Last Nocturne

by Marjorie Eccles

  ‘Have another cake, Dulcie,’ commanded her mother, dispensing tea. Because they had company she smiled, showing her beautiful teeth, but her look brooked no refusal. She sat very upright, as always, splendidly corseted, wearing a bronze silk tea-gown trimmed with black velvet, an ecru lace modesty vest at the crossover of her bodice, but only just veiling her magnificent curves. Yet it struck Dulcie that for some reason she didn’t seem as quite in command of herself as she invariably was. It was hard to say just how. She made the usual striking picture behind her tea-table, her head held high and proud on her long neck, around which gleamed the string of large, evenly matched pearls she almost always wore. It was no accident that the colour of the gown gave a subtle depth to her still-glorious hair, which was sculpted and waved, dressed wide, its rich brown enhanced now by gleams of silver. ‘Cake, Dulcie?’ she repeated.

  Dulcie returned her mother’s smile to prevent herself looking mutinous. She hadn’t wanted the first pink-iced fairy cake, tiny as it was, but only a very few people ever argued with Edwina Martagon, and her daughter wasn’t one of them. It was her mother’s oft-stated belief that Dulcie needed ‘filling out’ to complement her height, so that it would become an asset for which many women might envy her, rather than the burden to her it so obviously was. At seventeen, Dulcie ought to have learnt to hold herself straight, with her shoulders back – and she should surely have developed a bosom by now. ‘There’s really nothing at all wrong with your looks, child,’ was her regular admonition. ‘You’re extremely fortunate to have such an excellent complexion and very nice eyes – but why must you be so stubborn about having your hair waved? You won’t be able to wear it scraped and tied back like that when you’re out, you know.’

  Dulcie knew she would never come up to her mother’s expectations and bore these strictures, if not with patience, at least in silence, which unfortunately gave her an air of aloofness and secrecy which irritated Edwina even more. Obediently, she stood up now and lifted the tiered, cut-glass cake-stand. ‘Perhaps Mrs Cadell would like another cake, too?’ she asked politely, offering the prettily decorated fancies on their lace doilies to their visitor.

  Cynthia Cadell stretched out a be-ringed white hand and took one with a smile before returning to the subject they had been discussing: the art exhibition currently running at the Pontifex Gallery and the artists at the centre of it, presently being eulogised by those in pursuit of the latest fad. Mrs Martagon was diverted, and the moment passed without her noticing the absence of another cake on Dulcie’s plate.

  ‘Darling, such outré sorts of persons, these young artists, or at least one assumes so through their paintings… I have never met any of them…but madly intriguing, don’t you think? One can hardly afford to ignore them, though one has to admit that the subjects they paint are not those normally considered – well, artistic, shall we say? Common people and places, and – and that sort of thing,’ said Mrs Cadell delicately, one eye on Dulcie.

  ‘Nudes, don’t you mean? And not very attractive ones at that, I suppose,’ returned Edwina forthrightly, helping herself to another chocolate éclair, lifting a delicious creamy morsel to her mouth on her silver fork. She hadn’t been married to an art dealer for thirty years without learning that since nudes were Art it was permissible to speak about them without embarrassment.

  ‘As a matter of fact, that isn’t quite what I meant, Edwina dear. Plenty of rather sordid subjects perhaps – not very elevating at any rate, to my mind – and there are a few nudes, though nothing actually – improper. I wonder you don’t intend going to the exhibition to see for yourself.’

  ‘I dare say I ought to make the effort. If only to see why it’s on everyone’s lips. But I’m not sure. The Gallery, you know…’ Edwina let her voice trail off and raised a scrap of fine, lace-edged cambric to the corner of a dry eye, as if the gallery Eliot had owned, where he had conducted his business and had held regular exhibitions, brought back unbearable memories, which was not the case; but she was always very careful and watched for adverse reactions when her late husband’s profession was mentioned. In Edwina’s book, buying and selling works of art came perilously close to being in trade, but if this upset her, she had never betrayed it, not even by the flicker of an eyelid. So many people had managed to overlook the connection that Edwina had been able to do the same.

