The Crimson Bed (7 page)

    Joshua came over to her and bending, took his daughter's hand in his own. He peered into her face and frowned as he said, 'You
must
go out a little, my dear. Some fresh air. A turn around the square at least? No? Child, it's not healthy for you to stay in like this all day. You are losing your rosy cheeks.'

    'Oh, I am very well, Papa, I assure you. I prefer to stay in these days. There's much to do.'

    'Will you at least turn to your painting again?'

    Ellie considered the matter. It raised a glimmer of interest in her eye.

    'Perhaps I will, Papa. You are very kind to suggest it.'

    Joshua looked at her with troubled eyes. Ellie tried to smile at him, but the smile did not reach her eyes these days. They were deep pools of sadness.

Ellie was busy in her own little room. Her furnishings were simple and light as befitted her nature. The curtains were not of heavy velvet like those in Mama's room but made of thick lined cotton with a dainty flower design of forget-me-nots sprinkled over a white background. Here were two little cages with tiny finches in them, Ellie's beloved birds. She loved birds, so light, delicate and fragile. They could be so easily crushed yet could fly for miles, fly so high above mankind. Ellie thought it must feel wonderful to fly up into the air like that. She had let the birds free for a little and both of them now perched upon the back of her armchair and twittered to each other.

    Ellie also used her room as a studio where she could paint her unusual watercolours. She loved elaborate designs, loved to paint scenes from Tennyson's poems and romantic books like Scott's Waverley novels. She had taken her father's advice and was glad of it now. In these days of loss and grief, her love of painting was the one place where she could lose herself for a while; forget the treachery and sadness of life in some lost, lovely world of dream images: knights in armour, damsels fair. A false world, but beautiful and comforting.

    Taping down a sheet of paper on a table, she brushed it over with water to stretch it and stood considering the picture she wanted to paint. A scene from Keats perhaps… the Eve of St. Agnes maybe. Her mind, as it often did these days, drifted away to the past...

    There was a knock at the door and Papa came in. He looked more animated than he had in a long time and Ellie looked at him, puzzled.

    'Put on your bonnet, my dear. I have a surprise in store for you.'

    She laid down the brushes she had just selected and sighed a little. 'What is it, Papa? Where are we going?'

    'If I tell you it will be
no
surprise, now will it? Come, my dear. You look a deal too pale still. Fresh air and a change of scenery is what you need. What we
both
need.'

    Ellie didn't want to go anywhere. What she wanted was to remain undisturbed at home, stitch her meaningless embroideries, play with her little birds, and paint imaginary scenes that transported her for a brief moment away from the present crushing emptiness of life. No Alfie, no Maria. Loneliness embraced her rather than warm, loving arms. But there was Papa to consider. Dear soul, he suffered too. She was being so selfish, lost in her own grief and forgetting how much he loved Mama. He was lonely too. Rousing herself with an effort, she rang for Mulhall.

    'No need to dress up,' Joshua said. He was almost blithe in his manner. What on earth had he in mind? Curiosity woke Ellie from her lethargy.

    She called her little finches to her and they flew one by one onto her finger. Then placing them back in their cages, announced that she was ready for the mysterious journey.

    'Just fetch my cape and green bonnet will you, Mulhall?' she said as that lady poked her head around the door.

    'Yes, Miss Ellie.'

    Once attired, Ellie went downstairs to her father who was waiting by the door for her. He handed Ellie into the cab, took his place beside her and they set off for a part of London that she had never seen before. Her trodden routes had always been around the area of Belgrave Square, or to the comfortable suburban homes of her parents' friends in Hampstead and Highbury. She knew well the open road to Barnet and on to Oreton Hall but had little knowledge of the inner depths of London. When young she was taken to Madame Tussaud's 'Baker Street Bazaar' to see the famous waxworks, or occasionally to the Palace and St. James Park. When older, she was allowed to go with Maria and her cousin Anne to ride in Rotten Row.

