‘It’s “thank you” for blasting me out of the slough of despond.’
‘Just “thank you” the girl says, with a masterpiece.’ Lucy’s voice was unsteady. ‘You funny, funny kid. If you don’t look like Mrs. Average Dumb Housewife, and you can turn out . . . ach, go away.’
Mirelle had obeyed, almost on wings she was so pleased with the reception of her gift. It wasn’t as if she’d been afraid that Lucy wouldn’t understand, but because her friendship with and affection for Lucy was such a fragile thing.
‘You can’t ever rush a friendship,’ she’d tried to explain to Steve. ‘It can flop, all of a sudden, like a soufflé.’
‘Oh, Lucy’s all right,’ he’d replied sourly. ‘Fred’s my sort of guy, though. Sure knows his mulches.’
Mirelle never tried to explain again. She often wondered if Steve hadn’t been a little jealous of their friendship, and annoyed because Lucy encouraged Mirelle to be independent.
In her own way, Mirelle had quietly followed Lucy’s advice: she ran like hell to keep up with the children and her housework, and always found time to work a little each day. Until they’d left Ashland.
‘“But she is in her grave, And oh, the difference to me.”’
Mirelle quoted the last lines out loud, carefully putting Tasso’s sketch back in the file. ‘Let’s face it, there aren’t many Lucys in the world for Wordsworth or Mirelle. But then, how many are needed?’
She took down the photo album and thumbed through it, snapping out four photos of Lucy at various summer parties. Reluctantly she took out the obituary clipping, with its dull-looking, full-face portrait of Lucy.
The sense of loss had not diminished. Mirelle swallowed against the tightening of her throat at remembered grief. Lucy had not been much of a letter-writer. There had been only two brief notes between Ashland and Spartanburg. The last one had told Mirelle of the cancer which Lucy had known was poisoning her body even before Mirelle moved away. Then Reverend Ogarth had sent Mirelle the newspaper clipping and a personal note. She could remember every word:
Lucy asked that I write you when the funeral was well past, his letter had started. She said that she’d told you of her illness but not that the cancer was inoperable nor that her death was only a matter of months away. She was like that, giving unceasingly of herself.
I know how close you were to her. Nothing I can say can ease this blow for you, Mirelle. But she gave me a message for you. I was to remind you that you must keep running, as hard as you can. She made me promise not to write you until after the funeral.
The tears rolled down Mirelle’s cheeks onto the clipping. As she brushed them aside, she knew what she was going to sculpt next.
She had used the only prepared form she’d had for the soldier. It was infuriating to have to make a new armature with this concept boiling up inside her. She compensated by making the frame much larger.
Work big, bigger. Lucy was bigger than life anyhow. Well, Lucy was practical, too, Mirelle thought as she prepared the wires.
The thing with working small is that you finish quicker. But I don’t want to finish fast. Not this time.
Mirelle made four attempts in the next two weeks before she was satisfied with a pose that expressed her conception of Lucy. She wanted to capture a certain attitude. Lucy had had a habit of finger-combing her short front locks out of her eyes. She was constantly in motion and constantly losing hairpins, always pushing the locks back from her forehead as she moved restlessly from one task to another, too busy to take time to find or replace the pins. Mirelle put the figure’s right hand up, in Lucy’s gesture. The skirt was flying, to express the vitality and energy of the woman. Lucy had worn her hair either in a chignon or a ponytail, long before that style became popular. Mirelle chose the ponytail to express youthful exuberance. For some time she toyed with idealising Lucy’s unexceptional features, but finally she decided that it has to BE Lucy to make the work successful. Lucy’s vital inner self must spring through the bronze, fleshed out in beauty so that one could almost see the marvelous snap in the eyes: hear the rough-edged contralto voice, see all the intangibles that had made Lucy beautiful.
Can ye not see my soul flash down A singing flame through space?
Mirelle chanted the old poem to herself as she thumbed a line down the skirt. For three weeks she had spent most of her time on Lucy. During the two brief respites when plasticine had resisted her, she had done a rough plaster of the soldier and another happy pig figure to mollify Nick over Tonia’s prize. Otherwise she had Lucied.
