The Great Lover (8 page)

‘Oh, but you’re wrong, Nell,’ she replied, cool as you like. ‘There’s many a maid or a girl like us what wants the Vote. Have you not heard of Annie Kenny? Look, here she is, right here, and look how she’s lost a finger. That happened in the cotton mills…’ She pointed at a grubby, blackened picture in the
Daily Sketch
, which I could barely make out.

‘Well, that only proves that this Kenny girl is accident prone and hardly to be admired,’ I said.

That was yesterday, but it’s clear the subject is not forgotten, any more than the badge. I notice that Kittie is fiddling with the place on her apron where the pin was and, to forestall another argument, I say, with a firm tone, ‘See that that teacloth is scalded
out, Kittie, and do pick another one–otherwise it will never boil clean.’

Mrs Stevenson comes into the scullery; thankfully Kittie falls silent. She hates to be scolded, and within hearing of Mrs Stevenson too. She sets her mouth firm and her brows against me, plunging her hands back into the water with a great splash, practically knocking the bucket off the dresser in her violence.

Our next task is to pickle the day’s crop of young walnuts. Kittie is of the opinion that it is now time for a tea-break of our own and a sit-down with our feet up and perhaps to eat up the pieces of abandoned scone, but I soon put her right on that idea. A great basket of walnuts needs doing. I show her how to use only the good vinegar and where to find the jars and muslin. ‘And make sure the vinegar completely covers the walnuts…and be sure to tie them securely…They need a nice dry spot in the larder, up there on the shelf where Lottie won’t knock them,’ I add.

Kittie complains of a sore throat. She says the smell of vinegar is making her come over queasy. I promise her a piece of flannel soaked in whisky and rubbed with yellow soap to tie round her throat at bedtime, and for a while she accepts this, at last applying herself to her task. Then suddenly, in answer to no remark of mine, she sighs and springs out with ‘He’s so–he’s so fair, isn’t he? And so boyish and so–so clever—’

‘Who is?’

‘Why, Rupert–Mr Brooke–of course!’

I find I can’t speak. I am startled by the thump in my chest–my own heart leaping about like a dog when a visitor arrives. What’s this about? I ask myself. The Lord knows, you’ve no interest in the man, Nell Golightly. You’re just embarrassed to picture him again, so erect, his arms hugging a bundle of clothes, and that queer, sudden laugh he has, so unexpected but so catching, somehow, like the laugh of a ten-year-old child…and as I scold myself, I cannot help remembering the moonlight
gleaming on one side of his body, like the shine on polished silver…

‘Oh!’ I sigh, and Kittie glances at me. My hand is stinging and black from the walnut stains. ‘I’ve splashed my scalded palm with vinegar,’ I snap, and my eyes prickle with tears. When Kittie turns again to stare nosily at me, I say, ‘I find it rather silly that he wanders around barefoot and refuses meat. A boy who is kept by his mother and never did a day’s work…I wonder if Mother’s allowance doesn’t run to bacon?’

Kittie shakes her head, reaching for another empty jar. She begins filling it with walnuts, and for the longest time, I believe her angry and refusing to answer me. Then I see with surprise that she is smiling.

‘He does have a young face, doesn’t he? How old do you think he is? Twenty? Twenty-two?’

‘He’s here to apply for a fellowship at King’s. He’s failed his Tripos and that surely makes him—’ But I don’t know how old that makes him. In truth, I have no idea what this ‘Tripos’ is, although I’ve heard Mr Brooke and his friends talk of it. My ignorance must be hidden from Kittie, for it would make her despise me. I know that my authority over her rests on the fact that I am used to shouldering the burdens of a mother. Also that I had two more years’ schooling than her.

‘Oh, no–not that knife!’ I suddenly screech, seeing her about to pick up a steel knife to prise the walnut from its shell. ‘The metal gives such a terrible taste–honestly, Kittie, don’t you know
anything
?’

Well, that remark does it, and she sets her mouth in a pout and refuses to speak to me for the rest of the afternoon. It is only when Mrs Stevenson’s daughter, Lottie, serving another boating party on the lawn, comes running into the kitchen, giggling, that Kittie breaks her sulk.

‘He’s back! They all are–and on the meadow there was a lady, a lady arrived on a train from Cambridge–another one!
And this one, you wouldn’t believe it—’ Lottie is saying. She doesn’t complete her sentence, ending with a laugh that veers into a shriek. Mrs Stevenson comes into the kitchen then, and Lottie has to wait for her mother to leave before she carries on. ‘She’s got this hat–enormous!–and she’s as tall as a man, but sort of drooping, like a great–like a sort of arum lily, drooping over the field! You can’t believe how grand she is. Her nose–like a beak. Like a great parrot!’

