by Rosie Thomas
There were wide, well-lit windows half curtained in warm crimson. Inside was a big room with tables set against the walls, each with a red-shaded lamp. In the centre was a brass construction sprouting parlour palms and ferns, flowers and newspapers, with a small table beside it laden with exotic fruit and shellfish, plovers’ eggs, caviare and asparagus. There was a feeling of cosiness, but also of comfortable space and order.
The girls had time for only the briefest first impression. Pilgrim and Jeannie were flinging off their hats and coats as if they had come home. A portly man with a moustache came surging forward to greet them.
‘Stulik, Stulik,’ Pilgrim cried, patting him on the back. The man kissed Jeannie on both cheeks and bowed to Clio and Grace. Pilgrim introduced him. Rudolf Stulik was the Eiffel Tower’s proprietor.
‘Welcome, welcome guests, and friends,’ the man crooned. His accent was foreign, fractured. ‘See, I have a table for you here.’ He led them to it.
Grace and Clio saw that the tables were crowded with people, a diverse collection of people in street clothes and theatre clothes and half fancy dress like Jeannie’s. There were thin-faced women with cigarettes and eccentric jewellery, and there was even a sprinkling of young men and women in evening dress. They were all busy eating and talking and gesticulating and laughing, but they looked up when Pilgrim’s party swept by. Clio felt exhilaratingly certain that they were looking not to see what she was wearing, but who she was.
Pilgrim enjoyed the attention given to their entrance. He returned it with lordly waves and smiles and then settled his three companions into their comfortable, plush-seated chairs. A waiter in a black coat brought them menus, but Pilgrim commanded, ‘We will have the plat du jour. And a bottle of burgundy, to begin with.’
The food, when it came, was a poulet rôti au beurre that reminded the girls of the Normandy holidays of their childhood. But before they even began to eat, the first of a stream of visitors to their table arrived. He was a huge man with a curling brown beard and gold earrings who thrust his glass down on the tablecloth and waved to a waiter to bring him a chair. He and Pilgrim began to argue at once, with Jeannie mildly interceding as she filled up their glasses. The man with the beard was followed by a woman in black draperies, her hair as red as Jeannie’s. She brought her own bottle across with her, and clung tenaciously to it. After the woman came a brace of poets, and another painter or two, and a shifting retinue of art students from the Slade School.
Grace and Clio were introduced to more interesting people during that one rambling meal at the Eiffel Tower than they had encountered in the whole of their débutante season. They drank in the arguments and the gossip and the jokes, understanding almost none of them, but impressed by the liveliness and the wit and the casual intimacy.
At first they were shy and almost silent, but the wine and the conviviality worked on them and they began to talk themselves, and then to laugh. Daringly, they lit cigarettes and waved them about like the red-haired Nina. Little sub-groups formed, and broke away from the centre, drawing Clio and Grace with them. They forgot that they had begun by needing Pilgrim’s protection. Clio cupped her chin in her hands and talked in her accurate school French to a Parisian dancer. Grace sat between the two poets, laughing uproariously at each development in a lengthy doggerel-verse account of the evening that they batted between them. More bottles of burgundy were brought and emptied.
When the poulet was replaced by plates of gâteau St Honoré, the big man with the beard leant over to Grace and Clio. His huge fingers pinched at their earlobes and then rubbed the pearls of their matching necklaces.
‘Where did you find these charming English rosebuds, Pilgrim? One would be fine, but a pair is magnificent.’
Pilgrim was pleased. He grinned, showing his white teeth. ‘In Belgrave Square, John, where else? I am painting their portrait for Lady Grace’s mama. She wants to hang it alongside the portrait of herself by Sir John Singer Sargent.’
John bellowed with laughter. ‘You are a lucky man. And I am sure her ladyship will be delighted to have a Pilgrim to hang in her drawing room.’
