Clouds among the Stars

by Clayton, Victoria

  ‘What sort of portrait are you doing of Sir Oswald?’

  Freddie made a face. ‘I’ve had to take at least six stone off him, I have to admit. It’s always the way. Sitters don’t want the truth. But I suppose one can hardly blame them.’

  ‘Don’t you like painting portraits?’

  ‘It’s a love-hate relationship. I like looking at people’s faces in detail. There’s a reward in uncovering hidden traits, which you invariably do after a while. But it’s surprisingly unsatisfactory to paint a lie. Sir Oswald’s still tubby but you could just about call him a fine figure of a man. The trouble is, it’s hard to make any money painting other things. I’m putting together an exhibition of landscapes but that takes time. And though I no longer need to work to earn money, I like the feeling of making a contribution to the matrimonial jam jar. Also I never want Vere to become bored with me. I’m afraid he might if I don’t challenge myself.’

  I was surprised. Vere had not seemed, the little I knew of him, to be particularly demanding. ‘Is he difficult to please?’

  ‘Not in the least. He’s the kindest man in the world and he’d never intend to let it be seen that he was bored but he’s quite incapable of dissimulation. I’d know at once. His transparency is one of the things I absolutely love about him.’

  I was amazed that Freddie could think that anyone would grow tired of her. I supposed it was just possible that a man might weary of eyes of an arresting shade of peridot green, a face like Botticelli’s Venus, an elegant figure and flaming Pre-Raphaelite hair, had they been matched with a vapid, disagreeable personality. But Freddie was interested in so many things. She was not much older than Ophelia but I could not help seeing that they were as different as egg tempera and poster paint. Absurdly, this comparison wounded me as soon as I had made it. Though I was frequently cross with Ophelia, yet I could not bear any attack on her, even in my own thoughts.

  Freddie opened the door of the housemaid’s room that had been set aside as her studio. It was lined with cupboards and had a huge sink beneath the window. A dozen stone hot-water bottles were lined up on a shelf above a row of white china slop pails. A small table with a sewing machine on it, an armchair and an easel, with its back to the door, were the only items of furniture.

  ‘Cosy, isn’t it? There are two cylinders in this cupboard that keep me deliciously warm. I really enjoy working here. Painting’s a chilly business, standing on the spot for hours until your blood has pooled in your ankles.’

  ‘Maggie’s a brilliant housekeeper, isn’t she?’

  ‘With her powers of organisation she could be a managing director of British Steel or Marks and Spencer. Not that she’d probably enjoy it as much as looking after this house. But it makes my blood boil to see her treated like a turnspit dog. Now, what do you think?’

  I approached the easel with trepidation. Coming from a family almost morbidly sensitive to criticism about its artistic performances, I knew how a careless word could bring on a migraine or destroy a night’s sleep. But when I saw the portrait the complimentary phrases I had been rehearsing deserted me. The canvas was as bright with blocks of colour as a Fauvist painting. I happened to know about this because my mother had been through a Fauvist phase of decoration and for at least a year our drawing room had been as colourful as a Matisse, with juxtapositions of vivid contrasts, pink sofas, red walls, emerald curtains and a blue fireplace with a carpet dyed in abstract shapes of purple and lemon yellow. It had had a very lifting effect on one’s mood and we had all been sorry to see it go in favour of le Crépuscule, sophisticated and recherché though this had been.

  Though his cheeks were chequered with mauve and blue, it was unmistakably Sir Oswald. It had caught exactly his brand of genial patronage. Something besides good humour lurked in the charcoal and crimson eyes, perhaps desire, certainly greed, and – was it discontent or could it be a deeper anguish? – in the sensual mouth. Despite Freddie’s tactful omission of the grossest accumulations of flesh you saw clearly that he was a ruin of a man. I looked at it for a long time and my assumptions about Sir Oswald changed. He ceased to be a caricature and became a complex being.

  ‘Poor man!’ I said, at last. ‘It’s so awfully sad.’

  ‘Ah! You’ve seen it. Vere says it’s very like Sir Oswald but, perhaps because he’s another man, he didn’t see that. After he – Sir Oswald, I mean – had been sitting for a few hours I found I wanted to paint his face in a rictus of grief. Yet I don’t believe he’s truly aware of his own wretchedness. He probably considers himself a fortunate man. Just as well.’

