by Maggie Ford
‘Not down on your uppers, are you?’ she asked, suddenly concerned for him.
He gave a small shrug. ‘We manage.’
‘We?’ She pounced on the word, her heart sinking. Someone with his looks had to be married or perhaps sharing his place with a girl.
‘Didn’t I tell you?’ he said. ‘I share a room. We share the rent and – well, everything else. He sculpts. He sold something recently, so we aren’t too badly off. I’d just like to sell something so I can pull my weight. Though he’s very good about it.’
He. Ellie couldn’t help a sense of relief. At the same time she felt sorry for him having to put up with sharing, both no doubt getting under each other’s feet. But then, it was probably better than going back to an empty room, with no one to talk to or go out with to meet others.
She’d made no friends apart from Felix. The way he’d smile at her, she still had hopes that he might ask her out at some time, maybe to meet his friends. That would be nice. And maybe there might come about a more lasting union, though she wouldn’t make the same mistake as she’d made with Michael Deel. Or with her father.
She would need to keep him at arm’s length where that was concerned, at least until she was very, very sure of him. Odd, though, that while he’d been very free with that red-headed female she’d seen him kissing with gusto on New Year’s Eve, he hadn’t made a single advance towards her so far.
Perhaps she wasn’t his sort. But she was pretty and lively and if he looked deeper he’d find that she liked fun. Perhaps he preferred the more unconventional artistic type, the bohemian type of woman who dressed outrageously, dyed her hair and made free with men without a qualm. She, with her conventional dress, stuck out like a sore thumb amid such. If she dressed like them, would he take more interest in her? Ellie vowed to try and make an effort so as to get closer to him. She needed companionship more than anything at this moment.
As Felix accompanied her home, he carrying her unsold paintings along with his own, showing more strength than his thin physique would have had people believe, Ellie took his arm. But when she made to snuggle against him, he pulled away.
‘Whoops-a-daisy!’ he laughed. ‘You’ll have me over, carrying this lot.’
She immediately let go his arm. ‘It must be heavy. Let me carry mine. There’ll be one less for me to carry now.’
‘Doesn’t matter; we’re almost here,’ he said, his old self again as they turned a corner into her street.
‘Would you care to come up for a cup of tea?’ she asked eagerly as she took her canvases from him.
He pursed his lips. ‘Thank you, perhaps another time. Ginger, who I share with, will have got something in for us. I’ll see you tomorrow though?’
‘Yes.’ She felt a little deflated. But now her mind turned to Dora. If she could get Dora to leave, then they could share this room and she’d have companionship, someone to talk to; and as Dora had no interest in art, she wouldn’t get in the way.
One problem would be that if she and Felix did become closer, Dora might be a stumbling block. Even so, her sister needed to get away from the place where she was, being virtually trapped by that woman. Paid companion indeed! – a girl her age playing companion to someone of Mrs Lowe’s years who should have had contemporaries as friends.
Tomorrow evening she would go and demand Dora’s release from her job, and so long as Dora was still willing to come away with her, there wasn’t much they could do about it.
Twenty-Four
What was it about best-laid plans? Whatever the saying was, Ellie realized that rushing off to visit Dora would do no good at all. To turn up out of the blue could cause all sorts of problems and her chances of enticing her sister away could go all wrong.
It wouldn’t take five minutes for that woman, Mary Lowe, to talk Dora round with a bribe of, say, another nice dress or something like that. What had she to offer? An attic room, the constant smell of paint, the leak in the corner from a broken tile, a lavatory along the hall below whose flush was as if a battle had broken out and which, if used in the middle of the night, would wake up the whole building; tenants who kept themselves to themselves, whom she saw so little of that they might have been ghosts, who often, out of a misguided courtesy for others asleep in the house, avoided pulling the chain after bedtime, the morning revealing a pan full of all that had passed in the night.