The doorbell rang and she damned the intrusion because she was so close to finishing the statue. As she went up the stairs to the door, she looked back at her work, highlighted by the sun. And sighed with satisfaction.
‘Expecting someone?’ asked James Howell facetiously.
‘Is it the 26th already?’ she cried in dismay, acutely aware of her clay-smeared face and dirty smock. She stepped back so he could enter. He placed his hat on the hall table.
‘It most certainly is and it is obvious that the passage of time which I marked in dragging tempo, has flown by you in industry.’
‘I have been working. I’m sorry. We have a lunch date.’
‘I also have a commission with you, or has that flown your recollection?’
‘No, it hasn’t. But I have to confess that I’ve really done nothing on it. I started out to. But then, well, I had to do a pig for Nickie when the Lucy wouldn’t work, and the soldier . . .’ She stopped because she realised that the soldier was in plain sight on the workshelf. And that soldier was more James Howell than the man himself.
‘The Lucy?’ he asked, his eyebrows rising.
She stepped aside so he could catch a glimpe of the statue down the stairway. Before she could divert him to the living-room and the Running Child, he was down the steps and circling the statue with a half-smile on his face. And, of course, when he had made a half-circuit, he saw the soldier.
‘Ah, ha!’ he exclaimed dramatically, striding over to pick up the statuette. He did a double-take as he recognised the features. ‘And when did you do this?’ His expression was both startled and amused.
Mirelle wet her lips, searching for an answer as she walked jerkily towards him, twisting her hands together.
‘Well . . . I . . .’
‘Is . . . this the soldier figure, the one you mentioned?’
She nodded, unable to meet his eyes. He leaned towards her so that she couldn’t avoid him.
‘You have a very accurate memory, or you’ve been housebreaking into my war mementoes. If I didn’t know absolutely that I hadn’t posed for that, I’d’ve sworn that I had.’
‘You’re not angry then? I mean, I have a nerve. I didn’t really mean to put your face on it . . .’
‘Angry? Hardly!’ He shook his head. ‘I’m overwhelmed.’ He held the statue away from him, chuckling at its mimicry of himself. ‘I still catch myself standing that way, you know, and wonder where my rifle is.’ He gave a short bark of a laugh. ‘And you’d seen me just twice before you did this?’
Mirelle sat down, nervously twisting spare globs of plasticine out of her smock.
‘Here is one time I can say, without fear of contradiction, that I have made an impression on someone.’
‘Oh, no,’ Mirelle spoke up quickly, trying to keep a straight face. ‘I made the impression.’
He looked at her blankly for a second and then menaced her with the soldier.
‘You certainly cut a guy down to size.’
‘I surrender.’ She held up her hands, laughing, and was comfortable with him.
‘Seriously, Mirelle,’ and he turned the statue over in his hands, one thumb smoothing the lifted thigh, ‘this is a masterful little vignette, if one can have vignettes in plaster. It makes me tired just to look at myself. But . . .’
‘Oh, that isn’t for the commission,’ she said as she sensed the reason for his hesitation. ‘Anyway, you couldn’t have it for a while. I’ve
promised Nickie that I’d make some models of it for his army. And it ought to be cast in bronze. Here’s the pig I did, and that is, of course, the Lucy.’
He examined the pig carefully, its expression bringing a smile to his face. Then he turned his full attention on the Lucy.
‘A particular reason for her?’
‘Yes.’
He grimaced and made a motion with his hands, closing his fingers into his palm like a clam.
‘No.’ She smiled. ‘No. Lucy was a special friend of mine. A staunch supporter.’
‘Was?’
‘She died of cancer when Nick was two. Eight years ago.’
‘. . . “But she is in her grave, And oh, the difference to me.”’
‘You read Wordsworth?’ Mirelle blinked back the tears that threatened to embarrass her.
‘There are times when Gideon does not supply the traveler’s reading needs.’
‘When did you get back to town?’ she asked, remembering her manners. He looked tired, she thought, particularly about the eyes.
