by Jane Gardam
‘Could we remind her of her mother’s funeral? Would that end it?’
‘She never went to the funeral. Her mother died abroad. I do say sometimes, “She’s not here, Ma—she’s dead and gone,” but she just says, “I’m afraid not.” She’ll forget for a week and then remember. Then the terrors begin.’
‘Whatever can the woman have done to her?’
Alice paused so long, that I thought we’d been cut off.
‘Oh, I expect nothing much,’ she said, in the end. ‘Something quite hidden. It’s just part of the horrors of old age.’
But at Molly’s funeral I wasn’t so sure. Among the extraordinarily large crowd—many of them young, many dog-lovers, some old, old racing-driver types, her solicitor, her stockbroker and a horde from the Final Resting Place, quite a few children—I could not rid myself of the notion that there was someone else present, just at my shoulder.
II: SIGNOR SETTIMO
There again,’ they said in Spratpool Street. ‘She’s there again,’ and they looked at each other and plodded on round the shops.
The horse lifted and dropped a hoof. The groom sat above on the polished seat of the trap. The trap was smarter than a carriage, quite chic and, like the County, expensive and correct but not yet a motor. It stood outside the studio of the new photographer and the groom stared ahead, knees stalwart under the rug, the Ironside groom, just about the last in Shipley.
Mrs. Ironside was attending the photographer. All of sixty, squat as the old Queen, she was again attending the photographer, she was never away.
The first visit had been only a sighting from the road when the new studio was still an amazement in the town and she had directed the trap to pause there as she passed by, to allow her to examine the window.
A low, artistic signboard of bright wood was painted with gold lettering: ‘Settimo. Portraiture’, and behind it stood a huge, near life-size photograph of a newly married couple, the she in a mile of heavy lace, the he in half a bale of black, ill-fitting, foreign-looking suiting. The she had her veil pulled down low over the brow with a little tight band of flowers, rather like a swimming cap. It gave her a glamorous ferocity. The sheaf of lilies across her lap lay like swords. The he stared hot-eyed, plump-cheeked, a broad silken moustache and tie, round-ended stiff collar, hair plastered flat on his head, gleaming; and on his ankles spats, grey spats above patent leathers. They were a serious, confident pair, not yet rich but determined. You could see the black ink of ledgers, the shouting and the passions, little leisure, and the children not having it easy. Mrs. Ironside felt a liking for the two of them, almost recognition, though they clearly hadn’t had much to do with Shipley.
Nothing at all to do with Shipley, for over their shoulders spread a crumbling hillside tremulous with laburnum, dark with chestnut trees, and roses showered over the tops of secret garden walls. A little donkey with panniers filled with grasses was being watched on its way by a peasant woman shading her eyes in a dusty, flowery lane. And all beneath a cloudless sky.
And this couple was seated upon an ornamental terrace before a marble balustrade and on the balustrade a slippery fringed shawl and on the shawl a flagon with an inviting lip and beside the flagon a great glass jar with a carved glass stopper. The jar seemed stuffed with spiral layers of orchard fruits, strange, syrupy, glowing things catching the light.
The photograph had already created a stir in Shipley. Often little groups had gathered on the pavement in the cold spring winds and steady northern English rain saying, ‘Look at them pears and plums, you could sink your teeth in them, queer aren’t they, you can see right through to the gowks. You can just feel the silk in that shawl. He’ll be expensive I dare say. It’ll be for carriage folk I dare say.’
Florrie Ironside was carriage folk nowadays all right and had been for a long time. Expense meant nothing to her in her jet necklaces and black ruched satin and first-quality Shipley woollen pelisse, her beaded hat from Harrogate, her chunks of ugly jewellery and the vast brass-framed cameo attached to her bosom. The cameo held a tinted representation of her dead husband and a twist of his sandy hair. Florence Ironside sat under a black umbrella in the rain and examined the new shop-front painted coffee-cream with lighter cream blinds each with a golden tassel. It stood between Bogey’s Grocers full of cheeses stuck with gluey linen, and Batty’s Drapers (founded 1812) stacked up with bales of wool and tweeds and calicos, and fans of cards of button hooks and linen-covered singlet-buttons. Outside the new shop a young man in thin shoes was locking the door behind him as he went off to his lunch. His coat didn’t look the cloth for a Shipley spring.
