Chapter 7
It had been a good day, thought Stella. She had walked Ted into Breverton where the dad of one of his schoolfriends had umpired a football match on the village green.
There’d been squash and jam sandwiches afterwards, and an invitation for Ted to come back and play tomorrow, and now Ted was spark out in the bunk and she was enjoying the last of the sun up on the deck with her sketchbook.
Everything on the canal had grown almost overnight.
May overtook everything with her verdant stealth, with ranks of bulrushes and trailing willow, broken up with the bright yellow of buttercups and irises.
The mother moorhen was out with her young, dabbling away.
She closed her eyes, relishing the warmth and the peace.
Although her fingers were gripped around a pencil, she wasn’t ready to work just yet.
She let her mind drift back to where she had left it that morning, to just before the war.
She’d been barrelling her way out of the Underground station, a few months after she’d first met Edwin in Monsieur Corbières’ shop, when she saw the poster.
Plastered on the wall, smack bang in front of her.
Lifesize. If she stepped into it, she would match it, limb for limb.
Her mouth fell open. He’d stolen her, every inch of her, from her dark green coat to the flowery dress that peeped out from beneath the hem to her T-bar shoes – she could even see the scuff marks on the back of the heel where she’d caught them on the kerb.
And her hair was unmistakable – that unruly tangle she had stopped trying to tame.
He had captured every coppery corkscrew strand.
And who on earth was it she was supposed to be kissing? There was hardly anything of the man visible, just a pair of shoulders in a dark overcoat, and a hat. Nevertheless, there was an intensity in the portrayal of their kiss. You could feel the heat rolling off it.
She had never hung around anyone’s neck like that, or kissed them as if the end of the world was nigh, but she felt a swirling in her belly as she took in the scene, and the words underneath it: WHO KNOWS WHERE IT MIGHT TAKE YOU?
It wasn’t her, and yet it was. Undeniably. How dare he?
She knew it was Edwin behind it, because he’d told her about his commission the next time he came into the shop.
A series of posters called London Lives, encouraging people to travel on the Underground.
She had no idea that he’d intended to use her.
How had he captured her so perfectly? Had he followed her?
Taken a photograph without her knowing? He couldn’t do that.
He couldn’t just steal her, and put her into a story that was completely made up.
Yet at the same time, she wanted the story to be true. It made her pulse race, the thought of being so close to someone. And she knew, by looking at it, that everyone who saw it would feel the same. It was brilliant.
‘Is that you, love?’
A man was standing next to her, his eyes moving from the poster to her, roaming over her coat, her hair.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ve never seen it before.’
‘It’s the spit of you,’ he said, unconvinced.
She turned and walked away. She felt as if everyone’s eyes were upon her. She felt seen.
Edwin came into the shop again a week later. She’d spent the week travelling with her hair in a thick plait stuffed under her coat to keep herself incognito, after more than one person asked if she was the girl in the poster. She was confused, and suspicious.
He strolled in as if he was guilty of nothing. She marched up to him in a fury.
‘You can’t do that. You can’t just steal me.’
‘What?’ He was laughing at her as she pushed him in the chest. ‘Who says it’s you?’
‘It is me. It’s my coat. My dress. My hair.’
‘It’s not you,’ he protested. ‘It’s a character I invented. Her name’s Angela. You might have given me a tiny bit of inspiration but she’s just made up …’
‘It’s embarrassing. People keep asking if it’s me.’
‘Well, you can tell them it’s not.’
She glared at him. He seemed totally unrepentant.
‘How did you do it?’
He tapped his head. ‘I remember everything I see. I can draw people from memory.’
‘You should have told me. You should have asked me.’
She was trembling with emotion, unable to contain herself. He stared at her and it was as if he was only just realising the impact of what he had done.
‘If you’re really upset,’ he said, ‘I’ll get them taken down.’
‘How many are there?’
He shrugged. ‘I’m not sure.’
‘There’s one at Russell Square. And one at Oxford Circus.’ She’d gone home via another station to avoid it, but there she was, plastered over a wall in Argyll Street. ‘There might be one at every station.’
‘Qu’est-ce qui ce passe?’ At the sound of their voices, Monsieur Corbières came bustling in from the stock room, demanding to know what was going on.
Stella turned to him, indignant.