The evening roared on. To Grace and Clio it was new and entirely magical, but for the rest of them was no more than a familiar night in their usual haunt. The girls were to discover that Pilgrim held a kind of court at the Eiffel. He used it as his club, where he ran up bills and drank coffee at all hours, read the newspapers and wrote his letters. It was also his office and unofficial labour market. He trawled for commissions amongst the society sprigs who daringly penetrated this outpost of Bohemia. It was from just such an infiltrator in evening dress that Blanche’s friend Mary Twickenham had heard that Pilgrim was the very best and absolutely the most fashionable of all the young artists in London. Somehow the other half of his reputation had not been recounted.
It was eleven o’clock when it occurred to Clio to ask the time. She gave a little shriek of dismay, causing the French dancer to raise his eyebrows in comical peaks.
‘We have to go home. Now, at once. Grace, Aunt Blanche will have called the police. We were supposed to be home at seven.’
Grace was equally astonished, but she reassured her, ‘They have gone to a musical soirée. They might not be back, yet, please God, if we hurry. It’s just Broddy who’ll be worried, and I can square it with her.’
They were on their feet, gathering up their wraps. The talk swirled around them, unstoppable.
‘Pilgrim, won’t you take us home? Please, now? Or find us a cab, at least?’
Pilgrim was comfortably ensconced, and had no intention of being dislodged just to make the round trip to Belgrave Square. But he did detach himself for long enough to bustle them into Percy Street. As they left the overflowing table Jeannie called after Clio, ‘Next time, bring that brother of yours, won’t you?’
Pilgrim flagged down a cab. Then in full view of the restaurant’s lighted window he kissed each of the girls on the mouth. His kisses were thorough, tasting importantly of burgundy and garlic and maize-papered French cigarettes. Then he opened the door of the taxi and bundled the two of them inside. He gave the address to the driver, slammed the door, and disappeared back into the red glow of the Eiffel.
Clio and Grace had no money on them. To pay their fare they had to borrow five shillings from John Leominster’s valet when he opened the door. Blanche and John were not yet back. The girls fled upstairs to Nanny Brodribb and their beds.
Clio lay awake, thinking. She was remembering how Pilgrim and Jeannie had entered the Eiffel as if they were coming home. She had not felt at home herself. It was more like hovering on the threshold of some infinitely attractive household, eavesdropping on the family and longing to be invited in to join them. She felt happy, almost breathless with relief, to discover that there were such interesting people, and full of apprehension that she would not be considered amusing enough herself. ‘Next time bring that brother of yours,’ Jeannie had said. At least it seemed to be understood that there would be a next time. She was pleased to think that Julius might be her passport to it.
Then it occurred to her that the world of the Eiffel might not yet feel like home, but it could be a vastly expanded and sophisticated version of the life she had known in the Woodstock Road before the war changed everything. People had come to Nathaniel’s house to talk and eat, and Eleanor had complained sometimes that she felt she was running an unexclusive club. Perhaps the image of a family was more apt than she had realized.
Whatever the truth was, Clio knew that she wanted to be able to take off her coat and belong in this stimulating new world as comfortably as Pilgrim and Jeannie did.
She wanted the people she met there to be her friends. She could only hope that she could offer them something of interest in return.
Seven
The leaves were changing colour under a porcelain-white sky. There was a smoky, wintry bite in the air that whipped Grace’s blood. It was hunting weather, making her wish for the woods and hills around Stretton. Sh
e thought of the visceral pleasure of a hard gallop, and the exhilarating rush of the wind in her face. To be limited to a decorous walk in the Park with Anthony Brock made her feel irritable, and the knowledge that it was her own choice did not improve her mood.
Hugo had gone back to Stretton, to oversee the estate and complete the reopening of the house, and if Grace had insisted on going too Blanche would have given way to her. But in London there was Pilgrim and the circle that had the Charlotte Street studio and the Eiffel as its centre. She would not have retreated and left them exclusively to Clio however much she might otherwise long for the country.
Anthony strolled beside her in his dark City clothes. He was quiet because Grace seemed to prefer not to talk, and the absence of anything to complain of in his company chafed her further. Grace would have liked an argument, anything to provide an outlet for her energy.
They came to a junction in the path they were following. They had the choice of walking on, towards the Serpentine, or taking a shorter route that would lead them back the way they had come.
