Beauty in Thorns

by Kate Forsyth

  But all of his awareness was focused on the Briar Rose paintings. Nothing else mattered.

  One evening, in the last days of winter, Georgie said to her daughter, ‘Darling, I think you should tell him. The longer you go without telling him, the harder it will be.’

  Margot gazed at her mother in astonishment. ‘You know? About Jack?’

  Georgie nodded.

  ‘We thought we were doing such a good job of keeping it secret.’

  ‘Not from a mother’s eyes,’ Georgie said with a smile. ‘I’m so happy for you, darling girl. He is just the man I would have chosen for you.’

  ‘Is he?’ Margot cried in delight. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he is so kind,’ Georgie said. ‘And because he loves you.’

  She felt a pang as she said the words. Georgie had thought Ned the gentlest man alive, and their love preordained from the beginning of time. And yet he had hurt her so cruelly. So much that she had hated him for it.

  Georgie pushed the thought away. ‘Would you like me to tell him?’

  Margot hesitated, but then shook her head. ‘No. I’ll do it. At least … I think Jack and I should do it together.’ She bit her lip, looking down at her hands. ‘Will he … will he be very sad?’

  ‘Yes,’ Georgie said. ‘But also so very glad for you both.’

  Joy, sorrow. Love, hate. Kindness, cruelty. Beauty, ugliness.

  What a mysterious world we live in, Georgie thought. Mysterious but miraculous.

  So Margot and Jack stood together before the fire one evening, fingers entwined, to tell her father that they planned to be married.

  Ned sat very still, looking from one to the other. ‘That’s … that’s wonderful. Congratulations.’ He stood up stiffly, shook Jack’s hand and kissed Margot on the cheek.

  Margot put his arms about him. ‘I shall always be your little girl, Papa.’

  ‘I know, I know.’ He tried to smile. ‘This calls for a celebration! If only your mother allowed us a wine cellar. It shall have to be tea.’

  The evening passed with much merriment and the making of plans. Margot only wanted a small wedding. Jack had but one sister, and no mother and father, and she did not want his side of the church to be empty while hers was full. ‘I told him once that I would share my parents with him,’ she said, laughing.

  ‘I told her it would be an honour and a pleasure,’ Jack said.

  He was a grave young man, but that evening it was as if something had been unlocked in him, allowing him to grin and laugh, and tease Georgie and Ned, and mock himself. ‘I made such a fool of myself the first time I saw her,’ he said. ‘Up on the podium, reading aloud my ridiculous poem, and then I see her, gazing up at me with those great blue eyes of hers, and next thing I know I’m blushing and stammering like a schoolboy.’

  ‘And then Papa said Jack seemed like a nice chap and was going to come and see his studio. And I, of course, was hoping that it meant he wanted to come and see me.’

  ‘I have been greatly deceived,’ Ned said. ‘I thought you a most learned fellow who came because you wished to converse about books. It did not occur to me that you came because you wished to steal away my daughter.’

  There was an edge to his voice.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ Jack said. ‘I promise you I won’t take her far away. Margot wants to find a house as close to you as she can get.’

  ‘Yes, but she still won’t be here,’ Ned said. He took a deep breath and composed himself. ‘It’s just that I am used to having her about. The house will seem very empty with you gone, my blue-eyed damsel.’

  ‘I know,’ she said and put her arms about him, pressing her cheek against his. ‘But you’ll find something new to paint and then hardly notice I’m gone.’

  ‘I’ll always know you’re gone,’ he said mournfully. ‘I don’t know how I’ll do without you.’

  ‘You’ll just need to rely on me,’ Georgie said, getting up and tidying up the cups. ‘Look at the time! Jack, will you mind if we draw the evening to a close? Ned has been so unwell again this winter. I don’t like him to be up too late when he’s had a long day in the studio. And Margot needs her beauty sleep.’

  Jack stood up at once and said his farewells, and Margot walked him to the front door. Ned sat, back hunched, staring into the fire. Georgie came and put her hand on his shoulder. ‘Well done,’ she said quietly.

