This was what Mag had told her about. Incredibly, here was tangible proof of a truth she had never quite been able to accept. Although later she was to fill the studio with fresh flowers every day, she was not ready for it yet. Stepping out of the car, she dropped on her knees and contented herself with breathing in the fragrance all around her while gently touching a single petal of a single white daisy.
Nick, watching her, saw a classical shepherdess in a field of asphodels, and, in seeing her thus, failed to see her at all. His fingers itching for brush and palette, he looked at his watch. “Come on, Venus, we’ve still a lot to do to-day.”
Both of them burdened with the purchases he had made that morning, they followed the path single file across the field to the barn and a small green door let into the stone foundations.
As Psyche discovered on the following day, when she went exploring on her own, there was a door on the other side of the barn that gave access to a dim world of empty stalls, mounds of dusty hay, and the disintegrating remnants of a long-disused farm wagon. But the door that Nick now unlocked opened on nothing but an enclosed staircase, up which they mounted.
No one who had ever been to Nick’s studio had failed to stop at the head of the stairs and pay immediate tribute to the striking beauty of its proportions. The cathedral vault of the beamed roof, finding an apex in a single mighty roof-tree, framed, at the far end of the room, an immense triangular window that was in itself almost the entire north wall. The east and west walls, against which were clustered groupings of well-proportioned modem furniture, were lined with brilliant canvasses. And, supported by the wide pine planking of a floor sanded and waxed to a clean, pale beige, were an easel, work-table, and model’s stand which, close to the great north window, made up a still-life study oddly attractive in that setting.
“This must be the most beautiful room in the world,” Psyche said quietly.
Nick looked around him with the pleasure he always felt when he returned to this place after any absence from it, but he was not given to exposing his feelings, even in so unimportant an instance as this.
“It will do. Take a look at the rest of the place, and then we’ll eat. I’m hungry as the devil. Kitchen, bedroom, and bath are behind you. The bedroom will be yours for as long as you stay. I’ll use one of the couches out here.”
Turning to face the south end of the studio, Psyche saw a wall, broken by three doors, that rose to a height of about eight feet, at which point a false ceiling ran back to the outside wall. Raising her eyes to this high isosceles section of the outer wall, she saw sunlight striking through the rich colours of a circular stained-glass window, the single eccentricity that Nick had allowed himself when he had had the old barn made over. Fascinated, as she always was, by any harmony of colour, she did not at once look away. And, as her gaze lingered, a memory, buried so deep within her it could scarcely be termed a memory, stirred, and the multicoloured patten of the window seemed to resolve itself into symmetrical bits and pieces, each one a tiny rainbow in itself. Behind these shimmering splinters of light she saw a different set of shapes, mounting one upon another in a spiral curve that she must, must—must see clearly.
She struggled to bring the memory into focus, her whole being concentrated in an effort so terrible that when it faded instead of clarifying, leaving her with a reality that now reminded her of nothing at all, she felt faint and ill.
“Nick——”
“What is it, Venus?”
Her face paper-white, swaying on her feet, she said, “I feel sick.”
He came quickly across the room to her, and led her to a deep chair facing the north window. “The drive was probably too much for you. You aren’t used to that sort of thing. Sit here, and stay still. I’ll make some coffee.”
Psyche heard him, but she made no effort to reply. Her eyes fixed on a green sweep of field, a rise of wooded hill, and a segment of blue sky, she faced the knowledge that it was neither the drive, nor the unpremeditated wrenching asunder of her life, that had so upset her, but something else that, though suggested in some way by these events, yet had nothing to do with them. In the night and morning just past she had brushed close against a long-closed door, not once but twice, and had twice sheered away from it in spite of herself. One can remember a dream on waking, draw it piece by piece from the subconscious. She knew this, because she had so often successfully done it. And, if one wants to, one can usually retrieve an elusive memory. Why then had she not remembered whatever it was that had hovered so near to her, when she had tried so hard to do so? Was it because there was something that she did not want to recall, or simply because it was so very long ago? And why should she have been frightened? For she had been frightened, very.
“Here’s your coffee. Feel better now?”
She looked up to see Nick standing beside her, and knew that she was glad he was there.
“Nick—is it possible for a person to remember anythin’ that ever happened to them?”
“Possible, but not probable.”
“You mean that it’s all there like, but you can’t get to it.”
“That’s right. Old memories have to be properly cued.”
“Cued?”
“Eat while you talk, or you’re wasting time.” He gestured toward a plate of sandwiches that he had put down, without her noticing it, on a small table beside her. “A cue is a thing, person, spoken word, or situation that reminds one of something else through an association of ideas. Memory is usually aroused by some present similarity to the past.”
“I see,” Psyche said slowly. “As if, for instance, you had once seen an odd-lookin’ house with a dog in front of it. If you saw the house again, you would remember the dog even though he wasn’t there no longer.”
Nick’s lean face creased in a smile part humorous, part derisive. “There’s fish in those sandwiches. Keep eating. They say it’s brain food.”
Psyche’s thoughtful expression changed briefly to one of mockery that more than matched his. “You eat. It’s your brains I’mpickin’.”
