The Painted Lady: A moving story about family loyalty, friendship and first love

by Ursula Bloom

  ‘So it’s you,’ said Mr. Rozanne. ‘Vant to buy a frock?’

  ‘No, I came to see you all.’

  ‘Oh,’ with obvious disappointment. ‘Vell, half a minute. You sit down.’ He indicated the dilapidated chair where Winnie sat in her very few spare moments, and which had, long ago, been worn out. Madeline sat down. Isobel came to and fro, raising her eyebrows at Madeline to infer that this customer was almost more than she could bear.

  ‘Shan’t be a mo’,’ she said, but was several mo’s. Eventually the customer trailed away with the cheapest of four fourrures, and a great many hints that she believed that Mr. Rozanne was doing her. Isobel, looking jaded, sank down into the second chair. ‘This life makes me tired,’ she said.

  ‘Very busy?’

  ‘Oh, so-so! They come in, they don’t really mean to buy anything but just want to mess about, and wear me to a frazzle. How’s life with you?’

  ‘It’s going well.’

  ‘You might have sent me a bit of wedding cake, I do think.’

  ‘We didn’t have one.’

  ‘Well, that’s a nice wedding, I must say, with no cake. I suppose you did have a wedding?’ and she glanced at Madeline.

  ‘Of course!’ She was too emphatic, too sure; she wasn’t old enough to hide her feelings, and, realising it, she changed the subject. ‘How about you?’

  ‘I gave up my flat and I’m now living in Regent’s Park. It’s a house, with a garden, just what I’ve always wanted.’ But, thought Madeline, if she is living with this man why is she still working in the shop? She looked about her questioningly. She was now aware of the shabbiness of the place, the carpet that was never properly cleaned, the indifferent furniture pushed into dark corners, and cubicles, where it was hoped that customers would not penetrate ‒ things that she had never noticed before. As they talked she heard Mr. Rozanne fumbling in a paper bag (did the little man never stop eating?). ‘I’m glad you have a garden,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, it’s lovely.’ Isobel’s eyes were tired, but in them lay a new tranquillity. Madeline had the impression that Isobel was happy in a different way, she cared for this man as Madeline cared for Chester, they understood one another, so that Isobel radiated and showed how happy she was by her manner.

  They chatted, yet both were conscious of a wall rising between them ‒ neither was telling the actual truth ‒ and when Madeline got up to go home she knew that, whereas once she had envied Mr. Rozanne’s, now she saw it as another shabby little shop, because she had known something better. The flat and the paved garden, with the two sinister words, TIME PASSES, cut into a stone seat were a milestone on her road. The Virginia creeper might be rosying, and blown leaves might litter the garden, but time was only passing nearer to the divorce, which meant her ultimate marriage to Chester. She believed in him. A man who could hold her so tenderly in his arms and breathe such fond words into her ears could never deceive her. He might make her uneasy by the way that he cheated her in small matters, but she could understand the urge to turn the insurance office into the F.O., to make Biddy Bianca-of-Hollywood, and to give himself a commission.

  Chester was a snob ‒ but so, at heart, is all the world, she assured herself ‒ but he would never cheat her.

  As she walked up Shaftesbury Avenue, with the little dress shops, their saleswomen lurking in the doorways, all ready to beckon customers in with a crooked finger and an ingratiating smile, she was thankful to have escaped this. She came to the Circus, with the pleasure-seeking crowd, and the people converging on the tube entrances, and the flower women grouped round Eros. As she went along in a leisurely way, she saw a man walking in a hunched fashion because of a large canvas under his arm, and she recognised Frank Greyston.

  ‘Just going along to old Hellgarth’s,’ he said, smiling, with kind grey eyes. He looked like the very spirit of autumn, with his bronze-red beard and chestnut suit, and the darkly red jumper under it. Unconventional, and un-Londony, but pleasant.

