Friday's Girl Page 17

  She did not know why, but as she followed the tall figure in front of her she felt as if she was leaving something behind on the low stone wall. What it was she could not have said exactly, except that she knew it was gone, because after a few minutes of walking at first behind and then beside the tall, bearded man, she began to be able to see in the dark, and it was not just because of the light of his lantern, not just because he talked gently to her of the sea and its ways, of fishing and boats, not really expecting her to reply – it was something to do with the gentleness and warmth that seemed to be coming from him.

  ‘Here we are, my dear.’ He held up his lantern and it swung a little too vigorously in the breeze as he did so, lighting his face. ‘Mrs Harvey will be coming to the door any moment.’ He nodded towards the owl doorknocker that he had dropped against the blue-painted door. ‘You are no longer lost, my dear, but quite safe again, and here’s herself, here’s Mrs Harvey to take care of you.’

  ‘Mrs Todd! Back again so soon?’

  ‘Yes, I am afraid so – the bad penny and all that that entails.’ Edith smiled at Mrs Harvey before turning at the door to thank her escort, but he had gone.

  ‘I thought it too much for a little thing like you to go straight out a-visiting, and after a long journey like that; but that’s Mr Todd all over, I’m afraid, as you must know yourself by now. You’m be as tired out as a bird in the spring coming back to Cornwall. You come with me, my dear, and I’ll help you to your room.’

  Mrs Harvey put an arm round Edith and helped her up the stairs to her bedroom where her visitor sat down on the bed, staring word-lessly for a while at nothing much, while Mrs Harvey fussed about her, taking the brass warming pan with its loose hot coals from her bed, and laying out her nightclothes.

  ‘I was lost and a kind gentleman showed me the way home.’

  Mrs Harvey nodded, not really listening. ‘That’s right, my dear. Now you undress yourself and don’t stir until morning, and whoever it was that showed you home, he must have been a nice gentleman, because anyone can get lost in Newbourne down the lines as we call them – the lines is that narrow and that crooked even us gets lost down them some of the time.’

  Those had been the last words that Edith remembered. She appeared to have undressed and climbed into her wonderfully warm bed and fallen asleep before she could ask Mrs Harvey what the name of the kind gentleman who had accompanied her might have been.

  Now she drew back the flowered curtains of her bedroom and stared out at the picturesque scene outside. With her despair quite fled, Cornwall seemed to her to be a paradise that morning, and she no longer felt haunted by the unhappiness that had been weighing her down the previous evening. She was in a new place, and new places it seemed held out their hands to you, grasped you by the fingers and whirled you round in such a way as to remind her of her birthday bumps at the Stag. Birthday bumps had always been a highlight of the year. The other maids would take hold of her hands and feet and swing her backwards and forwards before they bounced her up and down on the hard wooden floor until they had bumped her the same number of years as her birthday.

  Remembering these and other happy times, and thinking that perhaps there was a chance that one day there would be more, Edith jumped out of bed, and hurried down the uneven corridor to the bathroom, determined on washing and dressing as quickly as possible before taking a walk on her own to try to work up her still feeble appetite for breakfast.

  As Napier had promised the evening before, Celandine did indeed call before midday. Edith was seated in Mrs Harvey’s front room reading a book in a desultory fashion when she saw her crossing the narrow street and coming towards the house. Celandine saw Edith too, and waved long before she reached Mrs Harvey’s front door, her face lighting up.

  ‘I am glad you are up and about. I hope you are quite recovered?’ she said, as soon as she realised that Edith was ready and waiting for her. ‘I was so worried when Napier said you had to go home on account of not feeling well. We missed you. I have not been married so long that I don’t still find that I miss female company. When on my own, alone and dining with gentlemen, I quite flounder, really I do. Either I sit there silent as the grave, listening to their high-flown ideas, or I start to argue against everything they are lecturing me about, which is so tiring that I wake up in the morning vowing never to do anything so silly again. Gracious heavens, whoever changed the mind of a man over a dinner table? It has never been known.’

