by Rosie Thomas
They enjoyed their afternoons with the painter. He had droll American manners, he made them laugh, and he listened with amusement to their talk.
The portrait, as it emerged, reflected their rapport.
The girls were posed on a green velvet-padded love seat. Blanche faced forwards, dressed in creamy silk with ruffles of lace at her throat and elbows. Her head was tilted to one side, as if she was listening to her sister’s talk, although her dark eyes looked straight out of the canvas. Her forefinger marked her place in the book on her lap. Eleanor faced in the opposite direction, but the painter had turned her so that she looked back over her own shoulder, her eyes following the same direction as her sister’s. Their mouths were painted as if they were on the point of curving into smiles, the eyes were bright with laughter and the dark eyebrows arched questioningly over them. Eleanor wore sky-blue satin, with a navy-blue velvet ribbon around her throat.
Their white, rounded forearms rested side by side on the serpentine back of the love seat. It was a pretty pose.
The girls looked what they were, identically young and innocent and good-humoured. There was no need for Mr Sargent to soften any of the sharpness of his vision with superficial flattery. He painted what had first attracted him in the ballroom at Norfolk House, twin images of lively inexperience.
‘You have made us look too pretty,’ Eleanor told him.
‘I have painted you as I see you,’ he answered. ‘I can do no more, and I would not wish to do less.’
‘We look happy,’ Blanche observed.
‘And so you should,’ John Sargent told her, with the advantage of more than twenty years’ longer experience of the world. ‘You should be happy.’
Even then, the girls understood that he had captured their girlhood for them on canvas, just at the point when it was ending.
The Misses Holborough was judged a success. John Leominster paid for the double portrait, and after the wedding it was transported to Stretton where it was hung in the saloon. Blanche sometimes hesitated in front of it, sighing as she passed by.
Eleanor was often at Stretton with her, but she could not always be there. Blanche missed her, but she was also occupied with trying to please her husband, and with the peculiar responsibilities of taking over from her mother-in-law as the mistress of the old house. The separation was much harder for Eleanor.
The dances and dinners of the second Season were no longer a novelty. They were also much less amusing without Blanche, who was away in Italy on her wedding journey all through the height of it. A small compensation for Eleanor was a new friendship with her cousin Mary, the younger daughter of Aunt Frederica Earley. Mary had married a languid and very handsome man called Norton Ferrier, and the Ferriers were part of a group of smart, young, well-connected couples who prided themselves on their powers of intellectual and aesthetic discrimination. They called their circle the Souls, and they spent weekends in one another’s comfortable houses in the country, reading modern poetry and writing letters and diaries and discussing art.
Mary was kind-hearted and generous, and she began to invite her young cousin to accompany Norton and herself on their weekend visits. Constance was glad to let her go, and there could be no objection to Eleanor making excursions in the company of her older married cousin.
The Souls were sophisticated and under-occupied. Once their conventional marriages had set them free, they were at liberty to wander within the limits of their miniature world and amuse themselves by falling in and out of love with one another. Most of them had one or two young children. They had done their family duty, and they left their heirs at home in their nurseries while they travelled to one another’s houses to play, and to talk, and to pursue their romantic interests. At night the corridors of the old houses whispered with footsteps. The mute family portraits looked down on the secret transpositions.
There was one house in a village near Oxford that Eleanor liked particularly. It was an ancient grey stone house, set in a beautiful walled garden. Eleanor liked to wander on her own along the stone paths, breathing in the scents and bending down to examine a leaf or a tiny flower beside her shoe. At Fernhaugh she was perfectly happy to leave the Souls to their books and their mysterious murmurings, and to enjoy herself amongst the plants.
She was, she told herself with a touch of mournful pride, learning to be by herself. And at the same time she wondered if she could persuade Blanche to begin the creation of a garden like this somewhere in the Capability Brown park at Stretton.
