Friday's Girl Page 24

  Edith stared at him as Napier raised his head and sighed again.

  ‘You have become a person!’

  ‘Was I not always – a person?’

  Edith frowned, feeling that she might be about to be hurt, but refusing to acknowledge it, knowing with a sinking heart that what was at stake was not just the painting.

  Napier walked away from her down the studio, and sat down on the small gold throne where she normally sat.

  ‘I have to tell you, Edith, that when I married you I married your beauty. I could not help myself. Your face when you looked up from the floor that day was something I will never, ever forget. Of course I have known many beautiful women, painters of my kind always do, but I have never been so taken by a face before. Your face. But I didn’t want you to be more than that. I wanted to keep you as you were, unknowable, an image that I had to convey to canvas. I did not want you to become human. I did not want you to become – Edith. But then when we were in Newbourne – no, later than that; when you were being so wooed by all those men, so admired by everyone, at that celebration at Miss Biddy Montague Robertson’s – I – I gave in – because I realised just how much I loved you. No, not just how much I loved – how much I was in love with you. Horribly, dreadfully, in love with you. Never mind that I had struggled all the time since we were married to keep you from me. That night I thought I might lose you, and so I gave in, and I made love to you, something in which I have continued to delight. But . . . I know now I can no longer paint you. You are no longer the mysterious subject of a painterly notion of womanhood, you are my darling Edith, and as a consequence – I cannot put your likeness to canvas. The look in your eyes now is the one I see on my pillow. That funny sweet smile with which you turn towards me, that is the one I want to paint, but I can’t. I have to finish this painting, and I can’t do that either, because you are now my Edith. And what is more I don’t want you any other way.’

  Edith put out a hand and touched Napier’s face. She no longer felt in danger of being hurt; she just felt for him. She realised that everything she and Celandine had talked about now made sense. The cold baths in the early morning, Napier’s insistence on keeping his distance – everything made beautiful sense, and was thankfully no longer hurtful.

  ‘I am sure we must be able to find a solution to all this,’ she said tentatively. ‘I could always – we could always cease intimacies, could we not? Until the painting is finished, perhaps? Would that help?’

  ‘No.’ Napier smiled. ‘It would not help at all. Not in the least, alas. I have told you – you are my Edith now, and there is no going back. And besides – I don’t want to go back.’

  ‘Mr Napier?’ Mrs George was standing by the outside studio door.

  ‘What is it now, Mrs George? This is a very difficult time, really it is.’

  ‘That’s as maybe, Mr Napier, but you have a visitor to the main house, that Mr Alfred Talisman.’ She made her voice purposefully accusing. ‘He said that you had invited him when you were in Cornwall, but that you might have forgotten to tell me, or Mrs Todd.’ Mrs George looked at Edith. It was the kind of look that might have passed between two martyrs who had been given the thumbs down by Caesar and were now hearing the roar of the lions.

  Edith hardly registered the housekeeper’s look. She was feeling totally confused, and the idea that Alfred Talisman, of all people, would be coming to stay with them was just what she did not at that moment want to hear.

  ‘Is this true, Napier?’ she asked. ‘Did you ask Mr Talisman to stay?’

  ‘I might have done. I don’t know, really I don’t.’

  ‘No, well you wouldn’t, Mr Todd, but here he is, and waiting for you in the main house. He does not seem to think that he was invited for one night, either.’

  ‘Does he not? And how would you know that, Mrs George?’

  ‘Why, sir, from the amount of luggage he has brought with him, how else?’ Mrs George curtsied and went. Napier stared after her.

  ‘I do wish she would not do that,’ he said absently. ‘Really I do. There’s no need for her to curtsy to us as if we were royalty. God knows, we are all equal here.’

  But then he caught the look in Edith’s eye, and started to smile.

  ‘We have talked about this, Napier. She likes to curtsy,’ Edith reminded him. ‘She takes a pride in being the housekeeper here at Helmscote and doing things what she sees as properly, and part of what she thinks is doing things properly is curtsying. That is Mrs George. She doesn’t want to be your equal, she wants to be allowed to do her job as she thinks fit.’

