by Maggie Ford
Only one other person she would have liked to be there: that was Michael Deel. He was, of course, with his own family. On any other Tuesday he’d have been here tutoring her and, despite the jollifications going on this evening, she found herself missing him. But at least she’d see him on the Thursday.
Since October he had come on Monday and Thursday as well as Tuesday, Doctor Lowe being eager to see her expand her talent as an artist. She hadn’t seen him yesterday either, it being Christmas Eve, when his family had expected him to be with them. They did not consider what he did here as work and therefore an obligation.
‘I come as a favour to my father’s old friend,’ he’d once told her. ‘I studied medicine at university and am now with my father’s practice.’
His father practised in Harley Street. Why Doctor Lowe himself didn’t Ellie was left wondering but of course never asked, though his work here in the East End seemed to pay well enough.
‘It was my father’s wish that I study medicine,’ Michael had once told her. ‘I had an interest in art and found I had a talent for it. I would love to have been an artist, but it wasn’t to be. I was never that good. So now I am teaching you.’
He had smiled wryly at that, a smile she had from the first found very attractive. The smile fading, he added, ‘I really haven’t the talent you have.’ He’d waved away her protest. ‘I know enough, technically, to teach a little, but one day you’ll have to find a tutor who can give you more than I ever can. Eventually you’re going to have to move on, Miss Jay.’
He no longer called her Miss Jay, but Ellie, and had asked that she call him Michael rather than Mr Deel. ‘It’s silly to be so formal,’ he’d said.
She missed him today – could hardly wait for Thursday to come – and was sure he must be feeling the same about her. No word had ever passed between them of such feelings, but it was the way he looked at her, the way he guided her hand, would stand close to her as they surveyed the results of her evening’s efforts.
It was nice to have him call her Ellie, since everyone else called her Miss Jay, apart from Doctor Lowe, who mostly used the term ‘my dear’. He had once asked what the name Ellie stood for, and when she had told him it was her mother’s derivative from Elizabeth, he’d said he preferred that; but he seldom, if ever, spoke it. It was usually, ‘my dear’.
He had no idea that she and Michael seemed to be growing slowly closer to each other, merely being glad that tutor and pupil were getting on so well. Today she caught herself time after time thinking of Michael Deel and how he was enjoying himself, wondering whether he was thinking of her in the same way. She would never have dreamed of asking him, but with her thoughts came recollection of his words: ‘Eventually you’re going to have to move on.’
Suddenly she didn’t want to move on; but common sense told her that it was inevitable, some time or another. She had no fancy to stay with Doctor Lowe all her life and she had to find her father. That meant she’d need to be independent, which would mean earning her living. The only thing she knew was being in service and that she refused to contemplate.
One way was to develop her talent as an artist, enough to earn some sort of living, necessitating her moving on and losing touch with Michael. That thought made her sad – sad enough to almost ruin her evening. But then, who was she? No one. If their interest in each other did develop, his well-to-do family would never countenance a union with someone of no account. They probably already had in mind the right sort of wife for him, when he was ready.
Shutting her mind, Ellie took a quick sip of the drop of port Doctor Lowe had given her despite his wife’s frown, and turned her thoughts to the party – Mrs Jenkins chatting with Dora and Rose, Mrs Lowe with her sister and brother-in-law. They seemed amicable enough, despite having had that falling-out, perhaps because now she wasn’t in their household any longer. Next to Ellie, Doctor Lowe was talking of famous paintings and old masters – quite boring, but it would soon be bedtime and then she could dream of Michael.
* * *
As she had hoped, he arrived on the Thursday, though little work was done, with the time mostly spent talking of their separate Christmas experiences. She hardly stopped talking of the wonders of such a full table, the mounds of food there had been.
‘When I was at home,’ she said, as she attempted to make something of the picture she’d been required to paint, ‘we weren’t all that well off, so we just had what we could afford.’
She’d never told him of her real upbringing. It would have shocked him. But he knew her family hadn’t been well off. After all, anyone who had been employed as a housemaid wouldn’t have well-off parents. But, refusing to be ashamed of her roots, she had always been open with him, at least up to a point.
