Althea said: ‘I said you looked tired, Norah. I expect you’ve been overstrained – before you came here, I mean – by your father’s death and the unfortunate end to your friendship with Robert Jenkin. It’s easy, then, if you’re tensed up about something, to allow something quite different, quite trivial, to upset you. I’m very sorry there has been this – coincidence. But don’t worry about it, please. I’ll arrange tomorrow for you to come down to the first-floor bedroom that Miss Harris had.’
‘No, thank you. I’ll stay.’
‘It’s a nice one, looking over the front. Only it hasn’t got a bathroom.’
‘I’ll stay,’ said Norah. ‘I think it’s – right for me up there.’
Gregory came into the room and his mother asked him to play the piano. After a while Norah left them and went into the library. She wished she had refused to listen to Simon’s pleas for delay. It was foreign to her nature to hide her true feelings and to put up with a situation that had now become insupportable.
Yet she saw his point of view; and for the moment at least she simply could not desert him. For me, he had said it could be the promise of a new life. For you as much or as little as you care to give. Was this, she wondered, an egotistical demand or a loving supplication? And to which would she be most likely to accede? After the barrenness, the emptiness of only a week ago, now, after only a week, not one man but two were making demands on her – though of a radically different nature. Christopher spoke from strength, Simon from weakness.
But it might be a bad misjudgment to suppose that there was no weakness in one or strength in the other. Confidence was not an absolute, insecurity not a measurable liability. Everyone’s personality was a succession of Chinese boxes, one within the other, each contradictory of the one before.
As she went back through the main hall Simon came from among the shadows on the other side. He had changed since dinner and was in a polo sweater and old flannel trousers, his hands grey. He smiled at her.
‘I thought I’d do the mortaring tonight. The wall’s almost as good as new.’
‘Already? You shouldn’t have bothered,’
‘Afraid we have some wallpapering to do. You didn’t spare the decorations. Does Alice come up to your room?’
‘I make my own bed. But somebody’s sure to go up soon. Simon, I can’t keep quiet about this – the whole thing is so monstrous that I feel I must ask her for an explanation!’
‘Do you think you’ll get it?’
‘I don’t know. But I can try. And then leave. It’s the only way!’
He was staring at her thoughtfully. ‘D’you know what occurred to me when I was up in the studio just now plastering up the hole? D’you know what I thought?’
‘What?’
‘That unfinished portrait of Marion – the one you admired. I wish you’d sit for it – let me finish it before you go. Before I go.’
She stared back at him. ‘What, d’you mean sit – for Marion . . . in her place?’ When he nodded. ‘But that’s impossible!’
‘What’s impossible about it?’
She struggled to find the right words. The wise, the tactful ones. ‘What you said this afternoon . . .’
‘D’you mean about separating her from you? I made that stupid mistake when you first burst in – but it was over as soon as I touched you. That’s the difference. It’s the chasm that exists between a human being and a ghost – between warm flesh and a cold memory. Painting you in her clothes would I think achieve the ultimate separation.’
‘In her clothes?’ She stared at him. ‘But how could it? Anyway, I wouldn’t want to.’
‘If you don’t want to, that’s an end to it.’
‘But why should you want to?’
He frowned. ‘I think Marion would have liked me to finish it.’
‘Must we – must you consider what Marion would have liked?’
‘Not of itself, no. Of course not. But you’re right about that painting – it’s the best thing I’ve done, and not merely of her. Among the many self-recriminations I’ve suffered over the last years has been the regret – my regret that I didn’t finish it. The regret grew, I think, with my recovery. My ego was beginning to emerge from its eclipse.’ He gave a wry smile. ‘So in a way, helping me to complete the hands and arms and shoulders would be helping me in an artistic way, and that was something I thought you might want.’
There was a splash of water from a choked gutter over the front door.
‘But, Simon, if you painted me as Marion, I should feel that I was Marion! Sometimes I think even now up in that room . . .’
He shook his head. ‘The mistake can never be made again – certainly not by me, least of all by you.’
‘At times I get an extraordinary sensation . . .’
‘You could sit for me perhaps two mornings. Then it would be done with. Over. A door closed. But anyway – whether you do or not, when I leave this house I shall buy a studio somewhere and start painting in earnest. Until now I’ve lacked the courage to see myself as a fulltime artist. You’ve given me that courage today.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
I
It poured all night. Norah dozed fitfully, waking often to hear the tom-tom drums of the rain. Simon had made a good job of the wall. Only the damp mortar and the pile of stripped wallpaper on the floor remained to betray the breakthrough. She had promised him nothing for tomorrow. Her mind was in a condition in which emotion constantly upended rational thought. As day began to split the thin line of the curtains she sat up and mentally listed the problems before her.
(1) Sometime soon, whether at a politic time or not, her true feelings for Althea would betray themselves. Last night restraints had just held, but they must give way any time. If Althea’s reasons for inviting her here were solely those she had already given, then she stood condemned as the all-time monster of blundering insensitivity. If there were other reasons then they could hardly be less than sinister.