  Dulcie’s heart had given a little jump at the mention of the exhibition. Grace Thurley had already suggested asking permission to visit it, but Dulcie knew that would have been to invite a refusal. Her mother was not in the business of encouraging Dulcie’s artistic ambitions. On the other hand, the surest way to get Edwina to do something she was against was to agree with her, and vice versa. ‘I’m sure you’re right, Mama,’ she murmured. ‘I believe one or two of the exhibits are in fact said to be rather – modern.’ She couldn’t make herself blush, but she could cast her eyes down modestly; and luckily, Edwina didn’t ask how her daughter had come by this particular knowledge.

  ‘Hmm. I’m sure I don’t understand this passion for realism as they’re pleased to call it – it all stems from Abroad, I am convinced.’ Edwina spoke of this suspect place in the same tones as she would have spoken of Sodom and Gomorrah. ‘There’s nothing beautiful to my mind in depicting the seamy side of life…’

  But the dark side of life is all some people know, thought Dulcie – and why shouldn’t art be for and about them – real life, as lived by real people – as well as those living pleasant, sheltered lives?

  ‘…but I am the last woman in the world,’ Edwina went on, ‘as anyone will tell you, not to be open-minded. The last.’

  Then why had the decidedly modern, though admittedly disturbing, Sickert, which her father had hung over the fireplace in his very private study – not to mention the more discreet, classical nudes in different parts of the house – been removed within days of his death?

  ‘However – one cannot judge the merits of any work of art by what other people say, Dulcie. I would have thought you, as someone with artistic leanings, would appreciate that,’ Edwina continued, managing to make Dulcie’s desperate ambition to be an artist sound little more than a hobby along the lines of tooled leather bookmarks and découpage. ‘As your father always said, one should trust one’s own judgement.’

  Dulcie held her breath, sensing the possibility of this particular battle being won. Her father had been the only one who had understood and sympathised with her frantic desire to attend one of the London art schools and to learn how to paint and draw properly, her feeling that talent alone was not enough – or not without some direction. Had he still been alive, she would have been enrolled at one or other of them by now, probably the Slade, instead of having to endure all this useless nonsense about coming out and doing the season. But her mother wouldn’t hear of it and her brother Guy, who was now legally responsible for her, was still too wrapped up in the aftermath of his father’s affairs to be approachable, much less to enter into a battle with his mother.

  ‘Perhaps,’ suggested Mrs Cadell, ‘if it is too painful for you to visit the gallery yourself, Edwina, Dulcie may go along and judge for herself, as you suggest? Your nice Miss Thurley might take her. She seems a sensible creature.’

  Dulcie raised her eyes and realised that help was coming from an unexpected source. Cynthia Cadell, currently her mother’s best friend, was a small, pretty woman with a triangular kitten face and a penchant for gossip with a spice of malice. She purred, but had claws. Yet Dulcie sensed an ally, if only because Mrs Cadell had probably seen the opportunity of outmanoeuvring Edwina, something which did not often happen. Perhaps she, too, had sensed, as Dulcie had, that there was something a little – distraite – about Mama this afternoon, almost as if her mind were on other things.

  ‘Well, I’ll speak to Guy, and see what he thinks,’ Edwina said at last, blinking, looking as though she suspected she’d been trapped, but didn’t quite know how. ‘And Grace – where is the dear girl now, Dulcie?’

&
nbsp; ‘I believe you told her you wouldn’t need her, so she went for a walk.’

  ‘A walk?’ echoed Edwina, who never walked anywhere, other than to take a stroll in the square gardens or around St James’s Park. ‘Alone? Perhaps not quite so sensible, after all, Cynthia. All the same, we’ve all become very fond of Miss Thurley – Grace, we call her, the dear girl, since I’ve known her from the cradle, after all. Her mother and I came out together, you know.’ She omitted to say how many years had passed since then, or that she and Grace had never previously met. ‘But I believe they don’t have the same sense of comme il faut in Birmingham as we do.’

  Dulcie seized the moment. ‘She may be back now. Shall I see if I might find her?’

  ‘Run along, do,’ Edwina answered, dismissing her daughter with evident relief, fluttering a hand. She had large, well shaped and very white hands and used them often and expressively, which was useful to draw attention to her beautiful rings.

  ‘Yes, Mama. Goodbye, Mrs Cadell,’ said Dulcie politely. ‘So nice seeing you.’ She smiled, looking almost pretty, and her large dark eyes said thank you.