He in turn surprised her by saying how boring his Christmas had been. ‘Just me and my parents and my sister and her husband. We all went to bed quite early, actually.’ He made it seem such an ordinary day that she felt privileged to have enjoyed such a hearty time at the Lowes’.
‘But I’m glad you had such a nice time,’ he went on. ‘I thought of you and hoped you’d be enjoying yourself.’ Suddenly he rounded on her. ‘Ellie, would it be possible for me to ask Doctor Lowe if I could take you out one evening?’
‘Take me out?’ she echoed, a brush full of yellow paint in her hand in the act of adding tints to a sunset she’d been attempting under his guidance.
He had in fact taken her out before, with Doctor Lowe’s permission. It had been a Monday, the twenty-ninth of October. With the Boer War having come to an end on the thirtieth of September, the soldiers had returned home one month later to a heroes’ welcome.
Crowds had swamped the City of London. Ellie had begged Doctor Lowe to take her to see them returning, but he’d had his surgery to run. Nor would he let her go among the crowds unchaperoned, even with Dora as company. Unable to bear her disappointment, he’d suggested to Michael Deel that he might care to take charge of the two girls. But, with Dora there as well, she hadn’t had the joy of having him all to herself. Now he was actually asking her if he could take her out – just her.
Although excitement gripped her, she had begun lately to feel more and more tied down. As Doctor Lowe grew closer to her, so he had begun to guard her as if she were his property. It seemed she could hardly go out unless it was with him, and if she did venture out alone, there were always questions as to where she had been and what she had done.
‘What can you be doing all on your own?’ he’d queried before now. ‘I can take you to so many marvellous places.’ Sometime she felt almost a prisoner. It was true that, no longer employed by him, she was in theory a free agent, but there was this sense that if she were to try and kick over the traces, her future might become somewhat shaky, especially with his wife living back here and at his elbow, starting to nag about her all over again. If the woman did manage to get rid of her, it would be the end of it just when what she had so far saved was beginning to mount quite substantially. Another year over and she could sling her hook with a tidy sum to see her on her way. Until then she must be patient and not rock the boat.
It hadn’t surprised her that he’d let Michael take her to watch the Boer War heroes return, a demonstration of an Empire’s pride in its fighting men. But would he frown on Michael taking her out merely for pleasure?
‘Where would we go?’ she asked lamely.
Michael gave her a wily grin. ‘Have you ever seen moving pictures?’
‘Moving pictures?’ she repeated – the second time she had echoed his words; she was in danger of looking like an idiot. She quickly gathered herself together. ‘No, never,’ she said as unhurriedly as she could.
‘There’s a little place that’s been set up in Oxford Street where they are showing moving pictures, though they’re put on at the end of music-hall performances. You’ve never seen one?’
‘I don’t go to music halls,’ she admitted. ‘I asked Doctor Lowe to take me but he considers them common. He’d pre
fer to take me to see plays.’
‘What about before you worked for him. You must have gone then?’
‘We didn’t have money enough for music halls.’ She felt instantly angry at herself for bursting out with that, but he didn’t blink an eye.
‘Then let’s go to see the moving-picture show on Saturday. I hear it doesn’t take long to show it. But it’ll be an experience. Then we can have dinner somewhere afterwards. I’ll bring you back here in good time.’
‘You’ll have to ask Doctor Lowe. I only usually go out with him. He might not like me being out with you.’
‘I don’t see why,’ he said, puzzled. ‘He did ask me to accompany you in watching the soldiers’ homecoming parade, so why should he object?’
‘That was Dora and me. This time it would be just you and me.’
Michael was frowning. ‘He’s not your father, Ellie.’
Nothing like my father, came the malevolent thought. Bertram Lowe was a good man, gentle and kind, if a little possessive of late.
‘But he tends to see himself as my unofficial guardian,’ she said. ‘He’s been good to me. He took us in – me and my sister – when we had nowhere else to go, and gave us work without any references.’ Oddly, she no longer minded him knowing of her impoverished home life, so long as she didn’t let it sound too squalid, which it had come near to being in spite of her mother’s hard efforts to keep her family as respectable as possible.
