‘Spend a
weekend
with Michael Hadleigh? The portrait painter? Certainly not!’
‘Mummy, it’s not just with him. It’s with his parents. They have a house in Wiltshire. He’s on leave; he’s going back to his ship after that.’
That was better, but it still didn’t do the trick. Her mother rang Hermione who gave her Lady Zinnia’s telephone number in the country, and Mummy rang
her
– it was all
most humiliating, but it also had made her really want to go. So when her mother finally said that she might go and began fussing about things like her not wearing trousers, Louise sulked and was
offhand about the whole thing.
It wasn’t until she was sitting in the train to London, a headscarf over her newly washed hair, wearing clothes that she would have died to let her friends at the acting school see –
an olive-green tweed coat and skirt,
stockings
and proper shoes (socks and sandals were the mode at school) and with a handbag (people used canvas fishing tackle satchels in which they
could conceal their gas masks) and her mother’s rather expensive Revelation suitcase on the rack above her, that she began to feel both nervous and excited about the prospect ahead. She had
told herself all kinds of things about it: that an actress should get as much experience about as many different kinds of people as possible, that the pangs of homesickness from which she still
occasionally suffered could only be vanquished by frequent efforts, that he probably hadn’t meant a word that he had said about her – and, after all, it wasn’t much – but
then she would remember him saying it: ‘You – are – lovely.’ It was like a double brandy on an empty stomach. Her family did not mention, let alone discuss, people’s
appearance, with the exception of her mother who criticised it. She knew that she was clumsy: movement classes at her school had made that clear to her, apart from her mother’s devastating
remarks. But nobody had ever said that she was OK to look at, let alone
lovely
. Perhaps he is the only person in the world who would think that, she thought. She knew that painters had
some funny tastes about people’s appearance, liking sometimes quite fat and sloppy people, or people whose faces could in no way be described as conventionally beautiful. It was quite likely
that he was one of them. Why did it matter to her so very much? She did not know, only vaguely supposing that people loved you starting from that, and if they didn’t have that to start with
they would not bother to love the rest. And it seemed to her that, apart from becoming a great actress, she wanted someone to feel that she was the most special person on earth. She was not exactly
hunting, but she had begun to want to be hunted.
He met her at Pewsey station in the late afternoon wearing a polo-necked jersey and very old grey flannel bags, a stocky, rather square figure – but I do not feel like Lydia or Kitty
Bennet about uniforms, she thought. How useful Jane Austen often was, because otherwise she would have caught herself thinking how much more glamorous he looked in naval dress.
‘Your train was hardly late at all,’ he said, ‘although, of course, the “hardly” seemed a long time.’ He took her suitcase from her. ‘It’s
wonderful that you could come. Mummy is longing to meet you.’
A fiery sun was setting, leaving a cold, darkening, translucent sky. They drove along a valley with large fields of stubble – like golden stumpwork – and beyond gentle shoulders of
chalky downs, moth-coloured in the dying light. It was far less crowded country than the kind she was used to: there were fewer trees and those there were were gracefully windswept by the
prevailing wind. He drove fast through the narrow, winding roads that climbed up out of the valley, through one or two dark little hamlets, whose only signs of life were the occasional wisps of
smoke from chimneys, until they reached a wood, and in the middle of it a drive.
‘Here we are,’ he said. The wood thinned out to single trees and she could see railings on either side of the drive and then the dark mass of the house before them. They had not
talked in the car much: she had asked him who would be there, and he had said, just the parents. He stopped the car, and she got out and waited, shivering slightly while he collected her suitcase
from the boot.
There were two doors, the second made mostly of glass, and then they were in an immense hall, at the end of which was a double staircase rising to a gallery. A very old manservant appeared and
said that they would be having tea in the library.
‘Right. This is Miss Cazalet’s case. Get Margaret to take it up, would you?’ He turned to her, untied her headscarf and gave her a reassuring smile, ‘There, my
beauty,’ took her hand and led her through a vast oak door, along a passage to another oak door which opened into a square room that seemed to be entirely lined with books, except for the
huge stone fireplace, where a log fire burned, on each side and in front of which were three sofas. On one of them lay a fragile-looking woman with white hair who was embroidering something in a
round frame.
