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

by Ursula Bloom

  ‘When’s he coming?’

  ‘Friday,’ said Uncle Luigi, ‘God help us!’ and he laughed disastrously, for his mouth had been full of chips.

  Nonna came in. ‘You serve, Luigi. I’m so tired. I ache,’ and then, ‘Madeline, there are some chips and a cold pie. Nonna didn’t cook this day.’

  ‘Can’t I give you a hand in the shop? I could do a bit, and it might help the rush?’

  ‘Ah.’ Nonna’s eye brightened, for she always appreciated anybody giving her a hand. ‘I getta the pie, you givva the hand.’

  Madeline went back into the shop, chianti on one side, tomato ketchup, pimentos and chives all along the counter. She worked briskly, with Uncle Luigi beside her, his braces denting into the shoulders of his drab shirt, and his collarless band kept together by a huge brass stud which was green with age. He whistled through his teeth as he worked, an unpleasant-looking but efficient machine. Madeline was serving the last customer, when a man walked into the shop out of the yellow sunshine of Old Compton Street. The moment that she saw him Madeline’s body sagged with dismay; she had to brace herself to take it, and could not bolt into the back room, for her legs had become paralysed with horror. It was Chester! He had come in to see if they kept white wine. There they stood on either side of the counter, and to the girl it was a river a mile wide.

  ‘You?’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ and, because she was brave, ‘This is my Nonna’s.’

  He pulled himself together. Chester was a snob; he was a social climber, and the little shop frankly horrified him. When she had spoken of it it had not sounded to be so sordid, but he was shocked to find her now. He said the first thing that came into his head, which was, ‘But, how nice!’ only it wasn’t nice, and they both knew it. She gathered the inference by his tone; returning abruptly, she took her hat down from behind the sitting-room door, and Nonna, groping with potato chips and cold pie, stared at her, bemused. Madeline knew that she was mumbling something; she did not know what or why, for she walked straight out into the hot street, her eyes smarting too much for tears. Chester came behind her; she knew it was Chester even though she did not actually see him, she just knew. He had her arm, but at the moment she was so humiliated that she did not know what to do and made an attempt to shake him off, but he caught her again.

  ‘Don’t be a silly little girl. You’re coming out to lunch with me; it’ll have to be a quick one, of course, but there is a patisserie here where we can get a snack. Now, don’t be silly!’

  ‘I never want to see you again.’

  ‘Good Heavens, why not? Because by accident I walked into your grandmother’s shop to see if she stocked a particular wine? Madeline, you’ve gone crazy! Give yourself time to think about it.’

  ‘I don’t want time. I want to die.’ She was so young that she could only think in extremes.

  He led her into the patisserie, quiet, almost empty save for a French sailor who sat in the far corner reading a three-days-old copy of Le Matin. Chester did not consult Madeline about what she wanted to eat, he merely ordered a quick snack meal.

  ‘Now,’ he said when Madame had brought it, ‘what is it? Why are you so angry with me?’

  ‘I’m not angry with you, I’m angry with everything and everyone. I hate the shop, and I’ve always hated it. I know it is disloyal of me, and I despise myself for it, but I wish I had never seen Soho, and that street.’ Then, pitifully, ‘Oh, you don’t know how I want my father again.’

  She was thinking of that day in the quiet hedgerow when the painted lady had danced above the tall grasses; then it had all been tranquil and unhurried.

  Chester said, ‘You poor kid! Hadn’t you ever thought of getting married?’ Frankly, he didn’t know why he said it. It might be that the quixotic impulse was more than he could quench on the moment.

  ‘Yes, I suppose I have. What girl hasn’t? There is Luca; only I wouldn’t marry Luca even if he asked me, and he wouldn’t ask me.’

  ‘Nobody else?’

  ‘One or two. Nobody important.’ There had been the big boys in Old Compton Street; once somebody had kissed her in a dark doorway, once under the mistletoe at Christmas, but nothing serious, nothing that really counted.

  ‘What about me?’ he asked.

