"They had a storm over at Clacton on Saturday. Snow in April, can you believe it?"
She hadn't even minded about the car. Hadn't even wanted to look at it to check on the damage. And that man--George--had just peeled off a roll of notes as if he were flicking through old bus tickets.
"Went from mild and sunny to hail and everything, all in the space of a couple of hours. There were people on the beach as well. I reckon some of them would have been swimming. You're getting wet, Lottie. Here, take my arm."
Lottie threaded her arm through Joe's and turned back, craning to see the front of Arcadia House. It was the only house she had ever seen to have a front and back of equal magnificence. It was as if the architect couldn't bear to make one view inferior.
"Wouldn't you love to live in a house like that, Joe?" She stopped, heedless of the rain. She felt a little giddy, as if unbalanced by the afternoon's events. Joe looked at her and then up at the house, leaning over slightly to make sure she was covered by the umbrella.
"Looks a bit too much like a ship."
"That's the point, though, isn't it? It's next to the sea, after all."
Joe looked worried, as if he were missing something.
"Imagine. You could pretend you were on a liner. Just sailing along the ocean." She closed her eyes, briefly forgetting about her row with Celia, picturing herself on the upper floors of that house. How lucky that woman was, to have all that space to herself, all that room to sit and dream. "If I had that, I think I'd be the happiest girl alive."
"I'd like a house that overlooked the bay."
Lottie stared at him, surprised. Joe never expressed a desire about anything. It was one of the things that made him such easy, if unchallenging, company.
"Would you? Well, I'd like a house that overlooked the bay and had windows like portholes and a great big garden."
He glanced at her, catching something in her tone.
"And a great big pond where swans could live," she added encouragingly.
"And a monkey puzzle tree," he said.
"Oh, yes!" she said. "A monkey puzzle tree! And six bedrooms, with a closet you could walk in to." They were strolling slowly now, their faces pink from the fine rain blown in from the sea.
Joe furrowed his brow in thought. "And outbuildings that you could put three cars in."
"Oh, you and your cars. I'd like a big balcony where you could step out of your bedroom and be right on top of the sea."
"And a swimming pool underneath it. So you could just jump off the edge when you fancied a dip."
Lottie started to laugh. "First thing in the morning! In my nightie! Yes! And a kitchen below so that the maid could leave me my breakfast when I'd finished."
"And a table, right by the pool, so I could sit there watching you."
"And one of those umbrella things--What did you . . ." Lottie slowed her pace. Her smile slid from her face, and she regarded him warily from the corner of her eye. She thought she might have imagined it, but his grip on her arm grew a little lighter, as if already anticipating her withdrawal.
"Oh, Joe." She sighed.
They trudged on up the cliff path in silence. A solitary gull flew ahead of them, pausing occasionally on the railing, convinced against all evidence of the imminent arrival of food.
Lottie waved a hand at it to make it go away, feeling suddenly furious.
"I have said to you before, Joe. I'm not interested in you that way."
Joe looked straight ahead, his ruddy cheeks slightly flushed.
"I do like you. Heaps. But just not in that way. I do wish you wouldn't keep on."
"I just thought--I thought, when you started talking about the house--"
"It was a game, Joe. A silly game. Neither one of us will ever own a house half the size of that one. C'mon. Don't sulk, please. Or I'll have to walk the rest of the way by myself."
Joe stopped, letting go of her arm and turning to face her. He looked very young, and grimly determined.
"I promise I won't go on anymore, then. But if you married me, Lottie, you'd never have to go back to London."
She looked up at the umbrella, then thrust it back at him, letting the seaspray and rain cover her head in a fine mist. "I'm not getting married. And I've told you. I'm never going back, Joe. Ever."
TWO
Mrs. Colquhoun took a deep breath, smoothed the front of her skirt, and nodded at the pianist. Her reedy soprano rose like a young starling, taking its first tentative flight across the crowded front room. Then crashed like a fat, shot pheasant, prompting Sylvia and Freddie, who were seeking sanctuary behind the kitchen door, to slide downward clutching their mouths and each other, to stop their screams of laughter from escaping.
