Set in Stone (35 page)

The new generation of painters would care nothing for caution or circumspection. They would scorn me for my discretion, for my cowardice. For denying the passion in me.

I love Charlotte. Of course. But maybe I can only truly experience passion in this way: as a yearning for something out of reach, for ever unattainable, for ever desirable.

Marianne has had many lovers; how could she not? She attracts men, bestows herself upon them, tires, and moves on, always seeking, always restless. This is my consolation: that she loves none of them; she will neither possess, nor be possessed. The people she truly loves are not the men who come and go in her life, drawn like moths to her vitality, but her family – Charlotte and Juliana, Tommy and me.

We go down the stairs and through the drawing room. The doors to the lawn stand open; as we step out, I catch the resinous tang of cedar. That pungent scent recalls, sharp and clear in my mind, the hot summer’s day more than twenty years ago, when I saw Thomas for the first time: when Eliza Dearly brought him to visit, and I played with him in the shade of this tree. Now the house and everything in it belongs to him, though he cannot know. Tom – Tom as he was – knew that he was adopted, that was all. Charlotte and I dreaded the task of telling him who his father was, when he came of age. Juliana was known to him as Aunt Juley, and that deception we had all decided to continue, for both his sake and hers.

Now he cannot know any of this, and maybe never will. Perhaps it is a blessing. As, perhaps, Tom’s beatific smile is a blessing; as are the blanks in his memory that protect him from harm.

The garden has matured; it is more densely planted, more rampant than Mr Farrow would have liked. On the west side of the house, where Marianne leads me, there runs a long, wide border which was not there in Mr Farrow’s day. A purple-leaved vine clothes the house wall, and the border is bright with Michaelmas daisies, with golden-rod, with the dried seed-heads of grasses and poppies, and others I do not recognize.

I stand looking up at the West Wind, fixed in its proper position: not the revenge piece, but the new carving made for us by Gideon.

I have seen him before, this Wind, but familiarity cannot diminish my sense of delight and of rightness. Here he is, the zephyr: the missing piece, the completion the house has awaited. Here he is, a young male figure, Pan-like, athletic, tumbled and twisted by gusts, arms outstretched, and his face – his face, mercifully, is nothing like that green-hued, snail-slimed, silt-stained visage drowned for ever in the lake, but full of joy, or mirth, relishing his own youth and vitality and the strength of the current that carries him. He is exuberantly himself; he is unmistakably the work of Gideon Waring. Someone has trimmed back the vine, so that he is not obscured; a few creeping tendrils obscure the edge of Portland stone and its fixing to the wall. I am caught, as always, by the grace and purity
of line, and by the fine-grained beauty of the stone, perfect in its occasional imperfection. I have often watched Gideon, and have talked with him while he works. I know that while he plies hammer and chisel and carries on a conversation about the most everyday matters, his vision is always in his mind, clear and true.

Marianne comes to stand beside me. ‘I told you,’ she says, taking my arm, ‘that the West Wind must be in his place. Once he was here, the house would be happy.’

‘And I’m pleased you were right,’ I tell her.

‘I’m always right, Sam. Don’t you know that, yet?’

I look at her and laugh; we stand for a few moments in silence.

I am thinking of the young man who stood here more than twenty years ago, his future open before him. How ambitious he was, how sure that he would make his mark, how complacent that his modest gift was only waiting for the world to appreciate it!

Well, he was a different person. The Samuel Godwin who stands here now is sadder, if not much wiser. I have, in a way, achieved my ambition, and found it brittle, crumbling to the touch. For truth, for something to sustain me through life, I must look elsewhere.

My gaze lifts again to the cleanness of stone, the purity of line, the ageless, timeless grace. And I know that this is what I yearn for. To handle the materials of life and death, as Gideon once said; to touch the mysteries of the Earth itself. I must make something simple, enduring and true.

I am thinking that, as soon as I can, I must see Gideon again, I must visit him in Chichester. I think of all I have learned from him, and of how much I have yet to learn.

Samuel Godwin was one of several minor painters who came to public attention during the early years of this century under the patronage of Rupert Vernon-Dale.

Brought up in Sydenham, Godwin studied at the Slade School of Art, though he left before completing his course to take up commissioned work. Although his achievements never matched those of his more illustrious peers Augustus John, Wyndham Lewis and Paul Nash, Godwin’s work became fashionable after the First World War. Vernon-Dale’s sponsorship was a key factor in making Godwin’s name; it was through Vernon-Dale’s recommendation that Godwin was appointed as War Artist. Continuing to promote the work of Godwin and other artists after the war ended, Vernon-Dale had the London connections which led to Godwin’s acclaimed one-man show at the Cork Street Gallery in 1920. Godwin never embraced the avant-garde; from 1920 he seemed to turn his back on the art world, and never exhibited again. The portrait entitled
The Wild Girl
, one of the works which helped to make his name, is believed to depict his sister-in-law, the artist Marianne Farrow. Of all his works, the most striking is surely
The Four Winds
, a series of oils which clearly shows the debt owed by Godwin to
the sculptor Gideon Waring, with whom he formed a lifelong friendship.

In 1900 Godwin married Charlotte Agnew; they lived in Alfriston, near Eastbourne, at first with Mrs Godwin’s sisters, Juliana and Marianne Farrow. Shortly after their marriage, the Godwins adopted a son, Thomas, who served in the Royal Sussex Regiment and was awarded a Military Cross before being invalided out of the army in 1918. Both Charlotte Godwin and Juliana Farrow were committed members of the Women’s Social and Political Union until the outbreak of hostilities in 1914. Juliana Farrow served as a VAD nurse throughout the war years, afterwards continuing to campaign for women’s welfare and for social reform. Marianne, her younger sister, became a successful painter in her own right. Although taught by Godwin in her youth, she developed a style very much her own.

From 1920 onwards, Godwin completed only a few insignificant watercolours, and turned his attention to stone-carving, becoming an expert at letter-cutting and a specialist in memorial plaques. His work can be seen in many a country church.

He is survived by his widow, Charlotte, by his son Thomas and by twin daughters, Connie and Grace (b. 1906).