This is what she had to offer her sister. On top of that, food would be plain and not plentiful. No more nice gowns. She’d be out all day trying to sell her work and what would Dora do with herself in the meantime? Not a very attractive offer. Ellie scratched miserably at her itching chilblains.
She still intended to visit Dora, but best to leave it for a while longer. Instead she used the evening to write to her, keeping it light-hearted so that should anyone else open it – and she wouldn’t put it past Mrs Lowe to do just that – there’d be nothing significant to be gleaned from it.
Another reason for not going to see her was that this afternoon had been a little traumatic, and special, not to say surprising.
As usual, she had sat on her stool beside her small display of pictures propped against the park railings, eyeing the passing public despondently. Not much interest in works of art. The weather had been miserable, the end of January as cold as could be expected, heightened by a sharp wind bearing the odd flurry of light snow whenever it felt inclined. Who’d want to come out?
Huddled in the expensive but now gradually deteriorating winter coat she’d brought with her from Doctor Lowe’s, Ellie got up off her stool as she recognized the man coming towards her. Her lips tightened.
‘So you’ve shown yourself at last,’ she began. ‘What’ve you got to say for yourself, Mr C. Hunnard?’
She might have been talking to the wind. He utterly ignored her as he took in the two oil paintings she’d set up, the one of her mother, the other, still unsold, of Mary Lowe, the rest just a couple of watercolour scenes.
The painting that was supposed to represent her father she had left behind, no longer being able to look at it without experiencing a new feeling: that the figure at his feet wasn’t her mother but herself. It made her feel strangely ashamed now to look, and it stood propped with its face to the wall. She wanted no one to see it now and many times had thought to paint over it, but was somehow unable to bring herself to. Though why she couldn’t have said.
‘This one,’ Hunnard was saying, indicating the distorted likeness of her mother. ‘This is new. It’s very good.’
He looked from the painting to her. ‘You must keep going with these, young woman. Get rid of this other rubbish.’ He waved his silver-topped cane towards the landscapes, then swung it back to her mother’s portrait. ‘I should like to buy this one.’
Strangely she felt loath to sell it, though if she wished to settle the rent and buy fuel and food, she would have to. She was no nearer to having all that money she’d dreamed of, enough to further her plans to find and confront her father.
The man had moved even closer to the painting to peer at it. Ellie watched him with growing indignation. Who did he think he was, taking in her work as if he were some blooming judge or other at a competition?
‘How much?’ he asked suddenly, standing back.
Now Ellie flared. ‘A bit more than the measly four quid you gave me for my last one! Someone saw it in your gallery, marked up at fifty guineas, and you gave me four pounds. Well, no, Mr Hunnard, this one’s not for sale – not at what you’re offering.’
He regarded her for a moment, then quietly said, ‘What if I offered a sum you couldn’t refuse?’
Ellie’s anger died a little, but she still stood her ground. ‘It depends on how much.’
Her heart was beating so fast it was making her feel a little sick. What if he named a price around the fifty guineas that the previous one had been marked up for? – should she stick out for more? After all, this portrait of her mother was special to her. She wasn’t sure she even wanted to sell
it.
She needed the money, desperately. All that she had made earlier was practically gone and next week’s rent still to pay. But what if he laughed at her price and walked away? She’d be in the soup.
She took a deep breath. ‘What about what you’re selling my other picture for? This one’s even better… I put my heart and soul into my work and you treat it as if it’s just a business. You’re the one with no soul.’
He interrupted her with a laugh. ‘My dear child, I am appreciative of the work you people do, and art is in my soul. That is why I am proprietor of an art gallery. But business is business and my establishment does not run on hot air. It is costly, there are massive overheads and risks taken, and at the end of the day I am not a charity. I also need to make a profit from what I love selling. Is that enough for you, child?’
Ellie wasn’t impressed. She was incensed. ‘And what about my overheads, as you call it?’ she demanded. ‘I’ve got to find the money to buy paint and canvas and food, and pay for the room I have to live in and coal for a fire to keep warm with. At the end of the day what profit is there for me?’
