Beauty in Thorns

by Kate Forsyth

  Janey listened, enraptured. Once again the hours sped past. Then Ned and Topsy came home. While they made tea, and teased Gabriel, Janey quietly tidied the room.

  ‘It’s not much of a place,’ Topsy said to her apologetically, as she piled all the books neatly, largest to smallest.

  She looked at him in amazement. They each had their own room, and shared a sitting-room and a small square of cobblestones where they could sit in the sun and read. Janey longed with all her heart for a place half as small.

  That afternoon she sat and sewed on missing buttons, while Gabriel and Ned sketched her and Topsy read aloud from Le Morte d’Arthur.

  She had never felt so content.

  The next few weeks flew past. Topsy wrote poetry and painted sunflowers, Ned drew caricatures of his friends and wrote long letters to his own little Stunner, waiting for him in London, and Gabriel drew Janey again and again.

  One day Topsy came to the debating hall in a state of high excitement. He had drawn up a design for a medieval helmet, and a long jerkin of small linked metal rings that he called a surcoat. He had taken the design to a forge near the castle, and the smith had made them for him. Topsy hurried behind a screen to try it all on. He looked like a king out of a painting, Janey thought admiringly, when he came out. The surcoat reached his knees, and he had drawn up the hood so it framed his face. Everyone clustered around him, fingering the fine work of the chain mail.

  ‘Put the helmet on,’ Gabriel said.

  With some difficulty Topsy pulled it over his head. Gabriel promptly slammed the visor down so he could not see. Topsy tried to lift it, but could not manage it. Then he tried to take the helmet off, only to find it jammed on the chainmail hood.

  Dancing about, bellowing with rage, Topsy tried to drag the helmet off, while all his friends stood by and roared with laughter. Janey came to his rescue. Holding on to the rim of the helmet, she pulled one way and Topsy pulled the other, until at last the helmet came free. Topsy fell back on to his bottom, the mail ringing like a hammer on a horse’s shoe.

  Grinning, Gabriel helped him up. ‘How ever did they fight in all that?’

  ‘They would have had squires to help them get it off and on,’ Topsy growled, very red in the face.

  ‘I think you made the helmet a little too small,’ Ned said, his face still alight with amusement.

  ‘It’s not the helmet that’s too small, it’s Topsy’s head that’s too big,’ Gabriel said at once, making them all laugh again.

  Janey thought they were unkind, but Topsy took all the teasing in good part. He put the helmet down, but wore the surcoat all day, even to climb up on to the scaffolding to work away doggedly at his painting of Sir Tristram (whose face, Janey had to admit, was rather green).

  The paintings were progressing slowly, since so much time was spent talking, telling jokes and playing pranks on each other. The artists began to call their project ‘The Jovial Campaign’, in mimicry of the battles of medieval knights. Gabriel was the acknowledged king, and all the other artists his faithful followers. They laughed at his jests, adopted his way of speaking, and tied their stocks in the same careless knot.

  Both Gabriel and Ned had a talent for caricature, and soon little cartoons of Topsy were sketched in the dark corners behind the beams or scratched into the whitewash that covered the windows. There were also many sketches of a small rotund animal that looked rather like a beaver without a tail.

  ‘It’s a wombat,’ Gabriel explained to her. ‘The most absurd and comical of all God’s creatures. They have one in the zoo at Regent’s Park, and I go and visit it whenever I’m in town. Did you know it has a sort of big pocket in which it carries its babies? Only it carries them backwards. So when one goes waddling past, you can see the baby’s dear little face sticking out underneath the mother’s … ahem … tail.’

  Janey did not know whether to believe him or not.

  Friends often caught the train from London, delaying the work even further. They sprawled about the debating hall, playing cards or arm-wrestling, or dressing up in Topsy’s armour so someone could paint them. Sometimes they clambered up the scaffolding, a brush in hand, to splash some paint around.

  ‘Are they all artists too?’ Janey asked.

  ‘Some of them,’ Gabriel said. ‘The others just wish they were.’

  Janey was never invited out to lunch but she often ate supper with them, sitting around the fire, listening to Topsy read out the latest stanzas of his poems. He was polishing them up in the hope of finding a publisher, and would often stop mid-sentence to change a few words, or add in another syllable. He had an astonishing ability to come up with rhymes at the drop of a hat. Janey had never heard the like.