‘Last night.’
‘You look it.’
‘Your compliments are going to my head.’ He accented the phrase histrionically.
‘I’ll change. I’ll be very quick. Oh, there are more bits and pieces in the living-room. They might give you some ideas,’ she told him as she ran from the studio.
Humming to herself as she fumbled in her closet for a dress, she felt pleased that he wasn’t annoyed about the soldier. She’d worried that he might be. When she came back downstairs, he was critically appraising the Running Child.
‘That’s Tonia at three,’ she said.
For a long moment, he regarded her through half-closed eyes before he smiled.
‘Not bad. I timed you at just twelve minutes. I’ve been kept waiting longer with less result.’
She dropped him a mock curtsey. He extended his bent arm.
‘To lunch, madame?’
‘To lunch, monsieur.’
She directed him to the only other restaurant of which she had any knowledge. Over two drinks, she tried to get a rise out of him and managed not to fall for his little ploys. He told her of his trip, four good jokes that he’d picked up and one hilarious incident with a pompous ladies’ club chairwoman. He didn’t once mention the commission or her work but it did not seem to her a deliberate evasion.
After their lunch, however, he turned north, away from her development, then eastwards.
‘I’m taking you, little spider, to see the web,’ he explained when she pointedly refused to ask where they were going.
‘A bold course to direct my over-fertile imagination in appropriate directions.’
‘My dear girl, I would not for an instant consider directing your imagination. What impudence.’
She caught a subtle undertone to his voice but then he was turning into the driveway of a two-storey house.
‘You don’t know a good gardener, do you?’ he asked with a weary sigh, gesturing at the neglected lawn and seared shrubbery.
‘The exercise would do you good,’ she said with a heartless laugh.
‘I’m a pianist, not a planter. I don’t know a petunia from stinkweed.’
‘Sniff!’
‘You are unkind,’ he said with mock petulance.
‘Utterly, but, at one dollar an hour I might lend you a knowledgeable yardboy.’
‘Robbery!’
His house, however, showed every evidence of order and attention. The entrance hall was attractively papered in a large black and white scroll design, and led into a white living-room, carpeted with a rich, predominantly blue oriental. A white concert grand piano of a rather old-fashioned style dominated the room. A low, long sofa, upholstered in blue brocade, was opposite, a low coffee table, of the Queen Anne style, in front of it. Two Queen Anne armchairs completed the furnishings of the room. Over the fireplace was an excellent impressionistic painting with a predominance of reds. The dining-room, seen through the archway, from the living-room, was also furnished elegantly in the same period, blue-carpeted, with gold brocaded chairs around the table.
‘It’s a beautiful web.’
‘But sterile,’ he said, bluntly critical.
‘I’m not sure I sculpt Queen Anne, though.’
‘No, Mirelle,’ and again he favored her with that quizzical look, ‘you are not the nymphs and shepherds type.’
He guided her back to the hallway and opened a door that in most houses of this type would have led to a family room. It housed two more pianos, and an extensive library of music folios, books and albums were shelved on one wall. On the other, shorter inside wall, were photographs, autographed by the artists to ‘Jamie’.
‘My artists,’ he said with a facetious bow to the display.
Several faces were immediately familiar to her. One of them was unquestionably Caruso, yet the inscription was also to ‘Jamie’.
‘“Friend of my early struggle”?’ She translated from the Italian and stared at Jamie. ‘Surely not you?’
Jamie laughed, delighted by her confusion. ‘No, my linguistic sculptress, my father. He was concert master for many years at the Metropolitan. A good deal of the music here is his, and many of the photos. Unfortunately I never had the pleasure of accompanying Caruso or Gallicurci as he did.’
‘So you come by your musicianship second generation?’
‘Yes, and I discovered who you’ve been reminding me of when I was browsing through some of Dad’s old programs . . .’
He moved to reach an album down but she grabbed his arm.
‘I don’t want it rubbed in,’ she said.
‘You come by your art second generation, too,’ he said, mildly surprised by her reaction. ‘Did it hurt so badly, Mirelle?’
