Chapter Eleven #3
There were visitors at luncheon, which meant she didn’t have to talk, for which she was grateful.
When they had gone, Aunt Caroline said, ‘Now, dear, I’m engaged at Lady Vane’s for tea.
Do you want to come with me? You needn’t if you don’t want to – we’ll be discussing the benefit concert so it will be dull.
It might be better if you rested before the opera this evening – I think it’s a long one.
You’re looking rather peaked. This has seemed such a long Season – I’m starting to feel glad it’s almost over. ’
‘Yes,’ Rachel said. ‘I mean, I’ll rest, thank you.’
‘Are you quite well, dear? You look a little flushed.’
‘I’m rather tired, Auntie. I – I think I’d like to go home.’
Her aunt looked her surprise. ‘Home? You mean, down to Ashmore? Well, you’ll be going next week anyway, won’t you, to the celebration for that fellow with the strange name who’s being given a medal?
Cecile is going to accompany you and Alice.
On Wednesday, I think it is. Can’t you wait a few days longer?
We have cards for every day until then – and they might not be ready to receive you sooner. ’
Rachel, struggling to hold back tears, could not argue. ‘Yes, of course I’ll stay until then,’ she said. ‘I’ll just go…My room…Rest a little.’
She hurried away, and her aunt watched her with surprise and faint concern: Rachel so loved the Season, – usually she couldn’t get enough of it.
But then her mind reverted to the annoyance of tea at Lady Vane’s and the discussion of the benefit, which would ramble on so long, as such discussions tended to, that she would hardly be back before dressing bell.
They’d been invited to the Porchesters’ box and were dining with them first, so it would take a long time to dress – everything had to be just so.
And the Porchesters were such opera lovers, they would want to leave in time to see at least some of the first act, so dinner would be on time.
She couldn’t remember which opera they were to see but she had a horrid suspicion it might be Carmen.
An evening of singing was bad enough, but all that unregulated passion was so tiring…
Alice had gone to luncheon on Sunday at Aunt Caroline’s locked in a world of her own. It was lucky that there were outside visitors so there had been no attention on her. She answered when spoken to but had no memory of what anyone had said or even who had been there.
Her life was about to change. Next week she would sit for Ivor Wentworth, for his major work.
She would be his muse, his inspiration, and in return he would teach her.
She would become a true artist, and they would be everything to each other.
Theirs would be a great love that echoed down the years.
Once she had taken this first apocalyptic step…
She was terrified at the thought of it, yet she could not think of turning back.
Terrified, and elated…She understood that she would be putting herself outside conventional society.
There would be a scandal, they might have to go away.
She might never see her family again. But what did it matter?
In the service of Art, no price was too high.
Artists were above convention. They lived by different rules.
Her aunt had said something about going down to Ashmore the following week – her and Rachel. She had smiled vaguely and nodded. She didn’t think she would be going. Everything would be different by then.
As she entered the school on Monday, Mrs Platt, the secretary, called her from her office. Bron raised her eyebrows and walked on to the cloakroom while Alice went in.
‘A note for you, Miss Tallant,’ said Mrs Platt, holding out an envelope across the desk.
Alice opened it. Inside was a single sheet of heavy paper. Across it, in black ink and what she now recognised as Wentworth’s spiky writing, two sentences sprawled.
Your lesson on Tuesday is cancelled.
I shall not be teaching you next term
I. B. Wentworth
There was not much to reread, but Alice reread it. No salutation. No explanation. She looked up, bewildered, and Mrs Platt did too, perhaps wondering why she was still standing there. ‘Are you sure this is for me?’ Alice asked. ‘It doesn’t have my name on it.’
‘Mr Wentworth gave it to me himself and asked me to give it to you.’ There was a hint of disapproval in her voice, though Alice could have no idea of what.
‘He’s cancelled my lesson. Did he say why?’
Mrs Platt twitched impatiently. ‘He gave me the envelope, nothing more. I expect he’s going home a few days early. It’s not unusual.’
There was the reason for the disapproval. Alice felt it, but her own concerns were greater. ‘I thought he lived in Stafford Street,’ she said.
