Cecily's Portrait

by Adele Geras

  “Quick, Cecily!”

  Sam didn’t sound in any distress. Rather, he was excited. She ran up the stairs to the second floor and there he was, in the doorway of the back bedroom. Behind him, she could see the furniture shrouded in white sheets.

  “Nanny Mildred will scold you for playing up here, Sam. What are you doing?”

  “She said I could come. Florrie saw a mouse.”

  “In here? How could she? The door’s always kept shut.”

  “On the landing. It was there she saw it. It ran under the door. Nanny said to bring Mossy up to hunt the mouse.”

  “And has she found it?”

  “No, but she’s in the corner. Maybe the mouse hole’s there.”

  “Why do you need me, Sam? I was busy.”

  “I wanted you to see…” His voice faded away.

  Cecily went in. Mossy was indeed crouched by the far wall, just near the corner, trying to look like a fearsome predator. The skirting board didn’t quite meet the floorboards in some places. A mouse could easily have run into one of the gaps in the panelling.

  “That’s the mouse hole,” Sam said.

  “How d’you know? Did you see anything run in there?”

  “No, but a mouse could fit.” He got down on the floor and stretched out next to Mossy.

  “Get up this minute, Sam! Your clothes will be filthy and Nanny will blame me for allowing you to lie around in the dust. Get up! You’re not going to see a mouse. Neither is Mossy. Any mouse who knows what’s good for him will keep well hidden with a cat sitting outside his front door.”

  “But I see something. Look…” He put two fingers into the hole and pulled out a small square of cardboard.

  “Give that to me,” Cecily said, and she put it in her pocket without looking at it. “And now get up and come downstairs. Mossy’ll wait for the mouse, and we’ll leave the door open just a little so she can come out when she’s found him. Aren’t you hungry? It’s nearly lunchtime, and I’m going to try and clean you up before Nanny sees you.”

  The promise of food succeeded in luring Sam out of the room.

  Later that afternoon, Cecily went to show the piece of cardboard to her father. He had studied the history of the house and knew about the people who had lived here, long ago. She blushed as she handed it over to him, because the picture on it was of a lady with very few clothes on, and indeed, Papa coughed and looked away a little as he told Cecily what he thought it was.

  “Here’s the date, do you see? 1764… It’s a ticket of admission to Ranelagh Gardens, which in those days was a place of entertainment and amusement, just where the park is now. Most interesting…perhaps one of the young ladies who came to school here long ago went to the Gardens, though it’s hard to imagine the teachers letting their charges visit such a place. Ah well, it is a message from the past. Perhaps one day I will take it to a meeting of the Local History Society. Most interesting.”

  He stood up and went to put the cardboard ticket in a drawer, but Cecily said, “Papa, may I keep it? Sam found it, but I would like to put it in my scrapbook.”

  Her father hesitated, then gave her the ticket. “I’m not sure whether it’s quite suitable…this drawing…”

  “It was a ticket, Papa, so it must be respectable, surely.”

  “The eighteenth century was a much laxer time in many ways…”

  “Please, Papa…”

  “Will you undertake not to show it to anyone?”

  “Amy? May I show it to her?”

  Papa would relent. He almost always did, when Cecily looked both eager and anxious. “Very well.” He sighed and went to the door. “But only Amy, please. And I hope I may borrow it if I wish?”

  “Yes, of course you may. Thank you, Papa.”

  Cecily stared down at the yellowing card, with its edges worn away a little. It had stayed there, hidden in the panelling for more than a hundred years and now here it was, like a faint whisper from the past and she wondered who the young girl was who must have known Ranelagh Gardens in 1764. Perhaps her ghost might indeed be a visitor to the room. She shivered pleasurably and looked forward to discussing the likelihood of this with Amy.

  The next day, after they had left their school things at home, Cecily and Amy went straight to the Templetons’ house and upstairs to the studio. While the girls enjoyed the warm milk and buttered scones that Elsie the parlourmaid had brought in, they listened to Rosalind telling them of her plans for the afternoon’s session.