‘Mummy, this is Louise.’
When Louise got near to take the hand held out to her, she realised that she was not as old as the white hair had made her think from the doorway. She wore a blue Chinese silk padded jacket
embroidered with birds and flowers over a long thick white woollen skirt, and silver earrings, which looked like some kind of fish, dangled from her large, but elegant ears.
‘Louise,’ she said. Her eyes were as pale as they were blue and looked now at her with a kind of shrewd brilliance, as though, Louise felt, she was transparent. ‘Welcome,
Louise,’ she said, and then, turning to her son, who bent to kiss her, added, ‘You were quite right, Mikey. She is a little beauty,’ but somehow there was a touch of impersonal
patronage about the way in which she said it that made Louise feel simply uncomfortable.
‘Where’s the tea?’
‘I rang for it, darling, when I heard your car.’
‘Where’s the Judge?’
‘In his den, as usual, working. Come and sit down, Louise, and tell me about yourself.’
But this invitation increased her unease, and she heard herself being very dull in her answers to the questions put to her while she ate hot scones and bramble jelly and cherry cake.
‘My favourite cake!’ Michael exclaimed when he saw it, and Louise saw a small complacent smile flit for an instant across his mother’s face.
‘Really, darling? How very lucky for you!’
‘Well, you must act for us this evening,’ she added to Louise as she delicately licked bramble jelly off a finger and rubbed it with a large, very fine white handkerchief. God, no!
Louise thought.
After tea, Michael got out his Senior Service and offered her one. When she had taken it and he had lit it for her, Lady Zinnia said, ‘You smoke? It used to be fashionable when I was
young, but my mother always said that it was common for girls to smoke.’
‘Oh, Mummy, according to you, she thought everything girls did was common. Times have changed. But if you’d rather we didn’t smoke in here—’
‘Darling, I wouldn’t dream of telling you what, or what not, to do. I was only considering that if Louise wishes to become an actress, she should look after her voice . .
.’
At last, Michael said come and see his studio, and took her upstairs and along what seemed like miles of sombre passages to one end of the house where there was a very large room with skylights
along one side of the ceiling.
‘Hang on a minute while I do the blackout,’ he said pulling down a series of roller blinds. Then he switched on the lights and the room was blazing. The floors were bare wood, and it
smelled pleasantly of paint. He went to open the wood stove at one end, sat her in a large armchair and offered her another cigarette. Then he said: ‘Don’t be overwhelmed by Mummy. She
hates people to be afraid of her, but she does rather tease new ones to see if they will be. Stand up to her. She’ll appreciate that. She has trouble with her heart, and as she’s always
been an extremely active person, it is hard for her. And, of course, she worries about me far too much, although naturally she would never say so.’
He seemed to be saying two things at once, Louise thought. She felt it was rather difficult for a stranger to stand up to someone who had a bad heart and was suffering from anxiety. All she said
now was, ‘Don’t let her make me
act
anything. I’d be speechless with terror. Honestly, I can’t think of
anything
that would frighten me more.’
‘Darling Louise, we shall
all
be acting this evening: people are coming to dinner, and Mummy loves us to play charades. So it won’t just be you. Although I expect
you’ll knock spots off the rest of us – being a pro and all that.’
‘Oh. Are a lot of people coming?’
‘A neighbouring family, the Elmhursts. Now, tell me more about you. I want to know every single thing.’
Because he seemed really interested – not merely curious, as she felt his mother had been – she was able to launch into what he seemed to find an entertaining description of her
family; and she found that when she was telling him about the great-aunts, for example, she could imitate them perfectly and make him laugh. She told him about Uncle Rupe, and he said how awful
that must be, and then about doing lessons with Polly and Clary, ‘Until, of course, I got too old,’ and then about the cooking school and her great friend Stella and then back to her
burning desire to join the student rep when it relocated to the country if only her parents would let her. ‘Although I think they want me to learn typing so that I can get some boring war
job,’ she finished. ‘But they might let me have this one year.’