  Celandine laughed gaily. They were both out in the street again, and she caught up the front of her elegantly tailored coat and nodded towards the harbour.

  ‘I thought, as it is your first morning, we would walk along to the old harbour and, just for a game, watch out for the West Cornwall Luggers. Sometimes they can come back unexpectedly early, although not often, Mrs Molesworth tells me; but when they do, it seems it is quite a sight to see, at least so she says.’ Seeing Edith did not understand what she meant, Celandine explained. ‘The Luggers go to sea in the summer, sometimes for as much as three months at a time. It’s a hard life, Mrs Molesworth says; but they enjoy being away from their wives, as so many men do. And of course the wives can get on with running their boarding houses and other such things without having the men coming in and out smelling of stinking poisson! Fish does smell so, as you probably noticed as soon as you arrived in Newbourne.’

  Edith fell in readily with Celandine’s plan, walking along beside this vibrant young woman with more vigour than she had brought to anything for what seemed weeks, all the while well aware that, perhaps because she was still feeling tired after her illness, she was feeding off Celandine’s buoyancy, just as she had fed off Mrs Harvey’s concern the previous evening. It was as if Celandine was the sun, and Edith her earth, desperately in need of her warmth after a long, hard winter.

  Since it was a beautiful morning filled with perfect sunshine they walked at a leisurely pace towards their goal. Celandine, sensing that her companion was not yet feeling as well as she was perhaps pretending, kept up a one-way flow of conversation, until they eventually came to a stop on the waterfront.

  ‘This is the old harbour,’ Celandine explained. ‘Sheridan is always painting it.’ She turned to Edith, and pulled a face. ‘At least, I say Sheridan – I should say Sheridan and Mrs Sheridan, because he very generously allows me to fill in the background, the sky and those roofs over there – he hates roofs, so monotonous he always says, tile after tile. So good for your technique, I always say, but of course he will not believe me. After all, not all tiles are the same. Some have mossy bits, some have chips, some are redder or browner. Detail, boring detail, he murmurs, unimpressed, and leaves it all to his poor wife.’

  ‘He lets you paint on his canvases?’

  ‘No, Edith, he makes me paint the dull uninspired bits on his canvases, the bits that he does not wish to bother with, while he gets on with the figures in the foreground!’ Celandine gave a light laugh.

  ‘Do you like doing that?’

  ‘As long as he doesn’t touch my canvases I am perfectly happy to paint his roofs and his sky. Although of course I can’t help ribbing him about it. “Do you think Turner would have done this, Sheridan?” I ask him. But Sheridan being Sheridan merely says that Turner did not paint with the square-brush technique, he did not attack his canvases in the modern manner, but had he been alive of course he would have done, or so Sheridan says.’ She laughed again, obviously not believing her husband, and not caring that she didn’t. ‘And you? Does Napier make you daub? Or is he still firmly and shockingly a Pre-Raphaelite, as he was so busy assuring Sheridan last night?’

  Edith shook her head, feeling suddenly ignorant and exposed by the question.

  ‘I don’t know what Napier is,’ she confessed. ‘I have no idea how he is painting at the moment. I sit to him in his studio for his new painting, that is all I know. He does not like me to comment. I just sit to him, for this new painting he has had in his mind for so long,’ she finished in a suddenl
y low voice.

  ‘You sit to him?’ For the first time Edith could see that she had shocked Celandine. ‘You sit to him? In that case you are a martyr. I refuse to sit to Sheridan. If he wants models he has to go into the village and find them for himself. I can think of nothing worse than hour after hour spent in holding a pose, but the fishermen and women here don’t seem to mind at all. In fact they are so long in patience it makes me weep. I tell them they should charge Sheridan, but they seem to be flattered by the attention, and of course Sheridan plies them with drink and food before or after, I forget which. I suppose it all depends on the time of day, but whatever the time, and for however long they sit, they are quite touchingly grateful. Fishing is such a hard life, but knowing nothing else, and belonging as they do to a small community, they seem to want for nothing, not even hope.’

  Celandine frowned, staring out to sea while thinking over what she had said.

