Chapter 3
Odette
IT IS ODETTE’S NINETEENTH BIRTHDAY, and she spends it in much the same way as she has for more years than she can count.
Herne House is busy about its own work, as on any day.
George entertains his circle, the servants go to their work, mayflies cloud above the standing water, and the wind moves through the willow trees and the peonies.
Cecilia wakes her early with kisses pressed across her face and whispers in her ear of a surprise later.
The perfect line of Cecilia’s throat, the dip of her clavicle, tempts Odette to linger in bed, and she lets her finger drift over the curve of Cecilia’s shoulder, the swell of her breast below thin linen and the crest of her nipple. There will be time for that, later.
Then she is summoned to her mother’s studio.
Lydia is already up and busy when Odette comes in.
She has a trailing shawl flung about her shoulders and before her is a mess of half-used tubes of paint, brushes, pencils, caked palettes, all spread about a fresh canvas.
The Elaine painting is gone from centre stage, leant up against a wall with its back to the room.
Lydia is ragged around the edges, the colour too flushed in her cheeks.
‘Should you not be resting?’
‘Good morning, my angel.’ Lydia stops and surveys Odette. ‘And what an angel you are. You look so much better with a bit of weight on you.’
Odette ignores the flush of shame. ‘Does this mean you feel well today?’
‘Well? Well? Who amongst us is well?’ She pulls open another drawer in the index card cabinet where the paints are stored, to reveal a scatter of different peach tones.
‘I feel as though someone is driving knives through my stomach and has let all the air out of my head, but you know, they give me very good medicine.’ She lifts her skirt up to use as a basket to carry the paints over to her easel.
Odette picks through the mess spread about the floor.
There is a present waiting on the stool, wrapped beautifully in marbled paper and tied up with ribbons.
‘Is this for me?’
Lydia diminishes a little. ‘Oh. Yes. You may not like it, and you must say at once if you don’t; it is only a trifle and really very unimportant. Happy birthday.’
Delicately, Odette unwraps the object that is unmistakably a book.
It is a copy of Persuasion – a first edition, she sees when she turns to the title page, in a brown leather binding with a maroon and black-banded spine. The pages are lightly speckled and the edges soft where they have been clipped and turned countless times.
Her mother watches her hopefully.
‘It is wonderful,’ says Odette.
And it is.
‘You like it?’
‘Very much.’
‘I thought you might find Anne’s story a comfort.’
Odette’s smile is fixed. ‘What do you mean by that?’
‘It is her best work, I think,’ says Lydia, as though Odette has not spoken. ‘Her most mature.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Now. Come here.’ She gestures for Odette to stand in front of the canvas, as though she is to sit for another painting. ‘I have an idea. It’s quite, quite brilliant. It will simply make the show. I cannot imagine making any work public without it.’
Odette’s breath catches. ‘Then it is settled? You will show at the Jermyn Street Gallery with Mr King and sell the paintings?’
Again, Lydia continues, disregarding her. ‘Mr King said it is a busy market and we must find a way to draw attention – something that will get the press interested. Publicity, he called it. And I have just the thing.’
‘What is it? Shall I fetch Cecilia and Leo?’
‘Oh no, this one is quite special. I want only you.’
That warm flush of pleasure. What it is to be wanted. ‘Of course, Mama. I’ll sit for anything you want.’
Lydia takes up a pencil and begins to consider angles, shapes. ‘Help me lift this.’
Her mother indicates a small square trellis that is interwoven with cloth flowers.
Odette remembers it from a work of Tristan and Iseult that she and Cecilia sat for last year, and from La Belle Dame sans Merci that Cecilia and Leo modelled the year before.
The sittings would go on so long, the three of them came up with games to play, The Minister’s Cat or I Spy: silly, childish parlour games.
One year, Leo had insisted that the minister’s cat was a frabjous cat, and argued that as it had been published in a poem, that made it a real word.
The resulting argument had derailed Lydia’s work and they had been banned from any mention of Lewis Carroll for the rest of the summer.
It was a beautiful time. They had so many beautiful times.
It cannot be possible that this is the last summer they will spend like this.
Together, they position the trellis where Lydia wants it, and Odette waits in anticipation.
It is so rare that Lydia asks her to model alone.
