Rose Rivers

Mama has thick carpets, but nearly all the Meissen broke beyond repair. She was devastated, though Papa didn’t seem to mind: he said he’d always thought the Meissen repellent, and joked that Beth was simply expressing her artistic contempt for them. Mama grew angrier than ever, and they had such a serious row that Papa went to stay at his club that night.

  Mama permits Beth to come down to the drawing room nowadays, but has Edie remove the best china, just in case.

  Beth is better behaved now. She is at her best in the afternoon, quiet and docile, and can sometimes be persuaded to sing. She’s always repeated snatches of songs – nursery ditties like ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’, and music-hall favourites like ‘The Boy I Love Is Up in the Gallery’, which Maggie sings while she dusts. But Nurse Budd has been teaching her hymns, and Beth looks like an angel when she clasps her hands and sings about Jesus.

  ‘I certainly am kept very busy running the house and bringing up my seven children,’ Mama said now. ‘But I’m sure I could make time to sit for my portrait, Mr Walker.’

  MR WALKER COMES every weekday morning and works in Papa’s studio. Mama sits like Patience on a monument, a little smile on her face, her pretty hands clasped, while he dabs at his canvas and keeps up a stream of chatter.

  I sit nearby, acting as a child chaperone, because Papa is mostly out sketching street children to illustrate a new children’s book written by his writer friend, Miss Sarah Smith. Papa says it is a perfect opportunity for me to practise drawing. I am supposed to be drawing Mama. I have made several cursory attempts, but most of the time I am secretly sketching Mr Walker! I can’t get his features right. I shall keep on trying until I get a true likeness.

  I’ve never spent so much time with Mama. She is so very tedious. While Mr Walker works, she prattles on and on. When she starts gesturing, her bracelets tinkle. Sometimes he gently reminds her not to move, but mostly he simply murmurs responses. I don’t think he actually listens to her. He just says yes and no at the appropriate places.

  She talks and talks and talks, yet she doesn’t say anything. It’s all society gossip. She mentions Lord and Lady this and that as if she actually knows them. She talks of their balls and parties as if she’s attended every one. She confides details of their family births and marriages and deaths, and asks Mr Walker if he’s acquainted with any of the younger men. Mr Walker says no.

  She chatters about the latest fashions, discussing the merits of ruching and lace trimming, wondering whether a certain colour would be right for her complexion. Mr Walker says yes.

  She fusses about the servants, complaining that Edie isn’t respectful enough and Mr Hodgson is becoming doddery and Jack Boots too clumsy. She asks Mr Walker his opinion, and he murmurs that the house seems very well run all the same.

  She talks about us children, saying what a happy little soul Phoebe is, and isn’t Clarrie a special sweetheart, and Algie such a lively youngster, and Sebastian remarkably sensitive, and Mr Walker says yes and yes and yes and yes. She barely mentions Beth, briefly referring to the ‘poor dear child’, and he murmurs another sympathetic yes.

  Of course, she sighs over me and wishes I were more ladylike and less wayward, and you’ll never, ever guess what happened today! Mr Walker didn’t answer with a monosyllable. He said, ‘I think Rose is splendid just as she is. Edward says she has promising artistic talent!’

  Mama sniffed. ‘I’m not so sure about that. Artistic talent is wasted on a girl anyway. You don’t get lady artists.’

  ‘Oh yes you do, Mama! What about Lady Butler, who paints all those military scenes!’ I said.

  ‘Hardly a ladylike subject!’

  ‘And the French artist Rosa Bonheur.’

  ‘Do stop interrupting, child. And anyway, she’s French,’ said Mama, as if this meant she couldn’t possibly be respectable.

  ‘I think Rosa Bonheur’s very good at painting horses,’ said Mr Walker.

  ‘Well, I hardly think horses are Rose’s ideal subject matter. She fell off the very first time she went riding and now won’t go back to the stables,’ said Mama. ‘And the Feynsham-Joneses have been so kind too, offering us the use of their ponies. Perhaps Rupert will care to go riding when he comes home for his half-term break. He gets on so well with those sweet Feynsham-Jones girls.’

  That shut me up. I sat silently while Mama boasted endlessly about dear Rupert – top of his form, excelling at sport, the most popular boy in his year.

  Mr Walker didn’t comment.

  ‘Where did you go to school, Mr Walker?’ Mama asked.

  ‘I’m afraid I attended several schools and detested them all,’ he said.

