by Maggie Humm
The portrait could wait for an hour or two while she visited his studio. Whatever she felt, or didn’t feel so much about Louis, she’d never stopped admiring his expertise. Mr. Ramsay seemed indifferent to her this morning and probably wouldn’t notice her absence, and she could talk out her ideas with Louis. She set down her palette.
She hurried down into St Ives, unsure what to think about Louis. The harbour and beach were at last in sight, stroked by the raking sun, but the sand had been made more secure for wartime with six new windbreaks. Surely there wouldn’t have been scaremongering about invasion, given the town didn’t face France, but she’d heard recently the town council had forbidden all outdoor art during the war. It wasn’t merely the details of the coast and buildings judged unpatriotic to paint, even sketching the line of the horizon was forbidden. That’s why Louis must have stayed in Australia. He’d have found such restrictions impossible. She was glad to see the same bathing huts with their canvas roofs dotted around the bay—their parallel lines became like the prongs of a crumpet fork. Holiday-makers were sitting on the beach, triggering a memory of her first time working on the quayside with Emily, trying to capture people’s gestures, a palimpsest lying under today’s sunlight, but she was too eager to reach Louis’s studio. Did she love him? It was impossible to decide.
Standing hesitating before the door, she wished she’d been less hasty. She had her sketchbook, so she could set out her plans, but looking down, she noticed she hadn’t chosen her best clothes. The stockinette jacket and fitted grey dress would have helped her look slimmer, younger than this dull serge. It was so long since she’d thought about clothes. A nurse’s uniform was constricting, but at least she hadn’t had to bother about her appearance. Uniforms of any kind always brought admiring glances, and she’d quite forgotten how to dress in civvies for the gaze of others. Her best dress was unpacked. Mr. Ramsay was hardly a man she needed to please. She wanted Louis to smile for one minute, his eyes travelling down her body as they had the first day in the studio. She smoothed down her skirt and knocked. Was she doing the right thing? He’d be busy, definitely painting, and not thank her for the interruption. She should have written, telling him she was coming to St Ives, but how could she without seeming too effusive?
Putting her ear to the door, she couldn’t hear any sounds inside, and she waited for a moment listening for movement. Taking a sheet from her sketchbook, she was about to scribble a message when the door opened slowly. A handsome man roughly her age stood four-square, his paint-spattered trousers topped by a loose student’s smock. His puzzled expression turned to a deep frown, and she gave a quick, hesitant smile.
“I’m Miss Lily Briscoe, a former student of Mr. Grier’s,” she said, straightening her jacket. “Is he at home?”
From over the man’s shoulder, Louis called out. “Lily, is it you? I’m so delighted you decided to come to St Ives. Do come in.”
The warmth of his voice flowed through her as she stepped into the room. Everything was as before. The shelves above head height were laden with curios, ships in bottles, broken Toby jugs, a pepper pot standing unevenly on its legs. “My ‘tipsy’ pepper pots resemble their owner,” he’d laugh to new students.
“Enter, enter our humble abode,” Louis said, smiling at her.
She smiled in reply, but what was this “our”? Was he sharing his studio with a younger student, perhaps a woman in one of the tight white muslin dresses he’d seemed so fond of in the past? What would the next sentence bring?
“Allow me to introduce Norman Wilkinson—a former student of mine,” Louis said. “Norman, I think you were studying here in 1899, the year before Lily first arrived? Has my memory served me well?”
Norman nodded without much of a glance at her, but Louis’s face was luminous looking at him. She could see Louis more clearly now in the light from the studio window. He was thinner than in August, his face drawn and lined, and he sat down almost before she did. She was about to ask about his health when Norman said, “Will you take tea with us?” At least he had some social graces, she thought, smiling again.
“Nothing stronger for you, Louis,” Norman said teasingly, “especially at this time of day.” The tone of light companionship echoed how she always tried to speak with Louis, and she regretted not trying harder when she’d been his student. Now she felt a moment of jealousy triggered by Norman’s closeness to Louis.
“One of Norman’s paintings sank with the Titanic,” Louis said, “but his career soared, and we all owe the safety of the British Navy to his camouflage expertise.”
