Daisy's Betrayal

by Nancy Carson

  ‘Are you going out today?’ he enquired pleasantly.

  She shrugged with indifference. ‘I might. On the other hand, I might get the groom started on the garden. Lord knows it’s a sight.’

  ‘Good idea,’ he said unctuously and reached for the teapot himself. ‘But why not do both?’ He poured himself another cup of tea. ‘Are you still intending to collect rents for me?’

  ‘You mean from your officially occupied properties?’

  ‘Yes, I mean those.’

  ‘If you want me to. I don’t mind. It keeps me busy. And I like quite a few of your tenants.’

  ‘I was hoping you would.’ He smiled agreeably. ‘I really appreciate your doing it.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll be doing it to please myself, Lawson, not to please you. I’ll be doing it to keep myself busy. Otherwise, I’ll die of boredom. But don’t worry, I shan’t pocket any of your precious rents.’

  Emma, the new maid, entered and asked what ma’am would like for breakfast. Daisy said she would like a boiled egg with bread and butter and Emma left the room again to arrange it.

  Lawson sugared his tea and stirred it. He wanted to make ordinary conversation, as one would during any ordinary breakfast time shared by an ordinary couple. Even he was finding it difficult. He said, ‘How is Emma turning out?’ and knew at once that he had said the wrong thing, asked the most tactless question.

  ‘Oh, I thought you were the expert on maids,’ Daisy replied tartly.

  ‘I asked a civil question, Daisy.’

  ‘I don’t know. How is she turning out? Like Caitlin? Though she’s not half as pretty, that might not bother you.’

  Petulantly, he crashed his cup back in its saucer and tea slopped into it and over the clean white tablecloth. ‘I’m going out,’ he rasped. ‘You do as you please.’

  ‘Oh, I will, Lawson. Be sure of it.’

  Two months passed and things did not improve. In those two months, Daisy’s emotions for Lawson had metamorphosed from devastation, through anger, to contempt. It was late morning on 23rd September, a Monday. The day was bright and it was warm for the time of year. Daisy had been collecting rents from Albert Street and the general area around Eve Hill as she had been doing regularly. As each week passed she was growing ever more aware that she was rushing through the other tenants to get to the old mine-manager’s house in Windmill Street as quickly as she could. She hankered for the company of John Gibson, looking forward to seeing him every Monday morning. She was confused as to the reason. Maybe it was what wronged wives did; sought male company elsewhere, wished somehow to retaliate, to curry favour with other men and take their revenge … Revenge, however, was not a word in her vocabulary. At least she had some rapport with John Gibson. She had come to know him well. He was like a breath of fresh air. He was so open, so sincere, and so refreshingly naïve for a man; such a change from Lawson’s boisterous, knowing, abrasive intensity and worldliness.

  She drove into the narrow street and hitched the horse to the gatepost. A group of very young children were scrabbling about in the dirt close by while their mothers and grandmothers sweated amid the clouds of steam that billowed over their cast-iron mangles and wooden maiding tubs in their tumbledown brewhouses. She felt in her purse and gave them each a penny to keep an eye on her horse, but on no account to worry it. Then, she walked to the front door, tapped the cast-iron knocker and awaited a reply.

  John Gibson was as usual delighted when he saw her. He stood aside to let her in and invited her through to his studio.

  ‘I was just about to make a sandwich, Daisy. Can I tempt you?’

  ‘If you have enough. If I wouldn’t be depriving you. That’s very kind …’ She stood and cursorily looked at the painting on his easel. ‘You seem to be getting on very well with your painting.’

  ‘Actually, no. It’s not going well at all … But never mind that. Come into the scullery and talk to me while I slice some bread.’ He took a fresh loaf from a bread bin and a large knife from a drawer in his table. ‘Thick or thin?’

  ‘Let me do it, John.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dream.’

  She laughed. ‘I imagine I’m more used to slicing bread than you are. Besides, you have smudges of paint on your fingers. Let me.’ She held her hand out for the knife and he passed it to her. ‘Thick or thin?’ she asked, mimicking him.

  ‘Something in between, I think. Neither thick nor thin … Actually, I was contemplating cheese and tomato …’

  ‘My next question,’ she said with a smile, cutting a first slice, ‘was to be, what are we going to put between the slices of bread?’