  ‘Oh, very well, have it your way. Now that the painting is not to be finished and your husband is not to be paid by that old devil Mr Algernon Hollingsworth, we shall probably have to let Mrs George go anyway, but not, it seems, before Alfred has imposed himself on her, and you!’

  Alfred’s luggage was indeed splendidly prolific, encompassing not just a portmanteau but his many work cases and canvases carefully tied in their usual coverings, not to mention his favourite easel, which accompanied him everywhere.

  ‘I thought this hall quite spacious until you arrived, Alfred,’ Napier stated ruefully as he wrung his friend’s hand in greeting. ‘Imagine you coming to see us after all, and straight from Cornwall, I dare say?’

  Edith too shook his hand, after which she looked away quickly, because as soon as she saw Alfred’s tall figure in the hall, and heard his rich-toned mellifluous voice, she found she was forced to turn away from the men before they both noticed that she had coloured. She moved towards the door.

  ‘Mrs Todd!’ Alfred called out. ‘I am most hurt. I have hardly arrived, and you are leaving?’

  ‘I am going to find Mrs George, so that she can go and find Biff, the new boots boy, and tell him to take your easel to the – studio.’

  Alfred turned to Napier, smiling. ‘Am I again to be allowed to work in the studio next to yours? How very generous of you, my dear fellow.’

  ‘You can set up your easel next door, and do as you please, Alfred. You know that. You are welcome to stay as long as you like, and in the house you can have the guest bedroom overlooking the garden.’

  Napier was smiling so broadly and looking so relieved at seeing his friend that Edith suddenly realised he must be pleased at this distraction, at not having to keep concentrating on the problem he was having in completing the painting for Mr Hollingsworth.

  ‘I shall be very quiet. I shall paint away, I promise you, without you even noticing my presence next door. I shall be virtually invisible, see if I am not.’

  Napier nodded affably at his tall, handsome friend. ‘My dear Alfred, it will be capital to have you here, really it will. You can spend the day as I do, coming back to the house in the evening.’

  Alfred smiled but his eyes were not on Napier, who had anyway walked off to find the boots boy, but on Edith.

  ‘You are looking almost impossibly beautiful, Mrs Todd, really you are, but why the old-fashioned cloak? Are you intent on leaving us? I do hope not,’ he said quietly.

  He looked puzzled as Edith, intent on tightening her grip on the cloak that she always wore between the studio and the house to cover the Grecian garb, dropped her eyes.

  ‘No, I am not leaving. I am just going up to change for luncheon.’

  Edith turned to walk away but as she did so, because it had been raining, she slipped slightly on the hall floor and once again, as he had on the way to the beach, Alfred went to her rescue, catching Edith’s elbow just as the cloak dropped away.

  He stared, mesmerised, surprised, as she tried to right herself, but it was too late. He had seen the Grecian dress, and what was worse he had seen her in the Grecian dress.

  ‘What is it that you are wearing?’ he asked.

  ‘This is just the costume I sit to Napier in,’ Edith replied, her colour deepening even more as she tried to snatch her cloak up and cover herself fully again. ‘As I say, I am just about to go to change for luncheon.’

&nb
sp; ‘Napier makes you sit to him in that?’

  ‘It is for his painting, for Mr Hollingsworth. Mr Hollingsworth wanted a large painting in the Pre-Raphaelite style, and as you know, until he went to Cornwall, Napier was a determined Pre-Raphaelite, although less now, I think; much less now.’

  ‘Yes, but making you, of all people, look as you do, in that.’

  ‘How do I look?’

  Edith knew that she should not ask, but she had done so, and nothing now to be done but to wait for the answer – or the laughter.

  Alfred shook his head, but he did not laugh, or even smile. ‘You look like someone else, not yourself at all. That sort of look does not suit your beauty at all. It makes you look – cold, and you are warm; you glow with warmth and life.’