(2) Sometime soon, two men would expect her to make some sort of choice between them. Although they might seem to be asking fundamentally different things, they were asking in essence for something from her that she could only give to one.
(3) Sometime soon . . .
And there she stopped. For all the minor problems and decisions of her life hinged upon the decisions she came to over the first two. Such other decisions as she might have to make, such as when she should leave the house and with what purpose, simply waited upon these. If she argued in her mind that she could escape from or delay the important choices for the unimportant she was simply deceiving herself. She lay back and shut her eyes again and tried to empty her mind of thought. For in the end thought was not going to have the ultimate voice.
Surprisingly, she dozed again and woke in full daylight. The rain had stopped but the weather was still heavy. Shards of broken sunlight fell through clouds as grey and heavy as a sepulchre. At ten-thirty Christopher rang. They talked for five minutes but she gave nothing away. She could give nothing until she could be completely frank. He complained that he had not seen her at all yesterday, and she said: ‘Tomorrow. Come over sometime tomorrow.’ Put off until you are surer. Delay, delay just a little while. After yesterday’s fears and shocks perhaps one quiet day will allow emotions to settle, to sediment. But a quiet day? Will it be a quiet day?
She saw Simon at eleven as she was going into Mrs Syme’s study. He was looking cheerful.
‘Have you decided?’ he asked.
‘Decided – what?’ She was startled, as if he had read her thoughts.
‘About today.’
‘Oh . . . about today. I’m – just going to do some work for your aunt.’
‘How long will it take?’
‘She’s dictating an article. Most of the morning, I’d think.’
‘Well, if you’re free this afternoon I think I could finish all I need to do in one sitting. I’ll leave the door to the other house unlocked so you can come up. If you don’t co
me I shall know you’ve decided against it.’
‘I already have.’
‘What – decided against it?’ He looked disappointed.
‘Yes. It’s – unhealthy. Playing with fire.’
‘Long-dead ashes . . . In one sense you’re right, of course. Anything that brings that time back . . . But in another, not so. Don’t you think, artistically, it will decide something?’
She looked at him. ‘Yes.’
There was a long tense silence between them. She turned to put her hand uncertainly on the study door.
He said with a change of tone: ‘I rang the chemist’s in Aberystwyth about my pills. They’ll have some by this afternoon.’
‘Then . . .’
‘Timson will go in and fetch them.’
‘D’you feel any different without them?’
‘A little . . . As if I’d been without sleep. But much happier.’
‘Happier?’
He nodded: ‘It stands to reason. Wouldn’t anyone be? I feel like someone at the end of a long tunnel seeing the daylight again.’
II
When the article was finished it was nearly one, and Althea said: ‘Thank Heaven that’s done! My head! You’ve been so patient with me. What a wonderful nurse you’d make, Norah. Have you ever thought of taking it up?’
Yet in spite of the generous words it had not been an equable two hours. Friction had come into their relationship; it surfaced now and again like some conger eel of discord moving through apparently clear water. When Althea put her arm round Norah as they walked towards the dining-room, Norah willed herself not to edge away, yet she thought Althea detected the movement that had been stillborn.
When Gregory came to lunch he had broken his glasses. He had pushed the pebble out when polishing them, and it would need an expert to fix the thick lens in place again. Timson had been told to take them in when he went for the pills. In the meantime the boy managed with a spare pair that were short of one side piece and were anchored grotesquely on his nose by the left ear only. Thunder eructated over the house on different cloud levels, but in the west the sky was bright like a piece of torn touch paper.
Simon had been out walking in the fitful sunlight. His face was warmed by the exercise. He said he had been to the top of Cader Morb and then beyond it as far as the Dwynt Valley.
‘The clouds are like fog up there. You can walk into one suddenly and as suddenly out the other side. They’re like ideas passing through a man’s head. It often happens at this time of year, when a season is breaking . . .’
‘Did you talk to Cader Morb while you were up there?’ Althea asked, with a hint of malice.
‘No, dear aunt, nobody should need to ask questions of Cader Morb – only of themselves. What we can’t answer ourselves no mountain can answer for us.’
‘In other words,’ said Gregory, peering, ‘the wisdom of the ages resides in the id.’
‘That’s a very clever remark in one so young,’ Althea said, smiling.
‘I had a funny dream last night,’ Gregory said. ‘I dreamed I was dead, and Heaven was a sort of great hall where everybody was gathering to hear me play a concerto. And wherever I looked, whichever way I looked there was a piano, destroyed, broken in pieces, all the wires hanging out.’
‘I had a habit of repeating stupid dreams at breakfast,’ said Mr Croome-Nichols, ‘when I was a boy. My father soon cured me of it. Every dream I told I was compelled to learn ten verses of Samuel by heart. Very good discipline.’
