by Maggie Humm
His discoloured moustache would be visible in a photograph, and Lily nodded agreement.
“But he’s always sleepy,” Prue complained. “He doesn’t want to take part in any activities.”
The other evening at dinner he’d seemed sunk into sadness and dropped dribbles of food onto his coat. She’d overheard Andrew and Prue gossiping about opium. In Parisian cafés she’d seen the effect of strong potions, the mood swings in drinking men who became angry over inconsequential remarks, volatile like Mr. Ramsay. There he was again on the terrace, standing by an urn full of red and yellow geraniums, lighting a pipe, seemingly oblivious of the flowers, staring irritated at Andrew and Jasper in the distance returning from the station. She’d seen how his eyes often searched for his wife as if checking she was sad when he felt sad, like he wished to control her every mood.
“Damn you, Shag!” Mr. Ramsay roared as the dog barked, pounding across the lawn towards the garden gate.
“The children are almost here with Mr. Hunt,” Prue announced.
It was always “the children,” never “the other children.” Prue seemed already grown up. Happy Prue was chatting as if becoming her friend, it was extraordinary to find how many impressions she’d gathered about the family without fully knowing them. It struck her she was in love with them all, apart from Mr. Ramsay, in love with the idea of a family completed by her inclusion.
Andrew and Jasper strode towards them on either side of a broad-shouldered man who was laughing to himself as the boys struggled with his bags. Reaching Eliza and Lily, he swept off his hat, bowed, and beamed at them. His frame was slim in spite of his wide shoulders, his forehead smooth, and his face was free of hair in the military style, slightly marred by a small nose.
“Allow me to make introductions,” Andrew said. “Mr. Hilary Hunt, Miss Eliza Stillman and Miss Lily Briscoe.”
The two women shook his outstretched hand in turn. It was the man from the cricket match; Lily recognized him immediately. Hunt resembled his father, but she knew she shouldn’t mention the fact. All boys disliked being compared to their fathers, especially when their fathers were famous. She remembered a tinted photograph of Holman Hunt’s studio in the Century Illustrated with its tall windows, divans draped with Eastern rugs and shawls he’d brought back from the Holy Land, walls covered with Damascan tiles, their rich hues of green and plum matched by the brightness of his art. “Hunt’s paintings take a great deal of time. He must have painted each hair on a shepherd one by one,” her mother had said, and they’d both laughed.
Andrew and Jasper were scuffing their shoes impatiently, but Hunt ignored them and continued gazing directly at Eliza and Lily, scanning them from top to toe, as if the sight of his leather bags and tweed jacket could carry the tale of his trip to them, leaving him free to stare. The hand that had once shaken the plump hand of Sir Edward Burne-Jones was reaching for his bag.
Lily could feel the words surfacing but couldn’t stop. “I’m relieved you’re not the cherubic child in your father’s paintings,” she heard herself say. Why had she mentioned his father after all? Did she sound too forward, too sarcastic?
“I’m very different, I’m afraid, from my father,” Hunt replied, giving a careless laugh. His mouth was wide, with full red lips under his short nose. “Not the aesthetic type at all. I’m much more of an action man.”
Lily could see him astride a stallion, holding a whip.
“Oh, the more types of men, the better,” Eliza replied, a little too hastily.
“But I’m so glad to meet artists, and two such delightful artists.”
Eliza blushed in the certainty of her beauty. Lily knew his confidence came from his manhood, but his voice sounded sincere.
“And my first action, Andrew,” Hunt said, turning to the boys, “will be to sail with you, Jasper, and Nancy or Rose perhaps, to the lighthouse. Macalister is still the boatman, I hear?”
Lily noticed Prue frowning as if pained at her exclusion from the group.
“It will be convenient,” Lily said, quickly nodding at Hunt, “to have Mrs. Ramsay and Prue all to ourselves for the day to paint their portraits.” Prue rewarded her with a smile.
“We’ll take James too,” Hunt added, “if Mrs. Ramsay allows her favourite out of her sight for a few hours.”
“Father has already told James the weather won’t be fine for him to sail to the lighthouse,” Andrew replied, “but I’m happy to go even if it rains.”