So Norman had been able to continue painting all through the war, whilst she had been taken up by her nursing duties. The list of Norman’s accomplishments was perturbing. Trying to look bland and unconcerned, she managed to sit back with an air of exaggerated patience.
“Your paths must have crossed,” Louis said. “Norman worked in the basement of the Royal Academy with his merry band of camofleurs.”
Louis knew Dahlias had been displayed and she was successful, but all she could remember was the door to the basement opening for her to collect her rejected paintings from other summer exhibitions. Lily managed to keep a serene expression.
“Camofleurs is our little pun on the French flâneur, Miss Briscoe,” Norman laughed, handing her a mug of strong tea. “The term is literal. We designed camouflage for ships.”
Hearing their conversation was like being made to look at a succession of photographs in a private album; she felt awkward, not knowing what to reply. There was something in the studio she didn’t understand, and it wasn’t the right time to ask Louis about her own painting. She couldn’t reveal her vulnerability in front of Norman; she felt no longer quite herself. She needed to focus on her reason for being in St Ives, focus on Mr. Ramsay, to attract Louis’s attention, and she looked directly at him.
“You know Hunt asked me to report on any odd actions of Mr. Ramsay?” she asked, describing her breakfast with Mr. Ramsay and his abrupt response to her information about Mrs. Beckwith’s medical expertise.
“When does the good lady arrive in St Ives?” Louis asked, leaning forward.
“In three days’ time,” Lily replied. “I’m not sure what Mr. Ramsay will make of her.”
“And to think, he was once president of our Arts Club,” he said.
So, he and Hunt must find Mr. Ramsay strange, but at least Louis was interested. Putting down her mug, Lily relaxed, glancing along the wall at his paintings (or were they Norman’s?). The large canvas of St Ives beach, with its massive waves tumbling over white sand and foam dyed in all the colours of the spectrum must be Louis’s. About to praise the workmanship, she turned to see him standing alongside Norman in the narrow kitchen, holding his arm across Norman’s back for support as they rinsed the tea mugs in a sink. Their two shoulders nudged and overlapped. There was a self-sufficiency in the gesture which confused her. She wasn’t sure what she was seeing, aware Louis’s attention was elsewhere. She tried to pin down what she thought about them, but the image was blurred.
Remembering an unchanged Louis had been the one thing sometimes making the wartime nursing bearable. It had always been there, running through everything, her friendship with Louis like a solid horizon line giving a picture its strength. She’d been thinking about him this past week, more than she’d done all year, beset by images. Some were of real events, like the day she first saw him in the studio; others were imagined. Above all, she saw Louis as a brilliant and handsome painter.
For a moment, it was as if she were suspended, unsure of what she felt. She discreetly watched them, seeing their gestures, disbelieving, almost, in the reality of the scene, not knowing why she was so surprised by the sight of the two men touching each other, staring into each other’s eyes, but their intimacy seemed intense. The whole studio felt stuffy and oppressive, and her mind became a blank. Putting on her gloves, she stood up. Conversation was at a standstill, and she needed to return to Talland House. She felt sad i
n a way she couldn’t remember being for a long time, but she also felt a strange relief. Seemingly, Louis hadn’t rejected her for a younger woman; he’d turned to a man for support, perhaps love. Moments of those first days in St Ives returned to her, things he’d said to men seemed to gain lucidity from their distance far away from her. Somehow it was oddly comforting. She could step out of Louis’s shadow. She would become her own artist.
Lily held her hand out first to Norman as she said goodbye, but Louis reached out both hands, placing hers in a tight grasp, and she was glad of his touch.
“Do be careful,” he said. “Please don’t expose yourself to Mr. Ramsay’s anger.”
The warm, rich tones were as strong as ever. His quick dark eyes gazed at her. She watched him taking in her dress and the curls in her hair. His eyes, the affable voice, his soft lips and wide smile could find a way into her, but he looked thinner and drawn. Now he was standing right alongside her, she could see the deterioration in his appearance since their Royal Academy meeting. He’d lost weight and his face had a yellowish tinge, like an old portrait. She was about to ask about his health, but there’d be more banter between the men, and she couldn’t bear the tension gathering behind Norman’s silence any longer. Lily made her goodbyes.
