I took it off and handed it to her. She studied it closely, turning it from side to side in the light like an expert, and then asked, without looking up:
‘Who gave it to you then, the doctor?’
‘Yes, actually.’
Now she gave me one of her cheeky sidelong glances. ‘So are you going to marry him – actually?’
‘No.’
‘But he wanted you to.’
I could only nod. At once, she was mortified.
‘I’m ever so sorry, I am a stupid cow. Here.’ She handed the ring back. ‘It’s lovely. Lucky you, I say. Bet I’ll never have one like that.’
Like a true friend, she had given me time to recover from my moment’s discomposure, and I appreciated it. In the short silence that followed, I had one of those ideas which formed only a split second ahead of my putting it into words.
‘Dorothy – quite soon I want to move to a bigger place, a place of my own. Would you like to live with me?’
For only the second time since I’d known her, I could tell she was thrown off balance. Her face was an absolute study as a whole series of emotions raced across it, jostling for position: astonishment, disbelief, amusement, and finally a wary curiosity.
‘Pardon?’ She leaned one ear towards me. ‘I’m not sure I caught that . . .’
‘I asked if you’d like to live with me. When I get a new place of my own.’
‘I thought that’s what you said.’ She gazed at me, her brow knitted, as though trying to read my mind. ‘Why?’
I paused. I had moved too fast for both of us, and needed a moment to express myself simply and clearly.
‘Because I’d like your company, you’d have a place to call your own—’
‘No I wouldn’t,’ she interrupted tartly. ‘It’d be yours, you just said so.’
‘I’d buy it, but we could run it as a partnership.’
‘Run what?’
I wasn’t quite ready to outline my whole plan, so said lamely: ‘Run our home. Together. I’d continue to go out to work for the time being, and you could manage the domestic side of things.’
‘So I’d be your housekeeper, would I?’
‘Sort of.’
‘Blimey.’ She dropped her head into her hands and then looked up, still baffled, her hair on end. ‘I can’t really see it, can you?’
‘Yes, I can. Or I wouldn’t have suggested it.’
‘Tell me something,’ she said. ‘Why would I want to be your housekeeper when I’ve got a perfectly good job here?’
It was a fair question, and I could no longer avoid answering it. ‘Because you’d be my partner, Dorothy – my business partner. I’ve got plans.’
‘Haven’t you just?’ She gave a sceptical little laugh.
‘There isn’t time to go into them all now, but I want to help people – women like you and me. And you and I could work well together.’
‘What’s all this, “women like you and me”? You and me aren’t alike, we’re chalk and cheese.’
‘That’s what I mean, all sorts of women. And as for you and me, opposites can get along well.’
‘That’s true . . .’ She sat back in her chair with her arms folded. I knew what she was going to say.
‘I don’t say it’s not kind of you, and I appreciate it, I really do.
But I’ve got a home already. And I’ve got my job here. Mr and Mrs Jarvis have been good to me, so I don’t want to rock the boat, or leave them in the lurch.’
I felt as if a plug had been pulled out somewhere inside me and all the warm hopes and good intentions of a minute ago had drained away, leaving me empty.
‘It’s all right, Dorothy,’ I said dully. ‘I understand. Forget I mentioned it, please.’
She didn’t forget, of course, and neither did I. It was one of those conversations which, though in no way fatal to our friendship, I would have erased from the record if I could. It rattled around at the back of my brain for days, mocking me with its (wholly unintentional) patronising tone, its condescension and presumptuousness. I believed then, and know now, that Dorothy herself did not notice any such horrors herself; she was simply baffled and taken aback. But that didn’t prevent me from feeling like a pompous idiot. The exchange had created an unprecedented awkwardness between us. For a while, I returned to my original, somewhat unbending self, but there was none of her old, importunate teasing.
