All My Sins Remembered (24 page)

She grinned at the painter, ignoring the two half-naked girls. ‘I’m sorry, Quint, didn’t know you’d still be busy.’

‘Make some tea, will you?’ was his only response. He worked for a few minutes longer. The woman clattered to and fro with the kettle, glancing at the sitters now and again without much curiosity. Once she went behind the easel to see what he had done. They heard her sniff. At last Pilgrim put down his brush.

‘That will do. You can rest now.’ Clio and Grace stretched gratefully, turning to look at each other, and then at the redheaded woman. Pilgrim introduced her.

‘This is Jeannie. She’s a regular model of mine, a very good model. Jeannie, this is Lady Grace Stretton and Miss Clio Hirsh. I’m painting a society portrait.’

Jeannie sniggered, but she held her hand out. ‘Pleased to meet you.’ Then she looked more interested. ‘Hirsh? Any relation to Julius Hirsh?’

Clio was startled. ‘He’s my brother.’

The model chuckled. ‘It’s a small world, isn’t it? We live in the same digs, just across the landing. You remember, Quint, I told you about the musician? Such a lovely friendly boy. Has he ever talked about me?’

This was an entirely new perspective on Julius. Clio managed to say, ‘I can’t remember if he has or not.’

Jeannie was unperturbed. ‘Well, I suppose he wouldn’t. Listen here, Quintus, why are we messing about with tea? Why don’t you take your friends and me across to the Eiffel for a drink and a bite of supper? I see there’s no cake left, even though it was me that bought it.’

Pilgrim hesitated, then seemed to come to a decision. ‘Would you like to do that?’ he asked the girls.

Without consulting one another, without looking, Clio and Grace both knew that they would like it very much. They wanted to know more about Jeannie and Julius and about Pilgrim himself. They were ready to take on the Eiffel, whatever that might be.

‘But the car is coming for us at seven,’ Grace said with regret.

‘Tell the driver he can wait. That’s the point of having a chaffeur, isn’t it?’

‘Can we go like this?’ Clio asked.

‘Well, perhaps better to put your dresses on again. Even for the Eiffel.’ Pilgrim and Jeannie were laughing noisily.

‘That’s what I
meant
…’

‘I am not proposing some louche dive, madam. Your evening gowns will be quite acceptable.’

When they emerged from behind the screen again Jeannie said, ‘Shown you any of his pictures of me, has he?’

There were canvases stacked all round the studio, but every one of them was turned face to the wall. Pilgrim shrugged, and she went over to the deepest stack and began to turn the pictures outwards, one by one.

They were all of Jeannie, some clothed, some naked. Pilgrim had painted her body as blocks of solid flesh, geometric shapes outlined in heavy black lines, as massive and immobile as slabs of rock. Her russet hair provided the only movement, painted in intricate and regular waves, like water pouring over the rocks. When she was clothed the fabrics were strong greens and violets and ochres, and she lay against plain sheets of thick earth colours. Her face, full on or in profile, was calm, brooding. Her eyelids were rounded like pebbles.

Pilgrim had made her an odalisque, carved out of stone.

The girls looked, impressed by the power of the Jeannie portraits, trying to imagine how Pilgrim was painting them. They had not dared to glance at the canvas on the easel.

‘Struck dumb, eh?’ Jeannie scoffed.

‘They’re wonderful,’ Clio said at last, meaning it. The pictures made her feel insipid, milky and insubstantial, when she wanted to be strong and elemental as they were. Pilgrim bowed to her. He had already put on his black hat, and a long black cape.

‘Shall we go, now?’

As they descended to the street Grace whispered to Clio, ‘God knows what Blanche and John will make of it all.’

‘Who cares?’ Clio answered, with sudden fervour.

They found the chauffeur waiting with the car. Pilgrim waved him away. ‘I will see the young ladies home myself, thank you.’ He offered an arm to each of the girls and swept them off. Jeannie marched in front of them, her gypsy drapes blowing like flags.

The Eiffel turned out to be the Eiffel Tower, a restaurant a few yards away on the corner of Percy Street. Grace and Clio saw with faint relief that Pilgrim was right, this was no low dive.