‘Which would you like?’ Anthony asked. ‘Backwards, or forwards?’
‘Anthony, why are you always so gentlemanly? Why are you so implacably good and reasonable and considerate?’
‘Perhaps I’m not. Perhaps that is just how I would like you to perceive me.’ He was looking sideways at her, his long face expressionless. She couldn’t tell whether he was making fun of her or not.
‘Don’t be. Be brutal and intransigent.’
‘Instead of you? All right, then. We will walk on to the water, because that is what I would like to do.’
‘Is that the best brutality you can manage?’
‘Yes, for the moment.’
They turned towards the Serpentine, a flat sheet of silver visible through the trees. Grace sighed. ‘I’m so bored with the Park and Belgrave Square and shopping and dinners.’
‘How is the portrait progressing?’
She faltered. It was like Anthony to make the immediate connection between her proclaimed boredom and the reason why she was prepared to suffer it.
‘Pilgrim seems satisfied. I haven’t been granted a viewing yet.’
That was almost a relief. As long as it was unseen, they could hope that it would somehow turn out to be the innocent celebration of their début that Blanche expected.
Pilgrim did not show any anxiety to finish the portrait. Twice now he had invited the girls for separate sittings, claiming that he felt outnumbered by the two of them together. They had not felt it necessary to mention this new arrangement to Blanche.
For the first of Grace’s solo sessions he had worked in frowning silence, making her wonder if she had said or done something wrong. But at the second he had been jovial, and had made only a brief dab at his easel before throwing its calico shroud back over the canvas. Grace was relieved to find that he was in good humour, and happy not to have to hold the familiar pose for another hour.
‘I can’t work every day,’ Pilgrim smiled at her. He came and sat beside her on the divan, briefly rubbing her cheek with his forefinger. Grace was beginning to be used to the way that Pilgrim and his friends touched each other. They kissed and embraced the way her parents shook hands.
Pilgrim brought them a glass of wine, and they smoked his yellow French cigarettes while they talked. Grace had met enough of the people who frequented the Eiffel to enjoy Pilgrim’s gossip about their affairs.
The pictures of Jeannie still faced into the room. When she looked away from Pilgrim and saw them confronting her she felt uncomfortable, aware of a prickle beneath her skin. The pictures were erotic. There was a majestic calm in Jeannie’s nakedness that mocked her own fiddly attention to her shreds of covering. With part of herself, Grace wished for the simplicity of bare skin. It would be easier to be naked. And Pilgrim had painted Jeannie’s flesh with such attention, with such a heavy impasto of cream and coral and bronze that Grace wanted to reach out and touch the crusts of paint. But another part of her flushed at the mere thought, and dragged her eyes back to Pilgrim’s face.
She saw that he was watching her. His lips were very red, shiny with wine, and his eyes glittered.
‘I’m sorry to say,’ he whispered, ‘that it is time for my next sitting.’ He leant forward and kissed the hollow at the side of her throat.
Grace leapt like a rabbit, relieved and disappointed.
Yet for all her confusion, she had not wanted her sitting to end with Pilgrim at an advantage. When she was dressed in her street clothes she had crossed back to where he was still sitting, smoking. She reached down, until her eyes were level with his. She liked his aroma of paint and tobacco overlying another musky scent that she could only identify as the natural smell of his skin. He examined her, at these close quarters, with frank approval.
‘When can I see the picture?’ Grace asked.
‘When I have finished it.’
‘Are you pleased with it?’
He was silent for a second. Then he said, ‘I believe it is my masterpiece.’
Grace felt her skin prickle for the second time. Slowly, as if his stare had hypnotized her, she leant closer until her top lip grazed his. Pilgrim smiled. His face was so near to hers that she couldn’t see the expression in his eyes, only the granulation of colour in his irises. ‘Your masterpiece,’ she whispered back.
Their mouths were still touching when Pilgrim repeated, ‘It’s time for my next sitting.’
Grace stood up and drew on her kid gloves. Blanche’s chauffeur was waiting for her downstairs with the car.