There were house guests, of course. Edward Rintoul came and went (with no news of Suzannah); Georgina, too, with quantities of shopping, selecting and ordering to do for the wedding, was a frequent visitor – once with her jolly, loud-voiced mother who was the very opposite of the martinet conveyed by her daughter. Her twin cries were ‘On we go!’, and ‘No peace for the wicked’, but under a jovially overbearing manner she was the best-natured woman you could hope to meet. There was a sort of amiable wrangling going on, outside Georgina’s hearing, about ‘the fiancé’. The Jarvises claimed, not altogether seriously, that while Giles was pleasant he wasn’t nearly good enough for Georgina, a shortcoming he shared with almost every man on the planet. Molly Fullerton propounded the view – also humorously – that anyone with his own teeth, hair and a steady income, and who was safe in taxis, was quite good enough, and to be welcomed with open arms.
To my great embarrassment, even I was dragged into this light-hearted debate. Mrs Fullerton came into the drawing room one morning when I was going through the diary with Amanda. Georgina was still in bed, having apparently not managed breakfast due to a headache.
‘It must be bad to affect her appetite,’ said her mother, sitting down on the sofa. ‘The girl eats like a horse and always has done.’
‘Let’s hope Mr Parker can afford to feed her . . .’ murmured Amanda without looking up. They all loved this game, but it made me feel slightly uncomfortable.
Mrs Fullerton snapped open The Times. ‘Now then, Hatches, Matches and Despatches . . . What do you think of my daughter’s fiancé, Mrs Griffe?’
Amanda looked at me with a wide-eyed smile. ‘There’s a poser for you, Pamela. Molly, what a perfectly horrid thing to do.’
‘No it’s not,’ said Mrs Fullerton. ‘It’s a straight question and I shan’t think any the worse of her whatever she says.’ She peered over the paper at me, eyebrows raised. ‘Come along, Mrs Griffe, you can be the arbiter – a good catch or not good enough?’
‘Well, Georgina certainly thinks he’s a good one,’ I said, sounding, as I always did when on the back foot, rather too sharp. ‘And she’s the only one who matters. If she’s happy, it’s not up to anyone else to throw him back in.’
‘Well said, Pamela . . .’ Amanda patted my hand. But Mrs Fullerton wasn’t about to let me off so easily. Putting the paper down with a little heave of the shoulders, she addressed herself to me challengingly:
‘A very diplomatic answer, my dear, and nothing wrong in that. But I’m going to be beastly and put you on the spot. What do you think of him? Personally, I mean. And you may speak freely.’
She was wrong to think me diplomatic. I had spoken freely the first time, and needed no invitation to do so again.
‘I don’t know him. But,’ I added, before she could prompt me, ‘he strikes me as kind, honourable, and generous.’
‘Hmm . . .’ Mrs Fullerton bridled mischievously. ‘Are you saying my future son-in-law is a tiny bit dull?’
‘Yes,’ whispered Amanda in her direction. ‘She is!’
Suddenly I’d had enough of these two older women playing their silly game. I got up and excused myself.
Five minutes later Amanda Jarvis came into the office and seeing that her husband wasn’t at his desk, said: ‘I’m sorry, my dear . . . Just now – that was inexcusable. But it was only a bit of silly nonsense. None of our business, and none of yours so Molly shouldn’t have dragged you in.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said, a touch frostily.
‘Well, no, but . . .’ Amanda all but wrung her hands in mortification. ‘He’s a
dear young man, and we’re all so pleased.’
‘I know.’
‘Georgina’s so happy.’
‘Yes, she is.’
I wished she would go. I had work to do and the episode had meant less than nothing to me anyway. I began to type, but Amanda was hellbent on setting the record straight.
‘What you said about Giles was absolutely true. He’s a gem. Christopher and I like to tease Molly, but Georgina’s very dear to us and believe me if we didn’t like some man she’d taken up with, or really believed he wasn’t good for her, we should say so immediately.’
Such was her sense of urgency and the importance of what she had to say that all of this came out in a continuous, fluent stream without the usual hesitations and flutterings. I had to reply with whatever was in my power to restore her peace of mind.
‘Of course you would, Mrs Jarvis. I know that. And you’re right, it’s none of my business. It was nothing, let’s forget it. In fact I already have.’