  ‘You?’ Too young to hide her feelings, she felt that she was a pendulum swinging violently to the very opposite extreme. She rose like a mountain railway, every second making her body vibrate and spin with the rarefied air. ‘Please don’t laugh at me, Chester.’

  ‘I wouldn’t laugh at you. Surely you don’t think I’d do that? You’re a darling! I suppose I’ve always loved you from the first moment we met, only I didn’t know it until now. That’s the truth.’ He had loved her eyes and the way that she moved, the delicate shape of her hands like those of a Florentine statue. In his own mind he looked upon her as being a little Madonna, and, because the physical attraction was so great, shut his eyes to the surroundings. Her faintly Italian accent caught from Nonna, saved her from Cockney vulgarity. All along he had thought that he was being rather a fool about this girl, and ten thousand times more of a fool to-day when he had seen that muddled shop; but a smooth skin and a pair of bright eyes can blind a man to much.

  ‘Together we can make light of all that,’ he said.

  ‘You don’t mean it?’

  ‘Yes, I do. This has got to be our secret, we won’t tell a soul. I’ll get everything fixed up, and we’ll be married as soon as ever we can.’ He put out his hand and took hers. Madame cooed to herself over the counter, where the new rolls had just arrived smelling so delicious. L’amour, said Madame, remembering her own brief episode with Monsieur which had been on a Sunday trip to Versailles; very romantic, if rather hot and sticky. Toujours l’amour, thought Madame.

  ‘Chester, I’m too ordinary for you.’

  ‘You’re adorable!’

  ‘But you’ve only seen that shop. There’s another, the one where I work, Rozanne’s.’

  ‘Run by that awful little man?’

  ‘He isn’t really awful. I feel sorry for him because his wife ran away to-day.’

  ‘I hope my wife will never run away.’

  ‘She won’t!’ A pulse started to work with emotion in her throat.

  ‘Darling, I love you so much.’

  ‘Yes, Chester, and I love you.’ Nothing would ever change the feeling that she had for him, for Madeline was the faithful kind. Even now, years afterwards, she clung to the thought of the Hertfordshire village, to the memory of her father, to Miss Sheila. She would always love Chester with the same loyalty, though perhaps he did not realise it.

  ‘There’s no need to wait,’ he said, ‘we’ll have a scout round for somewhere to live, which ought to be rather fun. Which do you like best, a house or a flat?’

  ‘I adore flats ‒ leastways the sort of flat you’d get.’

  He nodded. ‘Any particular district?’

  ‘Away from Soho.’

  ‘St. John’s Wood? Perhaps a bit arty! Hampstead is too far out, I’m afraid. Westminster’s a bit old-fogey.’

  They were touring London in complete freedom, she felt her spirits rising to the point of ecstasy. They decided on Chelsea; they would go and see Swan Court this evening, or that block of flats on the Embankment just off Cheyne Walk. Or what about More’s Garden? It sounded to be rural and lovely. Then Madeline caught a glimpse of the time and rose in a panic.

  ‘I simply must get back to Rozanne’s. They’ll think that I’m dead.’

  ‘Surely you could be a little late to-day? It is the day, you know.’

  ‘Yes, but Mr. Rozanne is in such trouble, and Miss Joyce run off her feet, and Miss Bates having bother with her husband again.’

  ‘Soon you’ll be away from all that for ever.’

  ‘Darling!’

  ‘Does it sound good to you?’

  ‘Almost too good. Oh, Chester, I do love you so.’

  Their arms linked as they went to the counter to pay the
bill. The madelons smelt delicious. Madame smiled at them with tender memories in her own eyes, for she was remembering all the ardour of her day at Versailles. Even if Jean had turned out to be a cad, had grown fat and had had several mistresses! Even though the only decent thing that he had ever done was to pass out into Kensal Green, where she had erected an execrable foreign-looking tombstone to his memory, and had thought no more about him.

  The couple walked down the street to the dress shop, and at the corner Chester bought her the entire stock of pink roses from the woman with the flower basket.

  ‘But I’ve nowhere to put them, they’re far too many,’ she said.