  ‘Your girl seems devoted to Miss Thurley already,’ remarked Cynthia, after Dulcie had been allowed to make her escape from the drawing room.

  ‘Devoted,’ agreed Edwina absently.

  It was true that Dulcie – so quiet and watchful – so judgemental at times – appeared to have taken to Grace Thurley, though one never knew with Dulcie. The last thing she would ever do was to confide in her mother. But she and Grace seemed to have made friends, which was a blessing, relieving Edwina of much anxiety as to how to occupy an unwilling daughter during this indeterminate stage between schoolroom and the adult world. Though in truth, Edwina hadn’t yet made up her mind whether Grace as a solution to the problem was going to work out or not. She herself was prepared to like the young woman, who seemed discreet and pleasant, and had worked so very efficiently at organising Edwina’s rather more than chaotic private affairs. But she’d occasionally caught a look of irony in her eyes which warned Edwina not to take her for granted. ‘She’s certainly very agreeable,’ she temporised.

  ‘My impression exactly when I met her the other day. And deliciously pretty, too. You’ll have to keep an eye on her where Guy is concerned, dear Edwina. Every mama of my acquaintance has him in her sights,’ rejoined Cynthia, smiling, watching Edwina carefully. She too, had a marriageable daughter. And, lurking somewhere in the background, a husband, whom she seemed constantly to be misplacing, like a lost pair of spectacles – until he was called upon to repay her persistent bridge and dressmaking debts, which he did with great reluctance, and only after a tremendous show-down. The result was that Mrs Cadell was chronically short of money, and it was her mission in life, to which she was dedicated with absolute and utter ruthlessness, to see that her Virginia should not make the same mistake as she had.

  ‘What? Guy?’ demanded Edwina sharply. ‘In that case, they may be disappointed. Amongst other things, he’s come home with some strange idea that he will never marry, if you please. Quite maddening.’

  Maddening to distraction, if the truth were told, though she wouldn’t have let her dearest Cynthia see this, not for the world, especially since she knew what Cynthia was angling after, something she was determined to prevent at all costs. Edwina could do better than silly, penniless little Virginia Cadell for Guy. He was, after all, her only son – their only child, in fact, for thirteen years – until Dulcie was born. But that led to matters best not dwelt upon, she thought, a little lurch of the heart taking her back two hours, and noticing a little belatedly how Mrs Cadell’s smiling little triangular cat face had become avid with curiosity. She ought to have remembered: Cynthia missed nothing – and by the way – ‘You are looking particularly smart today, Cynthia dear. It must be your new dressmaker – what is her name, again?’

  ‘Lucile, Edwina. Surely you must remember. Everyone’s mad about her.’

  ‘No, I forgot. You know how bad my memory sometimes is – which is only to be expected when I have so much on my mind.’ But of course Edwina remembered Lucile now – the newest fad, a provocative dressmaker who was taking rich society women by storm with her daring – and perhaps not quite nice – creations. Original, however. Cynthia’s dress was in shades of green and amber that reflected the colour of her eyes. Clever Cynthia.

  ‘The young can be too provoking,’ murmured the lady in question, bringing Edwina back to the point with a gentle prod.

  ‘Yes, too vexatious of the boy, but what can one do?’ Edwina gave an amused lift of her shoulders to indicate the subject closed.

  Cynthia, however, was on the scent, and not to be put off. ‘Darling, one assumes he meant it as a joke? Though one hasn’t seen him around much since he came home…’

  ‘Oh, you know Guy. He doesn’t make those sort of jokes. I’m sure he means what he says. At the moment he’s more interested in winding up his father’s affairs – which is only right and proper, of course – than in looking for a wife. If he thinks of anything else, it’s of righting the world’s wrongs. A phase which will, of course, pass,’ replied his mother, untroubled, as ever, by uncertainties. But then, she couldn’t help the sigh that escaped her. ‘No girl’s going to want him, however, if he does nothing but glower – and the annoying part is that he can be so charming when he wants to be.’

  ‘Of course he can. We all know what Guy was like as a boy. But my dear, I hardly think you need worry. Those dark, moody looks are madly attractive. And I do believe girls see a little disdainfulness as a challenge.’

  ‘Do they?’

