Keeping the World Away (22 page)

‘But if they took my painting mistaking it for something valuable and then find it is not, what will happen to it?’

‘It will be discarded.’

There was no scream from Charlotte, her mother noticed, nor even any sign of either anger or misery. Instead, she sat quietly, gazing rather vacantly into space. Like John, Lady Falconer saw how Charlotte had changed but unlike him she was able to pinpoint the difference. It was simply a matter of having grown up, and the change was more striking in her case because they had not seen her for several months. If she had remained at home, the change might have happened imperceptibly. Studying her daughter, Lady Falconer even saw signs that in spite of her unkempt hair, the once ugly duckling might become, if not a swan, a far from
hopelessly
unattractive creature. Her voice softened as she said, ‘I am sorry about your painting, Charlotte. I know how you cared for it.’ Charlotte bowed her head and did not reply, but Sir Edward gave a little grunt which his wife could not interpret.

‘Edward?’ she said. There was no reply. He was slumped in his chair, his eyes closed. Smoothing her dress, Lady Falconer asked if they might move on from the unpleasantness of the burglary and she might hear something of their tour. Her husband sighed heavily. ‘Charlotte?’ Lady Falconer said.

‘It was wonderful,’ Charlotte said, with no wonder in her voice. Realising this herself, she tried again. ‘Paris was beautiful,’ she said. ‘We saw so many works of art. And in Florence too,’ she added lamely.

‘The weather?’

‘Perfect. It rained one day in Paris, but otherwise, perfect.’

‘Did you meet interesting people?’

‘Not really. We were engrossed in the art, Mama. Oh, we did make the acquaintance of one lady, but I forget her name …’

‘Miss Tyrwhitt,’ said Sir Edward, eyes still shut.

‘Yes, Miss Tyrwhitt. She is an artist herself.’

Lady Falconer was instantly alert. ‘How did you meet this lady, whose difficult name your father remembers so easily?’

‘She was staying in our hotel, that’s all.’

‘She was attractive, I take it?’

‘Charming,’ Sir Edward said, ‘very knowledgeable about art.’

‘Quite to your taste, then.’

‘We only talked to her once,’ Charlotte said.

Supper was served, but though Charlotte ate heartily – in that respect she had not changed – Sir Edward picked at his food. There was virtually no conversation between the three of them. The minute Charlotte had finished, she begged to be excused, saying she wished to go to bed at once. When she had left the room, Lady Falconer said, ‘She does not seem distraught about the loss of that painting she used to treasure so.’

‘She is disillusioned,’ Sir Edward muttered.

‘About what, precisely?’

‘Art, Hettie, art, of course. Taking her to see great art has revealed to her her own inadequacies. It has had quite the opposite effect from that which it ought to have had.’

‘But how has this changed her view of her painting?’

‘It does not mean the same to her.’

‘I am lost, Edward.’

‘And I am tired. Goodnight.’

The next day, while her husband spent his time haranguing police officers, Lady Falconer addressed herself to Charlotte in a way she had never quite done before. For the first time she felt intrigued by her daughter rather than irritated, and found herself wanting to understand what on earth Edward had meant by his bewildering remarks concerning Charlotte. It had always seemed rather ridiculous, the way she used to fawn over that little painting – Lady Falconer had wondered if she was quite right in the head – but now that it had been stolen, and Charlotte seemed unperturbed, there was a mystery her mother wanted to solve. How could a painting mean so much to its owner one day and apparently mean nothing some weeks later? Charlotte
ought
to be upset.

They chatted first about baby Jasper. Lady Falconer described him in predictable detail to Charlotte and said that he would be a joy for her to draw when she saw him. Charlotte shook her head. ‘I have given up art,’ she said.

‘Oh, come, Charlotte, that is a little melodramatic.’

‘Then it is. There is nothing I can do about it. I have lost all enthusiasm. I cannot do what the artist who painted the attic picture can do, let alone what the great artists can do.’

‘But, Charlotte, you have not been trained. It is ridiculous to imagine that you cannot paint when so far no one has taught you except your father.’

