Harriet Smart: The Romances, page 76
Henrietta sighed slightly and nodded. She thought again of the easy brilliance of that sketch in the cathedral, that mere practice piece, and wondered of what Kate might be capable. “Could I see that sketch again, do you think?” she asked.
“Of course,” said Kate, reaching for the portfolio. She laid the sketch in front of Henrietta on the desk.
“I would love to see your real work,” Henrietta said.
Kate shrugged and drank some more mint tea, cradling the mug in her hands. Henrietta lolled back in her chair, impressed again by the accomplishment of the drawing in front of her. The different colours in the sandstone walls were perfectly done, and the ink lines delineating the architecture had a life entirely of their own, crackling like lightning across the page.
She smiled suddenly, and said, “Do you know, I’ve just had the most wonderful idea. I can’t promise you anything on this, but I know there is a marvellous exhibition space downstairs – that room on the right as you come through the door. Why don’t I put it to the head of the Centre, Professor McCleod, that you have a one-woman show there, in a few months or so, in the fall, perhaps? That would really give you something to work towards, and it would get me some brownie points. I am supposed to be contributing something creative to this place while I’m here, after all. You’d be just the sort of person she likes, I know, and she’s got some very good contacts. We would make quite a puff of it all, publicity wise. It would be quite helpful to your career.”
“A one-woman show?” said Kate. “Are you quite serious? I mean, you’ve only seen two sketches by me.”
“Yes, I know, but I like taking risks,” said Henrietta. “And I can tell you are good, just from this. Besides, you are exactly the sort of person that a Centre for Women’s Studies in a Scottish university should be helping out, aren’t you? You’re Scottish, you’re a woman – and I suspect you’re rather outstanding in your field.”
Kate looked dazed.
“Of course, you may be worrying about being ghettoised and not competing openly,” said Henrietta. “Does it bother you to be thought of as a woman artist?”
“Well, I am a woman, aren’t I?” said Kate. “But I’ve never thought consciously about it. I don’t think that I’m politicised. Is that the word?”
“Perhaps you should be,” said Henrietta, and then held up her hands apologetically. “I’m sorry. I’m preaching.”
“No, no, I should think about these things.”
“Be careful what you say,” laughed Henrietta, “or I’ll make you read my books.”
“I think I’d like to,” said Kate. “Will I find them in the bookshop here?”
“Well, Masters and Slaves was reprinted by a British publisher last year, so it may be around still. Some people have been kind enough to call it a classic, although I think it’s mostly polemic. I was very angry when I wrote it. I was about your age. It’s a good time to achieve things, mid to late twenties. I found my mind was very focused.”
“I wish mine was,” said Kate.
“It will be,” said Henrietta. “I’m going to fix this show up for you and you are going to confound us all.”
“All right,” Kate said, and then grinned. “If you dare.”
“That’s much better,” said Henrietta. “You’d better give me your phone number. I’ll call you as soon as I get a response.”
They exchanged phone numbers, and Kate gathered up her things. Just as her hand was on the door handle, she said, “You really must come and have dinner with us sometime soon.”
“Yes, I’d like that,” smiled Henrietta.
When Kate had left, Henrietta contentedly opened up her laptop PC. It had turned out to be a rewarding morning. There was nothing she enjoyed more than gently propelling a young woman in the direction of success. Two years before, she had been thrilled when one of her students had picked up a major poetry award in a competition that Henrietta had encouraged her to enter. It was hardly an official part of her duties, but it was one that she enjoyed most of all.
THE WILD GARDEN
Chapter Seven
Gabriel went looking for Kate in the old nursery. She was not there, although the room now showed real evidence of her occupation. It had made the transition from being a nursery into a studio. Her painting things had been set out on the table, the easel was up with a shrouded picture on it, her painting apron was thrown over a chair-back, and along the chimney piece she had propped some coloured postcards. On the table was Hugh’s red lustre dish, full of apples, and on the press door she had pinned up several large sketches. One, he particularly admired: it was a pen and watercolour sketch of the south front of the house from the terrace, with the sky behind a spectacular inky blue-black, shot through with spring sunlight. He had seen that sort of light often enough, and relished the extraordinary drama of it, but he did not think he had ever seen it captured so well in paint.
