by Parks, Adele
Beatrice heard her name and looked up. Both women were flustered. They allowed one another a moment. Beatrice closed her sketchpad, Lydia constructed an alibi. They kissed on the cheek. As Lydia withdrew from the embrace, she quickly went on the offensive.
‘Beatrice, what a surprise. What are you doing in London?’
‘Didn’t Ava mention it? I’m staying with her for a few days, in Chelsea.’
‘Ava? No.’ Lydia politely hid her astonishment that Ava would extend her hospitality in Bea’s direction. ‘How lovely.’
‘I come here to the museum so I’m not under her feet all day.’ Bea shrugged; the gesture suggested that whilst Ava had opened her doors, she might not have opened her heart to Bea, and that the stay wasn’t necessarily a delightful and totally relaxed one. ‘It’s very pleasant here.’
Lydia glanced around. ‘Wouldn’t you be better visiting a tea shop?’ She didn’t know why she’d said such a stupid and frivolous thing. She’d actually found the last hour in the museum one of the most thought-provoking and charged of her life, but still part of her would have preferred to stride through the streets with Edgar, visit busy restaurants and shops, if only she could. Given a choice, she wouldn’t hide away. She wondered why Bea might choose to come somewhere so quiet.
‘I like it here. I find it soothing. It’s austere yet peaceful.’
‘I see.’ Lydia blushed. She was aware that Beatrice must be going through a hard time. That awful business with the chap she’d been flirting with at the Pondson-Callows’ must have unsettled her. They hadn’t seen a lot of one another since that weekend. Thinking about it now, Beatrice had only attended one or two of the subsequent parties. It wasn’t like her.
Lydia wondered how she ought to introduce Edgar, but was saved the trouble when he assumed a familiarity with Beatrice and said, ‘Let’s have a look, then.’
‘Oh, I’m … It’s not finished.’
He ignored Bea’s demurring and firmly took the pad from her grasp. ‘These are damn good.’
‘Do you think so?’ Beatrice blushed with delight.
Lydia leaned over his shoulder to look at the drawing book. ‘Goodness, Bea, you have a gift. I never knew.’
‘Really? I’ve always enjoyed sketching. It’s just a hobby.’
‘You’re extremely talented.’
The threesome huddled around the sketches and Lydia was forced to reappraise and reject her earlier assumption that these artistic women, huddled on the benches and floors of the museum, were imitating or parasitical. The sketchpad erupted. There it was, on the paper. Dark and light lines, strokes and delves. Sex. Beatrice had sketched sex. Sex and desire and – Lydia turned another page – misery. Bea was able to illustrate a depth that she never articulated.
Edgar coughed and Lydia suggested they ought to take tea.
‘Will you join us?’ She prayed that Beatrice would decline – she couldn’t stand the idea of sharing her precious moments with Edgar – but, having just witnessed the tender rage and beauty in the sketches, she couldn’t walk away from her friend. There was a loneliness on the paper that Lydia was unable to ignore.
Still, she was relieved when Bea replied, ‘No, thank you. I want to finish this today.’
‘If you’re sure.’
‘Yes, I am quite sure.’
Suddenly Lydia wanted to leave as quickly as she could. She realised that thus far Bea hadn’t asked for an explanation as to why she was out with Sergeant Major Trent, and that was a blessing. She would need time to think of a viable excuse. The women kissed one another on the cheek once again, then Lydia turned to Edgar.
‘So, tea?’
Edgar held out his hand for Beatrice to shake and said, ‘I’m so terribly sorry to hear about your loss. I was only vaguely acquainted with Oaksley, but he seemed a very decent chap. He gave our country everything. My sympathies, Beatrice.’
Bea held on to Edgar’s hand and nodded briefly. She didn’t say anything. Lydia saw that she was fighting tears.