‘I thought you did not wish me to become an art student.’

‘True, I did not, but as a hobby …’

‘Art that is a hobby is useless, Mama.’

‘Your father does not think so.’

‘But I would. It is all or nothing with me. There.’

Still struggling, Lady Falconer said, ‘Let me understand. The attic painting made you believe you could be an artist?’

‘No.’

‘What then? What did it do?’

‘It made me want the life.’

‘The
life
?’

‘Mama, please, there is nothing to understand. I had foolish ideas. I imagined things, and now I do not. I am realistic.’

‘And what form does this realism take?’

‘I have no more ridiculous dreams about living in attics and being an artist.’

In spite of herself, Lady Falconer was touched. ‘How sad, dear,’ she said. But this was evidently not the right thing to say.

‘It is not in the least sad,’ said Charlotte. ‘A painting deluded me into thinking I was something I clearly am not. That’s all.’

‘So now you do not care for art?’

‘Mama! Of course I care for it, how could I not, seeing what I have seen. I will always “care” for art. But it pains me to know I can never be an artist, do you see? Am I plain enough?’

Lady Falconer did not see. Nothing was plain to her. It seemed to her that her daughter was in a muddle, and somehow she was blaming the stolen painting. How this could be, Lady Falconer could not fathom, but since she had never understood Charlotte she told herself this was to be expected. But at the same time she began to hope that, with all this art nonsense out of the way, her youngest daughter might yet turn into a young woman of whom she might be proud – graceful, sensible, well-mannered.

The tour, she thought, had done Charlotte good.

*

The bare patch on the wall was not so very noticeable. The painting had not, after all, been there long enough for the lurid wallpaper behind it to fade much. Nevertheless, Charlotte did not like to see it, and looked around for some other picture to cover it over. She found a harmless scene of Hampstead Heath and hung that up instead, but still she felt disturbed and guilty every time she looked in its direction and began trying to sleep
on
her other side so that she would always wake looking the other way.

It would be better if she went to Queen’s College rather than to the Slade. If she had no artistic talent then she must use her brain. Perhaps, in the end, the stolen painting had taught her something. That, at any rate, was how she resolved to think of it, but the memory of it floated in her mind, the image of it, the atmosphere, the spell it had cast over her.

She could not bear the thought that it might have already been damaged or discarded or even destroyed.

STELLA

I

COMING OUT OF
the hospital, Alan turned sharp left and began walking quickly, sticking to the kerb side of the crowded pavement. His sight was blurred, but he knew where he was going, there was no need for him to be able to see clearly in order to recognise signs. It was a stifling hot day, though there was no sun. London in August, an uncomfortable place to be, but soon he would be on the train and speeding – he hoped speeding, and not dragging – towards Cornwall. Once there, once home, he would feel better. Everything would settle down. A humdrum life, that was what he wanted now. A quiet, uncomplicated existence.

He loathed hospitals. He had been surprised to discover how many men found them safe, comforting places. He’d seen faces light up when the decision came – ‘Hospital for him.’ But he had no trust in doctors, not much respect for most nurses. It seemed to him that some of the medical staff in the hospitals where he had been didn’t know what they were doing. Suspicion and scorn probably showed on his face, because he was not a popular patient. He asked too many questions, analysed closely too many answers. Before the war he’d been a civil servant, desk job, Trade & Industry, which had taught him to be meticulous. He liked to get things right, and couldn’t stand bluster.

The city was packed. He saw lots of men like himself, obviously wounded in the war. A few were even in uniform though it was two years since the Armistice. He didn’t like looking at them, and tried instead to concentrate on the traffic, a mixture of automobiles and horse-drawn vehicles which still struck him as strange. He thought he would like a car one day, if he could ever afford one. Moving less carefully among the rushing pedestrians, though his sight was clearing, he noticed a woman who
looked
a bit like Stella getting onto a bus. Odd. He hardly ever saw another woman who looked like her, whereas there were quite a few who reminded him of Charlotte. It was a question of colouring, obviously. Stella’s bright red hair and disturbingly green eyes were not a common combination whereas Charlotte was a brunette, a tall, fairly ordinary-looking brunette. You had to look closely (as he had done) to see the sweetness in her face.

