Tyringham Park (22 page)
Authors: Rosemary McLoughlin
Cormac cursed inwardly. Of course Verity hadn’t mistaken the door. In the normal course of events she wouldn’t be anywhere near this part of the house, but he guessed she was still
keeping an eye on him – he had often been aware of a passing figure during lessons, but now she had caught him doing his own work during class time and he had no excuse to give except his
dislike of
Little Women
. Bloody hell.
“Is there anything I can do for you, Miss Blackshaw?” he asked. He wouldn’t make excuses.
Aunt Verity, still staring at the nude, began to back out of the room.
“No, thank you,” was all she said. She never addressed him by name and during the rare times she did look at him, it was his deformed hand rather than his face that held her
gaze.
“Yes, Charlotte,” said Cormac, after he gauged Verity was out of hearing range. “You
may
do this. Whether you
can
or not remains to be seen, so it does. I’m
nothing if not pedantic. One stipulation, though. We’ll paint in French. Agreed?”
It didn’t quite work out like that. Soon, Cormac and his ‘apprentice’, as he now called her, were painting daily side by side for hours, and for long periods didn’t speak
in any language.
Dublin
1921
Beatrice wrote to Edwina telling her how her second son had been recognised by chance by one of his regiment in an English lunatic asylum and how she and Bertie had travelled
there to bring him home. They found him in a poor physical state with no memory, parts of his reasoning functions missing, and prone to outbursts of rage, but they were glad to have him back under
any circumstances and hoped he would soon be restored to his former health now that he was in familiar surroundings.
Her next-door neighbour on the other side had been burnt out during the year by rebels who claimed he was sheltering British troops there after their barracks were destroyed, she continued.
Our estate and Tyringham Park are still intact (except for your gate lodge which was uninhabited as usual, making the burning look like a token gesture), no doubt due to
the influence of someone we both know high up in the organisation, not mentioning any names. One can’t be too careful these days.
Letting on she had inside information about the nationalists, as usual. Unlike Tyringham Park which had a policy of not taking on local people as servants, Beatrice and Bertie
employed them exclusively on their 12,000 acres, and were supporters of Home Rule. Beatrice, particularly, was vociferous in her wish to rid Ireland of British colonial rule. Waldron called her a
traitor to her class.
We seem to be at Tyringham Park a lot these days. Bertie was friendly with your brother-in-law when they were younger and their friendship has been renewed to mutual
benefit – they have so much in common. Charles’s wife Harriet and I took to each other straight away. The place is so lively with three generations happily living there you’d
hardly recognise it.
Was Beatrice deliberately rubbing salt into her wounds? Edwina was more annoyed than saddened to think that that might be the case.
As it so happens, last time I was there I ran into both Miss East (can never think of her married name) and Manus, who has just had his first child, a son. I think I told
you in my last letter that he married a girl from the locality. Marriage must have loosened his tongue. You know how shy and unassuming he was.
Oh, God, how can I bear it? Beatrice setting herself up as an expert on Manus when she obviously knows so little about him – talking about his first child. His
first
? How little she knows! And Manus, when he sees the emptiness of his attachment to his local bride, must mourn the loss of what he had with me – a relationship closer than a
marriage. Each day of those years, already full of interest, coloured by our rivalry, our opposing philosophies on training fought over with exhilarating intensity. How could Beatrice know anything
of that, when she and Bertie saw only his superficial skills each time they dropped by to pick his brains?
Both of them asked after Charlotte. Miss East said she thinks of her every day and even little Catherine (her stepdaughter in case you’ve forgotten) can’t
touch the part of her heart reserved for her. Didn’t she word that very nicely? Manus is training the colt Bryony who has the same breeding as Mandrake, and would love Charlotte to see
him and perhaps take him over. They both hope she will visit her cousins and come to see them while she’s here. One can see how both of them are genuinely attached to her. I promised I
would pass on their messages so that you can relay them to Charlotte.
Charlotte. Charlotte. Always Charlotte.
