Brushstrokes

Ineke always loved it here; to stay in the green painted, clap-boarded house with its mellow, orange-red, pantile roof and white framed, and shuttered, casement windows. It was the place where her aunt and uncle, Anna and Frank Meijers had made their home.

The Zaan River was not so far away, and the countryside all around them with its tree-lined streams and waterways, large and small, so evocative of the Dutch pastoral scenes that you so often saw in renowned paintings of old. The crush of humanity, the road noise and bustle of city life that prevailed elsewhere in her small country - they could all be forsaken.

Here, she could live it all out and for real. She could enjoy the company of her cousins and to indulge in her own artist's ways. Frank had even told her that she possessed a skill that needed to be mentored, and not have her undoubted talents reduced to formulaic ways. He had implored her not to have them reduced to a shadow of their true potential.

He had gone so far as to suggest that she meet a certain Luuk Kesting, an artist and teacher who lived nearby. He possessed soaring talents and was a man who lived not so many doors away along from them and who was often to be seen with his easel propped on a stand securely fixed to the stern deck of his small flat-bottomed punt, his unkempt greying hair shoved under a battered straw hat as he worked. He was usually to be seen clothed only in a pair of baggy pants cinched tight at his slender waist and a shirt hanging loose and free; his chest hair exposed to anyone who passed. Such occasions were few -- he hated to be disturbed and made no secret of the fact.

She had reached a decision to do as Frank had suggested and to spend a few days with them. She had done so only on the understanding that Luuk had also willingly agreed to it. And he had. Pictures of her work had been sent to him and after some weeks of deliberation, they had all supposed, a reply had been received that he had some days free, in a particular week in August when she could be with him, and that she should be prepared for all outcomes. She was to step out of her 'bounded world' of a graphic arts student and to witness, at first hand, what a life as a man depending on his art and mind entailed.

'I'll help her...attempt to show her who she really is as an artist,' he had told Frank in his uncompromising ways of it.

And so it was that she forsook the company of her cousins on a Friday morning of a summer vacation and walked beside Frank to the man's house. She clutched a large sketch pad along with a box of drawing materials. The coming hours were to be spent in Luuk Kesting's company and a critical eye, no doubt, cast over what she was able to produce, through the jingle-jangle of her nerves, when she was in his presence.

♥

To see the man in the flesh and to hear his deep, but considerate, voice, charmed her; his ways beguiling. Remaining anxieties of meeting him soon fell away and she saw Frank also relax. Somehow, her uncle had picked up on her anxieties and nothing that he, nor Aunt Anna, told her would ease them away.

From the outside, 'Kestinghuis' was like the others along the quiet narrow roadway. Inside, however, Luuk had used the smoothed and rounded trunks of trees to support the long timber ceiling beams that bore the weight of the upper floor, where she took his bedroom, or bedrooms, to be. The ground floor was his open plan living and studio space, the wide picture windows framing the stream, the trees and the polder-land beyond. They also gave a glimpse of the soaring blue skies above them and the scud of wispy clouds on the breeze.

A large stove stood in the middle of the room, and around it Luuk had arranged a motley collection of large, but tatty, armchairs. Piles of books weighed down the small tables set by their sides.

He held out a glass of pressed apple juice to her. 'From my orchard...it's one way to live off the land.' He saw her hand tremble as Ineke took the glass from him. 'Relax...try and do that? It's work, you being here with me, not an Inquisition.'

Ineke heard the reassurance in his voice.

'I guess it is...' She couldn't help but meet his appraising glances upon her as if she might become a model for him and what the possibilities might turn out to be. Others, at art school, had ventured to ask it of her but she had declined. 'I've done as you asked...brought just a drawing pad and some pens, pencils and charcoals...along with me.'

'Good,' he answered, padding silently over the boarded floor in his large, bare feet and taking up a pad and a charcoal. For a big man she thought him light on his feet. 'Just this, then...'

Ineke saw him take up the pictures that she had sent him and that Luuk had printed off. 'These are nice pieces of work, in themselves, but they lack any sense of passion...'

'I was after an idea of peace and harmony...not a work that confronts you and sets you on edge.'

