Talland House

by Maggie Humm

  So, Holman Hunt’s son visited the town, but how odd for him to play against the studio’s artists. Perhaps he didn’t relish an artist’s life? Lily gazed as Hunt tapped Louis’s bat with his and saluted. He was about her age, with a ruddy complexion and eyebrows set well apart. “Never trust a man whose eyebrows meet in the middle,” her mother had always said. He was wearing a conservative blazer, but somehow the masculinity of his broad shoulders and neatly tied cravat was appealing—a perfect subject for his father to paint.

  Lily caught up with Emily at the pavilion and stopped. There was Mrs. Ramsay sitting alongside the three girls who’d screamed at the dog in Talland House. Today they were dressed in muslin dresses, with thick blue sashes, waiting for the men to assemble on the pitch. Another girl, who looked older than the others, wore a blue crepe dress matching the sashes and was peering down into the viewfinder of a Frena camera. Lily watched Mrs. Ramsay with them, noticing how she smiled at her children even when they weren’t looking at her.

  “Do join us, ladies,” Mrs. Ramsay beckoned. “There’s plenty of room on our bench. My husband, Mr. Ramsay, is concentrating on his papers under the yew tree over there.”

  Emily wandered off to sketch while Lily sat close to Mrs. Ramsay and her daughters for the first overs. How long could she stay with them before the family would leave? Ever since Studio Day and the extraordinary moment when Mrs. Ramsay had bought her watercolour and praised her work, she’d wanted so much to talk with Mrs. Ramsay, to share her thoughts, her opinions about art. Now she was tongue-tied.

  “My daughters are as skilled cricketers as my sons,” Mrs. Ramsay said, breaking the silence. “They all play long into the night. A section of our garden is painted with luminous paint for the game.”

  Lily shifted on the bench, uncertain how to join in a conversation about cricket, wishing she’d listened to the men’s discussions yesterday, but then a cry of real pain sounded from the pitch, not the usual leg-before-wicket shout. The game stopped. Cricketers clustered around a man lying prone, unbuttoning his flannel shirt, giving him air, and Mrs. Ramsay rose swiftly and rushed to the man’s side, her ballooning black skirt partially blocking Lily’s view. Louis was upright, thankfully. It wasn’t him.

  “Mama is a very good nurse,” the eldest daughter said as Mrs. Ramsay bent over the man, examined his head, and smoothed his brow with a gesture so like the way her mother used to stroke her hair before lessons, Lily felt a sharp twinge of nostalgia.

  “Concussion, I believe.” Mrs. Ramsay’s authoritative tone reached her across the pitch, stilling the chatter. “Don’t move him,” she said loudly, but as the crowd parted, Lily saw her murmur in his ear and, opening his eyes, he smiled.

  Someone must have already run back into the town and found a doctor because a gentleman came across the pitch, clutching a Gladstone bag. He nodded thanks to Mrs. Ramsay as he returned her shawl from under the cricketer’s head. A plank was carried across the turf from the pavilion and the man taken to a hansom cab parked at the entrance to the ground. The drama had taken less than quarter of an hour, Lily realised, but it was now a splendid Victorian scene in her mind—a sweet Florence Nightingale saving a fallen sportsman.

  “We need trouble ourselves no more,” Mrs. Ramsay said to the girls, shaking her shawl free of grass. “He’s in good hands. Remember how well I was myself soon after one of your cricket balls hit my head? Dr. Seton suggested I had been ‘silly mid-on’!”

  “And you went on playing with us all day, Mama,” a younger daughter said, neatly folding the shawl.

  Smiling at her children, she sat back on the bench, her hands resting in her lap, as Lily marveled at her serenity and expertise. The young girls started practicing catch, but more carefully now, and the eldest aimed her camera at the scene.

  Mrs. Ramsay turned to Lily. “Do you think our holiday home might interest you, Miss Briscoe?” she asked. “Talland House is somewhat higgledy-piggledy but has many small gardens surrounding the cricket pitch, an orchard, and glass houses. I grow several types of flowers and shrubs.”

  “I should love to visit,” Lily replied, delighted. “I adore flowers with bright colours. It’s always a challenge to capture the exact shades when I paint.” She could almost feel Mrs. Ramsay nodding.

