Friday's Girl Page 28

  ‘Are you not used to easy company, Mrs Todd?’

  Edith reflected on this. ‘Sadly, it seems to me now that a husband can never be as easy with his wife as another man can be,’ she finally announced.

  ‘And a wife?’

  ‘Wives are different. Since you are still a bachelor you might not have noticed that wives are not expected to have opinions, only duties.’

  ‘You make marriage sound as grey as the dress in which I refused to paint you, Mrs Todd.’

  ‘Oh no, not grey exactly. But I do think that marriage is a state in which everyone seems to be in just that – a state. Most of all those outside it!’ she added, staring straight at him.

  Alfred jabbed at the painting in front of him. ‘Oh me, oh my.’ He shook his head before turning round and staring at Edith in some admiration. ‘It is truly said that it is always the innocent of heart who say the most wounding things.’

  Edith stared straight ahead, unmoving as she had to be, but unable to stop herself thinking of the impossibilities of relationships. Now that Napier was once more caught up in his painting he seemed to be considerably less than passionate. He was kind and thoughtful at meals, to be sure, but so tired at night that he could hardly keep his eyes open to climb the stairs to bed, which was, to say the least, disappointing.

  Perhaps taking account of her continued silence, Alfred decided to move their conversation to a different subject.

  ‘Your husband seems to be roaring ahead with this most difficult of his paintings, doesn’t he?’

  Alfred managed to sound both innocent and artless at the same time while continuing to attack his canvas, but for once Edith pretended not to hear him and continued to stare ahead.

  It seemed somehow so different when someone was painting a portrait of you, rather than for ever seeking to be inspired. She had failed, dismally, to inspire Napier, and it was not something that either of them could perhaps forget, for not only had she failed, but so had he, which meant that every time he looked at her he surely saw only – failure.

  ‘I myself have to go away for a few days,’ Alfred went on, pausing to stand back and view his work. ‘I am trusting that you will miss me most dreadfully. But more than that, as you must know, I am going away in the express hope that you will miss me.’

  Edith laughed. ‘You are incorrigible, Mr Talisman. Quite incorrigible.’

  ‘You may see the painting now that you are not sitting for it, dearest, if you wish?’ Napier announced to Edith a few days later.

  But Edith, because she was not sitting for the painting, and because she had sat for it, and disliked doing so, looked puzzled by the idea.

  ‘I would really rather not see it, Napier, because I don’t want to put you off. After all, the slightest word can put a painter off his stroke. Alfred told me only the other morning that a friend of his remarked that the lady’s hat reminded him of a saucepan, and he was not able to finish the painting. He slashed the canvas, and could not work for weeks.’

  ‘Ah yes, the little matter of the saucepan hat. I remember that. It was when Alfred was having one of his many affairs with a famous Parisian cocotte – she of the hat. Yes, I do remember.’

  ‘What is a cocotte, Napier?’

  ‘Something we would not wish you to become. Now you will please come and view,’ Napier told her, so abruptly that Edith was forced to follow him into the studio and stand in front of his easel.

  She stared at the painting. She did not like it at all. In fact, try as she might, she hated it straight away; happily Napier was staring at it with such ferocious attention that she had plenty of time to hide her feelings.

  ‘It is beautiful, Napier. Truly beautiful. Really it is,’ she said.

  It was true. It was beautiful, but that did not stop Edith from hating it. She hated it as much as she adored Alfred’s painting of her.

  ‘It is much better, wouldn’t you say? I truly hope that I have found the kernel of it. “Temptation” has to be cold on the outside, but here, up here, with the depiction of the same face, done several times, the coldness ends, don’t you see? There is a change of emphasis. I think I am starting to get to the heart of it. Indeed, I hope so, for I am sure that old Hollingsworth is about to hang up his boots on the whole subject.’

  ‘You must be pleased. You should be pleased.’

