by Rosie Thomas
Did they know? Grace wondered. Could they see it in her eyes?
Her face glowed above her crumpled collar, and the men in the group shifted in the hope that she might sit next to them.
On the other side of Pilgrim, Max Erdmann muttered, ‘So it’s the other one tonight, is it?’
Pilgrim grinned, making no attempt to hide his pleasure and satisfaction. ‘What is a man supposed to do? Beat them off with a stick?’
‘I have no idea. My problems tend in the opposite direction. But do you really need two of them?’
Pilgrim half closed his eyes, still smiling. ‘Is it not your experience, Max, that every woman is invariably lacking in some department? This arrangement is perfection itself. There is one for conversation and company, and one for bed, according to their natural aptitudes. It is like having one woman, with twice the variety and none of the drawbacks. The female Janus. I’ve painted her, and now I’m enjoying her.’
‘How fortunate you are,’ Max said, with noticeable dislike. Pilgrim returned his attention to Grace.
‘Grace, would you like the plat du jour?’ he invited, mindful as always of his bill. Grace smiled her acquiescence. She knew that this evening, in her happiness, whatever she ate would taste like ambrosia.
Nathaniel and Eleanor always liked to give a party at Christmas, although for the years of the war it had been a muted affair. Now, at the end of 1919, they had decided that they must compensate with a bigger and much more splendid event. It would be their own celebration of the first year of peace, of Jake’s and Julius’s proper emergence into the world, and of Clio’s coming out.
The party would also celebrate the hanging, in the drawing room overlooking the garden at Woodstock Road, of Pilgrim’s double portrait.
Pilgrim had declined to sell The Janus Face to Nathaniel, to Nathaniel’s private relief because he suspected he couldn’t possibly have afforded to pay for it, even for the sake of teasing his brother-in-law. It had been Pilgrim’s own suggestion that he should bring the picture to Oxford, and leave it there on indefinite loan.
The painter had been a lively and welcome guest. Pilgrim had obviously enjoyed the comfortable informality of Eleanor’s household and his planned overnight stay to supervise the hanging had somehow stretched to a week.
‘It’s just like home,’ he said expansively, although he never offered any more information about his own domestic life. Clio knew that according to Charlotte Street gossip, Pilgrim lived in some bleak rooms in Tottenham, and only ever returned to them when in dire need of some refinement like clean clothes or hot water that was unavailable either in his studio or someone else’s more conveniently situated residence.
Nathaniel liked him. The two men sat underneath the portrait in its place of honour on the long wall facing the garden, and argued about politics, pictures and Wagner. Pilgrim was gallant to Eleanor, insisting that she was by far the ripest and loveliest of the quartet of women, until she blushed and protested.
And Clio fell deeper in love with him. Pilgrim occupied the tower room that had been Peter Dennis’s, and his robust presence exorcized the paler ghost. Pilgrim’s behaviour towards Clio was impeccable, to her slight regret. He took her to tea at Tripps’, not counting the cost of chocolate cakes, and then marched her around the pictures in the Ashmolean Museum. They were familiar to her, but he made her see them with different eyes. He made her walk around the circumference of the Radcliffe Camera and lift her head to examine the lines of the Bodleian and the Sheldonian Theatre. All of these things had been familiar to her from childhood, but in Pilgrim’s company they were new and fascinating.
Over their tea in Tripps’ he also warned her not to waste too much of her life in learning instead of doing.
‘What do you mean?’ she had asked him.
‘Do you really want to spend years buried in some library here, or chaperoned by women dons whenever you set foot outside the College walls? You’ve seen Oxford now. What about the rest of the world?’
‘It isn’t quite like that,’ she had protested, but she had begun to think, much more seriously than his casual remark had warranted.
All the Hirshes missed him when he went back to London. Tabby and Alice begged him to come back soon and draw more animal pictures for them. Nathaniel and Eleanor told him that he was welcome to visit the Woodstock Road whenever he wanted to.
