Mrs Damer smiled awkwardly. 'It was a shocking demonstration, wasn't it, in front of my fellow Players?'
'Not at all, they know your situation. They're old friends.' 'Well, Derby is; the rest are acquaintances, really.'
Eliza persisted. 'They must think me a tactless and ignorant stranger who broke in upon your most painful memories.'
'Hardly a stranger,' said Mrs Damer, smiling. She looked down. 'I've muddied you with my dreadful paws.'
'It doesn't matter.'
The sculptor spread her bony fingers in front of her. 'Even when they're clean, how they age me! Chicken claws, Mr Damer used to call them.'
'Did he?' asked Eliza, a little fierce. 'They may not be smooth, or plump, but they're most expressive.'
'Oh, excuse me while I moisten my osprey.' Mrs Damer stepped over to the clay model and dabbed it with a sponge from a bucket. 'My work's been so interrupted by our rehearsals—not that I'm complaining.'
Eliza recognised a change of subject. 'I've never seen a statue of a bird before,' she said, walking round it.
'Oh, hardly a statue yet,' the sculptor answered ruefully. 'It's a fishing eagle I'm modelling in terracotta for my cousin Walpole, to go with his ancient Roman one. Terracotta's not as noble as marble, of course, but he dotes on the stuff. It has a quickness and verisimilitude about it that's hard to match in stone.'
Eliza drew closer, inhaling the cool earthiness of the clay. 'Do you always work with your fingers?'
'And with anything that comes to hand. Knives, spoons, gouges and wires ... This, for instance,' said Mrs Damer, holding up what looked like a thin embroidery hook. 'I filched from my mother.'
'Lady Ailesbury's famed for her needlework, isn't she?' Eliza was fumbling for details.
Mrs Damer made a little face. 'Pictures in worsted. She enjoys it vastly. But our work has little in common; my mother makes copies of Van Dycks and Rubenses, while I try to create an original image which will live longer than the creature that inspired it. Actum ne agas, as Terence puts it.'
Eliza nodded as if she'd caught the allusion and looked the bird in its roughly formed eye. 'You must have studied an eagle close to.'
Mrs Damer stood beside her, arms crossed. 'It was before Christmas, at my friend Lady Melbourne's seat in Hertfordshire. The gamekeeper was a fool; almost cut the magnificent creature's wing off as he netted it and pulled it down.'
'Was it in pain, then?'
'Yes, but I don't want to focus on its helplessness,' Mrs Damer told her, a line of concentration appearing between her eyebrows. 'What I'm trying to capture is rage, I suppose. Or outrage.'
'It's not a bit like your carvings of women, which are so very smooth and Grecian,' said Eliza. She felt the need to prove her knowledge of Mrs Damer's work.
'Ah, yes, I aim for the true ancient style when I sculpt the human face, a beauty that will stand for all time. But animals'—Mrs Damer smiled at the rough clay bird as if it were a pet of hers—'they seem to demand a more everyday look. When I model my dog Fidelle, for instance—Fidelle? Where've you gone?—I often find her curled up like a hedgehog; Italian greyhounds are great nesters, especially the bitches.' She walked through the workshop and pulled aside some sacking. 'Aha! Fidelle, come out and make your obeisance to the Queen of Comedy.' The miniature dog streaked out and ran in circles, chasing her own tail, barking shrilly. 'She's just nervous of strangers.'
'What a little beauty,' said Eliza, watching the loop of smooth silvery flesh and hoping it wouldn't attack her shoes.
'What dogs have you, Miss Farren?'
'None.'
The brown eyes went wide. Are your cats afraid of them?'
'I've no cats either, I must confess.'
Aren't you fond of the brute creation, then?'
Eliza decided to be frank. 'I can appreciate their beauty—in a case like your darling Fidelle's,' she said, aiming her sweetest smile at the dog who was now on two legs, scraping at Eliza's skirts and whimpering. 'But I confess I'm perfectly indifferent to them as beings.'
'Stop that,' scolded Mrs Damer, scooping the greyhound up in her arms and rubbing its head.
'I imagine pet keeping is a taste one must acquire in childhood.'
'You surprise me; I'd always assumed it came naturally.'
Perhaps you've never known anyone who didn't grow up with lap dogs, thought Eliza sardonically. 'No, I won't even have a canary in my dressing room at Drury Lane. Lord Derby despairs of this lack of sensibility, he says I have a very hard heart.'
Mrs Damer gave her a peculiar smile.
Why had she brought that up? Eliza wondered. Of course, Derby had other good reasons for thinking her cold; didn't the nastier papers call her an icy prude~i She turned towards the clay eagle, now, to hide her face. 'This bird has nothing in common with a tiny greyhound; you must have a great talent for entering into their different natures.'
Mrs Damer smiled at the compliment. 'The ancients would have shown the osprey at his noble best, of course—wings spread, eyes on the horizon.' She spoke as if her visitor only needed reminding. 'But this one is captured, with a smashed wing. I want to seize him in the moment—to make the moment of his fury last for ever. I've shaped his beak very hooked, see? I've taken for my inspiration Giambologna's marvellous turkey-cock in the Grand Duke's Uffizi Gallery—like a shaken bag of feathers—you must know it.'
