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Authors: Margaret Forster

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BOOK: Keeping the World Away
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*

She wrote to Winifred often, but could not seem to catch in words what she could catch in drawings and in the end, as writing became ever more stilted and laborious, she resorted to sending sketches upon the back of which she scribbled other information. She drew her fellow student Ambrose McEvoy with his flat, straight black hair, his monocle, his immaculate clothes, and on the back of her drawing she wrote that his voice was strange, it had a cracked sound, and that she was learning a great deal from him about building up colour in painting and how to emphasise light and dark. This did not tell the whole story, of course, but she lacked the language to do that. A tiny trickle of feeling had been cautiously running through her from that deep hidden well she knew was there, but she was afraid of its turning into a torrent, and of being engulfed by it before she was ready. So she dammed it up and set her face against it. There was so much to learn and nothing must get in the way. She knew she was born to love, but not when or whom. There was safety in numbers and she kept to them for the most part. She did not care for groups, but within a group, she felt secure.

*

Winifred was coming. Their father had agreed that she might come to London and study music. She was to live with Gwen
and
Gus and another friend, Grace, in Fitzroy Street. It had been kept from their father that the house, No. 21, had once been a brothel, and that the woman who owned it was an extraordinary character of whom he would not have approved. Gwen had not yet met Mrs Everett, but she had seen her, dressed in her widow’s weeds and men’s boots, and carrying a large bag in which were rumoured to repose a Bible, a dagger, a saucepan and a loaf of bread. One of the students at the Slade, William Orpen, who lived in the basement of her house, had been to a session of what she called her ‘Sunday School’, where religious songs were sung and there was much clapping and swaying in time. William found it hilarious, and so did Gus when he was taken along, but Gwen shuddered. She knew her father would be furious.

She did not know how it would be, the four of them living together, but the financial and other advantages were too obvious to overlook. The lack of space and light at Euston Square meant she could not work there – and she had always known that in her second year she must move. For a while, she shared with Gus when he moved to Montague Place, but this was not a success. They needed someone between them who could keep them apart but also connect them. Winifred was that person, their own sister, intimately acquainted with both of them but like neither of them. She would provide the balance and, being joined by Grace, the burden would not become too great.

She arrived in January, on a bitterly cold day. It had snowed the night before and the blackened buildings of Fitzroy Street had been prettified. Gwen had bought flowers to welcome her, at great expense, six Christmas roses which she stuck in a green glass carafe and put on the washstand in Winifred’s room. They’d given Winifred the room overlooking the street, the best room, though this was not as generous as it seemed since she and Gus both preferred the back rooms where the light was stronger and from the north. Grace was to have the smaller front room, connected by a door to Winifred’s. The rooms gave the impression of being larger than they were (but also, it was true, colder).
Mrs
Everett did not care what was done to them and so Gwen and Gus had rearranged things considerably and thrown lengths of old velvet, purchased cheaply in a street market, over any especially hideous item. Winifred and Grace were charmed.

In her own room, Gwen had rolled the carpet up and pushed it under the window, leaving the floorboards bare. She liked the feel of them on her feet. There was space for her easel, and she could pretend this was her studio and not her bedroom. But this had a curious result. By placing her easel and her paints, and all that went with them, so prominently, she did something to the room which made her uneasy. The bed was still there, the other pieces of furniture were still prominent, and she felt threatened by them, she wanted to be rid of them. They had no place in an artist’s room; they did not fit.

Winifred was admired by the art students who came to Fitzroy Street but she made no attachments. Gwen watched her being watched, and wondered at her lack of response. It was not, she thought, the same kind of withholding which she employed herself. Winifred was not suppressing passion. She was simply not interested in any of the students. Rather they mystified her with their flamboyance and noise, their apparent lack of seriousness. She was mistaken, of course. Gwen knew how deadly serious they all were about art if not life, but her sister could not discern their strength of purpose. She saw only the drinking, the smoking, the laughter and fooling about and the disregard for convention. It puzzled her that Gwen belonged to this crowd, that she did not spurn it but appeared as involved as Gus in all its activities. She wished sometimes that she could see them all at work in their precious Slade School of Art. It was like a secret society to which they all belonged. Gwen, she decided, was a reluctant member, and not as happy as Winifred had expected to find her.