  “Colours mean a great deal to me, too, when I garden,” Mrs. Ramsay said. “We’ve been coming to St Ives for several years. My husband discovered the house on one of his walking tours of Cornwall. At first he thought the location might be too far from our London home, but we’re all so happy here each summer.”

  “I’ve also fallen in love with St Ives!” Lily exclaimed, as the space between them filled with images of the Ramsays and her own months in the town. “Particularly in the early mornings. The boats, beach, and hillside, which is so often misty in the sea fret, seem to unfold—like a Japanese scroll.”

  “What a beautiful description,” Mrs. Ramsay sighed, gazing straight at her. “I can quite picture it.”

  Uncertain how to continue without seeming pretentious, Lily wanted so much to make Mrs. Ramsay interested in her but felt wary of deterring her by sounding too painterly.

  “Come with me now to Talland House,” Mrs. Ramsay said with a sudden urgency. “You’ll be seeing it for the first time, and I want to hear you describe the house because you picture things so splendidly.”

  “I should love to,” Lily answered quickly. “Shall the girls and Mr. Ramsay come?”

  Mrs. Ramsay was already standing. “Oh, the girls would far rather stay for an hour or so learning new cricket tricks to try out later. I can ask my friend Mrs. Olsson, Mr. Olsson’s wife, to keep an eye on them. I couldn’t possibly disturb my husband.”

  Lily searched across the cricket field for Emily, who was sketching under the yew tree beyond the whitened boundary of the pitch, Mr. Ramsay having walked off, it seemed. Lily wanted Mrs. Ramsay all to herself, but the guilt of leaving Emily made her pause. Her best friend was her one confidant in St Ives, and Emily’s support, especially on crit days, had made her brave enough to face Olsson.

  When they reached Emily tucked over a drawing pad, Mrs. Ramsay spoke as if she’d read Lily’s thoughts.

  “Miss Carr, I’d love to invite you to dinner next week with Miss Briscoe. I could make arrangements with her this afternoon.”

  “Thank you, I’d be very pleased to come,” Emily said graciously, with a careful look at Lily before she returned to sketching.

  Lily’s whole body was tingling at the prospect of being free to savour Talland House alone. The sun gleamed as they walked down the hill between purple bushes and green hedges dotted with cow parsley and foxgloves. Mrs. Ramsay strode out and Lily was glad they swept down in silence, so she could appreciate her presence, suspended in a late afternoon of rich violet. The older woman’s smile was a perfect shape, and Lily wanted more than anything to paint her. In the distance, harsh voices floated towards them from tired-looking men tramping along in a line, their flat palms touching the black dovetailed fences for support as they climbed the hill. When they neared, she smelled dust from filthy clothes mixed with a faint scent of creosote. Doffing their caps at the sight of the two women, the men stood stationary; Lily imitated Mrs. Ramsay’s polite nod, and the men tramped on.

  “Those are the miners returning from Hayle. Not all can find housing near the mine,” Mrs. Ramsay murmured. “They’re so weary. I do what I can.”

  Lily glanced at their faces as they passed, noticing some with strange dark patches and mottled skin, like animals moulting in patches. Trying not to stare, she turned back to Mrs. Ramsay.

  “They work in the mines, tending to burning braziers,” Mrs. Ramsay sighed. “It’s such a dreadful, strenuous life. They’re not at all healthy, my dear. I wish for solace for them.”

  Mrs. Ramsay cared for so many people—her children, her husband, and anyone who needs nursing, it seemed. Lily smiled at Mrs. Ramsay, and her mind emptied of crits and the new student artists she’d seen arriving w
ho might crowd out her place in Louis’s thoughts. Talland House had been far away in the view from her attic window, and now she was here.

  “I do so want to show you my favourite dahlias,” Mrs. Ramsay said, taking Lily’s hand. Hers felt as smooth as a pebble on St Ives beach. “I’m sure you would appreciate how the pink shines against the purple bushes behind. I try so hard to create pictures when I plant my flowerbeds.”

  Lily gave her a smile. From the path she could see the house’s black slates and white eaves above a high hedge. The privet smell filled her senses as they pushed open the gate and, reaching the house, stepped through French windows into a drawing room. Directly ahead, her little watercolour was hanging next to a print in a gilt frame. The sizes matched exactly. Mrs. Ramsay must have been thinking about her to make such a careful placing. Lily wanted the minutes ahead to stretch out before her like a roll of velvet.

