by Siân James
She’d first met Anthony when he, much to her and everyone’s surprise, had visited the students’ exhibition in Brighton to see her paintings. Perhaps he’d been intrigued by her phone-call, perhaps happened to be in the area. Whatever the reason, he’d asked to meet her, had been introduced to her, had congratulated her on her work. ‘You needn’t have asked my permission,’ he’d said. ‘It’s a work of art in its own right.’
‘It was your poem that made me paint it,’ she’d said. ‘I like your poetry. I don’t understand it all, but it moves me.’
‘I like your paintings,’ he’d said. And then something had made him add, ‘Come and have lunch with me next week.’ He’d given her his address and she’d realised at once that he was inviting her to something more than a meal.
She’d driven up from Brighton the following week. His daily help had shown her into what was then a sitting room and study. Anthony was sitting at a table heavy with books, working on his volume of critical essays – his poetry had already dried up by that time. He’d got up from his chair, walked over to her and turned her towards the window to examine her. ‘What do you want from me?’ he’d asked. ‘Tell me, and if I’m able to give it to you, I’ll tell you what I want from you.’
‘I’d like a month in Florence,’ she’d said, because that was what she’d been thinking of for several months.
‘I’ll arrange it this afternoon. Do you have a passport? How soon do you want to go?’
‘What do you want from me?’
‘To look at your body and perhaps take some photographs of it.’
It seemed a fair and just exchange.
She’d started posing for him that afternoon. She hadn’t found it difficult or embarrassing. She’d attended life classes herself for three years and now it was her turn to be the model, that’s all there was to it.
He’d studied her as though she was a work of art and he a collector; she never got the impression of an old man ogling her.
She wrote to him from Florence, telling him about everything she was seeing and including pen and ink sketches of churches and statues and American tourists.
She went back to visit him before going to Liverpool to start teaching. He was touched that she’d come, thinking that their bargain was over, but within minutes she’d thrown off her clothes and was showing him her tanned body with its white bikini patches, delighted at his pleasure. She’d returned to see him for some part of every holiday, before and after the foreign trips he helped finance.
He was already ill when they got married, a secret wedding at a Register Office in Cleeve. Her mother had been very upset, hardly prepared even to meet Anthony who, she kept telling Rosamund, was old enough to be, not merely her father, but her grandfather.
Her disapproval had survived Joss’s birth; she hadn’t even visited them in hospital, had only sent them an over-large bouquet of beetroot-coloured chrysanthemums with her best wishes.
It was only a few months afterwards when Anthony was dying that she had relented and come to stay with them, taking over the baby and the running of the house, leaving Rosamund free to nurse her husband, read to him and keep him company.
Her mother had been magnificent at the funeral, dealing with the journalists who turned up with a most kind condescension, passing them cups of tea and treating them to little homilies on poetry, poets, marriage, children and death; so that they soon left.
For weeks after Anthony’s death, Rosamund had read and re-read his poetry in a kind of frenzy, as though needing a closer connection with him. She had loved him.
* * *
Joss came over the wall flashing his new torch about like a searchlight.
‘Why are you sitting in the dark?’ he asked her. ‘Can I have some oven chips? I had a rotten tea.’
‘Gran said you had a lovely meal. Broccoli and mushrooms.’
He shuddered delicately. ‘Poor Uncle Brian,’ he said.
‘I’m thinking of getting an Uncle Brian myself.’
‘Oh, don’t. We’re all right as we are, aren’t we?’
‘Not really. You’re out all the time.’
‘I’ll put some chips in the oven. For the two of us. And I’ll stay home from school tomorrow, if you like, to keep you company.’
She heard him clattering a packet of frozen chips onto a tray and slamming it into the oven. When he came back, he looked at his mother, head on one side as though being cute for a television advert. ‘I’d never marry anybody old,’ he said ‘because they’d only die. Didn’t you think of that?’
‘One can’t be wise all the time.’
‘Never mind. You’re a jolly good painter, anyway. Did that woman come? The one who was going to write about you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Shall we have some baked beans with the chips?’
* * *
The next day Rosamund walked morosely round the studio. She realised that she was now only painting the same landscapes in darker colours. Ingrid had very kindly suggested a growing sense of doom and nightmare, but she was flattering her; they were simply darker.
She wondered why she had ever imagined she had the talent to become an artist. She’d always been able to draw fairly well and at school this had been played up because she wasn’t particularly good at anything else.
‘Rosamund should definitely go to art school,’ her form mistress had told her mother on one of her visits to the small private school she attended, and Marian had seized on this as the perfect solution. Rosamund knew she was becoming a problem. Her mother complained that she was dreamy, withdrawn and lacking in ambition. Other girls at seventeen were longing to get away from home, while she talked of getting a job locally. ‘But doing what?’ her mother asked, over and over again. ‘Couldn’t I be a receptionist at a hotel? Something like that?’ ‘Certainly not. That’s no sort of career.’