  ‘Never mind. You must have roses to-day,’ and he parted with her in the shop doorway. She went inside with the pink roses in her arm; Isobel was standing beside a stout customer entering down measurements in a small book, whilst Miss Bates knelt before the client, encircling her with a tape measure.

  ‘Forty-three hips. But that’s nothing!’ lied Isobel.

  Madeline passed to the far cubicle, looking for a jam jar into which she could thrust the roses. It seemed criminal to put so much beauty into a common jam jar, but there would be nothing else. Mr. Rozanne peered out at her, his face swollen with crying. ‘Vere you get them?’ he asked.

  ‘I got engaged. We’re going to be married as soon as we can get a flat,’ she said, and then, quite suddenly with a burst of confidence, ‘Oh, Mr. Rozanne, he is so lovely.’

  Mr. Rozanne looked at her with cold eyes. He said, ‘Never love anybody too much, Madeline. It hurts,’ then he went back into his cubicle, gulping down his sobs.

  FIVE

  They went to Swan Court that night, and on to the Embankment flats later. There were few vacancies, and the rents were heavy, far more so than Chester had expected. Madeline was to learn that he had the most optimistic ideas of money, and always expected an income to drop into his ready lap. More’s Garden was out of the question, but ultimately they came to a little block of four-storied flats, situated round the corner from Cheyne Walk. It was a converted mansion, but on that score more reasonably priced, and the small notice Flat to Let lured them within. The flat that was vacant was small, it had a sitting-room which led into one large bedroom, with a bathroom and cupboard kitchen on either side. It was on the ground floor, with large French windows that opened into a minute square of paved garden, where the handiwork of a previous tenant showed to advantage. Pink ivy geraniums straggled from a formal urn, lobelias fought spikes of groundsel, and a white clematis hung in a shower of stars like a spangled veil over the fence.

  ‘What a lovely little place!’ said Madeline, and her voice was excited because this flat looked so much like the shrine of all her dreams. ‘And it is so fresh and clean, it doesn’t want doing up like the others did. I like the dead white of the sitting-room and the pale green of the bedroom.’

  ‘You’re not superstitious then?’

  ‘No, why should I be when it’s all so pretty? Besides, how could a colour hurt you?’

  ‘I don’t think it could. But I just wondered, because most women are frightfully superstitious. You see, I know so little of you really; it’s charming to know so little and love so much; you know you are a very original little person.’ He kissed her lightly. She was different from the other women he had known; Chester had always gone in for experience before and now found that the virginal emotion was delightful.

  His kisses disturbed Madeline. She believed this to be her personal emotion, something that nobody had tasted before. She was sure that Mamma and Nonna had never loved like she did now, and she turned her face from him blushing. She couldn’t speak.

  Chester went round the rooms, appraising their proportions. The furniture that he already had would fit admirably, both in size and colour. Figured walnut should look exquisite against that soft green, or the dead white.

  ‘You wait here, Madeline, whilst I slip along and talk prices with the agents; they’re only just up the street. I’ll get everything fixed if I can.’

  ‘I expect it’s terribly expensive.’

  ‘I don’t see why. After all, it is a converted house; they can’t charge as much for that.’

  She went into the little garden, sitting down on the stone seat, a bare seat and cut into its back the significant words TIME PASSES. Time would pass indeed pleasantly for her in such a heavenly place, she thought. All those hundred and one little pinpricks that had hurt her so much before could not penetrate here. But would she be good enough for Chester? Their paths had lain so far apart that she wondered how she could qualify in those small details which she suspected might be at fault.

  She made brave plans as she sat there in her black satin shop frock, the one that Nonna had bought her at B. & H.’s, fitting tightly across the highly-poised bust and pinned down by a single rose from the many that Chester had bought.

  The sun hid himself behind the chimney stack of a neighbouring block, and the little garden became darker, but never unlovely, for the white stars of the clematis were even whiter without the sun, and the ivy geraniums pinker.

  Presently Chester returned, ‘Sorry to have been so long, but they wanted all sorts of silly references; you wouldn’t have believed that people could have been so fussy.’ He sounded to be rather put out. Chester never liked that sort of thing, and was easily annoyed if people doubted his integrity. ‘Anyway, the place is dirt cheap; the agent said some people don’t like ground-floor flats, and of course I played him up on that. I said that you were scared of burglars, so live up to it, my sweet.’

