Talland House

by Maggie Humm

  “I’ve only a short time free from the Ramsays, I’m afraid,” she said, “but the article in this week’s Cornishman about the Truro exhibition made me so angry. I had to see you.”

  She’d never thought of herself as quick to anger, and the word seemed to colour the review with an inappropriate exaggeration. She’d blurted out the news, and the comforting sentence she’d planned to say fell away as she looked up at his face. He was frowning, seemingly avoiding her gaze.

  “If you recall, Lily, it was The Cornishman which told us last year,” he said, “paintings are valuable in giving people conversation topics at dinner parties. I certainly don’t need to pay attention to The Cornishman!”

  Stealing another furtive glance, she gave a nervous smile at his jest, but he’d called her “Lily” at least, even though he seemed irritable, and it warmed her through the awkwardness hovering in the room. Scarcely two weeks ago he’d charmed her as usual by singing her favourite song in the Sloop Inn, but it came to her in a flash of sharp yearning she might never know more than the comfort of Louis’s smile, and he seemed reluctant to give her even that today.

  “Surely you remember my lecture on G. E. Moore?” Louis continued, tracing a pattern in the paints on his palette. “He wrote creating a work of art was as direct a means to good as a human being can practice—nothing to do with newspapers.”

  Louis was as good a human being as any other she knew in St Ives—apart from Mrs. Ramsay. She’d missed hearing his ideas, and her thoughts hurtled about in her mind, but he was standing as if wanting her to leave.

  “I remember also your lecture on Cézanne and Zola,” Lily said.

  She ought to say something more, keep the conversation alive, but she couldn’t think of anything, as if it was unusually difficult to speak; Louis was concentrating on his canvas. A chill breeze from an open window blew into the room.

  “I must go,” she told him, managing a calm tone, “because Mrs. Ramsay will be missing me, but I’m so glad to have seen you again.”

  “Such a brief meeting?” Louis said, pulling words over whatever was behind.

  There was a suggestion of tension in his pressed-together lips, and his eyes weren’t really seeing her, as if thin gauze had swept in between him and anything she might want to say.

  “Perhaps you might come to a studio crit another time? I remember how much you loved our crits!” he said, giving her another half-smile, and she tried to smile in reply.

  “I’ll certainly visit if I may.”

  It was almost as if she’d been reaching out, trying to get past his irritation. She couldn’t imagine what he was thinking, but he seemed remote from his handshake as he said farewell. With him, her emotions were always in danger of becoming bright slides in a lantern show beamed across the studio walls for anyone to see, but today she had to put away her confused thoughts as she left. She felt him paring away from her as if the stickiness of their friendship was dissolving. The usual exhilarating business of his studio was hidden today, enclosed behind its front door, away from her. Outside, the St Ives streets appeared changed. It was like seeing them for the first time again—narrow and provincial, before they’d taken hold of her. She wanted to push away the buildings on either side, irritated by the cramped winding lanes.

  The road widened as she reached Talland House as if from a great distance. In the breakfast room she sat thinking about Louis. She’d wanted to be the source of his happiness, but now she felt bewildered. He wasn’t the completely affable man she remembered, and his expression had been set, unmoving, like he’d been miles away listening to someone else, not her. She told herself he’d probably been in the midst of painting, annoyed with anyone interrupting, and he hadn’t wanted to be aware of anything but his private world. Lily picked up her brushes, vexed by her own irritation.

  What she most wanted to do was return to Louis, to be close to him, but he hadn’t wanted that today. Perhaps he might visit the Ramsays while she was painting and admire her brushstrokes; perhaps they might meet in a day or so at the regatta? There were too many maybes. Painting would take her away from uncertain wishes; painting the portrait would settle her thoughts. She leaned back in her chair watching Eliza use viscous oils to catch Prue’s outline on a canvas, admiring Eliza’s gestures and intensity, although she’d never paint in the same style.

  “I’ve been taught to make each figure recognizably itself,” Eliza said, turning to her with a smile.