Eliza nodded vaguely, not wanting to admit that she'd never been any further from England than a visit to her father's relatives in Cork. An odd pause came between them and Eliza couldn't think how to fill it. Mrs Damer picked up a large damp cloth and draped it over the bird. Eliza wondered whether she should take her leave.
'Have a seat, Miss Farren,' said the sculptor, pulling a shabby chair away from the wall and dusting it off. 'I'll be perfectly frank with you, as if I've known you ten years instead of a few weeks. Shall I?'
Eliza had a slightly giddy sensation, as if she was high on a ladder. 'Please do,' she said, sitting down.
'I fled the rehearsal today because I was in danger of laughter.'
'Laughter?' It came out almost as a squeak.
'Yes,' said Mrs Damer, her mouth twisted. 'I wasn't sad when I was talking about unworthy husbands and how little good it does to waste all one's womanly wiles on them, but caught up in angry memories. Then, when I saw the ring of concerned faces around me, all thinking I was grieving for John Damer, I felt bubbling up in my throat a sort of dreadful giggle.'
'Oh.' Eliza felt very naïve.
'That's why I had to clap my hand over my mouth and make a run for it,' Mrs Damer told her. 'Though people think me eccentric already, they'd be far more shocked if I were to burst out laughing at the memory of my dear departed. Even to admit I had the impulse sounds shocking, though we're in private here and you've such a sympathetic eye. You aren't shocked?'—and Mrs Damer glanced sideways at her guest.
'No.' The dog had tucked herself between Eliza's hip pad and the edge of the chair; she wasn't so much of a nuisance when she'd quietened down. Eliza added, more as a statement than a question, 'You don't miss him, then.'
'Not for a moment,' said Mrs Damer and went on picking some dried mud off her sculpting hook.
Eliza felt oddly comfortable in the workshop, despite the draughts and dirt. She put one hand on Fidelle's warm neck. 'Tell me more, if you don't mind? Your parents made the match?'
'Well, yes, but that's only to be expected among people of birth. You, Miss Farren, for instance, would be so much freer to pick and choose.' A pause. 'You're not offended by the observation?'
'No, no,' said Eliza. She never forgot her low origins, of course, but these days it was rare for anyone to remind her of them so baldly.
'Your life is your own, that's all I mean. Whether and whom to marry is no one's decision but yours.'
Eliza felt doubtful on this point. 'I consult my mother on all important points. And it sometimes seems to me as if I have two thousand parents.'
'Your audience.'
Mrs Damer was quick, thought Eliza. 'Two thousand fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters...'
'Lovers.'
'Well, suitors, perhaps,' said Eliza. All interested in my actions, all concerned about my reputation, all waiting to see what I'll do next.'
'I never thought of it that way,' said Mrs Damer. 'I suppose we do make a claim on you, when we sit there in our boxes night after night, raising our spyglasses ... But at least you have intelligence and experience, to chart your own course,' she added, suddenly sweeping the leftover scraps of clay into a bucket and turning a winch to lower the work table the eagle stood on. 'At eighteen I had neither. Perhaps I'd read too much Rousseau; I was more interested in tenderness and sensibility than in per cent per annum. And, unfortunately, whereas my elder sister got Richmond, with all his sterling qualities, the boy my mother chose for me proved a dunderhead, a wastrel and a philistine.'
Eliza pressed her fingers against her smiling mouth. What outrageous words to describe a dead husband.
'In Florence,' Mrs Damer groaned, 'we visited the Uffizi with one of John's brothers. I was enraptured by the statues, I felt as if I'd been lifted to Olympus to consort with the gods. But the East Gallery is so vastly long, John and his brother decided they were weary of art, and laid 50 guineas on the result of a hopping race. They nearly toppled a fourth-century Venus Pudica,' she said through her teeth. 'I couldn't tell what I saw after that—the art was hidden in a mist of shame for me—because all I could hear was the crash, crash, crash of two earl's sons pounding like gigantic one-legged hares down the gallery.'
Eliza released a giggle. 'Who won?'
'I didn't look.'
'The winner must have boasted. The loser must have cried foul.'
'Oh, I'm sure, but it's one of many details I've managed to forget. I was married for the best part of ten years, Miss Farren, but my memories probably amount to three months. It's rather terrible,' she added, 'to wish away one's prime years.'
'But they weren't.'
'Well, the twenties—aren't they meant to be one's best? But you're right,' she said with a smile. 'I think perhaps these are my prime years, now, past thirty-five!'
Just then a maid came in to say that Mrs Moll was ready to serve the tea. 'I should go,' said Eliza, glancing at the window, where a crust of snow had built up. She tried to collect her skirts without disturbing the dog, but Fidelle exploded off the chair and ran into a corner. 'You've been very kind.'
'Have you another engagement, or are you needed at Drury Lane?'
'Well, no, but—'
'Then you must stay for a dish of tea. Tell Mrs Moll we'll have it in the library,' said Mrs Damer to the maid. 'I'll join you, my dear, as soon as I've made myself respectable'—pulling off her makeshift turban as she spoke and releasing a shock of unpowdered brown curls—'and we can wait out this snowstorm together.'
* * *
Emma Donoghue, Slammerkin
(Series: # )
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