Until the Colours Fade (29 page)

‘I am pleased … it’s this place, don’t you see? Thinking of a house like that here …’ Tom felt guilt and affection when he saw the way Magnus immediately brightened at his words. A
moment later he turned to Tom, his old self again.

‘I hope,’ he drawled in a matter-of-fact voice, ‘your
illustrations
will be worthy of their text.’

Tom aimed an ineffectual punch at him and then lay back smiling, amazed that he had forgiven Magnus for putting him in a position where he had had to wash in water that had made the river in Rigton Bridge seem clean by comparison; amazed too that he had even come in the first place.

Before his departure for Turkey Sir James had summoned Catherine and broken the news of his intention to marry Helen Goodchild. Catherine, who had always found Helen scathing and imperious, had done her best to conceal the shock and dismay she felt at the prospect of subordination to a step-mother less than ten years her senior. Because of the recentness of Helen’s bereavement, Catherine had rightly supposed that the marriage itself would not take place for a year; but her
assumption
that her life would remain unchanged in the meantime had proved over-optimistic. Since Magnus had gone and Charles seemed likely to remain in the south while his ship was being converted and fitted out, Sir James had asked his daughter whether she thought it reasonable for him to be burdened with the expense of keeping up a large country house for her alone, especially while an excellent alternative was open to her. While he was away Helen would need companionship, and who better to provide it than her future husband’s daughter? Since
Catherine
had known that her father was set on this course, she had not argued.

*

Almost from the day of Catherine’s arrival at Hanley Park a veiled animosity had grown-up between the two women. If Catherine thought Helen imperious, Helen thought Catherine secretive and self-righteous. From the beginning Helen had
disliked
having the girl at Hanley Park, but since Sir James, as well as providing Helen with fifteen hundred a year, had also
promised
her the benefit of any money saved by the virtual closure of Leaholme Hall, she had hardly felt able to refuse to
accommodate
Catherine. But financial advantages notwithstanding, Catherine’s presence continually irked her. She talked so little and her habitual expression, it seemed to Helen, was a martyred smile; whether she was dispensing tea, or arranging flowers, or playing the piano – there it was, that faint insipid smile: full of tolerance and sweet resignation but not, Helen felt, without a definite hint of reproach. Her position, it was true, was a difficult one; from being virtual mistress of one house, she was now little
more than an unwanted guest in another and, realising this, Helen did her best to be friendly. But she always felt uneasy with Catherine and knew that the feeling was reciprocated. Both seemed to fear any intimacy in case it should lead to indiscretions which might reach Sir James. Helen was certain that Catherine believed she was marrying her father purely for convenience; and at times when she saw Catherine’s deep blue eyes – so
strikingly
like her father’s – following her across a room, Helen thought of the girl as a spy and her presence at Hanley Park Sir James’s means of ensuring that his wife-to-be remained
well-behaved
. As a rule she quickly laughed at herself for such ideas, but laughter or no laughter, Helen’s relations with Catherine, although they grew no worse, did not improve.

Catherine imagined herself living for years in a house which she hated; an unwanted stranger condemned to wander through tall classical rooms with Aubusson carpets and silk upholstered Empire chairs and sofas, forever banished from the homelier low-ceilinged rooms of Leaholme Hall with their irregular
mullioned
windows, panelled walls and solid Jacobean furniture: an inconvenient and unimposing house when set beside the formal grace of Hanley Park, but one where she had felt that she
belonged
. Her father had never been there long enough to feel the same and now, according to Helen, he was no longer thinking of a temporary closure but of finding a tenant. The day she had
discovered
this, Catherine had known that there would be no limit to her time as Helen’s
guest.
Therefore when she heard shortly afterwards that Magnus had persuaded her father to commission Tom Strickland to paint Helen’s portrait, Catherine looked
forward
to his coming as an oasis in a desert.

