by Maggie Ford
‘I don’t intend to go to more than four pound, young lady, if you were expecting more.’ Ellie gaped. Four pound – it was a fortune!
‘That or I walk away!’ she heard him say through what sounded like a buzzing in her ears. She nodded and felt four gold sovereigns drop into her hand. Never had she held so much money at one time – never even possessed so much.
The man was taking down the portrait, now his property, from the railings and tucking it under his arm. Turning to leave, he paused.
‘One more thing, young lady,’ he said slowly. ‘You’ve talent – your work, expressionism, like Munch, Rouault, Ensor.’
Ellie had never heard of them. Her gaze was blank as heon, ‘My name is Hunnard – Robert C. Hunnard. I own a gallery. If when I return I find you’ve done nothing more than those two remaining works you have left, I shall assume you to be one of these artists who are too indolent to recognize that success only comes with dedication and sacrifice. This doesn’t mean dashing off a few dozen paintings just to sell to the public; it means putting your soul into each brush stroke, even if it takes half a lifetime. If you are of that mind, you will go far. If not…’ He shook his head then gave an exaggerated shrug and, walking off very swiftly and elegantly for one of his build, left her staring after him.
‘God, I wish I had your luck!’ came a voice beside her. She turned to see the scruffy young man, Felix, now gazing at her last two paintings as if totally absorbed by them. ‘Do you know who that was?’
Ellie shook her head and Felix went on, ‘He owns one of the finest private painting galleries in London. My God, girl, consider yourself made!’
Twenty-Two
New Year’s Eve. Ellie was alone, just as she had been at Christmas. At that time she’d missed the good company, celebration, laughter, good food, and had felt sad and lonely. Now, she told herself, all that was out of her system.
She stood now gazing at the half-finished painting she’d been working on. Her back was aching. With her mind riveted on the canvas, she’d let the fire die, and although she wore the thin blanket from the bed around her shoulders, her fingers were stiff from the cold as well as from gripping her brushes.
Her feet were freezing and when they warmed again would itch with chilblains. She’d have to stop, relight the fire, brew some warming tea and find something to eat. She didn’t feel hungry but knew she needed to eat.
She had gone over this painting so many times, but it refused to go the way she wanted. For days she’d stood staring at the blank canvas, with nothing in mind but the words of that Robert C. Hunnard: ‘Paint from the soul!’
She supposed she had painted from the soul when she had worked on those three other paintings, a soul full of hatred interpreted on canvas – of Bertram Lowe’s scheming wife, of her own loathsome father, of herself and the way she felt about her life.
Now that she was on her own, trying to recapture that feeling was proving virtually impossible. A need to make money from her work was not enough to instil into her that clawing anger she should be feeling. She had tried hard to recapture it, but it just wasn’t there. Hunnard’s fear was right: when it came to it she was, after all, just one of those people who were ready to sit back on their laurels after one brief bout of inspiration.
But she was working hard. Usually cold, tired, hungry, aching from standing in one position all the time but unable to tear herself away from this present painting, she was trying so hard to reflect a bit of her inner self.
Surely that was dedication – giving of herself, her soul, to her talent. Yet there was something missing. There was no longer the stimulation that had come from desperately wanting to escape, live her own life, follow her quest for her father, seek revenge.
She still had every intention of finding him and her need to make more money in order to do so was there, but it wasn’t enough. Something had gone out of her and she wasn’t sure what it was.
Ellie shivered, the cold eating into her young bones. Putting down her brush and palette, she went over to the fire. There was the briefest glow from one of the coals. Gathering up a piece of newspaper, she coaxed it under the live coal and blew gently on it. It began to flare. She added a couple of thin sticks of firewood, and as they caught, laid some of the still-warm coals on top. Before long there was a bright fire again.
Sufficiently warmed, she made some tea. She would make herself a fried egg on fried bread. There was enough money left from the sale of her paintings before Christmas for her to eat and be warm. But it wasn’t going to last much longer.
Since selling her so-called self-portrait she had only gone to her pitch three times with a few rushed landscapes done in watercolours. Oils took a long time to dry and varnish and people seemed to like her little landscapes, which she sold cheaply to keep herself going. But although conscious of what sold well to the general public, it was sapping her will to do the one she was at present struggling with. She was slowly losing that inner self this Mr C. Hunnard had spoken of. She’d not seen him since that first day. Maybe he had come while she wasn’t there and had given up on her, assuming that he had been proved right about her.
That evening she and Felix Reese had gone off to the art shop he knew of, her day’s takings of four pounds fifteen shillings burning a hole in her pocket.
It had been nice having a young man walking with her through the dark streets, even though he was thin and scruffy, so different from the young man who had once walked beside her. Michael – immaculately dressed and well-spoken but under the thumb of wealthy parents, destined to follow his father’s illustrious footsteps into the medical profession – knew which side his bread was buttered on. All the more reason to let her down. Her heart still felt dreadfully empty without him, but she had to put him behind her, telling herself that that part of her life was over.
Felix, with a cheap room not far from where she was living, had been so kind, walking her back to her own lodgings. ‘Young women should not be alone walking these streets after dark,’ he’d warned. ‘Perhaps I can continue walking you back.’