‘So what are you asking for this?’ Completely unmoved, he looked back at the portrait. ‘Who else is going to buy it other than myself? You have a client here who is interested in your strange interpretation of the human form and I happen to think it may have a market. But your price must be a viable one.’
She didn’t know what viable was. All she wanted was her due. Ellie tightened her lips. ‘I want half of what you sell it for.’
‘That means I take it away and pay you nothing until it is sold. That could take months, or might not happen at all. Maybe people are not ready for work such as yours.’
‘You sold my other one.’
‘No-o-o.’ The reply came slow and exacting, almost patronizing. ‘That hangs in my gallery still, awaiting a buyer. That is the risk I take. Therefore I will not meet any exaggerated price, and your suggestion is not sensible, to my mind. I shall give you twenty pounds for it.’
Ellie stood dumbfounded in disbelief, but he continued to talk.
‘Here is my proposition. I will give you twenty guineas, here and now, and take this away with me. I will give you my card. And if I find a buyer I’ll give you ten per cent. That is a generous offer. Take it or leave it. Leave it and I will not buy your painting.’
Ellie thought quickly. Ten per cent of fifty guineas wasn’t all that generous – a little over five pounds – but she’d have the twenty in hand. Dared she take up his offer? He seemed very keen to possess her painting. She might even up the price.
‘Come on, young woman!’ he prompted. ‘Make up your mind. I’m paying a lad to keep an eye on my vehicle. He’ll be wondering where I am.’
‘Vehicle?’
Unable to help herself, she queried the word and saw him grin behind his beard. She was informed that he had one of these automobiles that were beginning to be seen on the roads, frightening the horses.
The revelation chased away what she’d had in mind to tell him and she found herself blurting out the words, ‘All right, I agree. If you take me to see your showrooms.’
Instantly she realized how childish she must sound, proving her not to be as adult as she assumed she was. ‘I’d just like to see the other one I did hanging there.’
To her surprise he nodded. ‘Very well.’
‘Twenty guineas,’ she reminded him before he could move to take up the picture. His smile broadened as he reached into his heavy, dark-coloured, astrakhan-collared topcoat. Extracting a leather wallet, he took out several large, crisp, white banknotes and handed them over.
‘Bring the painting,’ he ordered and strode off rapidly, Ellie following.
She saw Felix with both his thumbs up and displaying a broad grin. In reply she indicated a plea for him to keep an eye on her other pictures, and he nodded, still grinning. She could trust him. He might even sell one. But with interest being sparse, she reckoned not. Anyway he had his own to sell.
This was the first motor vehicle she’d ever been near enough to touch, much less ride in. Slipping a sixpence to the young lad he’d enlisted to keep an eye on the vehicle, Hunnard took the painting from her to place behind the long, leather seat before taking her hand to assist her into the vehicle. She had to gather her skirts so as not to trip on them as she stepped tentatively up into the thing, bending her head low so that her straw boater did not collide with the hood that had been unfolded to shield the inside from the weather, very much like the hood on a baby’s pram or on a bath chair.
‘Are you comfortable enough?’ he asked. Ellie smiled and nodded, feeling not at all comfortable but very much on edge in case she might topple out onto the ground the moment the contraption started up. Her heart was in her mouth, but she held her smile.
Closing the little door on her, Hunnard went round to climb in beside her, spreading a thick rug over her knees, making her feel strange sitting so near to a man she hardly knew; but he took little notice of her as he began adjusting things that probably worked the engine.
He seemed quite at ease with it all, but Ellie clung with clawed fingers to the edge of the seat, unsure what would happen as they moved off, sure she might be flung up into the air. At a signal from Hunnard, the young lad began to energetically crank the engine, part of the task he had been paid to do. His job done, he scurried off, a silver sixpence richer for his pains.
As the engine started up, Ellie gave a little squeak of terror. Hunnard gave a deep chuckle.
