by Rosie Thomas
At last Pilgrim gave a gusty sigh. He sat up, mopping at their thighs with one of his supply of painting rags. Then he settled back, unaffectedly cross-legged, and lit a pungent cigarette.
Clio studied him. With his broad shoulders and white, slabby nakedness and his solemn face wreathed in smoke he looked like one of his own portraits. Naked Man II, perhaps, or Omnium Tristum Est. The urge to laugh came back to her.
‘Well?’ Pilgrim asked.
‘Quite well, thank you,’ she responded. It was less flippant than it sounded. All was well, or quite well. She did feel exactly as if she had put down some heavy piece of luggage or wriggled out of some old, constricting skin. She had taken a lover, but she was comfortably sure that she would not be left with a painful passion for Pilgrim. She would feel the same about him tomorrow as she had done yesterday. It was about herself that she felt differently. She had her own power, and the ability to control, after all.
She also knew that Pilgrim was eyeing her with a shade of guilt and anxiety. Would she weep or complain or make further demands?
Clio held out her hand, rested it on the inelastic skin of his thigh.
‘May I ask you for something?’
‘Of course,’ he told her, meaning ‘Of course not, if it will cost me anything to give it.’ Clio had observed his malicious teasing over the years, and it pleased her to extract a momentary revenge.
‘For one of your cigarettes?’ she said sweetly. The relief in his face was so clear to see that she was reminded of Lucas again. She did laugh now, out loud. He took a cigarette out and lit it for her, and put it between her lips. Then he reached for their whisky glasses.
‘Here’s to the next time,’ he proposed, glad to see that she was happy.
Clio drank before amending the toast. ‘The future,’ she said, over the rim of her glass that tasted strongly of the polishing rag.
When they had drunk the whisky he made her lie down again, and settled beside her, covering them both up with the paisley shawls. With her face close to his and her wide eyes unblinkingly watching him he felt suddenly tender and grateful. He almost said I love you.
‘My lovely Clio. You are unique.’
‘Of course,’ Clio said, with calm conviction.
‘The party for Pilgrim’s retrospective was early in 1927,’ Elizabeth said, in her knowing way. ‘It must have been, if it was just before the first by-election.’
Clio inclined her head. ‘It must, if you say so.’
Her vagueness was deliberate. Silly things, unimportant things, she sometimes couldn’t recall, but others she had never forgotten. February 17, 1927. The day she had lost – no, not lost but divested herself of – her virginity with Pilgrim, on the musty divan in the Charlotte Street studio. Afterwards he had walked her home through the rain to Gower Street because she had left her car outside the gallery. They had sung to each other, only she couldn’t remember what the songs were.
She was not going to tell this inquisitive girl the significance of the date, of course. It was only a party, one of hundreds.
Grace and Anthony had been there, but they had not stayed for long.
A few weeks later, Anthony had been defeated in the South Wales by-election. He had not been expected to win the seat. He had been put up to contest it in order to show what he could do, and he had done well. He had reduced the Labour majority by several thousands.
In the same year Grace had had a miscarriage, a late one, and had been ill for some months. After Grace lost the baby, Anthony and she had dropped out of their set of bright young people. They seemed to prefer one another’s company to anyone else’s. Clio had hardly seen them.
She had been busy herself.
Pilgrim’s retrospective, she remembered. The portrait, hanging at the end of the gallery. Pride of place, someone had said. Was it Pilgrim?
On that evening, in the crush of the party, she had first met Miles Lennox.
Ten
Shropshire, May 30, 1929
The black car with its curved mudguards like fastidiously raised eyebrows was incongruous at the bottom of the village street. The sleek, shiny length of it crept up the hill a few paces and then stopped. Blue ribbons fluttered from the bright chrome of the door handles, and the bumpers glittered in the May sunshine.
The women hesitated in the shadows of their doorways, and the children stopped playing and stared with their mouths hanging open. Anthony Brock’s driver climbed out and skirted the long bonnet, trying not to wince at the sight of the whitish dust from the unmade road that filmed his polished coachwork.