  ‘Why didn’t you like school?’ I burst out. ‘I’d give anything to be able to go! I’d love to learn Latin and Greek and find out about the world.’

  ‘Oh, the lessons weren’t too bad, though I wasn’t really interested in anything but painting,’ said Mr Walker. ‘It was the rest of it I couldn’t bear – the rules, the heartiness, the cruelty, the tedium.’

  ‘Papa didn’t like school either,’ I said. ‘So did you break the rules, Mr Walker?’

  ‘Rose, I don’t think poor Mr Walker wants to be plagued with all your questions,’ Mama said.

  ‘I don’t mind a bit, Mrs Rivers. I’m afraid I did break the rules, Miss Rivers, and consequently had to leave some of the schools prematurely.’

  ‘You mean you were expelled?’ I asked.

  ‘Rose! Hold your tongue!’ said Mama sharply. ‘Of course Mr Walker meant no such thing.’

  He kept quiet, but when I glanced at him he nodded and winked. I longed to ask what he’d done, but I knew Mama would send me away if I continued. I pressed my lips together and drew her, though I found myself digging the point of my pencil into each of her curves and her little pursed mouth. Then I turned the page and drew Mr Walker instead – but not a sketch from life.

  I tried to imagine what he might have done to get expelled from school. I drew comical alternatives: he played tricks on teachers, painted on walls, climbed the topmost tower.

  At the end of the morning Mama looked at her portrait as usual and beamed. ‘Yes, it’s really coming on now. Excellent! Would you like to stay for luncheon, Mr Walker?’ She’d invited him before but he’d always said no. However, today he agreed and said it would be lovely. Mama went bustling off to confer with Cook, wanting to serve something special.

  I went to peer at Mr Walker’s half-finished portrait myself.

  ‘What do you think?’ he asked.

  ‘I think it’s a very fine painting,’ I said.

  ‘But I sense a little hesitation?’

  ‘No, I think it’s wonderful – the colour, the brushwork, the whole composition. I think you’re a marvellous painter, Mr Walker, even better than Papa,’ I told him.

  ‘You’re still not sure though, are you?’ he said, looking amused. ‘Don’t you think I’ve captured a good likeness of your mother?’

  I took a deep breath. ‘Not exactly,’ I said. ‘Your portrait looks remarkably like Mama, but somehow she’s too pretty. And young.’

  Mr Walker smiled at me. ‘Don’t you think that’s the way your mother would like to be seen?’

  ‘Oh yes. So I suppose that makes you a very artful artist.’

  ‘You’re a very perceptive girl, Rose.’

  Is Mr Walker painting such a flattering portrait because he simply likes to please? Or is it because Mama is a wealthy woman and will pay him handsomely, and introduce him to the Feynsham-Joneses and Lady Robson. I’m sure they’d all appreciate flattering portraits too. Years ago Mama persuaded Papa to offer a portrait as a prize for the Christmas Charity Bazaar in aid of Orphan Girls, and the Honourable Mrs Helmsley drew the winning ticket.

  Mrs Helmsley is enormous. Even the strongest whalebone corset can’t control her rolls of fat. Once, when she was taking tea with us, she leaned forward to grab the biggest slice of cake and split her seams. Rupert and I didn’t dare glance at each other because we knew we’d start
spluttering.

  Papa kept his side of the bargain and painted her. It was a fine portrait, like Mrs Helmsley in every way. Too like. Every single roll of fat was highlighted. Mrs Helmsley was mortified. She didn’t make a scene as we expected. She didn’t reject the painting. She simply asked if the servants could wrap it up in brown paper, and then she took it away with her. I don’t know what she did with it. I’m sure she didn’t hang it on the wall. Perhaps spiders are spinning cobwebs over her curves in the attic.

  Mama never asked Papa to do a portrait for the bazaar again. Perhaps that was the point. He can be very wily. I think Mr Walker is too. He likes Papa. Has he made Mama a gentle beauty in his painting to please him?

  Of course, Mr Walker may simply like Mama and want to please her.

  He can’t, can he? Mama is still quite pretty when she makes an effort. Her black hair is glossy, her eyes a deep blue, her figure plump but pleasing. Her voice, with its Scottish lilt, is attractive. But the things she says are so trivial. She is actually very ignorant, yet she declares things with such authority, as if she is the fount of all knowledge.

