The Painted Lady: A moving story about family loyalty, friendship and first love

by Ursula Bloom

  Nonna stood staring at him, her three hoops of chins sloping into her little short neck, which in turn merged into her hunched shoulders. ‘Eh, you,’ said Nonna, ‘you tell Nonna what has happened?’ and she came forward. ‘Madeline tell no tale, Nonna say so! Tell Nonna what happen?’

  She reached up to pat Luca’s shoulders gently, trying to encourage him, and he began to tell her. He was in love with an actress, far too lovely and sweet for him. He told no one about it save Madeline, and he had only told her because he thought, mistakenly, that he could trust her.

  ‘You can,’ said Nonna.

  But now, said Luca, his eyes afire, look what had happened! To-night his papa knew all about it in detail; he had docked Luca’s money, and had thrown him out of the Venezia.

  ‘But who tell him?’ asked Nonna. ‘Not my bimba.’

  ‘I asked him that one, and he said that it was his business. It must have been Madeline, because she was the only one who knew. It couldn’t have been anybody else.’

  ‘I never told his papa, I did tell Mamma.’

  At that Nonna threw up her hands. ‘Oh, that Yolanda! Always a clever one, before she run off with her ploughboy, no one know, now look you! Oh, che tragedia!’ Instantly the scene centred round Nonna, she thrust everyone else before her; tiny little woman as she was, she had become an Amazon. ‘Wait you till Yolanda come home, that she should behave so wicked. Wait you! I give her for what! Oh, cielo mio.’

  Madeline went upstairs. She sat down in the bedroom which had so little of herself in it, and she knew that she must have freedom. She realised more than ever that she must get away to some place which was her own niche, somewhere friendly, and tranquil. Outside, in the street, the sounds of Soho jumbled together in confusion; inside the sordid little room her heart was very heavy.

  Mamma came in very late indeed. She was wearing a fanciful frock, and a string of deep-blue beads fastened with a paste snap. She looked excited. Nonna had sat at the head of the table awaiting her, occasionally picking her teeth with a finger-nail darkened at the rim, and reiterating that she had no idea why she had ever been cursed with such a daughter.

  Uncle Luigi sat back, his drab braces cutting his shoulders, his collar cast aside. Madeline came down again because she was so hungry, and was greeted by Nonna as the innocent lamb who had suffered from a jealous ewe. But Nonna would put everything all right, she reiterated, so wait!

  Mamma came in with the half-guilty, half-triumphant look of the child who has successfully stolen the fruit, and, although aware of the crime, feels that it should be congratulated. Mamma stared at Nonna, who rose to do battle.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ asked Mamma.

  ‘A fine parcel of mischief you hatch. You told Mario about Luca.’

  ‘Oh, that!’ said Mamma indifferently, and slipped into a chair beside Uncle Luigi.

  ‘It does not matter to you that your bimba suffer so much? All we plan for her is interrupted.’

  ‘Well, I can’t help that. She told me.’

  Nonna’s little eyes danced vindictively. ‘My God,’ she said, ‘and we arrange for Madeline to be mistress of the Venezia; all we plan, all we do …’

  ‘I daresay, but she isn’t going to be mistress of the Venezia. I am.’

  For a moment Nonna was completely staggered, then, recovering with remarkable quickness, she let out one word, a horrifying one.

  ‘I’m marrying Mario,’ said Mamma. It had been difficult, for Mario’s first marriage had been disillusioning, and Mamma had had to use all her wiles to drag the service of the priest into the affair, but she considered that she had managed very well. The engagement was announced.

  ‘You marry Mario?’ asked Nonna. She was like a woman chased by a lion, who suddenly sees the boa constrictor across her path. She had armed herself for a really good quarrel with her daughter, because she had thought the best way would thus be provided to get her fingers on to Mario’s wealth through Madeline. Now she knew that whatever happened she must not quarrel with Yolanda, for she would be the one with access to the cash-boxes of the Venezia. After all, there was plenty of time to think of somebody else for Madeline.

  ‘I am going to marry Mario.’ Mamma took a large bite out of one of the stale Vienna rolls.

