by Ursula Bloom
‘What made you walk up Snowdon?’
‘I don’t know. I wanted to, so I did. Haven’t you ever felt the fascination of a mountain?’
‘I don’t know. Would you like to take up climbing? Go to Switzerland or something?’
‘No, thank you. But I’d like to go up Snowdon again with Owen some day. But that’s no good either, I suppose.’ A dance band sent out music which caught up with her, and the jerkiness of its tune repelled her. ‘What trash it all is! What utter rubbish! Oh, Daddy, it all makes me feel quite sick.’
‘Let’s go for a drive; it would be much nicer than during the day when it is so hot.’
‘Yes, it would.’
They went for a drive along the Grande Corniche with the lights of Monaco twinkling in myriad stars scintillating in a bewilderment of light. The scent of the flowers was quite unreal, and the shapes of the trees dark shadows against the roadway. It helped her.
On the return journey, she said, ‘I don’t want people to sympathise with me, because I know it would have been so much worse if Richard hadn’t died. I’m scared of returning to Eresham.’
‘Then let’s spend the rest of the summer in the country? Wales, if you like?’
‘No, not Wales.’
‘All right. Would you prefer the country or sea?’
‘A cottage somewhere. Cornwall perhaps?’
‘All right, little duchess. It’ll be Cornwall.’
She hid her face on her father’s shoulder and began to cry for the first time. The tears were an enormous relief. ‘Oh Daddy, Daddy, how good you’ve been to me,’ she sobbed.
They leased a tiny cottage on the outskirts of St Ives. The moors were wild, they smelt of hot sun and were zigzagged by dusty white roads, along which an occasional bus lumbered. The cottage was primitive, with a late clematis blossoming about its rustic porch, and red roses on the windows. There were two downstairs rooms, and upstairs two uncomfortable bedrooms with an attic a top them, which let in the rain when there was any. A farm girl called Gemma came in to attend to their needs.
Gemma was plain, rather clumsy but she never minded what she did, and worked hard. Lesley had found that she had been more shocked by her marriage than she had realised, and was now seeking to re-establish herself, one of those processes which refused to be hurried. She had grown quieter. Her previous ebullience seemed to have diminished, and she was inclined to lethargy.
She bathed in the Cornish sea, going down to the beach hedged by black rocks and she lay on the white-gold sands where the great gulls strutted and screamed, and fought one another for revolting pieces of fish. In a frustrated mood she turned to the thought of the pixies, said to live on the heathland, or was this yet another of the Father Christmas myths? Then one day she met James Stevens.
James was an artist who lived on the Porthmeor beach in one of the fishermen’s lofts, which had been converted into a long studio, reaching out to the sea. He saw Lesley from his window; she was walking along the loose sand, dragging her feet after her as though they were unimportant. He knew that she was desperately unhappy, but was attracted by the poise of her thin body, and the way she carried her head. Once she looked up at his window and he saw her eyes, the perfect jade, and he had never seen such a provocative colour in a woman’s eyes before, like glass on the beach, wave-caressed and worn smooth. A pure green, like a cat’s!
Then one day he met her, it was the day of the intense gale, blowing hard, and the sand in a dust storm like a sirocco. She was out of breath, holding her head down, and her body pressed forward against the gusts so that she almost ran into him.
‘Oh,’ she said, surprised.
‘Hello, aren’t you a stranger here?’
‘I’m not here at all. Our cottage is beyond Porthmeor. But I come here to bathe.’
The sun was setting in the sky, falling down to a sea spread with a magnificent counterpane of gold. Evening after evening he watched it, and adored it.
‘My studio is up the road,’ he said, ‘would you like to see the pictures?’
She went with him and they turned in at a door which was painted brilliantly blue, and instantly there was the tranquil atmosphere of all the St. Ives’s studios. There was a bare floor and low chairs, and everywhere canvases stacked against the wall. A cat stretched herself on the one white rug, playing elegantly with a ball of crumpled-up tissue paper. ‘That’s a nice cat,’ she said.
