The Crimson Bed (6 page)

    Fred paused now and re-filled his glass from the whisky bottle. Henry twirled his own glass in his hands and then said, half amused, 'Well, Fred, it's not to your credit, I agree. But it's hardly the most evil of sins. I doubt the girl was a virgin anyway. These country girls seldom are. I suggest you forget it and put it all behind you now. After all, no-one's the worse for wear.'

    Fred tipped up his whisky glass and swallowed the contents in one gulp. He re-filled it and did the same again. The fact was that he hadn't told Henry the entire story nor did he intend to do so. The remainder of the story, the consequences, were even worse in his opinion and he still felt pain and anguish over it all. Henry with his robust and sensible view of life would not understand. Fred had always had deep, strong ideals that he now felt were shattered; he had always longed to be pure of heart but it seemed as if that purity was blemished irretrievably and nothing could take away the stain.

    'No woman will ever love me, Henry,' he said sadly,' no pure and lovely girl will ever want me.'

    'Nonsense, Fred. She need never know. You wouldn't surely speak of all this to a bride on your wedding night.'

    'No, of course not. But I would know. And I feel it would unman me.'

    'Heavens, man, you're far too sensitive. It would do nothing of the sort. I'll get you "manned" again. Come over here and I'll show you something that will raise your cock, I promise.'

    Henry began to gather some chalks that were scattered on a small table and flung them pell-mell into a box so vigorously that some of them broke in half. Fred came over and helped him. 'For Heaven's sake, you're so careless, Henry! Here, let me do it.'

    'Oh, you do it,' snorted Henry, 'you're worse than an old woman; you're so infernally tidy and fussy. Come and see this stunning brunette. I know you prefer brunettes to blondes. What d'you think of
her
?'

    Fred turned round to view the easel near the window.

    'A brunette?' he smiled. 'What, no redheads and blondes? This is a change of heart for you.'

    'You'll like this one,' said Henry, 'I can definitely wager she'll be your type. If you'd been here an hour ago, you'd have seen the goddess herself.'

    Fred paused, intrigued and interested, and took a long look at the large sheet of paper on which his friend had been busy before he came. It was already well sketched out and much of the face drawn in fine detail. Henry had captured the expression and the features of a young woman with an extraordinary mass of dark, luxuriant hair dressed in large plaited coils about her face. Fred drew closer to take a better look.

    This girl had an unusual and striking kind of beauty, quite unlike Henry's usual models and certainly nothing like the plump and florid Rosie whose attributes filled most of his designs these days. There was a harder quality about this long, narrow face. The bone structure was well defined, the mouth had full, curved and sensual lips and the eyes, slightly turned up at the corners, looked into the distance full of intelligence and expressiveness.

    Henry often made sketches and plans in chalks or pencil before transferring the ideas to canvas. Fred wondered what completed picture he had in mind.

    'You never mentioned anything about this. I didn't see this last time I was here. Are you planning some dark Morgana or a Lilith?'

    'No, no. This is to be a paid-for portrait of the young lady. And just in the nick of time too. I owe a month's rent and Mrs Russell won't let me chalk up any more on credit. Reminds me, have you got any tin on you? Can you let me have a couple of guineas? I'll pay it back soon.'

    Fred stared for a long time at the picture. He loved this face. It was so unique and exquisite that he didn't even hear Henry's last comment properly and absent-mindedly handed over two guineas.

    Henry chuckled as he pocketed the money. 'I knew you'd fall for this face.'

    'As always, you're absolutely bloody right. I'll buy it when it's finished,' said Fred. He felt serious all of a sudden. This was a face that pulled at something deep within him. 'Where the devil did you find her? Is she one of your latest discoveries?'

    'She's a stunner all right, but she's not for sale, Fred, not the picture, nor the girl.'

    'What? Why not? Why not to both notions? She's a beauty, a real beauty and you've just begun to capture her. Has she truly a mouth like that?'

    'Oh, I like luscious lips, you know that. They look so kissable. And yes, these look exactly like the original.'