Beatrice ended the letter with effusive wishes for Edwina’s good health and happiness.
No mention of calling in if she ever found herself in Dublin. Four years and four Horse Shows since they’d seen each other face to face. Did Beatrice not realise she was hungry for news,
especially now that women were eligible to compete in the Show? The
Irish Times
printed the results, but she wanted to know the inside story behind each event.
Edwina saw Charlotte approaching with her usual nervousness.
“Tell me, Charlotte, did you ever hear from Miss East since you left?”
“No, Mother.”
“Or Manus?”
“No, Mother.”
“That’s a little disappointing, don’t you think?”
Charlotte squirmed and shifted her weight from one foot to the other.
“Well, don’t you?”
“Yes, Mother.”
Charlotte was now fourteen and already tall. She moved the folder of paintings she had brought to show her mother from under her left arm to her right and looked unsure of what to do next.
“Have you brought something for me to look at?”
Charlotte nodded, and a flicker of pride showed on her face.
“Put it on the table over there and I’ll cast my eye over it later when I have time.”
“Well, what did your mother say?” asked Cormac.
“She didn’t say anything about them because she didn’t look at them. She said she’d look at them later.”
“Never mind.” Cormac could feel Charlotte’s disappointment. He realigned his easel with two sharp kicks to the base. “Perhaps she was busy.”
“Doing what? She never does anything except play bridge, and she can’t do that all day long.”
Lady Blackshaw hadn’t shown the slightest interest in Charlotte’s education all the time Cormac had been at the townhouse so it was difficult to keep a judgmental tone out of his
voice.
“Perhaps she wanted to look at them when she was on her own. In fact, she’s probably looking at them right now.”
“Very likely,” said Charlotte with heavy sarcasm. She picked up her brush and made some strong slashing strokes across the canvas.
“That’s the girl!” Cormac cheered. “Don’t hold back.”
Five days afterwards, he saw Charlotte carrying the folder that enclosed her paintings.
“Well, what did your mother say?” he asked, holding his breath.
“She didn’t even look at them. They were in the exact same place . . .” Charlotte couldn’t finish the sentence. She dropped the folder, kicked it, and ran out of the
room.
Cormac bent down, picked it up and opened it. “So help me God, I could swing for that woman,” he said as he spread out the work he so admired.
Dublin
1925
Harcourt went off to school at the age of seven. Holly, turning down Waldron’s offer to stay on as a companion for Edwina, travelled to County Down to take up another
post, leaving Charlotte doubly bereft. She had grown attached to Holly, and her departure brought back memories of her rupture with Miss East. When Harcourt was escorted from the house by a tutor
who accompanied the new boys to England, she went to her room to weep secretly both for Holly and Harcourt, and the memory of little Victoria.
Two years earlier Aunt Verity, either through weariness or fear of Waldron, told Charlotte she was now old enough to stay unsupervised after Cormac left at two.
So while Cormac was working in secret, Charlotte did the same in the empty classroom, hiding her work at the end of each day in one of the many empty cupboards. Dublin was forgotten, and life at
Tyringham Park became her subject matter. She ignored Cormac’s view of narrative as an outdated and usually moralistic device and painted the story of her early life. He would never see them
so she wouldn’t have to justify herself to him. Besides, she called them frozen moments rather than narratives. Whether she would keep them hidden or destroy them at a later time was of no
immediate concern to her.
She continued experimenting with different painting techniques and, after two years, arrived at a method that yielded the end result she wanted. She would wait three weeks for the basic layout
of a painting to dry, so that if the final fluent, single brushstrokes were not to her liking, she could scrape them off and do them again without disturbing the underlying layers of paint.
Sometimes she redid them as many as ten times until she arrived at the exact effect of immediacy and spontaneity she sought.
“You call those highlights?” Cormac often teased her.
The subdued pigments she favoured – black, white and grey as the dominant ones, with bare hints of siennas, ochres and muddy blue-greens – were in direct contrast to his approach of
pure colours applied straight from their tubes.