He moved to the easel, and could not resist removing the dust sheet from it. The image that presented itself startled him. A young, extremely virile man stared out at him with arrogant, predatory, intensely charged eyes. The figure was modelled with extraordinary detail. The veins seemed almost three dimensional, the muscles and tendons taut as if supporting real bodily weight, the pale hair so crisply defined in every long curl that he felt he might touch it and feel it yield beneath his fingers. The figure alone was a tour de force, but around it, painted with the same dazzling precision, were the most intricate and elaborate patterns of foliage, flowers and fruit, some not yet finished but already drawn out in Kate’s elegant sparing line. Why had she not shown him this before? he wondered. It had been sitting in her room, presumably, under its cover, every time he had visited her in Edinburgh. But even as he admired, he felt disturbed. This was not a picture about Kate’s painterly bravura. It was a painting about the destructiveness of passion itself. This was Adam, after all, about to be exiled from paradise itself because of his indulgence in human love.
The door opened and Kate came in, carrying her portfolio and her bag of painting equipment.
“Oh,” she said, “I didn’t want you to see that yet.”
“I’m sorry, should I not have looked?” he said. “I couldn’t resist.”
“It doesn’t matter now,” she said, putting down her things.
She came and stood in front of the picture, her arms crossed, one shoulder tilted up, one hip thrust slightly out, carefully looking it over, absorbed, concentrating, pursuing her own independent and professional line of thought, her face both grave and intelligent.
“I had an amazing piece of luck today,” she said, smiling slightly and turning to him. “Which, if you hadn’t been so damned extravagant with that car, wouldn’t have happened at all.”
“Are you still cross with me about that?” he said.
“Oh, so you saw I was cross?” she said.
“It was horribly obvious,” he said, rubbing his chin. “And I just went on and on, didn’t I, assuming it was what you needed? I’m sorry, Kate, I should have asked you first. It was just that I wanted to surprise you, that’s all.”
“Well, you shouldn’t always just assume what I want, should you?” she said, and then added, in a slightly more mollifying tone, “please?”
“Point taken,” he said. “I’m too used to running my own show, aren’t I?”
“But it is a great car,” she admitted. “And just what I need. Thanks.”
“So,” he said, sitting down, “what was your piece of luck with it?”
“Well, I went to St Andrews, and I found that lovely art shop you told me about, and then I went down to the cathedral ruins and spent the morning sketching. While I was there, this amazing American woman came up to have a look at what I was doing, and we got chatting.” As she spoke she began to comb her fingers through her hair. Gabriel was so distracted by the beauty of this simple action that he hardly heard what she was saying. “She was so interesting, Gabriel. And such a fascinating face, like a classical statue or something, but with beautiful eyes. Here, I did a little sketch of her from memory to show you.” She dived into her painting bag, brought out a little ring-bound sketchpad and, flipping it open, handed it to him. “Just a doodle really, but I think I got something of her in it.”
Gabriel knew Kate’s talent for catching a likeness with a few strokes of a soft pencil, and this likeness was so strong that he found himself squinting at it, mentally constructing and then deconstructing the lines as if it were one of those brain-teasers he recalled from the comics he had read as a boy. Surely it could not be...
“Isn’t that an interesting face?” Kate said.
“Did you find out her name?” Gabriel asked carefully. Kate’s answer would settle the matter. After all, there was no way that this woman could actually be Henrietta. It was just his brain playing a trick; and yet that fact alone was disturbing enough, for it begged the question: why should he want to see a resemblance?
