Portrait of a Love (14 page)

Isabel wore a simple ivory sheath dress and looked, as Leo told her, magnificent. Her portrait of him hung in the place of honor in the drawing room above the marble chimneypiece.

Isabel had met nearly everyone present at least once previously, so it was not too difficult to remember who was who. Mrs. Sinclair had filled the drawing room with fresh flowers, and hired maids who assiduously passed canapés and drinks. Most everyone was vociferous in praise of Isabel’s portrait.

“You look older, darling,” Lady Pamela said to Leo as she gazed at it critically. “There are lines around your mouth.”

“Yes. It makes me look quite statesmanlike, I think,” Leo replied.

“It’s marvelous, Leo,” put in Hilda Messenger. “I like it very much.”

“Mama is pleased,” he returned with perfect good humor. “Now she’s got a portrait of her senator son to hang on her walls—like a trophy!”

At nine o’clock Mrs. Sinclair discreetly indicated that dinner was served. Then, led by Leo and Isabel, the guests began to move toward the dining room.

Mrs. Sinclair had outdone herself, Isabel thought. Imposing silver candelabra stood on either end of the long table, and in the center was a lovely arrangement of fresh flowers. Fine silver and china sparkled against white damask in the candlelight.

I could never do this, thought Isabel. She had assisted Leo’s mother this afternoon—in fact, she had arranged the centerpiece, but the initiative had all been Mrs. Sinclair’s.

Dinner was superb. “I know. They’re the best caterers in town,” Leo told Isabel imperturbably when she commented on the quality of the food. “Everyone uses them.”

As dessert was served, Leo got up to speak. The after-dinner toast, defunct in most of the civilized world, still survived in Washington. Relaxed and informal, he made a toast to Isabel and to art that was both highly complimentary and comfortably humorous.

Isabel felt stiff as she stood up to make the necessary response. She managed a few compliments for Leo as a subject and as a person, and then expressed her gratitude to both Leo and Mrs. Sinclair for assembling such a distinguished group of people to view her effort. She was feeling more comfortable as she finished and sat down amid a general outpouring of smiles.

Shortly after the toast, everyone rose from the table and Mrs. Sinclair led the women back to the drawing room while Leo escorted the men to the library for brandy and cigars. Isabel noticed with interest that Mrs. Messenger was engaged in serious conversation with Mrs. Sinclair. She hoped fervently she would soon receive a commission from the Messengers.

“Did you go to art school in New York, Miss MacCarthy?” said a very cool, very English voice at Isabel’s side. Isabel turned to look into the violet eyes of Lady Pamela Ashley.

“Yes,” said Isabel. “I did.”

“And do you have a studio there now?”

Isabel thought of her crammed bedroom and smiled faintly. “Not really. Not yet, at least. I’ve got half my paintings stored in a former teacher’s studio. I shall really have to get something of my own soon.”

“Ah. Then you
are
going back to New York?”

Isabel looked dispassionately at the Englishwoman’s lovely face. Two weeks ago she would have frozen up and answered in wary monosyllables. Now she merely raised an eyebrow and said, “Why are my plans of such interest to you, Lady Pamela?”

The British ambassador’s daughter shrugged her slender shoulders. She was wearing a simple black gown and her skin looked dazzling against the midnight satin. She made Isabel feel like a gypsy.

“I’m not the only one who is interested,” she said in her clipped voice. “There’s been some speculation already about you and Leo.” The violet eyes were hard on Isabel’s face. “You cannot continue to stay here. Leo can’t afford it.”

Isabel nodded thoughtfully. “I see. You are concerned for the political consequences?”

“Yes,” snapped Lady Pamela.

Isabel lifted her chin, grave and graceful in her great natural dignity. “Thank you so much for mentioning your concern to me,” she said pleasantly. “I shall bear it in mind.” Left with nothing more to say, Lady Pamela glared. Isabel smiled at her a little absently, murmured an excuse, and went over to where Mrs. Sinclair beckoned her. Isabel had come a long way in the last few weeks.

“Isabel dear,” Leo’s mother said, “Mrs. Messenger has been telling me how much she admires Leo’s portrait.”

“Yes,” Hilda Messenger said. “In fact, I’d like very much for you to do a portrait of my husband, Miss MacCarthy.”

“I see,” said Isabel quietly, hoping that the triumph she felt was not too clearly visible on her face. “When would you like me to do it, Mrs. Messenger?”

