A Mad, Wicked Folly

by Sharon Biggs Waller

  I held my hand over the paper. “It’s not ready yet.”

  “Come on, Vicky.” He held his hand out. “You’ve read all my work, so there’s no secrets between us. Give it over. You’re going to have to show the examiners, so why not just start with me?”

  “Fine.” I handed him the sketchbook. “Bossyboots.”

  He took the book over to the window.

  “Blimey,” he said. “It’s really good.”

  I stood up and took it back. “I don’t know. I think the perspective is a bit skewed.”

  Will made a little noise of exasperation. He set the book down and took me by the shoulders. “Will you stop finding fault? Listen, you dafty. When are you going to realize how talented you are? You made my carcass look halfway decent, and that’s saying a lot.” He gave me a little shake. His eyes were warm, his expression kind. His hands felt so good on my shoulders. I thought about when he hugged me earlier in the park and when I fell asleep in his arms on the train.

  And then the image of him nude flashed in front of my eyes, leaving me feeling slightly dizzy, weak, and hungry for something I didn’t quite understand. I had seen Will undressed in person. He had seen me undressed in a drawing. Amazing that two people could know each other’s bodies so intimately and yet . . .

  This thought was barely taking shape in my mind when Will leaned forward and kissed me.

  I SHOULD’VE WRENCHED myself away and left. But my hands flew up and found their way to the back of his head, and I leaned into the kiss, lacing my fingers through his hair. A little sound left him, and his lips opened with mine.

  I didn’t care how scandalous it was to be kissing a boy in his own flat. I didn’t care that I was engaged to another. The way he felt against me, the hardness of his chest, the strength in his arms that pressed me to him, and how he smelled overcame any sense I had. The city noises of horseshoes ringing on cobbles, workmen shouting, and motorcar horns blowing faded into the background. All I knew was Will.

  The next moment we were on his bed, kissing each other as though we would die if we stopped.

  I could not get enough of him, and it felt as though he could not get enough of me. His kiss grew more urgent. His fingers tightened around my waist and pushed me back until I was lying beneath him. Will’s mouth left mine and fell against the hollow of my throat, and his lips trailed down from my neck to the top of my bodice. I could feel his breath flutter under the lace of my chemise, like gentle shivers on my skin. He’d seen me undressed in Bertram’s drawing, but I wished him to see me, my body, and not a charcoal rendering of it.

  My hands ached to touch what I had drawn for so long, so I pulled his shirt free of his trousers and ran my hands over the muscles of his back, tracing each curve and dip as if my fingers were a paintbrush and his body my canvas. “Vicky,” Will murmured, and the way he said it, so desperate and adoring, made something clench inside me. Edmund never made me feel this way.

  Edmund.

  Edmund!

  His name clanged around inside my head, and I reached for the last shred of sense I possessed. I braced my hands against Will’s shoulders and shoved him away from me.

  Will let me go, startled. His face was flushed, his hair mussed. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

  I jumped up from the bed. “I have to go.” I grabbed the Lancelot drawing and went back to the table to collect my things. I shoved the sketchbook into my art satchel, throwing pencils on top and cramming loose papers in. I swung my satchel over my shoulder and spun around, nearly bashing my face on Will’s chest, he was standing so close. I backed away.

  “Vicky . . .”

  I should have told him that the kiss was a mistake and why, but heaven help me, I could not. I gripped the strap of my satchel. “I have to be somewhere.”

  “I shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry, Vicky. Honestly, I didn’t bring you up here to do that. Let me walk you to the Underground.”

  We walked in silence back to the station at Praed Street. I felt stripped naked, my emotions raw. My lips still tingled from his kisses; my skin yearned for his touch. Once Will’s hand brushed the back of mine as we walked, and I drew it away quickly.

  We stopped in front of the Underground entrance. People bustled all around us, but I felt we were the only two standing in the street.

  “I’ll meet you Thursday week, then?” He sounded unsure. “By the boathouse in Hyde Park again?”