  “Yes, here’s your painting,” Mrs. Ramsay said, catching Lily’s glance. “See how beautiful it looks next to Michael Angelo!”

  The old-fashioned separation of the name Michelangelo into two made the artist sound even more angelic than he was. Comparing the works was absurd, but Mrs. Ramsay’s praise made her feel whole, more certain of herself. As Mrs. Ramsay called for the maid, Lily took an all-embracing look around the large room. A seaweed frond trembled by the window, but the room was tranquil, empty of children, of visitors, of Mr. Ramsay, and of animals, and was flooded with light from the garden—it was perhaps the last day of summer. The walls were covered in art. Her painting was quite at home.

  “Do take tea with me,” Mrs. Ramsay said. “I often sit on the steps leading down into the garden with my cup, but I think we’ll be more comfortable here in the drawing room.”

  Through the window, Lily stared at the escallonia blossoms behind the steps, musing about how they could be a mass of colour behind Mrs. Ramsay’s figure and could shape her outline, framing the scene in her mind as she sat on the plump sofa, its wide stuffed arm supporting her like a friendly guard dog.

  “I sit side by side with my husband on the sofa to read when he’s free at last from his writing,” Mrs. Ramsay said, “and when the younger children are asleep in the nursery. I imagine the plants in the wallpaper coming alive, flowering behind me as I read, and I can climb up their thick stalks. I’m very fanciful, I’m afraid!”

  Lily laughed with Mrs. Ramsay. She couldn’t imagine Mr. Ramsay understanding his wife’s need to see beauty in the wallpaper of drawing rooms, and art in the colour of flowers, given his anger with Andrew on the cliff walk and the botany lecture about gorse. There’d been no tenderness in his words, but vexation and facts. Mrs. Ramsay nodded as the maid placed a tray on the low table between them with a pitted silver teapot whose curved neck reached over mismatched cups and saucers.

  “You must forgive us, Miss Briscoe, we live our summers among camp beds, and old chairs with their wadding falling out,” Mrs. Ramsay explained. “My son Andrew calls it ‘entrails’—a horrid word—and we have cups and saucers from different types of crockery, which have never belonged to a complete set. I’m afraid Mr. Ramsay has broken one or two pieces of china.” Mrs. Ramsay looked down and continued, “And the children … well.”

  The freedom of ill-assorted cups delighted Lily. “My favourite memory of my mother, who died sadly some years ago,” she replied, “is of the two of us together on holiday in a tiny house in Broadstairs.”

  Or was it Bournemouth? Well, the story was the thing, the image of her mother in the tiny rented house, making a room exquisite with velvet and satin thrown over the hideous heavy brown settees as Lily watched, dazzled, holding her first little watercolour set.

  “She made everything surrounding us elegant,” she added, “however shabby the furniture, with pieces of colourful fabric.”

  “How marvelous to hear about a kindred spirit,” Mrs. Ramsay said, handing Lily a plate of gingerbread nuts. Nibbling, Lily glanced down and placed her cup carefully on the tray so as not to add to the broken china while the older woman pointed to another painting.

  “What do you think?” Mrs. Ramsay asked, her eagerness making her expression marvelously mobile. “It’s a print, of course, not an original, but it reminds me of my childhood, of Italy.”

  Was it Vesuvius erupting? Lily must be accurate, must impress Mrs. Ramsay with her knowledge and show sensitivity to the beloved image.

  “It’s simply wonderful—very dramatic!” Lily exclaimed. “But it’s not the Joseph Wright picture I remember from my art history classes. I don’t recognize the painter, I’m afraid.”

  Smiling, Mrs. Ramsay turned towards her. “No, no, the print came from Italy. De Vito I think, but I can never remember names these days.”

  Lily studied the figures in the foreground and the grand ship in the bay so unlike St Ives’s little fishing boats, the sky plumy with firework flares. Her heart was full of the bright colours, the reds and silver against the brown sails, and she was standing here with the woman she was beginning to admire so much.

  When they entered the hallway to return to the garden, Lily noticed a large visitors’ book with homemade cloth covers.