  “I’ve been considering who you girls might be,” she said, “and I think Juliet for you, Amy, from Romeo and Juliet, of course. Miranda for you, Cecily, from The Tempest. Do you know the play?”

  Cecily said, “I’ve read the story in the Lambs’ Tales.”

  “Excellent.” Rosalind smiled. “Then you know that she and her father have been shipwrecked on an island, and that gives me an opportunity to suggest the sea behind you…there!”

  She uncovered a flat painting of the ocean, with rocks sticking out of a stretch of sand in the foreground. “Here’s one of Papa’s early landscapes and just the thing, I think. Miranda will be wearing fine clothes, but they’ll have been torn and tossed about a little in the storm… The effect I seek is: windswept. Your hair streaming down…wild, untamed.”

  Cecily didn’t feel she could say what she thought, which was: why do I have to be wild and untamed, with torn and windswept clothes? Why can’t I be one of the well-dressed heroines, like Juliet or Titania? It would be rude to complain. I’d rather do what Rosalind suggests, she told herself, than not be photographed at all.

  “But let’s start with you, Amy. Juliet dressed for the ball at the beginning of the play and leaning over the balcony.”

  Amy beamed and looked pleased with herself. Cecily could see the white dress, hanging up ready for her to put on, and a beautiful headdress and jewels to go with it. Cecily thought it would have been much more interesting to show Juliet stretched out on her tomb. Anyone knows, she said to herself, that the balcony scene needs Romeo in it. The photograph would be incomplete. She stood up and went to find the velvet cloak that Rosalind had decided she must wear over the torn brocade dress that she’d provided for Miranda.

  Cecily watched for what seemed like a very long time while Amy’s picture was set up and she tried to follow how Rosalind decided what would make the best picture. She disappeared for several minutes under her cloth and looked through the lens, moving the bellows backwards and forwards, which Cecily knew altered the amount of light that came in through the lens. From her bent-over position she called to Amy to move this way and then that. Posed against a flowerpot. Against a door. Leaning over a fragment of a wrought-iron gate that would be most effective, Rosalind said, as a balcony. While she waited, Cecily wondered where the Templetons found the bits and pieces that their house was full of. There were no paintings of the sea nor sections of gate at Number Six. Perhaps that was the difference between artists and ordinary people. When I grow up, she resolved, I will fill my house with unusual items of every sort.

  The photograph was taken at last, and Amy said, “May I go home now, Rosalind? I promised my mama to read stories to the little ones tonight… Will you manage on your own, Cecily?”

  “Certainly.” Cecily tried not to sound too annoyed. How typical of Amy to think she was the one in charge, the one without whom nothing could happen. Especially since it was Sam and Cecily who were the first to meet the Templetons! “I am able to find my own front door, I think.”

  But Amy had already left the room and was on her way downstairs.

  Cecily didn’t often admit it to herself, but without Amy, she enjoyed Rosalind’s company even more. They spent happy minutes arranging the cloak to look particularly windswept.

  “Did Miranda not have a mother?” Cecily asked.

  “No, she was like you and me… Your poor mama died when you were six, I believe. That must have been terrible.”

  “How did you know I was six?”

  “A
my said something…” Cecily knew that Amy had spoken about her and she felt a little irritated.

  “I have no mama either,” Rosalind said, “but I was a great deal older when mine left us. She lives abroad. Papa and I have had to fend for ourselves for many years. Now, stand up straight as though you were looking out to sea.”

  The subject, Cecily could see, was one that Rosalind didn’t wish to speak about. She disappeared behind the camera and was lost under the black cloth till she took the photograph. When they had finished, Cecily began to help with the task of putting the props and costumes away, but just then, there came a knocking at the door. It was Elsie again.

  “Elsie, you can see that I’m busy…” Rosalind began.

  “I think you should come downstairs, Miss Rosalind,” Elsie said. “Mr. John Bright has called for his daughter. I’ve asked him to wait in the parlour.”

