Beauty in Thorns

by Kate Forsyth

  Georgie knew that Maria Zambaco had returned from Paris. Topsy had told her, in his usual brusque way. He had become close friends with Maria’s cousin Aglaia Coronio, who had been one-third of the famous Three Graces. Georgie knew that Ned had never truly recovered from his affair with Madame Zambaco. Her beautiful, melancholy face had continued to appear in his paintings. She was Nimue, the cruel enchantress who beguiled and enchanted Merlin, snakes writhing through her dark-red hair. She was Venus, standing at the edge of a pool, draped in transparent gauze, haloed. She was an angel, playing a flageolet.

  Yet it was the painting of The Tree of Forgiveness that had proved to Georgie that Maria Zambaco’s claws were still deep in Ned’s flesh. It seemed that all she had to do was smile and beckon, and Ned would go to her. It still hurt, even after all these years.

  In Rottingdean, though, Ned was all hers. They walked on the Downs together, she read to him whilst he painted as she had done when they were first married, and at night they played a game of draughts. Phil and Margot lay on the grass under the apple trees, Phil drawing and Margot reading. Huge black-and-golden bees buzzed in the sweetbriar roses. Swifts darted in and out of the eaves.

  Soon after they arrived, a tinker came and played the fiddle on the green. Ned loved music, and went out to listen. Georgie and Margot watched from the window, as the tinker’s daughter – a grubby little mite of about four – began to dance. Her face was solemn, her steps careful and precise, and she held up her ragged skirt with both small hands, showing filthy bare feet. Most people hurried past, throwing the occasional penny into the tinker’s hat, but Ned watched to the very end. The little girl finished and curtseyed to him. Ned raised his hat to her, then poured all the pennies in his pocket into her eagerly outstretched hands. Her thin face was transfigured with joy. Then Ned nodded to the tinker and wished him good day.

  Georgie heard Margot give a deep sigh, and put her arm about her.

  ‘Truly, your father is a good man,’ she whispered.

  Margot nodded, and laid her head against her mother’s arm.

  That night, sitting by the fire, Ned began a new project. He carefully drew a circle in the middle of a new notebook and sketched lightly within it. When he was satisfied with his design, he carefully tinted it with a thin brush dipped in his palette of watercolours.

  ‘What are you drawing, Papa?’ Margot asked. It was the first time she had addressed her father directly in a long time.

  ‘I want to paint the beautiful old names of flowers.’ Ned showed her the page. He had painted an angel with red wings, caught in a swirling blue cloud. The angel’s arms were raised high as if trying to protect his head.

  There was not a single flower in the little painting.

  ‘But where is the flower?’ Margot asked.

  ‘I don’t want to paint the flowers themselves,’ Ned said. ‘Any poor fool could do that. No, I want to wring their secret from them. I want the names and the picture to be one soul together, indissoluble, as if they could not exist apart.’

  ‘What flower is that, then?’ Margot asked, leaning over in interest.

  ‘Can’t you guess?’ Ned asked.

  ‘Love-in-a-mist?’

  Ned crowed with delight. ‘You’re right!’

  Margot was pleased. ‘What flower shall you do next?’

  ‘What would you like me to do?’

  ‘Rose? Daisy? Buttercup?’ Phil suggested, and Ned frowned.

  ‘That sounds like you’re calling the cows home at night. No, no. I need flower names that seem to have some kind of hidden meaning to them. A story, or a fairytale. Something mysterious and magical.’

  ‘Like Traveller’s Joy,’ Margot suggested. ‘Or Adder’s Tongue.’

  ‘Yes!’ Ned drew a scrap of paper towards him and scribbled down the names.

  ‘Meadowsweet?’ she suggested.

  Ned was already sketching designs.

  Georgie looked at the two heads bent over the page, names of flowers flying back and forth, and smiled.

  Ned had a new studio built at the Grange that Christmas, at the end of the garden.

  Georgie was sure he had wanted it so that Madame Zambaco could visit him there without any risk of being seen from the house. It had its own separate entrance so that models and tradesmen need not go through the house, and – Georgie had heard – Maria Zambaco had leased a house on the same street, only a block away.