He opened the passenger door, and Grace stepped out.
She crossed the street at once, gaily heading for the nearest pair of cottages. She held out her hand to the aproned woman hovering on her step and said, ‘It’s Mrs Fletcher, isn’t it?’
The woman was amazed, and delighted, as Grace had intended her to be. But it was not such a great feat of memory. The district electoral roll lay on the warm leather seat in the car. Grace had studied it as they drove from village to village between the high hedges of West Shropshire. During the last few days, canvassing with Anthony, she had visited almost every hamlet in the rural constituency and now, on polling day itself, she felt as if she knew every lane and farm and every cottager and labourer who inhabited them. It was, in any case, almost her home ground. Stretton lay only twenty miles north of this village, within the constituency borders.
The woman shook the offered fingers, nodding vigorously, brushing her wispy hair back from her red face with her unoccupied hand. One knee folded behind the other as if they might collapse together into a curtsey, but reached a compromise in a parlourmaid’s bob.
‘Yes, mum, my lady, that is.’
‘Mrs Fletcher, are you coming out to vote?’
Mrs Fletcher looked embarrassed. She glanced from side to side, hoping to find an answer reflected in the craning faces of her neighbours.
‘I don’t know, mum. I don’t know as my husband …’
Grace said gently, ‘Your vote is your own, you know. Don’t you remember the Franchise Act? We women have won the right to a vote and we owe it to one another to use that right.’
She was smiling and her smile was warm and genuine, even after more than half a day’s constant employment. The words ‘we women’ seemed to hang in the still air.
Mrs Fletcher looked her in the eye now. The gulf between the labourer’s wife in her apron and the candidate’s in her pearls and her navy and white spotted silk seemed to have narrowed a little. On the doorsteps, that was Grace’s talent. It was impossible to forget that she was Lady Grace, daughter of the Lord Lieutenant of the county and the Conservative candidate’s wife, yet at the same time her manner was friendly and direct. The women thought that she was easy to talk to. ‘No airs and graces on her,’ they told one another. The men looked sidelong at her with grudging admiration.
Mrs Fletcher folded her arms. ‘Maybe so,’ she conceded. ‘Maybe so. But if I come out and vote for your husband, what will he do for me and mine? Tell me that, now.’ She looked round triumphantly at her neighbours, surprised and pleased by her own daring. There was a murmur of agreement, although no one else was quite brave enough to echo her words.
Grace turned to face the little crowd that had gathered. There were women and old men and grimy-faced children, all mutely staring at her.
‘You know me, all of you, don’t you? You know my father and my brother, and what this part of England means to us? My husband is a young man, a good man. He is proud to have been selected as your candidate. A vote for him is a vote for peace in the world for your children, for work for your menfolk, but it is also a vote for West Shropshire, for yourselves.’
Her voice was ringing. There was a moment’s silence and then, not exactly a cheer, but a ragged chorus of assent. ‘’Er’s right,’ someone said from the back of the group. ‘’Er’s one of our own, like old Wardle.’
Mr Wardle was the previous Conservative member, a
local landowner, retiring after a long silent career on the back benches.
‘What’ud we be doing with one of them Liberal lot, or one of MacDonald’s pack of Bolshies?’ Grace’s supporter demanded.
‘Quite right, sir,’ Grace called cheerfully. ‘Now then, who’s coming to the polls with me?’ She tucked a strand of dark hair back under the brim of her navy-blue cloche and bent down to the level of the children. She selected the smallest girl with the least matted hair and an almost clean jersey, and hoisted her up in her arms. ‘You’ll come, won’t you? You’d like a ride in my car, I expect, and you can bring your mother and whoever else would like to come. And those we can’t fit in, we’ll come back for. That’s fair, isn’t it?’
The child nodded, solemn-faced, her eyes on Grace’s lustrous pearls.