There were wide, well-lit windows half curtained in warm crimson. Inside was a big room with tables set against the walls, each with a red-shaded lamp. In the centre was a brass construction sprouting parlour palms and ferns, flowers and newspapers, with a small table beside it laden with exotic fruit and shellfish, plovers’ eggs, caviare and asparagus. There was a feeling of cosiness, but also of comfortable space and order.

The girls had time for only the briefest first impression. Pilgrim and Jeannie were flinging off their hats and coats as if they had come home. A portly man with a moustache came surging forward to greet them.

‘Stulik, Stulik,’ Pilgrim cried, patting him on the back. The man kissed Jeannie on both cheeks and bowed to Clio and Grace. Pilgrim introduced him. Rudolf Stulik was the Eiffel Tower’s proprietor.

‘Welcome, welcome guests, and friends,’ the man crooned. His accent was foreign, fractured. ‘See, I have a table for you here.’ He led them to it.

Grace and Clio saw that the tables were crowded with people, a diverse collection of people in street clothes and theatre clothes and half fancy dress like Jeannie’s. There were thin-faced women with cigarettes and eccentric jewellery, and there was even a sprinkling of young men and women in evening dress. They were all busy eating and talking and gesticulating and laughing, but they looked up when Pilgrim’s party swept by. Clio felt exhilaratingly certain that they were looking not to see what she was wearing, but who she was.

Pilgrim enjoyed the attention given to their entrance. He returned it with lordly waves and smiles and then settled his three companions into their comfortable, plush-seated chairs. A waiter in a black coat brought them menus, but Pilgrim commanded, ‘We will have the
plat du jour
. And a bottle of burgundy, to begin with.’

The food, when it came, was a
poulet rôti au beurre
that reminded the girls of the Normandy holidays of their childhood. But before they even began to eat, the first of a stream of visitors to their table arrived. He was a huge man with a curling brown beard and gold earrings who thrust his glass down on the tablecloth and waved to a waiter to bring him a chair. He and Pilgrim began to argue at once, with Jeannie mildly interceding as she filled up their glasses. The man with the beard was followed by a woman in black draperies, her hair as red as Jeannie’s. She brought her own bottle across with her, and clung tenaciously to it. After the woman came a brace of poets, and another painter or two, and a shifting retinue of art students from the Slade School.

Grace and Clio were introduced to more interesting people during that one rambling meal at the Eiffel Tower than they had encountered in the whole of their débutante season. They drank in the arguments and the gossip and the jokes, understanding almost none of them, but impressed by the liveliness and the wit and the casual intimacy.

At first they were shy and almost silent, but the wine and the conviviality worked on them and they began to talk themselves, and then to laugh. Daringly, they lit cigarettes and waved them about like the red-haired Nina. Little sub-groups formed, and broke away from the centre, drawing Clio and Grace with them. They forgot that they had begun by needing Pilgrim’s protection. Clio cupped her chin in her hands and talked in her accurate school French to a Parisian dancer. Grace sat between the two poets, laughing uproariously at each development in a lengthy doggerel-verse account of the evening that they batted between them. More bottles of burgundy were brought and emptied.

When the
poulet
was replaced by plates of
gâteau St Honoré
, the big man with the beard leant over to Grace and Clio. His huge fingers pinched at their earlobes and then rubbed the pearls of their matching necklaces.

‘Where did you find these charming English rosebuds, Pilgrim? One would be fine, but a
pair
is magnificent.’

Pilgrim was pleased. He grinned, showing his white teeth. ‘In Belgrave Square, John, where else? I am painting their portrait for Lady Grace’s mama. She wants to hang it alongside the portrait of herself by Sir John Singer Sargent.’

John bellowed with laughter. ‘You are a lucky man. And I am sure her ladyship will be delighted to have a Pilgrim to hang in her drawing room.’

The evening roared on. To Grace and Clio it was new and entirely magical, but for the rest of them was no more than a familiar night in their usual haunt. The girls were to discover that Pilgrim held a kind of court at the Eiffel. He used it as his club, where he ran up bills and drank coffee at all hours, read the newspapers and wrote his letters. It was also his office and unofficial labour market. He trawled for commissions amongst the society sprigs who daringly penetrated this outpost of Bohemia. It was from just such an infiltrator in evening dress that Blanche’s friend Mary Twickenham had heard that Pilgrim was the very best and absolutely the
most
fashionable of all the young artists in London. Somehow the other half of his reputation had not been recounted.