‘Won’t you come to our Christmas party, to celebrate the portrait?’ Eleanor begged. Eleanor had calmly accepted the defiant, semi-naked representation of her daughter and niece. Nathaniel admired the portrait, and that was good enough for Eleanor.
Pilgrim bent over to kiss her hand. ‘If only I could,’ he lamented. ‘But I must go to Paris. Work, work.’
The truth was that he had promised Isolde a holiday trip. The use of an apartment on the Cité had been promised to him by two painters he knew. He felt well fed and well rested from his week in Oxford, and after Clio’s receptive intelligence and thoughtful questions he was more than ready to divert himself with Isolde in Paris.
Clio came with him to the gate, where a taxi was waiting to take him to Oxford station. He took off his big black hat with a sweep of his arm and kissed her on the mouth. Clio saw that he was glitter-eyed, looking forward to his next adventure.
‘I shall miss you,’ she said in a small voice.
‘I hope so. But not too much.’
Pilgrim clapped his hat on his head again, and subsided into the taxi. Clio wandered back into the house, wondering if it was her permanent fate to be in love and lonely all at the same time.
The party was to be held three days before Christmas.
Nathaniel loved making the excuse of his Gentile family for decorating the house before the festival. A huge fir tree was always stationed in the hall and decorated with carved wooden ornaments and silver stars and gingerbread figures suspended on scarlet ribbons. Holly garlands were made for the mantelshelves, and Nathaniel always led a children’s excursion to Port Meadow, where mistletoe grew among the branches of one of the trees. Tabitha and Alice hung paper streamers and lanterns from the cornices, and Clio helped them to set out the beautifully detailed and painted Nativity scene that Eleanor had inherited from Holborough.
Nathaniel regarded all this, and the singing of carols and hanging-up of stockings, with impartial pleasure.
‘A feast is a feast,’ he said, ‘whatever religion it belongs to.’
This year the decoration was done earlier than usual so that the house would look festive for the party. Eleanor and Mrs Doyle, assisted by Clio, embarked on a marathon of cooking. There would be more than sixty people for dinner, and afterwards Julius and his friends would play music for dancing. The worn Persian rugs in the drawing room were taken up in readiness, laying bare the fine oak parquet floor. Eleanor’s housemaid spent a whole day waxing and polishing it. The Janus portrait gazed down at the preparations. It had looked perfectly comfortable in the Woodstock Road from the moment it had been hung amongst the books and music stands and manuscripts.
Clio had a new dress for the occasion. At last she had achieved the ink-blue velvet she had dreamt of for her coming out. She went to Elliston’s and bought the material herself, and Nanny Cooper helped her to cut and sew it into a narrow column that rippled when she moved. She was pleased with the effect, and told herself that she would look just as elegant as Grace in her Reville & Rossiter. If only Pilgrim were coming, she thought wistfully. She would not have minded at all letting Grace see that they were such good friends after a whole week spent together.
The Stretton party arrived from London on the afternoon of the party. They would stay overnight, and then travel on to Stretton for the Christmas holidays. John was not with them. He had no wish to join in any celebration of Pilgrim’s notorious picture, and had instructed Blanche and the four children to ignore the painting as far as possible. Blanche told Eleanor, and Eleanor told Nathaniel, who roared with delighted laughter at the absurdity of it all.
‘
I am looking forward to seeing Hugo doing his duty and standing with his back to it all the evening,’ he said gleefully. As a tease, the whole business of the portrait hanging had exceeded his best expectations.
Grace was quiet when the family party reached the Woodstock Road. She barely spoke to Clio, and hardly seemed to notice Jake and Julius. She announced that the journey had been tiring and that she was going to lie down. No one saw her again until the evening began.
At seven o’clock, everyone was assembling downstairs ready to meet the guests. All the children were to be allowed to stay up for dinner, even Alice who ran up and down the hallway between Phoebe and Tabitha in a state of wild over-excitement. The Oswald Harrises had already arrived and were greeting Nathaniel and Eleanor when Grace finally came down the stairs. She was wearing an ivory lace dress, with Blanche’s magnificent pearl and diamond choker at her throat and an ivory fillet in her hair. Her eyes were very wide, and there was an unusual flush of colour high on her cheekbones.
