Children of the Tide (21 page)

‘See here,’ said Batsford, pointing with a pencil. ‘See how the left breast flattens beneath the arm as she has it raised. And here,’ he tapped the sketch, ‘you have missed the indentation of the calf where the leg is crossed.’

James looked up at Miss Gregory to determine his faults and discovered that she was fast asleep and oblivious of their comments.

‘She’s quite beautiful, isn’t she?’ Batsford commented. ‘A visual image to be appreciated as much as the painting of a flower or landscape. We’re very lucky to have her.’

Later, when she was dressed and ready to leave and
Batsford had slipped out for his daily walk, James thanked her for sitting.

‘That’s all right,’ she said. ‘Batsford’ll give me extra.’

‘Why do you do this?’ James asked curiously. ‘Is there no other work you would rather do?’

She stared at him, then shrugged her shoulders. ‘How else could I earn money for sitting around all day? It’s better than working in a sweat shop or a kitchen. Besides, I’ve got a good body and face, and I’ve been painted by some of the best artists in London. One day I might be famous.’ A slight smile touched her lips. ‘You think I’m Batsford’s mistress, don’t you?’

James was flustered, not knowing how to answer, but why else would she sit, in spite of what she had said?

‘Well, I’m not, though I know that some of the artists paint their wives or mistresses. But I’ve never been an artist’s doxy and don’t intend to be, and if you want to paint me then you’d better look on me as a piece of furniture and nothing more. Don’t get any ideas that I might share your bed.’

James gasped. ‘I had no—’

‘No? Well, some of the young artists that Batsford teaches think that I come with breakfast, but I’ll tell you now, once and for all, that I don’t.’

James had paid two weeks rent for his room, which had left him with little money, and he had vaguely wondered why his father hadn’t sent him an allowance as he’d promised; and it wasn’t until his rent was again due that he remembered he had told his father he would send him an address as soon as he was settled.
But I’m sure I gave him Batsford’s address
, he thought.
Or perhaps I didn‘t. I must write
. A twinge of conscience smote him that he hadn’t written to Sammi either, or sent her any money for the child, and he vowed that he would write to her too, but then
he forgot and it wasn’t until his landlady came down to remind him his rent was now overdue, that he realized that perhaps his father might be worrying about him and wondering if he had safely arrived at his destination.

He promptly sat down to write, to tell him that he was now a pupil of Batsford’s and that he had found lodgings.

‘
I shall be forever grateful to Peacock
,’ he wrote. ‘
My life has opened up anew, and I know that I was destined to be an artist. I can feel it in my blood, in my veins, and although I realize that it is not perhaps what you would have planned for me, Father, circumstances have decreed my true vocation
.

‘
I cannot say that I am missing home, as my life is filled to such capacity that I do not have time to think of what I left behind, but I do miss you, and remain your ever loving son. James
.’

He wrote another letter to Peacock, thanking him for the opportunity given to him, sealed them both and posted them. It wasn’t until later that he remembered he hadn’t asked his father about money, and he hoped that he wouldn’t need prompting.

‘We have been invited out for supper this evening, Rayner,’ Batsford greeted him one morning. ‘Jonathon Walker – he is a great patron of the arts. It would be good for you to meet him. He’s very influential and has helped many young painters.’

‘But I haven’t anything to show,’ James said in some dismay. ‘Only my sketches of Battersea Bridge and Miss Gregory.’

‘It doesn’t matter. If he likes you, then he will wait for you to produce something.’ He looked James over and rubbed his chin. ‘Just one thing …’

‘What?’

‘Oh, nothing. It’s of no consequence.’

Whatever it was, Batsford obviously had second
thoughts about it, and James dismissed it from his mind as he changed for supper. He combed his hair, which was now long and curling into his collar in the manner of some of the other young men he had met, and tied a silk scarf around his neck in a loose knot.

There was already a crowd of people in Jonathon Walker’s home in Bloomsbury when he and Batsford arrived. He could hear piano music, the clink of wine glasses and a hum of conversation and laughter.

Jonathon Walker, a tall slim man with white hair, came over to greet them. ‘So nice to see you, Batsford, and this is your protégé?’ He extended a warm and flaccid hand towards James. ‘I have heard all about you.’

