This feeling was not peculiar to Margaret. The common denominator was felt in all Niland’s paintings, and it was this, apart from their beauty and his genius, which gave them their popularity. For they were popular. Thousands of reproductions of them had found their way into homes all over England and America, and the strange, simple juxtaposition of their colours, unexpected yet immediately felt to be inevitable, had helped thousands of ordinary people to look at ordinary yet beautiful objects with refreshed eyes.
Somerset Maugham has written of ‘the animal serenity of great writers.’ Niland possessed the visual serenity of the greatest painters. His work was untormented, and charged with his pleasure in the world he saw about him, and while there was no deliberate rejection of pain and ugliness in it, both were transmuted as they passed from his vision to his canvas. His paintings were not old-fashioned in the slighting sense of the words, but they resembled those of the painters of three or four hundred years ago, in that they were created in an age full of horrors and violence, yet breathed a calm loveliness which was timeless. In those medieval paintings the best of earth and the vision of the celestial were blended; on Niland’s canvases, his feeling for life penetrated the countenances and limbs of his happy mothers, his sleeping children and laughing girls, and made them glow. To an indifferent public, long confronted by a surfeit of guitars and swollen legs depicted either singly or in determined conjunction, the result was as refreshing as it was surprising.
He had no political views, and therefore in certain circles his name was mud.
The possibility of going to his house and perhaps catching a glimpse of him greatly excited Margaret, and she thought far more about that than about her first day at the new school on Monday. She planned what she would wear, and what she would say if he himself should open the front door (for Lamb Cottage did not sound like the name of a large house with many servants) and even prepared a little speech that was humble or casual or provocative as her mood varied. The Anna Bonner School for Girls seemed a dull place when she at last spared it an impatient thought, and as she opened the front door of her new home, it seemed an ordinary dull little house that needed painting, standing in an ordinary dull little road.
4
The next day there was of course a great deal to do and Margaret was busy all the morning, but she announced firmly that she was going for a walk in the afternoon, and although her mother grumbled she afterwards admitted that it was a nice day and a walk might do Margaret good; she wouldn’t get much time for walks once school started.
Margaret observed with mixed feelings signs that her mother was about to start upon one of her famous lightning friendships. This time it was with their neighbour on the left, who had come in with a delicate tray of tea and thin bread and butter an hour or so after the Steggles’s arrival. Mrs Steggles could not say enough of such kindness, so thoughtful, so neighbourly! Mrs Piper must come in and have tea with them the moment they were settled; she seemed such a nice woman, quite their sort, not a bit like a London woman, and had Margaret noticed how nicely her home was kept? Quite the neatest garden in the road, and the only other house with frilled curtains. It was quite a coincidence, being next door to each other and both having frilled curtains.
Mrs Steggles’s jealous and irritable temperament made her unconsciously desire the friendship and affection which it kept at bay, and occasionally her loneliness drove her to make violent friendships with women she hardly knew, whose acquaintance she had made in a teashop or a queue. At first all would go well, and no praise could be too high for the new friend, but soon her nature would assert itself, and she would begin to find fault and give unwanted advice, and the friendship would rapidly cool until it was extinct. Each failure added to her bitterness, for it never occurred to her that it might be her fault, and she accused everybody of being jealous and spiteful and two-faced. Mrs Piper of the tea-tray seemed a pleasant enough person, and Margaret hoped that living next door as she did she might prove to be more lasting than her mother’s other flashes-in-the-pan, and provide her with companionship and an interest outside her own home. But the omens were much as usual, and not good.
However, she had forgotten all about it when she set out at two o’clock that afternoon to walk across to Hampstead. She had been perplexed about what time to start, for at all costs she must avoid arriving at Lamb Cottage anywhere near tea-time, in case they should think she was trying to get herself invited to the meal, and she finally decided to present herself at exactly three o’clock.