  Lily nodded, but her portrait of Mrs. Ramsay wouldn’t be realistic; instead it would be like an iridescent weave pinned to the canvas with iron lines. She gathered herself together. Did she need a man to make her feel fulfilled? Wasn’t art supposed to be as important as love? She glanced around. Hilary and the children were sitting at the breakfast table, while her life seemed to have moved on in some way in the past hour, as if Louis had walked from the centre to the margins. She smiled at Hilary as he looked up.

  “Macalister’s agreed,” Hilary said, gazing at her. “We take his boat at midday.” He and Andrew pushed back their chairs from the table.

  “Ladies, do excuse us,” he added. “We go fishing today. The weather promises to be fair.”

  “Can you take James and Nancy?” Prue asked.

  “Father has ordered James not to go out to sea,” Andrew replied, “and Nancy isn’t a good sailor, as you know. We’ll take Jasper if he wants to share the boat.”

  “Andrew, we’d better get going,” Hilary said. “I’ll ask Sophie for a hamper.” He shook her hand in farewell. There was a kind of eagerness in the way he’d been so quick to gaze at her, and Lily could feel her face flushing, glad to be held, for more moments perhaps than a simple goodbye?

  “I trust the weather stays fine for you, Mr. Hunt,” she said, smiling up at him, “and for me. I’ll be able to continue with my portrait.”

  Talking with Hilary, she never felt as she did with Louis, like she was at a private exhibition in some exclusive gallery, but Talland House brought her emotions to the surface so frequently. She could often see her thoughts reflected in Mrs. Ramsay’s face. As a student she had allowed her feelings out into the air when alone in the attic in Fore Street, where she was free to dream after half an hour of Mrs. Trevelyan’s prattling stories of Old St Ives, meeting her own memories and finding a kind of peace.

  Talland House was different. The sheer number of visitors and children broke through her defenses, her secure screens. There was no possibility of detachment, especially with Mr. Ramsay’s bursts of anger, his noisy reciting of Victorian poems like one of her terrifying schoolteachers—without the cane at least. Mrs. Ramsay always calmed the swirling tides of children, found lost toys, and once curled Lily’s hair so to make her appear handsome for a day.

  And there she was, reading again to James. The pose was perfect.

  Lily set up her easel on the lawn and selected some paints. The sunlight was full on the canvas, and she was much more certain about the angle of Mrs. Ramsay’s head. All men seemed to adore Mrs. Ramsay. Hilary said his father had once proposed to her. Mr. Bankes claimed she was the most beautiful mother, a veritable Madonna. What image could capture such an icon? For an hour, Lily tried some cross-hatching at the edges of the canvas. The thin black lines seemed to work. Sometimes her paintings decided to be sweet-tempered and cooperative, at other times they were cross and inflexible, but she’d learned she had to keep working, and it would eventually come right. This painting would soon be her friend.

  Mr. Bankes gravitated across the lawn, smiling but tactfully not staring at the portrait. She noted his well-cut serge suit and brightly striped tie.

  “May I interrupt for a minute?” he asked. “My wife, Miss Briscoe, was very fond of a particular painting. It was of cherry trees in blossom on the banks of the Kennet, where we spent such a happy honeymoon.” Sighing, he continued. “I’ve forgotten the title and was hoping you might know the painter?”

  His association of art and memory appealed to her. Painting
Mrs. Ramsay sometimes recalled her mother, who’d been so certain Lily would be an artist someday. It was Mother who’d encouraged her to think of a life she’d never imagined possible. It was Mother who’d known how it might happen. A past loss couldn’t be completely healed, but it could be consoled by creativity, so she’d hand his remembrance back to Mr. Bankes burnished up.

  “Sir John Lavery painted cherry trees,” she said, “but I’m not sure where.”

  The exact name of the painting also escaped her for the moment. Was it Cherry Trees or Under the Cherry Tree?

  “It could well have been Lavery. Thank you,” Mr. Bankes replied, nodding sagely. “He paints out of doors like you, Miss Briscoe, I believe.”

  The light was changing. The sun had bleached out the misty tones of the early morning, and Lily thought to herself she should wait for later, when the white clematis behind Mrs. Ramsay would hang in a darkening sky like stars. She glanced towards the house, but Mrs. Ramsay had disappeared from sight, so she cleaned her brushes. At least she’d begun. Until now she’d felt most of the time life was something happening to her rather than something she’d made, but beginning Mrs. Ramsay’s portrait had given her a sense of control, of creating something potentially first-rate.

