by Mavis Cheek
‘What happened?’ asked Flora. They both knew the subtext to that.
‘The joke was that he wasn’t like it at all. Not really. And the reason he had an E-type and a flat in Chelsea was because he was the son of very wealthy, very indulgent and very profligate parents. A Welsh Chapel-reared father and a Scottish Presbyterian-reared mother. Can you imagine? Talk about brought up straight. Both were desperate to have a son who walked on the wild side because in their youth they had scarcely walked anywhere. They felt dull and wanted brightness, even secondary brightness. And when Angus came along he was even milder than Ewan, so it was Ewan they looked to. It was the days of swinging London and they pushed him into it . . .’
‘But pink, Dilly . . . And wearing mad colours? Ewan?’ ‘Well – he’s colour-blind, you goose. Surely you know that?’ There was an absolute silence only broken by the faint sound of Ewan talking on the telephone downstairs. Flora blinked first. Dilly began to laugh. Flora tried to be offended on Ewan’s behalf (if not on her own), gave up and laughed too. ‘I had no idea,’ Flora said eventually, allowing Dilly to refill her glass. ‘He’s always struck me as – well – a sobersides.’ ‘He is a sobersides. It’s just that he had no head for drink so that after a glass and a half of champagne he was dancing on the tables. And I got right up there and danced with him. Only it took me a little more than a glass and a half of champagne – well – a bottle and a half actually. Then.’
‘Well, I suppose it would seem exciting.’ Flora was remembering Edward. He had blossomed into his Dasher and Dancer mode gradually so it crept up on her, overtook her and then left her behind. ‘Personally I found it very irritating in Edward. Childish actually. Wildnesses.’ The gin gave her eloquence over loyalty.
Dilly was back in her own world, seeing who knew what (Flora certainly couldn’t imagine) behind those beautiful glowing eyes. ‘We got married – oh how his parents liked me – the wild young thing – and went on a long honeymoon and he danced on the tables all across Spain and into North Africa. And in Morocco it really didn’t show up that he was colourblind because all the men wore bright things and Egypt was mainly white cotton anyway. And then we came home . . . And that was real life because he suddenly decided he wanted to do real work. Practise as a proper solicitor. And that he didn’t like hangovers.’
‘And you did?’
‘Didn’t get them. And I wanted parties. All I knew was that there I was, the beauty of the family, praised for doing the right thing and marrying well – and it was suddenly quite different. No more parties. Silly Dilly had thrown her desirable self on to the scrap heap of life by marrying a small country-town solicitor. Well – he wasn’t a country-town solicitor then – he was a London-town solicitor in an ambitious practice but he began doing some jobs for nothing. Justice for all. That sort of thing.’ How honourable, thought Flora. Out loud she said, ‘Well, I suppose he could afford it with those parents and all.’ ‘He voted Liberal.’
‘And?’
‘The Davieses liked their politics like a good French steak. Barely cooked.’
Flora tried to work out the clue, and failed. ‘What?’ ‘Blue. And Ewan stuck to his guns.’
‘Well, that’s honourable.’
‘Honourable, indeed. So he turned his back on the money and they turned their backs on him for being dull and boring and ungrateful. And the London house went, closely followed by the Jags and the nice designer clothes and all that stuff – and here we are . . .’
‘Well,’ said Flora, ‘you’re not exactly poor.’
Dilly sat up and ran her pretty hands through her fluffy hair. ‘And we’re not exactly rich. So here I am. Dilly, launched with the expectation that an easy life was what you got in return for bestowing your beauty upon the world and choosing the perfect prince – beauty being the golden key.’
‘Well it does open doors,’ said Flora, wistfully.
‘I was bored out of my head, darling. Bored,’ she said, over the rim of her fresh glass, ‘To buggery . . . The golden cage, darling. And that . . .’ She tapped Flora’s arm with her perfect nail. ‘That is very hell.’
‘Well, why on earth didn’t you run off then?’ asked Flora, with some irritation.