One Sunday morning at Fernhaugh Eleanor was walking in the garden. There had been rain overnight and the perfume was intensified by the damp air. She knew that some of the house party had dutifully gone to church to hear their host reading the lesson, but that most of the Souls were not yet downstairs. There were guests expected for luncheon, but the drawing room with the French windows looking out on the terrace was still empty. Even the gardeners would not appear today. The green enclosure in all its glory was hers alone.
Eleanor wandered, breathing in the richness, letting her fingers trail over dewy leaves and fat, fleshy petals. She felt for a moment as if she might at last aspire to the sensuous abandon of the real Souls. She let her eyes close, feeling the garden absorb her into its green heart.
From close at hand, too close, an unfamiliar voice asked, ‘Are you all right?’
Eleanor’s eyes snapped open.
She saw a man she had never met, a big man in odd black clothes made even odder-looking by his big, thick black beard. He must have come silently over the grass, although his feet looked big enough to make a clatter on any surface.
‘I am perfectly all right. Why should you think I am not?’
‘I wondered if you were going to faint. Or worse, perhaps.’
It came to her how she must have looked, drooping with closed eyes between the soaking leaves, and her face turned red.
‘Thank you, but there’s no danger of anything like that. Unless as the result of shock. From being pounced on in an unguarded moment by a perfect stranger.’
‘By a peculiar-looking person far from perfect, don’t you mean?’
The man was smiling. His beard seemed to spread around his jawline. The smile revealed his shiny mouth and healthy white teeth.
‘I don’t mean anything,’ Eleanor said, retreating from this newcomer. ‘Will you excuse me? I should go and make myself ready for luncheon.’
To her surprise, the man turned and began to walk with her across the grass towards the house. He strolled companionably with his hands behind his back, looking from side to side.
‘This garden is very beautiful,’ he said. And then, peering sideways at Eleanor with unmistakable mischief, he recited, “Sed vos hortorum per opaca silentia longe Celerant plantae virides, et concolor umbra.” Do you know the lines?’
Blanche and Eleanor’s governesses had had to negotiate too many other obstacles at Holborough. There had been little time to spare for Latin verse.
‘No,’ Eleanor said. She was thinking that the man was not such a misfit at Fernhaugh as his appearance suggested. No doubt the Souls would all be familiar with the verse, whatever it was. Or would at least claim to be.
‘No? It’s Marvell, of course. He is addressing Innocence. He finds her in the shaded silences of gardens, far off, hiding among the green plants and like-coloured shadow.’
‘Thank you so much for the translation.’ Eleanor took refuge in briskness. They had reached the terrace and the open doors of the drawing room were only a few steps away. ‘Don’t let me detain you any further in your search for Innocence amongst the rose-bushes.’
The man was smiling again, looking full into her face. He seemed very large and dark and exotic in the English summer garden. He wouldn’t let her go so easily. ‘In the absence of our hostess, may I introduce myself? I am Nathaniel Hirsh.’
‘Eleanor Holborough.’
The man’s hand enveloped hers. The grip was like a bear’s.
‘And now you
must excuse me.’
Eleanor mounted the two steps to the terrace level and passed out of the sunshine into the dimness of the drawing room. Nathaniel watched her go. He was thinking with irritation that although he had been born in England, and had lived in England for most of his twenty-six years, he would never make an Englishman. He could never get the subtle nuances of behaviour quite right. He could never even get the broad principles. Today he had arrived for luncheon at least an hour too early. Then he had seen a striking girl daydreaming in the wonderful garden. An Englishman would have approached her with some stiff-necked platitude and she would have known exactly how to respond. But instead he had pounced on her with some clumsy joke. And then he had begun declaiming in Latin. Innocence amongst the green plants and like-coloured shadow, indeed.
Yet, that was how she had looked.
‘You will never learn, Nathaniel,’ he said aloud. But he was humming as he leant over and picked a yellow rose from the branch trailing over the terrace wall. He slid the stem into his buttonhole. He had liked the look of Eleanor Holborough. He had liked even better her cool admission of ignorance of Marvell’s Hortus. Nathaniel did not think many of the other guests at Fernhaugh would have acknowledged as much. He liked Philip Haugh well enough, but he did not have much patience with the rest of the crew.