  ‘Oh, but my bambina, this is so pewtiful that I could cry. I greet you with happy tears and good wishes.’

  Nonna rose and, staggering towards Yolanda, clasped her firmly. Over her mother’s embracing figure, Mamma looked at Madeline and she saw on her face a look of infinite distaste.

  Something had happened to the girl.

  Madeline knew that inside the dark Italian body of hers there beat a purely English heart. She was thinking back to the day where she had sat in the spring-sweet hedge beside her father with the cold jorum, and the flower smell, and the earth close to them. She had a nostalgic urge to return to the quiet of that village and say goodbye to all this kaleidoscope of quarrels, and peace-making, and quarrelling again.

  Mamma was going to remarry, and in a wave of jealousy Madeline felt that it was unfair to her father. She felt that, in telling about Luca and Poppy to Mario, her mamma had betrayed her. Now Nonna, forgetful of all else, was sitting holding Mamma’s hand, and chattering of delightful future plans, what they would do with the Venezia, and how much money had Mario.

  She had completely forgotten her granddaughter.

  Uncle Luigi looked across at Madeline. He slumped in his chair, eating handfuls of the biscuits made with oil in which Nonna delighted. Long ago he had lost his personality, drowned in the forceful one of his mother; he really did not care who married which.

  Luigi had not got as much out of life as had Antonio or Giovanni, who had found solace in religion, because Luigi did not believe in religion. He went to Mass, of course, because everybody went to Mass, and there would be too much argument if he tried staying away, but he did not suppose that his immortal betterment was assisted or hindered by his attendance.

  He was only happy when he was drunk and could forget, but Nonna’s tight hand on the purse made it hard to get drink, and he had a shrewd idea that his efforts at lifting trifles from the till had come to her notice. The old woman was wide-awake in such matters. Her deity was Midas (though naturally she never admitted it), believing it to be the Blessed Virgin.

  Madeline pushed her chair back. Even though she went to bed there was no privacy. Whatever Mamma might say or do, nothing would induce her to go and live at the Venezia, and she knew now that Isobel was quite right, she couldn’t go on living here. Too anxious and wretched to know what she was doing, she was, with morning, surprised to find that she must have dropped asleep.

  FOUR

  That was the turning-point in Madeline’s life, just as the day of her father’s funeral and the arrival of Nonna and Uncle Luigi had been another turning-point.

  At first it was difficult to make the necessary move. There was Mamma’s wedding, and the fact that Luca would not speak to Madeline, but sloped round street corners on his long legs to avoid her. That hurt! Mario was amiable and obliging; he and Nonna made all kinds of plans for a future that looked to be most propitious.

  The wedding was a festa, with the best wine and the reception held on the first floor of the Venezia, euphemistically termed ‘the banqueting hall’. Luca was not there. He had gone away to become a waiter at a French restaurant in Jermyn Street.

  ‘And he the son of the Venezia,’ said his father in a fury.

  Madeline had made up her mind that, the moment she could, she would make a move, and her chance came when Miss Marjorie became ill with a significant illness, and had to leave in a hurry. Madeline was promoted to her place, and another wan little girl called Winnie, who lived in Long Acre, took Madeline’s place as messenger. Becoming a saleswoman was a step-up on the rag-trade ladder and meant that her salary was increased.

  On Saturday afternoons and Sundays she went round inspecting rooms; as Isobel Joyce had suggested. At first she
concentrated on the immediate neighbourhood, for London is a series of little worlds, and it is always difficult to look beyond one’s original surroundings. Soho, and its streets, could only offer the most indifferent accommodation. The landladies looked suspiciously at Madeline, as though dubious of her intentions, and she realised that they were used to women of a very different type. The girl was accustomed to this. Life ran two ways, good and bad; women were the same.

  Going farther afield, she tried Bloomsbury, the matriarch of all lodging-houses. In an old square she found the tall slender house, with a room that looked out into the heart of a plane tree. In some intangible way the plane tree reminded her of Hertfordshire, and she was blind to the poverty of the little room adjacent to a bubbling cistern, and with no heating whatsoever. Madeline hired it one hot spring day, when it seemed as though nobody could ever require a fire again, so that she did not notice its absence. The place was cleaner than most that she had visited, but infinitely shabby.