Although both her previous meetings with Strickland had been in unfavourable circumstances, he had still impressed her, not just for his striking looks, but for a directness of manner which, far from being abrasive, had combined gentleness of speech and a refusal to be angered with an unmistakable inner pride. Almost all the men she had met during her London seasons had talked down to her when airing their views or expressing opinions. Strickland by contrast had appeared modest even when speaking with conviction. Apart from her admiration for artistic talent, the fact that Magnus, usually so critical of
everyone
, had formed a close friendship with Tom, also weighed heavily with Catherine.

She knew that he would not feel able to make himself pleasant to her, unless she first showed that she enjoyed his company, and
with this in mind, Catherine decided from the beginning to
encourage
him. Where this might lead, she had deliberately left vague in her own mind; certain at least that she deserved a brief interlude of happiness in her imprisonment. What in any case could words like ‘shameless’ or ‘flirtatious’ matter to a ‘lady’ with less freedom than the youngest chamber-maid in the house? Servants could at least chatter and laugh with grooms and
footmen
, and walk in the lanes with whom they chose on their
afternoons
off.

So on the hot and dusty July day on which Tom was expected, Catherine dressed with special care, forcing her maid to spend far longer than usual with her hair; and while the girl brushed and combed and curled, her mistress stared at her reflection, noting the effect of certain expressions and swearing to herself that she would not allow coyness or reserve to check her
excitement
and high spirits. By treating Strickland as a friend and equal rather than an inferior guest, she would be sure to annoy Helen, but this thought pleased rather than disturbed her.
Because
of his friendship with Magnus, Tom would take her part if Helen decided to be scathing at her expense. For the first time since her arrival at Hanley Park, Catherine joyfully anticipated an end to her loneliness.

*

Tom Strickland had not been many hours at Hanley Park before he sensed the tension between Lady Goodchild and Miss
Crawford
, but though he realised that his hostess was perplexed by Catherine’s gaiety – an aspect of her character which he himself had never seen before – he still felt grateful for the relaxed way in which she talked to him, especially since during dinner her
ladyship
hardly spoke at all.

While answering Catherine’s animated questions about Magnus and their life in London, Tom occasionally glanced at Helen, more to acquaint himself with the difficulties he would encounter painting her than because impelled to do so. Her face seemed paler than he remembered. Her cheeks were slightly sunken, not marring her looks but emphasising the perfection of her bone-structure and the intensity of her dark almond-shaped eyes.

After dinner he gave Catherine a bowdlerised account of his night with Magnus in the Lambeth Workhouse and was
surprised
that she did not seem at all shocked by anything he said. Later Catherine told him that she had not always confined her
visiting to poor villagers, but had occasionally taken food and money to families in Rigton Bridge where she had heard plenty about the local workhouse. All the time Tom was acutely aware of certain differences between the two women: Catherine’s fresh complexion and rounded cheeks, Helen’s pallor and smouldering eyes; her beauty made more poignant by faint traces of
haggardness
; the face of a woman who had lived and suffered and found no repose. Looking at her troubled eyes, Tom was stung by the memory of the easy way in which he had condemned her on first hearing that she had consented to marry Sir James.

Catherine’s behaviour since Strickland’s arrival was a
revelation
to Helen, and the girl’s open smiles and unforced laughter seemed to reproach her for having been the sole cause of her former lassitude. The idea that Catherine might wish to
captivate
Strickland for any reason other than to discomfort her did not at first occur to Helen; although later, her awareness that the artist with his dark curls and slender figure was by no means unattractive, did make her change her view of Catherine’s motives. Nor did Lady Goodchild understand or approve of Catherine’s evident interest in Strickland’s excursions into low life. While not averse to indirect charity, Helen suspected that many urban lady bountifuls gained a twisted pleasure from
visiting
squalid rookeries and courts to dispense soup and blankets. Then, like Strickland, they would return to warm clean
sitting
-rooms to tell their travellers’ tales, as if they had been to Africa rather than to Seven Dials. Helen was no more callous than others of her class and would have preferred a world
without
poverty – provided of course there were still servants – but since the poor were always likely to be there, and were openly in evidence to all who used their eyes, she saw no point in discussing them. In truth they bored her. Idealism of all kinds had always irritated her, smacking too much of worthy low-churchmen and chapels with absurd names like Shiloh and Ebenezer; and
perhaps
because she had so little herself, she thought those
professing
to be actuated by ideal motives, self-deluded men and women trying desperately to hide their selfishness, not least from themselves. In her view the strong had always taken advantage of the weak, and short of a dramatic change in human nature, to expect them to do otherwise was naïve wishful thinking. The idea that Catherine might be guilty of this offence did not endear her to Helen, who was already starting to think her deceitful for having concealed so much of herself.

