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

by Ursula Bloom

  He had heard of the hotel through a patient and decided to try it out for himself. He came originally from Edinburgh, was twenty-nine and blessed comfortably with this world’s goods. He had a practice in Surrey, but the practice did not worry him too much. They nicknamed him ‘Sandy Mac’ merely because they felt sure that his name must be Mac something-or-other (it proved to be MacPherson). Sandy was one of those pleasant people who fit into any picture; he was intensely practical, which neither of them were, he was neat with a womanish neatness, completely placid, accepting any situation which offered itself, all of which amused Frank and Madeline immensely. He considered that all artists starved because his mother had once told him so, and he thought that Frank and Madeline were terribly brave to have married on such a prospectless future.

  He could not understand when they laughed uproariously at him. ‘We’ll have to teach Sandy Mac a few things about life,’ said Frank.

  Sandy did not understand how a man could miss a good meal because he preferred to watch the last light on the snow, or the first challenge of the aurora; he preferred food to beauty. ‘You can’t fill a belly with it,’ he explained to Frank.

  ‘No, but you can fill a mind, and minds hunger as well as bellies.’

  Sandy Mac shook his stocky little head. ‘If you ask me, that’s all hoots-poots, and you’d be wise if you ate more yourself. You look a wreck! Ever had your lungs tested?’

  ‘Yes, and one of them’s T.B. I knew you’d be asking that. It’s funny, but a doctor can never get away from his profession. I don’t ask you if you’ve ever had your portrait painted?’

  ‘No, because you realise I’d never do anything so daft. Me with my freckles, and the hair that won’t lie flat.’ He screwed up his funny little nose and laughed.

  ‘If you ask me, the “daftest” thing I ever did was to have my lungs tested. I didn’t need the doc to tell me, and, anyway, I wasn’t going to take his treatment.’

  ‘But, man, you’re crazy! T.B. doesn’t stand still.’

  ‘Everything stands still for me.’

  Sandy appealed to Madeline, who had been sitting on a fallen pine tree, making a childish daisy chain, by threading stalk through stalk.

  ‘No, I can’t influence him,’ she said. ‘After all, it’s his own life.’

  ‘But this way he’ll lose it.’

  Frank laughed at that. ‘Don’t let him frighten you, Maddy, all doctors are disease boosters! They love getting people jittery, but I won’t let them do that to me.’

  Madeline was anxious; more so that evening, when Frank had gone off, and Sandy besought her to use her influence in persuading Frank to have some treatment. So insistent was he, and so pessimistic, that late that night she went into Frank’s room, where he lay in bed reading a book. He looked painfully thin, she thought, propped up against the pillows.

  ‘Now what’s all this?’ he asked, laying down the D. H. Lawrence. Madeline perched on the end of the bed and tried to explain.

  ‘I’m worried about you, Frank,’ she ended.

  ‘You mean Sandy Mac has made you worried.’

  ‘I don’t want you to take risks. If you ought to have treatment, why not be sensible, and get it whilst you have the chance.’

  ‘Because I’m allergic to sanatoria. People die there, and I’m so sensitive to the atmosphere.’

  ‘Yes, but you ought to be having treatment,’ she persisted, and then began to cry. It would be so dreadful if this lovely interlude, the first time that she had ever touched the fringe of real beauty, were interrupted by the ghostly fingers of death.

  He said tenderly, ‘Don’t be a juggins! Doctors love making a fuss, nothing delights them more than to whisk a patient into a sanatorium and leave him there whilst they fiddle about. I’m being no guinea-pig. After all, a man cannot get to my age without knowing something of his own mechanism; you must let me be the judge.’

  ‘But I’m afraid for you, Frank.’

  ‘Silly little thing! There’s nothing to be afraid about. Look,’ and he indicated beyond the uncurtained window, the red brightness of the aurora.

  ‘It looks angry to me,’ she said.

  ‘It isn’t angry, it’s happy; I’m happy too.’

  He put out his arms and held her to his heart so that she fell asleep, curled there beside him, waking to find the day already brilliant, and Frank still smiling like the sphinx, as though he could see beyond earthly vision and marvelled at what he saw.

