Southampton Row (9 page)

Where could they meet that would cause no comment? It must be a place where both of them customarily went, so it would look to be chance. An exhibition of some sort, of paintings or artifacts. She had no idea what was showing at the moment. She had not until this moment felt like looking. The National Gallery always had something. She would write to Cornwallis, send him a message, casually worded, an invitation to see whatever it was. It would be simple enough to find out. She would do it in the morning, first thing. She could say something about its being interesting and wondering if he might find it enjoyable also. If it were seascapes no excuse would be needed; if something else, then it hardly mattered whether he believed her or not, what counted was if he came. It was immodest, the very thing the archdeacon had been railing against, but what was there to lose? What had she anyway but this empty game, words without communication, closeness without intimacy, passion, laughter or tenderness?

Her mind was made up. Suddenly she was hungry, and the crème caramel in front of her seemed hardly more than a couple of mouthfuls. She should not have ignored the preceding courses, but it was too late now.

Actually, the National Gallery was showing an exhibition of Hogarth’s paintings—portraits, not his political cartoons and commentaries. In his lifetime, some hundred and odd years ago, he had been dismissed by the critics as a miserable colorist, but now his stand-ing had risen considerably. It was something she could quite easily suggest was worth seeing to make one’s own judgment, and either confirm the critics or confound them.

She wrote quickly, without giving herself time to become self-conscious and lose her courage.

Dear Captain Cornwallis,

I became aware this morning that the National Gallery has mounted an exhibition of the portraits painted by Hogarth which were much derided in his lifetime, but now have gained far more favorable attention. It is remarkable how opinion can swing so wildly upon a single talent. I should now like to see them for myself and form my own judgment.

Knowing your interest in art, and your own ability, I thought you might also find them thought-provoking.

I appreciate that you have little time for such things, but in the hope that duty might allow you half an hour or so I thought to inform you. I have determined to take at least that long for myself, perhaps towards the end of this afternoon when I am not required at home. My curiosity is awakened. Is he as bad as they first said, or as good as they say now?

I hope I have not intruded upon your time.

Sincerely,

Isadora Underhill

No matter how many times she went over it, it would always be clumsier than she wished.

She must post it before she read it through again and felt too abashed to send it.

A quick walk to the letterbox on the corner, and it was irretrievable.

At four o’clock she dressed in her most flattering summer costume of old rose with falls of white lace over both sleeves as far as the elbow, and setting her hat on at a more rakish angle than usual, left her home.

It was only when her cab turned into Trafalgar Square that suddenly she felt she was being ridiculous. She leaned forward to tell the driver that she had changed her mind, then said nothing. If she did not now go and Cornwallis was there, he would feel it a deliberate rejection. She would have taken an irrevocable step she did not mean. She could never afterwards withdraw it. He was not a man to whom one could explain. He would simply not open himself up to such hurt again.

She sat back in the seat and waited until the cab stopped near the wide steps up to the immense pillars and the imposing front of the gallery. She alighted and paid her fare. Then she stood in the sun amid the pigeons and the sightseers, the flower sellers, the distant, impressive stone lions, the noise of traffic.

She must have let the boredom addle her wits last night! By writing to Cornwallis she had placed herself in a position where she had either to go back or forward; she could no longer remain where she was, lonely, uncommitted, dreaming but afraid. It was like standing at a gambling table and having cast the dice, waiting for them to stop rolling and decide her fate.

That was overstating it! She had simply written to a friend advising him of an interesting exhibition which she was going to see herself.

Then why were her legs trembling as she walked up the steps and across the stones to the entrance?

“Good afternoon,” she said to the man at the door.

“Good afternoon, madam,” he replied politely, touching his cap.

“Where is the Hogarth exhibition?” she asked.

“To the left, madam,” he said, inclining his head towards a huge notice.

She blushed hotly and almost choked on the words as she thanked him. He must think her blind! How would anyone unable to see a notice a yard high be able to appreciate paintings?