I smiled at her, was rewarded by a smile in return, and then she went, closing the door very discreetly, as though she had been dismissed.
When she’d gone I sat there wondering at how far I’d travelled in the past few months, and what I’d turned into. From the reserved, unsure amanuensis of last spring, I’d become a woman who spoke her mind, dictated terms, and interfered in the lives of others. In other words I no longer knew my place. This realisation was both shocking and invigorating. The phrase ‘self-determination’, if it had even been coined, was not then in common currency, but with hindsight it was most certainly what I was engaged in. However, I reminded myself sternly, common civility and respect for my employers remained not only desirable but essential if I was to achieve my goals.
One morning towards the end of February there was a message waiting on my desk in Jarvis’s racy, slipshod handwriting:
John Ashe telephoned. Returned last night, but would like you to go to his home address this afternoon. Hopes that won’t be inconvenient.
Just seeing his name on the sheet of paper put a cool cat’s-paw of apprehension on the back of my neck, so that I suppressed a shiver. Jarvis came into the room and said breezily:
‘Morning, Mrs Griffe! Ah – you’re reading that . . . He called early this morning at some perfectly ungodly hour, I swear he never sleeps. Anyway, do cut along early if you feel you need to.’
I said I was sure that wouldn’t be necessary. My plans depended on the continuation of my work for Ashe, but I wasn’t looking forward to it. I had very readily slipped back into the gentler and more random rhythms of life at Crompton Terrace where, for the moment at least, the most exciting event in the offing was Georgina’s wedding.
And the spring exhibition, of course, the subject of today’s work.
‘As you know, I like to present new, young artists in the spring,’ said Jarvis, shuffling absent-mindedly through the papers on his desk. ‘It seems like the seasonal thing to do, creative vigour rising with the sap, so to speak . . . I do very well out of established artists, but the greatest satisfaction for a parasitic fellow like me is to launch the career of someone new.’
‘Like Suzannah Murchie,’ I said.
‘Very much like Suzannah,’ he agreed. ‘She has a wonderful talent, and I flatter myself I was the first to spot it. But her output is so erratic. Scarcity value is one thing, but one has to be a little more firmly embedded in the minds of art buyers before that registers.’
‘Do you know if she’s working at the moment?’
‘No idea. Don’t know where she is, what she’s doing, or with whom. What can I do? She comes and goes and disappears – she’s not susceptible to any kind of management.’
There flashed into my mind that awful photograph: the attenuated, childlike limbs; the swollen, savagely scribbled belly; the bowed head with its shock of unkempt hair. A once-free spirit not just in captivity, but in servitude – humiliated.
‘I think she needs someone to take care of her,’ I said. ‘She’d be more free if she was safe.’
Jarvis drew his brows together and looked keenly at me as though I’d voiced some remarkable insight instead of stating what, to me, was obvious.
‘Do you know, my wife says that. But the thing of it is, Suzannah resists care. Even when she’s here she leads her own life, and we take our tone from her. Like a cat!’ he exclaimed, warming to his theme. ‘A dog needs care and gives unstinting affection and loyalty in return. A cat graces you with its presence from time to time without a word of thanks, and then the moment something bad happens that you’re powerless to prevent, it goes off in a huff and dies alone.’
This begged a question which I could not bring myself to ask, but which we both felt was hanging in the air.
‘Not that we have either,’ he said. We dropped the subject and got down to work.
When, later that afternoon, I presented myself at the house in Piedmont Gardens, the same butler answered the door and showed me not into the grand drawing room where I’d met Felicia, but into what he told me was Mr Ashe’s study on the opposite side of the hall. It was more like a library than a study, solid and opulent with the feel of what I imagined to be a gentleman’s club. Three walls were lined with books, from polished floorboards to the ceiling twelve feet away. I had got so used to seeing John Ashe in the sterile, flatly lit whiteness of Soho Square that he seemed quite out of place here. I reminded myself that this was his home, presumably designed to his taste and for his comfort, but it still felt strange.