‘Really, sir?’ said James, feeling uncomfortable with his hand still clasped by Walker’s soft flesh.

‘Yes, indeed. There is little goes on in the art world that I don’t know about.’

James preened. To be included and mentioned in the art world was something he had never envisaged, and with a great passion about to take over his senses, he allowed himself to be drawn, with Walker’s arm around his shoulder, to be introduced to other members of the ensemble. Some of the ladies were dressed in extravagant gowns and inclined their heads as he was introduced, and gentlemen in three-piece suits or velvet jackets and narrow trousers nodded and made polite noises; others, shabby in well-worn shirts and down-at-heel shoes, were tucking in to the food which was laid on the white-clothed table in an anteroom – they looked up and spoke briefly, then resumed eating.

‘Naughty boy,’ Walker said to one, tapping him on his hand. ‘This is merely
hors d’oeuvres
! Do not stuff yourself. There is more. This is what you can expect, Rayner, if you become an artist or writer.’ Walker took two glasses of wine from a tray which a maid brought at his signal, and handed one to him. ‘For half of your existence you will be in a state of delirium
because you are close to starvation and long to be invited out so that you can eat; and the other half you will be in the depths of despair because no-one will buy your work.’

‘So what is the answer, sir, if a person only has the passion to create and not to earn?’

Walker smiled and, to James’s discomfort, once more put his arm about his shoulder. ‘We must find someone to take care of you. A patron. Someone who recognizes talent – if you have it.’

As James was silently debating whether it would appear rude if he moved in order to escape Walker’s clasp, a woman appeared in front of them. ‘Jonathon!’ she said. ‘You haven’t introduced me.’ She offered James her hand. She carried no gloves, but held a black feather fan in her left hand; on three fingers she wore diamond rings and around her wrist, several pearl bracelets. Her hair was very dark and sleek and piled into a high chignon with a white flower pinned above her ear.

‘I beg your pardon, my dear. Rayner, may I introduce Madame Mariabella Sinclair.’

‘James Foster-Rayner, ma-am.’ James bowed. He was beginning to feel overwhelmed by the undue attention from Jonathon Walker and now by the intense scrutiny of this most attractive woman who held his gaze with such beguiling amusement in her dark eyes.

‘Jonathon! I have just left Raymond.’ She rolled her
r
’s slightly, and there was just a trace of foreign accent to her tongue. ‘He is becoming cross with you. I think he feels terribly neglected.’

Walker looked across the room. A young man in velvet jacket and narrow trousers was leaning against the wall, his arms folded across his chest and dark hair falling over his lowered eyes, ignoring the conversation going on around him.

Walker gave a deep sigh. ‘I’d better go, he’ll sulk for days otherwise.’ He clasped James’s hand. ‘Don’t go away, my dear. I’ll be back.’

James stared after him. Was this what Peacock had meant, when he said – what was it he had said?

Madame Sinclair smiled at him. ‘Mr Rayner.’ The name rolled off her tongue softly and sensuously. ‘Will you find me a seat, and then we can talk?’ She gently trembled her fan. ‘And then you can tell me how grateful you are for my rescuing you.’ Her silk crinolined gown rustled as she sank into a gilt chair. ‘Tell me about yourself.’ She looked at him from over the rim of the glass of wine which he had brought her. Her eyes were dark, such a dark brown as to be almost black, and he thought that she missed being perfectly beautiful by the fractional – but barely, merely minuscule – by her nose being a shade too long.

‘I would rather know about you,’ he said shyly. ‘I have done nothing as yet with my life. I am just about to start.’

And oh, Madame, how I would love to have you in my life
. She was, he guessed, older than him, perhaps six or seven years, or even only four or five, he considered, for it is so difficult to know when ladies are got up so well.
But what does it matter? I do not believe that it matters one jot in the affairs of the heart
.

‘James? I may call you James?’

‘Oh, please. Please do. I would be delighted.’

‘And when we know each other better, then you may call me Mariabella. But not yet; you see, there are people here who know my husband, and I must be discreet.’

She gave him a tender smile which he felt was so special for him and which almost, but not quite, lessened the dismay he felt when she said that she had a husband.

He swallowed and tried not to let his disappointment show. ‘Is he not here this evening, your husband?’