Tiring, and still nowhere near the underground station, he decided to stop at a café and have a drink. The café he turned into was more of a teashop, but his bad leg ached and he had to sit down. He ordered tea, and a scone. There were only two other people in the place, women, both with shingled hair, a style he hadn’t yet got used to, deep in conversation. They paid not the slightest attention to him, which relieved him. His burns invited attention, and he hated being stared at. There were those who tried not to look but their furtive glimpses proved harder to bear even than stares. There was a paper lying on the table he’d chosen,
The Times
. He shoved it aside, not wanting to know any news. He’d finished with news. Politics, foreign affairs, share prices – they no longer had relevance to his life. He felt he didn’t really belong to the world any more. ‘Cutting yourself off, hiding away, won’t help,’ Charlotte had said. But she was wrong. It did.

He’d been with her for only six months, just before the war began. The future had been so bright, so full of every kind of promise. In 1916, remembering himself in the summer two years before produced a kind of tearful emotion in him harder to cope with than the misery he had had to endure ever since he was injured. All his images of his pre-war self were of a man overwhelmingly energetic, a man who had found it difficult to sit at a desk, though his job demanded that he should. He’d liked games – mainly cricket, and tennis – and had been good at them. His school reports had referred to his ‘exuberance’ and Charlotte had once said this was what had first attracted her to him. She liked exuberant men, men who glowed with vitality and physical well-being. She didn’t play games herself but she was a great walker, and had taken up the new fad for cycling with enthusiasm. That
was
how he’d met her. She’d been coming too fast down East Heath Road and her skirt had caught in the wheel, sending her flying into his arms as he came off the heath after his swim in the pond. He’d been almost at the road when he saw her hurtling down and he’d sprinted into her path, seeing what was about to happen – and caught her as she crashed to a halt.

Neither of them was hurt. It could have been embarrassing, being thrown onto his back as she catapulted on top of him, but they both laughed, not at all shy. He’d helped her disentangle the offending skirt, and a slight scratch on her ankle, where something had cut through her stocking, gave him the opportunity to produce his handkerchief (luckily clean and unused) and tie it round. He pushed the bike back up the hill for her to the rather alarmingly grand house where she turned out to live. On the way, they chatted about cycling and bicycles. He told her that he loved to cycle, belonged to a cycling club, and went off most weekends on long rides, taking the train to various places outside London. She said she wished she could do the same. Then he offered to fit a guard to her back wheel so that her skirt could not catch in it again and, to his surprise, she accepted his offer. That was the beginning. They had never, of course, become lovers, though he had thought of himself as in love and he was sure Charlotte had felt the same. Who knew what might have happened, had it not been for the war starting just as they were really becoming close? But if it had not been for the war, he would not have met Stella.

It distressed him that Stella had never known him as he used to be. He’d been so dreadfully afraid at first that what attracted her to him in that wretched hospital was his helplessness, and that it was pity which drew her to him. She denied this, but it had taken him a long time to believe she could see anything at all to love about him. ‘You’re brave,’ she said, and ‘You
try
all the time,’ and then, later, they discovered a shared taste for the same kind of music and the same sort of books, and she said no one she’d ever known could talk so intelligently about things. It didn’t seem a lot, to him, to inspire love, especially when so much of why
he
loved
her
was to do with her looks. She was beautiful, as Charlotte had not been.

He’d met Charlotte again, briefly, after peace was declared, to tell her about Stella and to finish things properly, and he’d been shocked at the change in her. She’d written to him throughout the war, sisterly letters, but never mentioned how thin and worn she had become, though she’d told him how ill she had been after the death of her father. But then she’d been equally shocked by his appearance. They sat in the buffet at Victoria Station, a meeting which lasted twenty minutes but felt like twenty hours. He was ashamed of his prepared speech but also relieved to have made it, to get it over.