She had readily agreed, but bad weather, with Christmas approaching, had turned people off pausing to gaze at the displayed efforts of casual street artists and she had only seen Felix once more. Nor had Mr ‘Celebrated’ Hunnard shown up. No doubt such an eminent person wouldn’t brave the cold even in a coach and, as Christmas came and went, she suspected she’d seen the last of him, that it had been just a flash in the pan.
Even so, she had been encouraged to buy some decent materials and so far had spent her time keeping to her room, rushing off easier landscapes at odd moments while trying to transfer her ‘inner self’ to canvas. All she’d achieved was this uncompleted effort, trying to capture the endless shapes and colours that invaded her head.
The portrait would be of her mother, or her memory of her – thin-faced with care-worn features, the eyes, oddly misplaced as with those others of her portraits, sad and empty from loss of hope for the future, the mouth, though smiling, as Ellie felt the need to portray, that smile false and bitter.
She painted her as she always did when these dark moods took her – using heavy applications of purples, browns, dark shades of green, black, and here and there streaks of stark yellow and white and touches of vermilion, the shadows always a sombre Prussian blue. The colours and the unusual shapes that took her thoughts expressed how she felt. She supposed this was what Hunnard had meant by that word he’d used – ‘expressionism’. She couldn’t recall Michael referring to it. He’d tried to get her to emulate the old landscape masters, with no idea of the secret images that lurked in her head.
They were still there but refused to be transferred on to the canvas, even though, time after time, she’d overpainted the work in an effort to get them out of herself. At one time she’d even picked up the canvas from the broken chair on which it was propped to fling it across the room, spoiling the still wet image she had so laboriously worked on, so that she had to start that part again.
Maybe she would be better off painting pretty pictures to sell until she saved enough to support her former quest.
Ellie gazed around the room, a far more comfortable one than when she had first arrived. She had bought a secondhand armchair, a table and two upright chairs as well as a passable mattress, another pillow, a pair of twill sheets and two blankets, all second-hand but clean. But her money was beginning to dwindle and she was growing a little desperate. The way things were going she would never have enough to go in search of her father.
The thought depressed her even to the point of asking the question why was she bothering. But it only needed her once to cast her mind back to those days when she had been helpless before him, and that other awful time having Doctor Lowe look on her private parts in helping her rid herself of the vile results of her father’s attentions.
Where was Charlie now? Would he have found out where their father was? If she went to see the Sharps, they might have had some news by now. There was also a chance of seeing Ronnie again, but she doubted it, him being taken up with that girl he intended to marry.
Washing up the supper plate, Ellie prepared for bed, taking a last look at the painting she’d been doing. Perhaps in the light of day it would look better. She was just wasting her time trying to apply colour by gaslight.
Lying in bed, her thoughts zipped from one memory to another: Mum, Charlie, Dora – she’d have to write to Dora soon – Bertram Lowe and his wife, her time with Michael. At that her heart slumped, making her thoughts turn quickly to Ronnie Sharp, then to Felix, whom she’d not seen since being walked home by him over a week ago.
Bells began to peal, waking her from a half-sleep. They were pealing in a new year – nineteen hundred and two. People in the street below had begun singing and laughing and calling out to each other, ‘Happy New Year!’ over and over. And she lay up here alone.
She heard her own voice explode in a single intake of self-pity. A tear trickled from the corner of her eye.
In a flash she was up, sweeping away the tear and in her rough twill nightgown she ran to the window and threw it open.
‘Happy New Year down there!’ she yelled.
A voice yelled back, slurred and jolly, ‘An’ ’Appy New Year t’you too!’
Ellie’s laugh gulped in her throat. So this was her new year, alone up here. She knew no one except Felix and he hadn’t shown any interest in her other than by walking her home – as a sort of gallant duty, perhaps. Of his life she knew nothing. By the time she took her paintings out to sell – who knew? – he might probably have moved on. Dejected again, that brief but hearty exchange of good wishes behind her, she made her way back to bed, trying not to listen to the still pealing bells, the noises of hilarity in the street below that had set dogs barking from every quarter.
A tap on her door stopped her. ‘Who’s there?’ she called in alarm. A muffled voice answered her. ‘It’s me – Felix.’
‘Felix?’
‘Reese. Surely you haven’t forgotten me.’
‘What do you want?’
‘Open the door.’
‘I can’t: I’m ready for bed.’
‘Come on!’ There came another bout of tapping. ‘I don’t care! Open the door.’
Ellie stood hesitating. She was in her nightgown. How could she open the door to a casual stranger? But she couldn’t just let him stand there. He sounded urgent. Perhaps something was wrong. She had to open it. Taking a hold on herself, she did so, peeping around the crack, one hand clutching the nightgown to her throat. ‘What’s the matter?’ she queried.
‘The matter? The matter, dear girl, is that it’s a new year and you’re in bed!’
His narrow features were lively, flushed with drink, but happily so. ‘I haven’t set eyes on you for a week. I even wondered if you might be dead. Get dressed, girl! We’re going to a party.’
‘I can’t.’