‘She came here as a stray. I like cats.’
‘I like them, too. I suppose I’ve got cat’s eyes,’ and then, ‘Show me what you paint?’
‘I paint women.’ He paused a moment. ‘I wish I could persuade you to sit for me, for I’ve never seen eyes quite your colour, and I’d love to reproduce them.’
‘My mother adored a cat. Emily, she’s the maid at home, swears that my mother gave me cat’s eyes because of it.’
‘The cat gave you great beauty, too. I want to paint you?’
She said, ‘Very well.’
‘But your father? Will he object?’
‘Of course not, I’m a widow, and I do what I like.’
‘Could you start sitting perhaps the day after tomorrow?’
‘I think so,’ and she knew that the idea delighted her.
Daniel for his part was thankful that at last Lesley had found something tangible to divert her interest. She had become intrigued with James Stevens’s work, and his studio. Daniel met him and decided that James was quite a pleasant man, and left Lesley with him, having no compunction about it. He himself wandered off to the Tea Cup down the road, for an elevenses. There was a well-built girl who served in the restaurant, and who had the power to stir him emotionally. She had overpermed yellow hair, blue eyes, and a big bust, and he knew she intrigued him in the worst way. But, as he told himself, he had been through a bad time, and had earned a little recreation.
In the studio with James, Lesley found out something about him. He had married young, before he really knew his own mind, and his wife had been a school-teacher, the practical kind and methodical. He had been told that opposites got on well and so had gone on that principle.
‘Why did you marry her?’ Lesley asked.
He had married her much for the reason that Lesley had married Richard, only where it had been Daniel who had urged Lesley on, James’s mother had been the influence in his life. It had been a mistake, but he had the ability to wipe out the debt and start afresh. It is easier for a man, Lesley thought. He had left his wife, since when he had gone through various phases eventually coming here to paint seriously.
At one time Lesley would have thought that she was going to fall in love with him, then she knew that she wasn’t, and believed that it was much more satisfactory this way. It would have been a mistake to be in love with a man who had a wife, even if he didn’t know where she was these days.
They had known one another some time when Lesley asked him how he adopted this attitude of the placid acceptance of life.
‘Why don’t you get angry with it? After all you’ve had a very difficult time, with everything going wrong.’
‘Don’t we all? The first rule of life is to allow no emotional crisis to upset its normal course.’
‘I daresay, but how do you stop it?’
‘But you are master of your own affairs, they do not master you.’
Then she told him about herself; rather dully; in that subdued voice which always came when she talked of it. ‘My marriage failed. I rushed the whole thing, We bickered horribly, it could only have got worse, then Richard was killed in a car crash on the Riviera.’
‘Fortunately brief?’
‘Yes, there’s a lot in that.’
‘What will you do next?’
‘I shall return to Holbeins, and settle down with my father there. We’ve been awfully happy together.’
‘You mean you’ve got a father complex?’
‘No, I mean we’re just happy.’
‘Life won’t let you do that. Your armou
r has become vulnerable. The chinks show and about it there is something that you can’t avoid. You were married, and now you can’t live like a nun any more, even if you think you can. Had you thought of that?’
‘Well?’
‘You’ve got green eyes, my girl, and there’s quite a lot of feline instinct in you, though you’re only half aware of it.’ She knew that it was true, and she told him no more. Owen. Richard. The sweetness of that night at Frinton, when life ultimately lost its lustre. She saw something ahead. She did not know what it could be at that point.
James never suggested a love affair.
He painted an exquisite portrait of her with his cat lying on the sill behind her, and the view of the Head and the sea beyond.
‘What have you done to me?’ she asked him when he showed it to her. ‘I look like a cat.’
‘So you do, my dear, let’s hope that you’ve got nine lives,’ and he began pulling his blue smock over his head.