There were sudden storms of tears which were bewildering. Winifred would come back in the evening to Fitzroy Street and find Gwen prostrate on her bed, fists clenched, body rigid in some kind of sustained grief too awful to speak of. Once, the name Ambrose McEvoy was mentioned when Winifred asked what was
the
matter, but no explanation followed the muffled reference to him. It was all rather frightening.

*

Climbing the steps of the National Gallery made Gwen feel important. She was not a tourist, she was not an ignoramus, she had not come merely to gape. This was her work. Tonks had had no need to urge her to make this gallery her second home, to visit it often and learn from all it held. The very stones of the building felt sacred to her and when she was settled in front of a painting that she had come to study, she lost herself completely for hours. She sat on her folding stool perfectly composed, staring, seeking the internal structure of one picture before her. She looked for the muscles beneath the sleeves, the bones beneath the skin and the sinews of the neck, the veins in the eye. Then she opened her sketchbook and copied the line, leaving aside all colour and texture.

She had finished with Gabriel Metsu’s
A Woman Seated at a Table and a Man Tuning a Violin
. Today she had come to look at Rembrandt’s
Self-Portrait
, aged thirty-four. Young, but fourteen years older than she herself was now. She had fourteen years to reach Rembrandt’s standard, a thought which made her shiver. She wished he had looked straight at himself but his gaze was slightly off-centre. Why? How? Where was his mirror? And was he left-handed? If not, why was his right hand folded across his body? He was leaning on something, a banister perhaps, or a shelf. The clothes, the hat, were striking, but she was more interested in the face, especially the chin and the sparse growth of hair around it. Her own chin made her despair. Gus hid his chin, which like hers receded slightly, with his beard, and she almost wished that she could do the same. Always, she drew herself full-face, and then the chin did not bother her as much. Full-face and, increasingly, one hand on her hip. She liked the feeling this gave her, of defiance, even arrogance. She hoped it suggested that she was in control and able to face herself without shame. It was a lie, but she wanted it to be a successful lie, one that would not be questioned.

Last night, they had all gone to the Café Royal, she and Gus, and Ida and Ambrose and Grilda. (She would rather have been with Ursula, but Ursula had gone home to her father’s vicarage in Essex.) They had eaten sandwiches and drunk lager, and watched what was going on around them though none of them sketched. Winifred would not go with them; she had said she would be out of place and feel uncomfortable, and this had made Gwen realise that she herself felt perfectly at ease. To be part of a group, a gang, was not a situation she had either wanted or anticipated – surely, she was a solitary being, more solitary than her sister. It was Gus who needed people around him and liked to be at the centre of activity, not she. And yet there she had been, as she now often was, sitting with friends, drinking and eating and talking, quite comfortable. She had caught sight of herself in a huge mirror fixed along the wall opposite and she could not credit it was herself. Ida on one side, Ambrose on the other, squashed up together on the banquette, smoke wreathing their heads and the light from candles casting their faces into shadow. She looked so small and demure beside Ida who was dressed in crimson and wore a flower Gus had given her in her hair. Nondescript, that was the word that had come to her as she looked at herself. Dark dress, plain hairstyle, pale unpainted face. Only her necklace sparkled, her mother’s diamonds brilliant against her black velvet dress. She hadn’t known whether she should wear them or not: they looked out of place on her and might draw attention in a way she did not want. But wear them she did.

It was the beer, she supposed, but towards the end of last evening she had become convinced that Ambrose was singling her out for meaningful attention. So often he evaded her eyes but then suddenly he looked into them and his expression changed. It was exhilarating and yet tantalising. She wanted him to take her hand, or put his arm round her, as Gus had his round Ida. And then she could lay her head on his shoulder and close her eyes and feel him embrace her … But he went no further than a look and it made her want to cry. What did she have to do? Ida needed to do nothing, Gus did it all. And Ambrose had not
come
back to Fitzroy Street with them afterwards, as he usually did. They had parted in the street. He and Grilda walked in one direction, she and Gus and Ida in the other. She had felt bereft and cold, and once home had flung herself onto her bed and bitten her pillow in fury.

