Keeping the World Away (12 page)

They sat at the back of the room, on the bed. Around the window there seemed to be an aura which could not be touched. The table, and the wickerwork chair, were clearly arranged for a purpose, and so was the parasol leaning against the chair. Ursula said she hoped she had not come at an inconvenient time and spoiled Gwen’s reverie, but was assured she had not. ‘It is too late now,’ Gwen said, ‘the light has changed, the shadows are wrong.’ They sipped their tea. It felt companionable, sitting perched on the bed, but Ursula sensed the tension in Gwen. She would not insult her by stooping to pleasantries. Instead, she waited. Gwen’s question came at last: had Ursula been to Rodin’s studio that day? Yes, she had. She had continued to work on the head Rodin had thought promising. And had the
maître
been there? No, he had not. ‘He has not visited me for five weeks,’ Gwen said. ‘He no longer replies to my letters. What am I to think, Ursula? What am I to do?’

There was no honest answer possible to that. Gwen trembled slightly as she spoke, but whether with distress or anger Ursula did not know. Carefully, she placed a hand on Gwen’s knee, the lightest of touches, merely to acknowledge that she knew how painful any mention of Rodin had become. ‘May I look at your painting,’ she whispered, ‘or is it too soon?’ ‘Much too soon,’ Gwen said, ‘but look if you will. It is nothing yet.’ Ursula, standing in front of the canvas, saw this was true. A vague impression of the window and the wall beside it and that was all. So far as her
friend
could see, Gwen had not progressed beyond what she had done the week before, and yet a strange, hypnotic quality was starting to emerge. ‘I love this room,’ Gwen suddenly said. ‘It
is
me, you know, at last.’ ‘But you said “no figure”,’ Ursula reminded her, ‘so where are you in this room that is you? You are invisible to me.’ Gwen pointed. ‘There,’ she said, ‘coming home, leaving home. It is what I see. That corner. It is what I know, finally.’

Ursula took her teacup to the sink and set it down there, not wanting to turn on the tap and make even the slightest noise. Gwen was struggling to tell her something and she wanted to understand. It seemed to her that Gwen must be mistaken – there was nothing about that corner, with its window and table and chair, that could possibly be her. The corner was all peace and calm and serenity, whereas her friend radiated energy, the air around her crackled with it and there was always the feeling that there might be an eruption. Gwen must mean something else. ‘It is a pretty room,’ Ursula murmured, ‘but you are more than a corner in it, Gwen. It is only a tiny part of you, surely, dear? You yourself are so much more.’ Gwen shook her head violently and then put her hands up to her face. ‘No,’ she said, ‘without him, I am
less
than that corner.’

The rumours had hardened recently into definite information. Ursula had heard about Rodin’s new mistress but feared that Gwen had not. Should she tell her? It was not something a friend would wish to do. But Gwen would hear of it, it would come to her ears in the end and hurt all the more for her realising that her friend must have known. Hesitantly, Ursula went over to Gwen and took hold of her hands. ‘Gwen,’ she began, and then stopped. Gwen’s hands were cold, yet her face was flushed. It was not the right time to tell her. She was happy with her conviction that this corner of her room, which she was painting, signified herself – calm, peaceful, content. To tell her about Rodin would be like smashing the window, throwing the primroses to the ground, upturning the table and chair. The painting would never happen.

‘I must go,’ Ursula said, and kissed Gwen lightly on the cheek.

*

All night she lay there, her body tortured by desire for him, his eyes locking onto hers, his hands everywhere, his body a weight upon hers which crushed her, and in her head a delirium of feeling she could not release. The dawn light creeping cautiously through the window found her exhausted and weeping, every bone in her poor body aching and her throat raw and dry, her head rigid with pain. It was hard to rise from her bed at all, and she staggered when she did so, clutching on to the rail of the headboard until it bent and creaked and threatened to come loose. Slowly, she steadied herself. The light grew stronger, it was changing in colour and she had to hurry. She went to the sink and splashed her face with water and then filled a cup and drank some of it. No time, no need, to dress. She shivered, but with apprehension not cold. Suppose it was not there this morning? Suppose what she had seen had vanished?