He reminded himself now that he had accepted Philip’s luncheon invitation in order to come and observe the idle wealthy at play, and to be amused by them. He could see Lady Haugh beyond the drawing-room doors, so he judged that it was at last the acceptable time to arrive. Nathaniel felt familiar exasperation. How could he have known that the fashionable hour was so much later than stated?
But now that he was here he would go in and be amused, as he had intended, and at the same time he would take the opportunity of seeing where Eleanor Holborough fitted into this languid coterie.
When Eleanor came into the drawing room again the rest of the guests were assembled. She looked around quickly and saw Nathaniel Hirsh. He was talking to Philip Haugh and Norton Ferrier. Beside Philip’s well-bred colourlessness and Norton’s perfectly sculpted feminine beauty it surprised her to see how very large and dishevelled and red-blooded he looked. From time to time his huge, booming bass laugh filled the murmuring room. Eleanor sensed that the other guests had to restrain themselves from turning around to stare. And to her surprise she felt her sympathy was with Nathaniel, rather than with Mary and Norton and their friends. What had he said or done to make her feel that they were a special minority of two?
Nathaniel had seen her, but he made no effort to navigate his way through the party to her side. Eleanor concentrated very hard on the conversation immediately around her, and wondered why not.
She need not have worried. Nathaniel had already discovered from Lady Haugh that they were to be seated together at the luncheon table. He was waiting for his chance.
There was no formal taking-in at Fernhaugh, but when Lady Haugh leant elegantly on Norton Ferrier’s arm and drifted towards the dining room, Nathaniel materialized at Eleanor’s side. Philip Haugh murmured the briefest introduction. Nathaniel took her hand and bowed over it, as though they had never seen each other before. On his arm Eleanor felt small and light, as if the toes of her shoes barely touched the floor.
‘Now then,’ he said as they sat down, ‘we can talk. Tell me exactly who you are, and what you are doing here.’
Eleanor told him, and he listened intently. For the first time, she talked about herself without referring to Blanche. She laid out the bare facts of her life as if it had been hers alone, and just as Blanche had done she discovered that it was agreeable to be reckoned with for herself, instead of as one half of a whole. It was more agreeable still just to sit with this unusual, suddenly solemn man looking into her eyes. The food came and went. The partners on their opposite sides were brutally neglected. Mary Ferrier caught Lady Haugh’s eye, and they exchanged a small, surprised moue.
‘I have a twin sister,’ Eleanor said at length, touched by a finger of guilt. ‘She was married earlier this year.’
‘You miss her,’ Nathaniel remarked, as if stating what was obvious.
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Are you very alike?’
‘We are identical.’
Nathaniel’s thick eyebrows drew together. When he opened his mouth Eleanor saw the movement of his tongue and the elastic contraction of his lips. She had never been so sharply aware of anyone’s physical nearness, of the few inches of air and layers of cloth between them. She should have glanced away, but she let his eyes hold hers.
‘I don’t think so,’ Nathaniel said softly. ‘I believe you are unique.’
Eleanor did look away, then. She turned deliberately to her neighbour on the other side, and began a conversation about architecture. She did not turn back until she was sure of herself, and when she did speak to Nathaniel again it was in an attempt to take control.
‘You haven’t told me who or what you are. It’s your turn to confess now.’ To her disgust Eleanor knew that she sounded arch rather than commanding. Nathaniel’s mouth twitched in the depths of his beard.
‘I am a teacher. I live in Oxford.’
That was all. Lady Haugh was standing up. Eleanor rose and followed her. When they sat down in the drawing room with their coffee cups, Eleanor found herself on a sofa between Mary and her hostess.
‘What did you think of our friend Mr Hirsh?’ Frances Haugh asked her, ready to be amused.
‘I liked him,’ Eleanor said. She hadn’t learnt the Souls’ way of pretending to feel less, or more, or something different. ‘Who is he?’