“Of course, everyone has to agree with Mr. Ramsay and his concerns,” Hunt said with a smile. “I’ve given up trying to interest him in cricket.”
There was something secure about Hilary Hunt. He could challenge Mr. Ramsay. Andrew was clearly impressed. He was one of the fresh tide of strangers in cities now washed up in St Ives, and Lily relished the week ahead.
Arriving at Talland House the next day, Lily found Eliza already sketching Prue in the drawing room, warmed by the early morning sun. There were far too many details already in the sketch, and Lily turned to Mrs. Ramsay sitting in her usual corner, reading to James from a bulky gilt-bound book, their two heads close together. James’s little finger pointed to images in the book, and the worn spine showed it must be a favourite family read.
“And then she made a third wish …”
Mrs. Ramsay read in a soft but precise tone. A fairy story as usual, Lily guessed, but not her own favourite tale, the one in which two little children left crumbs of bread on the ground to find their way safely out of a forest and the trail became alive with little birds pecking at the crumbs, the shape disappearing as the children walked.
With a quiver of energy, Lily placed her easel at the edge of the lawn. She had a foothold there, appreciating the artificiality of a window frame to contain Mrs. Ramsay within the borders of the canvas. The house was calm—perhaps it had been fine enough weather after all for the other children to take a trip to Godrevy Lighthouse with Hunt. As she scanned the scene in front of her, Lily checked the taut canvas. The shapes in the portrait were beginning to look firm enough, and she started to fill in the outlines, pleased how the matt black of her painted lines absorbed the light without constricting Mrs. Ramsay too much inside the strokes.
She looked up to see Mr. Ramsay strolling about the garden, holding his pipe and groaning and swearing to himself, and she glanced away from him as he marched past in case he should try to talk. Then the garden gate clacked open and Hunt led the children up to the house. Relieved to see him, Lily waved her brush in greeting.
“Since there was no possibility of visiting the lighthouse because the sea is stormier than the sky today,” Hunt called over, “we perambulated a little in the town, so I could visit my old favourite haunts. We’re going to walk to Carbis Bay. Do please join us.”
Mrs. Ramsay and James were absent from the window, and the black needed to fully dry before painting any more colours. Wiping her brushes, she put away her paints, and with a slight pause, she smoothed down her dress, glancing at Hunt’s face as he approached.
“I would be delighted,” she replied, “especially if Miss Stillman and Prue could come too.” She was aware of a strange contentment, seeing him smiling at her, and she conjured up a picture of herself with Hilary on a cliff top with the sea deep below, staring out over the waves and having a significant conversation about life.
Half an hour later, Lily and Eliza filed out of the garden behind Hilary at the head, carrying a basket prepared by the cook. They strode in a pair together, holding onto their hats, ribbons floating in the breeze. Cam and Nancy, with their short legs, had to run to keep up, their hands held tight by their older brother and sister. The day was becoming a silver print of pleasure.
“What do you think of Mrs. Cameron’s photographs of Mrs. Ramsay?” Eliza asked, glancing ahead at the Frenas carried by Andrew and Prue and tucking her hair neatly into a roll before the cameras could snap her.
“I love the delicate, smoky quality, and the way she captures Mrs. Ramsay’s stillne
ss,” Lily said. Was Eliza reading her thoughts? “I wish my portrait could match the quality of her images. I admire her work tremendously.”
“Mama sent for her,” Eliza said, “when she needed to be professionally photographed. I’ve made a platinum print of Mama, although not so fine, of course, as Mrs. Cameron’s work.”
Lily marveled at her new friend’s skill. She wished she’d photographed her mother. After Lily’s birth, Father had commissioned a portrait, Mother and Child. Her mother wasn’t looking directly at the painter. Was she looking at Father? Knowing her mother’s expressions as she did, Lily felt she must have been content. After her mother died, Lily often placed herself close to the painting, standing just where her mother might have been looking. It meant more than any photograph.
Lily turned to Eliza. “To have an eye for framing things in a different way through a lens must give you new ideas for compositions,” she said. “I envy you.”
Yet there was no real artist’s mark on a photograph, and she loved painting thick lines, leaving visible strokes on every painting.
