Until the Colours Fade (31 page)

‘No morning was wasted,’ she murmured, lowering her eyes. ‘And yet I think another likeness might be more suitable.’ She looked again at the unfinished sketch and sighed: ‘You are a clever artist, Mr Strickland, but not a tactful one.’

‘I will try to do better, my lady.’

She smiled ironically and tossed her head back.

‘Of course, you have abandoned honesty after what I said. You mean you will try to do worse.’ She caught his eye, and, although still angry, he returned a faint smile. ‘Perhaps we have
done enough for one morning.’

‘As your ladyship wishes.’

Helen inclined her head and looked quizzically at Tom.

‘You know, Mr Strickland, I wish you’d be a bit less generous with your “yes my ladys” and “if your ladyships”. Excessive deference is usually a subtle form of insult.’

‘I shall try to avoid it in future.’

‘Perhaps I can help you.’

Tom was surprised to see Helen go across to a corner cabinet containing Chelsea porcelain and lift out a dessert plate. She held it up to the light and he saw a deep green border edged with gold, encircling an intricately painted pastoral scene after
Watteau
or Teniers.

‘You spoke of plates and bowls, did you not?’ she asked with arched brows. Then, without waiting for his reply, with a sudden movement of the arm she tossed the plate into the
fireplace
where it shattered into a myriad of tiny fragments. After a slight shrug of her shoulders, she smiled briefly and turned on her heel. From the doorway she said: ‘Tomorrow I trust we will both do better.’

Speechless with confusion, Tom watched her go out into the hall, his heart still pounding from shock. A moment later, as his words came back to him, he cried aloud at his stupidity. ‘A house where even the meanest plate and bowl remind me of my position.’ His anger forgotten, he stared at the jagged pieces of china scattered amongst the fire-irons and felt a warm tingling sensation in his spine. Who else but Helen Goodchild, he asked himself, could have conceived an action which was both apology and command, accusation and truce – all in a single movement of her hand?

During the afternoon following Helen’s first sitting, Catherine had tried to recapture the relaxed and friendly atmosphere of the evening before, but had found Tom diffident, remote, and eager to find an excuse to leave her as soon as he could do so without rudeness. Thinking that his behaviour was probably a result of the strains of beginning work on the portrait of a far from easy sitter, she was not unduly alarmed; because she herself often suffered from moods, she was rarely surprised to encounter them in others.

But when the same thing occurred next day, after Lady Goodchild’s second sitting, Catherine felt less confident that all was well. Immediately after lunch, Tom had slipped away; into the corn fields, as Catherine later discovered, to watch the men getting in the harvest and to sketch them.

On his return she asked to see his work and was hurt that he seemed reluctant to show her. She found nothing offensive in seeing the men depicted stripped to the waist and the women with their gowns pinned up behind, showing their stays and coarse linsey petticoats. She saw that he had noted how the men wore footless stockings pulled up over their arms to protect them from the stubble. She praised several sketches, especially one of a group of labourers, lying sprawled under the shade of a heavy farm waggon eating their lunch, but Tom looked down at his dusty boots and said little in return. He had thrust a poppy and some corn flowers in his buttonhole and his face was glowing with the wind and sun. His uneasiness struck Catherine as so uncharacteristic that from the time of this brief conversation, Catherine concluded that Helen had been speaking to him.

Infuriated by this suspicion Catherine sought out Helen at once, but as so often happened, was unable to talk to her because Humphrey was with her. The boy’s habit of turning up when least wanted, and his open admiration for Charles and her father, distressed and irritated Catherine. His pathetic desire to please her and his well-meaning attempts to cheer her up if she looked depressed became a great burden to her; and, since he was only occupied with his tutor during the mornings – the time when Tom was painting Helen – Humphrey was always
wandering
about and wrecking her opportunities for speaking to Tom. In fact, Humphrey had taken to inviting the artist to come for walks with him to see ‘his’ estate. The thought that her father might very well be paying off Goodchild’s debts, so that the little lord might ultimately enjoy an unencumbered patrimony, added to Catherine’s feeling of injustice, especially since she had barely enough money to buy Berlin wools and muslin in Flixton.

On the fourth day of Tom’s stay Catherine’s anger reached a new pitch. Without consultation or warning, Helen had invited George Braithwaite to lunch that very day. To have to suffer the Vicar of Flixton and his wife was a penance, but to be forced to endure George at the same time was altogether worse; indeed Catherine suspected deliberate malice on Helen’s part. When faced with this, Helen professed entire ignorance of any rejected proposal or any other past embarrassment and had merely
countered
by saying that Sir James had been eager to avoid a
permanent
rift with the Braithwaites. Besides, George had recently bought a commission in the Coldstream Guards and would soon be leaving the county. Catherine had been about to broach her principal grievance when the housekeeper had come in.