The other children swarmed over the car. Anthony’s chauffeur thought longingly of his chamois leather, but Grace only laughed and let them clamber in their boots over the upholstery. The mothers and grandparents followed behind, leaning unaccustomedly back in the plush interior. When the car was packed full Grace waved at those left in the dusty road. ‘We’ll be back for you,’ she called gaily, and the car rolled away.
The polling station was two miles away, in another village, in the school that served all the outlying hamlets. As they drove a boy leant over the back of Grace’s seat and shouted in her ear, ‘Usually us has to walk all this way to school.’
‘Today is special. Election day,’ she said. ‘Today you ride.’
The road was almost a tunnel, winding between green hedges laced with may blossom. Grace knew that in the grass along the high banks there would be the white stars of wild strawberry flowers, and the pale freckle of wood violets. She felt a kind of rooted affection for this home countryside, although in the same instant she could have laughed at her own sentimentality. It would not matter if Anthony were standing for some East End constituency or a Midlands manufacturing town or anywhere else, so long as he won it. But at the same time it gave her satisfaction to think that he was here, on the other side of the county, ferrying the voters back and forth along the familiar lanes, and that Hugo and Thomas were out too, all the big shiny cars festooned with blue ribbons and rosettes, bringing their people in.
Anthony had done well in his unwinnable South Wales by-election. The party had rewarded him with West Shropshire, a safe seat, his own ground at least by marriage. He had worked hard, from the beginning of the campaign, and he deserved to hold the solid majority.
If we don’t, Grace thought, it won’t be for want of trying.
But Mr Baldwin’s re-election battle-cry of ‘Safety First’ had hardly set the electorate on fire. There was a feeling that after five years of Conservative government a change would be welcome. And even in the rural depths of West Shropshire both Liberals and Labour were fielding strong candidates. Nothing would be certain until after the last votes had been counted.
The packed car smelt strongly of bodies and two or three of the children had begun to sing. There was a holiday atmosphere. ‘As good as the Church outing,’ someone was saying. ‘Vicar took us in a charabanc all the way to Shrewsbury.’
At the polling station the car disgorged Grace’s cargo of voters. They filed into the Victorian schoolhouse and the children hung around in the yard, peering at the officials and the placards tied with string to the iron railings. The familiar building was different for a day.
The women and old people came out again, looking solemn and important. Grace shepherded them back into the car. ‘Home we go. Thank you for coming, thank you for your support.’
As they motored back through the lanes she was wondering, How many more villages did they have time for, how many more of their people could she bring out to vote for Anthony? She was tired now, and thirsty, and her face felt stiff with smiling.
Anthony Brock, MP. Grace was superstitious. Even now, she quenched the flicker of pleasure the thought gave her. Last night at Stretton Anthony had said, ‘I think we have done all we can,’ and she had corrected him fiercely, ‘Not until the polls close tomorrow night.’
Alice sat on the window seat in her bedroom at Stretton, looking down the curve of the carriage drive between the great trees. She was waiting for the cars to come back. She had decided that as soon as she saw Grace and Anthony arrive she would run downstairs to meet them. She would be first to hear the news, whatever stupid Cressida chose to do.
There was a book on her lap, but she hadn’t opened it. Her legs were stiff with sitting and the wall felt cold against her back. If her cousins’ old nanny came in she would fuss and scold her about getting chilled and probably hustle her into an armchair with a hot-water bottle. But Alice would not change her position. She stayed huddled in the narrow window slot, her back numb and her eyes smarting with the effort of keeping watch.
Alice had had a bad bout of measles. The illness had affected her eyes and she had spent a long time lying in her darkened bedroom in the Woodstock Road, with the boundaries between sleep and waking blurred by fever. She had dreamed of prisons and confinement, and when she woke up the old room had seemed like a cell. By the time the fever receded and reality had become a matter of certainty again, she was thin and weak, but filled with the need to escape from the room, and from the house that enclosed it.
Blanche had kindly invited her to Stretton to convalesce.