‘You can! Do up your hair,’ he said, seeing it hanging loose. His eyes roamed appreciatively over the glossy, dark auburn tresses, never having seen her hair loose before; but his gaze didn’t linger long. ‘Put on something halfway nice, suitable for a party. Hurry up now. I’ll wait out here.’
Suddenly excited, all morbid thoughts gone, quickly she dressed, selecting one of the nicer of her hoarded gowns and hurriedly pinned her hair up into some semblance of order.
She had washed her face for bed so there was no need to wash again. The scent of soap was still on her skin – cheap Sunlight soap, but it smelled nice and fresh. One day, when she was rich, she would have beautiful soap and beautiful perfumes. Casting dreams aside she scrambled into her winter coat, scarf and her straw boater and made for the door.
Felix was still standing there, a long, skinny form in a brown smock-like coat over green plaid trousers, a gaudy neckerchief and some sort of floppy cap of brown velvet, every inch an artist.
‘What party?’ she queried. ‘Where?’
‘Not far away. Friends of mine. Just a step. We’ll be there in no time at all. You’ll enjoy it.’ He sounded almost short of breath. ‘Let’s go!’
Taking her hand he gave her no time to question him further as he ran with her down the two flights of stairs and out into the still lively street.
* * *
She’d had a good time but a strange one, one that had taken some time to get used to – certainly it was a side of life she had never seen before and had certainly never known. Poor and rough her upbringing had been before Doctor Lowe had taken her in – quarrelling neighbours, street fights, any person straying into the area often being waylaid, coshed, stripped of their cash, and sometimes even their clothes; petty thieves, fornication and adultery in the dark alleys. But people dressed as decently as they could. Not these people.
Having already welcomed in the New Year before she and Alex had arrived, they were most of them highly charged and very drunk. The rather vast artist’s studio was thick with tobacco smoke, heavy with alcohol fumes and packed with perspiring bodies kicking up their legs to the thump of piano and drums or else slumped around the perimeter. The air was cloyed with cheap scent and body sweat. No one had taken any notice of her as she and Felix had entered, leaving her to melt in with the general noisy mêlée.
As he walked her home, her arm through his, mostly to keep herself steady for she’d had a little more to drink than was good for her, she couldn’t stop talking about it all, how strangely most of them had dressed and behaved.
It seemed to amuse him when she spoke of her horror at seeing women in a state of partial undress, showing no shame in exposing too much of their bosoms as they and their partners openly kissed and cuddled in such a liberated way – and not always their partners, even women with women, men with men, so that she had a job not to gape.
‘No one seemed put out by it all,’ she said, which made him burst out laughing.
‘Why should they be? There’s nothing wrong doing what’s natural. Let’s face it, everyone does it, though the so-called respectable majority do it in secret, thinking others don’t know. They were having fun, a good time. So, what if one gets carried away? Nothing wrong in that.’
She hadn’t referred to it again, thinking of her father. He’d enjoyed himself – at her expense. There was more wrong in that than she cared Felix to know about.
‘You were glad you came?’ Felix queried her silence.
Ellie perked up. ‘Yes, of course I was.’ She’d had a good time, her eyes opened to another world. ‘Thanks for taking me.’
‘That’s all right,’ he said perkily. ‘There’s always something going on somewhere. I’ll take you whenever you like. We all need company; painting, sculpting, writing – it’s a lonely business and most are only too glad of a little company at the first opportunity.’
She knew about loneliness and, despite her having been so taken aback by what she’d seen this evening, the idea of finding friends among these people was tempting. At least they were honest about what they were, every one of them steep
ed in their art and to hell with the world outside their sphere, spirits unto themselves.
But one thing Ellie still couldn’t get over. There had been a corridor leading off the studio where now and again a couple would wander off, their intentions vividly obvious.
At one time she had lost sight of Felix and felt herself giving way to sudden panic. Then she saw him, his lips almost eating those of a shaggy-haired female with hair shaded an alarming red. Used to elegantly pinned coiffure, Ellie felt quite shaken by the sight as well as by seeing her apparently inoffensive escort practically sucking the girl to death. She’d gone over to them, by then the alcohol inside her creating courage and some annoyance.
At her approach he had let go of the strange female, who had commenced upon a sinuous, gyrating dance all on her own with slow head and body movements as if her mind was somewhere in the clouds. It was then Ellie realized that alcohol wasn’t the only stimulant being consumed here.
As she went to turn away, she’d seen Felix give a sheepish grin.
‘What’s the matter?’ he’d asked, but her annoyance had dissipated and she remembered turning back to him, thinking it suddenly very funny.
She dimly recalled wondering on the way home in the cold, fresh air of the small hours of nineteen hundred and two, whether she might allow him to take the advantage, if he so felt inclined. But she’d thought of Michael. She’d let her guard slip with him and been made a fool of. She still felt horribly abashed and humiliated by it.
Surprisingly, Felix had conducted himself well, even though there had been no apology for his behaviour with the red-haired girl. This morning Ellie was left wondering whether, if she hadn’t been there, he and the strange red-haired girl would have stolen off along that dark passage together? As he’d said, it was perfectly natural to follow one’s instincts in certain circumstances.