“If you could start right away, that would be perfect. Otherwise we’ll have to wait until the fall. We leave for Europe in May.”

“I could do it right away. I don’t have any plans for the next few months.”

“Wonderful,” said Mrs. Messenger briskly. “Now as to your fee ...” and she named a price that was several thousand dollars more than Isabel had gotten for Leo’s portrait.

“Fine,” Isabel said calmly. She felt like jumping up and down and screaming with joy, but she kept her voice even and businesslike.

“As you don’t have your studio in Washington I hope you’ll come stay with us out in McLean until you’ve finished.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Messenger. I would like that.”

“Monday, then? Shall we expect you on Monday?”

“Monday,” repeated Isabel, and smiled. “Certainly.”

There was a murmur of male voices outside the drawing-room door and then the men entered the room. Isabel caught Leo’s eye almost instantly and raised her eyebrows very slightly. He came across the room to her immediately.

“You look like the cat that’s swallowed the canary,” he said with amusement. “What happened?”

“I got the commission from Mrs. Messenger.” With him she could let down her guard. Her thin face blazed with triumph.

“That’s wonderful!” His blue eyes mirrored her expression. “Good for you, honey. You’re on your way.”

“Yes,” she said. “I really think I am. God, I might even be able to get my own studio. At last! A place to work that’s all my own. I won’t know myself.”

A little of the light died out of his eyes. “Where do you work now?” he asked.

“In friends’ studios. At school. In my bedroom. Everywhere and nowhere. My paintings are stored in about eight different places.” She took a deep breath. “Wow.” She grinned at him. “I’m flying.”

“And so you should be.” He looked across the room at Ron Messenger. “Ron is a fine person. You’ll like working with him.”

“He’ll be a good subject,” Isabel said. “He has a good face.” She frowned a little thoughtfully as she thought about how she might do him.

There was a little stir by the piano and then Mrs. Sinclair announced that the wife of the Italian ambassador was going to sing. The Fellinis had been Washington fixtures for years and Mrs. Fellini’s voice was very well-known. The ambassador played the piano as his wife sang a selection of Italian songs in a clear and well-trained soprano. When she finished, she asked if anyone else would like to sing as well. There were no takers, and after another half an hour of the kind of fluent conversation that Washingtonians never seemed to tire of, it was eleven o’clock and people began to go home. By eleven-thirty the house was empty.

Mrs. Sinclair turned to Isabel as they stood in the drawing room and said, “Well?” Her eyes were twinkling.

Isabel hugged her. “I don’t know how I can thank you enough,” she said a little breathlessly. “You have been so wonderfully kind to me.”

“Nonsense, my dear. I’ve done Hilda Messenger a great favor.”

“Ron is delighted too,” said Leo as he came across the room to join them. “He says it’s going to be a very patrician experience, having his portrait done. He already feels like Charles the First.”

“Oh, dear,” said Isabel comically, “I hope he doesn’t expect me to paint him on horseback.”

Everyone laughed and then Mrs. Sinclair yawned delicately. “Well, good night, children. I need my beauty rest.” She kissed them both. “Don’t expect to see me before ten tomorrow,” she murmured, and giving them a vague and lovely smile, she went off to bed.

“She’s a pearl among women, my mama,” Leo said affectionately after she had gone.

Isabel looked a little distressed. “Do you think she knows about us?”

“She doesn’t want to know,” he said simply.

“Oh.”

“As I said, a pearl.” He put his hand on her neck, under the heavy weight of her hair. “The portrait was a smashing success. Jim Lewiston was asking me about the rest of your work. I told him to contact you. He’s rather a serious collector and he sounded as if he might be in a buying mood.”

“Oh, Leo,” she breathed reverently.

“That studio appears to be coming closer and closer,” he commented. His hand was still on her neck.

There was a long pause. “Well,” he said then, “why don’t we emulate my revered parent and go to bed?”

She put her hand on his shoulder and reached up to kiss his jaw. “Yes,” she said. “Let’s.”

* * * *

Mrs. Sinclair left for Charleston on Saturday, taking with her Leo’s portrait, carefully crated and wrapped. After returning from church on Sunday, Leo took Isabel golfing once again.

Isabel found it difficult to understand how, under the circumstances, Leo could still go to church. In anyone else she would consider the contradiction hypocritical, but such an explanation didn’t occur to her in his case.