‘Cressida will be here,’ she had told Eleanor on the telephone. ‘They can be company for each other while Grace and Anthony are out electioneering. Although I can’t think why Anthony wants to involve himself in politics at all. Every politician I have ever met talks nothing but inflated nonsense. But John says that Anthony may be some use, and Grace is as keen as mustard on the idea. That’s a blessing, of course, anything that occupies her attention. There won’t be another b-a-b-y until she’s forgotten the last time, I’m sure of that.’
‘Grace is still only a young woman,’ Eleanor had said firmly, only too well aware that Clio was not even married yet. ‘There’s plenty of time for a dozen more babies.’
So Alice had been transported to Stretton wrapped in travelling rugs, and ensconced in a bedroom on the second floor under the care of Nanny Brodribb. It was a few days before the Brocks arrived. She spent the time that Nanny allowed her out of bed wandering through the vast house, listening to its private language of creaks and sighs. It was interesting to have so much space after the confinement of illness, and she found that there was a melancholy satisfaction in solitude after the hubbub of her parent’s ever-open household. She avoided her uncle John Leominster and cousin Hugo, but found it restful to sit in the saloon with her aunt for an hour at teatime.
While Blanche sewed or wrote letters, Alice sat dutifully with her own work but rarely looked at it. She had always been strong and now she felt unmade by sickness, as if there was a new shape to her within the old one, not yet dry or set, waiting for experience to cut its marks into it. She let her thoughts wander, without direction.
The sofa she sat on was opposite the Sargent portrait of her mother and aunt. Alice decided that she much preferred this romantic vision of two fresh young girls to the later image that hung in the drawing room at home. In this one she liked to look at the pearly tones of the skin and the warm coils of hair, and the light and shadow in the intricate pleats and folds of the Victorian dresses. The Pilgrim picture was ugly, for all Nathaniel’s admiration of it.
It was interesting that no one had suggested that Phoebe or Tabitha should sit for anyone when they came out. There would be no thought of it when her own turn came next year. Alice shivered at the very idea of having to expose herself to some painter’s scrutiny. She pulled the loose ends of her hair to hide her cheeks and wrapped her thin arms around herself.
‘Are you warm enough, darling?’ Blanche asked.
‘Yes thank you, Aunt Blanche,’ Alice answered.
After a few days the Brocks arrived, Anthony driving Grace and Cressida in the big black car and the
chauffeur following on in a smaller saloon. Alice went shyly out with Blanche to meet them. It was a long time since she had seen her older cousin, and when she came laughing and exclaiming into the great hallway, with her high heels tapping a brittle rhythm, she seemed as modern to Alice as the latest dance tune. With her perfectly made-up face and tiny butterfly of a hat she was also as exotic as a hothouse orchid. Alice stared at her in fascinated admiration.
‘Alice. Is this really you?’ Grace kissed her on both cheeks and then held her away so that she could examine her. ‘So grown up. And so beautiful and slim. Not at all a fat baby any more.’
Alice had always hated being the baby of the Babies. She said sharply, ‘I’m seventeen and two months.’ And then, afraid that she might have offended this vision of elegance with her brusqueness, she added in an awkward mumble, ‘I’m awfully scraggy. But I’ve been ill, I can’t help it. I expect I’ll grow bonny again, like Nanny says.’
Grace laughed. ‘Don’t think of it. Everyone longs to be thin, you know. Ferocious diets, suffering for every single chocolate, all that. You keep your lovely narrow hips and count yourself lucky.’
Alice flushed with pleasure. Compliments on her appearance did not often come her way in the Woodstock Road. Grace was thin, too. The bones of her hips seemed to jut through the silk jersey she wore belted over a pleated skirt. But at the same time, Alice could not help noticing Cressida standing half hidden behind her father. Her eyes were fixed on the floor, as if she were fascinated by the veining in the marble.
Cressida was plump. She seemed to be made of cushions of plumpness riding on big bones. Her tweed coat was tightly belted around her middle, making her torso look like a pair of solid pillows. She was holding on to her father’s hand.