Three days later, Mr. Carmichael dragged his deckchair across the lawn to sit near Lily’s easel.
“Women always have a great sympathy with nature,” he said, “and an ability to interpret her most subtle charms.”
A little ball of spit flicked across the garden, and the words died away into his ragged, stained beard. She ignored his remark. He was directing his murmurs at the French book on his knees, not at her. It wasn’t nature’s charms directly ahead but its vibrant colours, and she stood back from the canvas, rubbing the small of her back. Everything was clear. She’d make the portrait more abstract and paint the flowers a strong purple to give weight to one of the two shapes. Her usual technique of sweeping in the main lines in thin paint, layering in the darker colours later to denote bulk, wouldn’t work so well, and the thought about abstraction gave her a new kind of thrill.
She needed to experiment, to start with a quick study. Chalks could suggest the massing of light and shade, and she’d try to slough off all the little tricks she’d nurtured. These dodges had helped with the painting of Dahlias, but she had to be braver. Everything depended on finishing a fine portrait. She knew now what Louis was, what Louis wanted. He was half of an odd couple, and only the painting mattered. Yet its success depended on discovering the truth about Mrs. Ramsay’s death, on things becoming as clear as today’s sky. The foreground was almost complete, and she finished it with a deft stroke, but what was she to do with the sky? Rolling the black-and-white chalks in one hand, she watched the powder turn grey on her fingers.
Mrs. Beckwith wouldn’t arrive until early evening, even if the change of trains at St Erth was quicker than usual. What would her friend think of Talland House? Mrs. Beckwith’s letter had surprised her with its enthusiasm. Lily’s invitation offered, she’d replied, “the unanticipated pleasure of a late summer holiday.” Mrs. Beckwith had missed their conversations and was “enchanted at the prospect of spending time” with Lily again. It was difficult adjusting to a life without the pharmacy after the war. The returning men had taken all the jobs she could perhaps have applied for, and she was “elderly now.” She’d added with her usual honesty, “my work is complete.” Lily’s worries about the visit had faded away.
Lily folded her arms, looking at Mrs. Ramsay’s portrait resting on the easel, with its blank spaces and an unfinished background, and gazed upwards again at the fine Cox-like sky, its light-blue streaks holding rounded white clouds, like dandelion heads. The sky was having a conversation with her, but it was hard to capture on canvas, and she touched the empty areas. The painting needed greater depth, and there was little time for sketching with chalks before oils. Picking up a clean brush, she stroked it across some fresh paint and drew a line for the central figure. The emptiness alongside it invited her to plunge in, but she put her brush down, reluctant to move. The angle of the pose was difficult to paint without losing the depth of the purple she needed for solidity.
Stroking her fingers across her brow, she pushed away a frown. The portrait’s new construction of shapes and masses seemed to cohere, but the sky remained a problem. She was concentrating so hard on the surface of the canvas and didn’t hear the doorbell tinkle at the other side of the house. Mildred was crossing the lawn towards her, holding out a silver tray with a thin envelope.
“Please, Miss, a gentleman left his card for you. He wouldn’t stop for a reply. Said it was urgent and would I say Norman Wilkinson had called.”
Quickly reading the card, Lily rushed down into St Ives to reach Louis’s studio as fast as she could, not even glancing as usual at the masts and rigging as she ran past the harbour. The narrow streets, so impressive on the first cart ride from the station, were now constricting, imprisoning her with their medieval shapes, absorbing all the sunlight. The pretty painted cottages became little squares of poverty, and the circular shadows the cherry trees cast on the ground were black pools. A sense of dread started to fill inside her. Although it wasn’t clear how ill Louis might be from Norman’s scribbled description, it must be something very serious for him to have written so soon after her last visit. The thrill of painting she’d relished for an hour or so completely vanished. He’d seemed unwell for sure, but why hadn’t she noticed any key symptoms in his appearance? She’d been so caught up in her own idea of him, changing Louis into a would-be lover or a very close friend, she’d overlooked details she’d been trained to see as a nurse.
