The Crimson Bed (44 page)

    Fred glared at him. 'I have no desire for my wife to meet French artists, especially the type of artist y
ou
know so well,' he said coldly. Oldham smiled back in his old sarcastic manner.

    'Good to meet you again, Mr Thorpe,' he murmured. 'Glad to see you doing so nicely and more than delighted to meet your lovely wife... you should have introduced me long before. Despite your rancour, you are more than welcome to visit us in Paris sometime.'

    Fred made no reply and refused to meet Sue's eye. He took hold of Ellie's arm and steered her away.

    'I think we should go home now, Ellie.'

    'Bye, Georgie-Porgie,' said Jessie with a little wave of her gloved hand.

    Fred slammed the door behind them.

    'Now why do I get the impression you really don't like that man?' asked Ellie, laughing up into Fred's enraged eyes. 'Am I right... Georgie-Porgie?'

Chapter 40

Henry sat in front of a half-finished painting and looked at it despondently.

    'I've lost my touch, Fred.'

    It was a large work, a half-length portrait of a florid and abundant woman seated combing out her long flaxen hair. This was his latest model, Bertha, a woman he had picked up in a public house in Bermondsey. She had now moved in with him at his house in Cheyne Walk.

    Fred surveyed the picture in question.

    'I don't think so, Henry. Just that your style has changed of late. You seem content to paint this... this... Bertha... and no one else. People will get a trifle bored with her face. Why not alter the portraits, try some other scenes, and find a different model? You always excelled in sea pictures. Take yourself off to Southend or Margate or somewhere for a spot of fresh air and some different scenery. Wean yourself from women for a little.'

    'From Bertha, is what you mean – why not say it?' scowled Henry. 'You always look down on women like her, always have. She's good company; she looks after me very well. She...' he wanted to say,
she keeps the ghosts away
– but didn't. Fred would laugh.

    'She's kind to me... ' he ended with an odd little whimper.

    'She drinks with you; drinks till you're both in a stupor. You call that being kind? I've never seen such a slut. Sorry, Henry, but I have to say it. She is not good company for you. How can you take up with her after... well, after... '

    'After Tippy, eh? No one, d'you hear me, no one can be like my Tippy. I know that. That's why Bertha will do. She fucks me, she drinks with me... I ask no more. She's large-breasted, she holds me close to them when I feel afraid and ill. I bury my face in them and shut out the world. And I do feel afraid some days, Fred... laugh, go on! But I do. I hear Tippy's footsteps shuffling outside my bedroom door and hear her sighing in the corridors. It frightens me. She's not at peace, Fred. What am I to do?'

    Fred was shocked. 'Henry... maybe you should see a doctor. You don't look well, I agree. Maybe the anxieties and fears will leave you in peace if you are treated properly. '

    'It's the nights I fear most,' said Henry, 'that's when her image rises up before me in the dark. I hear her voice – I want to stretch forth my hand and feel her body – but there's nothing there. She's gone – but where, where? I want to follow her and yet I'm afraid of that too. Why d'you think I drink so much, for God's sake? To bloody well drown out her voice, her footsteps in the night! That's why I need my poor little whore Bertha... I need her large body to hold me like a child.'

    He flung aside his brush and palette now and rising went over to the sideboard, took out a bottle of whisky and poured a glassful with shaking hands. Fred watched him, feeling despair for the man. Henry was gaunt; he looked as if he was not eating properly.

    'You were going to paint Orpheus and Eurydice,' said Fred. 'Why not get back to that picture? It may help you solve some of your grief for Tippy. Try again, Henry.'

    'It seemed a fitting idea, painting myself as Orpheus, a self portrait. A foolish being looking in the Underworld for my dead ghost, my beautiful Eurydice. It's half finished Fred, like all my canvases. I can't get to finish it. I can't do anything, everything remains half done.'

    'And you're in debt. You would do better to work and stop all this self-pity. Think of your daughter for once, poor little mite. You never see the child, never ask after her. You are unnatural, Henry, unnatural.'