‘He’s done a picture of me. It’s all over bloody London.’
‘It’s a poster, Mister C. To encourage people to take the Underground.’ Edwin pulled a rolled-up copy from behind his back. ‘Here. I brought you one to put up in your room.’
He unfurled it with a flourish.
‘My room?’ She looked at him witheringly. She couldn’t imagine for a minute her landlady letting her pin that up on the wall. She’d drum her out of the house.
Monsieur Corbières peered at the poster. ‘It’s magnifique. And who is that?’
He jabbed a finger at the man.
Edwin shrugged. ‘They’re both figments of my imagination. Jack and Angela.’
Monsieur Corbières gave him a beady stare. ‘You should take her for dinner. To say thank you.’
‘I don’t want to go for dinner,’ Stella said, her voice shrill. The very thought made her heart race and she wasn’t sure why. ‘You can’t buy me.’
She was trying very hard not to seem hysterical. It was hard to stay calm, though, because Edwin was looking at her in a way that was confusing. A combination of concern and admiration and amusement.
‘I wouldn’t be buying you,’ he said. ‘I’d love to take you for dinner.’
She’d never been out for dinner with anyone in her life.
And certainly not someone like him. She cringed at the thought of how overwhelming it would be.
She imagined chandeliers and champagne and snooty waiters.
It would be torture. He would soon see her for what she was.
A butcher’s daughter who had delusions, not of grandeur exactly, but of bettering herself, of becoming someone.
She would have to sit opposite him and try not to stare.
She was trying not to stare now. He was so distracting, with those green eyes that kept laughing at her.
She wasn’t ready yet. She wanted out of her world, but she wasn’t ready to step into his.
She needed to inch her way up the ladder, gaining confidence and experience and knowledge.
Working for Monsieur Corbières and getting her own digs had set her on the first rung, but if she scrambled up too high too quickly she might find herself back at the bottom.
She gave him the only answer she could think of that would stop him asking her again.
‘Thank you, but my boyfriend wouldn’t like it.’
‘Oh.’ He looked crushed, the disappointment clouding his face. She suspected he was someone who didn’t come across disappointment very often.
Monsieur Corbières raised his eyebrows. He knew very well she didn’t have a boyfriend. She avoided looking at him.
‘And I don’t know what he’ll say when he sees one of those posters. I don’t suppose he’ll be very pleased.’ For a moment, an image of her imaginary boyfriend came into her head, burly, scowling, fists balling at his side, over-protective. Exactly the kind of boyfriend she didn’t want.
Edwin made a pained face. ‘I didn’t think of that.’
‘No. Well. You should think about things. Before you go slapping up posters all over London.’
‘I am sorry.’ He seemed genuinely contrite.
Stella had never felt so many emotions all at once.
A curdle of indignation, fear and doubt, but also fascination and something she thought might be pleasure.
Pleasure at being the focus of his attention.
At the thought of him sitting at his easel, or wherever he did his painting, recalling every inch of her.
‘It’s all right,’ she managed eventually.
He nodded. He seemed to be about to say something, thought better of it, wrapped his voluminous black coat around him and left the shop with his head down. Monsieur Corbières looked at her.
‘Don’t push him away,’ he said.
Stella looked down, at the very shoe he had recaptured on the poster. A boring brown serviceable shoe worn by shop girls like her all over London. ‘I don’t belong in his world.’
Monsieur Corbières looked thunderous. ‘You will never become an artist if you think like that. You must not be afraid of people and what they are.’
Stella looked at the man she had already become so fond of in the time she had worked for him, with his grey whiskers and his immaculate but faded clothes.
He was French. Of course he wouldn’t understand.
You only had to listen to Edwin’s cultured, languid tones and her East End twang to know that they could never be a match, not in a million years.
Mr C didn’t understand the English way. You didn’t mix with people out of your class unless you wanted an unhappy ending.
You might get a bit of fun between the sheets, but you’d never get taken seriously, let alone get a ring on your finger.
Not that Stella was after a ring. She had her sights set much higher than that. She wanted a career. Something that was even more difficult for someone of her background.
She sighed and turned away, heading towards the counter to indicate the conversation was over, tidying the sheets of paper they used to wrap things. She didn’t want to argue with Monsieur Corbières. She needed him. And he needed her, too, so they shouldn’t let anything come between them.