  Since Mamma had married, Nonna had moved into Madeline’s room. Until now nobody had ever known where Nonna would choose to sleep. It was as likely as not that she would huddle herself on a kitchen chair, or sprawl on the sofa, and once she had actually slept in the shop among the sacks of noodles. Nonna had no definite roost, but, feeling that the grandchild might be lonely, had moved her body into Madeline’s room. Nonna in the home was a trial (in spite of her generosity and kindliness), but in bed she was a pest. She would settle in with the idea of cataloguing the day’s activities, never of sleep. Born intensely curious, she wanted to know all about everything, and immediately, and talked incessantly. Her abundant energy desired merely a few snatches of personal sleep, no more, but this didn’t suit Madeline.

  As the girl walked down New Oxford Street, on her way back from Bloomsbury, she wondered how she would ever break the news to Nonna. She waited until the night before she was due to take up her residence; after a most trying day in the shop (for Mr. Rozanne was having trouble with Lilith) she broke it to Nonna. Nonna was not in a good mood, for she had an inkling that Uncle Luigi had been at the till again. Her faculties were becoming a trifle dimmer than originally, and she was not so alert to detect his trickery, but she had counted the money over and over, and could not make it the amount that intuition told her it should be.

  Madeline said, ‘Nonna, I’ve something to tell you.’

  ‘No, no. Not now. I get this correct,’ and she went on counting laboriously.

  So it came to night, when they lay in the large unaired bed, which Madeline hated the smell of. She took in a long breath, and got it over. ‘Nonna, I’m going to live in rooms. I must have a place to myself, and I’m going to-morrow.’

  For a moment Nonna was speechless, but only for a moment, then she began to cry. She lay like a cocoon, holding her face in her little fat hands. She had loved no one like this her carissima bimba, all her other children were as nothing. Antonio (the great fat lump), Yolanda (and look what a mess she had made of her life!), Uncle Luigi who drank, and, under the thin pretence of helping her, cheated so outrageously. Giovanni was a good boy! But what would you with a priest? No, all her hopes had been pinned on Madeline; now Madeline was going away!

  ‘No, no, no,’ wailed the protesting Nonna.

  This was far worse than anything that Madeline had expected. She had thought there might be a terrible row, but had not anticipated tears. Intensely sorry for Nonna, she promised to look in every night on her way back from the shop; she would also go to Mass with Nonna, but the old lady refused to be comforted. Next morning she called the girl to her, and put a five-pound note into her hand.

  ‘Nobody shall say that your poor old Nonna thinks not of the little one. Nonna loves you.’

  ‘Oh, Nonna, I can’t take so much.’

  ‘Si, si. You must take him. And come back to see Nonna often, because she always love you very much.’

  And now, with parting so near, Madeline knew that she loved Nonna far more than she had thought.

  The room was freedom, but it was lonely.

  At first it was beautiful to sit looking out into the heart of the plane tree; to see the sunlight glazing the leaves with gold, and the delicate dark lines of the branches between. But youth and loneliness do not walk hand in hand for long. She found that she was missing Luca, who had disappeared, and she fretted for the noisy chatter that once had irked so much. She could not understand this loneliness which kept on welling up within her, and to assuage it she called in at the shop every night as she had promised. She did not go to the Venezia to see Mamma; Mamma had drifted away.

  Rozanne’s enthralled her. She and Isobel Joyce drew nearer to one another, comparing notes. She liked Mr. Rozanne too, realising what a lot the poor little man had to put up with.

  ‘I can’t think why he ever married that silly wife of his,’ said Isobel Joyce. ‘One of these days she’ll leave him.’

  Lilith visited the shop. She walked in unexpectedly, wearing a perfect frock, with the borzoi sloping behind her. Her husband was in his usual crumby condition, in with the treadle machine having his sandwiches. He brushed himself down with those futile fat hands that reminded Madeline of a sea lion’s flippers, and he came out protesting.

  ‘Oh, my ’tarling!’ he exclaimed.