“No one else in my family takes photographs,” Eliza said, “so it gives me a kind of freedom from them all.” Smiling at Lily, she continued, “Too many artists surround me—a sister married to an art professor, another sister sculpting every day, and a Pre-Raphaelite stepmother. Every foreign visit was arranged for study: statuary in Rome for my sister Effie, in Athens to draw perspectives of the Parthenon. Sometimes I drowned in the sublime!”
Eliza had already talked about Rome. “My father allowed me to find my métier, as he put it, in Paris,” Lily said. “The charm of the city, you cannot believe. I spotted gardens in all sorts of impossible places. And the Bois was full of carriages with elegant ladies, much chicer than Hyde Park. The sky was clear, too, with none of London’s smog.”
She hadn’t told Father about the stylish women, or about taking a little mouche down the Seine to Sèvres and other villages. Her stories for him described the curators’ lectures in the Louvre and her teachers. Father was kinder by far than Mr. Ramsay, but it was best not to mention fashion.
“Your months in Paris sound such fun,” Eliza said. “We always travelled en famille, following Father’s employment. It was comfortable but far too restrictive.”
Lily smiled at her petulance, delighted to be Eliza’s confidante. It would be good to have someone she could connect to, share ideas with, and it felt, by talking with Eliza, she could believe in herself.
“My journey to Paris was by night boat then train,” Lily added, “alone and in a third-class carriage. I had to speak in French to get the attendants to unlock the ladies’ waiting room!”
“My languages are poor,” Eliza said, “in spite of all the travel.”
“I’m fluent in French now,” Lily said, in a stronger voice than before.
Her glowing memories were reflected in Eliza’s rapt expression. They became breathless with the high hill climb, but the day was as bright as a sunflower as they strolled along the cliff edge towards Carbis. Looking back, Lily saw the whole shape of St Ives, the pattern of the town much clearer from this height. The pier bent towards the left, lined on the seaward side with iron posts for hawsers and on the town’s side with tiny rowing boats sheltering under the high pier wall.
“On the ground it’s difficult to hold the shapes in one’s mind as blocks of colour,” she told Eliza. “It’s much easier to do so from above.”
“We’re here to enjoy ourselves too,” Eliza replied, smiling at Lily.
The group scrambled down a slope towards the sea with the girls’ white dresses and socks becoming tinged green from algae-covered rocks. Lily glanced, enviously, at the boys’ sensible knickerbockers. On the shore Andrew pulled out his knife to cut wide pieces of seaweed covered in raised circular shapes like medieval plague boils.
“We use these fronds as an experiment, Miss Briscoe,” he said, “hanging them up in Talland House to predict the weather.”
He searched nature for facts like his father, rather than beauty. A duplicate of Mr. Ramsay would be even harder for the other children to endure than the original, Lily thought. She glanced over to Hilary, who’d stopped.
“Shall we have lunch here, Miss Briscoe, Miss Stillman?” he asked.
He picked up the rug covering the food in the basket, adding, “Allow me to make a softer seat for you ladies,” and Prue raised her mother’s umbrella to shade them from the sun.
“As well as eating Sophie’s tuck,” Hilary said, “it’s a perfect spot, too, from which to fish.”
Andrew stood in front of the group, facing the sea, holding his camera close to his chest as something rose inch by inch from the water—it was a fat grey seal. Unperturbed by the children’s cries, it crested above the waves, swimming closer to the shore. The animal was sleek, shiny, and handsome. Water rippled down its back, swirling into white peaks in a wash behind its tail.
“I say, I’ve caught it with my Frena,” Andrew said triumphantly.
If the children would be stationary, they would hear the swishing of the seal’s flippers as its elegant V-shaped wake disappeared into the distance. Turning towards the others, Lily discovered Hilary had already laid out all the provisions: hard-boiled eggs, ham, thick bread and butter slices, Sophie’s famous marble cake, peaches from Talland House’s greenhouses. She knelt, taking an egg in a napkin.
“Tell me, Miss Briscoe, do you admire my father’s paintings?” Hilary asked.
Uncertain how to reply, she tensed and nested the napkin and egg in her lap, taking a moment to reset her hat, looking guardedly into Hilary’s eyes.