Lesley wanted to argue but she couldn’t. Nervously lighting a cigarette, she said, ‘I must go and find my father. I bet he’s in the Tea Cup.’
‘Does that worry you?’
‘I don’t see why he shouldn’t have some fun in life,’ but she said it with overdone carelessness. James knew how she really felt about it.
She went down to the quay where the boats had just come in, and there was a crowd of determined men and women buying fish, and a defiant trail of seagulls screaming above the masts. She heard their great wings rocking. As she passed the Tea Cup, she had seen her father inside, and knew that she would rather stay out here. He was talking to the girl, and his eyes were over-bold. She recognized that look. She went to the railing and stood there watching the boats unload their fish. Suddenly she knew that she hated this place, the loose sand, and the colour of the water, with the points and the bays stretching round Perranporth.
But she hated the Tea Cup, most of all.
When the autumn came, Lesley knew that her father had finished with the girl at the Tea Cup, and had turned his attention to a red-headed woman who said she was a widow, and had a very bad name with the people of St. Ives, who declared that she was nothing of the sort, but only gave herself the title to account for that fat child of hers.
‘I want to go home,’ said Lesley, ‘the picture’s done.’
‘Do you suppose Stevens expects me to buy it?’ her father asked her.
‘I don’t think so.’
He looked at her. ‘I don’t know that I’m quite ready to go back to Holbeins yet,’ he said.
‘Then I’ll go alone,’ she said, and made her plans.
On the last day at St. Ives, she walked across the moor where the pixies were said to be, and she went to the studio and had tea there with James.
‘I’m glad to be going back,’ she said, ‘but I wish I had found a pixie. I should have liked that.’
‘I doubt if you have even found yourself?’
‘I think I have. At any rate I know more about myself than people think.’
‘I doubt that! I can’t see you sticking small town life long.’
‘I shall, you know.’
He said, ‘If you get in a dilemma, remember me, and let me know. I could help?’
‘If in a dilemma, I shall send for you, and after that everything in my garden will be lovely.’
‘That’s a promise. I wouldn’t make love to you, you know; at one time you were afraid of that, weren’t you?’
‘Perhaps I was.’
‘You’ll always be safe with me, and come back here if ever you seek sanctuary.’
‘I’m not likely to want sanctuary.’
‘You never know.’
Purposely she lingered over the tea, and when she left she had the half longing that he would kiss her goodbye. He didn’t. He stood in the doorway with the ship’s lantern swinging beside it in the gathering mist, and the vista of blue paint behind him, and a sea fret coming in from the Head. And as she walked up the road, she thought that she must be crazy to be thinking about him.
What had happened to her?
They were home again, at Holbeins, and she had never thought that it could be so maddeningly dull! She was a cat walking by herself, and at times it was incredibly lonely.
The restlessness returned like an eternal sea, with herself the beach on which it rose or receded. She couldn’t sleep and was losing weight, and she had the sense of anticipation, waiting for something, not knowing what. Then it happened. It was nearing Christmas and she had gone into Addlington in her car trying to get a Christmas gift for her father.
Coming out of Addlington in the car, she was caught in a traffic jam, for a young policeman on duty had brought everything to a halt. Soon there was a double line of traffic, and looking across to her neighbour, she realised that it was her father in a coupé with a young woman. She knew that he had seen her, some inner instinct warned her that he knew, but he would not look. She blew her horn, still he did not look! He’s ashamed, she thought suddenly, and she was furious that this should happen. The girl looked common, her frock was a cheap cotton velvet, her face over pink and white, her hair irritatingly yellow.
When the traffic started again, Daniel had a bother in starting, or was that a fake to get rid of Lesley? She went off up the hill and waited at the brow, knowing that he must come this way if he was returning to Eresham. But Daniel was too clever for her, he had taken a side turn and had disappeared.
She got home to tea and sat there fuming, but he didn’t come in. Much later she heard him in the hall, and went angrily out to him. He was hanging up his coat, and looked cold.