  He nodded, and got up and went out. She could hear his slow heavy footsteps on the stairs.

  Margot came back in, bubbling with joy, and Georgie went up with her to her bedroom, to brush out her hair and talk some more. ‘Papa did not seem to mind at all,’ Margot cried, as she changed into her nightgown and bounced into bed.

  ‘See, I told you. Now go to sleep, if you can. We will talk more in the morning.’

  ‘I’m so happy, I’m afraid,’ Margot said.

  Georgie felt such a thickening of the tissues of her throat she could scarcely breathe. ‘If there is only one gift I could give you,’ she managed to say, ‘it would be to have the courage to love him with all your heart. Just love him. That’s all that matters.’

  ‘I know,’ Margot said. ‘I will, I promise.’

  ‘Good night, darling.’ Georgie gave her daughter one last kiss. ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’

  She went quietly about the house, blowing out candles and putting the guard in front of the fireplace. Outside, the wind rattled through bare branches, and an owl was hunting. The sky was clear, but few stars could be seen. The glare of London was too close for that. She went to her own room, and slowly undressed and unpinned her hair. A few silver hairs glinted amongst the brown. She did not look in the mirror, but washed her face and cleaned her teeth.

  She did not climb into her own bed, but went as quietly as she could along the corridor to Ned’s room. It was lit only by the glowing coals in the fireplace. He lay in his bed, curled up on his side. His breath was raspy and uneven. Georgie took off her dressing-gown and slippers, and climbed into bed beside him. She put her arms around him.

  ‘It’s all right, my darling. I’m here.’

  His chest heaved. A few tears fell on to her wrist. She kissed his shoulder. ‘You did so well. I’m so proud of you. Sssh, now. They’ll be happy, I promise you.’

  Gradually his sobbing breaths calmed. One of his hands found hers, and returned her clasp. She kissed him again, and soothed him with her voice.

  ‘What shall I do? How shall I bear it?’ The words came with great difficulty.

  ‘You must,’ she said. ‘Don’t think of it as an ending, but as a new beginning.’

  He took a deep shuddering breath. ‘You know, if I ever see my mother again … in heaven, you know … she will be such a young thing … she was just Margot’s age when she died. So young. Too young.’

  Georgie crept a little closer to him, and he turned to face her. ‘Margot has her life ahead of her,’ she whispered. ‘She’s running to meet it. Let her go, Ned. Let her be happy.’

  ‘I … I want her to be.’ His voice shook. ‘It’s just … I’m so afraid. Of her being hurt … or her dying …’

  ‘I know. But you can’t save her from any of that. You shouldn’t want to try. Life is for living, Ned.’

  They lay together in silence for a long time, then Ned gave an abrupt nod. ‘You’re right. I know it. I’ll try to be happy for her.’

  ‘Perhaps they’ll have little ones,’ she whispered. ‘You’ll be a grandpapa and I’ll be a grandmama.’

  He laughed and sobbed together. ‘I’m not old enough for that!’

  ‘I’m afraid you are. You’ll be fifty-five this year, and I’ll be forty-eight.’

  ‘I don’t want to get old.’

  ‘No-one ever does.’

  He had shifted towards her, so that she no longer embraced his back but lay in the crook of his elbow, her head on his shoulder, one arm across his chest. How familiar it felt to her, and yet how strange. It had been a very long time since they had shared a bed.
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  ‘To think I liked him,’ he said.

  ‘You’ll like him again. Give yourself time.’

  He sighed. ‘I suppose I should have seen it coming.’

  She smiled and looked up at him, even though she could see him only dimly in the low light. ‘Margaret did not want to upset you. She did her best to hide it from you.’

  ‘I hope he’s good to her. I’ll wring his neck if he hurts her.’

  Georgie caught her breath, and turned a little away from him. So long ago, and yet still he had the power to wound her.

  Ned shifted so that he could look at her. ‘I just hurt you then, didn’t I? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.’

  She could not speak.

  He drew her closer. ‘I am sorry. About … well, about it all.’

  ‘I know,’ she managed to say.