  One day a burly figure with an immense wiry beard arrived to spend the day. His name was Brown, but everyone called him Bruno. He had a gruff way of speaking, and stared at Janey with beetling brows. His presence had a dampening effect on everyone. Even Gabriel was quiet, and barely looked at or spoke to Janey the whole time his friend was there. Janey was hurt, but Ned told her afterwards that Bruno’s baby son had died only a few months earlier.

  ‘Bruno was utterly devastated, and Gabriel too. He was little Arthur’s godfather, along with Lizzie …’ He stopped what he was about to say, adding uncomfortably, ‘So you see, we’re all very sorry for poor old Bruno.’

  Janey nodded. It must be very awful to lose a baby. But she wished Gabriel had explained it all to her, and not been so cold. She was afraid Gabriel’s friends must think her a figure of fun, dressing up as a queen and playing pretend like a maundering child.

  A few days later, Janey went to the hall as usual, only to find Gabriel had not turned up to work that day. Ned told her he had received a letter that had worried him.

  ‘Does he … does he no’ need me fer today?’ Janey asked anxiously.

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know,’ Ned said, standing with one hand on the ladder, his other holding a palette of freshly mixed colours. ‘I would think not. Perhaps you can enjoy the day off.’ He smiled at her, and began to climb the ladder up to the roof.

  Janey looked about disconsolately, not knowing what to do. After a moment, she tied on her bonnet again and went out into the raw November day. Everything was grey and damp and blackened with soot. A hansom cab trotted past, splashing her with cold muddy water. Shivering, tucking her gloved hands into her sleeves, Janey hurried along Cornmarket Street. She passed the church of St Michael at the North Gate, and came to a halt at the corner. Broad Street was to her left, leading the way back to Hell’s Passage. George Street was to her left, leading to Gabriel.

  Janey turned left. Her steps quickened till she was almost running. She came to the door of the lodging-house and knocked timidly. The landlady let her in, recognising her with a grunt. She looked disapproving, as always. Janey went to knock on Gabriel’s door.

  He looked tired and dispirited, his eyes shadowed and his curls rumpled. He let Janey in with a muttered apology. His trunk stood in the centre of the room, and clothes hung out the sides.

  ‘I’m so sorry, I have to go,’ he said. ‘I have just heard from Lizzie. You know …’ His voice trailed off and he sank down into a chair.

  Janey gazed at him in dismay. ‘Is she sick again?’

  ‘She says so. I can’t help feeling she’s heard some gossip about you, and is malingering.’

  ‘Gossip? About me?’ Janey’s heart gave a weird hard thump.

  He smiled at her wearily. ‘Of course. Lizzie is friends with Bruno’s wife. I knew as soon as I saw him that word would get back to her about you. Lizzie is very jealous. It doesn’t matter that I haven’t laid a finger on you, much as I want to.’

  He wanted to? A tumult of emotion rushed through Janey. She did not speak, but just gazed at him, her hands clenched tightly before her.

  Gabriel looked down at his own hands. He had tried to scrub them clean, but paint was still embedded in his cuticles.

  ‘I wish I did not need to go!’ Th
e words burst from him. ‘I wish I could stay here with you, Janey.’

  He dropped his head into his hands, his fingers writhing through his hair. ‘But I can’t, I can’t. I have to go to her. What if she died? I would never forgive myself.’

  Janey went to him, and knelt before him, taking those restless, long-fingered hands in hers. ‘I know ye have to go. But does it have to be right now? Couldn’t … couldn’t ye give me just a li’l space o’ time?’

  Gabriel looked down into her face. She raised herself up so she could press her mouth to his. He groaned and gathered her to him.

  All Janey had ever wanted was someone she could love. She knew Gabriel could not stay. She knew he loved another. She knew she’d be sorry in the morning.

  But she did not care.

  She wanted just one sweet hour.

  5

  Victuals and Squalor

  Winter 1857

  Mrs Macdonald lay on her bed, propped up on pillows, clutching her smelling salts.

  ‘It strikes me to my very heart,’ she said. ‘To think that this house, which has seen such deep sorrow, will soon be the home of a stranger!’