  “I can’t. It’s the Women’s Exhibition in Knightsbridge. I promised I’d draw portraits in the art stall.” I had been disappointed to give up a day with Will, but now I was relieved. I stared at his mouth, thinking of how I had just kissed it, how I had felt his body against mine. It felt wrong to be standing in the street feeling this way. Did the people walking around us sense it?

  “Oh,” he said. “The Thursday after, then?”

  I just ducked my head and walked down the steps to the platform. I did not turn around to see if he was watching me.

  On the Underground train back to Piccadilly, the clicking of the tracks and the noise from the engine seemed louder than usual. A man sitting near me must have tipped half a bottle of bay rum cologne over himself, and the scent made my stomach churn. What had I done? No matter how much I tried to rearrange in my mind what had happened, the simple fact was that even though Will had kissed me first, I had been only too happy to kiss him back. And I had let it go on for so long, let it go so far. If I hadn’t stopped, how far would it have gone?

  What kind of person was I to do such a thing when I was engaged to another? Was my father right? Was I, like other females, overly emotional? Was I wanton and tawdry like everyone thought I was? Out to have a mindless fling with my muse, like some male artists did with their models? This was why female models were held in such disrepute, after all. Why so many artists were considered louche. People assumed an affair was the next logical step.

  I pulled out my sketchbook and looked at the drawing I had done of Will working. And in that moment, I didn’t see him through an artist’s eyes, mentally placing a border around him, thinking of how the light would reflect best off his features, and how I could portray him. I saw him for real, as the person he was: stubborn, kind, full of a sense of fairness and integrity.

  Then I knew: this wasn’t just a passion I felt for my model. My feelings about him had nothing to do with how his looks inspired me; he was far more than a muse. With every stroke of pencil and crayon, I had drawn Will into my heart.

  I was in love with him.

  My fingers clenched on the edges of the sketchbook. Will and I could never be friends. I could never see him again. I had to end it. Another kiss like that, and I would give my body to him with no hesitation. He already had my heart. I had to take it back. I had to.

  But the thought of never seeing Will again, of never talking of writing and drawing and laughing with him, or kissing him again, filled me with grief. I couldn’t help it; I burst into tears, right there on the Underground. I tried to stop crying, but it was like trying to push back the tides.

  Twenty-Seven

  Knightsbridge, Prince’s Skating Club,

  Friday, fourteenth of May

  CONCENTRATE ON MY art. That was the solution to the problem of Will and Vicky. I knew it was. And I was grateful to have somewhere to direct my mind to when Sophie, Lucy, and I headed to the Women’s Exhibition the day after it opened to volunteer. Sylvia’s grand mural was finally completed and hung in place at the Prince’s skating rink in Knightsbridge. The rink was huge: a vast and cavernous space that had hosted the figure skating events of the Olympics last year. The ice had been removed in February, and now events and bazaars were held in it.

  Sophie turned in a slow circle, taking in the vast iron-and-glass ceiling festooned with banners in the WSPU’s colors. The spring sun cast rays of light through the rink. The Aeolian Women’s Orchestra sat on a pl
atform in the middle of the rink, tuning their instruments.

  The twenty-foot-long murals covered the walls of the rink, looking for all the world as if they had been painted in situ and had always been there, just as Sylvia hoped. The winged angels looked down at the crowd, giving the space a mystical air. The woman sowing seeds with doves over her head and thistles at her feet took pride of place at the middle of the hall, and the design I’d helped with, of the woman reaping the rewards, was directly across.

  “Sylvia must be over the moon,” Sophie said.

  “She must be exhausted,” Lucy added. “I don’t think she slept much in the last few days.”

  “This is what you’ve been working on, Miss Darling?” Sophie said.

  I pointed. “That’s my design.”

  She looked at me in wonder. “It’s so beautiful.”

  “Thank you, Sophie, but I didn’t complete her. Another artist did.”