  ‘It really is good, Freddie! How talented you are! I feel in awe.’

  ‘Glad you like it.’ Freddie was looking at it, her eyes narrowed, head on one side. ‘Oh, damn! Yes, I see now. Something about the chin – not quite …’ She picked up a paintbrush and then put it down. ‘The temptation to fiddle is almost irresistible but really I want to talk to you, Harriet.’ Freddie leaned back against the sill. The sky through the unshuttered window was black against her fiery hair. She smiled. ‘I enjoyed sitting next to Max at dinner.’ I was annoyed with myself for blushing ‘I won’t say another word if you’d rather I didn’t.’

  ‘Why – what do you mean?’ Freddie shook her head and smiled more broadly. I saw it was pointless to prevaricate. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Perhaps it was because he hardly took his eyes off you for five courses. It rather undid any conceited ideas I might have got from his flirtatious manner.’

  ‘Flirtatious?’

  ‘Only of the most generalised kind. Men and women are supposed to flirt with each other at dinner and Max plays the game. Very well.’

  I could not help a frisson of pleasure at this praise, trifling though the accomplishment was. ‘There isn’t anything to know, really. I mean we haven’t actually … Freddie, can I ask you something?’

  ‘Go ahead.’ Freddie’s eyes veered over to her painting for a moment but quickly she returned them to my face.

  ‘Do you think the fact that Max is married ought to make a difference to – anything? I mean,’ I rushed on, ‘Apart from Ophelia, who thinks married men a complete waste of time, the rest of my family consider people being married or not absolutely unimportant. They think being faithful is corny and middle-class and rather ridiculous and that everybody has affairs as a matter of course. But you see,’ I rushed on without giving Freddie time to answer, ‘Max says that Caroline – his wife – tried to kill herself. Not because of me. Honestly, we haven’t done anything that could upset her even if she knew.’ I paused, suddenly remembering the kiss on the doorstep. ‘Well, hardly anything. I know my family would think her wanting to kill herself was between Caroline and Max and nothing to do with me. But oughtn’t it to have some bearing? At least on our behaviour, if not our feelings. Am I being hopelessly na’ive?’

  ‘I’d never thought of adultery as a class thing.’ Freddie cupped her elbow with one hand and rested her chin on the other while she considered. ‘Certainly the upper classes are adulterous almost to a man. And royalty are worse than anyone. I suppose monogamy has got a two-grey-little-people-in-a-dull-little-house sort of image. Boarding-house holidays, two children and a Labrador. Slippers by the fire and calling each other “dear” and a Rotary Club dinner-dance as the high point of the year. From a snobbish point of view, it does sound dreary.’

  ‘Actually I think it sounds rather nice. With the right person. Particularly the two children and the Labrador. I could do without the dinner-dance.’

  ‘You’re a romantic, Harriet, and so am I. But to tell you the truth – bourgeois or not – I know if Vere had an affair I’d feel as though my back was broken. My happiness would be absolutely destroyed. It would be no comfort to tell myself that Vere making love to another woman was merely a well-bred convention. If he ended the affair and asked me to take him back, I expect I’d try to forgive it because, frankly, I can’t bear to think of life without him.’

  ‘It’ll never happen.�
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  ‘One can’t be sure of anything. I admit Vere’s the last man I’d expect to be unfaithful. But if he were, then I’d have to face up to having been mistaken about him and find a way of living with a broken back. But I doubt if I’d try to kill myself. I think that’s the result of a serious personality disorder. Max’s wife is clearly sick, poor thing, and she needs help. If I were you I’d be reluctant to add to her troubles but I wouldn’t hold myself entirely responsible for her behaviour. Better to ask yourself about Max.’

  ‘About Max?’ I echoed stupidly.

  ‘One of the reasons I love Vere – if there are reasons for loving anybody – is because he’s honest. He won’t cheat me if he can help it, nor would he cheat himself. And I can’t help feeling that an adulterous affair is, above all, an attempt to cheat oneself.’

  ‘What do you mean, exactly?’