Marian had recently become friendly with her accountant, a widower called Brian Spiers, and Rosamund realised that she was in the way. Had she been sent to art school so that her mother and Brian could start living together with less embarrassment? Or was her mother determined that her father should continue to pay towards her upkeep, feeling that if she left school and found a job, he’d be getting away too lightly? Her parents had been divorced for five or six years at that time, but there was no real truce between them.
She remembered the interview she’d had at Brighton. The lecturer in charge of admissions had looked through her portfolio in a slightly bemused way. ‘They’re certainly different,’ he’d said. ‘Everyone else is showing me abstracts in grey and black.’
‘Perhaps he meant that yours were more interesting,’ her mother had suggested afterwards.
‘I don’t think so.’
She could hardly believe it when she was accepted for the following year’s degree course. And throughout her four years she was the only person who’d stuck with representational art. Amanda Wright, her closest friend, had told her quite kindly that she mustn’t blame herself but the way she’d been brought up.
Most people blamed the way they’d been brought up. But she, she told herself, had never been ill-treated or neglected. Her mother had always fed her nourishing meals, bought her the best Startrite shoes and sent her to bed at the proper time with a story and a goodnight kiss. If she’d been bitter about her husband’s treatment of her, she’d kept it from Rosamund as much as she could. They’d certainly never fought in her presence, though she’d been aware of the undertones of tension between them. Had she adored her father and been devastated when he’d left them? Not as far as she could remember. He’d never been much more than a handsome but occasional presence. She remembered feeling pleased when he reappeared after a week’s absence, and enjoying the games he played with her at bedtime, but could recall no stronger feelings.
His absences in London had gradually lasted longer, though she hadn’t been aware of the actual divorce. When she was thirteen, though, her mother had let her know that her father inten
ded to get married again. Some marriages worked, she’d said, but theirs had failed and now he’d met another woman and was going to try again. Rosamund had been appalled by this turn of events, tormented by the idea that her mother was being replaced.
‘I’m certainly not going,’ she said when her wedding invitation had arrived. ‘You’re not going, so I shan’t.’
‘Your father will be very disappointed, dear, and so will Dora, the woman he’s going to marry. I’ve talked to her on the telephone and she seems very pleasant. She invited me, too, but quite understood when I said I didn’t think it appropriate, so we’re meeting for lunch next Monday.’
‘You’re meeting her for lunch?’
‘Darling, we’re civilised people.’
‘I don’t feel civilised.’
‘You must, dear. She’s very anxious to be liked.’
‘But don’t you mind that she’s marrying … your husband?’
‘She’s very keen that your father should make me a generous settlement.’
‘What does that mean? What is a settlement?’
‘It means that I’ll be able to buy a little dress shop that I’ve got my eye on.’
‘Do you mean money? Is that what a settlement is? Do you mean that you’re giving him up for money? That’s horrible! Oh, that’s really horrible!’
‘Don’t spoil things for me, dear. Money can buy a person a new way of life. You’ll understand that one day.’
* * *
A few weeks later, Rosamund went to the wedding dressed in a new peacock-blue suit and long cream suede boots, and in spite of her determination to dislike her father’s new wife, hadn’t quite managed it.
Before that day, she’d only been to large, conventional weddings where the traditional bride, dressed like a fairy doll, walked up the aisle on the arm of a man in black fancy dress. Dora and her father were married in a Register Office, Dora dressed in a saffron-yellow suit and scarlet shoes and seeming more than capable of walking on her own.
‘This can’t be much fun for you,’ she’d said to Rosamund after the ceremony, ‘but thank you so much for coming. Paul and I did want you to be with us.’
The reception, with only twelve guests, was held in a friend’s flat and Rosamund admired the way Dora took charge of everything. It was like a particularly friendly dinner party where, for the first time in her life, she was treated as an adult and not as a child or an adolescent; she drank champagne and the food was simple but delicious. There were no embarrassing speeches either, though at the end, Dora stood up and thanked everyone for coming and her father recited a short poem by Herrick in a voice she had never heard before.
Then Julia let me woo thee,
Thus, thus to come unto me;
And when I shall meet
Thy silvery feet,
My soul I’ll pour into thee.
On that first meeting she hadn’t quite capitulated to Dora, but felt she could really like her father in this new mood.
* * *
The next thing that happened was that Dora was pregnant. And almost as soon as Rosamund had got used to that idea, they heard that she’d had the baby – a little girl – two months early, and a few days afterwards her father had phoned again to say that she had died. ‘Dora wants to see you, Rosamund,’ he’d said. ‘I know it’s a lot to ask, but do you think you could bear to visit her in hospital?’
She’d handed the phone to her mother, unable to reply, and had stood dry-eyed listening to her making arrangements for her to visit the following day.
‘I’ll run you up, dear,’ her mother had said. ‘It’ll be an ordeal, but I know you’ll want to do everything you can.’
Rosamund had felt no joy at the prospect of a half-brother or sister, but was very sad to hear of the baby’s death. All the same, she couldn’t understand why Dora wanted to see her – her mother’s explanation that she had no other relatives to visit her seeming altogether too trivial. Throughout the journey on the following day she wondered what comfort she could possibly be, but the way Dora welcomed her made her feel reconciled to being there.