‘He’s a friend of Philip’s. He is very clever; last year he was elected a Fellow of All Souls. He is a don, a linguist, I believe. Eccentric in the way that people of that sort often are. And he is Jewish, of course.’
Eleanor had met plenty of Jews during her two Seasons. There were dozens of them in the new aristocracy. Many of them were rich, and most of them were good company. They were invited everywhere, and hostesses were pleased to welcome them whilst congratulating themselves at the same time on their own enlightened attitudes. Now that she thought about it, Eleanor realized that of course Nathaniel Hirsh was a Jew. And at the same time she knew that he was different from the bankers and financiers and manufacturers she had met in the London ballrooms. They were indistinguishable except by name from the old families.
Nathaniel was distinguishable. Nathaniel was distinguishable from everyone else she had met in her life. She didn’t want to label him, Jewish or not, suitable or otherwise. He was, she understood, above that.
When he came to claim her from between Mary and Frances, Eleanor went with him. Mary watched them go out into the garden, and then shrugged her pretty shoulders.
‘Whatever will Aunt Constance think?’ she wondered, and laughed faintly.
Eleanor and Nathaniel walked the shady paths together. They could never remember afterwards what they talked about, only that there was a great deal to say. The sun moved and dipped behind the garden’s fringe of elms.
When it was time for Nathaniel to leave, he took her hand. He lifted it to his mouth and held it there. The beard was soft on her skin, black against the whiteness.
‘May I call again tomorrow?’
‘I go back to Town tomorrow afternoon, with my cousin.’
‘I will call in the morning.’ Nathaniel said.
Eleanor smiled at him, and he saw all the light of the day in her face.
That evening, Eleanor sat down at the writing table in her bedroom and began a letter to Blanche. She had been intending to tell her sister everything; about how Nathaniel Hirsh had appeared in the garden at Fernhaugh and had immediately occupied the middle of her private landscape. He had made her see how bland the scenery was before he came. But then she thought of Blanche and John Leominster together, and of the tentative, sometimes puzzled way they seemed to defer to one another. She had never seen John Leominster look the way Nathani
el had looked at her today, and she didn’t believe Blanche had ever known the mixture of happy anticipation and certainty and dazzlement that she felt tonight.
Eleanor sighed, resting her chin in her hand and thinking of the miraculous day that had produced Nathaniel. Then she put down her pen. She never completed the letter.
Nathaniel went slowly back to Oxford. He was considering the other women he knew, the dark, exuberant daughters of his mother’s friends and the few University ladies and the wives of his colleagues. None of them had Eleanor Holborough’s air of opposites combined, of originality within the conventional, of passion contained by propriety. None of them even seemed to Nathaniel to be as perfectly beautiful as Eleanor.
He had accepted the invitation to Fernhaugh intending to listen and watch, and he came back having fallen in love.
The next morning, when he was leaving her again, Nathaniel kissed Eleanor on the mouth. She turned her face up to his, and kissed him back. There was no reason not to. They were honest with each other. Afterwards, when he had gone, Mary and Frances looked speculatively at her. They were too discreet to ask direct questions, and Eleanor had enough self-possession to give nothing away. But her senses were sharpened by the feelings Nathaniel had stirred in her. She looked around Fernhaugh, and suddenly understood what she saw.
As they were leaving the old house and Norton Ferrier bent his sleek head to kiss Frances Haugh goodbye, Eleanor felt as if her eyes had been opened. There was plenty for her to think about on the journey back to London.
‘What will you tell my mother and Aunt Constance about Mr Hirsh?’ Mary asked slyly.
‘The truth,’ Eleanor was composed. ‘When the right time comes.’
They wrote to each other every day of the next week, letters of deepening affection. Eleanor discovered that Nathaniel was steeped in Goethe and Dante as well as Andrew Marvell, and her own responses seemed stilted and childish in answer to the fluently romantic pages he poured out to her. But Nathaniel answered that he loved her letters, and would keep them for ever. He also warned her, as gently as he could, that there might never come a right time to announce to their families that they intended to marry.