  Chapter Seven

  Papa is Displeased

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Bright,” said Rosalind. “I’m sorry to keep you waiting. My name is Rosalind Templeton. I’ve been photographing Cecily and her friend Amy, too, for a series of pictures I’m composing, based on Shakespeare’s heroines.”

  Cecily was relieved that she was no longer dressed in her costume. She could see that Papa was upset. He’d be polite, she knew, because he’d never met Rosalind, but she feared that his displeasure might later be directed at her. He said, “Good afternoon, Miss Templeton. I’ve been concerned about Cecily, not knowing where she was. She is out very late. I was obliged to call on the Chistlehursts. Amy informed me of my daughter’s whereabouts.”

  “I am so sorry,” Rosalind said. “We lose ourselves in the work, and then forget to look at the clock. This is entirely my fault.”

  “I feel that Cecily, too, bears some of the blame. She knows when she has to come home. She has her schoolwork to complete every day, of course.”

  “Of course. I hope you’ll allow the girls to visit me again. They are such good subjects.”

  “I cannot speak for Amy Chistlehurst, naturally, but Cecily will in future ask my permission whenever she wishes to visit you.”

  It seemed to Cecily that this meant seeing a great deal less of Rosalind. If Papa allowed her to come, it would certainly not be every day, nor probably, every week. He would think that visiting so often was impolite. He might even try to stop her coming at all. Perhaps he thought an artist’s house was not the sort of place he’d want his daughter to visit.

  Papa had calmed down somewhat, Cecily saw, though she feared he was still angry with her. He said, “Thank you, Miss Templeton. Now, Cecily, gather your things together and we will return home.”

  As soon as they reached Number Six, Papa called Cecily into his study.

  “What have you to say for yourself, Cecily?” he asked, looking stern.

  “I am very sorry to have made you worry, Papa. I should have been home earlier but forgot the time.”

  Papa frowned. “I want you to spend more time under this roof and less under the Templetons’. I had a word with Nanny before setting out to find you today and she tells me that you’ve been visiting almost daily. That must stop.”

  “But Papa, did you not like Miss Templeton? Mr. Templeton is a well-known painter. And have you seen the photographs? They are so wonderful!”

  “Miss Templeton seemed agreeable. And I did look at the photographs, while I was waiting for you to come down from the studio.”

  “Did you not think them fine? Do you not see how lifelike and clear they are? Just as though you were in front of the real person. The camera performs magic.”

  “I’m the first to agree that the camera is a great step forward in scientific invention and no doubt will have many uses in the future. And Miss Templeton’s images are admirable, but that has nothing to do with what I’m saying. Nothing at all. You simply cannot dress yourself up in ridiculous costumes and pose for pictures every afternoon.”

  “It’s not every afternoon that we pose. Indeed, before today, it’s been some time since Rosalind took our picture.”

  “Rosalind? She allows you to call her by her Christian name?”

  Cecily nodded. “Is that wrong of her, do you think?”

  “Perhaps not wrong exactly, but still, it strikes me as a little…Bohemian, perhaps. How many other ladies do you call by their given names? Do you call Miss Braithwaite Ellen?”

  Cecily shook her head. She couldn’t imagine calling Miss Braithwaite anything more personal than Miss Braithwaite, however long she knew her.

  “Well, then,” said Papa. “Do we have an agreement, Cecily? You will not visit without my express permission?”

  Cecily nodded and wondered what she could possibly do to change Papa’s mind. She resolved to discuss it with Amy at school next day.

  Cecily and Amy sat at the back of the room during Needlework Hour. The pale, April sunshine fell on their backs as they talked quietly together. Miss Perry, their teacher, suffered from a slight deafness, which meant her classroom was always filled with the sound of girls whispering to one another while someone’s French knots and slip stitches were receiving Miss Perry’s full attention.

  “Don’t worry,” Amy said. “He will relent in time. Next time you ask him, he’s sure to say you may visit.”

  “I hope you’re right. Today I went to see him again and he said maybe in a little while.”