  Smiling at Mr. Bankes, she strolled again with him to the gap in the garden hedge. They peered through, searching for a boat with Hilary and the boys fishing, but the fine weather had encouraged so many small craft onto the sea. Several crisscrossed the harbour, leaving swirls of water in their wake the colour of peacocks’ tails. Behind her someone was walking towards them, and she turned to find Mrs. Ramsay looking preoccupied.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you,” Mrs. Ramsay said, “but I must consult Sophie about tonight’s meal and need to know the number of diners. Even with the boys away today with Mr. Hunt, there’s a lot to do. We plan to see the town’s regatta fireworks from the roof after dinner tonight. I hope you’ll both join us for dinner and fireworks?”

  They nodded, and Lily left Mr. Bankes to study the plants he loved to name, following Mrs. Ramsay into the house, their skirts swishing in tandem over the grass. Mrs. Ramsay’s face was full of the day’s business.

  “Do climb up to our roof space now in daylight, Miss Briscoe, so you’ll know how to reach it easily this evening to see the illuminations,” she said, disappearing into the kitchen.

  The same feeling of joy she’d experienced the first time she visited Talland House overcame Lily again, being invited to see more of the house than ever before. It was completely open. She could spend the entire afternoon exploring every corner, and she quickly climbed the stairs to the unseen upper floors, pausing for a moment on the landing, glancing into the nursery. Cam and Nancy lay sprawled on a rug, carefully pressing flowers into an album. Their circle of conversation was too tight to include her.

  A yellow blind above an open window was raised high so sunlight could fall on the girls, and a breeze blew the blind’s acorn to and fro, tip-tapping across the wooden floor as they worked on. They mustn’t have heard her climb the stairs. Far below Mr. Ramsay was reciting poetry, and lines from Tennyson floated up through the window. Staring further into the room, she noticed a bulky animal skull fixed to the wall hanging over the girls’ beds, with nail heads poking through the empty eye sockets. Why would the Ramsays place such a thing so close to their children? The skull was bleached white, its nose bone flattened and the surface smooth. There were two darker oblong holes where the nostrils had been. It resembled a boar’s head, or a pig’s, reflecting long shadows onto the wall, like sharp knives pointing at them all. Surely Mrs. Ramsay must have a perfectly good reason for mounting it, although she couldn’t imagine what? She’d be sure to ask.

  Disconcerted by the sight, she wondered what else she would find. Tucking in her blouse, she glided towards a narrow staircase to the roof, feeling uncomfortable for having spied on the girls, but they’d been oblivious, and everyone else was out of sight. It was a stolen moment of small insignificant things that might mean something interesting, and she peeked into the next two bedrooms. The first’s worn rugs and camp beds were covered in children’s toys. Tin soldiers lay on their sides as if cannons had exploded. A skipping rope was entangled around the floppy body of a rag doll that had lost its hair long ago. The second bedroom was colder and had been stripped of bedding, giving the room a patched-up appearance.

  Before reaching the staircase, she glanced into Mrs. Ramsay’s bedroom, its door open to allow air to circulate. Mrs. Ramsay was obsessed with open doors and windows and her children’s health, but it was her husband’s outbursts making the children tense and unhappy, not stale air. Lily listened for any movement, but the house was subdued, the girls murmuring over their album, all the adults far below, and she stepped inside.

  The bedroom felt distinctly chilly after the sunny nursery, as if it had a special mood of despondency. A dressing table stood in the window bay, and its unusually tall glass gave a striking likeness of Lily’s whole body, so she could see more of herself than she’d ever seen in one mirror, making her feel somehow like a grand lady. Her cream silk blouse had a dainty ruffle, and the French roll at the back of her head was smoothly in place, held by an amber comb, but it was as if she was trying to see a moment beyond what was in front of her. She remembered watching her mother at the dressing table, its mirror’s beveled edges reflecting a rainbow onto her mother’s arms whenever she picked up her brushes and perfume bottles. Sometimes her mother had sprayed her with scent. It was one of her favourite times of the day—when Mother changed her serge day dress for evening silk and asked Lily to choose a piece of jewellery, smiling when her little fingers pinned a brooch with great care.

