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

by Ursula Bloom

  She did not know when she started living with Val. She had told herself repeatedly that there must be nothing like this in her life again, but Val had need of her. Pity began it, her care for him in those weak and trembling moments when he suffered that ‘hell of a hang-over’ that was so shattering: he clung to her, beseeching her never to leave him, and she could not tear herself away. It was easy for moralists to generalise, pity drove hard. The world never knew Val as he was: to them he was the drunken poet, who could ask little sympathy and who drank from sheer lack of grip, but Madeline knew him as the man who had been spoilt as a boy, and had never been able to catch up with lost time, the man who had never had a chance.

  She went from doctor to doctor, finding most of them unsympathetic. Twice she got Val to consent to treatment, but he bored easily, and as every doctor required of him some willpower (of which he had no reserve store) he lost control. Madeline realised that Val’s helplessness with regard to his condition had restored her own confidence in herself. In her eagerness to be useful to him she was able to forget her disappointments, Chester, and Frank; Val, too, in a way, but not such a difficult way, because she still believed that she could help him. Frank wrote every three weeks and was optimistic that he was growing rapidly better. One of these days Madeline must come out and see the sanatorium, which was delightful. He raved about the flowers, the trees, the warm sweet air, and the bird-song. Only he wasn’t painting very much, he confessed, but he’d make up for all that when he got home. Had she been to the exhibition?

  ‘Val, we ought to go,’ she said, ‘it’s been opened two days already; we really ought to go.’

  ‘Very well, we’ll go this afternoon.’ It had been a bad night, and he was shaky.

  ‘Do you think you could manage this afternoon?’

  ‘Nothing easier.’

  They went that afternoon to the exhibition, taking a taxi, for it was one of the first hot days in London, when women put on their new spring hats, and the streets smell of hot tar and rubber, and there is a new brightness in the eyes.

  ‘It seems a shame to go indoors on such a day,’ said Madeline, ‘especially when I’ve seen the picture already.’ She had on a perky little white hat and a soft green suit, a new one that Val had bought for her for seeing him through a difficult bout, which had entailed negotiating a particularly formidable doctor. They held hands in the taxi, he pressing her fingers effusively, for he was very fond.

  ‘Don’t know where I’d be without you, darling,’ he said, a trifle thickly.

  How different Frank had been, but then he had not needed her so much: Val’s helplessness was the force that welded her to him. He would die without her.

  As they went up the steps of the entrance to the galleries she heard two people chattering on the stairway in front of her.

  ‘They say the Greyston picture is marvellous. Usually he only does flower pieces, natural history studies and that sort of thing, but they say that it’s really beautiful. I always like his work, and this is exceptional.’

  ‘I’ll get my husband to see it and try to persuade him to commission a portrait of me. I’ve always wanted to have my picture painted.’

  ‘So did I till I had it done, and I came out looking like the world’s worst woman. It was maddening.’ They went on ahead.

  Mechanically Madeline opened her catalogue, looking for the Greyston picture. Room C. 214. 215. 216. She caught her breath. There was the entry.

  ‘The Painted Lady,’ by Frank Greyston.

  That entry had done something to her heart: as she stood staring up at the exquisite picture she knew now why he had emphasised the lipstick, why he had depicted a painted madonna. She could not believe it of him, for Frank had always been kind, and this title was cruel. Now she knew why he had wanted to memorise the beauty of that Norwegian night, when, turning a bend in the fjord, they had seen the myriad of pale stars reflected, drowned in the waters below. Here was that view, faultlessly copied, unerring in detail. She said nothing, but she felt Val grope for her hand, wondering if he knew how deeply she was hurt. Frank must have some explanation, she’d write and ask, and as she thought of it the world spun round her, and she knew that if she wasn’t very careful she would faint. She felt quite ill, and couldn’t understand it, for she ought to be strong again now.

  They had meant to have tea at Gunter’s, but she preferred to go home to St. John’s Wood, because she wanted to be alone with Val.

  Val said as they drove back: ‘I can’t think what induced Greyston to call the picture that! You’re not the butterfly type, you’re the sort of girl who will do anything for a man.’