She swept past him and into the first room. There were at least a dozen people in it. At a glance she saw two with whom she was acquainted. Should she speak to them and draw attention to herself? Or not, and perhaps be thought to snub them? That would cause comment, and certainly be repeated.

Before she could reach a decision, years of training overtook her and she spoke, then instantly thought she might have ruined her chance of speaking to Cornwallis other than meaninglessly, in passing. She could hardly say or hear anything she wanted to in company.

But it was too late, the acknowledgment was made. She asked after their health, commented on the weather, and prayed they would leave. She had not the slightest desire to discuss the pictures with them. In the end she lied, claiming to see in the next room some elderly lady she knew and urgently wished to speak with.

There were another dozen people there also, but not Cornwallis. Her heart sank. Why had she supposed he would come, as if he were at her beck and call, with nothing to do but go to art galleries on a whim? She had no doubt whatever that he had been attracted to her, but attraction was not love, not the profound and abiding emotion she felt!

The women were coming in from the previous room. She could not escape. A further half hour’s desperate conversation ensued. What did it matter? The whole idea had been ridiculous. She wished more than anything on earth that she had never written to him. If only the post had swallowed her letter, lost it forever!

Then she saw him. He had come! His stance, the set of his shoulders, she would recognize anywhere. In a moment he would turn and see her, then she would have to go forward. Between now and that instant she must control the thumping of her heart, hope to heaven her face did not betray her, and think what to say that opened the way for him to speak, and yet was not too forward, too eager. That would make her look gauche, and it would repel him.

He turned, as if he felt her stare. She saw the pleasure light his face, and then his effort to cover it. For his ease, she forgot herself and went forward.

“Good afternoon, Captain Cornwallis. I am delighted you were able to spare the time to see this for yourself.” She gestured delicately towards one of the largest paintings, that of six heads, all facing out of the canvas, looking over the left shoulder of the viewer. It was titled
Hogarth’s Servants
. “I think they were mistaken,” she said firmly. “Those are real people, and excellently drawn. Look at the anxiety of the one in the middle, poor man, and the calm of the woman on the left.”

“The one at the top looks scarcely more than a child,” he agreed, but the moment after he had glanced at the picture, his eyes were searching her face. “I’m glad we chanced to meet,” he said, then hesitated, as if he had been too elaborately casual. “It . . . it has been a long time . . . at least it seems so. How are you?”

She could not possibly answer with the truth, and yet she longed to say “So lonely I escape into daydreams. I have discovered that my husband not only bores me, but I actually dislike him.” Instead she said what she always did. “Very well, thank you. And you?” She looked away from the picture and at him.

There was a very slight color in his cheeks. “Oh, very well,” he answered, then he too turned away. He took a step or two to the right and stopped in front of the next picture. It was another portrait, but this time a single person. “It must have been fashion,” he said thoughtfully. “One critic mimicking what the others had said. How could anyone with an open mind consider this poor? The face lives. It is highly individual. What more does one wish of a portrait?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Perhaps they wanted it to tell them something they already believed? Sometimes people wish to hear only what supports the position they would like to maintain.” She thought of the Bishop as she said it, and the endless evenings when she had listened to men decrying ideas without looking at them. Maybe the ideas were bad, but then again, maybe not. Without consideration they would never know. “It is so much easier to blame,” she said aloud.

He looked at her quickly, his eyes full of questions, but he did not ask her. Of course he didn’t! That would be intrusive and improper.

She must not let the conversation die. She had come here to see him, to learn if his feelings were still the same. There was nothing to do . . . almost certainly! But she still needed to know if he longed for her as much as she did for him.

“There is so much in faces, don’t you think?” she remarked as they approached another portrait. “Things that can never be said and yet are there if you search for them.”