‘Because the next one might be even worse and because – by then – I had another lover . . . One who was always the same, always available and never let me down. Ewan knew, and Ewan turned a blind eye.’ She laughed. ‘A colour-blind eye. Marriages are obviously made to last in the blood of the Welsh and the Scots, you see. Good people. Even those who have fallen from Grace. No pubs on Sundays for years in the one and desperate work ethic in the other . . .’
Flora could only think, She has a lover. Dilly has a lover . . . And she was thinking, What’s sauce for the gilded goose can legitimately be sauce for the balding gander . . . Give that other lover a medal . . . when she realised, as Dilly caressed her glass and took another bottle of tonic water from the bottom drawer of her what was either fridge or bedside cabinet, exactly who the lover was. Someone called Gordon who always dressed in green. She held out her glass. ‘I’ll have another one while you’re at it,’ she said, all miserable again. Just for that little second or two of sheer happiness Flora thought she had won. Colour-blind?
Ewan called up the stairs that he was ready to go.
‘Go on – run along, the pair of you. And have fun. Though quite how you’ll have any with my husband and a bunch of old papers is beyond me.’
‘Nice day for it,’ said Ewan, as they stepped out into the morning. ‘Very,’ said Flora, flatly. What she wanted to ask him was why, Oh why, he stayed.
Miss Murdoch took a little time to have a snack in the cafeteria and run over her notes. The exhibition was nicely populist. All the usual suspects. Nothing difficult and no surprises. Maybe she could slip in a little extra? After all, the dress in the Ditchley was said to weigh more than seven bags of flour when it was finished and you didn’t get statistics like that with the Cleves girl. It usually shocked them, that. And what a good story it was – Elizabeth – the Princess in the Tower who rose to be Queen. Miss Murdoch was always asked how such a young woman managed things so well and where she got her survival skills from; Miss Murdoch could always cite her father and the whole Tudor/Plantagenet genealogy. Then, as now, blood will out, she would tell them. She put it down to good aristocratic genes and left it at that. Catherine de Valois’ groom, the seed that eventually brought forth Henry VII, had not usefully registered with her.
Flora read the paper on the train, as did Ewan. It was a comfortable, ordinary way to be together and it helped her to calm down after so many revelations. She tried, by reading the letters page, to forget the little bubble of excitement that would surface despite Dilly’s somewhat pathetic tale. And she certainly tried very hard to forget that Ewan had told his wife a lie about probate . . . whatever that meant. Ah, she thought, even as she rummaged through it all in her mind, this is the female lot – to look for motives and for a complex stimulus of action that probably do not exist. Men were not so complex, perhaps, as women in such matters, or did she mean devious? Dilly had been lied to by Ewan, she guessed, because it was easier. A little white lie about probate meant – if anything – surely – that he was being protective of his wife. Since this was not a happy thought she rummaged around a little more until she managed to pull out the thought that he might have lied to protect Flora, which was much more acceptable.
How many women, she wondered, have sat chewing overendless speculations about the behaviour of the male of the species when the male of the species is being – in his own eyes perfectly straightforward? She returned to the Guardian’s letters page for comfort. There was just something about the moral high ground of New Labour that damped down all her neuroses. Ewan read the Independent, she noticed, with that hunger for details of the would-be lover that betokens a worrying and uncontrollable amount of interest. Already she was thinking of subtle foods and soft red wine and brandies at lunch and anything that might
follow. She had a tale to tell and she would tell it and he might, he might well, look at her differently then. Brandies at lunch? She’d risk suggesting it. He must have outgrown his hangovers by now, surely. For herself she was surprised to find that the gin was sitting very happily in her system.
Ewan collected their tickets and as they came up the grand staircase to the exhibition Flora saw in the distance a familiar grey suit with a Brown Badge on its lapel, and the tilt of a firmly resolved chin. Miss Murdoch, she presumed. And behind her, dimly outlined through the glass of the dividing doors, she saw, lining the walls, the rows of portraits. Flora was ready. Miss Murdoch should see the error of her ways, Ewan should see how clever Flora could be – and the rest – she guessed – would be history. I know why the stone was made, she said to herself, I know why . . . Miss Murdoch disappeared through the doors.