  Edith turned away, struggling with her feelings. Napier had found it so difficult to paint her, and yet now it seemed he had no difficulty painting Becky of all people. He had been spending his days painting Becky Snape’s face over that of Edith. Becky who had undoubtedly become one of the people about whom he would privately use that word – what was it? Ah yes, cocotte! Becky was undoubtedly a cocotte. Edith knew that, if only from the way that all the men around the place looked at Becky, as if they knew about women like her; but most of all from the way that Mrs George, in the nicest possible way of course, set her face against her presence in the house. No matter what the weather, or how late her carriage, Mrs George always made it quite clear that she could not wait for Becky Snape to be on her way.

  ‘I hope Miss Snape is progressing with her riding lessons. Ladies of her kind do need to ride well, especially in the hunting field,’ she had murmured the previous afternoon, after seeing Becky into her carriage.

  ‘I hope so too,’ Edith had agreed, watching the smart conveyance drive away. ‘I must say Becky Snape has come a long way from the Stag and Crown, Mrs George.’

  ‘That at least is obvious,’ Mrs George had agreed, and she smoothed down her starched white apron, inspecting it as she did so, as if she suspected that Becky might have made a mark on its pristine surface.

  ‘And so have I,’ Edith had added, not wishing to divorce herself from her own background.

  But Mrs George had walked off, making a light ‘puh’ sound. ‘You, Mrs Todd, are a different type,’ was her parting comment.

  Edith, while not wanting to agree with the housekeeper, nevertheless knew what she meant. She had indeed always been a different sort of person from poor little Becky. Becky had been thrown into work at a too young age by necessity, and by the fact that her stepfather worked at the Stag and Crown and resented having to feed her. But now, by what means Edith did not like to think, Becky was in their neighbourhood complete with fashionable clothes and a smart carriage, and taking riding lessons, at whose expense Edith also did not like to think; and what time Becky was not bent on improving her seat in the side saddle was now spent posing for Edith’s husband, something which Edith felt was somehow very wrong, although as usual she could not have said why.

  Then the reason came to her. Becky Snape should not be sitting for ‘Temptation’ for the simple reason that, it was now obvious to Edith, Becky Snape might be temptation. How could she be anything else given that she had obviously become a cocotte?

  Napier was quite open about the fact that he adored her form, that she was now his inspiration, in the same way that Edith had once seemed to be the same. All in all it seemed that by some strange twist of fate Becky Snape was now in Edith’s place, a place where Edith had not wished to be, but now wondered if she should have stayed.

  Edith snatched up her coat and hat and her fashionable fur muff and walked off to the garden. She would have to get good and cold to stop herself from thinking too much about her situation.

  ‘Never tell a man too much, Edith, not ever. And never let him know what you really think. A man likes to feel he is free to do exactly as he wishes. If he feels you’re putting a fence round him he will only want to jump it. It’s in the male nature.’

  Edith stared at the snow that was beginning to fall, remembering Celandine’s words in the summer. She had not put a fence round Napier, who would never have countenanced such a thing anyway, with the result that he had felt quite free to put Becky in Edith’s place, a fact about which Edith was becoming increasingly unhappy.

  She looked up at the sky. It was as dark as her thoughts, and the snow was now coming down fast. Inside
the studio, Becky Snape was once more posing for Napier, surrendering herself to Napier’s inspiration. It made Edith feel wretched, and for once she knew just why it made her feel so. It was because she herself was now caught up in Alfred’s painting. She had moved from failing as Napier’s inspiration to succeeding as Alfred Talisman’s, and neither role was comforting to her.

  ‘I am really rather afraid that Miss Snape’s carriage will not be able to get back to Stowe,’ Napier announced loudly, emerging momentarily into the garden, his blond hair awry, his artist’s smock covered in oil paint. ‘The snow has come too quickly. She will have to stay the night. Will you go and tell Mrs George to arrange to have a bed made up and a fire lit in one of the spare rooms, Edith?’

  The snow was piling up on Edith’s hat as she stared at her husband’s departing figure.

  ‘Mrs George will not like that,’ she muttered, but she returned to the house and confronted the housekeeper.