‘A newcomer,’ she said to the groom, who said he’d heard tell a Hitalian.
A while later Florrie Ironside saw the young man again changing the window, and she stopped the trap to watch. He was lifting away the happy Italian couple and replacing them with a bride alone, startlingly dark, her hair falling in polished ripples, a great Nottingham veil dragging down behind her and swinging round into a pool at her feet. The dress had a straining satin bodice with no shame. The mouth was soft and sulky, swollen with desire; and, good gracious heaven, was the mouth of Hilda Staples’ sullen Nellie! Who could have made a beauty of that slow lump? And sitting before that transfer screen with all the moral messages on it and the improving pictures—there was Mr. Gladstone with his rose—the sort of thing decent children used to stick together with flour paste to fill up a winter. If it was Nellie, no wonder the bodice was tight, and just as well that bouquet was the size of a haystack. She looked sultry, though. She’d be admired.
Two sets of fingertips set Nellie gently on the easel and, over the top of her, Signor Settimo’s sad eyes met the eyes of Mrs. Ironside in the trap. As the photographer moved sideways and forwards for a moment, to look Nellie over, she saw that he seemed now rather better dressed. He was a delicate-looking young man with a pale face and dark hair pomaded down, the body slight as if it had taken no account of itself since it belonged to a stripling—shoulders birdlike, sloped hips and waist like a dancer’s. All this—as he turned and looked at Mrs. Ironside again—with a sense of yearning, of honey for sale. He vanished behind the bead curtain.
‘I might get the dog done,’ thought Mrs. Ironside, and then aloud, ‘I might get the dog done. I’ve never had the dog done,’ and the groom cocked an ear to see if he was to turn and go to the veterinarian’s in the High Street. But no command came.
A few days later the trap was again outside the studio and Mrs. Ironside handing the dog down to the groom, who carried it in. Mrs. Ironside sat stately and waiting, and time passed. Mrs. Ironside even had to haul on the reins now and then to keep the pony steady, something she was perfectly able to do even in her black stiff costume, having been a farmer’s daughter and well known, before she married Ironside who had made her so rich, for bumping down into Shipley in a shabby old habit on a shabby old cob every Thursday market day.
The groom emerged nervous. There had to be appointments. Yes, he’d said that. Yes, he’d tried—that’s why he had been all this time—and, yes, even for dogs. And dogs was altogether dubious anyway. This Settims didn’t care for dogs. This Settims stood his distance and got out his handkerchief, sneezing, having some nose trouble. He often drew the line at dogs.
Florrie Ironside then flung the reins away and crashed into the studio with the dog hanging down front and back under her arm. The groom stood waiting, and soon watching the arrival and angry departure of a mother with her swansdowned child. The woman recognised the Ironside conveyance and told the groom that her appointment had been cancelled for a dog, and she might even say for a bitch. The groom, who knew when he was well off (for jobs were scarce), looked steadily ahead and did not reply.
Mrs. Ironside was with Signor Settimo a good three-quarters of an hour and emerged flushed with success, and the dog hanging limp even for a dachshund. Over luncheon with her daughter, Molly, she described
the triumphant morning. It had been a struggle to get the better of this Italian even though he was so quiet. He had just stood there at first, watching her and smiling and apologising in a slimy sort of way. He hadn’t given an inch until she had told him where she stood in the town, and Mr. Ironside’s position there, though dead. And that her address was The Mount. Then he’d been decisive and sensibly got on with the job. Not very talkative, though. Well, he’d certainly learned that foreigners in Shipley have to stand back.
Molly said she’d heard that he was a very good photographer and Mrs. Ironside had said, Well, we shall see; and that he was taking a very long time to produce any proofs of his photographs. Three weeks, if you please, three weeks! ‘Pressure of work’—and not able to get away to deliver even in the lunch-hours now, if you please. If you asked her it was all show and lies.