“Yes, indeed.” He looked down at the floor for a moment, then up again at the portrait. “When one has experienced something, one recognizes it in others. I . . . I remember a bosun I had once. Phillips, his name was. I couldn’t abide the man.” He hesitated, but did not look at her. “Then one early morning, we were off the Azores, terrible weather. Gales whipping up out of the west. Waves twenty, thirty feet high. Any sane man would be frightened, but there was a beauty in it as well. Troughs of the waves were dark still, but early light caught the spume on the tips. I saw the recognition of beauty in his face, just for an instant before he turned away. Can’t even remember what he was going to do.” His eyes were far away, but in a moment of realization in the past, the magic of understanding.

She smiled, sharing it with him, picturing it in his imagination. She liked to think of him on the deck of a ship. It seemed the right place for him, his element far more than a police desk. And yet she would never have met him were he still there. And if he returned to the sea she would be forever watching the weather, every time the wind blew, fearing for him; every time she heard of a ship in trouble, wondering if it were his.

He looked at her, catching her gaze and the warmth in it. “Sorry,” he apologized quickly, blushing and turning away, his neck stiff. “Daydreaming.”

“I do a lot of it,” she said quickly.

“Do you?” He swiveled back to her, looking surprised. “Where do you go . . . I mean . . . I mean, where would you like to go?”

“Anywhere with you” would have been the truth. “Somewhere I haven’t been before,” she answered. “Perhaps the Mediterranean. What about Alexandria? Or Greece, somewhere?”

“I think you’d like it,” he said softly. “The light is like nothing anywhere else, so brilliant, the sea so blue. And of course there are the Indies . . . West, I mean. As long as you don’t go too far south, the danger of fevers is not high. Jamaica, or the Bahamas.”

“Do you wish you were still at sea?” She was afraid of the answer. Perhaps that was where his heart really lay.

He looked at her, for a moment without discretion or guard in his face. “No.” It was only one word, but the passion in his voice filled it with all she was waiting to hear.

She felt the color burn up inside her, the relief dizzying. He had not changed. He had said nothing, just answered a simple question about travel, one word, but the meaning was like a huge wave buoying her up, lifting her as if into the air. She smiled back, allowing her other feelings to be unconcealed for an instant, then she turned back to the portrait. She said something meaningless, a remark about color or texture of paint. She was not listening to herself, and she knew he was not, either.

She put off going home for as long as possible. It would be the end of a dream, the return to the daily reality from which she had escaped, and the inevitable guilt because her heart was not where it ought to be, even if her body was.

Eventually, at nearly seven o’clock, she went in through the front door and as soon as she was inside, felt imprisoned in the grayness of it. That was ridiculous. It was really a very pleasant house, full of soft color and most agreeably furnished. The lack of light was inside her. She walked across the floor to the foot of the stairs and reached the bottom just as the Bishop’s study door opened and he came out, his hair a little tousled as if he had run his hand through it. His face was pale, his eyes dark-ringed.

“Where have you been?” he demanded querulously. “Do you know what time it is?”

“Five minutes before seven,” she replied, glancing at the long case clock against the farther wall.

“The question was rhetorical, Isadora!” he snapped. “I can read a dial as well as you can. And that does not answer where you have been.”

“To see the exhibition of Hogarth’s paintings at the National Gallery,” she replied blandly.

He raised his eyebrows. “Until this hour?”

“I met some acquaintances and fell into conversation,” she explained. That was true literally, if not in implication. She resented the fact that she had justified herself to him. She turned away to go up the stairs and remove her hat and change into an appropriate gown for supper.

“That is most unsuitable!” he said sharply. “He painted the sort of person you should have no interest in.
Rake’s Progress,
indeed! Sometimes I think you have lost all sense of responsibility, Isadora. It is time you took your position a great deal more seriously.”

“It was an exhibition of his portraits!” she said tartly, turning back to look at him. “There was nothing unsuitable about them at all. There were several of domestic servants with very agreeable faces and dressed right up to the ears. They even had hats on!”