“I like to go,” he had replied simply when she asked him, and that, she decided, was probably the best explanation she was likely to get.

Isabel discovered that she enjoyed golf very much. With Leo’s encouragement she had taken a few lessons during the afternoons, and so she was not as awkward now as she had been previously. She was, of course, nowhere near Leo in proficiency, but one of the pleasures of the game was that you did not have to be the equal of someone to play with them. They played eighteen holes. Leo shot an eighty-four and Isabel a 121, and they both had a splendid time.

“I’ve never gotten into this physical-fitness craze,” Isabel confessed over beers in the clubhouse. “I hate getting all sweaty and untidy. Terribly unfashionable, I know, but there it is. Golfing suits me just fine; its leisurely pace isn’t too strenuous and the scenery is great.”

“It suits me just fine these days as well,” he said. His face was perfectly pleasant, but Isabel detected a note of suppressed bitterness in the soft vowels of his drawl. She felt a sharp stab of pity, which she prudently concealed. The last thing Leo would accept was pity, she understood that perfectly.

“I must say, it has disappointed me in one way, though,” she continued talking with scarcely a pause. “Where are all those wonderful names from P.G. Wodehouse? The mashie, the niblick—you know ...”

He grinned and the indefinable shadow lifted. “Do you know P. G. Wodehouse’s golf stories?”

“I know everything by P. G. Wodehouse. I must confess I like Lord Emsworth and his prize pig best, but I read all the golf stories. His characters are always smashing balls with their mashies. Why don’t we have a mashie?”

“Because, being practical Americans, we simply call the woods and irons by numbers. It’s much duller, I agree.”

“I’m going to call it a mashie,” Isabel said firmly. “By the way, which one is a mashie?”

“The number-five iron. And the mashie niblick is the number seven.”

“And the niblick?”

“Is the number-eight iron.”

Isabel nodded. “I’ll bear that in mind. Niblick sounds much nicer.”

“It does,” he agreed with her cordially.

“I didn’t know you were a golfer, Miss MacCarthy,” said a voice behind Isabel, and she turned to see Ron Messenger smiling down at her.

“How do you do, Mr. Messenger,” she replied. “And I certainly wouldn’t call myself a golfer. This was my first time all the way ‘round, in fact. Leo has been marvelously patient.”

“What did you shoot?” he asked her pleasantly.

Isabel made a rueful face. “One-twenty-one.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Not bad at all for a first effort.”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell her,” Leo put in.

Ron Messenger smiled at Leo. “Dan Murphy was just telling me that one of the networks is putting together a documentary on your football career.”

Leo’s face became perfectly expressionless. “Yes. So they’ve informed me.”

“Who’s doing the narrative?”

“I have no idea. All the footage they’re using was shot a few years ago, and they own it.”

Messenger looked surprised. “Aren’t they interviewing you as well?”

“They wanted to. I refused.”

There was a moment’s blank silence, then Isabel said, “What time do you want me to arrive tomorrow, Mr. Messenger?”

He pulled his eyes from Leo’s face and looked at Isabel. “Why don’t you come around three, Miss MacCarthy. I don’t imagine you will want to start until the following day.”

“Three will be fine,” Isabel said, and smiled.

“Well, I have a group waiting for me,” Ron Messenger said easily. “We’ll see you tomorrow then, Miss MacCarthy.”

Leo rose to his feet, hand held out. “Good seeing you, Ron. Enjoy your game.”

Messenger’s face relaxed imperceptibly as he shook Leo’s hand. After he had left, Leo slowly sat back down.

Isabel sipped her beer and didn’t say anything for a long time. Leo was quiet also, staring with seeming intensity at his hands. Isabel looked at his hands as well. They were big, square-fingered hands, hard and competent. But for all their size and strength, the fingers were finely drawn. They were the sort of hands, Isabel thought, that a sculptor would love.

“Do you hate it so much?” she asked softly, breaking the silence.

He stared still at his hands. “Yes,” he said briefly, “I do.”

“Why?”

“Because,” said Leo, lifting his eyes, “they’re going to make a damn melodrama out of it. All this crap about my gallantry and playing in pain. Christ!” His eyes were savage.

“I couldn’t agree more,” Isabel said astringently. “It wasn’t heroism; it was stupidity. Hardly the sort of behavior one should hold up to young boys to emulate.”