  ‘Perhaps that was what he meant?’

  ‘Nonsense. Was it something to do with the painted lady butterfly who goes North to die?’

  ‘Don’t say things like that! You’re making it all so much worse.’

  ‘Oh, my dear.’ He touched her hand tenderly. ‘Please don’t take it that way.’

  She kept thinking of the inescapable. She wrote that night to Frank; the actual writing of the letter was a relief, in that she could pour out her feelings to him and pray that he would cable her some explanation for the change of title, a satisfactory explanation too. But she never received the answer to that cable, for on the day that ‘The Painted Lady’ sold for five hundred guineas the notice of Frank’s death in a Californian sanatorium was in the evening papers. He had been optimistic, with the buoyant happiness of the consumptive patient, who always sees ahead a bright light, but never the dark shadow, and she had believed him, and had not realised that he was dying.

  He had been happy. Only that very day he had written to Madeline, expressing the belief that he was so much better that he would be home this August. His hope sprung from an unquenchable fountain, yet he had a sudden and not entirely unexpected haemorrhage that night, and passed quietly out.

  When Madeline read the news in cold hard print she knew that there was now no means of discovering why he had called his picture ‘The Painted Lady’ and she would never know the answer, just as she would never see him again, tall, thin, and sloping, with his ginger beard, his quiet green-grey eyes and those attenuated hands which were so brilliant with a brush.

  A week later she received an official letter from a firm of solicitors in the city, which told her that Frank had left her five hundred pounds, free of duty.

  That was a hot summer.

  Madeline and Val stayed in London because he did not fancy going away, the country wearied him for long spells; once he had played with the idea of a cruise, but Madeline had coaxed him out of it, realising that such a trip would be the worst possible thing for him, with the constant proximity of the bar, stewards ever ready to bring him a pick-me-up, and unstable companions.

  ‘We’ll stay where we are,’ she said, but she felt listless and weary, and the August was unspeakably trying to bear. In the middle of the month Val went off to see an old friend who had asked him to the Wye Valley to do some fishing, the prospect of which interested him. It was strange that Madeline seemed to be almost relieved. The friend had been at college with him, and well able to deal with Val’s weakness, so he said. For the first time since Nonna’s death Madeline felt free, and had never known that she had longed for this.

  She sat in the little scrap of garden most of the day, and when the evenings came she went up to the West End, because the brightness of the streets intrigued her. She visited the Venezia, but it seemed now to be tawdry and soiled, with its clientele going in and out, and Mario brisk and bobbish, whilst Mamma, grown incredibly old to look at and very complaining to talk to, seemed both languid and uneasy.

  ‘It was all a mistake,’ said Mamma. ‘Oh, how I have paid for it! Now there is no hope for me! My beloved Mamma is dead …’

  ‘But you never got on with Nonna!’

  ‘You cruel girl! Of course I got on with her. I was never cut out for this sort of life, it is far too hard work. Your father would turn in his grave if he knew what was happen
ing to me. It’s slavery, and Mario expects me to be at my best all the time. He never has a day’s illness and doesn’t know what it is like to feel miserable all the time.’

  ‘Mamma, I am so sorry.’

  But there was, of course, nothing that Madeline could do about it. She sympathised, then went down into the restaurant itself where Mario was expatiating on the beauties of the chicken paprika and the sole Bonne femme to two distinguished guests. Seeing that she was leaving, he came to the door to see Madeline off.

  ‘Your poor mamma, she what you call like bad health. She will never be better because she does not want to be better.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s fair. Mamma does want to be better, I am sure. It’s very hard on her.’

  ‘And what about me? Me?’ The little man beat his chest in imitation of the man-hunting gorilla of immense power. ‘Is it not hard on me to have a complaining, difficult wife? Very hard, all the time it is hard on me, I say! Oh, what a fool is a man to marry!’

  ‘I hope Luca doesn’t say that?’