She turned away from him.
‘Perhaps if I’d been a boy. As always for a man, it’s not socially inelegant to be different. But conformity is required of women and it’s . . . it’s goddamned hard to be a bastard and a girl.’
She snapped the phrase out, wrenching her body towards him to see the effect of her words.
He regarded her calmly. ‘Madame Frascatti told me. But your mother was married at the time of your birth.’
Mirelle let out a bitter laugh. ‘And he would have thrown Mother out of his house if his family hadn’t convinced him that that would have given the scandalmongers a field day. So Mother was permitted to remain . . . but don’t think that she didn’t pay for it, day after day. And don’t think I didn’t. Oh, not physically. That wouldn’t be in the well-bred tradition of the Barthan-Mores. Oh, why did you have to bring it up? It has spoiled a perfectly lovely day.’
She turned from him again, crossing her arms on her chest, glaring out of the window.
‘Actually, I hadn’t meant to mention it, Mirelle. I hope you believe that.’
He waited for a reply. Then she felt him move to stand right behind her. From the corner of her eye, she could see his hands rising to curl firmly about her shoulders. She jerked her chin up in rejection of his apologetic gesture.
‘Sometimes the very devil gets into my tongue when I’m with you, Mirelle. I knew you’d be sensitive to your parentage. I wasn’t even looking for the picture when I ran across it. I had every intention of forgetting that I’d ever seen it except that you look so much like him, it’s hard to ignore. He was scowling in the photo, much the same way you are right now.’
The contrition in his voice had blended into amusement at the comparison and she jerked her chin higher. Then he reached for the album. She heard him shuffling the thick pages. And, although she had a tremendous desire to look, she averted her eyes when he first put the photo in front of her. One glimpse undid her resolve, because it was not only her face that stared back at her, but Nick’s, when he got in one of his rebellious sullen moods.
‘So that’s where Nickie gets it,’ she said. ‘See, the browline here,’ and then she remembered, ‘but you haven’t met Nick. Oh, Lord, what time is it?’
‘Quarter to three?’
‘I’ve got to get home. Tonia’ll be there any minute.’
He looked down at her for a long moment, then took the photo which she had thrust at him, not so much because it was of her father but because it still belonged to Howell.
‘Well, you’ve seen the setting now,’ he said as he ushered her out, ‘although I’d prefer something to go in the music room. I’ll find space for it, believe me, and he grinned as she glanced back at the crowded room. At the front door, he took both her hands in his. ‘Believe me, Mirelle, I didn’t mean to open up old wounds.’
‘It’s all right, Jamie.’
‘Now what settled you on “Jamie”?’
‘You don’t like it?’
‘Indeed I do but “Jim” is the logical nickname.’
‘Who said I was logical? And you’re just not a Jim or Jimmy,’ she said as she slid into the passenger’s seat.
Tonia was just descending from her bus as Mirelle and Jamie drove up. The child’s eyes widened at the sight of the Thunderbird. She behaved creditably during the introduction and then went obediently to change out of her school clothes.
‘You have a calming effect on my daughter,’ Mirelle said with a laugh as Jamie followed her into the studio.
‘She doesn’t resemble you at all.’
‘No, she takes very definitely after her father’s mother. A bit of astute genetic foresight on my part, I assure you.’
Tonia bounced promptly back into the studio and right out again.
‘Mr. Howell is here about the commission he asked me to do, so this is business, not social. Food, which is your current order of business,’ Mirelle said firmly, ‘is located in the kitchen. Do not, I repeat do not, eat the icing without eating all the cake underneath it.’
Jamies chuckled when the child had left.
‘If I don’t make the instructions explicit, the next thing I know the damage is done and I get the wide-eyed stares of outraged innocence and “but you didn’t say not to, Mother”.’ Jamie laughed outright at her mimicry. ‘Then there was the time,’ Mirelle went on, grinning over the incident, ‘when Steve came down late one Sunday morning and found Roman and Nick playing football with the breakfast honeydew melon. Only it was very ripe and did not drop-kick well.’
The Year of the Lucy Page 7