‘Until you’re eighteen?’
‘How did you know my age?’
‘I asked Hermione. She said you were just seventeen.’
‘I’m seventeen and a half,’ she said, feeling that her actual age was undermining her.
‘You are a remarkable seventeen and a half,’ he said.
She asked to see some of the pictures that were stacked against the walls.
‘You won’t like them. They’re not modern or adventurous or anything. I simply have a kind of deadly facility and most people are reassured by it and pay me lots of money for
them.’
The ones of women were all rather like the one she had seen of Hermione: wearing evening dress, and, in many cases, jewels, sitting in large gilded armchairs, or lounging gracefully on sofas
– not quite smiling, looking more as though they had been, and got tired of it. She did not know what to say about them. There were two that were different and although they were leaning face
outwards against a wall, he did not actually show them to her. One was of a very beautiful girl in riding clothes, and one of a young man in an open-necked blue check shirt – strikingly
handsome in a poetic faun-like manner. She was not sure what was different about these pictures, except that, apart from them being idealistically beautiful, the girl looked as though she might
also be stupid, and the boy petulant. Brought up by Miss Milliment at least to look at pictures that she considered to be good, but by painters who were, by and large, dead, she realised that she
had never looked at contemporary work at all, let alone by someone she knew. Excepting Uncle Rupe, of course, but she realised now that she had taken his painting, like his being her uncle,
uncritically and for granted.
‘I didn’t think you’d like them,’ he said. ‘They’re rather cheap and vulgar, aren’t they really – like me.’
‘You don’t really
mean
that!’
‘But I
do
. I’m second rate. Mark you, that’s not
bad
. Most people would be extremely glad to be that.’
‘Aren’t you most people?’
‘Of course not. I’m just as unusual as you are.’
She looked at him to see if he was laughing at her, and was not sure.
‘Darling Louise, I’m
not
laughing at you – you amaze me too much for that. Knowing Shakespeare practically by heart, and being so brave about bombs – and –
oh, I don’t know – everything! I kind of knew – the moment I saw you – that you were special, and by golly, you are!’
Before she had to say anything to this, a bell sounded from below, and he got up.
‘Dressing time,’ he said. ‘I’d better show you your room.’
He led her back along the passage, past the head of the staircase to the passage the other side of it.
‘Bathroom’s at the end,’ he said. ‘There’s time for a bath if you want one. I’ll come and fetch you in half an hour.’
During that weekend, he made two drawings of her, took her riding (he turned out to be a brilliant horseman: there was a row of cups he had won for jumping in shows, including ones at Olympia
and Richmond), acted in charades with her – he wasn’t particularly good, but he was uninhibited and clearly enjoyed it; played the piano – which he did by ear – and sang
songs like ‘Don’t Put Your Daughter On The Stage, Mrs Worthington’. Through it all, he never failed to
admire
almost everything she said and did. On Monday morning, he
put her on a train at Pewsey, kissed her face, and asked her to write to him.
‘But what,’ said Stella, the following weekend after she had listened to much of this, ‘was he
like
?’
‘I’ve
told
you!’
‘You haven’t at all. You’ve simply told me things you did. You seem so bowled over by the grand house and dressing bells and being unpacked for, that you haven’t noticed
anything interesting at
all
. What does he look like?’
Louise thought for a moment. ‘It’s funny. If I described his appearance you’d just think he was dull, but he isn’t. He has terrific
charm.
’
‘Go on.’
‘Well, light brown hair – not an awful lot of it, as a matter of fact. I should think he’d go bald fairly young. Of course, he’s not
young
now: he’s
thirty-two. Pale blue eyes – sort of greyish blue – but they look very hard at – at everything . . . Quite a large forehead.’ She stopped there; he had the suspicion of a
double chin, and somehow she didn’t want to mention this to Stella. ‘A small nose,’ she added.