Lottie tried to stem the smile pulling at her own lips. "I wouldn't laugh too hard," she whispered, not without some relish. "You're down to duet with her at the Widows and Orphans."
In the six short months since their inception, Mrs. Holden's "salon" mornings had achieved some degree of fame (or notoriety--no one was quite sure which) in the politer reaches of Merham's society. Nearly all those who considered themselves anyone attended the fortnightly Saturday-afternoon gatherings, which Mrs. Holden had initiated with the hope of introducing, as she put it, "a little cultural perfume" into the seaside town. Ladies were invited to read a passage from a favored book (The Collected Works of George Herbert was this month's choice) or play piano or, if brave enough, attempt a little song. There was no reason, after all, that their friends in the city should be able to suggest they were living in a vacuum, was there?
If there was just a hint of plaintiveness in Mrs. Holden's voice when she asked this question--which she did, frequently--then it should be blamed on her cousin Angela, who lived in Kensington and had once suggested laughingly that Merham's cultural life might benefit greatly from the building of a pier. Mrs. Holden's everpresent smile had gone distinctly wobbly at the corners upon hearing this, and it had been some months before she could bring herself to ask Angela to come again.
Attendance, however, was no guarantee of quality, as Mrs. Colquhoun's vocal efforts were proving. Around the room several of the women blinked hard, swallowed, and took slightly more sips from their teacups than strictly necessary. As Mrs. Colquhoun drew to a painful close, a few of them cast surreptitious glances at one another. It was so difficult to know quite how honest one should be.
"Well, I can't say I've met her myself, but she says she's an actress," said Mrs. Ansty when the tentative applause had died down. "She spoke to my Arthur yesterday when she came in for some hand cream. Very . . . talkative, she was." She managed to imbue the word with some disapproval.
This was what the ladies had really come for. The chatter evaporated, and several leaned forward over their cups.
"Is she Hungarian?"
"Didn't say," said Mrs. Ansty, relishing her role as appointed sage. "In fact, my Arthur said that for a woman who talked so much, she said hardly a thing about herself."
The ladies looked at one another, raising their eyebrows as if this were, in itself, a thing of suspicion.
"There's meant to be a husband. But I've not seen hide nor hair of him," said Mrs. Chilton.
"There is a man there often," said Mrs. Colquhoun, still flushed from her vocal exertions. But then she was often quite flushed; she hadn't been the same since her husband came back from Korea. "My Judy asked the maid who he was, and she just said, 'Oh, that's Mr. George,' as if that explained it all."
"He wears linen. All the time." In Mrs. Chilton's eyes this was extravagance indeed. Mrs. Chilton, a widow, was the landlady of Uplands, one of the largest guesthouses on the Parade. This would normally have excluded her from such a gathering, but as Mrs. Holden had explained to Lottie, everyone knew that Sarah Chilton had married below herself, and since her husband's death she had taken great pains to turn herself into a woman of some standing. And she ran a very respectable house.
"Ladies, can I get anyone some more tea?" Mrs. Holden was leani
ng toward the kitchen door, trying not to bend over too much because of her girdle. She had bought it a size too small, Celia told Lottie scornfully. It left great red welts all around her thighs. "Where is that girl? She's been all over the place this morning."
"She told my Judy that she hadn't wanted to come. They had been in London, you see. I believe they left in rather a hurry."
"Well, it doesn't surprise me that she's on the stage. She dresses very extravagantly."
"That's a fine word for it," snorted Mrs. Chilton. "Looks like she's been going through a child's dressing-up box."
There was a faint ripple of laughter.
"Well, have you seen her? All silk and finery at eleven o'clock in the morning. She was wearing a man's trilby when she went into the baker's last week. A trilby! Mrs. Hatton from the Promenade was so taken aback she came out with half a dozen cream horns she hadn't ordered."
"Now, ladies," said Mrs. Holden, who disapproved of gossip. Lottie always suspected this to be down to her own well-founded fear of becoming the subject. "Who is next? Sarah dear, weren't you going to read us something lovely from Wordsworth? Or was it Mr. Herbert again? The one about the broom?"