The villages of Highgate and Hampstead confront one another across a mile or so of small valleys and hills and copses, the whole expanse of some six hundred acres of open land raised upon two broad and swelling hills which look over the immense grey expanse of old London on their southern side and the ever-growing red and white expanse of new London upon their northern. Each village upon its hill is marked by a church spire, and both are landmarks for miles. Both villages are romantic and charming, with narrow hilly streets and little two-hundred-year-old houses, and here and there a great mansion of William and Mary’s or James the First’s reign, such as Fenton House in Hampstead and Cromwell House in Highgate; but their chief charm dwells in their cold air, which seems perpetually scented with April, and in the glimpses at the end of their steep alleys of some massive elm or oak, with beyond its branches that abrupt drop into the complex smoky pattern (formed by a thousand shades of grey in winter and of delicate cream and smoke-blue in summer) of London.
The afternoon was fine and windless, and many people were working on the allotments which since the Second World War had spread over the southern slope of Parliament Hill and the sunny valley lying between there and Kenwood. The latter was all that was left of the mighty forest that had once extended over the whole countryside; there were magnificent beech trees there, and a mansion which Margaret had seen between the trees, with an unusually large bomb-crater in the green sloping lawn immediately in front of the house. Now the mild sun beamed on the water in the crater and there were prints of children’s shoes in the soft mud round its sides. Those moonlit nights when the air had rung and quivered for hour after hour with the roar of guns and the horrifying whine of falling bombs, and the hot reek of explosives had stifled the sweet damp scents of autumn, seemed like a nightmare and were half-forgotten. Only in the hearts of the quiet cheerful people working on the allotments the memory was still alive, and when two or three of them got together for a cup of tea or a drink, the talk would sooner or later turn on The Blitz, and there were many of the women, with young children, who would never be the same again.
Margaret walked quickly, wondering if her clothes were suitable, and then scornfully telling herself that even if she did see Alexander Niland he wouldn’t notice what she was wearing, and then remembering that he was a painter and would naturally notice everything. She had tied her hair with the velvet bow and put on a dark-brown suit with a yellow and crimson handkerchief knotted under her chin, and her shoes and stockings were heavy and good, as were the shoes and stockings of most girls in England in those days. Her heart beat faster than usual and she was almost trembling; so much of her craving for a more beautiful and satisfying life took the form of wanting to meet interesting people that the possibility of meeting one, however briefly, excited her painfully. During her morning’s shopping she had found time to look up his name in a telephone directory and had found that he did live at Lamb Cottage! So this Hebe must be his wife, or perhaps his sister? No, she seemed to remember that he had painted several portraits of his wife. Hebe Niland. It was a strange name and Margaret thought it a beautiful one. Someone with that name started with an advantage lacked by someone named Margaret Steggles. I wonder what her name was before she was married? – thought Margaret. One thing, if ever I do marry I shall get rid of my name – though of course I might get landed with something even worse! But I shan’t marry, so why worry?
Her feeling for nature was the common one of sensitive temperaments which h
ave suffered a blow; she found spring flowers and autumnal woods too beautiful to be borne, and a splendid sunset reminded her of Frank Kennett and made her want to cry. Now, as she ascended the last slopes leading to the Spaniard’s Walk, she was reminded, by the sight of a little wood of pine trees with a grey stone fountain at its edge, of a walk she had once taken with Frank. The dark-green branches kept up a soft solemn sighing against the cold blue sky, for the wind was rising. Unmistakable sound, never to be confused with that made by any leaf-shedding tree, as lonely and mysterious when issuing from this ragged and shabby little copse as when it sighs in the thin clear air above an Alpine precipice! That was the time he said I had a nice voice, thought Margaret, sighing in her turn. In a few moments she was walking down Hampstead High Street.