‘The doctor’s protected my sister and me ever since,’ she went on. ‘And I think he’s become very fond of me, so he’s bound to be worried about me.’
She guessed he knew of the death of the daughter, Doctor Lowe being an acquaintance of Michael’s father; but he could have no idea she’d become something of a substitute for the dead girl. Doctor Lowe would obviously want that part to remain secret. Poor man, she felt pity for him in a way.
Whatever Michael said to him, to her amazement he gave him his permission for her to be taken to the moving-picture exhibition. The only thing she could think of that might have persuaded him was Michael’s intimating the benefit she might derive from it as part of her artistic tutorage.
Sitting in the dark of what was hardly more than a large room while others queued outside to fill up the chairs of those who left, it was a novel experience to see actual objects and people moving across a white screen as they were projected on to it.
Almost like magic – and indeed it was magic: a train that came at speed towards the audience, making everyone start back with a cry of fear, only to disappear before it came right out at them; a haystack that suddenly turned into a horse and cart, making people laugh but leaving them wondering how such magic could have been done. And when it suddenly became a troupe of female dancers kicking up their legs, everyone clapped appreciatively. And so it went on.
It was over all too soon, though the constant, jerky movements of the various images made her feel a little dizzy, and although it was something of a wonderful novelty, she was relieved to emerge into the daylight, where the stiff breeze that had seen them go in was now developing into a high wind, so that she needed to hang on to her hat despite the pins holding it to her nicely piled up hair.
‘It was certainly very different,’ she said, aware that during several alarming scenes such as the train one, she had clutched his arm. She tried to feign nonchalance. ‘But I don’t think it’ll ever properly catch on. It’s too harsh on the eyes and it could give people headaches watching it too long. But I’m glad I’ve seen it before it outwears its fascination.’
He laughed. ‘The new century seems to be full of new ideas at the moment, even machines that can fly.’
Ellie looked scornful. ‘People can already fly: balloons take them high up in the air and they go for miles looking down on all of us.’ Looking down on people like her. One day she would be able to afford to go up in a balloon and look down on others.
‘But these will be powered by machines.’ Michael interrupted her thoughts. Then he laughed again. ‘Whether it works or not, remains to be seen, I suppose.’
Dinner brought them back to normality, a nice ordinary little meal of lamb cutlets with fruit pudding and custard to follow, in a small restaurant, one in which she felt comfortable, a far cry from her grand ordeal at the Ritz.
Michael got her home by nine thirty. These days she entered by the front door, opened this evening by Rose. Obliged to stay up to let her in, she was blinking wearily after a long day and looking to her bed.
‘Thank you,’ Ellie said graciously, but received no reply except a brief and, it seemed to her, rather reluctant bob. No doubt Florrie was still intent on keeping the old grudge alive, probably with Cook’s blessing.
Bidding goodnight to her, Michael startled her by dropping a tiny kiss on her cheek, turning immediately and skipping down the front steps and into the waiting cab before the eyes of an open-mouthed Rose. More fuel to fire staff gossip, came the thought, as she made her way up to her room; but on her cheek she could still feel the touch of Michael’s lips. It felt so nice.
Outside her window the wind had whipped itself up, blowing almost a full gale. As she lay awake she thought about him, hoping he’d arrived home safely as she heard a chimney pot dislodged by the wind crash down into the street below. It was enough to have blown his cab over.
She didn’t know until Monday that more than fifty people had been killed in the floods and gales that had lashed the whole country. But with Michael calling on Monday evening as right as rain to resume her lessons, she gave no more thought to it. Her main interest was that he might ask if he could take her out again.
Fifteen
It was Thursday. Ellie had gone off to bed after her hour-and-a-half lesson, but before he left, Michael needed to speak to Doctor Lowe. Told he was on his own in the sitting room, his wife already having retired, Michael made his way there and tapped politely on the door.
Entering to the man’s invitation, he found the doctor taking his ease on the sofa, enjoying a final nightcap. The man beamed up at him and motioned to the armchair opposite him.
‘Ah, Michael. Take a seat.’