  Mario raised his eyes to Heaven. ‘Luca picked wisely. He has a very beautiful son, and his wife is well and strong, and her father make much money. But is he a miser? Oh yes. Is he mean? Oh yes. Never do I get one bottle of chianti for the shop without having to pay, how you say, through the snout for it. Through the snout every time, and all the time. It makes me seeck.’

  There was a call from inside the restaurant and, turning sharply, to the imminent danger of a pot palm, he rushed from her to the patron’s side.

  Madeline went down the street.

  Uncle Luigi was serving in the shop, in the same old way as he always served. Now he had the till to himself and could do what he liked, save that Uncle Tony had come up from Bristol, where the delicatessen had gone a resounding crash. Uncle Tony established himself here, occupying half the house, and his Protestant wife complained, and the children bawled most of the day. Uncle Luigi was indignant, but could only amuse himself by teaching them bad words to say, and some Italian ribaldry which made their mother even more angry with him.

  Uncle Luigi did not care. He knew that the business was not doing as it had done in Nonna’s time, but it was still a good business, and ought to see him out; that was if Uncle Tony did not get his fingers into the pie too much and too frequently. Uncle Luigi was cheerfully happy about it all; he just didn’t care as long as he could get his own food and drink.

  How wide is the river between me and these people, thought Madeline, and growing wider every day! They are interested in none of the things that interest me, they are not of me at all. And she walked up into Bloomsbury again, with a nostalgic yearning for much that had been, and which could never be again, and sweet memories of old Nonna. She saw the dreadful house where once she had lodged with Mrs. Staines, of whom she had been so afraid. All that was past, thank goodness, over and done with. She would never meet Mrs. Staines again.

  She went into the square, sitting down on the dilapidated seat where first she had met Chester. Here everything had begun, or nothing. She wished that she had not yielded to this homesickness which had brought her back again, for no good could come of it, only remorse; it was like listening to a once familiar tune which had the power to sharpen the edge of memory that one had believed to be dead.

  A man was coming through the gardens of the square, its grass browned by the arid hand of a hot summer; as he approached she recognised him and knew that although once she had believed her feelings for him to be dead, killed by himself, now they lived, and that nothing could ever kill love such as she had felt for Chester. As he came nearer she wondered if he would know her, pass her by or speak? She wondered if he had forgotten, and what had happened to him and to Hélène. Madeline was not calculating enough to take into account the fact that she wore beautiful clothes, that her face was exquisitely made up, and that she looked lovely; never in his life had Chester omitted to notice a woman in her present position.

  He stopped dead. ‘Madeline,’ he said tiredly, like a child who has at last found the one person he was searching for. ‘Madeline? Night after night I have come here hoping to find you, have sat here, have longed for you, and ached for you, now you have come. Oh, my dear,’ and, sitting down, he leant forward to rest his tired head on his hand. She saw that his suit was shabby, his shirt frayed at the cuffs and his shoes were down-at-heel. Much of the old smart Chester had gone, but here was the Chester that she had always loved, and perhaps now he would allow her to see him as he really was.

  ‘Of course I came back,’ she said.

  ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘Oh, round about.’ She avoided the question. ‘What have you been doing?’

  ‘I’ve been round about too.’

  ‘And Hélène?’

  He did not lie. She was glad and proud that at least he had the courage to tell her the truth. ‘We married, you know. When you left me I felt the veriest cad, and I rushed off and proposed to her. Too late I knew that it was one of those frightful mistakes from which there is no recovery ‒ at least no honourable recovery.’

  ‘The marriage was a failure?’

  ‘Yes. She left me months ago; there is some other chap, and I’m giving her a divorce. It was the only thing I could do; it’s called behaving like a gentleman, but I cannot see anything very gentlemanly about the behaviour. It’s just hell!’ He recovered himself. ‘Don’t let’s talk about me, let’s talk about you.’

  ‘No, Chester, I want to know about yourself. What job are you in now?’