  He went to the cellar head and fetched out a lump of cheese wrapped in greaseproof paper, and a couple of ripe tomatoes. He placed them on the table in front of her. ‘Would you like some wine to drink?’ he suggested.

  She smiled as she looked into his eyes. ‘Wine would be very nice. A bit like having our own little private party.’

  She had cut five slices of bread and was buttering them when John returned with a bottle of red wine. ‘I don’t know if this stuff is any good.’ He scrutinised the label on the bottle. ‘I’m not an expert.’

  ‘Neither am I. Lawson says that good wine is wasted on me. I’m sure this will be fine. I must say, I didn’t expect to be entertained to lunch quite so royally.’

  ‘The spontaneity appeals to me, Daisy. Does it not to you as well?’ He opened the bottle, reached for two glasses and poured. He handed her one. ‘I seldom have company, and friendly company permits spontaneity … What do you think of it?’

  She sniffed the wine and feigned a studied look, parodying the more pompous guests who had sat around the dinner table at Baxter House. ‘Oh, exquisite nose, John,’ she said in an affected accent, then she sipped it. ‘Mmm. Deliciously soft on the palate … Good length … Absolutely top-hole …’

  He chuckled delightedly. ‘I see you have the measure of such people. You mock scandalously well.’

  ‘But isn’t that what they say? I wasn’t really mocking though. Just imitating.’ She opened the package of cheese and began slicing it, laying the slices onto the buttered bread.

  ‘Nonetheless, it bore a striking resemblance to my father. Except that you are beautiful when he is patently not.’

  She felt herself go hot when he said that. She was sure that she had coloured up, and cursed herself for reacting like a silly schoolgirl. What did it matter if he thought her beautiful? ‘Oh, but I imagine your mother thinks he is,’ she said, trying to disguise her discomposure.

  The hooter blew at the bucket and fender factory in London Fields at the rear, signalling dinnertime. Daisy sliced the tomato without further comment and placed that on top of the cheese. John watched while she put the remaining slices of bread on top and cut them all in half. He felt a strange and somehow nostalgic intimacy with Daisy; nostalgic in the sense that this minor domestic event reminded him of what might have been but could sadly never be, because she was married to another man. For some time he’d been brooding over her. Already, she was breaking his heart and, in the fullness of time, would do so completely. The perfidious Fernanda was fading from his thoughts and was being replaced by this equally enchanting young woman whom he knew instinctively was infinitely more compatible, and yet just as remote.

  ‘Where shall we sit to eat?’ Daisy asked, looking up at him now.

  ‘The weather’s so fine, why don’t we sit outside in the back yard? It’s private enough with that wall around it.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘I’ll take two chairs out … Go through the studio, Daisy.’

  She nodded and carried the two plates out with her as she walked in front of him. Suddenly, she remembered that Blossom was tethered in the street. She asked if he had a bucket that she could use for water. He found a galvanised one and she went to the pump outside the old miners’ cottages and filled it. Some of the workers from the bucket works were making their way to the nearest public house. As they deferentially bid her
good day, she removed the nosebag and set the water on the ground in front of the mare. As the mare drank, Daisy patted her and spoke softly to her. She left the bucket for Blossom to finish at her leisure and went back inside where she washed her hands in a bowl of water and dried them.

  John had taken the wine to the backyard; her glass and plate were waiting for her on her chair. She picked them up, sat down and took another sip of wine. John asked if the mare was all right.

  ‘She seems so. When I arrived, I asked the children outside to keep an eye on her but I imagine their mothers have called them all in for their dinners. I’ll check her again soon.’

  They were silent for a few moments while they ate. She looked at the backyard. It was wild and overgrown. At some time it had evidently been a prized and lovingly tended garden, if the ornamentally edged paths and paving bricks were anything to go by. Formal geometric patterns remained, formed by flowerbeds that were now choked with a thick, wild growth of weeds and tufts of twitch grass.

