Keeping the World Away Read online

  They began well, travelling to Le Puy together, Ambrose delighted to be leaving London and telling her without embarrassment that Michel had sent him a cheque to pay for his fare. They were united in their poverty and their inability, it seemed, to earn money. But once they reached Le Puy, where Gus awaited them as well as Michel, the ease between them began to disappear. Ambrose wanted to be with Gus more than with her. They were absinthe friends, sitting in cafés listening to an alluring girl singing songs. Gwen was left alone, her arms wrapped round herself, pacing the floor until they returned. When they did, they were most often drunk, but not drunk enough not to want to go on drinking. Ambrose drank even more than Gus did, and then fell asleep and stayed asleep until the middle of the next day. Then, he’d seem a little ashamed, and go off with her picking flowers, though hardly talking. Instead, she talked. She overcame her reticence and she told him of all the feeling that raged inside her and for which she could find no outlet. ‘I am born to love,’ she said, and watched him closely. He turned away.

  Her tears were wearying. They exhausted her and yet she could not stem them. ‘Gwen!’ Gus said, and sighed. He never asked her what she was crying about. He knew, and could do nothing about it. There he was, with all his girlfriends and his whores, not for one moment having to control his passion. And there she was, just as passionate, driven mad with frustration. It was not only the sexual adventures she envied but the general unfettered nature of his life. She felt imprisoned and no one, least of all Ambrose, would turn the key and let her out.

  *

  The fog was thick and yellow, swirling round the blackened bricks of St Pancras Register Office as Gus and Ida came out, married. It was a secret marriage. Back in Wigmore Street, Ida’s unsuspecting parents had yet to be told and she both shivered and laughed at the thought. It was, Gwen reflected, how she herself would wish to marry, should the occasion ever arise (though there was no suggestion that it might). No pomp, no ceremony, simply a quiet pledging of themselves to each other in the eyes of the law. The eyes of the law that day of 12 January 1901, were set in the narrow face of a thin, weasly man, eyes so very small it was difficult to ascertain their colour. Ida and Gus looked all the more beautiful in contrast to him.

  Ida would probably never paint again to any effect. Did it matter? Gwen could not decide. She had never felt that Ida burned with ambition, or that within her was a raging urge to express herself through art. Gus had the need, and marriage and fatherhood would not stop his art. But about herself Gwen saw difficulties. She could not say that she did not want love in her life, and intimacy with the one she loved, but that was not the same as wanting to be a wife and mother. She hoped she would be brave, and take, and give, the love without allowing herself to be bound in any way. It ought, surely, to be possible. She intended that it should be.

  Ambrose was engaged. Two months after they returned from Le Puy, he had become engaged to Mary Edwards, nine years older than himself, a woman she did not know and was sure Ambrose hardly knew. It was inexplicable, cruel. Gwen gathered from Gus that Mary had declared her love to Ambrose and that he had immediately succumbed. Well, she, Gwen, had declared her love for him, had she not? And he had not succumbed. He had turned away, run away, and now she had to tell herself she was better off without him. But the hurt was there, raw and bitter inside her, and she had to work hard to conceal it. Looking at herself in mirrors, using herself more and more as a model, she had seen the sore place seeping through her flesh, staining her skin, tightening the muscles of her face. She tried not to paint this but increasingly her brush told the tale.

  Thankfully, her self-portrait, begun in Tenby, had preceded the damage and did not reveal her suffering. She had completed it before the news of Ambrose’s engagement and was able to exhibit it at the New English Art Club, the first painting she had ever publicly exhibited, confident that the impression it gave was the one she had striven for. She had wanted to show herself as calm and collected, aware of her own strength, a little superior and extremely serious. This was to be a portrait of a woman who was no adornment of the fair sex but a member of a new generation that intended its work to be important. There was no proof in the picture that she was an artist – no paintbrushes or palette, such as Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun had used, or a hand on a painting beside her, as in Mary Beale’s self-portrait. The viewer did not need to know she was an artist. It was enough that her skill should be appreciated. Sometimes, she felt she was a mere shadow of a person. Her portrait reassured her that she was not.