‘It’s quite safe. Safe as houses,’ he remarked and she held her breath, so as not to show herself up any further. As they started away, she felt the breeze hit against her cheeks with the increase of speed, but the machine wasn’t as noisy as she had imagined – none of that rumbling, clanking, banging of the very few she had so far seen frightening the horses as they rattled past far faster than a trot.
His galleries were situated near Brompton on the other side of Hyde Park. They didn’t look nearly as big as she had expected but seemed to have quite a few people moving in and out of the main door. Leaving the vehicle in a side street, he conducted her through a side door, along a short corridor and into a long, brightly lit room where people were wandering with intent expressions as they gazed at what was being shown.
No one noticed them enter from the side door and Hunnard seemed to prefer it that way. Unobtrusively he guided her to one side.
‘Your self-portrait,’ he announced, quietly indicating it, now in a plain, light-coloured wood frame. A little removed from a collection of modern art, it looked isolated, as if it had no right to be there, making it look amateurish and stiff against the flowing lines of the others. It looked different and out of step with what he told her was the work of post-impressionists.
When she said nothing, Hunnard went on. ‘There have been quite a few new schools of thinking springing up these last fifty years. Yours is just another way of looking at life and it takes time for the public to adjust to something new.’ Gazing at her forlorn little painting, Ellie could see why.
It did look out of place. Perhaps it would never sell. Then why had he bought it and then even come back for more of her work?
Hunnard led her away from her forlorn little picture to move between the rows of hung paintings. What he was saying meant nothing to her – all about post-impressionism, primitivism, expressionism. As she gazed with feigned knowledge at what he was pointing out, it was going over her head. All she knew about painting was what Michael had told her, no connoisseur himself, and her natural talent and sensitivity for what she painted. All this grandiose allusion to all these different schools of painting was only making her feel inadequate and very naive.
‘Your work is very different,’ he was saying. ‘It falls into the category of neither impressionism nor expressionism, though maybe leaning towards primitivism.’
Ellie had never heard of any of this before, having no idea what he was going on about. But she wasn’t going t
o display her ignorance.
‘However,’ he continued, ‘your work is new, refreshing, and for a young woman your brushwork is surprisingly strong, which adds to its charm. It presents a puzzle and the public may think that; but I firmly believe it will eventually be accepted.’ If this was meant to be encouraging, she didn’t feel it; but he continued with hardly a pause.
‘It was the same with most of our impressionists in the beginning as well as with the expressionists and primitives. Consider Vogeler, Fritz Mackensen, Charles Maurin, Lovis Corinth, Paula Modersohn-Becker. She is a woman, by the way, like yourself, but is of course well established.’
She was glad to hear of at least one woman among all these male painters. She wasn’t alone, then.
‘What you lack, young lady, is experience, good grounding. You need to study under a good tutor, another painter of merit. I strongly advise you to consider it. But you are very young and have hardly begun to live.’
Ellie wanted suddenly to laugh but managed to curb it. If anyone had done enough living, as he called it, she had – enough for someone twice her age: living in fear of her own father, watching her mother working to keep her family together, watching her die, being thrown out of her home at the age of fifteen to fend for herself and a younger sister, and they could well have been sent off to an orphanage to work like little slaves for all the good her own brother had been… No, that was unfair. Charlie had given Dad a good bashing when he’d caught him abusing her. But then he had walked out. They’d both walked out, leaving her at fifteen to cope with a dying woman.
She became aware that while she’d been going over the past, the man standing beside her was still talking, unaware of her wandering thoughts.
‘In time you could develop into as fine a painter as Modersohn-Becker, if you apply yourself. You have time on your side. Even Paul Gauguin did not begin to paint seriously until he was nearly forty.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘But now his health is failing him. His paintings no longer sell as once they did. Virtually penniless, yet he is producing some of his finest work. He now lives far away from France, you know, on one of the islands in the Marquesas. Such is the fickleness of public taste.’