  To get to the studio, Ned had to walk through the garden, which had a copse of trees like an old forest and then a meadow of wild flowers. He was too sick that winter to use it much, but when spring came he had a skylight installed and a pot-bellied stove to keep the room warm. He began to go to the studio every day, enjoying the walk through the bluebell wood and the wild meadow. Many of the paintings he had been working on were carried down to the studio, and Georgie took the chance to give the long room in the house a thorough spring-clean.

  One day, in late summer, a parcel of paints was mistakenly delivered to the house. It was a beautiful day, so Georgie untied her apron and took the parcel down to the studio herself. The walk was an enchanting one, through beds of hollyhocks and foxgloves, with plums and cherries beginning to swell on the trees.

  She slowed as she approached the studio, not wanting to disturb Ned at his work. Not hearing any sounds, she knocked lightly, then went inside.

  Ned lay asleep on his couch, one hand tucked under his bearded cheek. He looked so peaceful there, Georgie carefully covered him up with a rug, then bent and kissed his brow.

  Light poured in through the windows, illuminating the paintings hung on the walls or propped up on trestles. She saw a large painting of a prince in armour standing at the edge of a rose-briar wood, other knights lying entangled in the thorns, caught in an enchanted sleep. There was a giant wheel of fortune, with naked men bound to it, turned by the hand of a terrible goddess. And there were dozens of gouache studies for paintings of Perseus and Andromeda, her white naked body glowing out of the darkness. Georgie turned away from those, and only then saw the tall narrow canvas set on the trestle at the far end of the room.

  It was a painting of King Cophetua and the beggar-maid. Georgie recognised it at once, from the poem by Alfred Tennyson. The king – dark-skinned and black-haired – sat in his ornate armour, his helmet on his knee, looking up at the young woman, who sat above him dressed in grey rags that left her arms and feet bare.

  The beggar-girl gazed straight out of the painting, meeting Georgie’s eyes. It was like gazing into a mirror. She had Georgie’s chestnut-brown hair, her clear blue-grey eyes. In one hand, she clutched a bouquet of red anemones. Georgie gazed at them in amazement. She knew that, in the symbolic language of flowers, anemones meant forsaken love. They were the first flowers to open in spring, and the first to die. They were said to have sprung from the blood of Adonis, the god of beauty and desire. She wondered what it meant, that Ned had painted her this way.

  He had painted her only once since that dreadful depiction of her as chilly Winter. Again Georgie had been shown with a book in her hand, a blue pansy used as a bookmark. Her dark hair was dragged down over her temples, her jaw set, her expression thin-lipped and severe. Georgie had hated it. Even Phil had been moved to protest, saying, ‘Really, Papa, must you make Mammy look so cross?’ Ned had put the portrait away, its face to the wall, and not tried to paint her again.

  This picture of the king and the beggar-maid was quite different. The look on her face was grave but composed, and seemed to show a certain pluck as she faced her future as the new queen. The beggar-maid was not beautiful, just as Georgie was not beautiful. It seemed as if it was her goodness, her simplicity, her steadfast courage, that had so enraptured the king.

  Something new and warm swelled in her chest. Georgie put the parcel on the table and tiptoed out, wondering what it all meant.

  ‘But what do you mean?’ Ned gazed at Topsy in horror. ‘You’re standing on boxes on street corners? Shouting at people?’

 
‘Mmmm-hmmm.’ Topsy piled his plate high with bacon and eggs. ‘And wearing sandwich boards too, old chap. Anything to get the word across.’

  ‘But … your poetry … your designs …’

  ‘No bloody time for all that now.’

  Ned was distressed. ‘Any old fellow can spout speeches, Topsy. But not one man in a thousand can do what you do.’

  ‘Well, the thing is most people aren’t so good at giving speeches, especially me. I can’t figure why poetry is so easy and a speech so hard, when one rhymes and the other doesn’t. Which is why I need your help.’ Topsy turned to Georgie.

  ‘Mine?’

  ‘Well, yes. I’m working on a speech and I thought … if I could read it to you … you could make suggestions for me … and maybe tell me if it’s got anything of worth in it.’