  ‘Never mind, Mama,’ Georgie said, bringing a cordial in a little glass to her mother’s lips. Her mother drank it down, then dabbed at her eyes with her handkerchief.

  ‘My dearest Carrie died, in this very room, on this very spot, and soon I shall never see it again. How many times have I dropped to my knees beside this bed, in agony, begging God for the strength to submit to his will and endure this loss that still wrings my heart?’

  ‘Many, many times,’ Georgie said.

  ‘Yes, you are right. Many, many times. And now someone else will kneel here to pray and feel nothing of my anguish.’

  ‘Perhaps it will be a good thing … to start afresh?’ Georgie ventured.

  Her mother was horrified. ‘How can you say such a thing? This room is sacred in my eyes … this is the very last place on earth that her dear presence brightened …’ Mrs Macdonald began to weep again.

  Her dutiful daughter dipped a clean handkerchief in lavender water and passed it to her.

  Georgie was secretly delighted at the idea of moving from this narrow, damp house, nestled cheek by jowl with a dozen other houses just the same. Her father’s new posting was in Marylebone, only a few blocks away from Regent’s Park. Georgie and her sisters would have somewhere beautiful to walk every day. Best of all, it was only half an hour’s walk away from Red Lion Square, where Ned was renting rooms with Topsy. Once they moved, she could perhaps see him several times a week. Her heart sang at the thought.

  She had hardly seen Ned in recent months. He had been in Oxford with Topsy and Gabriel, painting some murals. Plump letters arrived several times a week, describing in humorous terms the fun and games they were getting up to and stuffed with caricatures of Topsy, tearing his hair out in rage.

  As her mother sighed and laid the damp handkerchief over her eyes, Georgie sat down and drew one of Ned’s letters out of her pocket. She had read it so many times it was already beginning to be worn at the creases.

  I have from now till breakfast to write to you in, and I have no idea what now is, for after the most elaborate directions for being called early, which were strictly attended to, I turned over and dozed away like a pig and now I expect my usual morning tormentors, Rossetti and Pollen, who come in at about 8 o’clock to insult me – laugh at me, my dear – point the finger of scorn at me, address me by opprobrious names and finally tear blankets and counterpanes and mattresses and all the other things that cover me, from my enfeebled grasp …

  Georgie smiled. How clearly she could hear Ned’s voice in his written words. And each time she read the words ‘my dear’ a little thrill ran over her.

  Her mother sighed heavily and lifted up the handkerchief. Georgie hurriedly hid the letter in her apron pocket.

  ‘Why, oh, why must we be always moving?’ Mrs Macdonald complained.

  ‘That is the lot of a minister’s wife.’ Georgie was so glad that Ned had chosen a different vocation.

  ‘I suppose I must be grateful that my poor dear Carrie was saved from the vale of tears that is this world,’ Mrs Macdonald said tremulously.

  ‘Yes, Mama,’ Georgie answered, her thoughts far away.

  Ned stayed much longer in Oxford than he had expected, and Georgie missed him constantly. Life was so drear and drab without him. It seemed to rain every day, and the new house in Beaumont Street was old and very draughty. There was nothing to do but practise the piano and watch for the postman.

  A week or so before Christmas, however, he sent Georgie a note saying he was back in town and begging her and her sister Louie to come to tea. Mrs Macdonald was soothed and cajoled into giving permission, and Georgie brushed her straight hair till it shone and scrubbed at her face with a rough flannel to bring some roses into her pale cheeks.

  She almost didn’t recognise Ned at first. He was thinner than ever, and had grown a wispy beard and moustache. She hesitated a little on the threshold, but then he smiled at her and took her hand, and she knew him again.

  Ned leant out the door to call down the stairs. ‘Mary, can you bring us quarts of hot coffee, pyramids of toast, and multitudinous quantities of milk?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ came the distant response, and he grinned and shut the door, leading them into the studio.

  It looked as if a whirlwind had gone through it, with bits of medieval armour lying tumbled next to costumes and strange bits of jewellery. Easels stood about the room, to catch the best light at different times of the day, and canvases mounted on wooden frames were stacked against the walls. One elastic-sided boot lay in the middle of the floor, and a stand full of swords and spears was doubling as a hatstand. Books were piled haphazardly everywhere.