Mrs. Ansty placed her cup carefully back on her saucer. "Well, all I can say is, she sounds a bit . . . unconventional for my liking. Call me old-fashioned, but I like things orderly. One husband. Children. No leaving places in a hurry."
There was much nodding from various upholstered chairs.
"Let's have some George Herbert. 'I struck the boards and cried no more.' Is that it?" Mrs. Holden cast around the low table for the book. "I can never remember the exact words. Deirdre, do you have a copy?"
"Well, she's not invited anyone up to see the house. Although I've heard all sorts went in there with her."
"You'd expect a small gathering. Even the MacPhersons put on a small gathering. It's only polite, really."
"Perhaps some Byron?" said Mrs. Holden desperately. "Shelley? I can't remember who it was you said. Now, where is that girl. Virginia? Virginia?"
Lottie slid silently back behind the door. She took pains to ensure that Mrs. Holden didn't see her, having been told off repeatedly for being "watchful." She had an odd way of looking at people, Mrs. Holden had said recently. It made people uncomfortable. Lottie retorted that she couldn't help it; she might just as well have been accused of having hair too straight or the wrong-shaped hands. She secretly thought that it probably made only Mrs. Holden uncomfortable. But then everything seemed to make Mrs. Holden uncomfortable lately. Even though she was trying to stop them talking about the actress, Lottie knew that Adeline Armand made her uncomfortable, too. When she had heard that Dr. Holden had dropped in there to take a look at Frances's nose, her jaw had begun to tic in the same way it did when he said he was going to be "a little late home" for dinner.
In the next room Virginia finally emerged through the hall door and collected the tray, her presence briefly quieting the visitors. Mrs. Holden, expelling an almost audible sigh of relief, began to bustle about, shepherding her to and from her various visitors.
"The Guest House Association is having a meeting tomorrow," Mrs. Chilton announced, wiping nonexistent crumbs from the sides of her mouth when the maid had gone. "There's a view that we should all put our prices up."
Adeline Armand was briefly forgotten. While the ladies of the salon were not among those whose families were dependent on the holiday trade (Mrs. Chilton was the only one who actually worked), there were few whose income was not boosted by Merham's regular summer visitors. Mr. Ansty's chemist shop, Mr. Burton's tailor just behind the parade, even Mr. Colquhoun, who let out his bottom field to caravanners--all did better business in the summer months, and subsequently all paid great attention to the opinions and decisions of the all-female and immensely powerful Guest House Association.
"There's some think ten pounds a week. That's what they're charging over in Frinton."
"Ten pounds!" The whispered exclamation bounced around the room.
"They'll go to Walton instead, surely." Mrs. Colquhoun had gone quite pale. "Walton has amusements, after all."
"Well, I have to say, Deirdre, I'm with you," said Sarah Chilton. "I don't think they'll stand for it myself. And with the spring being as blowy as it's been so far, I don't think we should be pushing it. But as far as the association goes, I seem to be in a minority."
"But ten pounds."
"The people who come here don't come for the amusements. They come for a more . . . genteel kind of holiday."
"And they're the kind of people who can afford it."
"No one can afford it at the moment, Alice. Who do you know with money to splash around?"
"Do let's not go on about money," said Mrs. Holden as Virginia finally appeared with a refreshed teapot. "It's a little . . . vulgar. Let's leave the good ladies of the association to sort this one out. I'm sure they know best. So, Deirdre, what did you do with your ration books? Sarah, you must be relieved that your guests no longer have to bring them. I wanted to throw ours in the kitchen waste, but my daughter said we should frame it. Frame it! Can you imagine?"
LOTTIE SWIFT HAD DARK, NEAR-BLACK EYES AND smooth brown hair of the type more normally found on those hailing from the Asian subcontinents. In summer her skin tanned just a little too quickly and in winter had a tendency toward sallowness. The undesirability of such dark, if delicate, coloring was one of the few things Lottie's mother and Susan Holden would have agreed upon, had they known each other. Where Celia, generously, saw a darker-skinned Vivien Leigh or Jean Simmons, Lottie's mother had only ever seen "a touch of the tar brush" or an everpresent reminder of the Portuguese sailor whom she had met briefly but with long-standing consequences when celebrating her eighteenth birthday near the docks in East Tilbury. "You've got your father's blood," she would mutter accusingly as Lottie grew. "Better for me if you'd disappeared with him." Then she would pull Lottie fiercely to her in a strangulated hug and push her away again just as abruptly, as if contact that close were advisable only in small measures.