27
BEATRICE WAS STUNNED. The sergeant major was the first and only person who had mentioned Arnie to her; acknowledged that she might be feeling a loss. Grief. The world was so saturated with grief that people had become hardened to it. Bored of it. Arnie had died inconveniently late; three years ago, on a battlefield, his demise would certainly have solicited much more sympathy. Yes, Sarah, Ava and Lydia had said how awful the entire thing was and that she must be shocked, but they had not hinted at the core of it. They had not admitted that another door had slammed in her face. Perhaps the last door. She was now alone in a black corridor of despair.
One of the other female artists, sitting just two or three feet away, nodded at Bea; perhaps she’d overheard the condolences. Perhaps she had her own anguished story. Bea had met quite a few other girls here, girls about her age or a little older. Well, not met exactly. They tended not to introduce themselves to one another, but rather to work peacefully, silently, side by side. There was some solidarity in that. Some company. Bea thought she might need some new pals. Despite Ava’s unexpected and undoubtedly generous offer to visit her in London, she didn’t feel quite as shored up by her friendships as she used to. Not since Arnie. It made no sense. She had only known him for a weekend; most people would agree that she had no real right to feel so terrible, yet she did. Naturally, she couldn’t expect a great deal of sympathy from Sarah, who had lost an actual husband rather than a brief encounter, but both Sarah and Lydia had been distracted and distant since the weekend at the Pondson-Callows’ and no help to her at all. Bea guessed they might be sharing a secret, yet another one that she was not privy to. It was frustrating and demeaning. She felt locked out and discarded from their intimacy. Another expulsion.
Perhaps Ava was feeling the same. Perhaps that was why she’d casually thrown out the invitation to Beatrice. Bea really couldn’t think of another reason. She’d always been aware that Ava tolerated her rather than sought her out. Why the sudden change? Still, she had not questioned Ava’s motives too closely; she’d bitten off her hand, practically packed the suitcase before the telephone line cooled down. She was so sick of feeling like a spare part at Seaton Manor. Sammy retired to bed as soon as supper was over; his painkillers made him drowsy. Cecily was becoming increasingly reclusive. Both she and Sarah turned in as soon as the children and Sammy were tucked up. Bea frequently found herself alone in the drawing room, wondering what she could do with the evening stretching out in front of her. She knew there would be many more of them to come. ‘I’d better get used to it,’ she told herself, and then she wondered if talking to herself was a sign of madness. Certainly a sign of loneliness. She made plans. One night would be devoted to sketching, the next knitting, a third watering the plants or writing letters. She found it helpful to write lists and decide what to do day by day. She could usually amuse herself until nine o’clock. Then she lay on her bed and sniffed her pillow. It smelt of her hairspray. Never of anyone else. ‘I’d better get used to that too,’ she told herself.
London and Ava’s invitation was some sort of escape. Even though, as it had turned out, they hadn’t seen that much of one another. Ava was always at some meeting or other. Causes. Bea had thought that was all over, now that the suffragettes had got what they wanted, but Ava had tutted crossly when she had suggested as much and said that Bea ought to come along and see how things really were.
‘Women in Britain can only vote if they are over thirty and meet certain property qualifications. How can you think the job is done? Neither of us has the right yet.’ Bea had noted the frustration flare through Ava’s body; it made her rigid. She was normally such a serene woman, but this thought set her nerves on edge. ‘Women living with their parents, those in service and the younger gals who worked tirelessly in the munitions factories and such are being ignored. It’s not on.’
‘You can’t change the world,’ Bea had sighed.
‘Why not? I thought that was what it was all about. The Great W
ar and everything.’
‘I thought it was about trying to keep things the same.’
‘Well in that case it was a bigger catastrophe than even I could possibly have imagined.’
Bea had shot Ava a look of rebuke, sensitive to Arthur’s sacrifice, to Sammy’s, to Arnie’s.
‘Sorry,’ Ava said sulkily. ‘I don’t always engage my brain quite as swiftly as I allow my tongue to function.’
Still, Bea had declined; she wasn’t yet ready for rowdy meetings. She needed cool, slow spaces. She needed to feel her smooth pencils and charcoal in her hands, the texture of the thick parchment of her sketchpad under her fingertips. The letter was secreted between the pages of her book; she kept it with her always.