  ‘A good picture?’ she asked,

  ‘Something I got at Burnham Beeches last week. I think it’ll sell, for people are being trained up to nature pictures. How’s Chester?’

  ‘He’s fine.’

  ‘One of these evenings you two must come along to the ballet with me, or do you hate ballet?’

  ‘I’ve never seen any.’

  ‘Fancy that now! Let’s do a matinee. I could manage Thursday if it was any good to you? Of course you may hate it; the ballet is like marrons glacés, you love them or loathe them. We could try, however.’

  ‘I’d love it.’

  She did not tell Chester, there seemed to be no need, and he was having trouble at the office. Madeline did not gather what had gone wrong, but surmised that Chester was suffering for somebody else’s blunder, and, in covering the other man’s mistake, had come in for a good deal of censure himself. He appeared to be so worried that it struck her as being foolish to tempt any further annoyance he might feel about Madeline going out with Frank, so she kept quiet.

  On Thursday she found that she did like ballet; it gave her a strange sense of tranquillity. The whole afternoon was pleasant ‒ rather like going out with one’s brother, she felt ‒ and when she returned to the flat she knew that it had offered her a relaxation that she had needed. Until this afternoon she had not been aware how tense she was with Chester (it would, of course, be different when they were properly married); but meanwhile, without being actually conscious of it, she was worrying.

  Chester was sweet to her that night, saying how lucky he was to have met her. ‘I couldn’t live without my darling little Maddy,’ he said.

  ‘Nor I without you, Chester. When I think of the way you rescued me from that awful dress shop, I cannot begin to tell you how grateful I am.’

  ‘What about my being grateful to you? You’ve changed my whole life.’

  She stroked his hair fondly. Their lives would change even more, she told herself, and she was wrong to doubt him. She could be sure of him, quite sure; she kept repeating to herself that it was absurd to worry about the future. He went to spend that week-end with the Hellgarths, and she was alone in the flat, but now she wasn’t frightened any more.

  She was intensely happy.

  The telegram came for Chester one November day when the fog was lying low over London, and threatening to become jaundiced. The flat was dimmed by it, and Ethel fussed, because ‘it wasn’t no use to clean the ‘brights’, as they’d go all funny with this beastly muck outside’. The telegram being delivered, automatically Madeline read it.

  Biddy killed in car crash. Come at once.

  It had been dispatched from Scarborough only a few hours previously! Madeline was ashamed that she should experience such enormous relief, for Biddy’s death meant that she could be married with the full sanction of her Church; now she would have to make no supreme choice between lover and faith. She had been brave, and courage is always rewarded, she thought, as she dialled the office to tell Chester what had happened. She was ashamed that another woman’s death could thrill her so much, ashamed that she should vibrate with joy in the knowledge that at last the way was clear.

  ‘Mr. Thane?’ she asked.

  ‘He isn’t here,’ was the reply.

  ‘Mr. Chester Thane, I mean. This is his wife speaking; there is an urgent message for him.’

  ‘Oh,’ said the voice, and then, ungraciously, ‘Half a mo’.’

  There was a pause, then another man came to her. ‘I’m so sorry, but Mr. Thane gave up working here some little time back.’

  ‘He what?’

  ‘He’s left! He’s been gone some time.’

  ‘Have you any idea where I could find him?’

  ‘One moment.’ She waited, aware of a dull feeling, of doubt that was almost a pain, then the man came back and gave her the very number from which she was telephoning.

  ‘Thank you very much,’ she said, and rang off.

  She could do nothing.

  Ethel went ho
me, and the grey fog descended closer, whilst Madeline had the feeling that something horrible was happening, and the premonition that Biddy’s death had not been opportune died; now she felt that life had not suddenly untwisted itself from some unpleasant contortion, but had twirled into an even more complicated one. When eventually she heard Chester’s key in the lock, she had worked herself up into an agony of worry.

  ‘Oh, Chester, I rang you at the office.’

  ‘What the hell did you do that for?’