  Edwina was very well aware of the romantic attraction her son had for marriageable young girls, which made his indifference to them all the more infuriating. ‘Talking trivialities to silly young women bores me,’ he told his mother, unanswerably. His manners could be casual, not to say off-hand – unless he drilled himself into being polite on necessary occasions which, to give him his due, he generally did. Yet, quite apart from the respectable fortune inherited from his father, his enigmatic personality intrigued those silly young women he so despised. Exotic adventures in foreign parts which one could only guess at had kept him away from home for years and, as well as making him tanned, athletic and fit, had endowed him with a mysterious aloofness which made him all the more sought-after as a desirable parti. But on his return after his father’s death he had not, as his mother had expected, plunged back into society, taken up a man-about-town’s existence like the other young men with whom he’d been at school. Edwina felt she no longer knew her son as she had done once. He had a left England a smooth-skinned, fresh-faced boy; he had returned hard and lean, sunburnt and taciturn. A man, and one of whom, sometimes, even she could be a little afraid.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Scarcely had the door closed behind Cynthia Cadell before Edwina rushed back to her room. It had already been tidied and bore no signs of the ravages of a couple of hours ago. She rang for Manners and the maid, with a frightened face, appeared, as if fearing her mistress was about to make a delayed scene over what had occurred before she had gone downstairs to preside over her tea-table. But Edwina merely ordered her to dab some cologne on her aching forehead, unlace her and unpin her hair so that she might lie down, then leave her undisturbed until it was time to dress for dinner.

  When Manners had gone, she lay down on her bed and closed her eyes. Despite the cologne, a fierce headache throbbed at her temples. Freed at last from the discipline of the last hour and a half, when she’d been unable to show any sign of the emotion churning her stomach, her thoughts raced back uncontrollably to that incredible half hour before she’d been forced to take hold of herself and descend the staircase to perform her duties as hostess.

  A routine afternoon, that’s all it had seemed to promise, as she sat comfortably en déshabillé in her warm, scented, luxurious bedroom, changing for the afternoon. She would have thought her social life quite wanting had she not been compelled to change he
r clothes several times a day, according to the needs of each event. It would be an unforgivable social faux pas to appear inappropriately dressed for the occasion: a blouse with a high-boned collar and a skirt for morning, another outfit for luncheon, or for whatever the afternoon had to offer; and again a change for the evening – sometimes twice, if dinner was later followed by a concert or the opera, say.

  Waiting impatiently for Manners to bring in the tea-gown she’d chosen to wear, and which the woman had been sent to re-press after Edwina had declared that the pleats in the godet at the front were not sharp enough, she’d seated herself at her dressing table and reached for her powder puff to touch up her complexion (or rather touch down, for her high facial colour, which had become more pronounced as she grew older, sometimes contrasted a little too vividly with her white arms and shoulders). She did not, however, consider herself by any means a spent force at forty-eight. Though she was putting on a little weight – she had such a sweet tooth! – she had very few lines or wrinkles, and her reflection as she regarded her splendid shoulders and the regal carriage of her head in her mirror underlined the knowledge that she was still a desirable woman. An additional confirmation, had she required it, was Bernard Aubrey.

  Despite her habitual self-control, a sigh escaped her. Bernard wasn’t yet her lover, though no one she knew would have raised an eyebrow if he had been. Truth to tell, she was growing a little impatient with his dilatoriness, rich and titled though he was. Not that she’d any fault to pick with Bernard himself: everyone who knew him adored him, for he was never less than agreeable and amusing; he hated controversy and could always be guaranteed to dissipate any awkward situation which might arise, usually by means of a little harmlessly malicious gossip or an amuse bouche, a small diversion. An amiable man with unremarkable looks, sandy hair and a penchant for beautiful rings, of which he wore two different ones each day, one on each of his long, beautifully shaped hands, he came from a rich, titled family but was known affectionately to all simply as Bernard. He lived in a bachelor apartment just off Berkeley Square, which he’d furnished with choice antiques and works of art, and had no need to work, since he’d inherited enough money to keep him in unostentatious luxury. An invitation to one of his small but exquisite luncheons was much sought after and Edwina’s relationship with him was regarded as something of a trophy to be chalked up. An engagement announcement, now that she was a widow, was expected after the required lapse of time.