Hampstead was less picturesque than it looked from a distance. Like the rest of London, it needed painting; it had been bombed; its streets were disfigured by brick shelters and its walls by posters instructing the population how to deal with butterfly or incendiary bombs; most of its small shops which had sold antiques or home-made sweets or smart hats before the war were empty; and its narrow streets were crowded with foreigners, for the village and its lower districts of Belsize Park, St John’s Wood and Swiss Cottage had been taken over by the refugees, and their population almost doubled. But there was a heartening note among all the sad sallow faces and unfamiliar accents; there were many young mothers with ringing voices, each pushing a pram with one fat baby in it like an acorn in its cup; hailing each other cheerfully across the turbaned heads of the aliens and asking each other what luck they had had with the biscuits or the fish.
Margaret asked several people where Lamb Cottage in Romney Square was, and at last an old gentlewoman with a stick, who was wading through the refugees with the air of one traversing a malarial marsh, crisply informed her that it was the first turning on the left, up – and she pointed with the stick. Margaret thanked her carefully, and turned up the hill on the left. The clock on the tower opposite the tube station said three o’clock.
Romney Square was not a square; it was a number of old houses and their gardens, grouped irregularly about a triangle of grass, and standing of course on the slope of a hill. Beyond one of the houses, a charming one made of white weatherboarding which prolonged itself into long galleries and little towers, Margaret saw an avenue of ancient lime trees leading on into the blue distance. She looked about her, and at once saw Lamb Cottage: it was directly opposite to where she stood. It was a cottage; it was unimposing, and built of small bricks that were darkened by age, but it had a wonderful scarlet front door, and behind it, rising to three times its height, was a lofty building with three long uncurtained windows which admitted the full light of the autumn day. Margaret’s heart beat faster. It was a studio.
She decided to knock at once, because it would look odd if anyone shold see her loitering and staring at the house; so, clasping the ration book firmly in one hand, she crossed the road and approached the brilliant door (it had surely been freshly painted) and rang the bell.
Her sensations as she stood waiting there were as confused as they were strong; she was nervous, hopeful, defiant, and expecting wonders to befall even while assuring herself that in another moment she would see the door opened by a maid, make her explanation, hand in the ration book, be thanked and told that Mrs Niland should be given the message, and then turn away, and the whole incident would be over.
But even as she waited a child began to cry loudly in the house, and then she heard footsteps hurrying down a passage, and the next instant the door was opened violently and a voice exclaimed ‘Grantey! Thank goodness you’ve come! Wherever –’ and a young woman stood there, staring at her, with a child in her arms and another standing crying at her feet.
‘Oh –’ she said blankly, looking very cross. ‘I thought you were someone else. What is it, please? (Barnabas, darling,’ to the crying child, touching him sharply with her knee, ‘do you think you could stop making that ghastly and hideous noise for just one instant, please?)’
‘I’m sorry,’ stammered Margaret, holding out the ration book and bewildered by the suddenness of the young woman’s appearance, and the noisy crying of the little boy, ‘I think this must be yours. I found it nearly a month ago on the Heath and I’m so sorry, I forgot to send it back to you. I’m very sorry. I –’
‘Oh, my ration book,’ and suddenly she smiled and the cross expression vanished as she gave Margaret a full look from her beautifully shaped light-grey eyes. ‘I’m always losing it – though actually this time it was my husband. Where did you find it?’
Margaret explained, and the girl listened, moving the child in her arms on to her hip as she did so, and still keeping Margaret fixed with that soft, amused, attentive stare. What with that, and a similar stare from the eyes of the baby which were identical in shape and colour with those of its mother, Margaret felt her cheeks slowly growing hot, and hastened to end her story. The little boy had stopped crying and was drying his face in a business-like manner with a dirty handkerchief, but when she glanced down at him with a timid smile, Margaret was disconcerted to meet the upward stare of yet another pair of beautiful eyes, this time of so dark a grey as to suggest violet. She was so confused that she only received a vague impression of the young woman’s appearance, but gathered that she was soon to have another child; even her wonderfully elegant black and white clothes could not conceal the fact.
‘Where’s Grantey?’ the little boy suddenly interrupted Margaret. ‘You thought it were Grantey at the door, Mummy, didn’t you? Who’s that lady? You thought it were Grantey this time, didn’t you, Mummy?’