The conversation at lunch was monopolised by the vicar and Helen. When Catherine was not angrily staring at the reflections of the tureens and dishes in the polished surface of the table, she watched her future step-mother closely. The vicar, a fervent advocate of self-help and the unique opportunities for mental and moral improvement offered to working men by the
Mechanics
’ Institute, had been airing his pet subject. Catherine saw Helen’s lips flicker at the corners as she said with apparent
sincerity
:

‘If a man can redeem his own soul by his exertions, what other improvements cannot be attained?’

Catherine already knew the impact of Helen’s sarcasm at first hand and, unlike the unsuspecting cleric, was well aware that he was being made fun of. Helen seemed able to make herself liked even by those she ridiculed. At one point she mentioned having heard that the Society for the Conversion of the Jews, with annual subscriptions totalling over thirty thousand pounds, had only secured twenty converts in the past year.

‘But I’m sure, Vicar,’ she had added with a smile, ‘that none of your parishioners would become Jews for a mere thousand or so.’

Later she had joked about the Temperance Movement killing more men than it saved: town water being demonstrably less healthy than beer. The vicar had laughed heartily at this. The
Temperance Movement was too much connected with dissent for him to approve. Eventually the vicar told a favourite joke – always a sign that he had enjoyed himself – one concerning an occasion when his cook had asked whether a piece of cheese had ‘gone too far to be saved’. The cleric’s witty reply being that though in an unpleasing sense ‘alive’, the cheese possessed no soul and was therefore past salvation. George and Humphrey both chuckled loudly and the meal ended with good will all round. Catherine acknowledged that Helen had a remarkable talent for being offensive without actually causing offence, especially when speaking to men.

Afterwards, determined to avoid George, Catherine had taken herself off to the Sculpture Gallery, which Humphrey’s
great-grandfather
had built to house his collection of classical
statuary
. She was sitting despondently on the broad rim of a large marble sarcophagus, when she heard footsteps and looked up to see Tom enter. Her funereal seat was situated in an apse and so he did not notice her at first but started to examine the statues with interest. He was standing absorbed in front of the entwined figures of Bacchus and a satyr as Catherine spoke his name. He started and turned in her direction.

‘Miss Crawford, I didn’t see you.’

‘If you had done so, I am sure you would by now have found a reason to leave.’ She said this softly, concealing some of her
bitterness
.

‘Leave? Before looking at works like these? I had no idea they were here.’ He gazed from side to side and made a vague gesture embracing the entire room. ‘Some pieces are superb. That figure of a slave.’ He pointed. ‘And there, just to the left, the boy
playing
a pipe.’

‘Statues are conveniently silent,’ she said, determined not to let him so easily evade her implied question.

‘On the contrary,’ he replied as lightly as before. ‘That figure of Minerva positively screams out that she is no more complete than Lord Anglesey after Waterloo. Look at that crudely replaced leg.’

Catherine gave him a tight smile and moved a pace closer.

‘What is your reason for avoiding me?’ she asked, feeling the blood rush to her cheeks.

He looked down at the large shell pattern inlaid in the marble floor and shut his eyes for a moment.

‘I could not risk coming to feel too much.’

Tom heard her sharp intake of breath and saw her fingers
clutching the fringed border of her silk shawl. At first he thought that she was deeply moved but then noticed her forehead crease with anger.

‘Am I so great a fool, sir? You mean you could not or would not risk
me
feeling too much for you.’

‘I am not guilty of that presumption….’

‘Is it presumptuous to afford me the courtesy of a few minutes’ conversation each day?’ Seeing that he would not reply, she calmed herself a little and asked more as an entreaty than a
command
: ‘Did Lady Goodchild tell you to change your behaviour to me?’

‘She did not,’ he replied at once; and although she caught his eye, he did not look away, nor did his gaze waver. Catherine felt her lips begin to tremble and tears spring to her eyes; a moment later a low powerful sob surprised her. He stepped towards her with outstretched arms, but she turned from him furiously. He saw her lean against the plinth supporting a bust of an Emperor, but though her shoulders trembled, she made no further sound. At last she murmured without turning:

‘What must you think of me?’

‘I respect and….’

‘Respect!’ she cried. ‘What use is respect?’ Then with a great effort of control she came towards him and said quietly: ‘I am all right, Mr Strickland. You may leave me. Please.’

He started for the door, but, before reaching it, came face to face with George Braithwaite.

‘Seen Miss Crawford, Strickland?’ he asked brusquely. ‘Hell of a house for finding people in.’ His eyes bulged slightly as he took in some of the female nude figures and Bacchus’s priapic pose. Catherine had had time to reach the apse from which she had watched Tom five minutes earlier. Tom’s hope was to talk to George and prevent him going into the gallery. ‘The Romans knew a thing or two I never learnt at school,’ went on George, moving forward as he spoke.