Nick’s spontaneous laughter echoed against the high, beamed roof. “I think we will get on well together, you and I, Venus. You go on surprising me. Can you cook, too?”
“Well enough. Can a person remember as far back as when they was three?”
“Sometimes. Not usually.”
“Could you do it just by tryin’ hard enough?”
“Unlikely, without a psychiatrist’s help. Even then you might not.”
“What’s a psychiatrist?”
“A doctor who specializes in the study of the mind.”
Getting up from the edge of the model’s stand where he had been sitting. Nick lit a cigarette, and began to pace restlessly around the studio.
“Psychiatrist—psychiatrist,” Psyche repeated under her breath. Always before she had thought of going forward, to come at last full circle. She had never thought of looking backward down the valley of the years. Now that the possibility had occurred to her, she was not at all sure she liked the idea, and was painfully puzzled by her own instinctive withdrawal from it.
“If you’ve finished, go and sit over there,” Nick said, and pointed to the model’s stand.
“Then what do I do?”
“Nothing. Just sit. And don’t talk.”
“Can I smoke?”
“If you like.”
“I ain’t got no cigarettes.”
Taking a package of cigarettes from his pocket, he tossed them to her. “Tell me when you want more. Now be a good girl, and keep quiet. I want to think.”
“What about?”
“You. How I’m going to paint you.”
For perhaps twenty minutes he circled her, studying her from every angle, his eyes narrowed in a frowning face. Then, without warning, he came to a halt in front of her, and said abruptly, “Go and have a bath, wash your hair, and put on one of the blouses and skirts you’ll find in the bedroom. A white blouse. I can’t even see you, the way you ar
e.”
A crimson flush stained Psyche’s cheeks. Biting her lip, she looked down at her telltale hands. She had meant to wash them as soon as she arrived at the studio. With no habit of cleanliness of this kind to guide her, she had entirely forgotten her intention. Getting up without any of her usual grace, she walked stiffly toward the bedroom.
Nick, watching her go, was well aware of her embarrassment, but made no move to alleviate it.
That Psyche should revel in being clean, and that he should spend a good part of the next few days hammering on the bathroom door while she luxuriated in hot, and at first over-perfumed, baths, was something that he had not anticipated. He had thought he would probably have to wash at least her neck for her, and in all likelihood be scratched for his pains.
When she finally emerged, nearly an hour and a half later, he greeted her with a long, low whistle, and a smile for once completely free of irony.
“Can you see me now?”
If he had had any lingering doubts as to the wisdom of bringing her to the studio, they were discarded there and then. For in her he now saw clearly what he might have searched for in vain for the rest of his life, an unselfconscious beauty with no trace of sophistication; a beauty in no way childish, yet unmarred by any worldliness.
“I can see you, Venus.”
And as the sound of his own voice died on the warm quiet of the afternoon, he knew how he most wanted to paint her. He had called her Venus half in tribute and half in jest, but the picture already taking shape before his mind’s eye would be tribute alone —to a young Venus, a young goddess of the love of which the poets sang, the untouchable personification of an unattainable ideal.
He saw her against a background of swirling grey mist touched by golden dawnlight, her figure moulded by the flowing simplicity of classical white drapery. Mist that obscured the arms; the Milo Venus echoed but not duplicated. A dawn that reflected the gold of her hair, but did not compete with it. In spite of the classical pose, the painting that he now saw, as vividly as though he had already completed it, was that of a comparatively well-clad, essentially modern Venus. A twentieth-century Venus with slim hips, long legs, and shoulder-length hair.
5
AN ability to live in the moment was a talent that Psyche had developed to the full during years when uncurbed restlessness would have led only to frustration bordering on madness. now she used this talent to put behind her the knowledge that the studio could never be more than a temporary shelter, while at the same time making use of every possible opportunity to prepare herself for a future in which she was unlikely to have even such an uncertain protector as nick.
Like a plant buried by accident too deep in the soil, she had grown up with her potentialities for the most part latent, her patient hopes for the future based simply on the inevitable passage of time. That her insatiable thirst for knowledge had made her at all times an active participant in the patterning of her life, she had not seen at all. Now, as the days went by, she realized more and more clearly how much she could do for herself, and the realization was as heady as wine, sharpening her already quick perception, stimulating her powers of observation and assimilation.
Understanding that at this stage Nick would help her to learn only in so far as that learning made her a more acceptable companion, she allowed him to initiate ideas that, if she had proposed them herself, he would probably have ignored.
Accustomed to a solitary life, she in no way resented, was scarcely even aware of, the fact that she was almost as cut off from the world as she had been at the shack. Accepting without question Nick’s statement that she must for her own protection stay away from people for a time, sensing no ulterior motive on his part, she explored with an inexhaustible interest and curiosity that limited but beautiful corner of the universe in which she found herself.
Nick, unhurried by time or weather, was, once his preliminary sketches were finished, more relaxed than she would have thought possible. His demands on her time and endurances were reasonable, and, although he was as profane as ever, his sardonic smile was proof that he felt no irritation. Working steadily on a full-length canvas that promised, even in its inception, to be the best work he had ever done, he treated her with the tolerent kindness he might have shown to an amusingly precocious child.