  Freddie held up a thumb before the canvas and narrowed her eyes. ‘Definitely it’s the left-hand side of the chin that’s wrong – more white, perhaps? Um, the justifications never quite add up, do they? Is being in love an involuntary state that can’t be denied? I don’t believe that. I think love’s a matter of will. We can’t escape the instinct that makes us act in our own interest. But often we can’t identify where our best interests lie. The woman who stays with the man who regularly beats her feels that life would be worse without him. But I doubt if it’s love. More like habit. Or fear.’ Freddie pounced on a tube of paint and squeezed a white worm on to her palette. ‘We want to be “in love”,’ she continued, ‘because it makes us supremely happy, and if someone’s sufficiently attractive we abandon ourselves willingly to as much passion as can be generated. The difficulty is finding someone who meets our expectations.’

  ‘So you think adultery’s just about sex?’

  ‘Lust’s in the mind, isn’t it? I don’t believe it’s uncontrollable. Even rapists are supposed to be driven by hatred and aggression rather than desire, aren’t they? I think adultery is about vanity – the excitement and the gratification of being desired. At the worst, boredom or even wanting something someone else is enjoying. It’s my guess that self-love makes Don Juan what he is.’

  ‘My family would say that life without romantic adventure was dull.’

  ‘But, Harriet, what does it matter what they think? You’ve got to make up your own mind, quite independently of them or me or anyone else.’ I knew she was right. I resolved to try to be more self-reliant. Freddie turned slowly away from the canvas with an obvious effort as though it were a magnet. She might have been composed of those little iron filings that were so dear to Miss Pothole, our physics mistress. ‘There’s no law I know of,’ she continued, ‘that obliges anyone to commit themselves to one person. Why not stay single and have as many romantic adventures as there are hours in the day, if that’s what matters to you?’ She glanced quickly at the painting and frowned. ‘I mean you can’t have everything.’

  ‘No. But I suppose it’s only human to try.’

  I was thinking about my father and Fleur Kirkpatrick. Freddie was probably right about the vanity bit. Pa was so terribly in need of reassurance. I tried to imagine him giving up Fleur for my mother’s sake and spending the rest of his life devoting himself to acting, books, friends, family. I gave up the attempt almost immediately. He would be bored and miserable.

  ‘Also adulterous affairs absorb a lot of energy and time,’ continued Freddie. ‘Running two lives, almost. Constructing the lies. And the high-octane passion is fuelled by the excitement of its being illicit. The affair itself becomes the focus of interest. Does he know? Has she guessed? Will anyone see us? You can kid yourself you’re really living life to the full.’

  ‘An expense of spirit in a waste of shame,’ I thought. I did not say it aloud because, though I acknowledged his unerring ability to put his finger on the exact spot, one of the few rules of life I had laid down for myself early on was never, ever to quote Shakespeare to anyone.

  ‘Don’t let yourself be persuaded into something you don’t want, Harriet.’ Freddie put her hand on my shoulder and looked at me intently. ‘Max has a great deal of charm and he’s quite a bit older than you. Don’t be tempted to take his word for it that this relationship ought to be. I know how seductive it is to give up one’s autonomy, to let someone else take responsibility. But you’re still accountable even if you allow someone else to take the reins.’

  ‘How extraordinary that you should say that.’ I was impressed by Freddie’s powers of divination. ‘That is part of the attraction, if I’m truthful.’

  ‘I was once guilty myself of mistaking despotism for destiny.’

  Though I longed to question Freddie further I knew it would be positively cruel to keep her a moment longer from her work.

  ‘I’d better go back to the drawing room and check that Cordelia’s OK. Thanks, Freddie, it’s been a great help to talk.’

  ‘I’ll just be two minutes.’ Freddie squeezed a shining coil of vermilion into the blob of white on her palette. Just as I was closing the door she turned her head from the canvas long enough to say, ‘And don’t forget, however much he wants to make love to you, you’re under no obligation to satisfy his desire.’

  I went downstairs, thinking of everything we had talked about. Was Max’s interest in me nothing more than self-love, a rake’s determination to add another conquest to his score? My own vanity shied away from the idea.

  The men had joined the women in the drawing room. Archie was showing the children card tricks. Cordelia seemed not to notice that Sir Oswald was squeezing her hand. Emilio was leering at Mrs Mordaker. I noticed Jonno’s feet sticking out from behind the sofa.