Only later, when in answer to a request from Tom, Catherine
had sat down at the piano and played and sang, did Helen
recognise
her true feelings. There was Catherine in her
cream-coloured
silk dress, her silvery hair dressed in ringlets and her face gleaming in the candle-light with the smooth peach-like bloom only given to women in their twenties, playing and singing so delightfully with her clear small voice, while she, Helen, sat watching her and remembering a time when she too had looked like a figure from an untouched world of innocence and hope. For a while Helen could not believe that she might be jealous and yet the young man’s attentiveness to Catherine disquieted her. She had pretended to herself to be above joining in while Tom and Catherine had talked about ‘the condition of the people’, but in reality she suspected that they had not cared whether she
participated
or not. And now, while Catherine sang, she felt excluded once more. Strickland had asked for her opinion from time to time and had addressed remarks to her, but from
politeness
, she had felt, rather than inclination.

The fondness both of them evidently felt for Magnus formed a bond between them, which she could not share. Yet exclusion for that reason did not hurt her. Jealousy of their youth? Not even that precisely. The idea that here were two people who possessed a freedom which she had felt obliged to throw away was what hurt her most. Catherine might still marry a man her own age and love him – truly love him, not just feel lukewarm affection. And Strickland, for all the financial hazards of his work, could leave the house when he had finished and be free to go where he chose, behave as he wished and need care nothing for what others thought of the company he kept or the things he did. And yet Catherine envied her the petty mastery of running the house, and Strickland deferred because of her patronage and position. As soon as Catherine ended her song, Helen rose and told them she was tired. Then she rang for the groom of the chambers to show Strickland to his room.

On reaching the bedroom, Helen sent away the maid waiting patiently to undress her, and sat down by the open window. The lamp was smoking a little but instead of ringing to get it fixed, she took off the chimney and globe herself and turned down the wick. She could hear a faint rustling of branches and the whirr of insects. A large moth, its eyes glowing red in the lamp-light, bumped against the window and fluttered past her into the room. In the distance the lake shone like a long silver mirror, and the moon cast a soft unbroken light over the fields beyond.

She shut her eyes and tried to recapture the certainty she had
felt two months before. A week after James’s departure she would not have been troubled by so small a matter as exclusion by an insignificant artist and an inexperienced girl. She thought of James and the responsibilities he had shouldered and
wondered
what he was doing at that moment. Ten days before, the Russians, as he had said they would, had crossed the River Pruth. Now he was in Vienna with Lord Stratford attending a conference of the ambassadors of the Great Powers. Should any woman engaged to be married to such a man feel distressed by trivial incidents? She stared out angrily into the night and then put her head in her hands. In truth it was not eminence, and the vicarious pleasure of hearing of great events from those
participating
in them, that she wanted. Sir James had spoken of
wanting
openness and understanding between them; and yet when she thought of their conversations, all she most vividly recalled was his remoteness and his assumption that politics and
international
affairs would be beyond her; that smile of weary slightly contemptuous wisdom when she had questioned about what he had said. With her he would prefer to sketch and chat about
matters
of no importance, or be read to, or reminisce about the
distant
past, separating her from his real life and present cares, and so cutting her off from the most essential part of him. He had written from Constantinople before leaving for Vienna, and although a Russian army was already marching towards Turkey’s northern frontier, most of his letter had been taken up with a humorous description of an audience with the Sultan, and that great man’s distress to discover that Sir James Crawford did not smoke – not even finest Latakia tobacco in a gold and amber pipe provided by his Sublime Majesty, and lit with glowing
charcoal
by a kneeling slave.