The Lorimer Legacy

by Anne Melville

  She flung herself on to a couch as he did what he was told. From his hiding place he heard the knock on the door, the dresser’s announcement.

  ‘Le due de Caversham, Madame.’

  ‘Alexa! Another triumph! A small present to celebrate.’

  ‘Jack, you’re too generous. How beautiful! Did you enjoy the evening?’

  ‘It’s the least enjoyable opera I’ve ever seen in my life, which makes your own performance all the more amazing. You’ve certainly proved the point that it’s possible for Salome to do the dance herself, instead of using a substitute – but only when the dancer is Alexa Reni. Can you imagine any of those stout females at Dresden casting off a single veil?’

  ‘They may turn out to be wise after all,’ murmured Alexa. ‘The dance is too tiring for a singer. I’m completely exhausted, Jack.’

  ‘But you’re going to dine with me.’

  ‘I couldn’t eat anything. Tomorrow we’ll have lunch and ride together. But tonight I must rest.’

  The young duke did not give up so easily, but Alexa was adamant, her voice seeming to fade away with weariness. Matthew listened with amusement until at last the door closed behind the petulant suitor.

  ‘Are you really exhausted?’ he asked, emerging cautiously from behind the screen.

  ‘Not in the least.’ Alexa bounded to her feet. Matthew found her sudden changes of mood startling. First indifferent, then angry, she had now suddenly become young and carefree, exciting him by the gaiety which sparkled in her eyes. ‘And I’m ravenously hungry. I never eat before a performance. What did you plan to have for supper, Matthew?’

  ‘A long loaf of bread and a bottle of wine. With a little goat’s cheese for a treat.’

  ‘Then I hope you have enough for two. Wait for me outside. I shall be dressed in fifteen minutes.’

  She was better than her word and took his hand like a little girl as she came running out. His own excitement grew as he led her up the steep and narrow streets of Montmartre.

  ‘You mustn’t expect too much,’ he warned her as they reached the foot of his staircase. ‘A garret to you may be merely part of the set of La Bohème, but to me it’s home.’

  ‘I begin to understand why Mimi collapsed,’ Alexa laughed as she followed him up one flight after another. ‘Why do artists always live in attics?’

  ‘Because cellars rarely have skylights. Here we are.’

  Even as he flung open the door he realized what a contrast his room must provide to the hotels in which she presumably spent most of her time, but he was not ashamed of it. He could joke about poverty because at least for the past five years he had known that he could earn money whenever he needed it, although he chose not to do so very often.

  The studio was tidy. Alexa could not be expected to guess the significance of that. It was the first time for nine years that he had not returned at night to a chaotic mess of canvases leaning against every piece of furniture, brushes in jars, discarded rags on the floor and an unmade bed in the gallery. Part of Matthew’s revolt against the well-ordered home of his childhood and the neat columns of figures he had been expected to produce in his father’s office was a refusal nowadays to notice his surroundings at all. But in the three hours before returning to the opera house he had swept the floor and stacked the canvases neatly and found a clean pair of sheets to put on the bed. His description of the frugal meal which awaited him had been a true one, because in order to take the sting out of his likely disappointment it had been necessary to tell himself over and over again that of course Alexa would not come, and therefore to cater for himself only in his usual style. But in tidying the studio he had revealed his true hopes.

  As he had intended, she went straight across to the canvas which stood unfinished on the easel and stared at it in perplexity. He stood beside her to explain.

  ‘All these cubes and triangles are merely on the surface, to break up the image,’ he said. ‘When you look hard beneath them, you will see the true subject of the picture.’

  ‘A piano,’ she said, pleased with herself for the identification. ‘But why must it be covered with these shapes?’

  ‘To prevent you from noticing that you are looking at a whole piano and not merely one view of it. When you think of the instrument you almost certainly visualize the keyboard as it looks to the player, but at the same time you’re aware of the shape of the raised lid as it is seen by the listener, from the side. I can combine both these views in a single painting by the use of these angles.’