  She was enjoying this warm September weather, which seemed to be enhanced by the warmth she felt for her friend John Gibson. She sensed their affinity. But how long would it be before somebody would view their friendship as something more? It seemed impossible in their society of outward respectability, with its rigid marital and moral codes, to have a legitimate friend of the opposite sex without some cynic perceiving that there must be something sordid going on. Such a pity, for already, she valued this friendship above any other.

  It suddenly struck her how he and she had both been afflicted by the infidelity of the people with whom they had been in love. It had not occurred to her before. She thought about Lawson and an image of his debauched antics with Caitlin vividly flooded back. Funny how she felt no pain any more, how the passing of a few weeks had moderated her emotions so that all she felt now for Lawson was this cold contempt and indifference. Was this cordial and candid friendship with John Gibson responsible? Hardly. How could it be when they were not in love with each other? Surely, only the love that people exchanged could shut out the pain of former loves?

  Daisy finished the wine in her glass and John at once refilled it.

  ‘Thank you, but I really shouldn’t drink too much.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ he replied with a pleasant smile. ‘It’s such a beautiful day. In any case, it’s customary on a picnic to open at least one bottle of wine.’

  ‘A picnic!’ Daisy exclaimed delightedly. ‘Yes, I suppose this is some sort of picnic.’

  ‘Alfresco, the Italians call it. Eating outside in the fresh air, that is. Unfortunately, the weather in this country seldom allows it. It’s good to take advantage of it when it does.’

  Daisy had finished her sandwich and put her plate on the ground beside her. She picked up her replenished wineglass and drank. ‘How come your painting isn’t going so well?’

  He sighed and put his sandwich back on his plate. ‘I’m missing Fernanda.’

  Daisy felt an illogical pang of jealousy at hearing this. ‘Does it still hurt so much?’ she queried.

  ‘Oh, no, I don’t mean heartache,’ he said earnestly, anxious to dispel any doubts. ‘No, I mean I’m missing her modelling for me. I have a sketch of her, done specially with this painting in mind, but I need to see the nuances of shade and colour in her skin – in the flesh, if you understand me – to enable me to impart it to the canvas accurately and with some expression.’

  ‘Oh, I see … Would it help if I took her place? I mean, if I modelled instead? I could pose like she was supposed to, and you could see how the light falls on me.’

  ‘Would you?’ he said and his face lit up like a child’s at receiving a surprise gift. ‘I’d be so grateful. You have exactly the right colouring, you know. I thought so from the moment I first set eyes on you.’ He left what remained of his sandwich, got up from his chair eagerly and beckoned Daisy to follow him back into the studio through the open door. ‘Look, can you see how she’s supposed to stand?’ he asked as they stood together facing the painting.

  The model had her back to the viewer, her head turned in three-quarter profile as she looked out to sea expectantly, her arm resting on a marble balustrade.

  ‘I can do that. The drawback as far as you are concerned though, John, is that Fernanda was lovely.’

  ‘And you are not?’ He was incredulous that she should apparently believe otherwise. ‘You honestly think you are not?’

  ‘I never try and fool myself that I’m something I’m not.’

  ‘Let me tell you, Daisy, that you are a perfect artists’ model. Your face is as lovely as the dawn in summer, your hair and your colouring are ideal. Your figure is … Well, you have an excellent, youthful figure.’

  ‘I’m happy you think so.’

  ‘I do. And beauty is what people want to see. They see enough ugliness … This dress, Daisy …’ He pointed to the unpainted figure on the canvas. ‘I have it upstairs in a trunk. If you’d wear it, I’d be able to capture the folds in it properly, without relying on memory.’

  Daisy laughed. ‘That would be novel,’ she said excitedly. ‘You know how women love to try on different dresses. Something from a different era – a totally different style. Oh, I’d love to, John.’

  ‘I’ll dig it out for you and you can put it on … You’d better come upstairs.’

  She followed him up the wooden staircase, their shoes clumping on the bare boards. She felt elated, inordinately pleased that she was being of some practical help. Not only that, but the prospect of seeing herself in a painting, seeing her likeness as John saw her, was stimulating. He led her into a room that was devoid of furniture, a lumber room where his travel boxes lived, together with an old easel, a couple of marble busts, boxes full of God knows what. He went to the trunk and opened it. It was full of the flimsy dresses, ribbons and stoles he used in his paintings. He rummaged through it all and pulled out a plum-coloured garment made of a loosely woven cotton gauze. He held it up as if assessing its likely fit on Daisy.

