Everybody knew that Peregrine couldn’t make a living from his art. It didn’t matter anyway, he always said that he didn’t want to. That would be vulgar. Art was pure. Art existed on a higher plane. Having said that, he had submitted works for the Royal Academy of Arts’ Summer Exhibition for the last ten years. Not one had been accepted.

That’s why he had left London. Well, in part anyway.

The cottage was large. Larger than any farm labourer could have dreamed of. It had been four cottages but Peregrine had had it turned into one. Now equipped with every modern convenience that the new century could provide.

She, Hetty, had first approached him at his Mayfair studio hoping for some opinion on her paintings. He hadn’t even looked at them.

She had become his model, his muse, his lover, and then his wife. This was somewhat bizarre as he claimed to be a Bohemian, shunning the whole concept of marriage. Hetty had refused to relocate with him to rural Dorset without the, what he considered to be, unnecessary wedding ring. She had never fully committed to his radical beliefs.

Despite his principles, Peregrine pointed out her aristocratic connections when informing his family that he had married the Honourable Henrietta Milford Strong. Hetty merely told her parents that she had been wed to an artist.

Every morning, a local woman, Mrs Tidy and her daughter, Flora, came to the cottage to clean, cook, and take away the laundry. This left Peregrine and Hetty the rest of the day to paint. The conundrum was that Peregrine liked to paint Hetty and Hetty liked to paint portraits. A compromise was reached. Hetty took her clothes off on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Peregrine worked without his muse on Tuesday and Thursday. This left the muse to paint on those days. She knew that he had little regard for her talent. Weekends were, in theory, painting-free.

Portraits of handsome young people held scant magnetism for Henrietta Laycock. She liked to portray characters. In London there was no shortage of such faces but in the country they certainly existed, they weren’t on every street corner. Hetty wasn’t entirely sure why Peregrine had such a strong desire to move to Dorset if he only wanted to paint her. There was nothing in Dorset that he couldn’t have painted in Mayfair. She felt that he may have more success with landscapes than with nudes.

Peregrine Laycock was a socialist. He could afford to be, his father was a Marquess. Peregrine’s father had also been a socialist; right up to the day he inherited the title and the estates as well as the coal mines and the steel mills in addition to several Scottish islands and most of an Irish county.

The Bohemian Circle had developed at Cambridge, and because of this, most of the members were now in a similar age group of about thirty. To be candid, it was made up of the second or third tier of the intellectual elite. Painters, writers, philosophers, etc. Certainly nobody of whom you would have heard. The common thread that bound them together was the rejection of conventional morality. In particular sexual morality. To them marriage was anathema.

After Cambridge they had met on an irregular and informal basis at various London addresses. The group had gained some additional members but had also lost some members (sorry to say, mostly to marriage). Of the remaining eight, only two were married men. As well as Peregrine Laycock, the failed painter turned art critic Justinian Wayfare had a wife. In her mid fifties, Adele Wayfare was no more committed to the ethos of the Bohemian Circle than was Hetty Laycock.

Hetty was about to enter the kitchen when she overheard the end of a conversation between Mrs Tidy and Flora. “ ... but it’s not just you. He says ridiculous things to every woman in the village. I put it down to him fighting in the Boer Wars,” said Flora.

“Of whom are you speaking?” asked Hetty, intrigued.

“Oh, sorry, Madam. We are still working,” answered Mrs Tidy.

Hetty said, “Forgive me, I didn’t mean to imply that you were doing anything wrong. It is just that the man sounds like a character.”

“Oh, he is that,” said Flora.

Mrs Tidy stepped in quickly before Flora could say anything else, “Now, don’t be unkind, my dear.”

“Is he an old man?” asked Hetty. “Could he be a suitable sitter for one of my portraits?”

“Martin Venn is only twenty-four but he has the cheek of a dirty old man. Any woman would be well advised not to be in the same room with him. Particularly not a refined lady like yourself,” warned Mrs Tidy.

Hetty smiled to herself. The conversations between mother and daughter could be quite refreshing sometimes. She had once overheard Flora expressing the opinion that Peregrine paid them three times what the local gentry would pay. She thought that he was a very generous man. Flora was sixteen and engaged to a local man called Jarvis. She hadn’t yet developed her mother’s cynicism. Mrs Tidy was of the opinion that Peregrine was a bloody nincompoop to pay too much.

Unfortunately, Hetty rarely took good advice so when she saw a young man and a mature woman in conversation in the village she waited until the lady went bright red and hurried away.

“Mr Venn?” Hetty enquired of the man, feeling sure that it was him.

Within that moment, with an artist’s eye, she took in his whole face. Not old but a face that had lived a dozen lifetimes.

“Just Venn will do,” he replied.

“As you wish, Venn. I would like to paint you,” she said.

He laughed and teased her, “Without seeing the best bits of me, you want to change my hue?”

“No, you purposely misunderstand me, I wish to paint your portrait. Have you had your likeness done before?”

“I once was photographed. But with me standing in the fifth row of a regiment, you would hardly be able to pick me out.”

“Yes, I had heard that you have been a military man,” said Hetty.

“Oh, and what else have you heard about me?” Venn said.

“I have been informed that you are a character.”

Venn simply laughed out loud.

Slightly irritated, she said, “Can I paint your portrait or not?”

“Not!” said Venn.

“Why ever not?”

“Because I won’t be here.”

“Where shall you be?” asked the artist.

“Twelve miles off, over Linden way. I have bought a smallholding with my Army savings and I am moving up there the week after next.”

“Oh,” said Hetty, thinking.

“Could you spare me two days next week? I can work quickly,” she asked.

“Well, I suppose that I could use the money,” answered Martin Venn.

Hetty hadn’t really considered that Venn would probably want paying. Nevertheless, they eventually agreed on a fee. He was to be paid more to pose fully clothed for two days than she had ever been paid to be painted stark naked in her whole life. It only served to confirm Hetty’s belief that character was worth far more than beauty.

Just when she didn’t need it, Peregrine had heeded Hetty’s advice and had gone off to try his hand at landscape painting.

Venn arrived just as Mrs Tidy and Flora were about to leave for the day.

“Would you like us to stay?” asked the older woman.

“That won’t be necessary, thank you,” said Hetty.

Flora gave her mother a rather knowing smirk.

“As you wish. We will bid you good day then,” said her mother.