She would sketch her often as a child, while Odette was reading or concentrating on her needlework, but her paintings are all grand pieces with multiple characters.
‘Strip down,’ Lydia orders.
‘To my shift?’
‘No, all of it.’
‘You mean—’
‘Yes, all of it off.’
Odette stands stock still, suddenly unsure what to do with any of her limbs. She feels burningly hot. ‘Do I have to? Can’t I just leave my shift on, and you make it up?’
‘Make it up? Do you know how hard we had to fight as women artists to draw from life? This is about craft and skill and expression. How can we ever be taken seriously as artists if we do not do as all the greats do and study the human form?’
Odette wraps her arms around her chest. ‘I suppose. Maybe we could do it another time?’ It is all unreal. She cannot think. Her mind is a great empty white space, like some Arctic waste.
‘Don’t be prudish. It’s not anything I haven’t seen before; I looked after you as a baby, or have you forgotten I am your mother?’
Odette stares at her. There is a frantic light about Lydia’s face that she had thought was excitement, pleasure – now, with the gaunt hollows of her cheeks so pronounced and the sheen of sweat across her ashen forehead, Odette is struck again by the horror of her mother’s illness.
She is not well. She is badly ill.
Now may be all they have.
She cannot bear to disappoint her mother.
Odette unbuttons her shirtwaist and unfastens her skirt, folding them to place them on a chair. With her back to Lydia, she takes off her petticoat, loosens her corset, removes her stockings. And then her shift.
She is naked, and the air is colder than she thought. The studio is such a big place, high ceilinged and all glass and empty air.
Lydia gives her instructions on where and how to stand, and she does so, acutely aware of her breasts and her stomach and her hips.
She is on display. Her body will be displayed in a painting.
Perhaps there will be mezzotints or prints made.
Perhaps the show will be a wild success and half of London will go.
She thinks, wildly, of asking her mother to paint a different face.
But speaking is impossible. She is only a collection of parts.
She is gone.
*
The birthday party brings all the usual crowd to the dining room that evening: Mr King, of course, and Eddie Rutherford, and the simpering Mr Wrexham, and a new libretto writer of whom her father considers himself patron, the earl of somewhere Odette can never remember, an old school friend of her father’s, who is an amateur philosopher, and many countless others who come teeming in when the gong is struck.
Lydia is swaying a little from a glass or two of wine too many, playing the hostess well.
The meal is not to Odette’s taste at all: far too fussy and formal, complicated dishes that take a long time and taste of little.
Fricandeau de veau à la Jardinière and capon à la Financière.
It smacks of Claudine’s orders to the kitchen, and Odette swallows down any disappointment that no one who knows her better took charge.
Cecilia catches her eye and gives her a commiserating look.
A few gifts are presented – a new pen, a silk square, a delicate bottle of scent – while beneath the table, Cecilia keeps her hand on Odette’s thigh.
Her father presents her with an academic diary for her first year at Cambridge and she strokes the soft leather of its cover with a bloom of hope. Her father does think of her.
Then, the real entertainment starts.
The weather is still fine, so the party moves to the garden, and a few scratch recitals are given as more wine is passed around.
Penelope makes a show of fanning herself, insisting she could not possibly be called on to recite, having been retired for so many years, but sure enough, a moment later, she is working her way through a soliloquy from As You Like It.
Leo joins his light tenor voice with another guest’s for a duet of a music hall number about Maria Marten, murdered by her lover in the famous Red Barn.
George eschews the limelight, watching his household, Odette thinks with pleasure, but she realises perhaps she does not understand him as well as she believed.
What does he want with all these hangers-on?
Is he content with his talented wife, or does he feel overshadowed?
It is strange, she felt so sure he thought as she thought, but it seems she has got everything round the wrong way.
Odette stays as close to Cecilia as she can risk, legs pressed together where they sit on a blanket, hands carefully apart.
Even Claudine seems to be making something of the evening, holding court with a rotating cast of admirers to whom she dispenses bon mots and witticisms, as though she is mistress of the house and not her sister.
Abruptly, Odette notices that Lydia is not here.
‘Where’s my mother?’ she asks Cecilia, peering around. ‘Have you seen her?’
Panic thrums in Odette’s chest, and she is struck by the image of her mother collapsing, red blood splattering across her shoes.