  Max – ah, yes, Max, whom, of course, I had been aware of at once – was leaning against the piano with Georgia, looking through some sheet music. In point of fact, he was examining the music while Georgia, her shawl discarded, had her eyes fixed on his face. Max turned round as I came in and sent me a smile that instantly overturned the resolve I had just made to have nothing more to do with him. Georgia looked sharply at me, then put her hand through his arm and drew him round to face her.

  ‘Freddie’s in her studio, doing something to Sir Oswald’s chin,’ I said to Vere, who was standing in one of the window bays, holding a glass of brandy and looking rather lost.

  ‘Ah. I had been wondering where she was. Well, at least I know she’s happy.’

  ‘It’s a marvellous painting.’

  ‘I’m very proud of her. Perhaps that sounds presumptuous. Of course her talent doesn’t reflect any glory on me.’

  ‘I don’t agree. She’s a monument to your good taste.’

  Vere laughed. ‘I’ll take that as a great compliment.’

  ‘She and I have had a very interesting talk. But there’s so much else I long to ask her. Where you’re both living now, for example? Not in London, surely, or I’d have known.’

  ‘At my family home in Dorset. It’s miles from anywhere. But she seems to love it.’

  ‘What’s the house like?’

  Vere described it to me and I concentrated hard on not letting my eyes wander over to Max and Georgia. ‘It sounds wonderful,’ I said when he had finished. I wondered why they had left it to spend Christmas in Derbyshire. I didn’t ask because there was an air of reserve about Vere that made me nervous of seeming to pry. But he was in a communicative mood.

  ‘I was abroad for twelve years but I thought about the house and the valley every day. I began to doubt whether they could be as good as I imagined. When I finally came home everything was even better … more beautiful … than I’d remembered. I hate being away from it, to tell you the truth, but my brother asked a lot of people to stay and – well, Freddie and I knew we wouldn’t particularly enjoy them, so we decided to take up Sir Oswald’s extremely generous invitation and kill two birds with one stone. This’ll be the last Christmas that we won’t mind too much being away.’

  ‘Really?’ I was going to ask why, then something that flashed f
or a moment into his eyes, a secretive sort of joy, gave me the answer.

  ‘You’re going to have a –’

  ‘Ssh! Don’t tell anyone, but yes. Freddie says it’s too soon to say anything. She doesn’t want people to fuss.’

  ‘I promise I shan’t tell a soul. But how lovely!’

  ‘Actually, of course I meant you to guess. I’ve been longing to tell someone for days.’ Vere smiled. ‘It makes it seem much more likely.’

  ‘I know what you mean.’

  ‘Can anyone play the piano?’ called Georgia. ‘If we roll up the rug the floor’s perfect for dancing. Would you mind, Sir Oswald?’

  Sir Oswald waved assent with the hand that was not caressing Cordelia’s.

  ‘I’ll play, if you like.’ Archie put down the cards and went over to the piano. He ran his hands up and down the keys experimentally and struck some chords. ‘What shall it be?’

  Georgia put some music in front of him. ‘Something lively to start with. I’m feeling energetic.’

  Archie obligingly began to play ‘La Cucaracha’. Georgia wiggled her hips and clicked her fingers in front of Max, who stood watching her with an expression that seemed to me slightly derisive. Possibly this was wishful thinking. Cordelia got up at once, casually discarding Sir Oswald’s hand, and began to jig about in time to the music. We watched them gyrating and jerking, hopping up and down and waving their arms.

  ‘Does that dance have a name?’ asked Vere. ‘When I left England a decade ago everyone was making serious efforts to master the intricacies of the Twist. Now the object seems to be to look as though you’re signalling a ship from a desert island, having been castaway with a dreadful bore for several years.’

  ‘It’s an age thing,’ I said. ‘That sort of dancing looks attractive and fun when a pretty young girl does it, but pathetic – almost ludicrous – when an older woman tries to do it.’

  ‘Ow-how! You almost make me sorry for the ghastly woman.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I giggled. ‘That was bitchy.’

  Vere pointed to Max, who was now dancing with Georgia. ‘Tell me, Miss Harriet Byng – as you’re such a severe critic, you won’t spare me, I know – does the older man look equally silly?’