  As he spoke, Georgie felt herself begin to blush. Topsy had once brought the novel he was writing for her to read, with exactly the same request. She had had to gently tell him to put it away. It had laid out the strange geometry of love between her and Topsy and Ned far too clearly for her liking.

  But Topsy was rushing on heedlessly. ‘The speech is in Oxford, to talk about the importance of art, and it’s too good an opportunity to pass up talking about other things too. But I want to do a good job.’

  ‘How about you talk and I make notes on things that occur to me, and then we can go over it together?’ Georgie suggested, rising to go and fetch pen and paper. Ned sighed and went to work on one of his cartoons for a stained glass window, while Margot quietly cleared the table so they could all work there together.

  Topsy picked up his sheaf of scribbled pages and began to read aloud.

  ‘You may well think I am not here to criticise any special school of art or artists, or to plead for any special style, or to give you any instructions, however general, as to the practice of the arts. Rather I want to take counsel with you as to what hindrances may lie in the way towards making art what it should be, a help and solace to the daily life of all men,’ he said.

  Georgie gazed at him, the ink on the nib of her pen drying. Topsy talked on, frank and brusque and passionate as ever, occasionally stopping to tear at his mop of grey curls as he tried to express what he meant.

  ‘Without beating about the bush, let us consider what the real state of art is,’ he said. ‘I must ask you to extend the word art beyond those matters which are consciously works of art, to take in not only painting and sculpture, and architecture, but the shapes and colours of all household goods, nay, even the arrangement of the fields for tillage and pasture, the management of towns and of our highways of all kinds; in a word, to extend it to the aspect of the externals of our life.’

  Ned had stopped in his sketching to gaze at his old friend. Margot sat with her book laid down in her lap.

  ‘For I must ask you to believe that every one of the things that goes to make up the surroundings among which we live must be either beautiful or ugly, either elevating or degrading to us, either a torment and burden to the maker of it to make, or a pleasure and a solace to him.’ Topsy stopped, cleared his voice, brought the papers close to his eyes, then far away, squinting as if trying to read his own handwriting.

  ‘What kind of an account shall we be able to give to those who come after us of our dealings with the earth, which our forefathers handed down to us still beautiful, in spite of all the thousands of years of strife and carelessness and selfishness?’

  As he spoke, Georgie felt a fierce flame leap up in her, a desire to create beauty and save the world.

  ‘Art is man’s expression of joy in his labour,’ Topsy said, and then, as he reached the end of his speech, ‘One man with an idea in his head is in danger of being considered a madman; two men with the same idea in common may be foolish, but can hardly be mad; ten men sharing an idea begin to act, a hundred draw attention as fanatics, a thousand and society begins to tremble, a hundred thousand and there is war abroad, and the cause has victories tangible and real; and why only a hundred thousand? You and I who agree together, it is we who have to answer that question!’

  Georgie clapped her hands. ‘Oh, Tops, it’s wonderful!’

  ‘Too long,’ Ned grumbled. ‘And too much about the proletariat.’

  Topsy gazed at him, wounded.

  ‘Well, that’s interesting, because I think there was not enough about the proletariat so it means Topsy must have got it just right,’ Georgie said. This was an old joke, inspired by what Gabriel had always said whenever anyone criticised his work. Both Ned and Topsy laughed and the slight was forgotten.

  But there was a fissure between the two men that had never been there before, and it troubled her. Ned was unhappy. He could not bear that Topsy was turning his back on his art and entering politics.

  He tried to explain his feelings to Georgie. ‘A man should do what he was put on this earth to do. Topsy is a poet and an artist and a maker of beautiful things. His work enriches all of our lives. A man like that shouldn’t be marching about wearing political slogans on sandwich boards, and standing on boxes ranting like a madman. It demeans him, and his work.’

  ‘He feels passionately that there is so much wrong with this world,’ Georgie protested. ‘Children begging barefoot in the snow, and poor old folk forced to labour in workhouses, and rich men getting richer and filling their houses with ugly useless things that were made in factories by people so poor they cannot rest for even a moment, in fear of losing their jobs. It’s like slavery! He wants to jolt the world awake, make them see the evil that lives right under their noses.’