  ‘You’ve had a lovely sleep,’ he said, and, kissing her gently, ‘Youth is very beautiful.’

  Frank finished the picture, and the day that he signed it with a flourish the enquiry came asking him to visit an exhibition in Copenhagen. He turned the letter over in his hand, flattered and intrigued by it, yet indolent and not wanting to leave the hotel.

  ‘I suppose I ought to go?’

  ‘Would it take long?’

  ‘The inside of a week. I could slip across from Sweden, and be back the following Monday in the motor-boat with any luck.’

  She realised by his tone that he did not intend taking her, and looked at him hesitantly. ‘I couldn’t come too?’

  ‘It’s a most uncomfortable journey; besides, you wouldn’t be happy. Fenistone, who is getting up the exhibition, knows that I’m not married and it might make it awkward for you.’

  It wasn’t an excuse such as Chester would have made, Frank merely stated a fact. ‘Of course,’ she said. She could easily content herself here; there was mending to be done, and she would enjoy getting on with it. She would get her hair washed. There were lots of little chores, and a week’s absence would only make his return all the sweeter.

  ‘I shall bring you back a fairing from the Tivoli gardens.’ He stretched himself like a big tabby cat, thawing in luxury before a fire. ‘The Tivoli is such fun, balloons, acrobats, music. It has a gaiety that is all its own. Yes, I’ll bring you back a fairing.’

  She said good-bye to him happily, because at this time it did not seem to be good-bye. She watched the little boat passing down the fjord, turning round the bend, with Frank waving from the prow. Darling Frank! But he would be back within the week.

  She had lunch alone with Sandy Mac, and it was a difficult lunch, because Sandy kept harping on the desirability of sanatorium treatment. In the end she flew into a passion (it was only because he had alarmed her so much), and she told him that she wouldn’t listen to another word.

  Sandy Mac was in a bad humour at suppertime, but next morning melted, and went into long explanations of how he had only been prompted by the best motives. Madeline wished that he would not explain, because all the time she was so frightened; she wished that it was next Monday when the boat was due back up the fjord.

  But next Monday Frank did not return. He wrote telling her that there was so much to be done in Copenhagen, and he had several commitments that would keep him there pro tem, also he had had the most surprising offer to go on to the States, to make a special contact that he had been wanting to make for some time. He enclosed a cheque to cover her expenses, and see her home with a very comfortable margin. When the pale-pink cheque fluttered out of the envelope Madeline felt herself turn cold. This was the end. The lovely dream had died, and the cheque brought it down to the ordinary level of debit and credit. To Frank, she had been merely the companion that he had desired; perhaps it had been her own fault that she had warmed to him, and had wanted him, and now should feel an empty space where her affection for him had once glowed.

  She told her landlady, ‘My husband may have to go to America on business, so I shall be returning to England next week.’

  The landlady had a commercial mind; she thought that any business must be profitable, particularly American business, and therefore good, so she smiled and fussed. But when Madeline explained to Sandy he did not smile, and she had the feeling that he must have known how matters really stood between herself and Frank.

  He said, ‘What are you going to do now?’

  ‘
I shall return to London, and wait there for Frank’s return.’

  ‘I see.’ But she had not deceived him.

  On the last night, as she sat by the tranquil beauty of the fjord, she knew that she had to hew out a plan of living for herself. Up to date life had been confused and she had veered this way and that, making no direct goal, steering to no definite spot. She was twenty-three. She would go back to London, sending Frank’s things to his club, and (until he returned) she would take a post in another frock shop. This time she would try for something better, a place like Elfrida’s, anything to get away from Mr. Rozanne’s, because she could not return there. She had a little money, for Frank had been generous, and early in their acquaintance had insisted that a certain sum should be put at her disposal. He had himself suffered the horrors of poverty and could understand her natural fear of it, but now she realised that she could not continue with all this vagueness, this veering first one way then another, this aimless living which carried her along without any proper milestones worth the passing.

  She must do better.