The door opened as soon as she knocked. Norman held her hand tight and took her into Louis’s bedroom. Everything in the room became clearer and clearer, as if being developed in a photographer’s tray at the Porthminster Hotel. Before she even turned to Louis, she knew the outline of every object. Her eyes pricked at the sight of medicine bottles on the bedside table, the slop bowl carefully rinsed for the next round of certain vomiting. Where someone other than Louis might have a prayer book or a statue of the Virgin, there was a pile of freshly washed pieces of muslin neatly stacked on a shelf together with a bowl of water, tinged with carbolic.
“My dear Louis,” she said, sinking into the chair Norman had moved close to the bed. Louis’s elegant black velvet evening cape was wrapped incongruously around his shoulders, and underneath the cape he wore a blue-and-white striped sleeping suit. She was staring at a bleached portrait whose tiny facial mannerisms had faded away; his face seemed almost colourless in the grey light of the darkened room, and the sheen on his forehead made him into a much older man.
Instinctively she dipped a strip of muslin into the water and bathed his forehead, pushing back the moist hair. He had a high fever, she could tell, but the sheer pleasure of being allowed to touch him, to stroke his hair, was too intense for her usual nurse’s observations. Yet now, when she could at last touch his body, there was no future. Hollowed out by the certainty of his illness and what he shared with Norman, she sat back, unable to speak.
Norman smoothed the blankets over Louis’s chest and helped him to sit more upright, gently holding a cup to his lips.
“Nothing too strong, my boy, at this early hour!” Louis’s laugh was weak.
Norman turned to Lily. “Thank you for coming so speedily. When you visited the other day, Louis was the best he had been for some time. He seemed more himself than ever. We were waiting for the doctor’s final diagnosis before telling you the news.” Norman paused, his eyes wet with tears. “I’m afraid to say the illness is terminal.”
She’d noticed the changes in Louis’s appearance when they were all sitting in the courtyard of the Royal Academy, and again on her last visit, but many people were less nourished during the war. She could never imagine Louis seriously ill, would certainly never think he was dying. Now he was like a sketch all crumpled up.
“Louis has suffered pain in his abdomen for some time,” Norman whispered at last. “He’s lost a great deal of weight.”
“But all for the better, my boy,” Louis murmured. “I am as slim now as when I was a callow youth.” The two men smiled at each other.
The wit lingered on his face. The old Louis was struggling out from the skin of another.
“Louis hadn’t visited a doctor. As soon as I saw his condition, I insisted we had professional advice. He has cirrhosis of the liver from alcohol poisoning. The damage is irreversible. He wanted to tell you before memory loss set in.”
She knew she should thank Norman for his honesty and care, but it was impossible to speak without crying. The news was all she could bear to hear. She held Louis’s hand, stroking it with her fingertips.
“I remember kissing the back of your hand when Olsson introduced you.” Louis’s voice was an echo of his usual strong tenor.
“You are in my heart as well as my hands,” she replied, unable to look at his face or Norman’s. The coal-tar smell of the carbolic made it difficult to breathe. With the stroking of his hand his eyes closed, his face strained even in sleep. She knew drowsiness was one of the symptoms of cirrhosis but was glad to see a peaceful remnant of Louis lying on the bed. In spite of all the war horrors, tragedy was another country, and she wasn’t sure she knew the language.
“He wants his friends to see him before the final months of deterioration,” Norman said. “Hunt will be visiting next week. I believe you know Mr. Hunt? But Louis wishes to give the news to him in person when he arrives.”
Louis’s eyes opened, and she promised to be discreet.
“There’s no hope for him,” Norman whispered as he closed the studio door.
Her whole body was stiffand painful, as if she were a fisherwoman pulling a heavy hawser on the beach. It was inconceivable Louis was dying. His vivaciousness and dramatic stories, the lively singsongs at the piano, had been the vortex of student life. The ripples of Louis’s smile had sucked them all into a more exciting world than she could ever have imagined. His teaching had given her a student self, but now she felt exposed, as if her skin were peeled away, leaving the pulp, as if the years of unrecognized, unreciprocated love for him had dropped away. Yet she didn’t feel regret. Her life had changed direction, away from what was conventional—marriage and children—into something difficult but with more sensations, more striking impressions. She wasn’t sure where it would go, but the thought was strangely settling. His ideas had sustained her, kept her painting, and she’d always be grateful.