  *

  She was an aunt. A boy, David, born 6 January, in Liverpool of all places, where Gus was holding a temporary post at the art school. Gus thought Liverpool ‘gorgeous’, but when Gwen arrived there to see her nephew, she could not share his opinion, not that she saw much of the city, being too occupied with the baby, who truly was gorgeous. He was said to look like her, a nonsense of course. She studied him for hours, stripping off his coverings and examining him in minute detail. Was he not a work of art? She marvelled at his structure, the perfection of his limbs and the contours of his skull. Through her mind went all the paintings of babies she had seen and not one of them, not even by Michelangelo or Raphael, had captured this. It was a shame to cover him up at all, but she did, and took him out in his big black pram to get the air. She walked miles, pushing forcefully, stopping now and again to rest in doorways, squatting down on the steps and rocking the pram when the baby whimpered.

  Ida looked beautiful nursing him. Gus drew and drew her, lightning quick sketches, but Gwen merely looked, noting the swell of the breasts lessening as the baby sucked, and the way his nose was flattened against them. She stored the images in her head and thought one day she might make use of them, but not now. Now, she was finishing another and much better self-portrait and it had drained her. She needed this break, it gave her time to stand back and gain some objectivity before she returned to work. It was strange, she could not help thinking, that seeing Ida’s child made her own work more important, not less so. She did not look at their baby and pine for one of her own, nor did the baby make her work seem irrelevant. On the contrary, he made it seem vital. She herself was not going to create a baby. All her creative talents had to go into her painting, all her feelings and emotions, all her ideas and plans, all her hopes and fears, all the turmoil within her, everything that was precious.

  She could see now how life, her life, had turned out.

  *

  Another baby, another boy, Caspar, born in March 1903, barely fifteen months after David. This time, Gwen saw the baby at once, living as she was in Howland Street, with Ida and Gus back in Fitzroy Street. A newborn infant, she suddenly realised, was more alarmingly fragile than beautiful and she contemplated him with awe, wondering how he could survive and grow into the sturdy toddler David had become. Ida was distracted and not nearly as glowing with motherhood. Her radiance was dimmed and Gwen felt concern for her. Was she eating enough, was she sleeping? Ida laughed at both questions. She ate when she could and she snatched sleep when she could. All was chaos in her household, and Gus nowhere to be seen. Mrs Nettleship was outraged at her son-in-law’s neglect of her daughter, but Ida defended him. She did not want him to be bored. Let him go to the Café Royal, let him mix with his friends. He had a new friend, she told Gwen. He was painting her. It was so convenient since this new friend and model lived in the basement of a house in their street.

  Gwen met her coming into the house. She had seen her somewhere before, at a party, given by an artist friend of Gus’s. She stopped, stood stock-still, and said, ‘Dorelia?’ Dorelia McNeill, only twenty-two, sultry and beautiful, with high, prominent cheekbones, slanting eyes and an air of detachment about her.

  No wonder Gus was painting her. Who could resist?

  III

  A GLORIOUS AUGUST day, the dirty Thames for once a sparkling silver and the sky as blue and cloudless as ever it could be in France. But the steamer was not what they had expected. Their cabin was hardly wor
thy of the name – so tiny, the door without a lock, the single porthole covered in salt and impossible to clean from inside. Their painting equipment filled most of the space. They were going to have to climb over the wrapped-up easels every time they went in or out, like climbing over rocks. Each had a cloth bag of clothes which went on their bunks, under the thin pillows. If they were seasick, this would be a dreadful place to suffer.

  But they were not seasick, not once. They spent most of their time on deck, leaning on the rails, eyes closed, smiling into the wind. Away! They were away, from London, from Fitzroy Street, from poor Ida and her noisy babies, from Gus and his demands. Hardly anything had been decided. ‘Come with me,’ Gwen had urged, ‘walk with me to Rome.’ And Dorelia had stared at her, and raised her eyebrows, and put her hands on her hips, and her head on one side, and then she nodded. She left all the preparation to Gwen, who launched herself immediately into a flurry of timetables and tickets and maps. They would sail to Bordeaux and walk the rest of the way along the Garonne and then to the Mediterranean coast and so into Italy. It was mad, quite mad. Everyone said so. ‘Walk?’ people exclaimed, and they lifted their long skirts and showed off their strong, laced walking boots. They were prepared.