  ‘This is the one I intended Fernanda to use. There are some straps as well that tie around the front and back of the bodice. Don’t worry about doing them up correctly, they’re a bit tricky. I’ll do them up when you come down.’

  ‘I hope it fits all right.’

  ‘I don’t see why not. You’re about the same size and shape as Fernanda. If you’d like to use my bedroom … while I go to the studio and prepare my oils.’

  He tossed the garment to her and indicated which room was his, then went downstairs. Daisy closed the door behind her and laid the dress on his neatly made bed. As she unfastened her own dress she looked outside and saw that Blossom seemed content standing with the gig. She scanned the room and saw the curtains she and Caitlin had made and put up, and felt a surge of pique as she recalled their friendly conversation, when all the time Caitlin was betraying her. Daisy was down to her underwear now. She took the flimsy dress, pulled it over her head and lifted the skirt so that the folds fell naturally into place. One of the doors in the wardrobe had a full-length mirror and she looked at herself. The dress was simple but elegant, light and comfortable, the perfect length for her … To her horror she saw that it was possible to see through it. That horror, however, was caused by the sight of her underwear. Beneath the dress, it looked incongruous and ridiculous. For this to look authentic, for her to genuinely look like a maiden daughter of the Roman aristocracy, she would have to remove her chemise, her drawers and her stockings. It was going to take some nerve to pose in front of John Gibson in a dress he could partially see through. She’d offered to pose for him though. If she went back on her word, she would appear prudish and feel uneasy that she had let him down, which she had no intention of doing.

  So, unabashed, she removed all of her underwear and her stockings and slipped the dress over her head again. Once more, she looked at herself in the mirror, turning one way, then the other. Then she turned her back to the mirror and looked over her shoulder at herself, and was pleasantl
y surprised to see how lovely the whole thing looked, even without the bodice straps yet done up. She could discern the outline of her body and a hint of skin tone through the material. It was certainly erotic but hardly indecent. It was elegant and only mildly frivolous. In any case, what was she worrying about? John would not look at her lasciviously. He would only be interested in how the folds of material fell. So, barefoot, she gracefully descended the stairs and presented herself in the studio.

  John gasped when he saw her. ‘Oh, you look wonderful,’ he enthused and she noticed he deliberately avoided looking at her where it would most embarrass. ‘Shall I criss-cross those bodice straps now?’

  She stepped in front of him and offered herself diffidently. He took the straps and passed them over her shoulder and under her arms, determinedly avoiding touching her. Daisy was uneasy that he might be able to make out her breasts and her nipples through the material. His consideration, however, made her feel all the more comfortable with him. Here, at least, was a gentleman.

  When he had finished, he looked her up and down with a professional eye. ‘Perfect,’ he said. ‘You look magnificent. Now I want you to pose like this …’ He turned her around so that her back was towards him. He touched her face gently, turning her head to the left. ‘Just look directly ahead of you, as if you’re looking out to sea.’

  ‘Don’t you want me to wear headbands?’ she enquired.

  ‘The headbands, yes! Yes, of course,’ he said. ‘I forgot. I won’t be a minute.’

  He came back with what she presumed were the same gold-coloured headbands Fernanda had worn. She tilted her head towards him and he put them on for her, adjusting them to his liking.

  ‘Perfect. Oh, Daisy, you look so right … No, just rest your hand on the table … Pretend it’s a marble balustrade. That’s it … Are you comfortable? Can you hold that pose without moving?’

  ‘I think so.’

  She could feel the sun warm on her shoulders through the glass roof of the studio. It was a glorious feeling. She closed her eyes. She became the girl in the picture he was creating, basking in warm Italian sunshine. The sea in front of her was a deep blue, heaving and sighing, matching her own emotions. The sky, which was of an equal hue, met it at the far horizon. She could feel the glistening white marble beneath her bare feet, touch the smooth balustrade in front of her with her fingers. Her body felt ethereally lifted from the constraints of too many hot and uncomfortable clothes; underwear and corsetry that she had already decided was ludicrous and ugly despite the lacy frills and fancies.