She settled herself in front of her easel and waited. The sun was up, the flood of light now tinged with gold, bathing that corner of her room so softly. The sunlight touched the primroses and made them shine, it stroked the top of the table until the solid wood seemed to become smooth and liquid. The wall was defined strongly, a wedge near the window, sharp and pointed at the end, and then a great shadow beyond it where no colour was visible. The chair was too near the table. She crossed the room and moved it an inch or two to the left. Yesterday she had put her coat over the chair, beneath the parasol, but then removed it. She had tried, last week, a different painting, with only her coat over the chair and the curtain open, as well as the window itself. She had put an open book on the table, pleased with what this would signify. But that had been another person, one full of hope still, cheerful, confident her
maître
would soon knock on the door and be welcomed in. That reading of herself was finished. She saw now how far away she had been from achieving the state of mind her lover wished her to attain.
This
picture, this was what he wanted. It even occurred to her that his absence was deliberate. He knew she would suffer, and would have to control this suffering, and through doing so would reach a level of serenity she had not yet come near.

Two hours after dawn and the light exactly right. She painted. Carefully, slowly, building up the layers of paint, catching the strengthening radiance diffused through the lace curtain. She could hear her own heart beating, her own breath escaping. Her hand was not quite steady and she had to support her left arm, the arm she painted with, with her right. She would have to go in search of more primroses herself – Ursula’s would not last beyond another day. The flowers had become crucial to the painting, giving the corner of her room the touch of colour it needed. Without them, the scene was barren. It struck her, as she went on painting, that she could give this painting to Ursula. It was not for exhibiting, or for sale. She would keep it or give it away to someone who would understand it and treasure it for what it was – see its significance.

It was over for another day. She cleaned her brush, pulled back the curtain and opened the window. The air was still cool and she breathed it in deeply, and thought that she must eat, but to eat she would have to go and find food, which meant leaving her room. She dreaded doing so, fearing that Rodin might come and find her gone and not trouble to come again. Here, she pined for him but he would not know that if the room was empty. She doubted if he could read the scene with her eyes and see how she had striven to please him. He must see her there. She wanted to be standing in the middle of her room, looking towards the window, proud of what it conveyed about her.

But she had to eat. She had allowed herself to exist on grapes and nuts and raisins and bread but now there was nothing at all left. Yesterday, she had drunk tea and now the tea was finished too. There was a pain in her belly and she felt light-headed, hardly trusting herself to dress and descend all those stairs. The noise of the street would overwhelm her but she must face it. Gathering her things together – her coat, her new black hat with its bright green ribbon, her purse, her key – she left her room and paused a moment on the landing. She looked at the shut door, the blankness of the wooden panels, and could hardly believe what lay behind it. It seemed urgent to get herself back
inside
as quickly as possible, and she began to run down the stairs so fast that at the bottom she almost fainted. She knew where to buy bread and cheese and more grapes, and where to get the tea she liked, but it was an ordeal to go through the necessary transactions. All the time she was peering up her street to check that Rodin was not alighting from a cab and entering her building. When she was back at the street door, she felt such relief, and yet also such disappointment. She had hoped, in an absurdly superstitious way, that by leaving her room she would be sure to make Rodin come.

She could hardly drag herself back up the stairs. Halfway up, she stopped and sat down, and broke off a piece of bread. It was newly baked, still warm, the crust golden, but in her mouth it tasted dry and threatened to choke her. A grape was better, the sharp bite of it delicious, the juice comforting. She took another, holding it for a moment on her tongue. The pleasure of the taste, when she crushed the grape this time, made her want to weep – there was so little pleasure, so little joy, in her life without her lover. Her senses were dulled and she had begun to feel all emotion extinguished. She stood up, climbed the remaining stairs, and then paused again on her landing. She wondered what she would see when she opened the door. The room might merely look sad. The corner, which she had turned into a representation of how Rodin wanted her to be, might be a mirage. Everything depended on that flash of recognition she ought to experience as she looked at her room with the eyes, for a mere second, of a stranger.