While Dora had hugged her, one sob had escaped from somewhere deep down in her chest, that was the only sign of grief she’d allowed herself. After that they had eaten grapes and talked about Christmas which was imminent. Rosamund had promised to visit them on the day after Boxing Day and then Dora had kissed her and said she wanted to sleep. ‘What did you call her?’ Rosamund had asked as she was leaving. ‘Louise.’ ‘I like that name. She was my little sister.’
Rosamund had tiptoed out of the ward and found her way back to the reception hall. Her father was there with her mother and they seemed more friendly than she could remember seeing them. Her father thanked them for coming and then kissed each of them.
‘I’m more sorry than I can say,’ her mother had whispered as they left.
‘And I am,’ Rosamund said.
They’d both been silent on the way home; her mother concentrating on driving as though she’d never driven before and Rosamund revising German irregular verbs for an end-of-term test as though they held the secret of salvation.
Not one of them mentioned the baby’s death ever again. Sometimes it seemed to Rosamund that she’d only existed to bring her and Dora together. For several months, though, she used to write Louise Harcourt in fancy letters on scraps of paper with wreaths of roses or leaves around it. It was a way of grieving, she supposed.
Dora and her father had never had another baby.
Chapter Four
The copy of Ingrid’s article arrived at the end of the week.
It was entitled Poet’s Muse and seemed to be more about Rosamund herself than about her paintings. ‘“Wide-set eyes, the colour of faded speedwell, hair like rippling water” – well really,’ Rosamund said aloud, ‘“tall, shapely body, strong hands.”’
After the description, the story. Ageing poet falling in love with the young beauty fate had sent his way, finally marrying her a year before his death. A mention of Joss – ‘the charming pencil drawings of him are not on sale’ – hinting at joyous consummation. The paintings themselves were praised rather ponderously, the word ‘impressive’ much used, so that they sounded worthy but dull. Prints of the five photographs the art editor had chosen were included, one of her looking rather sulky by the schoolroom door, one of the studio, showing the high Gothic windows and the long table with the painting paraphernalia on it, and three of the actual paintings – predictably Anthony’s Gate in its two variations, one entitled In Love’s Day, the other In Love’s Wake; the last was the small painting Ingrid had particularly liked, entitled Pastoral. The whole article was bland and overwritten, but neither unkind nor indiscreet.
Ingrid had enclosed a short letter. ‘I told you I wouldn’t be able to do justice to your paintings. I experienced them – and you – too deeply. However this article, unless there’s something you’d like altered, will find its way into Country Homes in one of the next issues.’ As a postscript she’d added: ‘PLEASE come up to stay with me.’
Rosamund had feared that Ingrid might have been more acerbic; once or twice she’d caught her looking at her with what seemed like pity or even scorn.
* * *
It was a delightfully warm afternoon and Rosamund, still in a restless state, decided to walk the two miles down to the village to call on her mother, realising that she ought to warn her about the possible publicity regarding Anthony’s poems.
Brian was in the front garden of their new house, brushing up fallen cherry blossom as though it were lethal fall-out. Their garden could probably have won a prize for the neatest in the whole world; everything in it savagely trimmed and pruned and disciplined. Brian made her mother seem a daredevil. ‘How are you, Brian?’ she called out in a chummy voice she never used except to him.
‘Mustn’t grumble,’ he said. ‘My back isn’t as bad as it was last spring. Not yet, anyhow.’ He straightened up with a faint but audible groan.
‘
Take care, now. Don’t overdo it.’ She waggled her fingers at him as she walked up the path.
She rang the bell, opening the door at the same time. ‘Come in, dear,’ Marian said. ‘I was just going to stop for a cup of tea. I’ve been doing a spot of spring cleaning. These Swedish blinds, dear.’
‘Is that a new rug?’
‘Yes. Do you like it? I don’t suppose so.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘We never like the same things, do we? Never mind. Go and call Brian, dear, while I make the tea.’
‘Can I talk to you first?’
‘Good gracious, what about?’
‘About Anthony.’
Marian sighed her relief. A dead husband seemed less worrying than almost anything else. She made herself comfortable on the oversized sofa.
‘When Anthony was married to Molly he had a mistress called Erica Underhill and he wrote her some very private poems. Anyway, she’s now short of money and she’s having her autobiography written, which will include the poems, and some of the papers will publish extracts from it. I think there may be a fair bit of publicity. And I thought you should know about it beforehand.’
‘Good gracious. When you say private poems, do you mean pornographic, dear?’
‘Erotic, anyway.’
‘Good gracious. Well, I only hope I’ll be able to understand them. I haven’t understood much of his work so far.’
‘I think there could be quite a fuss. You know, because he’s considered an important poet. I suppose he’ll come in for quite a bit of criticism about his private life and so on. Perhaps some of his other mistresses will discover some other poems. There may be a certain amount of mud-raking.’
‘I wonder how it will affect Joss.’