‘You read Catullus?’ asked Tom in a last vain attempt to stop Braithwaite, whose eye had lighted upon the female slave. He took several steps forward and saw Catherine. As Tom heard George embark upon an apparently endless list of places where he had searched for Catherine, he slipped away.

Catherine left the apse and came towards George without betraying her previous emotion.

‘Won’t keep you long, Miss Crawford. Only came to say goodbye.’ He looked in embarrassment at the statues; evidently
hoping that his remark about the Romans knowing a thing or two had not been overheard. He also sensed that he had come at a bad moment.

‘I hear you’ve bought into the Guards?’

‘Hope I get on better in the infantry’‚ he replied with a modesty that surprised her.

‘I’m sure you will.’

‘Truth is, I couldn’t stay here after what happened.’

‘You mean between us?’ she asked, distressed to think that he was leaving because of her.

‘And the election … everything.’ He moved uneasily and cleared his throat. ‘Rejection makes a man think…. I know you won’t believe I’ve changed.’ He laughed edgily. ‘’course I can’t claim much credit when things did the changing for me.’ He tapped the top of his hat with his cane. ‘If we go to war, I’ll not turn out a dud, Miss Crawford. Not when I think of you I won’t. I’m not the duffer you took me for.’

‘I never took you for anything of the sort.’ She moved closer to him. ‘I’m truly sorry about everything, George.’

‘Can’t be helped,’ he replied gruffly, gazing past her at a
plaster
urn in a medallion on the wall. He seemed about to add
something,
but turned abruptly. Half-way across the room he stopped.

‘Damned if I’ll feel the same about anybody else, Miss
Crawford
. Damned if I will.’

Then without expecting a reply or waiting for one, he walked out, his riding boots echoing loudly on the marble floor.

*

Later the same afternoon Catherine found Helen reading in the arbour at the end of the Pergola Walk. Shafts of sunlight filtered through the overhanging canopy of wisteria and honeysuckle, speckling Helen’s straw hat and pale yellow dress with glowing points of light. Helen put down her book and motioned to
Catherine
to sit down on the rustic bench beside her wicker chair.

They talked for a while about the beauty of the day, and about
Henry
Esmond,
the novel Helen was reading, and the vicar’s wife, whose chilly manner and pink complexion had always made Helen mentally christen her ‘the strawberry ice’. And in a natural manner their conversation had drifted to Tom
Strickland
, Helen mentioning that he had started work on the final portrait. Catherine then asked whether Helen was pleased with the sketches.

‘He is competent certainly,’ was her dismissive reply.

‘Only that?’

‘Competence is not unimportant in an artist.’

‘To me it means correct but uninspired,’ objected Catherine.

‘Inspiration is rare,’ sighed Helen, lying back languidly with half-closed eyes. ‘I’m always sorry for artists. Nowadays they’ve so little imagination that they spend most of their time dredging their way through history and literature for subjects. Such a labour, and most of them are fearfully uneducated. Imagine knowing no Homer and practising heroic Greek art.’ She cast her eyes upwards at the absurdity of the idea. ‘Small wonder they all end up with the same trite scenes from
Don
Quixote
and the
Vicar
of
Wakefield
.’
She sat up again and smiled at
Catherine
. ‘Poor Mr Strickland went to a deplorable commercial academy in Wands worth where he learnt nothing.’

‘The same, I believe, has been achieved at Eton,’ returned Catherine coldly. ‘Mr Strickland also went to the Royal
Academy
Schools.’

‘A pity that they taught him no conversation there. His
boorish
silences make sitting very drear.’

‘My brother would never stay with a taciturn boor.’

Catherine saw Helen’s raised brows and her questioning look.

‘My dear, forgive me. I never thought that my idle criticism of Mr Strickland would distress you.’

Catherine longed to leap at her and slap the superior slightly contemptous smile from her face. Her voice shook as she said:

‘I think you knew it would. I think that is why you said it. You don’t think him ignorant or uncouth but said so to test my reaction.’

Helen’s smile changed to a look of surprise and misunderstood rectitude.

‘But, Catherine, how can my opinion of him, whether true or false, affect you?’

‘You belittled Mr Strickland to make me defend him.’

Helen seemed puzzled for a moment and then looked sharply at Catherine.

‘Let me assure you, Miss Crawford; if I thought you foolish enough to consider hurling yourself at the feet of an impecunious artist, I would speak plainly enough.’

Catherine got up and looked down at Helen.

‘As plainly as you have already spoken to Mr Strickland?’

Helen also rose, being careful as she picked up her book to put a marker in her place.