On the day promised for the delivery of the proofs of the portrait of the dog, Mrs. Ironside arranged herself and Molly around the silver tea service in the drawing room at four o’clock as usual and as usual proceeded to eat up all the tea. Signor Settimo was to call at a quarter to five, and an upright chair had been placed for him at an appropriate distance. Mrs. Ironside was for the first time since her widowhood wearing colour—a bunch of cloth violets against the black foulard of her dress above poor old Willy’s good-natured face and wisp of dead hair. Molly across on the humpty was also looking neither one thing nor the other, for her mother in a fit of boredom had said Yes, she might bob her hair, and then in a fit of pique, No, she might not shorten her skirts.
So, ridiculous in flounces below her neat modern little head, Molly sat sideways reading a motoring monthly in which lean girls with flying scarves and cigarette holders clasped in their teeth lay back at the wheels of long chassis and sped across the pages like the wind. Their proud, painted, selfish faces stirred Molly. They rattled her. She said, ‘I’m glad about the violets, Ma. It’s well over the year. Well over. Black, black—it doesn’t suit me and Pa wouldn’t care.’
Her mother stared as if the fireguard had spoken. She said, ‘Your father liked me in black. Black gives authority.’
‘Well, I’d like a sea-green now. I’d like one of those motoring duster-coats and actually a car.’ (And a man, she thought, to get me away. Any man. I wonder what the Eyetie’s like? She’s not used to men. She’ll shred him. Poor old Pa with his belly and his sandy hair.)
A bell rang faintly far away and Mrs. Ironside instructed Molly to eat the last piece of bread and butter. Molly asked if she should order fresh tea but her mother said no, and a maid came in with a package.
‘Where is Mr. Settimo?’
‘He said, mum, he couldn’t wait, mum.’
‘Couldn’t?’
‘Said he couldn’t, mum, pressure of work, mum. Sends his compliments and the bill for the proofs is in the separate envelope.’
Mrs. Ironside thrust up her chin and turned a little blue about the lips and breathed slowly. She slapped down her crumby plate and said, ‘Take the tea things. Give me the package. Why isn’t it on a salver? What! Account! This isn’t an account, it is a ransom. It’s more than a doctor!’
But inside the package was a sleek and knowing hound, each hair gleaming, jokey frown-lines wrinkling between the eyes as if he were the most intelligent animal of the ark, as if he were perhaps even trying to understand Italian. His paddle feet hung down showing his beautifully manicured nails and his ears were lifted charmingly and alertly at the root.
‘Oh, Ma! It’s wonderful! He’s the most wonderful photographer!’
Mrs. Ironside sat all evening in her chair lifting the proofs of the dog one by one, holding them close to her eyes and then at arm’s length. She returned them next day via the groom marked up for enlargement and a note in her wild green ink saying that the account would be settled in full the following week when her considerable order was completed. She gave instructions to the maids that when Mr. Settimo called he was to be shown round to the back door.
But he did not come. Not to either door. Not the next week, nor the one after, nor the one after that. And at last when the groom was sent down to the studio he found a notice in the window saying, Temporarily closed owing to family bereavement in Cremona, and Nellie Staples displaced for a swathe of crepe.
‘Unprofessional,’ said Florrie Ironside. ‘Unnecessary. And what has Cremona got to do with it? I thought it was toffee. He’ll get nowhere if he can’t stick to his last. I’m sure we could never afford to go running about overseas when your father was making his way.’
Molly (eighteen) said, ‘But he’s young, Ma, you know, and he hasn’t any ties. He’s only about twenty.’
‘Forty-five if a day,’ said Florrie, fuming. ‘Foreigners are deceptive. All talk and guile. You should remember what your father used to say about them after we’d been to Dusseldorf for our silver wedding. No—he’ll go bankrupt.’
But later the next day the photographs of the dog were delivered directly to the back door by Signor Settimo’s personal messenger dressed in coffee-coloured uniform and pill-box hat and white gloves under the epaulette. Mind you, May, the maid, said ask her and she’d say it was George Bickerstaffe’s Henry with his face washed and the suit come from that overgrown page at the Regal cinema.