  ‘But that was the whole point,’ Edith rejoined quickly, ignoring his compliments and feeling defensive of Napier while at the same time secretly agreeing with Alfred that she did look – as well as sometimes feel – very cold indeed. ‘Yes, that was the whole point. Mr Hollingsworth likes women, in his paintings at any rate, to look like cold, marble statues, figures from the ancient world. He is, like so many older people, obsessed with the antique, or so Napier told me.’

  ‘Have we a title for this painting yet?’

  Alfred raised an eyebrow, but Edith did not notice, she was too busy tripping up the stairs, away from him, away from what she now knew was something she did not need, must not ever need, and which, although Edith did not know it, was encompassed very neatly in the title of Napier’s painting.

  ‘I don’t know, I have never asked Napier. I have not even seen the painting yet.’

  ‘You must surely know the title?’

  Napier had returned with the boots boy, and was directing him to take Alfred’s luggage to the best guest bedroom, and his easels and painting materials across the courtyard to the studios.

  ‘I don’t know the title, no.’

  Edith was gone, so Alfred turned to Napier.

  ‘Your beautiful young wife, whom I have just gathered you force to sit to you in Grecian garb, tells me that she has no idea of the title of the painting for which she is so busy sitting to you.’

  ‘No? Well, she wouldn’t have any idea,’ Napier agreed cheerfully. ‘I never allow my models to see the paintings for which they pose. As you know, all models are inclined to make remarks, remarks which at the time, although often well meant, are nevertheless very off-putting, or so I have found in the past. You paint the model, or models, over months of intense concentration, and if you allow them to see what you are doing while you are engaged on the painting they are inclined to come up with remarks such as “You’ve made my elbow bigger than it is”. Or “I don’t think my mother should see this, Mr Todd, really I don’t.” Mrs George has never forgiven me the painting I did of her – not a portrait, mind, a painting – she has never forgiven me for making her elbow look bigger than she thinks is its natural size. Never mind trying to explain to her that the enlargement of the particular elbow holding the basket of stuffs is to make a point, never mind that. As far as Mrs George is concerned, I am the vile debaser of her elbow.’

  ‘That is exactly my experience. A few years ago, some stunner that I had discovered in the back streets of Whitechapel—’

  ‘Does Whitechapel have any front streets, do you know, Alfred?’

  They both laughed.

  ‘At any rate, this particular stunner, once I had scrubbed her up, flew into a tantrum when she saw what I had done to her front prow, and bother me if she did not refuse to sit to me ever again! She preferred to go and work as a sales assistant in Whiteleys. Imagine choosing to sell doilies and dusters rather than be the subject of a great painting by Alfred Talisman! And she herself nothing more than a streetwalker when I discovered her. But that, she claimed, was a respectable trade compared to what I had done to her, painting her as a goddess of the sea arising from a shell, complete with fish tail.

  ‘But Edith is your wife, Napier, old chap. She will not put you off, will she? She is not the sort to make a misplaced remark.’

  Alfred knew at once that he was on to something because he had hardly uttered when Napier turned away too quickly, and started to help him carry his canvases from the hall.

  ‘Edith is surely a help to you? If you are making her pose in that Grecian gown, surely she must be?’ Alfred persisted.

  Napier was still silent, walking ahead of his friend towards the studio.

  ‘Well, at any rate you must at least let me know the title of your painting, even should you not let me see it,’ Alfred called after him as they both crossed the courtyard.

  ‘Oh, the title – the title is not exactly original. It is called “Temptation”.’

  Alfred smiled, and although he did not say How appropriate that might prove to be, if Napier had seen the look in his eyes he might have sent him packing. As it was he helped him set up his easel in the studio, and seemed only too happy to have his company.

  Edith, dressed once more as herself, found them in the drawing room, where they had at once fallen into one of their usual animated conversations, arguing amicably about some finer point of brush work, something for which Edith could not help feeling grateful, for try as she might to avoid meeting Alfred’s eyes she knew that he was yet again concentrating on her.

  ‘Luncheon is served.’

  Mrs George executed her usual defiant curtsy by the door, and opened it wider to allow the three of them to follow her to the dining room, where Alfred at once stared around him in theatrical disbelief.