Luuk clenched his lips for a moment. He saw her fiddle with a pendant slung on a thin necklace and resting on her breastbone; noted her neatly tended and pink varnished fingernails. He found her to possess a fleshy, youthful beauty. 'If there's no feeling aroused, both in you as the artist and in me as an onlooker...then what's the point of it all?'

'You hang pictures to set a mood...images that you like,' she retorted, fidgeting as she stood before him. She was glad that she'd chosen to wear some jeans; but her figure flattering T shirt seemed to arouse his undisguised interest in her all over again.

He moved and unfastened the door lock to a large window, looking out over the garden and polder beyond, before sliding it open. The breeze soon wafted into the room. 'In that case I'll agree that you've hit the mark in what you've done and sent to me. I just think that you can do better. You're quite talented, aren't you? I'll give you that much, Ineke...'

'Thank you. I don't daub like others in my year...'

Her reply made him laugh. Ineke saw his face wrinkle as he did that. She met again his look upon her. Whatever he intended by it, it was getting to her, or the man was.

She saw him pull two wooden stools from under a canvas shelter and place them on the decking that formed a terrace. He placed them in such a way that they would be facing each other. Luuk indicated as much.

'We...we draw each other?' she said hesitantly as he motioned for her to sit facing him.

'Yes, you learn about me and I learn about you...' He saw her nod. 'Just our face and neck...no more...got that?'

'That's a relief,' she blurted out on a laugh. Her mind had raced ahead and she had wondered how he would portray her.

'You've nothing to be ashamed of...in how you look.'

Ineke could only nod her reply to what he had told her. She had a nice enough oval shaped face that her blonde hair, swept back, made more appealing and youthful. She filled her T-shirt nicely enough, even if she struggled to keep her weight down; a concern that leant her breasts a fleshy fulsomeness and that she knew he had glanced at on more than one occasion since they had met. Luuk Kesting was inventive in his artist's ways; was renowned for his landscapes and portraits; but his nudes, the few that he had painted and had never sold, only exhibited, had put his name in the public's eye, for their uncompromising honesty. She had learnt that much about the man before agreeing to meet him.

But, to be alone in his company, now, and to have him look at her with his appraising and critical, or pleasure seeking, eyes was something else. The tap of his drawing board against his hand made her look at him and woke her from a moment's reverie.

'Ineke? Draw it out quickly...Picasso style...say...in one colour...a monochrome image of me. I will do the same of you. We have ten minutes. Go and sit over there...on that stool and in front of me...I will do the same. We then compare our work...see what is to be seen there on the paper...okay?'

Ineke faltered. 'I'll use charcoal...'

'Whatever!' Luuk said on a dismissive wave of his hand but his look now seeming to bore into her. It was both intimidating and entrancing for what it aroused within her.

Luuk was judging her and not just as an artist, but as a woman too...a young woman...someone who might become in thrall to him and...yes, susceptible to his ways. That unruly mane of hair, his beard and moustache that failed to conceal the richness of his mouth defined the man. She had not failed to see a man whose trousers fitted him and aroused her imagining of what they concealed but hinted at -- the man was as hot as hell and she was in his company, her jeans and tank top leaving little for him to imagine of her. She was so much younger but friends at college had said that reports of him, and women he had bedded, defied such simple a simple assessment.

'Do I show feelings?' she asked after a few moments of roughing out an outline of the man's features.

'Yours, or what you see in me?' he teased. 'Just do what you think is best. I'll soon tell you...now...work on. The time will fly by...'

She toiled to capture the luxuriance of his hair, that Luuk had brushed back from his forehead, the hairline receding and the furrows of concentration clearly seen on his forehead. She took in the glint of his eyes, those bushy brows but could not fully capture the thick, neatly shaped beard that outlined a strong jawline. She did draw his sensuous lips and hinted, with only a few short strokes of her charcoal pencil, the line of his neck and creases in the skin on his throat that was clean shaven.

Luuk saw her stop; heard her sigh.

'Are you through?'

'Yes, I am,' she replied on a whisper and tentatively turned her pad so that he could judge it. Ineke saw his eyes widen in surprise. 'It is who you are to me...'

'And, you're too modest, along with your youthful beauty...' Luuk turned his drawing so that she could take it in, the impression that she had created in his artist's eye. 'I hope this is who your boyfriend sees too...'