  Instantly she knew that he was angry. ‘I’d had a telegram about Biddy.’

  ‘You’d had a telegram? You mean you opened my telegram?’ She said nothing, but held it out to him, and he read it slowly, as though only half understanding; then he said, ‘Poor old Bid!’

  ‘It makes things simpler?’

  ‘Not at the moment; things are being uncommonly difficult just now. As you discovered by your own particularly low little trick, I’ve lost my job. It was my fault defending the other chap, of course, but things happen that way. I’m in a bit of a mess, Maddy.’

  She sat down on the sofa beside him. ‘Listen, Chester, if it’s money, I can go out to work. I can see us through a bad patch, because, thank goodness, I’m young, and strong and fit, and very, very willing.’

  She had braced her body with pride that she should be in the position to offer this for him, she felt rather heroic about it, but he shook his head.

  ‘No woman is working for me, I can tell you that, here and now. I may be a cad, and I know that I am a cad in lots of ways, but no woman is working for me! No, my sweet, I’m in a jam, but I’ll get out of it in my own way; after all, education is an investment and good men are not out of work very long. I’ve got that at the back of me.’

  ‘But, Chester, couldn’t I help pro tem?’

  ‘It would be against my principles; after all, you must leave me those. They may be poor things, but, damn it all, they are my own. We’ve got to face this out, only it means that for the moment we can’t be married.’

  ‘Not married?’

  ‘Well, poor old Biddy going this way, it hardly seems decent, does it?’

  She felt an uprising within her, an itching desire to fly into a rage; the emotion gained speed, and she knew that, although she still spoke quietly, inside her she was furious. ‘But surely it isn’t decent living as we are doing?’

  ‘Well, other men do.’

  She could not stop herself from screaming; she heard the sound in her throat raking her, a hideous and untutored sound over which she had no control; it seemed to fill the little flat and to blast it. She twisted herself into a convulsive movement, until now quite unaware that she had enough of her mother’s blood in her to behave like this. When she recovered her full sense she was lying on the sofa, with Chester slapping her hands, and pouring cold water on to her face. It was so cold that it made her shiver.

  He stood back, staring at her, and as she blinked up at him she had the extraordinary feeling that until this particular moment she had never really seen him before. He looked to be shorter, his eyes were set very close together.

  ‘I should think you’re ashamed of yourself,’ he said, ‘that was the worst piece of bad taste, but I might have known you could do it though I had always thought that you were better than that.’

  Between them rose a wall that she could never hope to tear down; she stared helplessly at him, refusing to believe that he had never meant to marry her, telling herself that whatever happened she must stay loyal to him, faithful to all that he stood for in her life.

  ‘I should think there’ll be the devil of a lot of enquiries about this row?’ he said irritably, ‘you screamed enough.’

  ‘I had something to scream about.’

  ‘I tell you I’ll marry you when the time comes, but that time isn’t now.’

  ‘Chester, you know you won’t.’

  ‘I’ve got to respect poor old Biddy’s memory. I’ve got to get out of this financial jam before I can make any other commitments.’

  ‘I said that I’d work for you.’

  ‘Only my kind of men don’t do that. Your kind do, they take it for granted, but the old school tie’s different. Oh, Maddy, I did try to educate you up to it.’

  ‘To the oil-and-colour shop?’ she asked, and for a single moment the fire of old Nonna flashed in her. ‘To the cook at the rectory? To the lower deck?’

  Each remark cut hard, she knew it; his eyes went stony, his face yellowed; when he spoke again the wall had become a bastion. ‘I don’t know who filled you up with all this rubbish, because none of it is true, but it is quite obvious that you will allow anyone to poison your mind against me.’

  ‘Oh, Chester, I do love you so.’

  He poured himself out a drink, and when she spoke to him refused to reply; she could do nothing but go into the bedroom. Every time that she had entered it before, it had been a joy to her, but now the room seemed to have grown cold; it was a morgue, Chester’s emotion for her was a corpse lying there. She could not possibly stay here like this.