  ‘How is this, Napier? No crowded eating hall full of the honest faces of noble workers fresh from toying with your furniture designs?’

  Napier shook his head, looking rueful. ‘I am afraid not.’ He smiled across at Edith. ‘This was not my doing,’ he added, pulling a wry face. ‘This desertion on the part of the noble worker was all to do with my beautiful wife here, who is even now going to explain her theory to you.’

  Edith spread her napkin over her knee as one of the maids came towards them with a dish poised and ready.

  ‘It is perfectly easy to see that what was happening in the dining hall was quite wrong,’ Edith murmured firmly, which made the maid holding out the vegetable dish to her simper. ‘We could all see,’ she continued, deciding to ignore the reaction beside her, ‘that the men, and the women, were miserable, but most particularly the men. They did not like eating together like a lot of school children on a day out. They were self-conscious about their manners, always looking around as if they were about to be told off by teacher. So it seemed to me to be a good idea to suggest to Napier that he did away with his ideas of equality and let them choose to do as they wished – which in truth is after all what equality is all about, surely?’

  The two men laughed at Edith, who had widened her eyes over-dramatically to make her point.

  ‘Bravo. So Mrs Todd has brought about a revolution at Helmscote?’

  ‘More than a revolution,’ Napier said quietly, and he looked across at Edith. ‘There has been a climate change, a breath of fresh air, since we were in Cornwall. Ozone is now being breathed in this house where before there were only the musty, dusty ideas that come from too much time spent thinking, and too little time loving.’

  Napier’s look to Edith was so tender in its appreciation that Alfred could not help feeling puzzled. After all, some weeks before, he surely had not imagined that he had heard Mrs Todd saying, with some force, that since Napier obviously had no desire for her she could do as she wanted with whom she wanted?

  ‘Mrs Todd?’

  Mrs George was once more standing at the door.

  ‘Yes, Mrs George?’

  ‘There is a lady at the door who insists that she is a friend of yours, and she would like me to tell you that she requests to – to see you.’

  ‘Can you not see that we are at luncheon, Mrs George?’ Napier asked impatiently, frowning round at the housekeeper.

  ‘Could you ask her
to call back later, Mrs George, or leave a card perhaps?’

  ‘I think that might be difficult, Mrs Todd. She says she has walked all the way from Stowe, and she does not look like the kind of lady who leaves calling cards.’

  ‘In that case, show her into the morning room, and tell her I will be with her as soon as I have finished eating luncheon with my husband and Mr Talisman.’

  ‘Very well, ma’am.’

  Mrs George shut the dining-room door again, and Edith pulled a little face at Napier.

  ‘Mrs George only ever calls me ma’am if she is disapproving,’ she said in a low voice, glancing from Napier to Alfred and back again.

  Although luncheon was full of laughter, and the food delicious, Edith could not help wondering to herself who the visitor might be. She had after all made no friends locally, and the few that she had made in Cornwall would not possibly walk to see her, and certainly not all the way from Stowe. It could not be anyone rich, or even comfortably off, for they would have arrived in a carriage, or a pony trap, or ridden over.

  Napier must have been thinking along the same lines because he smiled at Edith as they neared the end of the meal.

  ‘I think your visitor must be someone who, like Mr Ruskin, believes that walking promotes health,’ he announced, because he too had obviously been puzzling as to who it might be, but was still determined that whoever it was would not be allowed to interrupt luncheon.

  As it turned out it was not someone who would ever even have heard of Mr Ruskin. But it was an old friend of Edith’s, and someone who was about to rescue Napier from his artistic quandary.

  Chapter Nine

  ‘Becky!’

  Edith had to stare for a brief second at Becky before she recognised her. To say that Becky had changed was to say the least. She was dressed in the height of fashion; her long, sandy-coloured hair was caught up under a hat with a cheeky ostrich-feather plume decorating the front of it, and her travelling dress was richly sewn with lace edgings.

  ‘Becky, come in, do!’

  Becky stepped proudly into the hall, and looked around her with obvious appreciation, while nevertheless determinedly maintaining an airy expression as if she was now so used to big houses that she thought them two a penny.