  ‘The next haul is always going to be the one that brings them in their hearts’ desires, and if it does not, well, there is always the next, and the next after that, and so on. But enough of that. It is surely time we went back to our house, and I gave you luncheon in the garden? Ever since leaving my mother’s house and marrying Sheridan I have become assistant cook to anyone who will let me help them. Happily Mrs Molesworth is too good a cook to need me, but I like to watch. Not this morning, however. We will have far too much to talk about this morning, will we not?’

  Once back in the garden with Celandine serving them glasses of Mrs Molesworth’s delicious home-made wine, Edith, feeling herself to be under scrutiny from her companion, felt confident enough in her company to turn the tables on her.

  ‘Were you married in Cornwall? Were you married in Newbourne?’

  Celandine shook her head. ‘No, I had to run away with Sheridan to Gretna Green to be married, would you believe?’ She shook her head. ‘What a thing! A young American woman running off with an Irishman of all people – and to Scotland of all places. Shocking, my dear, too shocking! Little wonder my mother refuses to have anything more to do with me.’

  ‘Does she not like Sheridan?’ Edith asked, wondering to herself if it was possible for anyone not to like such an instantly warm personality.

  ‘She has never met him.’ Celandine half closed her eyes, leaning back in her chair, remembering. ‘She has only seen him, in a drawing I did of him.’ She looked across at Edith, willing herself to shock her new friend.

  ‘Was it a good drawing?’ Edith asked, hesitantly, because she was longing to know more, but unwilling to reveal her longing.

  ‘It was a very good drawing of Sheridan,’ Celandine informed her, pride in her voice. ‘The only trouble being that . . .’ She held her head at the same angle, eyes still half closed. ‘The only trouble being,’ she repeated, ‘Sheridan did not have any clothes on. He was as Mother Nature made him.’

  Edith straightened herself, carefully replacing her glass on the table. ‘Oh,’ she said slowly. ‘Well, I dare say if you are married that is not quite so shocking, surely?’

  ‘Quite. The only trouble being that at the time of the drawing we were not married.’ Celandine opened her eyes fully and stared at Edith, trying to keep a straight face, and finally failing.

  ‘Can you imagine?’ she asked, laughing helplessly. ‘For a woman like my mother whose ancestors sailed to America on the Mayflower. Can you imagine her thoughts, or lack of them, when she saw my drawing? Such was the shock I thought she might pass out.’

  Edith too began to laugh, but only really because Celandine’s laughter was so infectious.

  ‘I was turned out of the house, of course. Really rather lucky that Sheridan wanted to marry me, don’t you think?’

  ‘I suppose—’

  ‘You suppose, Mrs Todd! But for Sheridan I would now be a fallen woman, and heaven knows that is not a position in Society that anyone sensible would choose. Women do not win at love.’

  Edith stared at Celandine, whom she had from the first found delightful, but whom she now found fascinating, slowly realising that she had another less conventional side to her character, and one that was perhaps not really very susceptible to shock.

  Encouraged by this discovery she opened her own large eyes wider, remembering the previous evening’s despair, and how attractive a leap into the river had seemed – should she have been able to find the wretched stretch of water. Realising that, such had been her despair, but for finding herself lost and meeting the stranger she might well be dead, she took the verbal leap necessary to friendship, all of a sudden determined on being as candid as Celandine.

  ‘I do not know whether women win at love, for the simple reason that I have never known love,’ she confided.

  Celandine was so busy pouring them both another glass of wine that she seemed not to have heard her new friend.

  ‘What was that you said?’ she asked, for she had heard, but thought it only right to pretend that she had not.

  ‘I said,’ Edith repeated, ‘I have not known love. I do not know what love is.’

  ‘But you must do! You are teasing me, of course you are. After all, you are expecting une petite quelque chose, are you not?’

  After a few seconds’ pause Edith reddened as she slowly came to understand from Celandine’s expression just what she was implying.

  ‘No, no! No, that would not be at all possible, quite impossible, in fact. Quite impossible.’

