Читать книгу Bricks and Flowers - Katherine Everett - Страница 11

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Feeling uncertain about my future and being reluctant to go home, I spoke to Aurelia, telling her I thought of writing to a London hospital for particulars about training to become a nurse.

“Do you want to be a nurse?”

“No, but I want to be independent.”

“What would you really like to do?”

I explained that Lady Kenmare had advised me to study art and had said that if I was determined to do this a way would be found.

“And are you clear about it?”

“Yes, but it’s impossible, for the little I make copying pictures and doing needlework would never be enough.”

“Why,” Aurelia suggested, “shouldn’t you go to the South Kensington School of Art here? Lots of people do. I should like to myself, but I haven’t time. And of course I would pay whatever the fee is, and you could stay with me, for I like having you.”

The following week saw me at work at the local school, where the teacher was a man with a pointed beard and languid manner whose quite futile method was to make us spend a very long time stippling and finishing a study of some bust. With the technical ease I had in copying, I could carry out his ideas perfectly, and did a dreadful study, shading it to the most soot-like black in the shadows with every superficial irregularity emphasized but with no underlying knowledge of construction or anatomy.

When the School of Art closed I went to stay with some friends I had made in the neighbourhood, and while there I got a long, characteristic letter from Aurelia, posted from Switzerland, telling me that her husband had been ordered to go abroad for his lungs and had been given the chaplaincy at St. Moritz. She had taken a villa there, and would I come out at once and help her? She would pay all my expenses.

I shall never forget my first impression of Switzerland under snow. In those days one drove the last twenty miles of the journey over the pass in a sleigh, and leaving the stuffy train and going out into the brilliant sunshine, everything around one white and sparkling, was the most exhilarating experience I had ever had. I was young, and felt that never had anything been so wonderful, so thrilling, or so happy as this adventure.

The adventure, however, did not turn out like that. Aurelia had taken a summer villa standing where the shoulder of the mountain hid the sun for most of the day, a mile from the hotel, where the Rector had been given bright, warm rooms next to the Chapel. Alas, Aurelia decided it would be cheaper for him to live at the villa and to take cash in return for his rooms and his board. It was a dreadful decision, entailing a cold daily walk to take his service and all the discomforts of that horrible villa. To others it seemed positively cruel, but I think that Aurelia, with her immense strength and indifference to discomfort, was incapable of understanding that it could be much of a trial to live at the villa, let alone a danger to her husband’s life.

She had advertised for guests to spend the winter in the care of the chaplain’s wife, and had had many answers. Soon after my arrival I understood why I was wanted. The guests were seething with discontent and on the verge of revolt, for Aurelia was out from morning to night enjoying herself. She would come back from the skating rink, by way of the village street, her large form face downwards on a sledge, and, being skilful at this as she was at most sports, she would negotiate corners at top speed and whirl round a wall and up to our front door in a flurry of snow, her cheeks glowing, and thinking it the greatest fun. Then she would eat a large luncheon and rush off immediately afterwards on a bob-sleighing expedition or to practise for hours round an orange for her skating test. She thought of nothing else. She explained to me that her P.G.’s had been so unreasonable, getting so cross and threatening to go away, so would I help her to see that they were satisfied, for they had paid a great deal in advance and she couldn’t pay them back. This meant my running this unsuitable house, trying to keep it warm, and seeing that these unfortunate people, who were there for their health, were fed and looked after. There were no servants in the house, and I had to find women to come in at various hours to clean and cook.

I became miserable, thinking of all I was missing, and I confronted Aurelia angrily, telling her she only thought of herself, amusing herself from morning to night and leaving me to do all the drudgery. As usual, she was perfectly sweet-tempered, and said she hadn’t thought it would take up so much of my time, and of course I must go out, and she would cook and serve the mid-day meal. She could cook in a slapdash and very extravagant way, but left such chaos behind her in the kitchen and so ruffled the Swiss women with orders to go out and buy this, that, and the other (generally ingredients that couldn’t be got), while bedrooms were not done, that I thought it better to leave Aurelia to her sports and do my best.

Gradually things became organized in the villa, and as I was freer I learnt to skate, but was not good at it. Aurelia’s tall, good-looking son came out and joined us, and as he and I were the same age we made friends. He intended to become a landscape painter, but meanwhile he enjoyed skating and playing hockey on the ice, and being, like his mother, a natural athlete, he did both well. And so the winter passed.

The Rector had resigned his living in England, and Aurelia had taken a house on the South Coast overlooking the sea, where we went on our return from Switzerland. On arrival there the Rector became very ill, and for the last six weeks of his life Aurelia threw all her inexhaustible energy into nursing him. She slept on a mattress on the floor of his room, attending to him day and night. At six in the morning she would rush out of the house, her stout figure encased in a bathing-gown, and dive from a height into the sea—for she could swim like a porpoise and was indifferent to wind, rain, or cold—returning to the house dripping and glowing with health to resume her nursing.

One morning she saw a white and shining yacht out in the bay and asked whose it was. “Lord Dundonald’s,” a friendly coastguard told her. She was very distantly connected with this peer and had never met him, but immediately decided to swim out and claim this nebulous link, thinking nothing of the three-quarters of a mile which lay between the yacht and the shore. She looked amusing in the water, for she had a small head, never wore a cap, and her round cheeks remained their natural bright pink, but her vigorous movements and stout body were in striking contrast to the little, seal-like head.

Seeing a man leaning over the side of the yacht she called out, “I’ve come to see Lord Dundonald.”

He fixed an eyeglass in his eye and looking down at this unexpected visitor answered, “Have you indeed? Well, I happen to be that person.”