  ‘I don’t usually countenance the likes of her staying here, Mrs Todd, really I don’t. I don’t like it at all. I will make up the bedroom above the studios. I’m not having the likes of her in the house. We have the likes of her in the house no one decent will call on you again, that I can tell you. And if you think they will, you are wrong, for if I didn’t tell no one one of the maids would, that is certain, and you will not get no callers, and Mr Todd no commissions. Having the likes of her staying the night in the house, I ask you!’

  Much as Edith had, at least at the start, felt a certain loyalty to Becky, a loyalty based on their shared experiences at the Stag, she could not help seeing the housekeeper’s point of view. There was something vaguely threatening in Becky’s new manner, as if with every pace she took she was challenging Society to stop her having what she now considered to be her due.

  ‘There is nothing else we can do, I’m afraid, Mrs George. We must offer her a bed for the night. We cannot turn her out in the snow.’

  Mrs George sighed. ‘Well, let’s hope the blessed Lord sends a thaw as soon as maybe,’ she murmured piously, looking up to heaven as she turned on her heel. ‘But in the studio she goes, make no mistake; not in the house.’

  As it turned out the blessed Lord did not send a thaw and Napier, eager to get on with his painting, found the fact that Becky could pose for him indefinitely most convenient for his needs, if not for his wife’s peace of mind.

  The thaw finally came after a week’s long interment, during which, in the absence of Alfred Talisman and her own consequent inertia, Edith became increasingly unable to keep her mind off her husband’s seeming obsession with Becky. She felt herself burning up with jealousy, an emotion that up until then had been quite alien to her. She was sure that she could smell Becky’s scent on his clothes, convinced that when he slept he dreamed only of her. Why wouldn’t he, after all? Why wouldn’t he, when he was so obsessed with painting her?

  Celandine, on the other hand, by rising early and going to bed late, found that she had completed Mrs Molesworth’s portrait in a matter of a very few weeks.

  ‘You work hard, Mrs Montague Robertson, and that is the truth,’ her landlady told her in admiring tones. ‘I like a hard worker. I have always worked hard myself, and that is what keeps the good ship afloat, I always tell my son – not that he needs to be told, being that he takes after me rather than his father, thank the good Lord – I always tells him that hard work never killed anyone, but boredom did.’

  ‘I thought it as well to paint quickly, Mrs Molesworth, seeing that your granddaughters might tire of coming here and having to sit still. Besides being tedious for you.’

  ‘Not tedious at all.’ Mrs Molesworth raised her head, her nostrils flaring slightly. ‘It’s a privilege to be with you, Mrs Montague Robertson. You allus treat everyone the same, and I like that. You don’t talk down to a person the way my husband used to talk down to me, like as if I had been born with half a brain, just because I wasn’t a Molesworth. A grand Cornish family, the Moles-worths, though my husband only came from them right far back. But it stays, you know, that manner of being, it stays. It’s in the blood, and no more to be said. Now that you are finished, I dare say you would like another commission, wouldn’t you?’

  Celandine blushed. It was difficult not to feel that she had somehow become a charity case, someone to be pitied, at any rate in Mrs Moles-worth’s eyes.

  ‘My dear friend Mrs Dunstan, she’s not from round these parts, but she is a widow, as I am, and I know she would like a portrait of herself and her dog Cimmy to hang above her chimney-piece. That would make her so happy.’ She leaned forward conspiratorially. ‘She’s lonely is Mrs Dunstan, lonely and rich, and it would help pass the time for her, I know that.’

  It somehow seemed too hard-hearted to turn away a commission from a lonely widow. Moreover, Celandine knew, as Mrs Molesworth must know, that she simply could not afford to refuse it.

  ‘I should love to meet Mrs Dunstan,’ she admitted. ‘It is most kind of you to recommend me, as I am sure you did.’

  ‘No, Mrs Montague Robertson, I did nothing of the sort. She saw the portrait for herself.’

  Celandine looked surprised.

  ‘Why, did you not know, Mrs Montague Robertson?’ Mrs Molesworth smiled. ‘You are very talented.’ She paused. ‘Yes. You are a very, very talented woman.’