  ‘Do people buy pictures like this?’

  ‘Not yet. One day they will. Don’t you find sometimes in the musical sphere that a composer moves faster than the ears of his listeners? But they catch up with him in the end. It’s the same with the eyes of people who look at pictures.’

  For a moment longer she studied it, and then turned to smile at him with mischief in her eyes.

  ‘And where are the others, the pictures you have hidden?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘This room is far too spick and span. You’ve been tidying your paintings away. Why am I not allowed to see them?’ She turned the lamp higher, revealing the canvases which he had stacked against the wall in the low dark corner where the roof sloped to within a few feet of the floor. Her laughter bubbled in gaiety as she turned each one round in turn. ‘How odd it is that paintings of naked women should be fit only for the eyes of gentlemen, while ladies who can study the same shape every day of their lives in the glass if they wish are expected to turn away blushing.’ She turned the sixth canvas in the stack and her laughter came to a sudden stop.

  Matthew took it from her and set it up on the easel. It was a painting in his earlier Impressionist style, bright and sunlit. A young girl was standing in a meadow of ankle-high grass. She wore a white frock: a wide-brimmed hat with green ribbons tied under her chin lay flat across her back, leaving her long hair, reddish gold, to fly loose about her shoulders. Her arm was raised and her skirt was swinging. Her eyes smiled from the canvas, and the woman she had become stared gravely back. Matthew looked at them both.

  Alexa broke the silence with a little sigh. ‘I’m glad you remembered me, Matthew,’ she said. ‘Although I was hurt when you left, I tried to persuade myself that it was the best thing for you, and so I was not angry for very long. And I hoped you would remember me.’

  ‘Did you remember?’ asked Matthew quietly.

  ‘Oh yes. But all the same –’ she swung round to face him – ‘I made myself learn a lesson from our parting.’

  ‘What did you learn?’

  ‘That men are not to be trusted. That nothing is permanent, no one is to be relied upon – except your aunt, who is the most loyal, loving creature in the world, even when she ought to be angry. It seemed to me that I must grasp at whatever came near me and make use of it while I could.’

  ‘What are you trying to tell me?’ asked Matthew.

  She had been joyous and carefree when she first came into the studio with him. Now her blue-green eyes were serious as they looked into his.

  ‘I’m trying to tell you that I am no longer the girl in that picture,’ she said. She stretched out an arm so that he could see the emerald bracelet on her slim wrist. ‘I’m telling you that young men like the Duke of Caversham do not give such presents only because they love music.’

  ‘Nor does the model who poses for me always go home when it grows too dark for me to go on painting,’ said Matthew. ‘But I can say goodbye to her tomorrow.’

  ‘And as soon as Caversham has spent all his money he will have to marry, in order that he may start on his wife’s. He has probably begun to wonder already how he may free himself from me. Shall we try again, Matthew, away from your father’s reach?’

  Half an hour earlier he had hoped to persuade her to spend the night with him. Half an hour earlier she would, he suspected, have agreed. But the happiness which warmed his whole body with a deep sense of peace had a curious effect. Alexa had been right
to warn him that they could never return to the innocence of their first love. But they could make a fresh start of a different kind. Marriage played no very great part in the bohemian society of Paris, and he suspected that Alexa’s friends might be equally casual in their attitudes. It was curious that, after so long away from Bristol, he should suddenly feel himself ruled by the conventions of Lorimer respectability. One did not sleep with the woman one proposed to marry until after the marriage. ‘How long are you staying in Paris?’ he asked.

  ‘I leave tomorrow. Salome is not going into the repertory here. Tonight’s performance was only an experiment. I shall be in Naples for the summer. And then to London in September. The management of the Royal Opera House is proposing to experiment with a winter season, and they need some popular singers. Once before I was invited to sing at Covent Garden, but only in small parts. I preferred to wait until the invitation allowed me to select my own roles, and now that time has come. I must warn you, Matthew, that I don’t intend to stop singing. I have the taste for earning large fees.’