'We...we don't need to go there!' she answered sharply.

'No...I guess that's so.' Luuk chose to look down at his image of her; felt pleased that he had captured Ineke's wondering look at him, from the moments that had just passed and before. He had sketched the soft smile that he took to be in wonder that she was with him, and for a reason that went beyond what had been sketched out on the paper. He carefully tore the page from his book, along its perforated edge, and held it out to her. 'Do the same with yours...'

Ineke did as he asked. 'And now?'

'And now I look at this and see your skill. Note, however, that I have put life into you smile and in your eyes. You drawing of me is somewhat flat and emotionless even, although I don't think that is what was really at work in you...Ineke.'

She met his stilled and provocative look upon her and shifted uneasily on the stool. 'No, it wasn't. Are you happy now...to have got that admission from me?'

Luuk let her flare of temper subside before he chose to reply.

'No; not happy, Ineke. What I wanted...and you've learnt already in these past moments...is that art is more than putting something on paper or canvas. It has to have life...to captivate and enthral you...to scream it out even what the artist felt at the moment he drew or painted it.'

Luuk snapped his artist's pad shut with a noisy slap. He stood up, over her.

'What's wrong?' she said on a breaking voice.

'This has been enough for one day...that's all. There's nothing, wrong. I...I seem to frighten you...and we can't have that.' Luuk waited for her to join him at the open door of his living area. 'Come by again tomorrow. I'll understand if you don't. No good comes of your work if your mind's on other things...if you're distracted and not fully engaged with what or who you see. I have no intention of frightening you....'

Luuk turned away but on a crazy impulse she grabbed at his arm and restrained him. Luuk looked down at her hand then met her challenging stare upon him.

'Who do you see?' she challenged. 'Go on, tell me!'

'I see an attractive young woman who also happens to be a gifted artist. Deciding which comes first is the problem...'

Ineke dropped her pad and implements box onto one of the chairs close by. 'Will this help to clear things up in your mind?'

Luuk restrained her; saw Ineke's impulsive action as she began to lift her T shirt away from the confines of her jeans' waistband; noted the swell of her flesh fill it tightly. Meeting no resistance, his hands went to the sides of her breasts and his thumbs brushed over them, slowly, tantalisingly, in a lingering caress.

'Some things...Ineke...are discovered slowly.' His breath was on her parted lips and she embraced him. Ineke felt the swell in his trousers press against her belly and she shuddered. Just to think of him...in her...had brought a rush of sudden longing for the man...the man.

'Tomorrow! I'll be with you again, tomorrow!' she cried out on breaking free, soon sweeping up her materials and rushing from the house without a backward glance at the passionate artist. This man had entered her life; a man she knew wanted her. She had become fearful of the certainty of what he would bring to her. It had aroused a rush of longing to course through her body that she was quite unprepared for.

She was unaware of Luuk's following gaze upon her.

Her cousins, Marja and Betty, were glad to see her and questioned Ineke relentlessly on the man, the painter, and what had been achieved in such a short time. She had been gone for only a few hours but it felt as if had been for so much longer.

His picture was shown to them all and what he had said about her efforts to draw him; the tips that he had offered on her work, and that he had captured in the image of her.

'He told me to put more emotion into my work...to let my feelings show.' She met Auntie Anna's concerned glance her way. What did she know of the man that Frank had skated over or said nothing of? 'He meant, I think, that what the artist feels is soon seen in their work...so they need to bring it to life. If the artist doesn't feel anything, then why should the person looking at it be any different?'

'I'd go along with that,' Uncle Frank observed.

Auntie Anna glared at him before she gave Ineke a reassuring look. 'If it feels uncomfortable being there with the man, then don't go again. He's given you some advice so pay heed to that and move on...'

'It's okay, aunt,' she replied. 'He's intense...and, he believes I have talent to work on and to make something of. He asked if I could go back tomorrow...and I thought I would.'

'Well, if you're sure...' Anna left the table and helped Frank clear away their lunch things. 'The three of you go out for a bicycle ride...see if there's any summer fruit to be picked at the place by the mill. We'll have that for pudding tonight...make a fruit salad of some kind...'