  The fact that I hadn’t been there at the end rankled. I had gone back to the mural at the beginning of May to help one more time and to collect my reference letter from Austin, but I could find no time to help finish. I pictured all the artists filling in the final colors, stepping back from the work to admire it, and celebrating with a bottle of wine. I imagined them at the exhibition supervising the installation, sitting together on the skating rink’s floor, and absorbing the beauty of the work, exhausted but happy. Meanwhile, I had probably been practicing my court curtsy at Miss Winthrop’s or choosing the right color drapes for the sitting room or inquiring about the health of Georgette Plimpton’s spaniel again, as I’d never worked out anything else to say to her.

  Never again. I would never let that happen again.

  Fifty stalls had been set up, and in them women were setting out farm produce, confectionary, books, and postcards. The millinery stall was filled with wide-brimmed hats, cloches, and straw boaters, all trimmed in WSPU colors. Others were in the adjoining stall readying the posters, badges, and jewelry for sale. There were several stalls from regional WSPU branches throughout the country selling local fare such as Yorkshire parkin and Kentish cherry pudding.

  Close to the entrance, where no one could miss it, was an exact replica of a Holloway second-division prison cell, where the suffragettes were commonly held. Next to it was a replica of a first-division cell where the suffragettes, as political offenders, should have been held. A suffragette stood in prison garb, an ill-fitting green wool gown with a long apron tied at the waist, and a white cap on her head. The whole outfit was marked with arrows to denote prisoner status. Three times a day, a former prisoner would offer guided tours showing the public the difference between the way female and male political prisoners were treated. Although their protests grew from the same types of political unfairness, the male prisoners were allowed to keep their dignity; the female prisoners were not.

  Lucy laughed. “That’s Vera. Talk about game for anything. She’s been in the clink lots. This must seem like home to her.”

  “Costs a sixpence to get in,” Sophie said, digging into her purse. “Come on, Miss Darling. Let’s have a look.”

  “I’ve seen it in real life,” Lucy said. “I’m off to help at the jewelry stall.”

  Sophie and I paid our admission to the suffragette, and she opened the iron door to the first-division cell. It was a small bedroom with a rug on the floor, blankets and pillows on the bed, and books on shelves.

  And then we crossed through to the second-division cell. It was tiny, about four paces across. There was a small wooden stool to sit on, and a shelf in one corner was only large enough to hold an earthenware dinner plate and mug. The bed stood about four inches off the ground and was maybe two feet wide. The mattress looked full of lumps. The cell was dark and foreboding.

  “I admire the women who volunteer for this,” Sophie said. “I don’t think I have the courage.”

  “Neither do I, Sophie,” I said.

  I READIED THE art stall, setting out easels and preparing the space for customers who could commission painted or sketched portraits from us. While I waited for customers, I sketched the prison cell.

  At that moment a man approached the art stall, holding the hand of a little girl, and requested a sketch of her. I put my pad down and crossed to the easel.

  “Sit here.” I pointed to the chair we had set up. “You must sit very still and not fidget. Do you think you can do that?”

  The little girl put her thumb in her mouth and stared up at me, big brown eyes wide as saucers.

  Her father laughed. “She’s a shy one, miss. You won’t get much out of her.”

  I smiled at her father, but I felt sad. I could not picture my father bringing me to such a place when I was a child. I couldn’t even remember ever holding his hand. My father had certainly never looked upon me with pride like this man did his daughter.

  I stood behind the easel and began to sketch. The drawing was nearly completed when I happened to look up across the hall to the entrance, and my fingers squeezed so hard that I snapped the pastel in half.

  “Something the matter, miss?” the father said, frowning.

  “I . . . no. I need to be somewhere.” I took the picture off the easel and handed it to him. “No charge for the portrait. I’m sorry I couldn’t complete it. Perhaps you’ll come back.” I was babbling like a fool. I had to get out of there before I was seen.

  Because coming down the aisle were two men. And one of them was Sir Henry Carrick-Humphrey. Edmund’s father.