Beatrice took comfort in the women she’d become acquainted with at the gallery. They were like her. Respectable, but not wealthy, sincere, a shade too grave, and many of them were plain. The gallery was chilly, but no colder than her bedroom at home; besides, when at closing time she struggled to her feet, her legs numb with crouching on the marble floor, she knew she was only a short tube ride away from the sumptuousness of Ava’s apartment. Ava always saw to it that there was a fire burning and scones with butter and strawberry conserve waiting for her.
Bea was so enchanted with the idea that the sergeant major liked her work and so touched that he’d acknowledged her loss that it took her a full fifteen minutes before she considered what on earth Lydia was doing out with him. Was he a friend of Lawrence’s? Where was Lawrence? She didn’t pursue the mystery for more than a few minutes. She wasn’t of a suspicious nature, and even if she had been, Lydia’s behaviour was always exemplary. Bea didn’t doubt there must be a reasonable explanation for them being out together alone, if indeed they were alone.
Besides, she didn’t really care enough about other people’s lives to want to involve herself unnecessarily. That way danger lay. Look how it had ended with Arnie. Once again, perhaps for the hundredth time, Bea flipped through the pages and found the envelope. Her name, Miss Beatrice Polwarth, written in his hand on the front. It was a messy, childlike script. Each letter unnecessarily large. It must have been extremely difficult for a blind man to write with ink. Since receiving the letter, she’d closed her eyes and written her name over and over, in order to gauge what level of concentration was required, to understand how difficult a task writing the letter had been for him. Her script, normally so neat and precise, became a spidery scrawl. She’d had a glimpse of how tiring and demanding even the smallest task must have been for him. The thought had ripped at her heart. She berated herself for underestimating, for miscalculating. She sighed wearily; she was not sure she could make herself read the note again. But then she didn’t really have to; she knew what it said by heart.
Dear Beatrice,
What you feel is pity. If not pity for me, pity for yourself.
Don’t.
Yours with respect,
Arnold Oaksley
The words tortured her conscience. Why had he written to her? Why not to his father? There hadn’t been any other note, Sir Peter had reassured her on that point, quite vigorously. There had only been her at the end. Or had she brought about his end? Was it the case that he’d rather be dead than with her? The lofty arches of the museum began to swim in front of her. She needed some air. She might pack up early and walk back to Ava’s tonight. She couldn’t bear the idea of getting on the cramped and stuffy tube. She didn’t want to be so close to so many people. She didn’t want to have to walk past the soldiers with missing limbs who begged outside the tube station. She did not dare do it.
28
AVA NOTICED BEA’S peaky pallor she moment she came in the front door. She looked cold, even though the sun had finally squeezed through the clouds and was still warming the streets now at five o’clock. Ava couldn’t understand how such an insulated person could feel the cold so vitally.
‘I have cake and port,’ she declared. She was feeling munificent. Today she had been with her new friend Marie Stopes and some other interested parties. They’d spent the afternoon trailing from door to door in the East End of London talking to women ravaged with poverty and numerous children about contraception. Marie had written a sixteen-page pamphlet called Wise Parenthood: A Letter to Working Mothers on how to have healthy children and avoid weakening pregnancies. Even though the pamphlet was distributed free of charge, it was rarely well received. The level of illiteracy and the sustained mistrust the poor felt for the meddling middle and upper classes meant that the women who most needed advice were reluctant to listen. Often these campaigning days were exhausting. The earnest and conscientious could not cut through the fumes of cockney tobacco and the air of exhausted indifference; jeers and catcalls drowned out Ava’s salient points about birth control. However, today she had met and charmed a raucous, bibulous, but undoubtedly influential matriarch, who had insisted that her three daughters, two daughters-in-law and eleven granddaughters (two of whom were already obviously pregnant) listen to ‘What the posh lady says about the shunning of getting one in.’ It had been a great success. If just one unwanted pregnancy was avoided, then Ava had achieved something today. She felt celebratory.