    'Damn you, Fred, you pious bastard!' shouted Henry, 'what do you know of real grief, eh! Everything has always gone well with you. You never lost y
our
beloved.'

    Fred paled at his friend's harsh words. 'I did... I almost did, Henry. And I know how I would have felt if she had died before my eyes. But I would never neglect my children. It's not their fault that we adults are fools.'

    Henry fell silent. He twirled the whisky glass in his hand and after a while he said, 'What is she like now, young Eleanor? Does she hate her father?'

    'She's still too young to understand or to have hate for anyone. But as she grows, her nature seems likely to be a sweet one.'

    'Is she like Tippy? Is she like her mother?'

    'She's the image of her mother, same golden hair and blue eyes. She will be a beauty.'

    Henry set down the glass and pushed it aside. 'I'll visit her some time. But just now I'm too ill. No one believes me, I know that. Only Bertha understands and doesn't nag me to death about drinking. She understands how one has to numb oneself against one's thoughts. She's had her griefs and her pains too. I don't care what you say, you don't understand, Fred.'

    'Why don't you get Ellie to model for you now and then?'

    Henry looked up. 'A good idea,' he said. 'She doesn't nag me either. Nor does she look down on poor Bertha – but Ellie is busy enough with her own work, her superb work. Plus her children and a demanding creature like you for a husband.'

    'I'm scarcely demanding,' said Fred nettled, 'and, yes, she is busy – but I will ask her. Her company will be...refreshing, in your present state.'

    Ellie came and sat for a few pictures for Henry and her influence
was
beneficial. He seemed to cheer up a little, drank less and painted more.

    'I still learn so much from you, Henry,' she told him. Her interest and enthusiasm re-inspired him.

    'I think I learn from you nowadays,' he said humbly, 'you are far surpassing my efforts. Your designs are selling well, I hear.'

    'It's just luck, isn't it? The right people come along. Johnson is such a good businessman, unlike our dear, gullible Fred,' she added with a smile.

    'Luck? Aye... some have it and some don't.'

    'You have good friends, Henry, you have a dear mother and sisters. Above all, you have your sweet little Eleanor.'

    Ellie took her friend's hands and looked into his eyes. 'You
must
come and see your child; she will cheer your lonely heart. She's your own, your very own. No one else will ever be so close. Tippy left Eleanor as a gift to remind you of her... the little one is so like her mother.'

    'Perhaps that's what I fear so much. I fear being reminded of what I've lost.'

    'Come not to fear your loss, dear friend, but to be thankful for what you've gained.'

    He looked at her steadily and said no more.

    'I will come then,' he said, 'but it wouldn't be suitable for the child to live here with Bertha and myself.'

    Ellie surveyed the littered room, the empty bottles of whisky on the top of the chest of drawers, the grate full of unswept coals, cheerless and sad. The house itself seemed to sigh with a deep aching loneliness. It felt empty of hope, love or happiness.

    As if on cue, Bertha entered the room at that moment bringing in a tray of tea and cakes. She was of Germanic origin and had the look of a farmer's daughter. Half Henry's age, she was strong, vigorous and despite the drink, rosy-cheeked and capable. Ellie understood why Henry needed this stout but motherly creature. Ostensibly, she was his housekeeper and did the cooking also. The first cook and her husband, who had done odd jobs around the place, had left under a cloud some time ago. Henry had accused them of robbing him of some items, which they strenuously denied. It was hard to keep servants in this house for Henry's bouts of rage and violence would erupt after he had consumed too many bottles of whisky. In a state of drunken stupidity, his fantasies and paranoia made him think everyone around him was a spy or enemy. No one could be around him for long when he was raging in this fashion. Yet stout, earthy, phlegmatic Bertha seemed to soak up his anger without appearing the least bit perturbed by it and her rough ministrations in the bedroom appeased his aching needs.

    Ellie realised that Bertha kept him relatively sane. But for how long?

Chapter 41

Southend-on-Sea: March 1883

'Secret continuance sublime
Is the sea's end; our sight may pass
No furlong further. Since time was
This sound hath told the lapse of time.'
Dante Gabriel Rossetti: The Sea Limits

Ellie and Fred stood together in the little graveyard and watched as the dark oak coffin was lowered into the grave. Beneath her black veil, tears ran down Ellie's cheeks unseen. Fred looked sad and serious.