Mrs. Ironside said only, ‘Messenger, my eye,’ and sent for the trap and directed it to Spratpool Street.
In they swept.
‘Mr. Settimo,’ demanded Florence of the girl at the desk, who was in coffee-coloured sateen and jewelled bandeau, writing slowly in an order book with her tongue out.
‘He’s engaged.’
‘Engaged!’
‘He’s with a sitter. I can’t get at him. Not when he’s under the cloth.’
‘Produce him at once. I am Mrs. Ironside.’
The girl knew this. She was Netta Cricklewood of Bogey’s Grocers before being a Shipley solicitor’s tea-girl and she had known Mrs. Ironside from childhood. She sidled off (‘Half an inch of paint and silk stockings’) and returned looking sulky with fear.
‘He says to sit down and take a browse through the albums.’
There was one spindly gold chair, which Florrie regarded with venom while Mollie, who had been brought along, stood at the glass door looking out, hoping for motors.
‘Come away from there,’ said Florrie, ‘D’you want all Shipley to know we’re being kept waiting by a tradesman?’ and she glared at Netta Cricklewood and asked if she wasn’t missing her earlier professional career.
Netta—could it be her portrait above the desk, a sea nymph all bare skin and lip-gloss like a concubine?—Netta, recovering, said, ‘Thank you very much, I’m not missing anything at all these days.’
At last came Settimo, clashing through the bead curtain and bowing out the sitter—an excited shadow—and turning to Mrs. Ironside his gentle and impervious face.
He bowed.
‘I have brought my account.’
‘How very prompt. I am greatly obliged.’
‘The photographs were very late.’
‘I was called away to Cremona.’ He let his eyes drift over her black, and old Willy smiling away on her chest. ‘In Italy we also pay attention to mourning.’
Molly waited for her mother to embark on the sermon about the necessity for the bereaved to allow hard work to deal with grief and how she herself had immediately taken up the reins, winding up a great business with no assistance from anyone, except an only child who knew nothing, not even how to deal with the letters of condolence.
Instead she heard her mother ask if he would photograph her daughter. She, Molly.
Signor Settimo, not wavering by a flicker in Molly’s direction, brushed Netta aside and negotiated the appointment himself in the leather-bound book.
Going home, Molly said, ‘But I don’t want my photograph taken, Ma. Why should I be photographed? I’m not a baby or
a bride. They’ll think you’re trying to get me off.’
‘Nonsense. I want a photograph of you for the drawing room. It’s always wise to have a likeness. You never know what’s going to happen. Look at the Duke of Clarence.’
Molly then wondered if she was going to die and her mother knew something she didn’t. She went up and peered in the glass and decided she looked tubercular and became so taken with the idea that she considered making her will until she remembered that she had no money. She sat looking at her mother that evening, trying to see her sitting there soon alone, and maybe weeping. But Molly had a poor imagination.
When the photographs came, Mrs. Ironside put them aside with scarcely a glance. ‘I’m afraid you haven’t your mother’s presence, Molly.’ Molly, flat-chested, taut, anonymous, sat bemused.
For there had been something very queer about Signor Settimo at the sitting, tip-tapping about the studio floor as if he was in church, arranging the folds of the cloth on a trellis behind her—nearer and nearer, circling nearer, touching her cheekbone at last; directing her head to look now at the Pantheon, now at the Bridge of Sighs and now—just here over his head—at the Campanile at Cremona. His neat little shanks made a pair of back legs for the angular dragonfly that fixed its great eye on her.
Molly was unnerved. Again and yet again she waited tensely for him to slide beneath the pall that was the creature’s back, to crash the great brass plates together, then to plunge under again and call out his muffled directions. Out would dangle an arm holding in its fingers a soft grey rubber bulb on the end of a tube—there’d been something terrible and exactly like it the nurse used to bring when her father was dying—and the fingers would give a sudden expert squeeze and the flash of deadly lightning would strike.
‘These will be very excellent photographs,’ said Signor Settimo.
‘Will they be as good as the dog’s?’