By the time lunch was over it was raining again. Norah had not finished all her typing but she went up to her room and washed some stockings and combed her hair and examined her finger nails. All the arguments for and against had long since been through her mind; now it was a matter of instinct, of intuition, possibly of some inner compulsion. Yesterday she had been in a panic of apprehension, of fear for her own life. Now that was gone and in its place an apprehension of another sort. To allay it she must do which? Go or stay?
‘Don’t you think,’ he had said, ‘artistically it will decide something?’ She thought it would decide something for her, perhaps the second of the two questions she had debated this morning. But it was not an artistic one.
She went downstairs. No one in the hall. Across to the other door. It opened today, as he had promised. The empty part of the house struck damp and a little chill. Up the stairs. Only yesterday she had come this way for the first time, idly peering into rooms, half scared, yet still relatively uninvolved. Now, although entirely aware of what she was doing, she was conscious of a curious elision of time; as if she had thought herself here rather than walked here; as if she dreamed what she did and yet knew it to be real.
The big door was latched back. He must have heard her footstep, for he met her at the studio door. He didn’t say anything but smiled his pleasure as if sure she would come, took her hand, led her in.
The picture was out of its frame and back on the easel. She looked at it, seeing no resemblance now to herself in the girl pictured there. The face had a defiant expression, the rather heavy eyelids lifted, smiling.
‘Your hair’s longer than hers,’ Simon said. ‘But it doesn’t matter. That part’s almost done. The frock’s in there when you feel like changing.’
They hesitated, as if suddenly strangers to each other again, seeking some final agreement.
She said: ‘Simon, are you sure this is sensible?’
‘If by sensible you mean what can be appreciated by the senses, then, yes is the answer. Sensible, you know, means what can give pleasure or pain. In other words, what is alive.’ He was arranging his brushes. ‘And I am alive again – through you.’
She went into the other attic, only half shut the door to allow some light in. The repaired wall showed more rough mortar this side, and the paper that she had broken through drooped like dead vegetation. The big doll sat on unwinking guard beside it.
The frock was out on a chair. She touched it. Good velvet, and it had kept well. All these years while he was away . . . Smell of lavender; something else, a little acrid. Shoes too. Black high-heeled, dated. She kicked off a shoe and tried one experimentally. Her feet were bigger; she could just get them on but they pinched. That wouldn’t do. She thankfully edged back into her own. And the frock?
She held it up to herself, peered in the half dark at the reflection in the mirror on the Victorian wash stand. It was the right length anyway. She unzipped her dress, stepped out of it, put it over the chair beside the other; stood hesitating a moment then unfastened her brassiere and took that off also. She stared a second at herself in the dusty mirror then picked up the evening frock again.
Marion might have taken a size smaller shoe but she was an inch bigger in the hips. Slight satisfaction. It seemed about right round the bust. There was no zip, but buttons, and contortions were needed to fasten them. It was off the shoulders but had small puff sleeves part-way down the upper arm. Low-cut it certainly was.
As soon as she had got the frock on she knew why some part of her primitive self had wanted all along to do this. Because it was an emotional challenge, a sexual challenge, perhaps even a psychic challenge. The feelings of involvement of the last few days were deeply reinforced. She stared in the mirror, frowning, excited, oppressed.
Well, now it was done. The gauntlet taken up. She was contending not only for Simon but for herself. Shrugging off the oppression, shaking it away from her like a clammy shroud, she stepped out into the studio.
Rain purred like a heavy cat on the fanlight.
Simon looked at her, then passed a hand across his eyes. ‘It’s a complete triumph, isn’t it,’ he said in a voice carefully matter-of-fact. ‘A triumph of matter over mind, of flesh over spirit, of life over death, of beauty over the beast.’
In the same casual voice Norah said: ‘Where do I sit? Here?’
‘Just there. You can’t see the picture now, but you remember how she was sitting. Wait a minute. Let me move this pier-glass. Then yo
u can see her still.’
She sat absolutely motionless while he moved the mirror. Then she could see the painting again. She put her left arm on her knee, the right along the back of the chair.
‘Head up,’ he said.
‘But you’re not painting my head.’
‘No, but it gives the right curve to the neck.’
He began to paint. She thought, what’s wrong with me? Is the frock too tight or is something else making my breath come short? Her rational mind, when it was allowed to function, thought, what is this resolving? I must talk to him, remind him that these are my hands and arms, not hers. That’s the whole point, the reasonable point of my coming here, to convince him, or to enable him to convince himself, once and for all. But is he in doubt? Not by a word or a look does he suggest what I fear. That was as far as reason went. Thereafter it was only unreason – which after all dominated her movements this afternoon – and unreason saw the defiance of the half-smiling, brown-haired, white-shouldered girl who looked back at her. Marion looked back at her, like a third individual in the room, for it was the painting that was reflected, not the sitter. And the hand and the artist’s brush. And the brush was making slow firm lines of darkness around the left arm. So the arm, from being a sketch, began to take shape and colour. It was forte growing out of a void, substance created – or recreated. Living arms grafted on a dead person.
She suddenly tried not to shiver.
‘Are you cold?’ he said sharply.