Also, he was not alone. He sat in a leather armchair by the fireplace, and another man was standing in front of him, with his back to the door. It made one of those tableaux in which the seated figure held all the power. The visitor’s attitude was that of a boy reporting to the headmaster. He didn’t so much as look round when the butler announced me, but Ashe got up at once.
‘Mrs Griffe – thank you for coming over. Mr Allinson was just leaving.’
Dismissed, the visitor turned to go. It was the usually genial vicar from St Xavier’s, looking serious and preoccupied. I said, ‘Good afternoon,’ and he responded in kind but appeared not to recognise me. There was no reason why he should; in the church he was a distinctive, authoritative figure, while I, on the few occasions he’d seen me, had been one face among many.
‘Excuse me for one moment,’ said Ashe, and accompanied his visitor out into the hall. Through the open door I saw the butler bring the vicar’s coat, hat and scarf and then withdraw. Ashe remained, and the two men spoke quietly – or at least Ashe spoke, and the vicar listened attentively with his hand to his brow. When Ashe suddenly looked over his shoulder I felt a sharp dart of shock. I turned away and stepped back into the room, but not before I saw him walk with long, swift strides towards the door. I heard it click shut. I had not meant to spy, nor to eavesdrop – I could not hear what was being said – but Ashe had, as always, drawn my fascinated attention and I had been caught out. Furious with myself, I walked to the far end of the room. It was L-shaped, with the arm of the ‘L’ extending to the left beyond the fireplace, away from the windows that overlooked the road. On the wall at the end hung the portrait of John Ashe.
It was disconcerting, having escaped his accusing stare once, to be immediately confronted with it again. But thrilling, too, because I knew the painting was Suzannah’s. Even before I read the initials in the bottom right-hand corner I detected her distinctive trademarks: the huge scale, the muted, almost monochrome shades, the powerful and disturbing narrative quality that drew you into speculation and imagination – all were there. I could hardly breathe for excitement as I drew closer to the picture. For the moment, her achievement eclipsed her humiliation. No matter what had happened, nor what she had suffered or submitted to, her work would rise above it, and live on.
The likeness she had created was perfect; I might have been standing in the room with the man himself. He was depicted as if emerging from, or retreating into, deep shadow, with only the unmarked right h
alf of his face showing. This device added greatly to the portrait’s intensity, as if all Ashe’s cold energy and power were gathered into the small part of himself that he chose, on this occasion, to reveal.
He was dressed in the plain dark suit and crisp white shirt he often wore; I could almost smell the dry freshness of that always-spotless shirt. A full three-quarters of the canvas area was cast not just in shadow but a deep, opaque darkness in which his pale face floated like a chilly half-moon on a stormy night. I realised with a shiver of pure delight that Suzannah, in creating this memorial to John Ashe, had taken control as only a true artist can. No matter what her sitter’s instructions, something here was entirely hers – her vision, her genius, her message to everyone who looked at the picture. It took me back, yet again, to those days at Osborne’s, when I had marvelled at the alchemy which brought strange and wonderful stories from the most unlikely people.
While I stood before the painting I was oblivious to everything. The windows could have blown in and I would scarcely have noticed, or so I thought – until the soft click of the door told me Ashe was back in the room.
I tried not to appear self-conscious as I rejoined him. But he rarely played on a feeling beyond the moment, and was his usual pleasant self.
‘I apologise for keeping you waiting, Mrs Griffe. And for dragging you across town on this cold afternoon.’
‘It doesn’t matter at all. Did you have a good trip?’
‘We did, thank you. I wasn’t sure how long I’d be with my other appointments, and it seemed to me that what I have to discuss could as easily be dealt with here.’
I waited. He invited me to sit, and did the same himself. I chose a hard chair in which I could sit upright and alert; I was never wholly relaxed in his company and I hoped that always appearing businesslike helped to conceal this.
But having got me, so to speak, in place, he seemed in no hurry to get down to business. He remarked conversationally:
‘You were looking at the portrait, I dare say.’
‘I was admiring it, yes.’
‘Of course it’s hard to assess objectively a picture of oneself, but I think the artist has done a good job, would you agree?’
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