  She began to pack a few things in a suitcase, hoping every moment that he would come charging in, full of tender remorse, begging her to stay, but although he came in and saw what she was doing, he said nothing. The bag clicked to. She was crying now ‒ not for him but for herself; the tears fell and her face began to swell; she cried so much that the tensely tight feeling came to her head. She carried the suitcase out into the sitting-room, where Chester sat with the evening paper; and although he looked to be preoccupied, she knew that he wasn’t reading it.

  ‘I’m going, Chester,’ she said, waiting for him to entreat her to stay; he said nothing. She knew that she had made a mistake in threatening to leave him; when she had protested she had been confident that he could not bear to let her go.

  ‘Chester? Chester dear, you don’t want me to go?’

  ‘You must please yourself, I suppose. I don’t know what’s come over you.’

  She went to the front door, knowing that if once she opened it she would be obliged to shut it behind her for ever. He made no move. Cautiously and very slowly she turned the handle; a grey wave of fog blowing in seemed to stifle her. The smell of the street was sour with smoke. Longingly she glanced back into the sitting-room, and as she did so she heard the tinkle of a siphon nozzle against a glass rim.

  Resolutely she went outside.

  It took longer than she had expected to make her way back to Soho. At Piccadilly the fog hung thickly, so that it made the air almost impenetrable. Madeline made her way up Old Compton Street, not because she wished to go there, but because she had a sentimental longing for home and for the people she knew, and could not picture crying herself to sleep in a strange bed. Now the matter of money was urgent; she had very little, and obviously no more would be coming from Chester.

  She felt her way up Wardour Street, only being sure of her position when she touched the railings of St. Anne’s. She turned the corner and went along the street, coming suddenly upon the shop, almost unexpectedly. The lights were yellowed uneasily by fog, and the smell of curry and spice mixed unhappily with it. Within she saw Uncle Luigi wearing a grimy cardigan and no collar, his face moistly flabby as he doled out soup in tins to a fat customer. Nonna was weighing sugar, and peering up at the weight register with her short-sighted eyes. She did not see Madeline for a moment, for there were three or four people in the shop, then, catching sight of the girl, she gave a little cry of welcome, and beckoned her inside.

  Madeline went into the back room, where the table was littered with a new consignment of groceries, and an interrupted meal straggled across the far end. She set her suitcase down; just then Nonna came in, staring at the case as though not able to understand its import.

  ‘Why you bring him?’ she asked. ‘You haven’t …?’

  ‘Yes, Nonna. I’ve left him.’

  ‘Oh. Che tragedia! But he your husband?’

  ‘We were never married.’

 
Nonna put her funny little hands to her ears as though to shut out the horror of the sound. ‘But you said you will marry him at the Caxton Hall? You did said.’

  Madeline reeled off the reply dully, like a gramophone record. ‘He had a wife already and he kept promising that he would put things right, yet nothing happened. She died, the telegram came to-day, and he said that he wouldn’t do anything, not even now when she was dead. I had to come away, Nonna, there wasn’t anything else that I could do.’

  Nonna peered at her with small distressed eyes. The full significance of what had happened sunk in, and she put out a hand, stroking Madeline’s tenderly. ‘Poverina,’ she whispered, ‘poverina!’

  Then the girl broke down, sinking into an uncomfortable chair and burying her face in her hands; amongst the consignment of groceries she sobbed pathetically. Nonna closed the door between them and the squalid little shop. She made coffee in the percolator with hands that trembled, and she forced Madeline to swallow it down. She kept Uncle Luigi away.

  Afterwards, she took the girl up to the frowsty bedroom on the stairs, which was such a vigorous contrast to her own room that Madeline could have wept for self-pity. The windows had not been opened for weeks, and even the fog had entered to mingle with the stale-body scent of the place.