She had only been out of the room twenty minutes, but it was her first outing for a week. She had broken the spell it held her in. Taking a deep breath, she pushed the door open vigorously, wanting to take in the room all at once. The shock was profound – it
was
there! She felt dizzy with relief and had to sit down and put her head on the table. It was not an illusion. The corner of her room spoke loud and clear. It only needed her
maître
to come and hear its voice.

*

Winifred had written. When the concierge said that there was a letter for her, Gwen had hoped it was from Rodin and she had almost snatched it from the woman’s hand. But she saw at once the foreign stamps and recognised Winifred’s writing. It shamed her to feel such disappointment and she punished herself by not opening the letter at once. Winifred’s life seemed to her extraordinary – to take herself off like that to join Thornton in his strange wanderings through Canada, and then to go on to America, was quite bizarre. It could never have been predicted. Where was her sister’s music in all this? Once, it had seemed to drive her, as art drove Gus and Gwen, but now there was no mention of hours of devoted practice. Music was not her god.

It was a cheerful letter, amusing, full of lively descriptions of people and places. Winifred sounded happy, and Gwen was glad of it. She wondered, in this letter, if Gwen was once more working or whether she was still ‘in thrall’ to her lover. Only Winifred and Ursula knew about Rodin and sometimes Gwen regretted confessing to either of them, but there had been a great need in her to burst out to someone, to tell them what was filling her heart and her life. They had been kind, and respectful. They had not cast doubt on her passion, or uttered dire warnings of what might happen. They had, she thought, both been glad for her. She loved them for it.

But Winifred now upset her by asking if she was still ‘in thrall’ to Rodin. Of course she was, yet she did not like her feelings for him described thus. Someone ‘in thrall’ was surely blinded to reality, and on the brink of being silly. It made her sound weak and feeble, and she was neither. She tried to think how she could honestly respond to her sister’s enquiry. The attempt stopped her painting. She sat at her easel, facing the beautiful corner of her room, and she did not touch the canvas all day. Slowly, seeping through her brain, was the terrifying knowledge that she was no longer ‘in thrall’. She wanted to be, but doubt had begun to break the spell and she did not like what she glimpsed behind it. She loved her
maître
every bit as fiercely, but she needed him to love her as she loved him. His absences spoke for him. She had transformed herself
for
him, and had become his willing slave, but now he was wary of her hunger for him. He had said he was merely tired, he’d pleaded his great age, but she had seen in his eyes that it was more than that. It was like watching the moon wane, the full glory of its light weakening, the great roundness fading round the rim, and she could not bear it.

The next morning found her back behind her easel, still staring at the corner of her room but seeing it differently. It was a cheat. It was full of hope, yet she was losing hope. But instead of discouraging her, instead of breaking her heart, this revelation strengthened her sense of purpose. She knew what she saw in the corner of her room and she had to make sure that others saw it too. She wanted to record how things might have been and so nearly were. Contentment, peace, a life lived sweetly and quietly. No mess, no trouble, no agonising. The person who lived in this room was in perfect control of her emotions. She had been out for a walk and picked the flowers and had come home to it well satisfied. She might seem invisible, but she was across the room, pouring a glass of wine, putting bread and grapes for her supper on a plate. Soon, she would come to the chair and sit down, and put her glass and her plate on the table, and perhaps draw the curtain back and look out of the window. She wanted for nothing.

But I, thought Gwen, still want so much. I may not be quite ‘in thrall’ to my lover, but I am not free and I do not think I can bear to be free.

*

She had worked long enough on the painting. Day after day she had gone out and bought primroses and when primroses were no longer obtainable any other small flowers she could find. Sometimes, in order to get a posy of the matching size, she had to accept some tiny pink primulas too, and a few blue ones, though it meant changing what she had already painted. But now, on her thirty-first birthday, she had done as much as she could and it was not enough. She took the small canvas off the easel and turned it to the wall. She would try again, and meanwhile give this one to Ursula. Already she had the version with the open window and
the
book hidden away. It worked better but still did not say what she wanted it to say. She would keep that one.