It was eleven o’clock when it occurred to Clio to ask the time. She gave a little shriek of dismay, causing the French dancer to raise his eyebrows in comical peaks.

‘We have to go home. Now, at once. Grace, Aunt Blanche will have called the police. We were supposed to be home at seven.’

Grace was equally astonished, but she reassured her, ‘They have gone to a musical soirée. They might not be back, yet, please God, if we hurry. It’s just Broddy who’ll be worried, and I can square it with her.’

They were on their feet, gathering up their wraps. The talk swirled around them, unstoppable.

‘Pilgrim, won’t you take us home? Please,
now
? Or find us a cab, at least?’

Pilgrim was comfortably ensconced, and had no intention of being dislodged just to make the round trip to Belgrave Square. But he did detach himself for long enough to bustle them into Percy Street. As they left the overflowing table Jeannie called after Clio, ‘Next time, bring that brother of yours, won’t you?’

Pilgrim flagged down a cab. Then in full view of the restaurant’s lighted window he kissed each of the girls on the mouth. His kisses were thorough, tasting importantly of burgundy and garlic and maize-papered French cigarettes. Then he opened the door of the taxi and bundled the two of them inside. He gave the address to the driver, slammed the door, and disappeared back into the red glow of the Eiffel.

Clio and Grace had no money on them. To pay their fare they had to borrow five shillings from John Leominster’s valet when he opened the door. Blanche and John were not yet back. The girls fled upstairs to Nanny Brodribb and their beds.

Clio lay awake, thinking. She was remembering how Pilgrim and Jeannie had entered the Eiffel as if they were coming home. She had not felt at home herself. It was more like hovering on the threshold of some infinitely attractive household, eavesdropping on the family and longing to be invited in to join them. She felt happy, almost breathless with relief, to discover that there were such interesting people, and full of apprehension that she would not be considered amusing enough herself. ‘Next time bring that brother of yours,’ Jeannie had said. At least it seemed to be understood that there would be a next time. She was pleased to think that Julius might be her passport to it.

Then it occurred to her that the world of the Eiffel might not yet feel like home, but it could be a vastly expanded and sophisticated version of the life she had known in the Woodstock Road before the war changed everything. People had come to Nathaniel’s house to talk and eat, and Eleanor had complained sometimes that she felt she was running an unexclusive club. Perhaps the image of a family was more apt than she had realized.

Whatever the truth was, Clio knew that she wanted to be able to take off her coat and belong in this stimulating new world as comfortably as Pilgrim and Jeannie did.

She wanted the people she met there to be her friends. She could only hope that she could offer them something of interest in return.

Seven

The leaves were changing colour under a porcelain-white sky. There was a smoky, wintry bite in the air that whipped Grace’s blood. It was hunting weather, making her wish for the woods and hills around Stretton. She thought of the visceral pleasure of a hard gallop, and the exhilarating rush of the wind in her face. To be limited to a decorous walk in the Park with Anthony Brock made her feel irritable, and the knowledge that it was her own choice did not improve her mood.

Hugo had gone back to Stretton, to oversee the estate and complete the reopening of the house, and if Grace had insisted on going too Blanche would have given way to her. But in London there was Pilgrim and the circle that had the Charlotte Street studio and the Eiffel as its centre. She would not have retreated and left them exclusively to Clio however much she might otherwise long for the country.

Anthony strolled beside her in his dark City clothes. He was quiet because Grace seemed to prefer not to talk, and the absence of anything to complain of in his company chafed her further. Grace would have liked an argument, anything to provide an outlet for her energy.

They came to a junction in the path they were following. They had the choice of walking on, towards the Serpentine, or taking a shorter route that would lead them back the way they had come.

‘Which would you like?’ Anthony asked. ‘Backwards, or forwards?’

‘Anthony, why are you always so gentlemanly? Why are you so implacably good and reasonable and considerate?’

‘Perhaps I’m not. Perhaps that is just how I would like you to perceive me.’ He was looking sideways at her, his long face expressionless. She couldn’t tell whether he was making fun of her or not.