  On the steamer, they went barefoot, to the consternation of the only other passengers, a single elderly gentleman on his way to visit a relative, and a couple from Yorkshire who were prim and proper and changed for dinner. Gwen and Dorelia never changed. It was a nonsense in such circumstances, and ‘dinner’ the most basic of meals. They wore the same dresses all the time, Gwen’s a dark brown, Dorelia’s a vivid blue. They washed only hands and faces and, of course, their bare feet (twice a day). When they reached Bordeaux – even the Bay of Biscay was calm – they had to put on their boots before taking a single step on French soil, and it was a painful business. The delicious freedom had made their feet spread, or so it seemed. Their feet resisted being confined in thick woollen socks, purchased with such pride – they were so sensible – before the journey, and once the socks were forced on, the feet would not fit comfortably into the boots. ‘What are we to do?’ Gwen wailed. Dorelia sat on the edge of her bunk, quite still. She thought. Carefully, she undid the laces in her boots and spread the opening wide. Then she removed the woollen socks, rolled them into a ball and put them aside before finding and donning her thin stockings. She stood up and tried the boots, saying nothing. Gwen followed suit. She looked down at her flapping boots and took a step forward. They stayed on. Dorelia did the same. They looked at each other and laughed and laughed.

  The laughter faded on the quayside. They had so much to carry and their feet weighed them down. To get out of Bordeaux, which they were in a hurry to do, they were obliged to hire a cart and its driver, a surly fellow who did not seem to understand their French and whose face was one tight mask of complaint. But he took them to the outskirts of the town, as they had requested, and dumped them by the River Gironde near Podensac. It was late afternoon, the light beginning to fade from a dazzling blaze to a shimmering glow. They stood beside their heap of equipment and sighed, stretching their arms out wide and throwing their heads back to feel the sun on their faces. Then they took off their boots, and moved into the grass beside the road, taking up their bundles and walking slowly along the river-bank. Where to? They did not know. They had taken the precaution of buying bread before they left Bordeaux, and had filled their water bottles. When they were tired, they would lie down and sleep under a hedge, if need be.

  That first night, it was what they did.

  *

  One night was spent in a barn, empty except for straw, the perfect place to bed down, though the straw had a yeasty smell; another night under a cart, left in the corner of a field, the ground under it dry when all around it was wet; several nights in ferny hollows, the moon bathing them in white light and making the thought of sleep absurd. But every third or fourth night they paid to stay in a house, glad to be able to wash and attend to their hair. Gwen was more particular about her hair than Dorelia, though her hair was finer and not so prone to pick up bits of grass and twigs from the ground they lay on. They were both particular about their clothes, not wishing to appear vagabonds even if they were living like tramps. They regularly washed and pressed their dresses and cleaned their boots and made sure they were presentable. They needed to look respectable and attractive when they set up in village streets to offer themselves as portrait painters, or if, as sometimes happened, they had earned nothing from portraits and must sing for their supper.

  At La Réole, thirty miles from Bordeaux, they met another artist. He came to stare at them, with other men, as they slept in a stable. His name was Leonard Broucke. Gwen did not like him – she thought him arrogant, with his offer to give them a lesson – but Dorelia stared at him, and Gwen wondered if she saw something of Gus in him. They left La Réole poorer than when they arrived, earning only 1.50 francs there and spending 2. Next night it was cold and they slept under a haystack, waking very early, shivering, and rolling together, Gwen on top of Dorelia, to try to warm themselves. When they got up, Dorelia said she had not slept at all but Gwen had done so, her arms loosely round Dorelia’s neck and her body burrowing into the folds of Dorelia’s dress and cloak. She felt entirely happy, in spite of the cold and lack of comforts. For breakfast, they picked grapes, but the fruit was not yet quite ripe and tasted sour. Every day, their portfolios and equipment seemed to grow heavier and they prayed for a cart to come along and relieve them of their burden.