    The route they now took seemed a long way away from her habitual scenes. It wended its way through busy, noisy streets and dirty, mud-churned main thoroughfares towards the river. Ellie looked out of the window, astonished by the changing scenes before her and wondered how it was she knew so little of a city she had lived in all her life.

    'Where
are we
going, Papa?'

    Joshua just smiled. He tapped his nose.

    Eventually they arrived at a long, dismal street near a huge bridge. She glimpsed the river in the distance and when they descended from the cab, smelt it too. It was most unpleasant. What
was
going on?

    'There's Fleet Street just down there,' said her father, 'there... can you not see the dome of St. Paul's?'

    She could just glimpse the silvery dome of the great and famous London cathedral. 'May we go and see it, Papa? Please let us go and see it!'

    'We will, we will. When our visit is over.'

    A visit. But to whom? They rang the bell and Ellie fidgeted, consumed with impatience and curiosity. After some time an untidy little maid opened the door.

    'We are here to see Mr Henry George Winstone,' Joshua said.

Chapter 5

'One face looks out from all his canvases,
One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans:
We found her hidden just behind those screens,
That mirror gave back all her loveliness.
A queen in opal or in ruby dress
...'
Christina Rossetti: In an Artist's Studio

As they began their ascent up the narrow stairs, Ellie and Joshua passed a strapping young woman with a mass of coppery hair who stared at them with an almost hostile look. Ellie was taken aback and wondered who she might be and what her business was here.

    Mr Winstone, who was waiting for them at the top of the stairs, didn't trouble to introduce the girl to them though it was evident she had come from his rooms. He merely said, 'My dear Mr Farnham and Miss Farnham, do come in.'

    They entered and Mr Winstone took Joshua's top hat and gloves, relieved Ellie of her cape and bonnet and ushered them into this studio. Now she understood where she was at last and gazed around in awe and amazement.

    'As you know,' Joshua said with a smile, 'I wish to have my daughter's portrait painted. Let me introduce you to her. As you see, she is much surprised. I have brought her to see some of your work before she commences her sittings.'

    'Oh, Papa!' said Ellie delighted.

    Mr Winstone showed them several of his paintings and it was

then that Ellie realised that the young woman who had passed them on the stairs was Winstone's model and, of course, one was never introduced to a model. Yet she felt she would have liked to speak to the fiery redhead that had passed them on the stairs.

    Winstone's work attracted her at once and she wished with all her heart that she was as expert with form and colour as he was. There was so much to learn. She had a sudden desire to work in oils and made up her mind to take in all she could of this new situation. Evidently, she was to be allowed to come for the actual sittings, allowed in a real artist's studio! It was such a wonderful experience, and Henry Winstone a gifted and charming man.

    He made a quick study of her in chalks, which her father considered critically and then nodded in agreement.

    'I think this kind of pose will work well, Mr Winstone,' he said.

    Ellie looked at the study thoughtfully. She asked her father if she might be painted in the beautiful ruby-red velvet dress that had belonged to her mother. She felt it would please him as much as herself.

    'My dear, that is a splendid idea,' Joshua said.

    Turning to the artist, Ellie said, 'My mother's dress is very special, Mr Winstone. Crimson is a colour that I love more than anything.'

    'I agree. That would be truly stunning. Ruby- red is one of
my
favoured colours. Is this the shade you have in mind?'

    He brought over a jar of crimson madder paint and she looked at it and nodded.

    Tipping a small amount into a dish, he regarded it pensively. 'It's a good choice, because this colour actually intensifies with time. It was used a lot by the old masters. Yes, a very good choice. I shall have to see how you look in the dress to decide how we shall apply it. Possibly it might need to be made even more intense by adding a little carmine. But you like it – this
is
what you refer to?'

    'I do, that
is
the colour. It was my mother's favourite colour, too. We have an heirloom – a bed with coverings of this shade and when I think of her, I think of this bed. Our crimson bed.'

    'In my case I love the vibrant emerald green,' said Henry, taking another jar from the windowsill and showing it to her. 'This green is special, made from oxide of chrome by a secret process and it's a costly colour, not so much so as ultramarine, but near enough. So you see how precious it is.'