It was only then, as she put her arm through Ewan’s most boldly, and undid another of the buttons of her cherry-red silk, that she heard what she took to be a phantom – the voice of her daughter calling, calling, calling her. A siren song of warning, she thought, and a chill ran up her spine. She scrabbled to replace the undone button and felt her face go as crimson as her clothes. She must be dreaming, she must . . . Then Ewan looked round, called out, ‘Hilary! I thought you hadn’t made it.’ And then turned back to Flora and said with an immense smile on his face that she had a very distinct desire to remove ‘Flora – here you are – your surprise . . .’ And up came Hilary, plaited hair gleaming, pink-eyed, damp-cheeked, but beaming. ‘Hallo, Mum,’ she said, and after giving her nose a good long blow into a large white tissue, she linked her arm through Flora’s free one. The smile grew broader. ‘Thanks, Ewan. And it almost feels as if Dad’s here with us too.’
Then all three of them marched arm in arm towards Miss Murdoch and – Flora now felt – her doom. How could she say that it was all her own work if Edward was there with them in spirit, in Hilary? As they came nearer and nearer to the exhibition entrance, Flora felt the subtle foods floating away, and was left with the necessary and tantalising image of soft red wine and brandy instead. She’d be lucky if she got a cup of tea and a bun, now.
16
The Public Awaits
The portraits, hanging, waiting for the world to come and look at them and read about them and make of them what they will whether truth or fiction, whether founded or unfounded – are used to days like this. Days when everything is ready, the late arrivals have been delivered (Katherine Parr, last again), frames polished and put in place, the catalogue scrutinised and passed, the doors about to open. The usual glittering reception for the Galleristas and Sponsors over and done with the night before. Anna and her companions are brought together thanks to the generosity of a very large bank. A corporate sponsor. The portraits may nod to each other knowingly, for corporate banks are among the best of the patrons of art exhibitions. It is as if they feel the need to clean their money of some of its connections. They provide a fine show of fashionable people at the launch reception, and it is nice for the portraits, in their turn, to have something to ogle. And usury was ever thus.
Well, the floors have been swept, the champagne glasses cleared, the smears of caviar wiped clean, it is morning and the portraits wait. The portraits with bad conscience, as Anna observes, find it hard to contemplate the past. Marie Antoinette and Queen Victoria are not alone in their complaining. She once hung in an exhibition, Pivots of Revolution was it? – wrong again to call her a Lutheran – which featured both Charles I of England and Oliver Cromwell. Both of whom were beside themselves. Literally and metaphorically. And though Charles tried to remember the good days when he rode a white horse and looked tall, and Cromwell tried to remember the early days of Parliament and the Model Army when the country seemed ready to embrace everything and power had not corrupted him – they were both brought low by their more dishonourable memories. Despairing Milton was there, the good man in that group of arrogant egotists, and Charles spat to be told that he was the very model of Satan in Paradise Lost. Anna could only stay quiet and think that it was ever thus, the mix of politics and religion, and little had changed since her day. But at least she can say that her life, in the end, was a good one and she was happy. If it was mixed, the balance was always weighted to the good. As a single woman of rank and fortune, she had made very sure of that.
By the time her first Christmas arrived as the King’s Sister, she had adapted very well to her new life exchanging one family for another with her step-nieces. With them there was one cardinal rule – to speak no ill of their father. Not only because to do so was treason, but even when they talked together by the light of a candle with no one near, it was not to be done. His daughters revered Henry – both as their King and their father – despite his cruel treatment of their mothers – Mary’s mother taking a long time dying – and Elizabeth’s taking a moment. Yet still these princesses (who must only be called Lady now that he had also pronounced them illegitimate – unkind even in this) loved and admired their King. If Anna was being hypocritical, they were not. She maintained her hypocrisy with them to the end. For lessons in hypocrisy there was no better place than the Tudor Court of sixteenth-century England.