  ‘I’d left the F.O. when we parted, hadn’t I?’ So he was still sticking to that lie; she wished he wouldn’t. ‘I helped another fellow and had to buy the baby for it! Fortunes of war, I suppose; comes of being a fool and having decent standards, but ‒ well, there you are. Then I got into Hellgarth’s shop. I know nothing of pictures, but I interviewed possible purchase and made them interested. It was going very well, though he was mingy enough about a salary; you would have thought for his daughter’s sake he would have done something for me, wouldn’t you? But not he! Not on your life. When Hélène left me I got a curt little note saying that my job had terminated. That was that again! You’d think I’d get used to disappointments, wouldn’t you, but somehow a chap doesn’t.’

  ‘Are you out of a job still?’

  He shook his head. ‘No. I’m in something in the city. It isn’t my idea of a job, but I had more or less to take what I could get. It’s advertising. The fellow makes a lot of veterinary produces, cat powders, dog powders, chicken foods, and such. I write up the boosting advertisements and travel in them for him. There’s money in it, or rather there will be.’ He indicated his frayed shirt: ‘For the moment I’m damned hard-up.’

  ‘And the divorce?’

  ‘That’s coming through. It will come on in October, directly the courts sit again. Unnamed woman co-respondent, you know. It was the only thing that I could do.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  He would go on suffering all the time, she knew, and she was sorry for him, sitting here by his side; seeing him, hearing his voice, all the old love and loyalty had risen in her. She had learnt to forget him, or she had believed that she had, but now she knew that she had never forgotten him and that he would always represent the one man in her life.

  ‘And you?’ he said.

  ‘I’m living in St. John’s Wood.’

  ‘You look very prosperous, that colour suits you! Are you still at Rozanne’s?’

  ‘Good Heavens, no. I’ve been to Norway since then. I came back and was manageress at Elfrida’s for a time.’

  ‘Elfrida’s! Surely that was a step-up?’

  ‘Yes, it was, but I got ill, a touch of pneumonia or something, then I went away to Ventnor and came back to St. John’s Wood.’

  ‘You’re not married?’

  ‘No, Chester. I’m not married.’

  He looked at her curiously, then said very gently, ‘I was a perfect beast to you, and I’ve no righ
t to ask questions, but is there somebody else?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you love him?’

  She shook her head, knowing that emotion made her voice tremble, and her throat work. ‘The only man I ever really loved was you, Chester, and you know it. I’m terribly sorry for this man; they say that pity is akin to love. I wouldn’t know about that, but I do know that I’m very sympathetic with him. He drinks heavily.’

  ‘Oh, Lord, aren’t you wasting your sympathy?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Anyway, whilst Val needs it, it’s there.’

  He went rather quiet for a moment, then said, ‘Where is your life leading you, Maddy? It seems that I started you on the wrong road, and I’ll never forgive myself for that. I let you down, and since then life had been the one to let you down. It’s no good going on being nothing at all, you ought to marry.’

  ‘I suppose if Frank had lived I should have married him. He was the painter that we met at Hellgarth’s, I went away to Norway with him, and he was a dear.’

  ‘You loved him?’

  ‘In a way, yes; but not the way that I loved you. You meant everything to me. Frank was a brother, a dear brother, no more. He died in California a few weeks ago. T.B.’

  ‘Good Heavens,’ then very softly, ‘Tough luck! You don’t have much luck, do you, dear?’

  ‘No, Chester, I suppose I don’t. You, Frank, and Val. But it’s nice seeing you again. I’m lucky in that.’

  ‘Couldn’t we meet just sometimes? I’d ask you out to dinner if I had the price of the dinner on me, but,’ he coughed uncomfortably, ‘it so happens that I’m cleaned out.’

  ‘Supposing you dined with me? I’d love to have dinner with you, and I don’t see that it matters very much who does the paying.’

  ‘Well, of course …’

  ‘Then that’s settled.’

  They got up and walked across the square together.

  ELEVEN

  She was back again at the Northern port, with an hour to spend before the Luna sailed for Norway. It was one of those tranquil nights, with a calm steady sea, which was just as well, seeing that she was travelling in the Luna. The sky above was of ice-blue flecked with orange fire, as she had always remembered it, and it would increase as they turned North.