  ‘But that is why you left us, surely, last night when you left us feeling suddenly so unwell, because of your interesting state? At least, that is what Sheridan and I instantly imagined, although we said nothing to Napier. Nevertheless, we both thought it. We were quite sure. We were so happy for you. It is what we ourselves want so much,’ she confided. ‘It is such a happy outcome to the delights of love, don’t you think? I myself find I look forward so much—’ Celandine stopped as Edith shook her head.

  ‘No, I am very much afraid I am expecting nothing. How could I? When I have not known love, how could I be expecting anything?’ she asked, unable to keep the despair and the sadness from her voice. ‘Napier does not love me. It seems I do not please him, not at all. No, I do not please him,’ she finished.

  Celandine stared at the beautiful young girl seated at the table, for once lost for words.

  ‘You have left me speechless,’ she said, after a pause, adding with a swift retreat into humour, ‘And believe me that does not happen often.’

  Edith gave a faint smile. ‘Well, if I were you,’ she said, with almost ruthless honesty, ‘and you had told me the same about your marriage, I confess I would be the same, I would not know what to say at all. Not that it would happen with your marriage,’ she said sadly, as she remembered Sheridan and Celandine together the night before. ‘It is very evident that your husband loves you very much indeed, and that you love him very much indeed. That at least is quite plain to see. Napier does not love me. To be honest, I do not know why he married me, except perhaps for some reason that he has now forgotten, or which he is trying to remember. I think that is why he decided to paint me, to take his mind off having married me, which he obviously now believes was a mistake,’ she said, finally allowing her deep, long-held misery to surface. ‘I am now convinced that he is repelled by me.’

  ‘Oh, surely not?’ Celandine sprang up from her chair and stared down at Edith before slowly sitting down again, such was the almost physical effect Edith’s confession had had upon her. ‘I am afraid I cannot believe that what you have just said to me is true.’

  ‘It is true.’ Edith looked down the garden, staring at the flowers, wishing that she could feel as she would like to feel, relaxed and happy, able to appreciate the beauty of her surroundings, as she knew Celandine must be doing.

  Celandine allowed a minute or so to elapse before she continued.

  ‘I think I know what the matter is. Napier is an Englishman,’ she told Edith, in a low voice, as if she herself was now stating something really rather shocking. ‘And
I have heard that Englishmen are often afraid of women in the Biblical sense, that the men are too much incarcerated with their own sex when growing up, and as a consequence, unless they have sisters, or an enlightened mama, they are not well versed in the ways of women.’ She frowned at Edith, her head on one side, before going on. ‘The interesting thing is that from what you say Napier insists on your sitting to him, and that is not something that a man who is – forgive my using your words back to you – but that is surely not something that a man who was repelled by you would do? Indeed, I would say that he worships your beauty.’

  ‘Yes, perhaps.’ Edith nodded. ‘He has admitted as much, several times. When we talk about when he first saw me, which is not often, he has said it was my looks that first attracted him to me. I think he feels that I should feel grateful for that. And I do see that I should. After all, I was on my hands and knees scrubbing floors when he first saw me. I dare say I should be grateful.’

  ‘What about his painting? What about the masterpiece for which you have been sitting to him?’ Celandine asked, a little too quickly, knowing that Edith had a point and at once realising the pain behind the statement.

  ‘I became ill before Napier could finish it, which is so irksome for him, because the gentleman who commissioned it has finished the room into which it is destined to go. It was because my illness interrupted him that we had to come away, so that Napier could have a change, allow fresh breezes and the good ozone to help him back to the inspiration that he lost while I was ill.’

  Celandine snorted lightly and prettily as Edith gave a small cough, as if talking about her illness had prompted one of the symptoms to recur.

  ‘Oh, my. You are ill, and he has to come away! How that painterly all-male Hamlet behaviour brings about a flood of impatience in me. I suppose once you were ill he felt neglected because his inspiration had run out?’ She laughed, and then held up a hand, shaking her head. ‘No, you don’t have to tell me. Believe me, I can guess.’