Bea collapsed into a chair by the fire and threw down her hat. ‘Thank you, cake and port is just what I need.’ She ate greedily, as though she was alone.
Ava wasn’t famed for having an especially sentimental bent, but she did see the pity in a girl eating alone; it prompted her to ask, ‘So, how was your day?’
‘Productive.’
‘Can I see?’
Ava had asked the same thing every night for the past four days, but Bea had always baulked at the thought of exposing her work. Today, she was emboldened by Edgar Trent’s comments; she dug around in her satchel and retrieved the sketchbook.
Ava carefully turned the pages and echoed Lydia and Edgar’s enthusiasm. ‘These are quite special, Bea. I’m surprised.’
Bea sighed. ‘I do wish you could have stopped with the first sentence. Why do all your compliments have to come with a barb?’
Ava smiled. Recently Bea had started to say what she thought, and Ava liked it. Everyone assumed that her impatience with Bea came from the fact that Bea was so hopelessly frumpy; it did not. What Ava objected to was her passivity. Now that she was proving to be a little more spiky, Ava was finding her all the more palatable.
‘I’m not trying to be barbed. It’s just these sketches are so unexpected.’
‘What were you expecting?’
‘Oh, you know, wishy-washy landscapes in pastels.’
‘I see.’
‘These are …’ Ava thought about it. ‘Tender, yet angry.’ She had not thought Beatrice was particularly familiar with either emotion. She looked up at her. ‘Darling, what are you angry about?’
Bea glared. ‘How can you ask?’
Ava thought this was unfair. She had a full and busy life. She met hundreds of people through her parties and soirées and hundreds more through her campaigning and charities; most of them were angry. One had to ask. She wasn’t the sort of woman who had time to spare conjecturing and imagining what was on the mind of others. She felt much more comfortable with facts. She took a sip of port. Its velvety taste was too much for such a bright spring evening; she wondered what she should switch to. Gin was vulgar, sherry was ageing, champagne was frivolous and cocktails were lethal. That decided it. She rang for the maid and asked her to mix champagne cocktails.
Once they were furnished with drinks, Ava asked, ‘Are you enjoying your break?’
Bea nodded tightly. Ava had invited Beatrice to London because Sarah had asked her to. No one ever said no to Sarah because everyone felt bad about Arthur dying and all that effort Sarah put into caring for her disabled brother. Sarah had suggested that Bea needed a change. Ava had, for once, bitten her tongue and not said what she was thinking – which was that Bea certainly didn’t need a rest; what did the woman do all day?
She considered Bea’s tight nod
. It was obvious that the girl was churned up about something; her eyes bulged, she blinked rapidly. Was she about to cry? Ava hoped not. A good hostess couldn’t ignore tears, but they were terribly dull.
In many ways Bea was proving to be an easy guest to accommodate: she ate anything, at any time, was quiet and grateful; as long as there were chocolates, hot water and a fire, she seemed to be in heaven. Ava could provide all of these without inconveniencing herself at all. A rare breeze of guilt blew across her; admittedly she hadn’t done much to entertain Bea. They hadn’t actually spent any time together alone, they had so very little in common. Manners dictated that she’d seen to it that her invitations to lunch parties and dinners were extended to Bea, but other than that she’d left Bea to her own devices. She could have, perhaps, taken her to the Birdcage in Piccadilly, a famous but very tame underground dancing club. It oozed nostalgia in a way that Ava found a little nauseating – the men wore white tie and tails, they all kept carnations in their buttonholes. Alcohol was not permitted. Obviously alcohol was illegal in a number of dancing establishments, but the Birdcage had rather a quaint view of rules: they abided by them. Iced coffee and a brilliant soft pink drink were served with tea-time cakes and sandwiches. They played pre-war waltzes and one knew the evening was over when the band struck up the National Anthem. Ava sighed to herself, admitting it was quite likely to be Bea’s idea of perfection. Ava herself only ever condescended to attend if the Prince of Wales asked her personally.