The correcting of her grammar was something that he undertook, not on her behalf, but because he found it an increasing offense to himself. To have his idealized Venus, after an enforced silence, step down from the model’s stand and abominate his conception of her the moment she opened her mouth was more than he could bear. That she should prove as apt a pupil in this as in everything else failed to surprise him only because of his absolute lack of interest in her as a person. He had wanted her to be clean because, fastidious himself, he refused to live under the same roof with anyone who was not. That cleanliness should become, almost overnight, a fetish with her, he regarded as his own good luck. The satisfaction and sense of well-being that she derived from it meant nothing to him. In the same way he accepted her willingness to improve her English as a fortunate accident, without once marveling at the mind that so quickly and easily absorbed all it was taught. Only in the realm of the purely physical did he question the stamp of the environment in which he had discovered her.
One day, laying down his brush and flexing cramped fingers, he said, “Venus, yours it not, thank God, the kind of face that wins beauty contests. Nevertheless, one of your parents must have been something quite out of the ordinary.”
Psyche’s husky voice was almost harsh. “Why not the both of them!”
“The both! That excruciating grammar of yours is tearing my sensitivities to shreds. How can anyone look so lovely and sound so terrible?”
“You’re tryin’ to put me off by makin’ me mad, ain’—aren’t you? Why couldn’t the—I mean, why not both of them?”
“Just couldn’t be, Venus. You wouldn’t be here if they had been.”
“You think they—weren’t married?”
Nick looked at her curiously. “I wasn’t actually thinking of that. Would it matter?”
“Of course.”
“Why?”
There was a setness to her expression that he had not seen before, and her voice was positive. She seemed daring him to contradict her. “Decent folks who have children always are married. Mag said so. And not you nor nobody else is goin’ to say my parents aren’t decent people.”
“Don’t drop your g’s,” he said absently, while he absorbed her use of the present tense and all that it implied. “This is something you have apparently thought about a great deal, Venus?”
“Yes, I have.”
“Then how do you explain” He allowed the sentence to go unfinished.
Psyche’s troubled eyes sought the window and the sunlit green of the summer afternoon, and her mouth was no longer set but vulnerable with an old hurt. “I must have got lost. I’m just lost— that’s all.”
Briefly Nick had some inkling of just how lost she was, and an unusual compassion moved him to say, “You might be right, Venus. Perhaps you did just get lost, who knows how, and so I should have said——” He paused, and smiled, “—the both of them.”
“You mean that, Nick? Mag didn’t never really believe it. About me gettin’—getting lost, I mean. But kids, kids near on to three, as I was, do sometimes get lost and not found, don’t they?”
He would have been prepared to wager a large sum of money that she had been left on the doorstep of the shack by a mother who had known briefly, but not briefly enough, a man with more quality than conscience. However, when he replied, he did not betray his thoughts. “It could quite easily have happened that way, Venus.”
It was the first time Psyche’s inner belief, that she had not been cast off deliberately, had ever been supported from outside, and from that moment on she never allowed it to waver again.
Seeing the brilliance of her smile, Nick knew a fleeting compunction. Then, with a mental shrug, h
e decided that if she needed a fiction of this sort to sustain her, there was no harm in her having one. That he had given her, instead of a temporary reassurance, something of lasting consequence, he did not know then, and never did know.
“Well,” he said, “are you ready to pose again?”
Psyche nodded. “I’m not at all tired now.”
“Good. On two counts. You said that like a lady who wouldn’t recognize an ‘ain’t’ if she tripped over one.”
“I know it,” Psyche said demurely. She knew too, as she again took up the pose that was becoming almost second nature to her, that she now really liked this man. Without moving her head even a fraction of an inch, her glance slid sideways to watch him as he set to work again, and she thought, “I would go on liking him even if I didn’t like him”—and knew exactly what she meant by the apparent contradiction.
Later, when the day’s work was ended, when the mellow light of sunset muted the gaudy fresco of colours on Nick’s palette, she turned from the model’s stand toward the great north window. Her elbows resting on the edge of an open section, her chin cupped in her hands, she knew that she was happier, more at peace with herself, than she had ever been.
Watching the summer evening close in over a scene that, though now familiar, still seemed scarcely believable, she knew that she would remember it oftenest as it was just then, with the first star glowing above the dark lace of tree-tops sharply outlined against a cloudless, slowly darkening sky.
“Venus.”
Psyche did not turn her head. “Yes, Nick?”
“Have we any more rags anywhere?”
Laughter threaded itself through her reply. “Plenty. In a drawer in the kitchen.”
“What the devil’s so amusing?”
Looking around, seeing his frowning face, she said, still laughing, “Sunset. Rags. Nothin’ at all.”
Contemplating her, he said slowly, “You’ve changed since you came here. How long is it? Three weeks—four?”
“I’ll get your rags for you,” Psyche told him, no longer even smiling.
Psyche Page 18