‘Well, which is it?’ I ask. ‘An arum lily or a parrot? She can’t be both—’

But Lottie ignores my tart tone. ‘She lets the children run about her and makes eyes at the painter–she must be another mistress! And the other two wives allow it!’

‘Is she coming here for tea?’ I ask in alarm, calculating the scones and whether to send Kittie to fetch more milk.

Lottie and Kittie pay no heed to me at all but continue breathlessly. They run about the kitchen muttering and whispering, their voices spilling with excitement.

‘She’s a lady. A real one. Lady Ottoline, I heard Mr Brooke call her. A lady in fancy dress! Go peep at her, Kittie. Take a look at that great beaky nose! And that long trailing dress in such a lovely shade of green, fanning behind her and soaking up all the mud. It’s like a peacock’s tail–yes, that’s it! She’s like a–
peacock
!

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Lottie, how can one person be a flower, a parrot and now a peacock?’

‘That hardly matters,’ Kittie puts in. ‘What I want to know is–why would the artist need a mistress when he already has the lovely wife with the plum-coloured dress and her sister too, for seconds?’

‘How many mistresses can one man have?’

Here they put their heads together and wail with laughter. When they set out the tray the cups rattle against their saucers–their bodies shaking with giggles. Lottie can’t halt herself.
‘And the cart!’ she squeaks. ‘I heard such a story from Mr Neeve’s son. That huge horse they use to drag it slipped and fell down! And the painter–Mr Augustus John–just stares at it, staring and staring at the great brute kicking and struggling, and him just smoking his cigarette, like he hasn’t an idea in his head what to do next. Station loafers had to come to the rescue. The man is like–what is he like?’

‘A peacock, perhaps? Another kind of bird, or plant?’

But Lottie doesn’t hear the sarcasm in my voice. ‘He’s like one of his own wild boys!’ she blurts. ‘Honestly, I’m sure he’s quite mad. Cyril, Mr Neeve’s boy, says the whole of Cambridge is terrified of him.’

And so their twittering continues, and there is nothing I can do to stop them. The surprise of the things they describe keeps hitting my body in waves, and I cannot stop myself wanting to hear more. Can it really be possible that this ‘greatest painter’, as Mr Brooke described him, has three mistresses? Or even three wives? Why would a grand lady from London want to associate with a raggle-taggle gypsy band in a tent and two caravans? Lottie reports that Lady Ottoline left before tea, finding the meadow sodden and the other wives unfriendly. This makes the pair hoot.

‘The other wives unfriendly?
No!
’ Kittie howls.

And just at that moment, Mr Brooke steps into the kitchen and murmurs, ‘I say–any more whales on toast, girls?’ and the two stop dead, curtsy, and then when he is out of the room melt to the floor in a puddle of hysterical laughter.

That decides me. However bad it gets, however often the wicked Mr Brooke wants to parade naked in front of me, I shan’t give notice to Mrs Stevenson. Ten shillings a week and a kind mistress is not easily come by. But, most importantly, these two flibbertigibbets need a person of good judgement to knock some sense into them. Lottie might be Mrs Stevenson’s daughter but she’s worse than Kittie for a lack of good sense. No, it’s certain. I’m the only girl to do it.

The Fabian Summer School, Wales

This year, Beatrice Webb announces, the university men shall all be put up at Landbedr in the stables and with
several of the horses still in situ
. (There are different rules for the girls.) I am sure she remembers last year when–which of us was it?–Dudley got himself locked out on the balcony with the chamber pot and had to be let in (half naked and the afore-mentioned receptacle all aslosho with
contents
). She clearly believes the hard floors, natural smells and rudimentary lodgings will upset us delicate Cambridge boys, but little has she reckoned on the Neo-Pagan sensibility I’m encouraging–which positively relishes such privations!

So, that first night we bedded down in our sleeping-bags, tangled our legs in the cotton linings and wormed like caterpillars around in the stables, continuing our usual discussions.

I must confess that it was
not
the absolute urgency of addressing and revising the old Poor Law, dividing it into Health, Old Age and Employment, to demonstrate the different ways that the poor become poor, thus recognising the differing needs of each, no, not quite that.