Clio heard Julius draw in his breath when he looked up and saw Grace at the head of the stairs.
Julius went forward and took Grace’s hand as she came down.
‘You look very beautiful,’ he said. She turned her head, meeting his eyes, but she did not smile.
The Hirshes’ guests flooded in, neighbours and Nathaniel’s colleagues, past and present students who were still near enough to Oxford to reach it in the middle of the Christmas vacation, musicians and clergymen and philosophers. Hugo hobbled about on his stick, nobly making conversation as if he were at a tenants’ ball, with Thomas doing his best to imitate him. The younger children carried plates, and the smell of food mingled with the scents of pine branches and mulled wine. Grace’s high colour faded, and she began to look as ivory pale as her dress. Julius never took his eyes off her. Once, seeing her pallor, Jake asked her if she felt all right. She fixed him with a wide-eyed stare. ‘Never better,’ she answered.
After dinner the dancing began. Nathaniel smiled to see the Strettons carefully not looking at the portrait. All except Grace. She stared at it, her pale face quite expressionless. From across the room, Clio watched her. She felt less pleased with her blue velvet dress, less than satisfied with the whole evening. A dull feeling of apprehension gnawed at her innards, although she had no idea why she should feel apprehensive.
Julius played the fiddle for the dancers, waltzes and foxtrots and one-steps, but he longed to leave the other musicians to play and step through the crowd to Grace. He knew that her cheek would feel cool against his, and that she would bend with him like a reed in the dance.
At last, Alice fell asleep on the sofa with her best dress rucked up to reveal her white stockings. Eleanor was serving coffee, and the dancing slowed and then stopped. Julius and the others put down their instruments.
Grace was standing alone at one side of the room, under The Janus Face. Jake and Julius both went to her, both of them glancing up at the semi-naked figures above them with their straining muscles emerging from the common bud of flesh. Clio was drawn closer too, unwillingly, but by some inescapable compulsion. Grace waited until they made a ring around her.
‘The magic circle,’ she said slowly. ‘Let’s go upstairs to the old nursery. It’s so noisy down here.’
She led the way, and the others followed her. Clio’s feet were heavier than lead. What self-dramatizing instinct, she wondered, was prompting Grace to draw them all out of the heart of the party?
The old nursery belonged to Tabby and Alice now. The paper remains of streamer and garland-making still spread out on the deal table. Grace sat on the old-fashioned high fender and looked down into the embers of the fire.
‘We should have brought up some wine,’ Jake said cheerfully. ‘We could have had our own party.’ He had enjoyed the evening. Several of Nathaniel’s old colleagues had pretty daughters, and the dancing had given him plenty of opportunities for whispered flirtation.
Grace did not look up. She was still staring down into the glowing coals when she made her flat-voiced announcement.
‘I think I am going to have a baby.’
The words seemed to echo in the corners of the room.
Julius sat still, frozen into silence. Clio could only think, stupidly, But you can’t. You have to be married first.
It was Jake who went to her. He bent down on one knee and took both her hands in his. When he looked up at her, it was as if he were parodying a proposal.
‘How many days late are you?’ he asked gently.
To his shame, Julius found that he was blushing scarlet at the mention of such things to his cousin and his sister.
‘Fifteen,’ Grace said, in the same flat voice.
‘That isn’t so long,’ Jake told her. ‘It might not be what you are afraid of. There could be all kinds of other reasons. Overtiredness, or anaemia, or anxiety.’
‘No. I know what it is. I can feel it.’
There had only been half a dozen times in all. Perhaps six afternoons in Pilgrim’s studio, with the warmth of the gas fire and the musty shawls to wrap themselves in. There had been sufficient time for Grace to learn to enjoy what they did, even to feel eager for it, and more than enough for the damage to be done. She had never talked to Jeannie about ‘fixing herself up’, whatever that was supposed to mean, and Pilgrim had never mentioned it again.