    'Why won't you sell her to me?' pleaded Fred. 'I'll give whatever you ask, pay off your rent debts if you like. That's a good offer, isn't it?'

    Henry looked at him, his brown eyes full of amusement. 'Aha... someone's beaten you to it, my friend.'

    'Well, damn them! I'll pay more than them then.'

    Henry was wistful. 'Pity, I can't oblige you, Fred, but the claim is greater when it's the girl's father who wants the picture. I think you'll agree? Besides he's going to pay me a sum in advance so I can settle up with old Ma Russell then. And it's a very good price. I doubt you could match it anyway.'

    'Who is she, then?' asked Fred, looking at the picture again, stirred by the mystery that seemed to surround her.

    'She's the daughter of Joshua Farnham, the barrister.'

    'I've heard of the fellow, but I never knew he had such a glorious daughter or I'd have dug her out... why, I'm half in love with her already! Can't you introduce me?'

    'Guarded like the rare pearlie she is, alas!'

    The portrait drew Fred's eyes again. He loved something about the line of those eyes, the tenderness of those lips. Was she really like this or had Henry managed to soften and transform her, as he did all his sitters, into some indefinable dream person that had been filtered through his own romantic imagination?

    'If I can't have the picture in oils, I'll buy this chalk study at least. I wish I could see the original,' said Fred with longing. 'What's her name, anyway?'

    'Eleanor Mary. They call her Ellie.'

    'How romantic! How suitable! Eleanor, the Fair Maid of Astalot.'

    'Don't get too excited,' said Henry, with a laugh that turned into a cough. 'That damned river– shut the window, Fred. It stinks more than ever tonight now the weather's warmed up. Gives me such a bad throat in the summer.'

    'I wish you would move to somewhere a trifle more salubrious,' said Fred, 'I'm terrified you'll get the cholera.'

    'It's better than the place I was in before with the tanner's yard at the back, remember that one? My God, that was disgusting! Couldn't
bear
the smell of that. I'd rather have the river. I
will
move once I start to make some more money. Maybe this commission will be the start of something lucrative. Old Farnham's as rich as Croesus. Maybe he'll find me more clients. I have high hopes.'

    Fred took another long look at the portrait of Eleanor Farnham.

    'When will she be back for a sitting?'

    'Tuesday afternoon– why?'

    'I want to come along and watch you paint her.'

    'Aha... you
are
captured by the lovely Eleanor! Come by all means. But I warn you that she always brings two ancient dragons from home, her maid and an old governess, who is some sort of companion or duenna. You'll have to call as if by chance and then I'll introduce you.'

    Fred felt suddenly elated. His moodiness lifted and excitement stirred in him. He sensed adventure or even more than that; he sensed something intangible that flowed from a half-finished portrait that might lead him to some unimagined joy and happiness.

    'I'll be there!' he said, 'on Tuesday afternoon!'

Chapter 4

'No, No, Mama can't be dying, she can't be!'

    Ellie flung herself down by her mother's bed and grasped the coverlet with her hands. Maria lay back on the pillows, her face pale as a statue, her eyes open but gazing into an unknown space before her. It was as if she alone could see something there. Ellie looked in the direction of those staring eyes but saw nothing except an oil painting of St Anne and St Elizabeth, a favourite of her mother's.

    There was no sign of recognition in Maria's face, just that blank stare. She had been lying in the crimson bed for months now. In her forty-fourth year, a paralytic seizure had overcome her unexpectedly and she could no longer walk or talk properly. Her once-lovely face sagged and drooped and food dribbled from the corner of her mouth. Of late she had refused food altogether.

    Joshua rose from the chair at the side of Maria's bed where lately he spent most of his evenings, talking to his wife, watching as she slept and trying to tempt her to eat with specially prepared broths and little morsels that she would once have enjoyed. Ellie would come up in the daytime and sit beside the bed, reading aloud or just holding her mother's hands and hoping for a flicker of recognition or response. All she received for her pains was that stare turning upon her, that frightening, unseeing stare. Faithful Mulhall had made up a little truckle bed at the foot of the great four-poster and stayed by her mistress day and night.