It was all gone now, the anger, the frustration. So long as she was here, in the gallery, in front of Rembrandt she was safe from unseemly emotion. It was people, people who were alive, who caused disturbance in her. What she must do was cut herself off from them, and yet to do so would be perverse. She loved her group, all women artist friends. They had taken her to their hearts and enriched her life immeasurably – what folly to discard them. Men, then. They were the disturbance, even Gus – especially Gus. Look at Edna, only nineteen and about to be married and already her dedication was wavering. Was it, then, to be a choice? Was Ida going to make this choice?

Gwen stared at Rembrandt. She would paint herself and try to bring into her portrait all this seething beneath the surface and with it the determination to save herself.

*

The summer vacation came and her money did not stretch to staying on in London, so she was obliged to go to Tenby, though she no longer thought of it as home. Agony to take the train back to Tenby, knowing that Ida and another Gwen, Gwen Salmond, were going to Paris where she had never been and longed to go. They were to try to study at the Académie Julien, where Bonnard and Vuillard had studied, and were in a state of excitement so extreme that it came off them like heat. It was quite unbearable. Is this jealousy, raw and ugly? Gwen asked herself, and the answer came quickly enough – yes, she was jealous to the point of angry tears.

Her father had no patience with tears. She knew that. They only irritated him. But tears trickled down her pale cheeks every time she confronted him in his cold, dull house and she could not seem to stop them. ‘Please,’ she said. She would do anything, she would go without anything. For long enough she had existed merely on
bread
and nuts and a little fruit and could exist on bread and water entirely if only he would finance a brief trip to Paris. Her begging – and she had held her hands out, like a beggar – maddened him. Why, he asked, was she not content? Once, London, the Slade School, had been all she craved. He had given it to her, and now – he was reading
Oliver Twist
again – she wanted
more
.

So for three days, Gwen ate nothing. She drank water and weak tea but closed her lips firmly against food. She sat at the table with her father and Winifred and refused all sustenance. On the fourth day, she fainted. It was no ploy. She rose from the table as her father rose, at the end of the meal, and she could not get to the door. Silently, gracefully, she slid to the floor, her skirt crumpling around her, rustling as it settled. Winifred told her how alarmed their father had been, how he had rushed to Gwen’s side and anxiously felt her pulse and – Winifred vowed it was true – kissed her forehead. But she knew nothing of that. When she came to, her father was not in the room. Winifred was kneeling beside her, pressing a damp cloth to her face. ‘You must eat,’ her sister said. ‘You must eat, or you will not be strong enough to travel to Paris.’

*

She had only enough money to travel third class but this suited her perfectly. It was September and sunny, and being out on deck was exhilarating. No one noticed her, and she was able to lean on the rail and watch the white cliffs fade. Only the thought of arriving in Calais, and having to get herself on the train to Paris, made her apprehensive. No one seemed to understand her French and the speed with which the French themselves spoke meant that she understood little of what they said. But, though she felt nervous, she was also aware of a kind of relief to be so isolated. The hubbub was great, and in the midst of it she was speechless and deaf and turned in on herself, which thrilled her. There was a sense of containment that she had never experienced before, and when, at the Gare du Nord, she was met by Ida she was almost sorry. Ida laughed and talked and hugged her, and that sense of being remote, untouchable, disappeared.

The apartment thrilled her. Three large rooms,
empty
. Wooden floors, long windows, dazzling light. They did not need beds. Mattresses would do, and cushions were preferable to chairs and stools. Gwen felt giddy with excitement. In no time the three of them had been to the market and bought the very minimum they needed, and then Ida and the other Gwen went off to Boulogne for the weekend leaving her alone. When the door closed, Gwen let out one of her loud exclamations. ‘Oh!’ she cried with delight. Round and round the rooms she paraded, arms flung wide, dancing in the space. At one and the same time she never wanted to leave the apartment but longed to explore Montparnasse. Out she went in the end, not caring if she got lost, and wandered the streets, the boulevards, feeling carefree and eager. When she returned to her room, she began painting immediately, her easel set up near the window so that she could see the scene below.

BOOK: Keeping the World Away
2.68Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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