  ‘That may be just as well,’ laughed Matthew. ‘Very well, then, I shall come to London too. I shall paint your portrait and put it on exhibition and within weeks every beautiful woman in the country will be queuing at my studio. I shall see you in England, then, Alexa. Dearest Alexa.’

  ‘Do you intend to tell your father that we have met again?’ asked Alexa, after he had kissed her.

  ‘My ties with Brinsley House are already broken,’ he told her. ‘Until today, the coldness has been on my parents’ side. Now it’s my turn to be angry. But to raise the matter with my father might tempt him to interfere again. So I shall find lodgings in London and make no contact with my family. Will you be staying with Aunt Margaret?’

  ‘She’s in Jamaica now, visiting your uncle Ralph,’ Alexa said. ‘But she will surely have expected to end her stay before September. And she has so often begged me to come to London that in any case I know she would hurry back to welcome me as soon as she learns my plans.’

  ‘Then we can be married from her house.’

  Alexa gave an amused sigh. ‘All over Europe men fall on their knees and beseech me to marry them. And the man whose proposal I might consider seriously doesn’t even trouble to ask the question.’

  ‘Will you marry me, Alexa?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course I will, Matthew,’ she said.

  6

  A resident in a foreign country soon ceases to realize how strange the environment must seem to a newcomer. Ralph, forgetting for a little while his anxiety on Lydia’s behalf in the pleasure which his sister’s company brought him, and observing how easily Margaret fitted into the life both of the family and of the community, needed to be reminded that many things commonplace to him must come as a surprise to her.

  One such reminder came on her first Sunday in Hope Valley. Although darkness had fallen, they were all sitting on the verandah enjoying the coolness of the evening. Ralph himself was reading aloud to the children; whilst Lydia and Margaret, although listening, busied themselves at the same time with the sewing of baby clothes. So familiar was the sound of the drums to him that he would not have noticed when it began if he had not seen his sister look up suddenly from her work and stare into the darkness, listening to something in the distance.

  Fearing she might be nervous, he interrupted his reading to explain.

  ‘What you can hear is the last of the Sunday services,’ he explained. ‘One of the brothers leads it. When the weather is good, it’s held out of doors.’

  ‘May we attend it?’ she asked him.

  ‘It would be thought an intrusion on my part. And you would find the path too dark at this time.’

  He was reluctant to give a more honest explanation, and on this occasion Margaret accepted what he said without further comment. He could tell that she was curious, however, and on each subsequent Sunday as the noise began he was conscious of her distraction. So he was not too greatly surprised when on one such evening, a month after her arrival, she went inside to say goodnight to Kate and Brinsley and did not return to the verandah afterwards. He waited only a few moments before going inside to call. As soon as he was sure that she had gone, he lit a hurricane lamp and hurried after her.

  As he had expected, he found her standing in the darkness at the point high in the valley where a waterfall crashed down over the rocks to be abruptly absorbed in the calm of a large pool. He had taken her early in her visit to see the Baptist Hole, but then it had been in daylight, providing a picturesque view of water splashing and sparkling in the sun. That was how he had first seen it himself. His predecessor as pastor to the community had tried to warn him that a natural feature which seemed to lend itself to the baptismal service might earlier have had a part to play in some more primitive ceremonies. He had been too slow to understand the warning, and what Margaret saw now was the result of his insensitivity.

  The whole adult congregation – including the men who rarely came to the chapel – had assembled round the pool. But instead of sitting in neat rows in pews, they were throwing themselves about, shaking their heads and shoulders in a wild dance. Their leader, standing on the flat rock which Ralph himself used as a pulpit whenever he had anything especially important to tell his congregation, shouted out phrases which were meaningless in themselves, and the dancers repeated them in a sound something between a scream and a groan. As they writhed and stamped, so their torches flickered, casting eerie shadows amongst the trees which clothed the gorge so densely: the accompaniment came only from the shaking of gourds and the rhythmic and steadily more frenzied beating of drums. Ralph had left his lamp behind on the path before coming near and it was not surprising, in view of the atmosphere, that when he put out a hand to attract Margaret’s attention, she gasped in alarm.