  ‘Don’t mind the tumble and rumble and jumble,’ Ned said, waving his hand at the mess.

  ‘Oh, I don’t,’ Georgie responded quite truthfully. She found it fascinating.

  ‘Your beard looks like a goat’s,’ Louie said.

  He stroked it thoughtfully. ‘I think it makes me look like an artist. They are all very hairy, you know.’

  ‘I do know! You sent all those cartoons of your friend Mr Morris. He has a lot of hair.’

  ‘He does indeed. He is most unnaturally and unnecessarily curly. You should have been there one afternoon in Oxford. We managed to get him to sit still on the pretext that Bruno was going to paint him, but all the while Arthur Hughes was crouched behind him, quietly tying all his hair into knots. You should have seen his rage when he was at last allowed up and ran his fingers through his mop, like he always did!’

  Louie regarded him rather dubiously, and said that surely Mr Morris must have felt Mr Hughes knotting his hair.

  ‘You would think so,’ Ned answered. ‘But we had asked Tops to write us a poem while he was being painted, and so he was frowning furiously and gnawing the end of his pen and so had no attention left over for Arthur.’

  ‘I would so like to meet Mr Morris again,’ Georgie said wistfully. ‘I saw him that one time at the Royal Academy exhibition, and he was so engrossed in the paintings he hardly noticed me at all.’

  ‘Well, that’s why you’re here,’ Ned said. ‘Or one reason at least, apart from wanting to see you. I was thinking I might give a party. Gabriel is coming home to see his mother for Christmas, and Top is swinging past for a few days too, to see a chair he has designed for our apartment. I thought it’d be fun to have a shindig. But I’ll need your help. I’ve never given a party before.’

  ‘Neither have we,’ Louie said at once. ‘Unless you count temperance meetings.’

  Ned looked at her in horror, then turned his gaze on Georgie. She laughed a little ruefully, and said, ‘I’m sure we can help, though, Ned. What sort of party do you want to have?’

  ‘One with all my friends, and something to eat and drink, and maybe some music. And I thought perhaps your mother might let you and your sisters attend?’ He s
poke hesitantly. ‘It won’t be a bachelor fling. I was planning to ask Bruno – Mr Brown, you know, and his wife, Emma – and Arthur Hughes and his wife, Tryphena, and maybe Gabriel’s sisters would like to come too.’

  Georgie felt a warm glow of pleasure. At last she was to meet some of Ned’s friends!

  The chair was extraordinary.

  Huge and dark and medieval in design, it looked like something out of a fairytale. Georgie stared at it in awe, and wondered at the imagination that could conceive of such a thing.

  Ned dashed off quick notes to everyone, inviting them to the party, and Georgie helped him address the envelopes, while Louie licked the stamps. He wrote to Bruno: ‘Come tonight and see the chair, there’s a dear old fellow – such a chair!!! Gabriel and Top hook it tomorrow, so do come. Hughes will come, and a Stunner or two to make melody. Come soon, there’s a nice old chap – victuals and squalor at all hours, but come at 6.’

  Georgie very much liked being called a Stunner. Her most secret fear was that Ned would fall in love with one of the beauties that smiled out of so many of his friends’ canvases. She thought it would just break her heart.

  The guests began arriving promptly at six o’clock, and soon the room was crowded. Georgie met so many new people, her head was in a whirl. Arthur Hughes and his beautiful wife, Tryphena, who had hair the colour of a new guinea. The two Misses Rossetti were dowdily dressed, with dark severe hair, long sallow faces and large eyes of quite remarkable beauty. Ford Madox Brown was a bluff bear of a man with a great spreading beard and a kind, rather ponderous manner. His wife, Emma, pretty and plump, had a forced brightness about her and went straight to the hot gin punch, serving herself three glasses in rapid succession. Georgie remembered that Emma had lost two babies that year; her ten-month-old son, Arthur, and her unborn child a few weeks later. She tried not to judge her too harshly.

  Georgie, of course, drank nothing but water. She had handed out far too many temperance pamphlets in her time not to be aware of the evils of alcohol. Ned was always making jokes about it, and liked to pour her water from a great height so it came into her glass with a sparkle and froth to it.