“Good,” cried Aurelia. “I’m your cousin. Will you put over a rope ladder?”

She swarmed up hand over hand, and landed on the deck streaming with sea-water.

“You have made my deck very wet, and now perhaps you will tell me why you think you’re my cousin?”

At that moment two women dressed in smart yachting clothes came on deck and stared at her coldly.

“May I introduce a lady who claims to be a cousin but whose name I don’t know?”

Aurelia supplied it.

“And where, may I ask, is the link?”

“Oh, somewhere a long way back. One of your people married Elizabeth Rosette Stewart, and I was a Stewart before I married.”

Then, as she told us the story, “I turned to the two women and said, ‘Would one of you lend me a dressing-gown or a cloak?’ At first they all seemed rather stiff and didn’t seem even to want to lend me anything, but then one of them did get me a fur coat, and we went down to breakfast.

“I told them all about the boarding house and the Slade and the Sunday School, and of course I was hungry, and never noticed that Dundonald kept putting things on my plate. I just ate them till he suddenly burst out laughing and said he had never seen anyone eat so much breakfast and he had lost count of the rolls I had consumed, which reminded me that I had said I would cook the breakfast for everyone. They were all quite unstiff by this time and said, ‘Anyhow, you have had yours.’

“I told them I should probably have another after my swim back. They were so kind and nice, and waved and clapped when I dived from the bows of the yacht.”

Whether she felt it much when the Rector died is uncertain. She was quite calm, and said, “I did all I could for him,” and so she did for those last weeks. Perhaps there was also an undercurrent of relief at being completely free.

The Rector was to be buried in his former parish, and members of the church and officials of the town came to our house to accompany the coffin to the funeral service. Aurelia was decently dressed in widow’s garb, in which she appeared very good-looking. The weather was chill, and there was hot soup ready for everyone, but when it was handed round the sombre gathering Aurelia exclaimed, “I don’t want that stuff; I’ll get myself some cold plum-pudding, there was plenty left,” and she went out, returning with a dinner-plate on which were two large slices of suety pudding, which she ate and enjoyed. This was not done to make herself conspicuous; it was just that she was acting on impulse, and she didn’t like soup, but did like cold plum-pudding. The incongruity of eating it at a pre-funeral gathering could not have occurred to her, nor would she have considered what the people present might think of her doing so.

Aurelia knew of my wish to study art, and directly after the funeral she said, “I have always longed to go in for art; let’s all three go to the Slade School,” the third being her son. Every difficulty melted before her enthusiasm. The seaside house could have visitors and a manageress, and she would take rooms close to the Slade and perhaps take in other students. All perfectly simple; the first thing was to go up to London and look for somewhere to live. We would go together.

We were to leave at midnight and arrive at five in the morning, and there never was such an exhausting twenty-four hours.

“Why, why, Aurelia, start at such an hour?” I cried.

“But of course it’s far the best way; then we have a clear day before us and no time wasted. I went all over the Continent like that, had a full day in each place and no hotel bills. When it was a short journey I spent the rest of the night in the waiting-room, where one sleeps quite well.”

She could sleep anywhere.

When we reached the station we got into a third-class carriage, but just as the train was about to start she changed at great speed into a first, where a naval officer in one corner was the only occupant. Aurelia immediately took off her boots, explaining that they would make an excellent pillow and adding as she looked vaguely round, “If I could have a piece of newspaper....”

The naval officer politely handed her the outside sheet of the paper he was reading.

“Thank you so much. You’d better do the same and have a good sleep.”

“I never make a pillow of boots or shoes in trains,” he answered gravely.

Aurelia stretched herself on the seat, saying, “Wake me at Clapham Junction,” and immediately went to sleep, never moving except to snatch at the newspaper under her head and throw it on the floor.

The night seemed long; the naval officer dozed in his corner. We reached Clapham Junction at last, and I touched Aurelia, who woke instantly, her eyes bright and her cheeks rosy, though one side was slightly blackened.

“Come,” she cried, “no time to put my boots on.”

She was out of the first-class carriage and into a third-class in a flash and, hurrying after her, I saw the naval officer watching the manœuvre with interest.

The day in London remains in my mind as a blur of running to catch buses; of hammerings in vain at six in the morning at a Temperance Hotel; of adjourning to a cabmen’s shelter and drinking hot, sweet tea and eating thick slices of bread and butter while Aurelia cracked jokes with the men; of an interview and prayers at a Salvation Army centre; of a long wait in a city solicitor’s office; of walking through every room at the Academy, where Aurelia was determined not to miss a single picture, and then an endless hunt for rooms near the Slade School. We wandered down Gower Street, through Charlotte Street, and through many by-ways in that neighbourhood, all seeming depressing to my tired mind. In the end Aurelia decided on an unfurnished house near Fitzroy Square which had one large, well-proportioned room for our living-room. We spent a long time at the house agent’s, and ended the day with another visit to the Salvation Army Centre, by which time I was too dazed to take much in, but Aurelia enjoyed leading an entertainment with recitations, hymns, and prayers. When I tottered after her to the return night train I had learnt what she meant by night journeys giving one a full day.

Till the term opened at the Slade, Aurelia was busy and happy collecting a quantity of furniture at auctions and second-hand shops. She seemed to have plenty of money, but it transpired later that, her last trustee having died at that time, she had appointed the eccentric old artist I had met at the Rectory and a follower of the Salvation Army, neither of whom knew anything of trusts or had any means. They signed whatever she told them to, and she was selling this trust capital freely.

With this money we were able to move to London and furnish the large gaunt house in Fitzroy Street where we were to live.