“Oh, yes,” said Kate, sitting down opposite him. “Her name is even better than her face. When she told it to me I thought of you. I knew it would amuse you – it’s like something out of a novel: Henrietta Winthrop. Isn’t that amazing?”
Slowly her words reached his consciousness. He found he was sitting with his hand pressed over his mouth. He gave a nod in answer to her question, and then a slight wave of his hand to suggest she continue with her artlessly painful narrative.
“Anyway, when it started raining, she asked me if I wanted to shelter from the rain in her office – it turns out she’s a visiting lecturer at the university. So I went back with her and we talked some more, about pictures, about feminism, about oh – all sorts of things. Anyway, she really liked the sketch I’d done, and she suggested that I do a show there, in the Centre for Women’s Studies. Isn’t that a great idea? It’s just what I need, isn’t it, for my career? Manna from heaven, really!” she finished, triumphantly tossing back her hair. She stared at him, still sitting there. “Well, isn’t it great?”
“It’s... marvellous,” he managed to say.
“Bloody marvellous,” she said. “And I was feeling so purposeless, so unsure about my work, and then this comes along. She’s a really inspiring person. I bought one of her books.” Again she plunged into her painting bag and came out with a paperback. “Here we are.”
Gabriel found himself staring at the book’s title: Masters and Slaves.
Kate began to read aloud from the fly-leaf: “‘Henrietta Winthrop was educated at Smith College in the United States before coming to study at Cambridge in 1966.’ Isn’t that when you were at Cambridge?” He nodded heavily. “She must be a contemporary of yours, Gabriel. Do you remember her?”
“It’s a large university,” said Gabriel.
“But with a name like that – and those looks. I’m sure she was the sort of person everyone knew about. There are always people like that in any institution.”
“Perhaps. I vaguely remember the name,” he said, lamely. What a tiny, pathetic admission that was, when he really should have sat Kate down in front of him and told her everything, there and then. But he found he could not, and when she spoke next it felt like a punishment for his own cowardice.
“Well, perhaps you’ll remember more when you meet her. I thought we could have her to dinner when Liz and Martin come through next week. Liz will be really impressed by her, I know. It’d be perfect – didn’t you say you were going to ask Bob? He was at Cambridge with you, wasn’t he? He might remember her too, mightn’t he?” She was looking at him. “You did say I was to invite people, Gabriel,” she went on. “That is all right, isn’t it?”
“Of course it’s all right,” he said, getting up. He was aware how sharp his tone was, but he could not prevent the anxiety that gripped at his throat. “This is your house now, Kate, as much as mine. You may ask whoever you like. You don’t need my permission, for God’s sake. I’m not an ogre.”
“OK,” she said, clearly taken aback. “OK. I know that, Gabriel.”
“Sorry,” he said, and put his arms around her, pulling her close to him, wishing he could drown all recollection and all apprehension in this simple act. Yet, even with Kate in his arms, he could not stop himself thinking of the first time he had kissed Henrietta. It had been on a frosty November night, and they had been to hear a concert of Bach cantatas in King’s College Chapel. She had only been wearing a thin jacket, and as he had walked her back to Newnham she had started shivering in the bitter East Anglian wind.
“It’s almost as cold as New England,” she’d said. “I never thought it would be this cold.”
Irresistibly moved by her chattering teeth, he had pulled off his own sturdy tweed overcoat and put it round her shoulders. The gesture had turned naturally enough into an embrace, and he had felt he could have stood there all night with her in his arms. Yet suddenly she had broken away and laughed with giddy delight, throwing back her head to look at the bright starry specks in the sky above them. He had tried to kiss her again but she had resisted, pressing her icy cold palms to his cheeks and saying, “Wait until tomorrow. Come and see me tomorrow afternoon.”
And she had run away from him, his coat flapping from her shoulders like a cape.