  “Come on, old chap,” the other man said to Sir Henry. “We need to be getting on.”

  “Look at this nonsense,” Sir Henry replied. “Do they think selling hats and cakes will get them the vote?”

  They were coming toward the stall, and so I didn’t wait about any longer. I left, moving as quickly away from them as I could. I went outside and walked to Hyde Park. I sat on a bench near Rotten Row, where the gentlemen and ladies rode their horses along the path.

  Sir Henry could have seen me so easily. He would have told my father, and I would have been sent to Aunt Maude’s house to wait for my wedding day—or not have had a wedding day at all. I could almost smell the scent of boiled cabbage and beef tongue, the eau de cologne that permeated Aunt Maude’s house.

  Still, I was ashamed of myself for running away from Sir Henry and leaving the exhibition. I was a rabbit-hearted girl down to my toes.

  SUFFRAGE ACTIVITY SETTLED as soon as the exhibition drew to a close so as to let the peaceful efforts of the event sink into the minds of the people and the government. The Pankhurst family scattered. Sylvia, exhausted, went to Kent to paint and recover. Christabel left for Germany for the summer to restore her own health. Their mother, Emmeline Pankhurst, sent Harry to Fels Farm in Essex to work the land while she toured the north to gain support.

  As for me, I never went back to see Will again. I wrote him a letter explaining that I couldn’t meet him any longer, that it had become too difficult to sneak out of the house. I sent the letter to his flat along with the story illustrations I had finished. Ending things with Will was a worthwhile sacrifice, because for all Will meant to me, he could not send me to art school. I hadn’t set out to find love; I’d set out to become an artist, and that was exactly what I needed to do.

  It was over. William Fletcher had gone from my life as abruptly as he had entered it. He would be nothing more to me now than images on paper made with pencil and pastel, just as he should have been all along.

  Edmund came home from Oxford for good at the beginning of June. I walked in the park with him nearly every day, went to parties with him, smiled and laughed in all the right places. I went with Mamma to choose linens and china for the new house; I worked with Sophie on my trousseau. I had tea with India and her friends and tried to join in their conversation.

  But Will was entwined with my emotions and my artwork so much that I could not un
pick him from them. Thursdays were a misery. I kept up the scheme of my church charity so as to get out of the house and be on my own. I tried to resume drawing in the Royal Academy courtyard, but the first time I went there I nearly burst into tears, remembering Will’s face, his smile, the lips that had kissed me, the hands that had touched me. Even A Mermaid held memories of him. When I went to visit her, I found her gaze, which once seemed so welcoming, to be almost accusatory.

  I worked on the pastel drawing of Lancelot each morning. I had only less than a month left before I would present it to the examiners on the first of July, but without Will, the work was uninspired. The more I tried to get inspiration back, the muddier and more muted the colors looked. Worse, the expression on Will’s face in the drawing tore at me. More than once I longed to hide the portrait far away in the back of my closet because I could not bear to look at it. If I hadn’t needed to finish it for the exam, I might have given up on it altogether. I once took out the undraped drawing of Will, hoping to find inspiration again, but memories of the day he kissed me came flooding back, so I did not look at it again.

  I saw Will once on Oxford Street while I was with Sophie and my mother, choosing flowers for my wedding. My mother had stopped with Sophie to look at a hat display in Selfridge’s window, and that was when I spotted Will. He was walking his beat but he was on the other side of the road and did not see me. He was speaking to a gentleman, pointing out directions. After the gentleman had gone, I thought I saw Will looking toward me. I turned around quickly and pretended to be interested in a wide-brimmed hat trimmed with daisies. It took everything I had not to dash across the street after him.

  It seemed I could not keep Will squashed into the back of my mind, no matter how hard I tried.

  Twenty-Eight

  Buckingham Palace, the king’s drawing room, Friday, fourth of June

  Later, the Savoy Hotel, Saturday, fifth of June