  ‘Yes, but …’

  ‘I know what you are going to say, you’re brave as a lion! All the same, one must make a good bargain.’ It sounded ominously like Nonna to Madeline. ‘And I’ve got the whole thing fixed and settled. Isn’t that a joy? And now I’ll get a special licence.’

  ‘There’s one difficulty. I shall want to be married in my Church; you see, I’m a Catholic.’ She had been afraid to tell him this, in case he took it badly. Some people were prejudiced about Catholicism; she had never forgotten that unhappy experience in the village.

  ‘I never thought that you were a Protestant. You’ll want to know what I am? Well, I’m just a pious gipsy, a little of anything, and nothing very much. Does that worry you?’ She put out a hand impulsively and took his. ‘Dear little kid!’

  ‘Oh, Chester, I didn’t know that people could be so tremendously happy.’

  ‘Well, they can! What’s more, we’re going to be much happier! I knew that the first time that I saw you, my darling, sitting in that stuffy old garden; funny, but I knew. Then everything’s rather funny when you come to think about it, isn’t it?’

  Madeline was serving her last week at Rozanne’s.

  In some ways she was sorry. Chester had come in and bought her half a dozen frocks, including the pale-blue crepe that she had always loved. Mr. Rozanne had got over his first feeling of bitterness, and almost smiled about Madeline, because he believed that this was a case of the assistant being changed merely into a profitable customer. That, from his point of view, was a most satisfactory move.

  Isobel was quiet over it. Madeline, not understanding her reactions, wondered if she was jealous. But Isobel wasn’t jealous; in a quiet moment when Winnie had gone round to Elfrida’s, and Miss Bates had gone home (it was one of her husband’s early nights), Isobel confided in Madeline. Most women of her age had married during the war, which had given every girl a chance, what with the Yanks and the lonely subs home on leave, and the R.F.C. wanting something to do in their spare time, not forgetting the nice Naval boys. But during the war Isobel had been afraid of the after-the-war phase, seeing that the whole pattern of living appeared to be so insecure, and she had thought that there would be lots of time to decide things later on. Besides, her one mistake still rankled. Later on, nobody had offered, and Isobel had become alarmed that her life was slipping. The tissue-paper fabric of youth which would not endure was gradually eluding her and she was avid t
o taste the joys that she had thought would mature later, and which had not done so. Recovering from her one mistake, she was appalled at the emptiness of her own future, brought home to her by the prospect of Madeline’s marriage. There was another man in her life now, unfortunately already married, but to the wrong woman, and Isobel was weighing up the pros and cons of the situation.

  When she told Madeline the girl was shocked. Any affair with a married man was indescribably wrong, she felt, and to contemplate living with him for good was outrageous.

  ‘That’s because you’re young, and don’t know,’ said Isobel.

  ‘No, it isn’t. I think it’s awful. It’s adultery.’

  ‘Adultery, my foot! Anyway, lots of people do it, yet get on all right. It isn’t any use sitting waiting for life to go by you, and doing nothing about it. The mill doesn’t grind with the water that is past, you know.’

  ‘Yes, but not to be properly married!’

  Isobel was stung to fury. ‘You say that just because you’re a Catholic; I’m nothing! I suppose I believe in a God the same way that most of us do, but I don’t believe in all those trimmings. I don’t suppose that I’ll be eternally damned if I choose to live with some fellow, any more than I’ll be saved because I live a miserably lonely life here. That’s the truth. Better grab what you can get, when you can get it, I say.’

  ‘But if it’s wicked?’

  ‘Even if it’s wicked. I expect you think you’re being very clever getting married ‒ well, so should I, if I could, but I can’t! And I don’t see why anybody should make a fuss just because I can’t, so there!’

  Madeline did not know what to say, but stood fingering her shabby little handbag, feeling utterly dismayed. Then, after a pause, she said, ‘Well, good night, I must be getting along now,’ and she went out into Shaftesbury Avenue, feeling rather sick.