  Sandy saw her off next morning, coming down to the water’s edge, and pressing her hand hard. ‘Good-bye, Mrs. Greyston; come back next year?’

  ‘Of course I shall. This holiday has been the loveliest that I have ever spent.’ She did not admit to him that it was the only one. ‘Of course I shall come back.’

  ‘And take my advice. Make that husband of yours have some proper treatment. You could persuade him when others would fail, and I’m sure you’d never regret it.’

  ‘I’ll do my best.’ But she wished that Sandy had not got the power to frighten her so much.

  She waved to him until the fjord twisted, and the inn was blotted out, and with it the sight of Sandy standing watching her out of sight; then she sat hunched there and watching the enclosing mountains, listening to the jangle of the waterfalls, listening to the echo of the sheep-bells, and drinking in the scent of the fir forests in long deep gulps. Of course she’d return, she told herself.

  NINE

  Madeline was very lucky in getting work at Elfrida’s. She happened to apply the very day that Miss White left them after an upheaval. Elfrida’s was run by a syndicate, it was one of a chain of frock shops, and they accepted Madeline’s services immediately. It meant a reasonable salary, and she stayed for a week at the Regent Palace Hotel until she could settle with something more private for herself.

  During the week-end she found a flat at the corner of Trafalgar Square, a most unlikely spot, big, old and rambling, but she liked the view, and the proximity to people, which made it sociable and alive. It had belonged to an artist, which in itself seemed to be a link with Frank; and although it was furnished in futurist fashion, she decided that this was in its favour, and she liked this all the more because it was so away from her previous life. She got herself properly established there before she made her return known to the family.

  The flat had bare boards with rugs of deep colours, the furniture was covered with a zebra-striped canvas, the plain walls hung with garish pictures, but somehow it all fitted in with Madeline’s mood. And the rent was well within her means, which was important.

  A few days later she was walking in the streets latish, seeking a breath of fresh air round St. James’s Park, with its strip of water, the caressing willows and its interesting bird life. She had only just discovered this park in its full summer beauty and was delighted with it. As she came back up the Duke of York’s steps she saw a girl ahead of her, overblonde, overdressed, very obviously of a certain class. Madeline did not know why she noticed her so closely, but about her there was something that struck a familiar note. As she came to the big doorway of Madeline’s own flat the girl apparently turned faint, for she put out a hand to steady herself against a pillar and reeled. Coming behind her, Madeline was only just in time to prevent her from falling.

  She said, ‘You’d better come into my flat a minute and rest. I live here, it’s only on the first floor’, and she drew the girl inside. She had to help her up the stone stairway and on to the sofa of the sitting-room. The girl lay there, her eyes closed against a cheek which was dreadfully pale, and made clownish by the two spots of rouge. Her fanciful hat was thrown aside and Madeline saw that the hair was not dyed, it was only the outrageous make-up of this rather pathetic little face that had given that impression. The girl opened her eyes and stared dully at Madeline. ‘Who are you?’ she asked.

  ‘Never mind who I am. You turned faint and I brought you up here. It’s my flat.’

  She said, ‘Oh Lord, I keep on making a mess of things, don’t I? I wish I were dead. It’s all so awful and I’m such a rotten failure.’

  ‘Don’t be silly! Drink up that water. It’ll help you and make you feel better.’

  The girl drank it and put the tiny glass down, sat staring at it. As Madeline watched her she felt that about her personally there was something that the stranger could not understand, then she said, ‘You remind me of a little girl that I knew in the village at home; she was half Italian, Madeline Robinson was her name and her father was run over by the hay wagon. I think she’d have grown up just like you.’

  Then of course Madeline knew. ‘You’re Miss Sheila,’ she said.

  ‘You don’t mean that you are Madeline?’

  ‘Yes, I do; I’ve thought about you so often,’ and then very gently, ‘Please tell me, how did all this happen? Being like this, I mean?’