‘No. We do not attend the same functions.’ She flicked her fan to her mouth and looked at him from
over the top. ‘Neither do we share the same house,’ she said softly. ‘We live separate lives.’

‘How can he bear that?’ James whispered back. ‘How can he suffer to live apart from you?’

‘Our marriage was arranged.’ She lowered her fan and her eyes. ‘He needed a wife in order to claim his father’s estate, though he didn’t require a wife in any other sense.’

James felt himself grow hot and he fingered his collar. This life he was entering was undoubtedly quite different from the one he had previously known.

‘And I wanted to be married to an Englishman,’ she continued. ‘An Englishman who would give me his name and take care of me. Italian men are excellent lovers but don’t take care of their wives as well as they might.’

‘So – you are Italian, Madame?’

She laughed. ‘Can you not tell?’ She ran her finger provocatively down the length of her slender nose. ‘My nose!’

‘It is a most appealing nose.’ James suddenly became bold. ‘The most beautiful nose I have ever seen.’

‘Why, James! I believe you are flirting with me!’ She leaned closer and he could smell her perfume, feel the warmth of her skin. ‘I wonder? I think perhaps you have foreign blood? You have not the manner of an Englishman.’

‘English through and through, Madame. Yorkshire born and bred.’ He felt a quickening of his pulses.
I do believe I am falling in love with her
.

‘I do not know your Yorkshire, I have never been there. Perhaps you will call on me one day? We will have tea and you can tell me about it.’

‘Oh, yes. I’d be delighted,’ he began, and then glanced up in annoyance as his host appeared beside them.

‘James. Would you be an angel and get me another
glass of wine?’ She handed him her empty wine glass and her fingers brushed his.

He took it, feeling heady, though he had had only one glass himself, and he drank another swiftly at the wine table before taking two more. She was laughing merrily as he returned, and Walker gave her a small bow and left them.

‘Do you know why I laugh, James?’ She tapped him playfully on the face with her folded fan, and he felt the whisper softness of the feathers on his cheek.

He shook his head. ‘Walker said something funny?’

‘Yes.’ She took the glass from him and clinked glasses with his. ‘Jonathon Walker said of you, “Who is to have him, Madame, you or I?” And I said that I was.’

‘To have me?’ He felt hot and cold with embarrassment. He was not an item for sale, and for Walker to make the suggestion made it sound very improper indeed. ‘To have me?’ he repeated. ‘I don’t understand, Madame.’

She raised her eyebrows. ‘Why, to be your patron, of course! What else could we possibly mean?’

‘She has not so much influence as Walker,’ Batsford commented when James told him later. ‘Though she is rich. Still, she will not drop you as easily as Walker might. Walker gets consumed with jealousy if his protégés as much as look elsewhere.’

‘I am not of Walker’s, er, persuasion,’ James said stiffly.

Batsford shrugged. ‘It wouldn’t matter. If he liked you and your work, then he would see that you met the right people. But there,’ he dismissed the subject, ‘if you have made the choice, that is all there is to it.’

James called on Madame Sinclair a few days later as she had requested. She, too, lived in Chelsea, in an elegant Georgian house overlooking the Thames, with a small garden at the front and a glass conservatory at the rear which, she said, she had added
in order to sit in on hot summer days, amid the ferns and greenery, and pretend that she was in Italy.

‘Do you miss your country, Madame, or your family?’ James sweated under the domed glass and drank a cup of coffee, while she sat looking cool in her white dress and large summer hat, gently fanning herself with a bamboo fan.

‘Sometimes I do,’ she admitted. ‘When they have visited me, I get homesick, though I would not like to return to Italy to live.’ She looked at him from her dark eyes. ‘There is so much more here that I like. And also I must stay, because of my husband. It must not look as if I have abandoned him. But enough of me, James. Tell me of your life in Yorkshire and your family; you miss them too, yes?’

‘Not so much as I thought I would. The same as you, I find there is more here that I like, although I miss my father—’

‘Not your mama?’ she asked in surprise. ‘I thought all Englishmen loved their mamas better than anyone else?’

‘No,’ he said adamantly. ‘We do not get along. I – I don’t think she likes me very much. She much prefers my brother to me. But it is of no consequence.’ He brushed away the inference that he was concerned. ‘We are better apart. But there is someone I quite miss,’ he added. And, he thought,
I must write, as I promised
.