  ‘Yes, but a woman. Artistically speaking that is to be born a cripple, as I have found out to my cost, Mrs Molesworth.’

  Mrs Molesworth breathed in and out, reminding Celandine oddly of one of the carter’s ponies that brought the firewood and the coal to the house, trotting through the narrow streets with blinkered faces and docked tails.

  ‘Well, I know enough about the plight of women to fill a book, so I do, Mrs Montague Robertson, and I allus say to anyone who will listen that as if it’s not enough to be a woman, with all that that entails, the Bible has to blame us for all the evils of the world too. It had to be a woman who made up to the snake and ate the apple first, didn’t it, not a man, if you please, but a woman! No wonder we’re allowed less rights than a common criminal. I ask you.’

  Celandine burst into laughter. ‘I see I am not the only supporter of the suffragist movement in Cornwall.’

  ‘That’s as maybe, Mrs Montague Robertson, but nevertheless it’s allus best to keep your opinions under your hat with your brains, if you know what’s good for you, really it is. But to get back to this other matter, women like Mrs Dunstan, they like paintings of themselves as much as the likes of Captain Black. Yes. When we have the money, Mrs Montague Robertson, we women can spend it quite as well as the men, I allus say that too!’

  They both laughed.

  ‘When would Mrs Dunstan like me to meet her?’

  ‘As soon as maybe. If the winter weather continues this bright you will still have plenty of daylight, I should have thought.’

  ‘Yes, but as you know, my letter from France this morning means that I must go back again within a few weeks. The portrait might be interrupted.’

  Mrs Molesworth looked serious, and was silent for a while.

  ‘Family matters can be like a stone in your shoe, I allus think. You keep stopping to take it out, and then a few minutes later another jumps into its place.’

  ‘My mother died leaving a rather complicated matter.’

  ‘And you have Mrs Todd coming to stay first, I know that, poor creature, allus looks as though a breath will take her away. I told Mrs Dunstan that, though, told her you will have a visitor to look after afore you can set her on to a painting.’

  Celandine watched the tall, big-boned and pleasantly rounded figure of Mrs Molesworth leaving the room. She knew that Mrs Moles-worth could have no idea of her problems, but she also realised that the good woman must have guessed that whatever took Celandine to France so frequently was not an easy matter. What neither of them knew, however, was why Edith had suddenly written to ask herself to stay.

  Celandine waited on the platform of the winter-bright station, longin
g to see Edith, but at the same time unable to suppress her feelings of anxiety about the situation in France. To say it haunted her day and night was to say the least. She had written to assure Marie that she would be back in Paris as soon as her current commission allowed, but she also knew, only too well, that if she was to keep the commissions coming, she would have to at least start Mrs Dunstan’s portrait. It was Marie’s last letter to her, written in an urgent hand, that had given her real cause for concern.

  Madame, I have to tell you the situation here is becoming grave. You must, madame, make up your mind about the matter which must concern us both, before it is too late. Madame Montellier and myself are unable to continue as we are, but please believe me, madame, your most loyal and humble servant, Marie Depardieu.

  Celandine believed the urgent tone in the letter. In fact she believed everything in the letter, aside from the fact that Marie could never, would never, be humble. Part of Marie’s undoubted fascination was that she was neither humble, nor really a servant. She was, and always had been, Marie. Celandine was well aware that her mother had loved her, that they must have shared many secrets as mistress and maid, that they had in some way been a partnership, with Celandine, when they were out of sorts, going between them, an uneasy messenger. She herself had never really been part of the serious business of running the house, never known quite what they both thought of her as she induced them to move from America to Holland, and from Holland to Munich, and from Munich to Paris, in search of sympathetic tuition. All Celandine knew was that she had disgraced herself by falling in love; most of all, perhaps, because she had fallen in love too soon for their own plans.

  ‘Edith . . .’

  ‘Celandine!’

  The two young women kissed, holding each other carefully because of their hats.

  ‘You have no snow?’