‘Yes, Barnabas, I did.’ She glanced down at him. ‘We’re waiting for my mother’s maid to come,’ she explained to Margaret. ‘I’m going out and she’s going to look after the brats.’
She seemed in no hurry, standing there with the baby (who was about two, and dressed in a romper-suit of brilliant cotton) perched on her hip. Her eyes still studied Margaret.
‘I’m sure,’ she said at last in an amused voice, ‘that you’d like to do something to make up for having kept my ration book for such ages, wouldn’t you?’
Margaret laughed awkwardly. The familiarity of the tone delighted her, but she was not sure if she were being laughed at.
‘Oh, yes, of course. It was awful of me –’ she stammered.
‘Well,’ said Mrs Niland, suddenly but gently thrusting the baby at her, ‘will you be an absolute Teresa and keep an eye on these two for me until Grantey comes in? She’ll be here any minute now, I can’t think what’s kept her, and they’ll be good if I tell them to, and I’m hideously late now. That’s right. She goes to anyone, don’t you, my honeybunch?’ And she added to Margaret, ‘Do come in.’
The latter had grasped the baby clumsily but not weakly, for she was so alarmed by the responsibility suddenly thrust upon her that all the resourcefulness she possessed came to her aid. She settled the child in her arms with a confident and yet gentle touch that the little girl evidently liked, for she said some un intelligible cooing words, and suddenly smiled, showing two teeth.
‘I adore your little Mozart bow,’ said her mother carelessly, going ahead of Margaret down a passage. ‘Barnabas, lamb, shut the door. Yes, you may slam it. Here’ (she bent over a wide divan and shook up some cushions), ‘do sit down. Here’s her tin with a bead in it (isn’t it sinister, but she adores it), and Barnabas is making a house with the coal; he’ll do that for hours, only when Grantey comes she won’t let him, of course. It is angelic of you,’ she added, smiling at Margaret in an old, dim mirror on the wall as she tilted over her eyes a hat that was nothing but a huge black and white flower.
Margaret smiled and murmured something, trying to seem at ease. Her cheeks were burning. She had put the baby girl beside her on the divan, and still kept a hand on the child’s back as she plunged about. She was longing to look round the room and yet she wanted to go on looking at Mrs Niland, and she was als
o aware that there was a little staircase at the far end. Did it lead up to the studio?
Mrs Niland picked up an outsize handbag and some gloves and a mink coat from the floor. ‘Good-bye, Barnabas.’ The little boy gave her an absent kiss.
‘Have a nice party, Mummy,’ he said graciously, evidently repeating a formula and not taking his eyes off the coal.
‘Thank you, I’m sure. Tell Grantey there’s some dripping with lots of goobly in the frig, for your tea.’
‘Goobly – boobly,’ cried Barnabas, but still not looking up from his house.
‘Gooby – gooby –!’ echoed the baby, butting Margaret with her smooth fair head and chuckling.
‘What’s your name?’ demanded Mrs Niland, pausing at the door with the mink coat swinging from her shoulders. The light from the window shone on her brown hair where it was swept up from her white nape.
‘Margaret Steggles,’ said Margaret. She thought that her own voice sounded self-conscious and dull, and hated her name more than ever.
‘Good-bye, Margaret Steggles, and don’t murder my children. Good-bye, honeybunch,’ said Mrs Niland, addressing the baby. Margaret smiled and tried to sound gay as she said, ‘Good-bye!’ A second later she heard the front door slam. At the same instant the baby burst into tears.
‘Oh, good heavens – this won’t do – come here, darling –’ muttered Margaret distractedly, picking up the shaking little body. Tears were literally spurting from the tightly shut eyes. Margaret put her own cheek gently against the wet warm one, but the baby only roared the more.
‘She hates Mummy going out,’ observed Barnabas in a detached tone. ‘She always does that.’
Westwood (Vintage Classics) Page 6