'A fruit sludge more like,' Frank grinned at her. Anna gave him a playful slap. 'I'll get you, the expert, to make it...shall I?'

Ineke noted the undoubted love between the two of them, still. She contrasted that with what she took to be Luuk Kesting's ways of it with women; what she supposed was his beguiling and seducing manner and his dissolute sense of dress. Luuk would be certain of his carnal ways with them before the break, his interest and lust satisfied.

Was she really prepared for all the consequences if that were to be her fate too; what she had so briefly known of it, with him, earlier in the day? She would know of the heat and the impetuous rush to surrender to the man she had seen and known of in no time at all. Strangely, she did not think that she would feel cheapened by the experience; quite the opposite in fact. But she would not let him take her without some pleasurable preambles.

The man would be wise to it all, but she would have to try as she wanted that as a part of her rites of passage as an artist. Life informed the outcome on the canvas. It was what Luuk had told her or suggested was an inseparable part of his work.

♥

'Damn it!' Luuk exclaimed. 'Who can that be?'

Ineke looked from him to the work in progress, a water colour that she had begun and that he presided over, leaning close to study the work set on an easel and that often had them standing shoulder to shoulder, his presence not overwhelming but a spur to her efforts.

Luuk had not made a pass at her all morning and what she had chosen to wear no encouragement to such thoughts; if he still harboured any intentions of seducing her. The man was again barefoot; pale blue chinos and a white open necked shirt all that he wore.

He heard Auntie Anna's bright words of greeting and Luuk's polite,but unmistakable, reply that they were busy, at work on something that Ineke had chosen as a subject.

They came into his large living space, the doors again open onto the waterway and garden, sunlight streaming in.

'She tells me that water colours are a favourite medium,' Luuk explained.

'I just wanted to see that everything's okay,' Anna said in some embarrassment. Her lack of trust was to be clearly seen.

'It is aunt. I'm learning so much...' Luuk and Ineke smiled at her. 'I'll be back again in a couple of hours...'

'Only if that's finished,' Luuk said, intervening. 'I can't have this flitting in and out...or we'll get nowhere.'

The two women looked at each other and nodded.

'So be it,' Anna sniffed and prepared to leave them.

'I'll see you out,' Luuk said considerately. 'I didn't mean to be rude, but Ineke needs to concentrate on what she's working on...in the time we have together. She has a great talent and I want her to realise it....'

'Then that's where we'll leave it, Luuk.'

He watched her go; saw Anna look back at the house and graciously raise her hand to her hair as the breeze caught it and the skirt of her summery dress. The women in that family certainly had their looks...

'Luuk?' He felt Ineke stand close to, by his shoulder, as he turned. 'Sorry about that...but she worries about me.'

'About you being here with me, you mean?' he looked over Ineke's shoulder at her work. 'Are you through with that...should we give her something to worry about?' He touched her face. 'You...you could let me draw you...sketch the young woman who now stands before me?'

His hands were on her hips; they then moved until his fingers provocatively brushed the sides of her breasts, his breath on her lips before Luuk moved to kiss her.

Ineke clutched handfuls of his shirt. 'This is crazy...for someone like me...being with you like this!' She was kept from breaking free of his embrace upon her.

'A young and beautiful woman. I can't deny it...I want to draw you...see you differently.' His fingers were at the hem of her T shirt and began to slowly ease it free. 'We...we start with that, Ineke...if you'll let me?'

'My work...it was an excuse to bring us to this?' She slapped his hands away even as she felt a rush of longing that his touches upon her had again aroused.

'You...you could always leave.'

His soft words were in time with his renewed touches upon her.; Luuk's fingers now found their way to the skin on her back, then hips, before he offered sliding, caressing touches of his fingertips to her belly. With her mind possessed by conflicting emotions, Ineke pressed forward to meet them and she met his kisses. She sought to squirm free of his embrace, but she felt the ease with which he now pulled her T shirt off her body and pressed his mouth to the tumble of her breasts. He deftly unfastened her bra with practised, and unhindered, ease.

'Where...where do I go?' she gasped as he now tugged at the fastening of her jeans. 'You...you want me to pose naked and in here?'r"

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