  Lilith looked at him as if he were a beggar selling matches in the gutter. She was much taller than he, hyper-slight, and she had supercilious lips. Madeline noticed how round and high was her youthful bust, how long and lean her legs in their expensive hosiery. Lilith said, ‘I came to see if you had a decent frock for to-night?’

  Isobel Joyce went to the case of evening frocks, thrust back the sliding doors, to the jangle of hangers which jostled together. She disclosed the frocks, and of course the Destine model amongst them. Every now and then, Mr. Rozanne bought a really expensive model and had it copied. The Destine gown was made entirely of tiny Valenciennes lace frills rising in points; it had cost a great deal of money.

  ‘That’s the frock for me!’ said Lilith promptly.

  She had detected it from its inferior companions, even though Isobel Joyce had tried to cover it with a more ornate gold lame which she had hoped would conceal it. But nothing could hide a good frock from the calculating eye of Lilith Levi.

  ‘That or nothing,’ she said.

  ‘But, my ’tarling, it is for us to copy, not to sell,’ said Mr. Rozanne, and the eyes behind their thick lenses were frantic, because he could not afford to part with the dress.

  ‘I want it, I know it would suit me.’

  The Destine frock would suit any woman, they all knew that, and it had been the reason why Mr. Rozanne had chosen it. ‘It is not to sell,’ he protested, but weakly; they could all see his weakness.

  Lilith gave him one look, and, turning, she walked to the door, the borzoi sloping after her. The shop watched.

  Even Miss Bates stopped machining in her corner, her jaw dropping, her right breast liberally bespiked with pins, so that it looked like some obscene pincushion. Winnie, the new messenger, her arms full of frocks but recently hired (and no sale recorded), was in the way. Lilith pushed her aside. Apparently Mr. Rozanne forgot them all, forgot everything but his dismay, for he went protesting to the door.

  ‘I cannot say no to my ’tarling,’ he said, ‘she shall have it.’

  Madeline heard Isobel Joyce say to herself, ‘The fool! The damned fool!’ But now there was nothing for it but to do the frock up, packing it carefully on the far table, whilst Lilith and the borzoi waited with complete disdain, and no thanks all all for the generous gift. Mr. Rozanne went out into the street to get her a taxi, because Lilith wasn’t the sort that walks or takes a bus, neither did she soil her shoes with seeking her own taxis. He came back when he had disposed of her and the dress-box, and the poor little man looked even pleased about it.

  ‘A vonderful voman!’ said Mr. Rozanne, rubbing his hands together, ‘a vonderful, sweet, lovely voman.’

  Later, when he had gon
e back behind the curtains to salvage the last sandwich, Isobel Joyce said, in a hoarse whisper to Madeline, ‘Vonderful woman, my foot! What a bitch!’

  Madeline met Chester Thane one summer’s evening in the square, when the intense loneliness was pressing down upon her until it became a burden that she could hardly bear. It was very hot, with a storm brewing; the sky had become dark in the distance of the Hampstead hills, and was angry with the amethyst warning of thunder. In Bloomsbury it seemed that the air was devoid of all oxygen, and half London had come out of their houses to fan themselves, crammed on the little iron seats of the squares. As the night came on, with no intensifying of the storm signals, or alleviation of the humidity, they drifted away in small groups, but Madeline sat on, and the man at the end of the seat glanced at her. He thought that she looked very tired.

  Chester Thane was fair; of moderate stature, he was thickly set, with a round face and grey eyes put a trifle closely in his head. He would be nearly thirty, Madeline supposed. ‘It’s devilish hot to-night,’ he said at last.

  ‘Awful. Looks like a storm.’

  ‘It’s looked like that for the last three hours. I begin to wish that it would come.’

  ‘In the night, I suppose.’

  He said, ‘The worst of this part of London is that it can be so very airless.’

  ‘Soho is worse.’

  ‘Is it really? I shouldn’t have thought that possible.’

  ‘I ought to know. I lived there until quite recently, and it was dreadful.’

  He looked at her again; he had thought all along that she must be Italian, with that warm skin like a peach, and those lovely languishing eyes. ‘If you’re an Italian, you oughtn’t to mind the heat.’