Authors: Alison Stuart
“What do you call it?”
“The whole series is intended to be a triptych. Like the old religious paintings. The beginning and the end. Alpha and Omega.”
Helen gave the picture one last look, trying to reconcile the badly wounded soldier with the man she knew. She felt like a voyeur; that she had been shown something she had no right to see.
“Where am I to sleep?” she asked.
Angela gestured to a door. “Through there. You should find whatever you need. Don’t mind me if I’m working.”
In contrast to the rest of the flat, the guest room was a neat, tidy room with a single bed covered in a floral eiderdown. Helen set her bag down on the luggage rack and removed her hat and coat. When she returned to the main room, Angela was back at work at her canvas. Not a war picture this time but a huge canvas of Waterloo Bridge.
“Be a dear,” Angela said. “My daily has left some supper for us. It just needs warming. Can you manage? The kitchen’s through there. We’ll have a sherry while we’re waiting.”
Helen found a shepherd’s pie on the table and placed it in the small, gas oven. She cleared a space on the kitchen table and laid out knives and forks and then poured sherry into two unmatched sherry glasses. She handed one to Angela who continued with her work. Helen cleared some papers from an armchair, sat, and watched Angela at work, until the smell of the pie filled the flat.
“I think supper might be ready, shall I serve?” Helen volunteered.
“Would you? I’ll be right with you. The light’s gone now.”
Helen served two helpings on to a pair of cracked dinner plates and summoned Angela.
Angela washed her hands in the kitchen sink and pulled up a chair at the table. She picked at the food on her plate.
“God, Mavis knows I hate shepherd’s pie. It reminds me of nursery dinners when I was a child.”
Helen made no comment although it occurred to her that Mavis obviously knew her employer well and that shepherd’s pie was at least one way of getting nutritious food down her employer’s skinny frame. Angela ate half of what was on her plate and pushed the rest to one side. She lit another cigarette and sat back and watched Helen finish her meal.
“So what has darling Paul got you doing?”
“I have to deliver his report to the British Museum and then I have a little research on the family to do.”
“Sounds deadly. Since when has Paul been interested in genealogy?”
Helen shook her head. “Just a puzzle that has intrigued us.”
Angela’s mouth quirked and she stubbed the cigarette out on her dinner plate.
“That picture shocked you didn’t it?”
Helen nodded. “It was...unexpected.”
“I aim to shock people. I want them to see past the propaganda to the truth. Of course my agent doesn’t like me showing the pictures.”
“What made you want to do it? Go to the Front I mean?”
Angela looked up at the ceiling. “When Harry died I went to stay with his mother and sister in their pretty little manor in Hampshire. Knock at the door one morning about six weeks after the telegram and it’s a dispatch rider with a parcel. Harry’s kit and personal effects. I couldn’t face it so I went outside for a cigarette. I heard his sister Delia scream.” Angela’s face twisted at the memory. “God damn those insensitive bastards to hell. They’d packed his tunic, the tunic he’d been wearing when he was killed– bloodstains, bullet holes and the lot. Those two lovely, innocent women stood holding this obscene object with tears running down their faces. It was then I decided to do something so I joined the VAD.”
Helen sat quite still in appalled silence, trying to imagine how she would have felt if she had received such a parcel.
“I would have volunteered as a nurse but I was pregnant when Charlie left,” Helen said, “and with so many of the young men away, I was needed on the farm.” She pushed the last of the pie around her plate with her fork. “They used to send the telegrams to the vicar to deliver. Our poor vicar, such a kindly man, found people would start to avoid him in the street.”
“Did he bring the news about Charlie?” Angela asked, blowing a cloud of smoke into the air as she spoke.
Helen shook her head. “Because Charlie served with an English regiment, I had to wait until the telegram came from Evelyn.”
Tears pricked her eyes and Angela laid a hand on her arm. She let the tears fall knowing that Angela was probably one of the few people in the world who truly understood. Both women gave way to their own, individual grief and cried in each others’ arms before Angela straightened and sniffed, dabbing at her face with a sodden handkerchief. She stood up and poured them both a glass of whisky.
“Hang it,” she said. “I’ve made them large.”
Helen looked across at Alpha and Omega. Angela followed her gaze as she lit a cigarette.
“I’m an artist, Helen, and Paul was a subject. I’d done the portrait of him before he went off, more out of affection than anything else. While I was out there, I came across him in the trenches and as things were quiet he sat for me again. The third painting seemed a natural successor to the previous two. The cream of England’s young men on his deathbed. It’s immaterial that he actually didn’t die. It made the triptych–completed the circle.” Angela inhaled and blew out the smoke.
“Do you love him?” Helen asked remembering the way she had seen Angela touch Paul’s face.
Angela took another drag on her cigarette and stubbed it out on her plate before lighting another. She caught Helen’s eye. “Are you always so direct, Helen?”
Helen shrugged. “I don’t have the English reticence, Angela. I like to know where people stand, not tiptoe around, wondering whose toes I am treading on.”
“And that’s what I like about you,” Angela replied. “So to answer your question. Do I love him? I loved him once and, yes, if I’m honest, I still do.” She swirled the whiskey in her glass. “Paul and I...Paul and I had an affair, if you can call it that.”
Helen kept her tone measured as she responded, “An affair?”
“He was in London on leave in the autumn of 1916, a few months after Harry died. The deadly dull Fiona was in Scotland with her family so he had no obligations. It lasted all of the week he was home and it was the most intense, passionate week of my life. But that’s all it was. Two lonely people finding solace in each other.”
“And now?”
Angela’s mouth curled into a sad smile. “Now? There’s too much between us and we’re different people. Quite frankly, Helen, I’ve no interest in having a husband or children and Paul’s friendship means more to me than his love.” She smiled and drained her glass. “Anyway, I have lovers of my own choosing. Preferably older men with tedious wives and plenty of money. So much more fun. My painting is my passion and it is a jealous lover.”