  It had happened because Sheila had been brought up on too tight a bearing rein and had starved for romance and had suddenly broken away. It had happened because, driven hard by her narrow little father, at nineteen she had conceived a violent infatuation for a forbidden lover. He was quite a common man with very little intelligence, working in a local shop ‒ not a very high-class shop either; but Sheila was not the girl to be denied. She had climbed out of her bedroom window one night, having left an insulting letter for her father, and she had gone to Henry in the little town. Henry had been horrified and very much alarmed lest her father should pursue him, so they had realised their small savings and had made a bolt for London, where they had hoped for a Dick Whittington fate. But fate is not bountiful with Dick Whittingtons; there had been a fortnight that they had spent together in a hotel of a third-rate variety, but it had seemed to be most romantic to the starved little Sheila. Marriage had not come into it; possibly, when the affair was white-hot, both realised that a wedding ceremony would not help it; it wasn’t the kind of marriage to endure. Sheila’s whistle had been whetted, her appetite primed; London was a dazzling prize, and suddenly she found so much that she wanted, gewgaws, frocks, jewels, flowers, fun. Most of all, fun! Henry deserted her, it is true, coming suddenly to his senses when his money ran out, and the chance of a job was offered to him in Brixton. He walked out on her, but there were other men to admire her blonde hair and gold-lashed eyes. Blinding herself to the future, Sheila had plunged recklessly forward, drinking deeply of the cup that fate put to her lips, for at least it was heady, and she was getting some fun.

  She made no attempt to excuse herself.

  Madeline said, ‘Maybe I could get you work in the rag trade? It’s dull, of course, but honest, and it would be a start.’

  Sheila said, ‘I’m awfully stupid at jobs.’ Personally she agreed that the rag trade would be dull, and much preferred her own means of earning her living.

  ‘You’ll stay here?’ said Madeline.

  The invitation came at a time when Sheila was cleared out. She had been sharing a room with a woman she knew in Rupert Street, nothing like as nice a room as this, and a most undesirable woman who used nauseating language which Sheila had always loathed. ‘I’d love to stay here. Oh, how thankful I am to have met you.’

  Sheila slept well, whilst Madeline lay awake making plans for her; loyalty urged her to a quixotic rescue; whatever happened, Sheila must be salvaged from this morass into which she had plunged herself. Next morning the visitor lay back comfortably and watche
d Madeline get her her breakfast before leaving for the shop. ‘What you need is a job and a weekly pay envelope,’ Madeline decided.

  ‘Yes, of course. You are the most understanding darling in the world, and I can’t think how it is that some man hasn’t picked you up and made you the loveliest wife ever.’

  ‘It is peculiar, isn’t it?’ and Madeline went off to work. The feeling of exhilaration lasted all day, though when she approached the syndicate on the telephone they were disappointing in their welcome of Sheila. They said that they had no niche save for young girls who started as messengers and worked their way up to saleswomen. Wardour Street was more likely to take a girl of over twenty, because Wardour Street was far less particular.

  Madeline skimped her lunch to run round into Wardour Street at the imminent risk of meeting some of her family there, but she met no one, neither did she manage to get a firm interested in Sheila. When she returned to her own flat Sheila had left a note saying that she was out, but would be back later; and it was much later when she did come back, having had too much to drink. She was not actually drunk, only mildly silly with it, laughing a good deal at stupid jokes, and lolling on the sofa. The unfortunate part was that Madeline was not shocked or angry, for she had already set Sheila on a plinth and was determined to excuse all her weaknesses. Her loyalty was staunch and she was convinced that the girl was not really to blame. All Sheila needed was the chance to recover herself, and live the right kind of life. Madeline made every excuse that there was to make, because she treasured the memory of watering that child’s garden together, and Sheila coming to visit the school and remarking about her own indifferent sewing and the length of her stitches.

  Sheila made no excuses for herself; she admitted that she had always hated the Hertfordshire village which was so dull; she had disliked the smell of hawthorn in spring, and of privet and elder in summer. She had hated her father, though sorry for her dull mother, who, after many years of marriage to a martinet in a dog collar, had given up hope. Sheila’s passion had always been for gaiety and living and she had always admired outrageous clothes. Now she had them.