‘I saw you,’ she said. ‘I saw you with that girl.’
He must have decided that laughing it off was the best way out. ‘Oh well, a man must have a little fun.’
‘It’s disgusting at your age.’
‘I think it is rather disgusting that you should challenge me. I also have the right to live.’
She did not know what to say, except that it was her right also. He walked past her, playing a part she knew, and she believed that he did not even care. A man at his age should not behave like a Casanova, she told herself, and rounded on him. A vivid memory of her youth had come back to her, she did not know why.
‘I suppose that story was true that poor old Miss Sprockett put round?’
‘I daresay. I wouldn’t know, and I want my dinner.’
He seemed to be a stranger to her, someone whom she detested, and the arrogant accusation of jealousy stirred in her. Melodramatically she said, ‘I don’t want to stay here to be treated this way.’
‘And where do you suppose you’ll go?’
‘I suppose I could make a life for myself. London or somewhere. I’ll go right away, Daddy, because I can’t stick this sort of thing happening,’ and she flounced upstairs to her room.
The jealousy was the most disturbing thing of all for he was hers, he always had been hers and now he was going about with horrible-looking women, women who vied with her for his affections! She was ashamed to realise the violence of the emotion within her. Perhaps it was that James Stevens had made her see it this way, for he had held up a mirror to herself and the mirror was brutally truthful, curse it!
Oh God, what do I do? she asked herself.
Next day she came face to face with old Miss Sprockett, to whom she had not spoken for years, but today she stopped and said good morning. The old lady gasped.
‘Why Lesley, I thought you didn’t want to know me.’
‘I’m afraid I was silly and you must forgive me. Come and have some coffee with me, it’s awfully cold.’
They went into Mrs. Thorne’s restaurant, now run by two resolute spinsters who had introduced rose-sprigged cretonnes and oak settles, and called it olde-world. They sat over coffee and cakes, and Lesley began to talk. She hated Eresham and wanted to go right away. If only her mother hadn’t died, how different everything would have been! If only her father … Miss Sprockett took the lead, f
or she had never erred on the side of reticence.
Before long she had quivered into the story of Arabella Finch’s baby, and what had happened. Now Arabella Finch lived in the poorest quarter of the town, with a husband who drank heavily and her grown-up family. Daniel had never come forward to help her and of course it HAD been his child.
Lesley listened.
The immense love that she had borne for Daniel, all the excess of hero-worship she had felt, died down, and she knew that she doubted everything he did; she must get away. She simply must get away.
‘Eresham is no place for a young girl,’ Miss Sprockett was saying, ‘and living a life with your father is quite wrong, because you ought to be having fun.’
‘I know.’
Inside Lesley there was an ache and a void, and the complete apprehension of the unborn morrow. She got up and they went out into the street, and when she had parted with Miss Sprockett she went home quite miserably. She had sucked the poor old woman dry, and was now resentful of what had been revealed.
She wrote a long letter to James Stevens for had he not murmured something about sanctuary? She wrote passionately, posting it without re-reading. He’ll wire, she thought, but he didn’t wire, for he had gone to Mevagissey for Christmas, and when he read the letter ten days later, he felt that the row would have blown over by now, and any suggestion he had to make would be out of date.
He was not to know that Lesley was waiting desperately for a reply which never came, and that she fostered a sense of additional bitterness that her plea for help had brought no answer.
For a couple of months the sense of atmosphere continued to drift through Holbeins, Daniel praying that it would abate, and then as it continued, he challenged Lesley. It was a February-pale spring day, with the aconite in the shrubberies, little yellow cups in dark green saucers, and the pink plush blossom on the elms. Lesley laid all her cards on the table, she had felt ill and restless ever since her husband’s death, and she hated being here where she was well known.
She tried not to be rude, and to admit that her main urge was to get away from him, but knowing her so well, he saw through everything that she said though he made no comment on it.