  As soon as she had seen who it was, Ralph drew her quietly away. Neither of them spoke until they were back on the verandah of the pastor’s house.

  ‘It comes straight from the jungle,’ said Margaret at last.

  ‘It comes straight from their hearts,’ Ralph countered.

  His sister nodded. ‘The same thing, perhaps,’ she said.

  ‘I ought to have brought it to an end when I first came here. No doubt you think it weak of me to have given in.’ He had struggled long with his conscience before deciding that the best solution was to insist that a ceremony which clearly would survive whether he countenanced it or not should be brought, if only by name, into the Christian observance.

  ‘I respect all the more the success you have had here,’ she said quietly. ‘To overcome even partially an old culture of such strength seems to me a most impressvie achievement.’

  Ralph was pleased by her approval. He was not as unaware as his wife believed of the disproportionate amount of time and energy which he devoted to the running of the Bristow estate. He had never confessed to Lydia that the plantation had once belonged to his great-great-uncle Matthew, and even more carefully had he concealed from the whole world the lie which had resulted in it becoming his personal property; but perhaps the pricking in his conscience increased his determination that the congregation should profit from its fertility. His nature was that of a man who needed to see results, to reap the harvest of his sowing. It was difficult always to feel confident that his Sunday sermons fell on receptive ground, and without the successful organization of the farm lands he would often have been depressed. From his observation of Margaret’s reluctance to discuss her own religious beliefs with him, he deduced that she was not in sympathy with his opinions – but this very fact made her praise more welcome.

  By now the time of Lydia’s confinement was approaching. As she grew heavier, so did the atmosphere. The torrential outbursts of rain continued for longer and were then replaced by a sun which burned with a fierce, debilitating heat out of a cloudless sky. Ralph could see that even Margaret, who prided herself on her good health, was having to struggle against lethargy and tiredness, and Lydia’s exhaustion was m
ore conspicuous still. The smallest exertion out of the shade was enough to make the sweat run off her forehead to cloud her eyes, while the humidity made her gasp for breath. She could only take a few steps at a time before needing to stop for a moment and rest.

  Remembering the lively way in which she had continued to work throughout all her previous pregnancies, Ralph could not help but worry. But he said nothing, because Margaret without fuss or complaint was already taking over all Lydia’s activities. She was running the morning surgery by now, and visiting the sick in their homes. Kate and Brinsley were old enough to look after themselves – and Kate, in fact, chose to accompany her aunt to the surgery, producing from memory the past history of the patients who came there. Margaret even spontaneously continued the campaign towards community hygiene which had been one of Lydia’s chief enthusiasms ever since they arrived. Ralph watched with affectionate amusement as his sister followed the course of sewage channels to trace a blockage, chased cattle away from the drinking stretch of the stream, lectured the mothers of children who squatted in the middle of paths, and paid surprise visits to the Bristow slaughterhouse to see that her instructions on keeping flies away from the meat were being observed. Whoever had trained the two women in the principles of public health had achieved a lasting success.

  At times he worried, seeing that Margaret was almost as worn out as his wife at the end of each enervating day. But his first anxiety was for Lydia, and he knew that his sister shared it. That was why she had come, and she was not a woman to do things by halves. So he said nothing, even when – two weeks before the baby was due – she insisted that Lydia from now on must remain at home all day, and for most of the time in bed. His wife accepted the edict with a lack of protest which worried Ralph as much as anything else. Although it brought his anxieties to a head, it was a relief when in the early hours of one morning he felt Lydia’s hand on his shoulder, waking him to say that her labour had begun.