  I trembled at the thought of all the silly things she might say at lunch. I made a great effort, washed all the pencil smudges off my hands, and remembered to brush my hair and tie a ribbon in it. I changed my favourite forest-green velvet dress (too short for me now, but it makes me feel like Robin Hood) for the cream silk I wear on Sundays.

  I went skipping down the stairs, but as I approached the dining-room door Mama stopped me.

  ‘Where are you going, child?’

  ‘To have lunch!’ I said, astonished.

  ‘You don’t take your luncheon in the dining room,’ said Mama.

  This was true enough normally. Mama doesn’t use the dining room unless Papa is around either. She has her lunch on a tray in the drawing room, while I have lunch upstairs with the little ones.

  ‘But Mr Walker is here!’ I said.

  ‘We will have a quiet lunch together,’ said Mama. ‘I am sure we have both had enough of your chatter, dear. Go and join the other children in the nursery.’

  I felt stung. I hated the way Mama said the word ‘dear’. I am not her dear. I am her least favourite child. She prefers Beth at her most trying, Algie at his most destructive. I would be her least favourite child if I were an only child.

  It was useless to argue with her. I stomped off to the nursery and joined Nurse and my siblings for boiled plaice and semolina pudding, two pale, pimply dishes that turned my stomach.

  I took only a mouthful of each, even though Nurse nagged at me.

  ‘I don’t know what to do with you nowadays, Miss Rose,’ she said. She put a spoonful of white slop in Phoebe’s mouth. ‘You used to be a dear soul like Baby here. Whatever happened to that good little girl?’

  ‘I sometimes wish I was little and good again, Nurse. Or completely grown up and able to do as I wish. I hate being stuck like this, neither one thing nor the other. It’s so mean of Mama not to let me have lunch with her and Mr Walker when she lets me dine with the grown-ups now,’ I said heatedly.

  Nurse sniffed. ‘I don’t know why your mama’s taken it into her head to have that scruffy young man come to the house every day. He looks like a tramp. I’m sure he’s not a gentleman.’

  ‘Oh, Nurse, don’t be so narrow-minded. Mr Walker is an artist, like Papa,’ I said.

  Nurse turned to Algie. ‘Master Algie, don’t you go helping yourself to more jam! You’ve got more jam than semolina now!’

  ‘Good! It’s the only way to get it down. It looks like Phoebe’s sick,’ said Algie, licking his spoonful of raspberry jam with relish.

  ‘Do you have to be so revolting, Algie?’ I snapped.

  He waggled his jammy tongue at me. ‘Oh, Nurse, Mr Walker is an artist,’ he said, clasping his hands together and speaking in a silly high-pitched voice.

  I didn’t think he sounded at all like me, but Clarrie and Sebastian burst out laughing, and even Nurse couldn’t help smirking, though she told Algie not to be ridiculous.

  ‘It’s Rose who’s ridiculous, going all swoony over Mr Walker when he’s a man and she’s just a little girl,’ he said. ‘She’s in love!’

  ‘Stop being such a stupid little boy,’ I said angrily, and swept out of the nursery, though Nurse remonstrated with me, insisting I should come back and ask permission to leave the table like a nicely brought-up young lady.

  Out on the landing I heard Beth crying. She seems determined to resist the rules too. We’re not supposed to go into her room at meal times because Nurse Budd says it distracts her. But Beth is my sister, and she sounded so very distressed. I barged in without even bothering to knock.

  Nurse Budd was holding her by the shoulder, trying to feed her. Beth couldn’t get free because there was a belt tying her to the chair. She clamped her mouth shut when Nurse Budd thrust the spoon towards her, and it clanked against her teeth.

  ‘Stop it! How dare you! You’re hurting her!’ I cried, trying to stop Nurse Budd.

  ‘For goodness’ sake, Miss Rose, calm down,’ she said. ‘I’m simply giving the child her lunch.’

  ‘You’re torturing her! You’ve got her tied up like a prisoner!’ I declared.

  ‘It’s the only way to get some food down the poor little mite. The child is skin and bone. If I don’t secure her, she’ll run away. You’re a little monkey, aren’t you, Miss Beth?’

  ‘I’m sure Mama and Papa wouldn’t like it if they knew,’ I said.

  ‘Your mama knows exactly how I feed her, and thoroughly approves. “The child has to learn, Nurse Budd,” she said, her very words. And if she’s not encouraged, she’ll starve. Is that what you want, Miss Rose?’