    Close to the side of the grave stood Henry's mother, his two sisters and his daughter, Eleanor, now a beautiful young woman.

    Ellie moved forward as the vicar said the last rites and with others threw azaleas and primroses into the open grave. The faint sound of repressed sobbing was now audible as Henry's many friends, old and new, paid their last respects to him, remembering his life and the unique, warm, loving man he had been.

    As he declined further into drink, his liver became affected as well as his mind. He became even more difficult and seized by a dark, disturbing sense of paranoia that made his waking and sleeping life a misery. His family eventually took him off to Southend and rented a small house there feeling the sea air and a chance of scenery would lift his spirits a little. However, Bertha was dismissed at once and kept away from him.

    'This woman has led my son deeper into his afflictions,' his mother said to Ellie. 'She must not be allowed near him. Please do not give away his whereabouts, Mrs Thorpe. I do not want her to come and see him or have anything more to do with him. She was just a servant.'

    In vain, Ellie put it to Mrs Winstone that Bertha had been Henry's faithful companion all these latter years and that he always felt comforted by her presence.

    'Comforted, my dear Mrs Thorpe? I'm afraid you are much mistaken. He says himself that he no longer wants her to be there. He asks for his daughter and rightly so. She will go to stay with him at Southend to nurse him and take care of him.'

    'Well, yes,' Ellie conceded, 'that is more fitting. He and his daughter should be reconciled. He has scarcely treated her well and he should be grateful for her. She is the dearest girl.'

    Nonetheless, she felt some pity for poor Bertha, now cast aside and left to fend for herself. She had taken care of him for many years but no one seemed to admit to this or recognise that Henry really missed her rough and ready company.

    Ellie sought the poor woman out and gave her some money to tide her over till she found another position.

    Young Eleanor had gone to live with her grandmother and aunties while a small infant and Henry had become reconciled to her existence as she grew older. She was indeed the image of Tippy with her blue eyes and long golden hair. Sometimes this pained him too much and he would banish the child again muttering, 'I can't bear it. She's too like her mother – take her away!' On other days, he stroked her hair and gazed at her without speaking for hours at a time. The young girl bore it all with fortitude and even compassion as if she understood his problem. She agreed to go to Southend and stay with her father, nursing him to the end and holding his head in her lap as he passed away.

    At the last moment, he opened his eyes and stared at his daughter and a look of joy came over his face.

    'Tippy?' he whispered and tried to raise his arms to embrace her then fell back with a last long sigh.

Henry had never wanted to sell Wa
tcher in the Storm,
the picture of Tippy gazing over the parapet, though it had been exhibited many times and was considered a brilliant piece of work. In his will, he had donated it to the National Gallery where it would now hang in splendour amongst all the other great painters.

    'You know, Ellie, Henry could have been such a great man. What happened to him?' said Fred sadly. They turned away while the earth was being shovelled in heavy clunks upon the coffin. 'Why did he begin to unravel and come apart so easily just when his fame was growing, his paintings so loved?'

    'What great man is at peace? Don't you see, Fred, he was haunted all the time by Tippy. He loved her very much, idolised her. I shall never forget how his face used to light up with utter joy whenever she entered the room. Yet sometimes I felt he wanted the drama, was in love with love. He liked the tragic role of the great lover.'

    Their son-in-law, John Matheson, detached himself from a group of friends and now came over to them.

    'The trap is waiting, are you ready to go back now?'

    'We're ready.'

    When they reached their lodgings at a small seaside house nearby, they met up with their daughter Mary, pushing her youngest child in a perambulator. Her other little girl walked next to her, holding the hand of a nursemaid. They came over to greet them.

    'Was it awfully harrowing, Ma?' asked Mary as she hugged her mother and kissed her cheek. Mary disliked funerals and felt them unsuitable for young children to attend. She had made this an excuse to remain with them at the hotel.