‘That’s his Town house. His home is in Surrey, with his family. Haven’t you a class to prepare for, Miss Tallant?’
Alice recognised the dismissal and turned obediently away.
Instead of going to the cloakroom she went up the stairs to the small room called the library, where the shelves were packed with books exclusively about art.
There was a wooden table and chair in the centre.
She searched for and found a reference book called Directory of British Artists, wondering why she had not looked at it before.
She laid it on the table and opened it near the end, leafed further forward – there were few entries after W – and found it.
Wentworth, Ivor Barrington, b. July 27th, 1864, m. 1890 Augusta Mary Tiernan.
He was married. She stared at the words.
There were children, too, four of them. An address: Wild Rose Cottage, Eashing, Nr Godalming, Surrey.
It sounded rural, idyllic, just the sort of place an artist would find his inspiration.
He often painted roses in his pictures. And was Augusta Mary his muse?
Had she been his pupil once, like Alice?
She imagined her having long golden hair and rose-petal skin like the figure in his painting Tristan and Isolde.
She tried to make sense of it. What had been going on?
Had she imagined the whole thing? But, no, he had definitely said he wanted her to pose for Psyche.
Perhaps he had meant fully clothed – though that made no sense.
Or only wanted her face. That must be it.
He was a married man with a home in the country, and he was her teacher, nothing more.
The intensity of feeling – the dreams of the future – she had made all that up.
She was an abject fool, making up stories for herself like a child playing with her dolls. Because she had wanted it to be so.
She felt a blush of shame. Had he realised the foolish things she was thinking? He was a handsome man – girls must often look at him adoringly, he must get tired of it when yet another new pupil became awestruck. Was that why he had cut off her lessons? If he knew…She felt so embarrassed.
Her time here was done. There were only a few classes on Monday and Tuesday before term ended.
She could miss those. They were going down to Ashmore on Wednesday, she and Rachel, to prepare for Axe’s investiture on Thursday, and the village celebrations surrounding it.
Oh, Axe! She felt a deep ache at the thought of him, and a longing, like the longing for home.
She was so proud of him, but if he knew what she had been planning with Wentworth, he would be ashamed of her.
There was no reason he ever should know, of course.
No-one would know. How could they? It had all been in her head.
She put the book away and went downstairs to the cloakroom, collected her materials and her overall, and walked out of the school.
She felt bad about not saying goodbye to Bron and one or two others, but she wanted to be done with it all at once.
She would write to the school and say she was not coming back.
She had thought she might never see her family again, but it was the Blackwood she would never see again. It was ironic, she thought, as she walked down Old Burlington Street towards Piccadilly. Ironic, but not very amusing.
The journey was very long – to Edinburgh by train, change to a second train for Perth, then a cab out to Craigend – and gave Angus plenty of time, too much time, to think. His mother’s telegram had been short and to the point.
FATHER DYING+COME AT ONCE++
He had flung a few necessities into a bag and rushed straight to the station, merely tossing a word to the housekeeper as he passed, in too much of a panic for explanations, or even to arrange for leave of absence from work. All that could wait – he could send telegrams from Scotland.
Father dying! The words were seared into his brain.
His father was not an old man. It must have been some kind of accident.
Motor-cars, trains, machinery, runaway horses, rabid dogs – the world was full of hazards.
Or a disaffected worker, a miner with the huge muscles of his calling and a pick in his hands.
A drunkard on the street with a baulk of wood wanting a fight and not caring with whom.
A cutpurse with a knife lurking in the shadows, looking for a rich man.
He had to rein in his fevered imagination.
He would find out when he found out. There was no point in speculation.
At last here was the handsome, solid granite house, with lights on in many windows, despite the long Scottish summer dusk.
He had been born in the Edinburgh house, but they had moved here when he was five, and it was his real childhood home.
The door was opened by his brother Fritz, whose ginger-sparked brows drew down at the sight of him, who said resentfully, ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Mother sent for me,’ Angus said. Fritz seemed not entirely in control of himself, and stood there, staring stupidly. Angus pushed gently past, put down his bag in the familiar hall, and said, ‘How is he?’