As Michael sat, he went on, ‘My dear chap, what brings you here? Whisky?’ He indicated a decanter on the small table beside him.
Michael gave him a smile. ‘Thank you, but I’ll be off home shortly. I need to have a brief word with you about Miss Jay, that’s all.’
‘Yes, she seems to be blossoming very well under your guidance. I am most pleased with the way things are coming along. Tell me how you yourself feel she is progressing. When I ask her how she is doing, she shrugs, says “all right, not bad”, and appears disinterested. So how is she coming along?’
Michael gazed into the fire burning in the grate, its brightness boosted by a frosty January evening. This wasn’t what he had come to talk about. He had to get down to the real subject. He had his excuse all ready, preliminary to a request he wished to make.
‘She’s proving to be a talented artist. I think she could go far.’
Doctor Lowe frowned suddenly. ‘What do you mean – she could go far?’
‘I mean she could become a great artist if she puts her mind to it – that is, if a lady artist can go all that far. But she would need a tutor who can teach her far more than I ever can. To tell the truth, sir, my own effort as an artist is very mediocre. I am nowhere near as gifted as she is.’
Bertram Lowe seemed not to be listening. He was studying his whisky glass. His voice had grown cool. ‘I doubt she will be pursuing her talents to such lengths as could take her away from this house, where she has a comfortable home,’ he said slowly. ‘I don’t think she would want that.’
‘Whether that’s true or not, she might one day marry and have a home of her own.’ They were getting further and further from the real subject of his visit. He saw the man frown and purse his chubby lips, still regarding his whisky glass.
‘Marriage. That will not be for a long time yet.’
‘The
truth is,’ Michael interrupted with the matter he wanted to speak about, ‘I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but she seems to harbour some rather dark thoughts inside her. These pictures she draws—’
‘Yes, I know of them,’ interrupted Bertram. ‘I’ve known of them for quite some time. She is probably frustrated with what she has drawn, no doubt disappointed and annoyed with herself.’
‘But it’s always the same drawing, over and over, and always heavily scored out, almost obliterated. If she isn’t happy with the attempt, why does she not tear up the drawing? But she keeps it all, piles of it.’
The doctor took another sip of his whisky. ‘I suspect all artistic minds have their odd ways and I expect this is her way of reminding herself to do better.’
‘But always the same drawing?’ Michael queried. The question was met with silence. The silence spinning itself out, he leapt on the opportunity to turn to what he’d originally come to ask.
‘I’ve noticed she spends much of her time cooped up in this house. I do think she needs to be lifted out of herself.’
Doctor Lowe looked up sharply at him, his full lips growing tight. ‘If she wants to go out more often, Mr Deel, she has only to tell me and I will take her anywhere she wishes to go.’
This was Michael’s cue. ‘Sir, I was very happy to oblige when you suggested I take her to watch the Boer War heroes’ victory parade. I’d very much like to ask your permission to take her out again at some time, to a theatre perhaps, or to an art gallery, or wherever she wished to go. I know you’re a very busy man and can’t always find the time—’
He found his outpouring halted abruptly by the doctor suddenly leaning forward to put his whisky glass down with a loud thump on the side table and getting to his feet.
Politely Michael stood up too. ‘I merely suggested, if I could be of help…’
‘If I need anyone to take my dau—’ There was a sharp hesitation; then he went on. ‘If I need anyone to take Miss Jay out, I will ask. Enthusiastic as you are about her artistic talent, your task here, my dear chap, is to help her with her diction and give her tuition in drawing and painting, since that is what she enjoys doing. It is a pastime, a pleasant diversion for her – no more than that. So no more about her progressing to higher levels than she is capable of; and I would ask you as politely as possible, your father and I being close acquaintances, to leave Miss Jay’s well-being and happiness to me, and your good intentions outside. It’s often said the road to hell is paved with good intentions – a road to unhappiness; and my sole concern is to see her not made unhappy. Now, I thank you for your concern, my dear Michael, and though I am happy for you to continue to tutor her, Miss Jay’s private life is better left to me. Now it is getting late. I bid you goodnight.’