  “Well, then…” Amy bent her head to the leaf she was embroidering on to a traycloth. Her needlework was a little slapdash, Cecily thought and took pleasure in comparing Amy’s stitches with her own far neater ones. There weren’t many subjects in which she felt confident that her work was as good as her friend’s. Amy doesn’t mind not visiting the Templetons, Cecily thought. She’d happily forget about Rosalind and the studio and the photographs if it weren’t for me. She has her brothers and sisters to think of, and much else to do. Also, she doesn’t want to be a photographer when she grows up. She’s not like me.

  “I think,” Amy said, “that you must give him a reason to visit the studio.”

  “What sort of reason?”

  “Well, would he not want his own photograph taken, perhaps?”

  “Whatever for?”

  “I don’t know. To mark some occasion: an engagement, a wedding, a birth.”

  How tactless of Amy, Cecily thought, to mention engagements and weddings when she knows how much I worry about Miss Braithwaite! But an idea came to Cecily then. She was so happy to have thought of it, so excited to imagine how it might be achieved, that she pricked her finger and had to suck it quickly to prevent a drop of blood from falling on her traycloth.

  “It’s Aunt Lizzie’s birthday next month… I will ask Papa if we might make a family portrait…him and me and Sam and even Mossy…to give her as a gift… Oh, surely, surely he’ll see that’s an excellent notion! She’s always been interested in modern inventions, and a woman photographer is something she would heartily approve of. I can’t think of anything that would give her more pleasure.”

  “Wouldn’t she prefer a beautiful hat? A pair of white leather gloves, trimmed with beading? A necklace? A ticket to the Savoy Theatre?”

  “Oh, Amy, you don’t know Aunt Lizzie as I do! She is not a white leather gloves kind of person. I promise you, she would treasure a photograph of us.” Cecily leaned forward and whispered in Amy’s ear. “I fear she had a tragic love affair when she was younger and will never marry now…and never have children. She would have wished to be a mother, I’m sure. And Sam and I are the nearest thing she has to a son and daughter of her own.”

  “Well, you know your own aunt best, I suppose,” said Amy. “Why don’t you ask your papa and see what he says?”

  For a moment, Cecily imagined Papa laughing at her idea and being almost as scornful as Amy, but she pushed this thought away and turned to her embroidery again, concentrating instead on a dream of herself, Sam, and Papa with Mossy in a basket, walking along the street towards the Templetons’ house.

&n
bsp; Chapter Eight

  The Bright Family Portrait

  Cecily was telling Aunt Lizzie in a letter how much she missed being able to visit the Templeton house as often as she used to.

  Papa should realize, she wrote, that we learned so much from Rosalind…more than we do in our classes at school. She showed us photographs in periodicals and told us all about the actors and actresses shown in them, performing in Shakespeare’s plays. We talked about the clothes that the society ladies wear in the illlustrated papers. We saw pictures of the Queen, too, in a black dress with a lace collar. And I know a lot about the painters Mr. Templeton admires and the ones he does not. He is very rude about someone called James McNeill Whistler and about Mr. Turner, who lives very near to Chelsea Walk, but Rosalind admires these gentlemen greatly. She likes French painters best of all, like Monsieur Cézanne and Monsieur Monet and Monsieur Degas. Mr. Templeton sniffed loudly whenever Rosalind mentioned their names. He called them Impressionists and made it sound like something no one would ever want to be.

  Cecily looked at her father, who was sitting on the end of her bed. She leaned back against the pillows. “You said you’d think about it, Papa. What I suggested for Aunt Lizzie’s birthday present. Have you thought?”

  “I have, Cecily, and I must say, I am not entirely convinced it’s a good idea. Would Lizzie truly like such a thing? Or are you simply trying to persuade me to let you visit Miss Templeton’s house again?”

  “I do want to go back, it’s true. You’ve only given me permission to see her three times since…well, since the day you found me there.”

  “I don’t mean to be unkind, Cecily, but truly, I think you could find more worthwhile activities than dressing up as something or other…what was it last time?”

  “Cinderella,” Cecily answered. “What’s wrong with that?”