    He paused, held the jar up to the light, and waxed lyrical all of a sudden. 'But that's not why I love it. I love it because it represents the green of nature; fresh leaves and grass in the sunlight or the most precious of stones, rare, fragile and exquisite in its depths of beauty. It soothes me to the core of my soul to look into this colour and try to reproduce it. I would have liked to see you in this green. But I also adore the ruby-red. It's the feminine colour, the colour of passion, of the womb... and blood. Not your scarlet common-or-garden blood. It is the feminine blood with its intimations of birth and death... or arterial blood, deep hidden blood, the blue blood of the kings and queens.'

    Ellie stared at him. 'Passionate... the blood of kings and queens,' she murmured. 'I like that notion very much. Don't you, Papa?'

    'It's a pretty fancy,' smiled her father. 'Mr Winstone is a poet as well as an artist, I perceive.'

    'Not at all, sir. I just become excited and entranced by light and colour. That's why I turned to art.'

    Ellie, listening, was stirred by her encounter with Henry Winstone and felt a part of herself brought to life by the new experience. She wanted to see more and more of this fascinating way of life and the people who lived it, so different to those she had mixed with all her life. She yearned to listen to all they had to teach her about art and poetry.

So out came the rich red dress that Maria Farnham had worn in her youth complete with the garnet necklace and earrings and which Ellie now wore to the sittings for her portrait. When she returned from her first sitting, her father was delighted that she was his bright laughing Ellie again. He was pleased with his ruse. He had hoped that her natural vanity and an arousal of her artistic interests would be just what his daughter needed to awake her from the deep unhappiness she had fallen into since Maria's death. He had no suspicion that her grief was also over the faithless Alfred Dillinger. How could he? That was a well-kept secret.

    'It is going to look very well, Papa,' she said gleefully. 'How clever of you to find this Mr Winstone. Why have I never heard of him before? How did you discover him?'

    'It was while I was at MacCracken's place in Belfast,' her father replied. 'There was a most beautiful picture on his dining room wall which he told me he had just purchased from a new young artist, a pupil of Ford Madox Brown. Winstone has some connection with a young, rather muddle-headed group of artists who have been making quite a stir with the Royal Academy – but certainly not because the RA like their efforts. Far from it, they are horrified by what they see as unfit subjects, violent colouring and over attention to the minutia of detail to the point of ludicrousness.'

    'Are you talking about these Pre-Raphaelites, as they call themselves?'

    'Aha, so you've heard of them?'

    'Yes, I have,' she replied. 'In fact, Mr Winstone was discussing the fact that Mr Millais had a work at the Academy which seemed to bring down a great deal of insult upon that poor young man's head.'

    'Yes, I recall it. T
he Carpenter's Shop,
' Joshua chuckled a little, 'and you are right, it brought down a storm of criticism amongst the narrow-minded, bigoted old fools. The picture MacCracken bought from Winstone was quite different. He also had a picture by that young Italian fellow, Rossetti but I feel his work to be a trifle peculiar.'

    He took up a small cigar and with his eyes asked Ellie's permission to smoke. She nodded with a smile for she rather liked the smell of a Havana in the air, mingling with the small glass of port she had just poured out for him. She loved these moments after dinner with her father.

    'What is the subject of this picture, Papa?'

    'Which one, my dear?'

    'The one you regretted parting with to Mr MacCracken.'

    'It's a picture of a girl on a vast expanse of sands by the seashore, bending to pick shells or pebbles. But such a different, new treatment! The colours are vibrant –vivid even – yet at the same time there is a delicacy about the treatment of the subject. There is a freshness, a sense of movement that is lacking in some of the other modern painters whose subjects look rigid and transfixed. One can almost feel the wind blowing along the seashore, and the girl, though somewhat ample in figure, has sweetness about her. I was very taken by it.'

    'Perhaps it was that girl that we passed on the stairs the first day we went to Mr Winstone's.'