  He bent his head and kissed her cheek. ‘It just happened. And then … I couldn’t stop. I wanted to, and yet … oh, she wasn’t who I thought she was. But by then things had got out of hand … and I realised I’d ruined everything.’ He pressed her a little closer. ‘I’ve been sorry about it for a very long time.’

  ‘But … you kept going back to her?’ This was something Georgie had wanted to ask him for a long time.

  ‘She’s the very Devil,’ Ned said, in a tone of wonderment. ‘The harder I tried to escape, the tighter she would cling. But then, when I followed her, she would laugh at me and tell me I was a fool. And so I would go away … and then she’d come again … and throw herself at my feet and cry and tell me her heart was broken … and I couldn’t bear it, I just couldn’t bear it.’

  Georgie tightened her arms about him. He drew her closer, kissing her temple, and then her cheek. Georgie could not help pressing her nose into his skin, inhaling his scent. She had always loved the way he smelt. His mouth found hers. Something melted within her. She could not bear for him to lift his mouth away, and caught hold of the back of his neck, pulling him closer. His hand slipped down to her breast, hidden behind good sensible flannel, and then found the edge of her neckline and slid within. Georgie sighed at the feel of his hand on her bare skin. One of her feet found his.

  ‘You’re cold,’ he whispered. ‘Let me warm you.’

  He pressed both of her small feet between his own, his hand drawing up her nightgown, then edging between her knees. Georgie sighed, and lifted herself so he could reach her more easily. They kissed, gently, tenderly.

  Georgie thought she had stifled all desire. She thought she had left all hunger far behind.

  She had been wrong.

  10

  All the Treasure

  Winter–Spring 1890

  Margot’s daughter was born on a snowy winter’s night in late January.

  As she heard the baby’s first gasping wail, a thrill went through her.

  I have looked death in the face now, she thought, and I have beaten it.

  The midwife passed her the tiny white bundle. Margot looked down at her daughter’s face, soft as a rose petal, and gently touched her cheek. ‘Your daddy and I, we made you. We gave you life.’

  The big dark eyes looked up at her. One small hand grasped at the air.

  ‘So you make sure you live a good one,’ Margot whispered.

  Mama stroked Margot’s sweat-dampened hair away from her face. ‘Well done, darling,’ she said. ‘You had a hard time of it but you won through. How do you feel?’

  Margot tried to find the word.

  ‘Exultant,’ she said at last.

  Mama smiled and nodded. ‘I know it happens every day, all over the world, but it really does seem a miracle, doesn’t it?’

  Margot nodded, surprised to find tears leaking from her eyes and running down her face. ‘I don’t know why I’m crying. I’m so happy.’

  ‘You can cry from joy as much as from sorrow,’ Mama said. ‘Here, let me mop your face for you. Can I bring the men in now? They’ve been beating a path in your carpet downstairs.’

  Margot nodded. She could not look away from her daughter’s face. She wished that she could capture this moment forever. Sharp within her was a sense of terror at the hurt the world might do to this tiny, vulnerable creature who she had carried within her for so long. For the first time, she understood some of her father’s fierce love – and fear – for her.

  The door opened and Jack came in. He was white-faced and haggard, but smiling in joy and relief. ‘Hello, you,’ he said to his daughter. ‘Welcome to the world.’

  He kissed her tiny hand, and then kissed Margot. ‘Thank God you’re safe,’ he whispered. ‘I was so afraid.’

  She smiled at him wearily. ‘Me too. But we won through in the end.’

  Then Papa was bending over her, kissing the damp little curls on her daughter’s head.

  ‘Georgie, can you believe it? We’re grandparents.’

  ‘What are you going to call her?’ Mama asked.

  Margot looked down at the baby nestled in the crook of her arm. ‘Angela. For she’s as beautiful as any of Papa’s angels.’

  Carriages clogged the road all the way down to Piccadilly Circus.