    Joshua raised his bowed head and looked wearily at his griefstricken daughter. 'Ellie, dearest, she no longer eats or speaks or walks. Your mother wants to die. I know it. She cannot speak but she has made signs to me, touching her heart, lifting her eyes, looking at her Bible. It comforts her when I read passages from St. John, her favourite Gospel. She especially loves me to read of Mary Magdalene discovering Jesus walking in the garden after His Transformation. He called her 'Mary' and she turned to him and said 'Master'…she knew Him because of the way He said her name. It is a profound moment of recognition of the Lord. It always makes her weep. Tears stream down her face.'

    Joshua sighed and turned to look at his wife. Her breath was low, almost nothing now.

    'Poor Mama,' said Ellie, her voice choking with grief. 'Why would she want to die, Papa, when we love her so, when we need her so much? She is too young; she cannot go and leave us now.'

    Joshua stroked his daughter's head and gazed at his wife lying so silent and motionless. Mulhall and the doctor stood on the other side, the maid gazing at her mistress with great love. Maria had inspired this sort of adoration in all she had met; she was a woman rich in wisdom and beauty of soul.

    'I'll read that passage to her again,' said Joshua, 'I know she hears me, even now that her soul is departing. My beloved Maria...' he fumbled with the Bible, trying to hold in his emotion, and found the passage already marked from many openings. He then began to read in his quiet calm voice. Ellie felt she couldn't bear to listen and yet the words held comfort. If her mother thought so too, that was all that mattered in this moment. It was true. Maria was just a shell now, not the beautiful being she had once been.

    Ellie watched her mother intently as her father read out the passage from St. John.

    ' "And they say unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? She saith unto them, Because they have taken away my Lord and I know not where they have laid Him." '

    Joshua's voice carried on while Ellie and Mulhall stood in silence. Maria's breath rattled forth in one long last sigh.

    The servants downstairs paused as they heard the howl of grief from Maria's chamber. They put down their implements and stared at each other in dismay.

Ellie lost weight, her face pinched and eyes dark with sleepless nights. She often awoke just after midnight and all her childhood terror of the dark arose in her. There was no loving person now to come up with a candle and comfort her. Sometimes she slipped from her own room and crept into Mama's bed. It comforted her, the familiar smell, the moulded feathers of the mattress that bore her mother's shape, but as time went by, she felt unable to enter the room any more or look on that bed. It hurt her too much even to pass the door. The room remained firmly shut except to the maid who entered to clean and dust the sacred shrine, instructed to put everything back in its exact place when she had done.

    Ellie's mind also returned perpetually to that perplexing, numbing time when Alfie had suddenly disappeared from her life as if spirited away by some magician. Try as she might to carry on with her life as normal, nothing felt the same or could ever be the same. Alfie's face appeared everywhere, superimposed upon whatever she did. He entered her dreams and she awoke, troubled and disturbed. She found herself talking to him in her mind day and night, often lying awake for long hours in the dark, weeping over her lost love.

    'I never thought of you so much when we were lovers,' she said to herself, 'so now why do you trouble my heart all the time, all the time– when you are so evidently gone?'

    Was it pride? Was it mere humiliation at being abandoned so cruelly? How could he have said he loved her, taken her maidenhood, risked so much and then as suddenly jaunted off with his regiment and forgotten her? It was impossible to behave like this unless he was a monster. She had written two or three letters to him via his regiment but there was no reply. He never seemed to come home for his leave or if he did, she knew nothing of it; no one spoke to her about him any more. It was as if he had suddenly ceased to exist. It seemed to her that some cruel hand of fate had erased everything she had loved and that she could never, ever be happy again.

'Will you not go for a ride with your cousin Anne today?'

    Ellie looked up from the embroidery she was listlessly working on. Twice she had unpicked the same row of satin stitch. Next to her was a book, opened at a page but left aside. Nothing could occupy her mind and heart but her unhappiness and sense of loss.

    'No Papa. I don't desire it at all.'

    The thought of Anne chattering away in her happy, heedless manner when her own heart was so full would be too much to bear. Pretending to smile, pretending that anything in this life mattered any more.