  “You must write something for me,” Mrs. Ramsay said. “Everyone who visits Talland House leaves me a poem or a photograph to treasure.”

  The fabric had been stained by greasy fingers. Lily held the book, gingerly leafing through the pages, unsure what to put, reading the inscriptions, histories of moments in a time she’d never known, a record of Mrs. Ramsay’s life with others. Lily carefully picked up the gold pen attached to the book and wrote.

  She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die;

  And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips

  Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,

  Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips

  “How beautiful!” Mrs. Ramsay said, thanking her with overly bright eyes. “I love Keats too. Let’s inspect the gardens before you leave,” she added, taking Lily’s hand again. “The summer is fading, but certain types of flowers are blooming.”

  Behind the children’s cricket pitch, the garden was full of shrubs towering above the precious flowers. “Your colours are so exact,” Lily replied. “The flowers are perfectly placed against the bright green leaves.” It was becoming a day of unimaginable things, and she concentrated hard, trying to hold onto everything Mrs. Ramsay said.

  “Here are the greenhouses I use to force on some of my plants,” she was saying, “and this is ‘the Lookout place.’ The children sit on top of this bank to see Godrevy Lighthouse, and to watch for visitors arriving at the railway station.”

  This is what Lily had wanted, to share ideas about colour and art with someone as interesting and elegant as her mother. She smoothed down her skirt and drew a swift breath. She must ask the question quickly before she had time to think too much. She’d acted out the scenario so often in her dreams since Studio Day.

  “Mrs. Ramsay—I’m not sure if I should say this since we’ve merely met twice—but I’d love to paint your portrait one day.”

  It was out there hanging above them, her innermost thought. More than anything, Lily wanted to paint Mrs. Ramsay here in Talland House, sitting in front of the drawing room windows opening out onto the gardens with the scented escallonia hedge in the background. She waited, a little dizzy. Would the words waft away into the air now she’d let them go? Was it far too soon to mention such an important thing?

  “My dearest girl,” Mrs. Ramsay said, “I’d be delighted to sit for you and very honoured indeed, Miss Briscoe—may I call you Lily at last? Painters and photographers have taught me how to pose. I’m sure I can model for you. Your portrait would be the highlight of my year. Perhaps when you’re free from study, Miss Briscoe—Lily?”

  It was a moment, but Lily and life were as before, or almost as before, but changed in ways she could never have predicted. She felt like a proper artist. Emily would smile. And Louis? His handsome face swam before her. Perhaps he
might kiss her hand as he’d done the first time they’d met, or hug her, or more.

  All the way back through the gardens, the two women chatted, pausing to examine a butterfly or a flower.

  “I’ll wait to hear from you about the portrait, Lily,” Mrs. Ramsay said, “or I can write to you at your London home if you trust me with the address.”

  Giving Mrs. Ramsay the details, Lily could feel time slow down and lengthen, as if the hours might stretch out forever, and her sense of the day was clearer, each minute blending into the momentous agreement she could paint the portrait. She was leaving Talland House, but everything was beginning, and she felt even the margins of her life would expand. Before they reached the path’s end, the garden gate banged, and the tall prickly figure of Mr. Ramsay was marching towards them.

  “Miss Briscoe, I believe,” he said curtly, nodding at Lily. Immediately turning his back on her without a further greeting, he glowered at his wife.

  “How could you leave me alone at the match? The garrulous Mrs. Olsson started chatting. You knew I went to the cricket match to think about my paper,” he continued, his voice booming. “I’ll have no peace this evening trying to write with her nonsensical words in my head. I’ll be the laughing stock of the students!”

  Mrs. Ramsay glanced away flinching, a blush rising from her neck. Why he was so angry about something so uneventful, and, more important, how could his wife bear the humiliating outburst before someone half her age? Lily paused, clearing her throat. Mrs. Ramsay should not endure the shame a moment longer.

  “I’m afraid it was all my fault,” Lily said. “It was so kind of you, Mrs. Ramsay, to agree to my sudden desire to see Talland House. It was very generous to give up your time at the cricket pitch entirely to satisfy my wish.”

  She was aglow with the tremendous possibility of saving Mrs. Ramsay from the insufferable rudeness of her husband. Mr. Ramsay inclined his head, staring at Lily. She could almost feel a surge of loathing coming from his small, piercing blue eyes.