Clio licked her dry lips, and asked the question. ‘Who is it? Grace, whose baby?’ She heard the hostility in her own voice, and felt Julius’s eyes flick towards her.
‘Pilgrim’s, of course.’ Grace hardly turned her head. She was as white as paper now, even her lips were colourless. The pearls looked dirty yellow against her neck. She said to Jake, ‘I thought you might know somebody who could help me. A doctor. If not a proper doctor, then whoever it is who does these things.’ She spoke as if they were discussing some unpleasant but necessary domestic chore.
Jake’s horrified reaction showed clearly in his face. ‘I don’t know anyone who would contemplate performing an abortion, if you mean a medically acceptable operation. And I have seen women die after going to back-street abortionists. I have seen them, Grace.’ He was still kneeling in front of her, holding her hands, almost as white in the face as she was herself. ‘You can’t butcher yourself.’
Grace was stonily calm. She had already done her thinking. ‘I was afraid you would say that,’ she said. She disengaged her hands from Jake’s, spread out her ringless fingers and stared at them. ‘It seems that there is no alternative but to get married as quickly as possible.’
Clio stumbled to her feet, almost knocking over her chair.
‘To Pilgrim?’
She knew that there was as much envy as disbelief in her voice. The idea of marriage seemed so safe and simple. If she were married to Pilgrim, Clio thought, and a mother, her life would be settled. There would be no more uncertainty, and no need to answer questions for herself about what to do with her time, and what goals to aim for. She would know what to believe in, because it would be her husband and his work and their children.
Grace was laughing. It was an uncomfortable, jagged laugh that was full of bitterness. ‘Not to Pilgrim. I wouldn’t marry him, any more than he would marry me. No, I shall marry Anthony Brock. Our baby will be born a little early, but it will turn out to be as good a little Brock as anyone could wish for.’
Julius moved then, stiffly, as if his limbs hurt him, across the room to where Grace sat. He crouched down beside his brother but he was oblivious of Jake, and of Clio too. There might have been no one else in the house but Grace and himself.
‘I love you,’ he whispered to her. ‘I’ll marry you. Marry me, not Anthony Brock.’
With burning face and eyes, Clio watched her brothers as they knelt at Grace’s feet. A tidal wave of anger and bitterness was sweeping through her.
All the time Pilgrim had been lecturing her on Cubism and Christopher Wren and Samuel Palmer, all the time she had been meekly listening to him, he had been making lo
ve to Grace. While she had been childishly dreaming, Grace had taken the real thing for herself, just as she had always done, all through their childhood and growing up. While she had been standing to one side waiting for life to begin, Grace had helped herself to it. Clio thought savagely that now, not even to be pregnant with Pilgrim’s baby would be a punishment for Grace.
She would simply marry Anthony, wry and ironic Anthony whom Clio had come to look upon as her friend, taking him as she had always taken everything else. She would be the focus of attention, with her wedding and her baby, and Anthony would love her, and she would never have to suffer for any of the damage she caused.
And here were Jake and Julius, like the rival suitors in some stupid Victorian tableau, kneeling at her feet. Even after her confession they were still ready to support and comfort her. Julius had told her that he loved her and would marry her. And still, Grace was ready to turn on loyal Anthony and use him to father another man’s child, to enter into a lifelong lie and expect Clio herself and her brothers to keep her secret for her …
Clio could taste her own sour jealousy in her mouth. She felt how it pinched her lips, and dug premature lines in her cheeks. A childish refrain like one of Alice’s hammered in her head. It isn’t fair. Grace, it isn’t fair, I hate you for it …
Grace had Pilgrim, and Anthony, and Jake and Julius. Clio felt that she was left with nobody. Grace had even taken Peter Dennis, although Clio knew in her heart that he had loved her, not Grace.
The taste in her mouth was so strong that she wondered if it would make her sick. She forced herself to take deep breaths of air into her churning stomach.
Grace put out her hand and stroked Julius’s hair. She said very quietly, ‘Thank you. I’ll remember that you offered that, Julius. I wish I could marry you, but I can’t. It would be like marrying Clio.’