“Why do you think married women take lovers?”
“What sort of question is that?”
“I’ve been reading about a young woman of the last century, happily married who falls in love with another man.”
“A grand passion?”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“Boredom mostly. Amiable husband but no challenge? Intelligent, passionate woman looking for something more to her life than husband and hearth?”
“Passion, excitement, adventure?”
“Of course. Here, darling, do you want a ciggie?” Angela pushed the tin over to Helen.
Helen shook her head.
“I’ve no doubt at all that if Harry hadn’t died tragically on the Somme, we would have been bored with each other before too long. More pie?” Angela looked dubiously at the dish of congealing mince and vegetables.
Helen shook her head.
“Throw it in the bin for me, be a dear.”
“Do you mind me asking but does painting provide you with a living?”
Angela threw back her head and laughed. “Good God, no. Harry left me with a comfortable income to allow me to indulge my interests. Oh God, is that time?”
Helen looked at her watch. It was late. She stood up and dealt with the remains of the meal and excused herself, leaving Angela sitting at her table doing a rough drawing on a sketch pad
Tucked up in the narrow single bed, Helen undid the envelope Paul had left for her that morning. It contained several more pages of the diary with a rough note attached.
“
Couldn’t sleep so amused myself with some more of Great Grandmama’s adulterous ramblings. P
”
Helen unfolded the pages and began to read.
February 29: Lady Morrow has announced that we shall go to London for the Season. Her niece, Anthea, is to make her debut and Lady Morrow sees it as incumbent upon her to make sure the girl is engaged by the end of the Season. She thinks the change will do me good. If she but suspected how my heart leaped at the thought of London. London means S.
March 29 Easter Day: We have been here nearly four days and no word yet from S, although I sent him notice that I should be arriving. I thought I saw him at Church this morning but there was such a press of people that he was gone before I could ascertain whether it was him. I have to endure the endless round of visits, knowing that he could call in my absence or send a message that must wait for my return. I smile and nod and make polite conversation. The first great occasion will be on Wednesday night at the Duchess of N.’s ball where Anthea will be coming out. Anthea is a thin, pale girl who seems incapable of holding any form of conversation so I despair of Lady Morrow’s hopes to have her wed by the end of the year. Lady Morrow has engaged a painter to paint my likeness for Robert’s birthday. He is a most fashionable painter at the moment and we were fortunate to secure his services. My first sitting is on Tuesday and I shall wear my green dress, although it is only to be head and shoulders so I don’t suppose much of it will show.
March 31: A message, at long last, a message brought to me by my faithful servant Annie in whom I have confided some of the story. I care not whether Annie approves or disapproves, I know only that she is loyal to me and will not breathe a word to another living person. Joy! He will be at the Duchess’ ball. I can hardly breathe for knowing he will be so close.
April 2: Oh cruel, cruel world that I live in. To be so close to S and yet propriety would allow us no more than a casual conversation about, of all things, the weather. At such a grand occasion it would not do for me to dance so I had to sit with the other matrons watching as Barbara danced with S, not once but four times. How I hate her. How I wish I was dead. Even Anthea, pathetic creature that she is, danced with him. Around me, the women cackled and gossiped like old farm hens. Oh S, Lady Y, was heard to exclaim. I hear he has quite a reputation among the ladies. He is not the settling kind despite his handsome income. What reputation? I enquired. Oh my dear, haven’t you heard? There was a fearful scandal two years ago with the wife of Mr. W. The poor woman was quite ruined. Her husband had to send her to the country and she has not been heard of since. He has an eye for married ladies, they do say. Do they indeed? I replied, snapping my fan shut. They do not know him, cannot know him as I do.
Helen put the papers back in the envelope and switched off the bedside light.
* * * *
The opening of Angela’s exhibition attracted a large audience and the fashionable art gallery on the Strand bustled with elegant society matrons and gentlemen in dinner suits. Waiters moved among the crowd with trays of champagne. Angela, dressed in a simple grey silk sheath dress, drifted anonymously among her admirers, only occasionally stopping to accept the plaudits due her.
The paintings, mostly still life or landscapes, were what Angela described as ‘safe and saleable’ and exhibited under her own name. However, scattered among the safe and saleable were small vignettes of the underbelly of London life, a woman standing by the door of a slum house in the docks, with a grubby child on her hip, her eyes dull and hopeless; a legless ex-serviceman, begging on a street corner. These snapshots from a different reality seemed to be overlooked by the throng who exclaimed appreciatively over the landscapes and the vases of wilting lilies.
Helen, dressed formally in her blue satin dress, watched from a safe corner, clutching a glass of champagne that dripped damply on to her gloves.
“Helen, you took some finding!” At the sound of Tony’s voice, Helen started, slopping her champagne. She looked around and smiled as Tony joined her.
Angela waved and pushed through the crowd to greet her brother. They kissed on both cheeks. “So pleased you came,” she said
“Mother threatened me with debutantes again.” Tony pulled a face. “And look who came along for the ride.”
Both women turned to look at the tall, elegant figure of Paul Morrow, in evening dress, standing just inside the door, looking around the room. He saw them and raised a hand.
As he joined them, Angela put her hands on his shoulders in the gesture Helen had noticed at the stables and kissed him on the cheek.
“Paul, darling. How wonderful. I hoped you would come.”
A conspiratorial smile passed between them. Helen, now knowing their history, understood and, not for the first time, wondered if their relationship was quite as dead and buried as Angela proclaimed it.
“Tony told me you were the talk of London and I thought I should see for myself,” Paul replied. “It would seem he was right. What a crowd.”