  Carts did stop, quite often, attracted by the sight of Dorelia whose attractions were obvious. Twice they were followed, after they had sung in an inn, by men eager to give them money for other services. The men were not frightening, not rough or threatening in manner, but they were persistent and once the two women had to seek refuge in a church (where the verger took pity on them and gave them a bed in his own house for the night). But on they went, mile after mile, walking or riding in carts (and once in a motor car, unimaginable luxury), the weather glorious except for a few isolated heavy showers which they rather enjoyed though the rain made them look bedraggled. How far had they travelled when, towards the end of October, they felt the first cold wind? They did not know. Not far, for sure. Gwen was aware of a change in herself, not just in the weather. She wanted to be inside, she wanted an interior to make her own. Four walls, and a floor. To be enclosed again, and have order and certainty, to shut out distraction. Dorelia, though she said nothing, looked astonished, even perhaps alarmed, when Gwen remarked that they should look for a room in the next village and stay there for a while. She was happy, in the open all day, as happy as Gus always was. She liked not knowing where they would lay their heads. She liked having the sky for a roof and trees for walls.

  They came to Toulouse in November, on a grey, misty day, and Gwen said, ‘Enough.’ Toulouse was nowhere near Rome, it wasn’t even Italy, but she could wander no further, or not for the moment. Dorelia shrugged, and let Gwen knock on doors and make enquiries about cheap lodgings until they were directed up a hill, up a cobbled street, to a house where a tiny woman in black glared fiercely at them and asked to see their money before she showed them a room. The room was small but clean and practically empty. It had a bed (only one bed, but quite wide, room enough for two) a table, and two chairs. ‘Perfect,’ said Gwen. The window looked out on to a stream and had heavy wooden shutters which kept the east wind from blowing in. On the table was a lamp, quite a large oil lamp which once lit gave a steady yellow light. The moment it was lit, Gwen reached for her paintbrush. This was what she had wanted: this sense of containment, of calm. All around the edges of the glow from the lamp it was dark, the light fading gently as it reached outwards, making the walls mysterious and shadowy. She held her breath.

  *

  Dorelia studied. The book was difficult, her French uncertain, but the intensity with which she studied it pleased Gwen. The heightened sensibility gave to Dorelia’s face a touching and unusual solemnity.
She had asked Dorelia to wear her grey dress today, grey but with black threads drawn through it, a black belt tied at the side, and black trimming round the high neck. A sombre dress against which Dorelia’s skin looked peach-like. A demure dress, chaste, the sleeves long, her body hidden beneath it. Gus dressed her flamboyantly in vivid colours but Gwen wanted nothing to detract from Dorelia’s loveliness. Her portrait was not about clothes.

  She asked Dorelia to stand, and to raise her eyes from the book – but a direct stare ruined the atmosphere. She told her to drop her gaze again, back down to the book on the table, but to remain standing, one hand on the back of a chair. There was a bird singing outside, very close to the window, and the rushing of the stream was loud, yet within the room the silence was intense. Gwen could hear her own brushstrokes, the faint, light sweep of them, and the rustle of Dorelia’s dress as from time to time she shifted her weight. The lamp was lit. She had given up trying to paint in daylight. There was not enough of it in the room, and during the day they were busy. By four o’clock these winter nights they were inside with many hours to pass so she had accepted the challenge of painting by artificial light. It had its own problems, its own excitements. Shadows came and went and could not be depended upon.

  There had been letters earlier that day, each of them read a dozen times. Gus wrote to say he had opened a school of painting in Chelsea, with William Orpen. There was a letter from Ida too, from the new home in Essex, a house with the lilting name of Matching Green. She was there with the babies. Gus came and went. She longed for Dorelia to return, and said so with unmistakable emphasis. They could all live together and be happy.