So he had gone back the following afternoon, ostensibly to retrieve his coat, but drunk with excitement at realising that her words had implied she would be offering him more than the usual cup of coffee. He had been right. She had slowly and deliberately seduced him over Earl Grey tea, walnut cake and cigarettes. He could still remember the taste of her kisses and that extraordinary feeling of losing himself completely in her presence. He felt he had not just given up his virginity to her then but his soul.
THE WILD GARDEN
Chapter Eight
Gabriel found Bob Kavanagh, as usual, in his subterranean laboratory. It had once been a car park under one of the university science buildings, but Bob had commandeered it for his research team, and it was now filled with his strange robot creations. As Gabriel came in, Bob was almost obscured by a shower of sparks as he welded together the leg joint of what looked like a tin-plated pantomime horse.
He caught sight of Gabriel and switched off the welding iron. He pushed back his goggles and waved for Gabriel to come over.
“How’s Kate?” he asked.
“Settling in, I think,” said Gabriel.
“I’m surprised you can tear yourself away.”
“I need to talk to you.”
“About what?” said Bob. “Sounds serious.”
“Maybe, maybe not.”
“Let’s go into my office,” said Bob.
Bob, having offered Gabriel a can of Irn Bru (which he declined) straddled his chair, and said, “OK, spit it out. You look distinctly rattled.”
Bob had left Sydney for good when he came to Cambridge on a Commonwealth scholarship, but he had scrupulously preserved his Australian accent.
“It’s Henrietta. She’s here,” said Gabriel, and related Kate’s encounter with her.
Bob swallowed down the last of his Irn Bru and shook his head.
“Who’d have thought it, after all this time?” he said. “Now, where is that thing?” He began to search the piles of paper on his desk. “Here we are – this should give us the full gen.” He held up a copy of the St Andrews’ University Bulletin. “I never read this. I haven’t really the least idea of what goes on in this place.” He flipped through it. “Aha, this is our girl: Dr Henrietta Winthrop, of Harvard,” Bob raised an eyebrow. “No less. ‘Joins the Centre for Women’s Studies this term for a year’s sabbatical as a Lennox Visiting Fellow. Dr Winthrop’s research has centred on women novelists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and she is the editor of the quarterly…’ Blah de blah. Ah yes, and a picture too. Look at that.” He thrust the magazine over to Gabriel.
Gabriel studied the picture for a moment and then threw down the magazine. In black and white Henrietta stared out at him, looking levelly and dispassionately through half-glasses. Kate’s doodle from memory had been phenomenally accurate.
“Well preserved, eh?” said Bob.
“You always were jealous, weren’t you?” said Gabriel. “Even when you had half the girls in Cambridge queuing up to sleep with you.”
“That was just sex,” laughed Bob. “What you and Henrietta had was the great big love affair. When you two were around, it was like there was a bloody great symphony orchestra scraping away in the background, just like the movies. Romeo and Juliet, Anthony and Cleopatra, Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart. It was bloody romantic.”
“Complete with the obligatory unhappy ending,” said Gabriel, picking up the magazine and looking at Henrietta again.
“What did Kate say?”
“I said I didn’t know her.”
“Why?”
Gabriel shrugged. “It wasn’t quite the right moment to explain.”
“I would have thought you’d told her ages ago. You told her about Jane.”
“That’s different. That was easy. But this, it’s peculiar. I don’t want to tell her. The whole thing’s so…” He got up. “I know I should tell Kate, and I will, but…”
“What are you afraid of?” said Bob. “We’re talking ancient history, remember.”
“Of course.”
Yet, as he walked down from the North Haugh into St Andrews, it did not feel like ancient history. The sight of her photograph had triggered a hundred vivid memories. He could see her sitting drinking tea in her blue silk dressing gown after they had been making love; lying on her stomach in Grantchester Meadows, deep in a book; or gesturing with her wine glass in the full flight of some passionate argument: “No, no, I don’t accept that at all. That’s sloppy logic and you know it, Gabriel!”