  So many hundreds of people milled outside Agnew’s Gallery, policemen had been called to keep order. They stood in rows, truncheons at their belts, the badge on their blue helmets glittering in the bright sunshine, ordering the crowd into a long queue that snaked away down Old Bond Street. Street-sellers strolled up and down, selling hot elderberry wine and roasted chestnuts in paper cones. Despite the bright blue sky, the day was chilly, and people in the queue stamped their feet and tucked their hands inside muffs or coat pockets. A girl was riding about on a bicycle, flaunting her shapely calves.

  ‘Can you believe it?’ Georgie marvelled. ‘There must be a thousand people here.’

  ‘It’s like a fair day,’ Margot said. ‘Papa, come and look.’

  ‘I don’t want to look,’ Ned answered. He was sitting on a low chair by the fire, Angela in his arms. He dangled a silver rattle above the baby’s face, and she cooed in delight and reached for it with tiny hands.

  Georgie and Ned and the rest of the family had come to see the opening of the exhibition of the ‘Legend of Briar Rose’ painting, but had been so trampled by people that they had retreated to Mr Agnew’s sitting room on an upper floor. Ned had bought Georgie a new hat for the occasion. It was the most frivolous thing she had ever seen, frothing with pink roses like a summer garden. It gave Ned great pleasure to see her wear it, though, and so she had bravely pinned it in place, and was surprised to find she enjoyed everyone’s compliments.

  Ned, however, looked thin and old and stooped. He was utterly done in, Georgie thought. It had been an immense task, finishing the four paintings of ‘The Legend of Briar Rose’, the title Ned had finally chosen for the story cycle. Topsy had written four lines of verse for each painting, which had been engraved on the golden frame beneath each of the giant canvases. Georgie knew each verse off by heart.

  The fateful slumber floats and flows

  About the tangle of the rose;

  But lo! the fated hand and heart

  To rend the slumberous curse apart!

  The threat of war, the hope of peace,

  The Kingdom’s peril and increase

  Sleep on, and bide the latter day,

  When fate shall take her chain away.

  The maiden pleasance of the land

  Knoweth no stir of voice or hand,

  No cup the sleeping waters fill,

  The restless shuttle lieth still.

  Here lies the hoarded love, the key

  To all the treasure that shall be;

  Come fated hand the gift to take,

  And smite this sleeping world awake.

  Georgie thought ‘The Legend of Briar Rose’ was the most exquisite work Ned had ever done. And it seemed the rest of the country thought so too. The newspapers were all full of glowing reviews. The Times spoke of Ned’s ‘exuberance of fancy’, and The Magazine of Art said the four vast canvases we
re ‘equal to anything that has ever been done since painting began’. Many spoke about the simplicity and purity of The Sleeping Princess, and wondered why Ned had not painted the moment in which she was awakened with a kiss.

  Ned refused to read any of the reviews, or to answer any of the curious questions. Only once had he tried to explain his purpose in the paintings, when he had wearily said, ‘I just want to tell people something.’

  There had been talk of sending the paintings on tour to America, but Ned had shaken his head. He wanted them to be part of the free Easter exhibition at Toynbee Hall, where anyone who wanted to could see them, and then to be hung in their final resting place at Buscot Park. He planned to paint intersecting panels of entangled rose briars to connect the four paintings together.

  Georgie looked back down at the crowded street, at the queues of people lining up to see her husband’s paintings, and shook her head in disbelief. After so many years of poverty and struggle, after so many years of being torn apart by critics and ignored by the establishment, this ecstatic response just seemed impossible.

  She thought of a young girl who had visited Ned’s studio just that week, to watch him painting The Star of Bethlehem.

  ‘Do you believe the story’s true?’ she had asked in her sweet, piping voice.

  He had answered gravely, ‘It is too beautiful not to be true.’

  Part V

  Wake, Dearest

  1896–1899

  Not until his fifth-seventh birthday in August had come and gone did he tell anyone what he then confessed, that for years he had been filled with premonitions and forebodings that he would never live to see it. ‘I had it strongly as the time drew near, and very potently the night before. And that’s why I hurried so to finish Briar Rose.’

  Lady Georgiana Burne-Jones

  Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones, Volume II

  1

  No More Kings

  Summer 1896