Mrs. Holden, while less blunt, wondered if Lottie couldn't pluck her eyebrows a bit more. And about the advisability of her spending so much time in the sun, "bearing in mind how dark you do go. You don't want people mistaking you for . . . well, a Gypsy or something." She had grown silent after this, as if fearful that she'd said too much, her voice tinged with pity. But Lottie had not taken offense. It was hard to take it from someone you yourself pitied.
According to Adeline Armand, however, Lottie's coloring was not evidence of her inferior status or her lack of breeding. It was proof of an exoticism that she had not yet learned to feel, an illustration of a strange and unique beauty.
"Frances should paint you. Frances, you must paint her. Not in all these awful things, this serge and cotton. No, something bright. Something silky. Otherwise, Lottie darling, you overpower the things you wear. You--you smolder, non?" Her accent had been so thick as she spoke that Lottie had had to struggle to make sure she wasn't being insulted.
"Molder, more like," said Celia, who was less than pleased by Adeline's comments. She was used to being the one who generated the attention. All that Adeline had said about her appearance was that she was "so charming. So typically English." It had been that "typically" that had really stung.
"She looks like Frida Kahlo. Don't you think, Frances? The eyes? Have you ever sat for anyone?"
Lottie looked blankly at Adeline. Sat where? she wanted to ask. The older woman waited.
"No," Celia interrupted. "I have. My family had one done when we were younger. It's in our parlor."
"Ah. A family portrait. Very . . . respectable, I'm sure. And you? Lottie? Has your family ever sat for a portrait?"
Lottie glanced at Celia, toying with an image of her mother, fingers raw and stained from stitching shoe leather at the factory, seated like Susan Holden above the mantelpiece. Instead of posing elegantly, hands folded in her lap, she would be scowling, her mouth drawn into a thin lin
e of dissatisfaction, her thin, dyed hair pulled back into two unflattering pins and welded unsuccessfully around rollers. Lottie would be beside her, her face as expressionless, her dark eyes as apparently watchful as ever. Where Mr. Holden had stood behind his family, there would be a big, empty gap.
"Lottie hasn't seen her family for a while, have you, Lots?" Celia said protectively. "Probably can't remember whether you've got a portrait or not."
Celia knew very well that the nearest Lottie's mother had ever come to a portrait was the time she had appeared in the local paper standing in a row of factory girls when the Leather Emporium opened just after the war ended. Lottie's mother had cut out the photograph, and Lottie had kept it, long after it had yellowed and become brittle, despite the fact that her mother's face was so small and indistinct that it was impossible to tell whether it was her.
"I don't really go to London anymore," she said slowly.
Adeline leaned forward, toward her. "Then we must make sure you have a painting done here. And you can give it to your family when you see them." She touched Lottie's hand with her own, and Lottie, who had been transfixed by her elaborate eye makeup, jumped, half afraid that Adeline might try to kiss it.
It was the fifth visit that the girls had made to Arcadia House, during which time their initial reserve about the strange and possibly fast crowd who all seemed to stay there had gradually dissipated, to be replaced by curiosity and a growing recognition that whatever else went on there, nude painting and uncertain domestic situations notwithstanding, it was far more interesting than their traditional alternatives of walking to and from town, refereeing the children, or treating themselves to ice cream or coffee at the cafe.
No, like some kind of ongoing theatrical performance, there was always something happening at the house. Strange painted friezes appeared around doorways or over the range. Writings--usually about the work of artists or actors--were scribbled and pinned haphazardly onto walls. Exotic foods appeared, sent from people in various grand estates around the country. New visitors metamorphosed and drifted away again, rarely--apart from a core group--staying long enough to introduce themselves.