  Somehow the moment was more real than anything since. Mrs. Ramsay’s furniture was as highly waxed, but a smell rising from the table wasn’t fresh polish but a strange kind of acrid scent. The curtains wafted to and fro in the breeze, but the aroma lingered. Lily stared at the surface to find the source among Mrs. Ramsay’s jewels and brushes and noticed a miniature crystal bottle with a silver stopper and picked it up. The label was faded, impossible to read. She must be careful to replace it in exactly the same place, but the pungent odour had attached itself to her fingers from drops of the sticky solution on the bottle’s neck. Carefully dipping her fingertips in a bowl of cold water on the washstand, she stared out of a window. What had she found?

  A high wardrobe in a gloomy corner teased her to pry further, but she shouldn’t be snooping. She heard the nursery door slamming shut. It felt as if she’d entered the bedroom hours ago, and she stepped back at once to the doorway as Nancy and Cam rushed towards the staircase.

  “How hot it is today, Miss Briscoe!” Nancy called out. “We’re going out onto the roof. Do join us. You’ll see right across St Ives to the hills beyond.”

  Cam smiled up at her and took her hand, restoring the feeling of a sunny day.

  On the roof the air was fresher than in the garden, and settling her boater, she pulled it down to her eyes to block the sun. In the town below all the people were thin dark lines against the white heat of the buildings, stick figures in a child’s toy box.

  “This is where we like to sit,” Nancy said, gesturing at some folding chairs near the parapet, “staring out at the world.”

  “You’ve chosen a perfect viewing position,” Lily replied, amused by the grown-up phrase, and identified some landmarks whose names she’d learned when first in St Ives.

  It was her love of art she really wanted to share with the girls, to counter Mr. Ramsay’s fixation with facts, and she’d start by making her student days here sound interesting.

  “Porthmeor Studios, where I studied, are close to the harbour,” she said, pointing and speaking first to Nancy. “You can see the external staircase at the side of the building. Studying art was fun. There were several handsome young men among the students.”

  Nancy smiled, but Cam looked puzzled.

  “And we could use paints of ever
y colour and type, Cam,” Lily said.

  “Papa doesn’t like us painting.” Cam said. “He says we make too much mess.”

  “Well, we were so passionate about art,” Lily said, “we often started painting on the quayside in a drizzle, at eight in the morning, sometimes without breakfast.”

  The girls squealed with distaste. It struck Lily all at once this was the way to say things—to tell little tales, laughing and joking—and become part of their life. Soon the contented mood in which she’d arrived at the house swept back over her. Down below, the church clock struck half past six. They’d need to wash before dinner and help Mrs. Ramsay.

  “The boat, the boat!” Nancy pointed in excitement. “Look, Miss Briscoe, Hilary is standing by the tiller, and Andrew by a mast.”

  It was a sailing boat with a Cornish square sail large enough to carry them across the channel, or at least to the Isles of Scilly. Lily suppressed a desire to whistle. The girls waved energetically, but it was futile; they were too far away to be seen from the harbour. Hilary was safely home. Lily tucked some stray hairs into her hat.

  “There are fireworks tonight,” Cam said, “because the regatta is tomorrow. Mama said we could stay up late and watch from the roof.” She threw her arms around Nancy’s waist, clinging on as the taller girl swung her from side to side in excitement behind the parapet.

  “It’ll be a wonderful evening,” Lily said, “but we should go downstairs now to be ready to greet the conquering heroes, our Argonauts.”

  Nancy raised her eyebrows with a quizzical look, and Lily flushed as Cam pulled her towards the door from the roof.

  That evening the August breeze blew from the land, not the usual chill wind from the sea. The folding chairs had been taken downstairs, and there was more space to stand together on the roof; Mrs. Ramsay held Cam up high but close to her body, and the child peered safely over the parapet. The older children stood in a row behind, like uneven teeth shining out from a smiling mouth. As the lighthouse beam swept over them, the ruby brooch on Mrs. Ramsay’s dress glinted again and again.