“You’d be blinded looking at yours if you didn’t half close your eyes,” she would counter with affected scorn.
It was moments such as these that made Cormac feel his tutoring had been a success. She had been guided by him early on but was now following her own path and the only aspects of her work that
now showed his influence were the exuberant brushstrokes and impasto, which they both favoured but used differently.
When she was with Cormac she left aside Tyringham Park as a theme and concentrated on urban subjects – streetscapes, bridges, locks, façades, railings, warehouses, gravestones,
churches, interiors, houses – but came in so close with her viewpoint that it was difficult to identify exactly what the subjects were, as they looked like puzzles of abstract rather than
concrete shapes, with the close tonal values and limited palette infusing them with a quiet harmony.
“There,” she said, sighed, put her brush into the turpentine and placed the painting at a distance, staring at it with her head cocked to one side. “Would you say it’s
finished?”
“I would, and it’s masterly. That’s the only word I can use to describe it. Masterly. This area on the left is a touch of genius.”
Charlotte couldn’t hide her pleasure.
He continued to stare at the painting and Charlotte was gratified to see his expression was one of undisguised admiration. He was a severe critic so a look like that meant a lot to her.
“What a gifted little party you are!” His voice had turned serious. “Just think. You have exceptional horsemanship, so I’ve heard. That’s one. An ear for languages
– you’re now speaking French like a native. That’s two. And now, to top it all, you’re passing me out as an artist. Would you not think that’s an embarrassing excess
of riches?”
“You forgot to mention being useless at arithmetic and English composition and having two left feet and being tone deaf.”
“Accept the fact that you have talents and be grateful for them and stop running yourself down. That’s my lecture for the day. Now I have a surprise for you.”
“Another foreign ship in the docks that we have to visit?”
“Nothing like that this time. Something completely different. How would you like to give me four of those sombre, boring cityscapes of yours –”
“Not to be confused with those contorted, garish, chopped-up nudes of yours . . .”
Cormac laughed. He encouraged, even goaded her to be outspoken, and enjoyed it when she was, though he warned her that this was acceptable only in the classroom. Outside it she would be wise to
exercise restraint and decorum, and speak in the way Aunt Verity instructed her.
“For exhibition. To mark your sixteenth birthday.”
“Me? Exhibit? Do you mean it? How is that possible?”
Cormac told her that the Society of Emerging Painters had secured an extra room this year for their annual exhibition.
Charlotte already knew of the Society, as Cormac was a member of it and had exhibited with it for the last six years, but couldn’t see what news of it had to do with her.
To fill the extra space, Cormac explained, each member could invite one young student of promise and genuine merit to hang in the show, giving greater publicity to an already popular event.
“So of course I thought of you. Who else? A parting gift to you before you go off to Paris. Well, what do you think?”
“I don’t know.” Charlotte looked excited and apprehensive in turns. “I think I’d like it. What would I have to do?”
“You wouldn’t have to do anything except paint the pictures. I’ll arrange everything else.”
“What if I’m not good enough and everyone laughs at me?”
“Trust me, my little apprentice, no one will be laughing. Madly jealous, more like.”
Charlotte’s frown deepened. “I don’t think my mother would allow it.”
“She doesn’t have to know. I’ll deal with everything. It’s not as if you’re a child any more – you’ll be married in a couple of years’ time, for
God’s sake! I’m sure your father will give his permission now that he's back home.”
“My father?” She was so used to not considering him, it was now an effort.
“Remember how he and I met?” Cormac went on. “I told you. The War Office. His drawings all over the place. We got talking. Later he asked me to become your tutor as he
didn’t want your artistic gifts going to waste.”
“Did he? You never told me that before. I didn’t know he’d seen any of my work.”
“Apparently your old housekeeper kept everything you did and showed it to him.”
“But I was only a child!”
“He said he could see the promise even then.”
“Well, imagine, I never knew, but I still don't want him to come because that means Mother and Aunt Verity would come as well, and I couldn't bear that.”