Bacon.'
'The philosopher?'
'The philosopher, scientist and lawyer.'
'Tell me about him.'
'He said that wives are the mistresses of young men and that companions are old men's nurses.'
'What was Sonia Brownell?'
'I'm not sure that she was much of a companion.'
'Some people think that she was there for Orwell during a painful time in his life. That she was a companion.'
'I'm sure that others would disagree.'
'Did Francis Bacon marry?'
'He married at forty- five, Alice Barnham, the thirteen- year old daughter of an English parliamentarian. He disinherited her after he suspected that she was secretly involved with a John Underhill. The Barnham-Bacon marriage was said to be a political one anyway. Bacon had a preference for young, Welsh minions.'
'What happened to Alice?'
'She married Underhill two weeks after Bacon's death from pneumonia.'
'And?'
'Her and Underhill became estranged a decade later. He maintained that their manservant had stolen her affections.' He points to the staircase leading to their apartment. 'We have reached the door,' he says.
She stops. 'What happened? With John and Alice.'
'Underhill moved to another property.'
They walk up the stairs.
'What about her?'
'She continued to live in the mansion with the servant, who was married all this time you should know.' He begins to close the umbrella. 'Let's go inside.'
'Did Alice leave heirs?'
'No. She signed half of her property to the servant and the other half to her nephew before she died. Come, it's cold.' He opens the door.
'Leave the umbrella outside,' she tells him.
'Yes.' He leans it against the wall.
When they're inside he helps her out of her coat, hangs it onto the stand and then takes off his own.
'George Orwell had a son,' she says. 'An adopted child. Richard.'
He leads her into the sitting room and they settle down on the couch.
'Richard Orwell,' he says.
She takes off her shoes and spreads her feet in between the cushions. 'My feet are fine,' she tells him.
'Good.'
'Why is it so quiet when it's cold and cloudy like this?' She looks out of the window.
'I think that it's got something to do with the density of the air,' he says. 'I don't know exactly.'
'What should we do?' She looks at him.
'Read?'
'What are you reading?'
He picks up a book from the side table. 'A very long novel,' he says. 'I don't think that I'll ever get through it.'
'Leave it.'
'I can't. I can't when I've started a book.'
'You can start another book.'
'I have to finish this one first.'
'You're going to spend a lot of time reading things that you don't like. Leave it. You don't always have to push through.'
'I want to read it.' He takes her hand.
'I'm sorry about Catherine,' she says.
'There's nothing to be sorry about.'
'I'm sorry about what I said about Dora Maar. I'm sorry if it upset you.'
'That's alright.'
'She said that all of Picasso's paintings of her were lies anyway.'
'What?'
'Dora Maar. She said that Picasso painted Picassos. None of his portraits were of Dora Maar.'
'What happened to her? What happened to her after Picasso?'
'She said, After Picasso, God. She turned to Catholicism. But nothing could replace him. She died alone in Paris.'