It was wise to be an amenable ex-wife. Henry was a vindictive ex-husband. It was still talked about in her time, the stories of Mary’s mother’s suffering. In her last years Catherine lay ill and alone and banished from seeing her daughter for not complying with Henry’s wishes for a divorce and still he was cruel. When the dying Queen asked the Spanish Ambassador to send her some old Spanish wine, old wine being good for the stomach and new wine being vicious, Henry dictated that Catherine should be sent new wine only. Such a petty act of cruelty. The King, it seems, was disobeyed and the kinder old wine was sent to Catherine but the servant who arranged it was punished. That, thought Anna, showed the mettle of the man she might have married. But not a word of that was talked of with Mary and Elizabeth. Better that way and preserve their affection and respect. Sharp-eyed Marillac knew how discreet Anna was and wrote, in his usual shrewd way, that ‘All her affairs could never make her utter a word by which it might suppose she was discontented. This I put down to the singular Grace of God. And furthermore, I hear that the Lady Anna is half as beautiful again since she left court . . .’
As she looks across at the Ditchley Portrait, glimmering in the low light, and at Mary Tudor, hanging next to it, darker, more restrained, Anna remembers how they were – Elizabeth was seven and Mary the same age as herself. Perhaps it appeased Henry’s conscience to let them have affection from their new aunt, and on all formal occasions he dictated that Elizabeth and she should ride in the same carriage, and dine at the same table. Her discreet way was a good lesson for Elizabeth. Such pragmatism for the unwanted was better than provocation. Be seen to be living an ordinary life of religious propriety and simple pleasure and keep away from scandal and you will survive well enough. Did Elizabeth remember it? Anna looks across at the portrait. No, not always. Pride, as ever, goeth before a fall. Poor daughters, both.
At least the portrait of Mary I – by Hans Eworth – is not too much of a contrast with Elizabeth’s pearly glories. Mary, as a newly betrothed queen shows a face that is softened by expectancy. She wears La Peregrina – the pearl that Philip of Spain gave her on their betrothal and it hangs there, like an enormous teardrop – Anna always thought that it was a sign of things to come.
On the opposite wall, a little way from Elizabeth and Mary, is a curiosity, lent from a museum in Pavia. It is a late-dated portrait supposedly of Anne Boleyn by Frans Pourbus, and the face of the young beauty is so like the young Elizabeth that you would swear to its authenticity. Yet Elizabeth poured scorn on the picture and will have nothing to do with the beautiful young woman. It is not her mother. Elizabeth may have kept her counsel about Anne Boleyn through the years but blood is thicker than water, obviously, and she has nothing to say to this imposter. The young beauty has proudly said that she is, of course,
not Anne Boleyn at all but Isabella Clara Eugenia, Infanta of Spain, later Archduchess of Austria, and has never wished to be anyone else. In fact she has been mistaken for many famous women down the years. This cuts no ice (of which there is quite a lot floating about) because Elizabeth Tudor is no friend of the Spanish, obviously, what with the Armada and Catholic plots and all. Neither, surprisingly, is Mary her sister, though half her blood comes from Spain. You can’t be treated as badly as she was by a Spanish husband and stay neutral. Elizabeth and Mary, united for once, scorn the beautiful Pourbus, whoever she is.
For Anna it is like being among the family again. And although in all her seventeen years left on earth in England, Anna never quarrelled with either sister, they had many a quarrel between themselves. Indeed, when Anna died and Mary arranged that she should be ‘honourably buried according to the degree of such an estate’, the two sisters were so divided that Elizabeth was a virtual prisoner. She took no part in the funeral proceedings and whether she mourned Anna or not there is none to say.
The sisters continue to ignore the unfortunate (and beautiful) Isabella who continues – most reasonably in Anna’s opinion – to plead that she is also very surprised to be here as the executed English Queen considering she was painted over fifty years after Anne Boleyn’s death. Isabella has also in her time, and to her indignation, been identified as Mary Queen of Scots – than which there could not be anything worse to report to either of these two proud Tudors. So she hangs there, Isabella/Anne/Mary and longs to go home . . .
Saintly Jane Seymour, still trailing her clouds of glory further down the wall, looks away from Anna and stares, rather vacantly, at her son Edward in his infancy. No bonding there. He looks out, a little king, holding his golden rattle like a tiny sceptre, and pays no heed to anyone. Holbein painted it with such tenderness. Anna remembers how much Henry loved this picture. Poor Edward – never allowed to have a normal childhood – he has little to say to anyone, really, for he was kept too long away from childhood’s chattering.