  ‘I want my sister to be happy,’ I said.

  ‘I think she’s happy enough in her own way, dear,’ said Nurse Budd. ‘You wait, a few weeks’ more training and she’ll be a docile little sweetheart. I dare say she’ll be feeding herself soon.’

  ‘Why don’t you let her feed herself now? She’s been doing it for years. She’s not a baby,’ I insisted.

  ‘Very well then, Miss Rose,’ said Nurse Budd, shrugging.

  She undid Beth’s belt and offered her the dish and spoon. Beth put her hands behind her back and went to crouch in the corner.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Nurse Budd triumphantly.

  I ignored her and walked very slowly towards Beth.

  ‘It’s all right, Beth, darling. Don’t be frightened.’ I picked up the bowl and spoon and sat down beside her. ‘There now, Beth. Are you going to try a spoonful of semolina? Why haven’t you got any jam to make it tastier? Our brother Algie puts a whole pot of jam on his pudding!’

  ‘A whole pot of jam on his pudding,’ Beth murmured, looking astonished.

  ‘Well, I don’t mean literally.’ I looked over at Nurse Budd. ‘Why hasn’t she got any jam?’

  ‘Miss Beth’s sweet enough, dear,’ she replied.

  ‘Don’t you worry, Beth,’ I said fiercely. ‘I’ll talk to Cook and make sure she puts a big spoonful of jam on all your milk puddings.’

  I balanced the bowl of semolina on her lap and tried to get her to take the spoon. She took it, but smacked the surface of the semolina so it splattered all over the place.

  ‘Mind, Miss Beth, you’re getting it on your dress,’ said Nurse Budd.

  ‘Don’t listen, Beth. You feed yourself any way you like,’ I said.

  Beth held the spoon in the air.

  ‘She’ll make a mess, Miss Rose,’ Nurse Budd warned.

  ‘Mess,’ said Beth, and smashed the spoon down into the bowl with all her might. Semolina spurted everywhere – over her hands, her dress, her stockings, even the carpet.

  ‘You see,’ said Nurse Budd, lips tight. ‘Now I’ll have to clean her up. Why don’t you go to the nursery and supervise your other sisters and brothers, Miss Rose?’

  I gave up and went to find Nurse settling Phoebe into her cot for her nap.

  ‘Nurse, Nurse!’ r />
  ‘Ssh now, Miss Rose, Baby’s just nodding off,’ she hissed.

  ‘Rose, come and play soldiers with us!’ Algie called.

  ‘Now then, Master Algie, it’s not playtime now, not straight after lunch. You look at your nice storybook and have a little doze,’ said Nurse. She shook her head at me. ‘I should run along, dear, you’re just unsettling them.’

  ‘I’m worried about Beth, Nurse. Nurse Budd is being so horrible to her, tying her on her chair and forcing her to eat. Can’t you stop her?’ I implored.

  ‘I wish I could, Miss Rose. But she’s in charge of Miss Beth now, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I had words with your mama because I don’t hold with being so strict. She said I was too soft with her, and this was the only way to deal with a child like Miss Beth,’ said Nurse.

  ‘That’s nonsense!’

  ‘I think it’s nonsense too, but who am I to say? I couldn’t control poor Miss Beth. Maybe if I’d done better with her earlier, she wouldn’t be like this now. She was a dear little baby too, like a little lamb. But when she turned two she started getting into all these passions and developing her funny ways until I was at my wits’ end. I’ve tried and tried, but I can’t cope with her, especially with Master Algie being such a handful into the bargain.’ Nurse fidgeted with her apron, pleating it into folds. ‘Some days I think it’s time to retire. Your dear father has promised to look after me. Perhaps I should go now.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Nurse. You can’t go. You’re part of the family,’ I said, though I suddenly saw how old and tired she looked.

  It’s very strange. For years Nurse seemed so big and strong, able to pick me up and put me to bed in disgrace, even when I struggled and kicked. But now I’m as tall as her, and much stronger, and it’s very unnerving.

  ‘Don’t you worry, Nurse,’ I said, and fled the room.

  I could hear Beth howling now. I couldn’t bear it. I wished Papa were at home. Beth’s cries were heart-breaking.

  I went rushing into the dining room. Mama and Mr Walker were sitting on either side of the long table, eating chocolate pudding with whipped cream. Why did we get fobbed off with milky slop while they had such a treat? I was sure Beth would eat up every mouthful.