“Feel free to criticise,” he continued. “I knew long ago I wouldn’t join my father’s profession. He’s acutely disappointed in me.” He threw his head back in laughter, his neck catching the sun, and smiled at Lily.
“I don’t think I can quite follow Mr. Hunt’s technique,” she replied. “Each tiny detail is so carefully painted. Painters seem to use much larger brushes nowadays.”
“So Father’s style is not à la mode, I take it?” Hilary asked. “And your mother, Miss Stillman,” he continued, turning to Eliza, “wasn’t she painted by Mr. Walter Crane, and has her own work hanging every year in the Royal Academy summer show?”
How wonderful to hear he attended exhibitions—and even better, he remembered what he saw. Lily’s fingers felt less stiff, and she cradled the egg, biting into it delicately.
“Oh, Mama’s been painted often,” Eliza replied, picking at the fruit, “too many times to list.”
“What a fearful punishment!” Hilary said with a chuckle in his voice.
“It can be quite a strain,” Lily agreed, trying to think of some other exhibition he might have seen, Eliza looking now at the peaches.
He seemed to live his life with a kind of unselfconscious ownership she’d always wanted for herself. His way of thinking was apparently different from hers but agreeable nonetheless. She gazed at his tight-waisted jacket as he flung out his fishing line with deft-handed concentration, weighing down the handle at his side with stones, and they continued eating.
“Since we’re savouring such a colourful luncheon of eggs and fruit, ladies,” Hilary said, “I’m reminded of what I told Mr. Olsson last year at the St Ives Arts Club show. ‘Your red sunsets, green hills, and white waves, Mr. Olsson, are Neapolitan ices!’”
“Was he amused?” Lily asked. No one else had been so direct to Olsson, and Hilary grew taller in front of her.
“No, he was distinctly chilly!” he exclaimed.
The two women smiled. Any barriers between them all had fallen, like sharing a train compartment on a long journey with strangers when some odd topic of conversation creates an unexpected kind of intimacy. Lily searched her memory to find something to cause Hilary to continue smiling.
“Mr. Olsson was quite draconian in his demands on students,” she said. “On my first visit to St Ives, we had to paint in all weathers. No time for ice creams!”
As Hilary smiled again, the fishing rod jumped away from its stone. Grabbing it, he reeled in with expert dexterity, and, excited, the children gathered around, staring out to sea. A fish dangled, bobbing frantically from side to side, a distillation of the sea itself, shining silver in the sunlight reflecting the tips of the waves, and a tang of salt water filled her nostrils.
“It’s a gurnard, Mr. Hunt!” Andrew called out.
Lily wondered if Andrew was knowledgeable about all seaside life. His father probably drilled the names of sea creatures into him every day. The fish flapped.
“Now, since you’re all witnesses to my triumph,” Hilary said, “I’ll take out the hook and return the poor thing to his ocean life.”
Deftly removing the metal and bending over the rocks, he guided the gurnard into a pool, and it sped straight downwards, out of sight. The calm waves seemed to flow through her veins. Hilary resembled the afternoon, unruffled and peaceful, yet he was decisive and seemingly aware of their needs. With him, the moments seemed, while they lasted, enough in themselves, and Lily had a delightful sense of having nothing to bother about. Lunch over, they climbed up onto the cliff path to Carbis Bay, picking blackberries with the children.
At sunset the group stood again on Trenwith Hill, gazing down into St Ives. The houses appeared much taller in comparison with Carbis; even the parish school had a diminutive tower. Lily felt completely at home. She knew every street by heart. As they made their way through the outskirts towards Talland House in the fading light, it was a glorious view—the shimmering waves in the harbour, the cottages painted white, blue, and red. High above them, in a blur of wings made transparent by the sun, a raven pursued a hawk, and Cam and Nancy, excited, pointed upwards, holding their hands above their eyes to block the last rays of the sun. As the birds soared, vibrating flecks against the blue sky, Lily’s head tilted ever further back, and the vertigo forced her to look away. She willed the bird to escape.
“Oh dear!” Prue exclaimed, looking horribly distressed. “I’ve left Mother’s umbrella back where we stopped for lunch.”