When Grace asked Clio what happened at her corresponding sittings, Clio only said, ‘He talks a great deal. About art, mostly.’
Grace wondered if that was the truth.
Remembering all this, Grace’s impatience with Anthony and their stately progress swelled until she was sure that it would choke her. Her arms swung stiffly and her feet clapped on the dusty path.
‘Shall we walk a little faster?’ Anthony asked mildly. Grace lengthened her stride and he matched it, then Grace walked faster still, and faster, recognizing her own contrariness and taking perverse pride in it. Anthony kept pace with her until at last Grace was running, with her head down and the silver foxtails of her wrap flying behind her.
Grace ran, the uncomfortable drumming of her blood finding an echo at last in her thudding feet. She was oblivious to the stares of the other walkers with their dogs and their sticks, and their heads turning to follow her as she passed. Anthony loped beside her. He could outrun her; she would never shake him off.
They came to the water’s edge. The Serpentine lay in front of them, the grey surface broken now by ripples licked up by the wind. In the distance Grace could hear another echo, the hoofbeats of horses cantering in the Row. She was gasping for breath and there were tears in her eyes from the cold.
‘You don’t want to sprint on to Oxford Street?’ Anthony inquired. His breathing was quite even. He held out his handkerchief so that she could wipe her eyes. Grace took it without a word. He watched her, seeing how the silver-tipped fox hairs stuck to her damp cheeks. She was looking away from him, across the grass to some benches under the trees. A group of nannies was gathered there with their high perambulators. There was one toddler with them, buttoned into leggings and leading reins. He strained at the end of the padded leash and the bells on the leather front of it jingled as he tried to lurch towards the moving water. But his nanny would never let him out of the corral of perambulators. At last he flopped down on to the grass and let out a howl of frustration.
Grace screwed Anthony’s handkerchief up into a ball and thrust it back at him. She turned away and began to walk again. ‘Don’t you ever feel that you want to run away? All the way away, out of sight of everyone?’
Anthony said, ‘Of course I do. We can run away together, you know. Grace, why don’t you marry me?’
He loved her, he knew that. He also understood her bewildered boredom. If they were married, he th
ought, he could divert her. They would work together. They would make a political partnership.
Pityingly, Grace shook her head. ‘Marrying you wouldn’t be running away. It would be running into it all. Full tilt.’
She was thinking about Charlotte Street and the Eiffel Tower, and the merry, unplanned, Bohemian lives that Pilgrim and his friends lived. She did not share Clio’s half-awed esteem for their art, and the endless discussions of theories and ideals bored her as much as they fascinated Clio. What Grace liked was the vivid, reckless manner of life in the studios and pubs, and she wanted to be a freelance part of it. She wanted to slip into it, and out of Belgrave Square, whenever it suited her. It was partly that duality which attracted her. She was drawn to the same quality in Pilgrim himself. Part of her knew that her painter was devious, lazy and probably a liar. But he was also new, and different, and powerfully exciting.
Grace liked to be Lady Grace Stretton of Leominster House, Belgrave Square, and at the same time she liked to submerge herself in the brew of the Eiffel. It was like being two people, at once significant and anonymous.
The thought reminded her of Peter Dennis. It all seemed very long ago. How babyish she had been, with her unsureness of herself and her envy of Clio.
‘I can’t marry you, Anthony. I can’t marry anyone for a long time yet.’
There would be a time for all that, in the end, in a distant future she couldn’t even be bothered to imagine.
‘I’ll wait,’ Anthony repeated.
Grace put her arm through his. The running had burnt away some of her gnawing energy and made her forget her ill-humour. ‘Better not,’ she said kindly. ‘Why don’t you marry Clio? She likes you, and she would make a good wife.’
Freedom, they had pledged each other on the night of their dance. Modern women. But Grace did not believe that Clio was truly dedicated to independence. Grace guessed that for all her bluestocking pretensions Clio would be happy enough to marry and to have a brood of children just as Eleanor had done.
‘I like Clio. And she will be an excellent wife, but not for me.’