Rather, James, propping himself up on one elbow, his eyeglasses carefully placed on a shelf next to the horse-feed, opined on the predilections of my own dear brother Alfred, repeating a conversation of two days ago. He said that Podge (‘Rupie’s darling brother Alfred,’ he clarified loudly, for those who might be listening and not know the soubriquet) had plunged into the worm-eaten convention of discussing Sodomy as usual, its uses and abuses. Podge, James claimed, was very sound, and sentimental and, oh, definitely ‘Higher’, poor chap. But after all–it’s surely only in the most special circumstances that copulation is at all tolerable?

We laughed and snuffled inside our bags, like choking insects. So much so that James knocked over the candle and several of us had to prevent a major fire erupting. In the midst of this–us leaping around naked and jumping on sparking bundles of hay–Hugh Daddy Dalton conceived a light lust for James and tried to tickle him gently under the armpits. Poor old James jumped back into his sleeping-bag on the floor but not before Daddy stood over him, waving an immense steaming penis in his face, until James was nearly sick.

This seemed a good moment to turn the conversation to the disgraceful behaviour (Beatrice Webb’s opinion) of that ‘terrible little Pagan’ Amber Reeves. Could it be true that H. G. Wells actually
had
her in her room at Newnham? And, worse still (Dudley, to our left, silently listening, showed by his breathing that he was, of course, actually shocked), that she’s now–
carrying his child
? We giggled again, picturing the Marvellous Utopian Scene: Wells sweaty and panting, Amber pert and stranded as an upturned wheelbarrow with its handles stuck in the ground.

Beatrice’s interfering in the Wells-Reeves affair, James said, included her spilling the story to Noel Olivier’s father, advising him not to let his four handsome daughters run around with Wells. This infuriated me. Gloomily, I stared up at the roof of the stables, at the shifting black shape of a bat. No doubt this would only mean more restrictions for Noel, and my campaign generally thwarted, but I said nothing of this to James, sensing that he was drifting off to sleep.

Sleep was not my mistress that night. Thoughts whirled until dawn slithered her rosy light through the stable windows, and the horses at the other end greeted us with a hot stench of fresh manure. Time already to get up for Swedish drill. I hadn’t slept a wink.

The bracing exercises took place on the grass, overlooked by the Welsh sheep-spotted hills, providing us at least with our first
glimpse of the dewy Fabian girls. They all looked as if they had slept blissfully without a filthy thought in their heads–even Amber Reeves. (What on earth do the creatures talk about when the lights go out? They actually discuss Fabian ideals, James suggested. Margery Olivier no doubt debates the merits of eugenics in her father’s book, how the Germans and Japanese have made such astounding progress in regulating the races. ‘Or more likely the exquisite displays of grasses in vases at the house, and the William Morris tiles,’ Daddy offered.)

I noticed that the usually at-the-centre-of-things Amber Reeves did not take part in these vigorous jumps but sat instead on the grass, pretending a swollen ankle. Could Daddy Dalton be right, then, about her presumed condition? A sudden image of H. G. Wells twirling his moustache in pride entered my head as I sneaked glances at her, and filled my mouth with a sudden vile taste.

Daddy and some of the other fellows found the alcohol ban intolerable. ‘That filthy fake beer, No-Ale, is the only aspect of Fabianism I can’t swallow,’ he said. Of course, Dudley and I were glad to eschew the whisky our fathers believe makes us manly, and happy to continue the practice wherever we might be, as long as it is not in the presence of those same fathers. Even horribly sober, however, we managed to have a row on that same first night, when Dudders–of course the most devout among us–happened to mention how elucidating he had found the talk that afternoon by the visiting lady, Miss Mary Macarthur, of the Women’s Trade Union and Labour League. The one about the appalling conditions of the girl florists in the West End. And then, he added hotly, growing quite pink with the effort, had any of us heard that it was actually Mrs Asquith herself who wanted the florists excluded from the Factory Acts so that they could dress her rooms with flowers until ten o’clock at night?

Well, he had a point, and I found Dudley’s earnestness touching.
So I was more than a little angered by James and Hugh Daddy Dalton and the rest for giving him such a ribbing. It was all too familiar–the same dismissive attitude Augustus John had towards
my
socialism. Beatrice Webb has said (apparently) that the egotism of the university men is ‘colossal’ and we have a long way to go towards proving to her that we might have a serious interest in the subject of Fabianism. But why, I thought, without muttering it out loud to the others, must the two things be mutually exclusive, a sense of humour, or wit, or playfulness, and a genuine socialism. Must we all be cloth sacks and grow our own sandals to be taken seriously?