  ‘A man’s art should say all that he wants to say,’ Ned argued. ‘Art is what will change the world, not shouting at people.’

  ‘But Topsy wants to change the world now. He cannot bear to have to wait, and just hope that things will change. He’s trying to force change.’

  ‘But people don’t like to be shouted at,’ Ned objected. ‘Isn’t it better to create something that fills a man’s life with beauty, and makes him long to do better? You know I am always on the side of rebellion, and witchcraft, and all unlucky causes anywhere, Georgie. I want to change the world too. But I want to do it with my art, not by marching in streets and arguing with people.’

  Ned pointed at his painting of King Cophetua and the Beggar-Maid. ‘Don’t you see? The king has everything a man could want, a crown and jewels and a kingdom. But then he sees the beggar-maid … who has nothing … and he realises then that all he has is worthless without love. That is what I want the world to know.’

  Georgie had to turn away, unable to speak.

  Whenever she thought she had armoured her heart, Ned pierced all her defences and made her love him more fiercely than ever before.

  6

  Standing Stones

  Summer 1884

  Margot sat curled up on the window-seat, pretending to be reading. Her parents were arguing in hushed tones at the far end of the room, and she wanted to know what they were saying.

  ‘Don’t be so absurd, Ned,’ Mama said. ‘She is only going to Scotland, not to the wilds of Africa, and her brother will be with her. Margot will be perfectly fine.’

  ‘I have such a terrible feeling of foreboding,’ Papa said, hunched in his chair by the fire. ‘Something bad is going to happen, I know.’

  ‘Sssh,’ Mamma said. ‘Don’t put any ideas into her head. This will be a good thing for her. She’s eighteen years old now and should be having fun with people her own age.’

  ‘Why must my beloveds always grow up and go away?’ Papa asked miserably.

  ‘You have to let her go, Ned,’ Mama said. ‘You have to let her grow up.’

  Margot did not know how she felt about the trip to Scotland. All sorts of anxieties assailed her. What if Sally and Lily Norton did not like her anymore? It had been quite a few years since they had last met. And they were American. She imagined them brash, loud, assertive. Their father she remembered dimly as a stern-faced man with a bristly white moustache and
a shining pink dome of a head. He was a great champion of Pre-Raphaelite art, her father had said. He had taken a number of paintings to America after their first exhibition in Russell Square, and had continued to buy and promote their art in the United States.

  In the end, Margot found she had nothing to fear. Mr Norton was kindly and avuncular, and his daughters Sally and Lily were cheerful, kind-hearted girls who exclaimed over Margot’s dainty figure and big blue eyes, while their brother Eliot was clearly quite smitten with her. He and Phil and the girls talked so enthusiastically about books and art and nature that, after a while, Margot dared to join in, a little at least.

  By mid-June, they were in Arran, in the western islands of Scotland. Just twenty miles long and ten miles wide, it was a small island with tall peaked mountains wreathed with mist to the north and gentler rounded hills and meadows to the south. The party was staying in a hotel at Brodick, looking out across the bay to an old sandstone castle. Behind it was a sweep of dark forest leading to the foot of Goat Fell, a dramatic bare mountain with an almost perfect triangular point.

  Margot was hurrying down the steps to supper, pulling on her gloves as she went, when she collided with a young man who was bounding up the steps.

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ she gasped.

  ‘I do beg your pardon,’ a deep voice with a lilting Scottish brogue said. She recognised the voice and looked up, startled, as the young man exclaimed, ‘I say, it’s Miss Jones!’

  ‘Mr Mackail,’ she said, blushing fiery-red.

  ‘So have you been burying any more mummies?’ Jack Mackail asked.

  Her confusion increased. ‘You must have thought us very odd.’

  ‘I thought you were all utterly charming. I’ve never been to a Pharoah’s funeral before.’

  ‘Well, it was new for me too. Normally Papa and I just bury mice and birds. Most of them caught by my cat, I’m afraid. No matter how I scold him, I cannot seem to teach him to be kind.’ She shook her head sadly, then looked up at him in wonder. ‘Whatever are you doing here? I was not expecting …’