The Thin Woman (15 page)

“I hope I write better than he painted!” Ben put the portrait down and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “What’s happened to Dorcas?”

“Your eloquence frightened her away,” I said, sitting on the sofa with Tobias curled up on my lap. “She was afraid she might make a bid which she couldn’t honour, so she went out to make tea.”

“Is that it? Must have been my imagination then.” Ben was still looking at the portrait. “I thought she looked a little uncomfortable when we undid the package. Wondered if she felt in the way.”

“Embarrassed I would think by how awful it is, and afraid we would ask what she thought.… Here she comes now.”

“Return of the wanderer. Will someone get the door?” carolled Dorcas from the hall.

“You shouldn’t have,” I protested, mouth watering when I saw what accompanied her. “Ben, look at those delicious ham and cheese sandwiches. Mm, and watercress, too! Dorcas, shame on you fetching in the groceries. That was Ben’s job. We don’t want his muscles to atrophy.”

“Can’t say the same about your jaw!” Ben reached for two sandwiches at once while Dorcas poured tea.

“Already I don’t know what we would do without you, Dorcas.” I ignored Ben’s rudeness and slid my hand unobtrusively towards the edge of the plate.

“No, you don’t.” Ben reached out and slapped me away like a troublesome fly and then picked up a couple more sandwiches. “You get a tomato and a piece of cucumber. Half an hour ago you declared that food was of no consequence.”

“Reduction is one thing, starvation is another,” I retorted furiously.

“Here, here! Leave the girl alone, Bentley. Machinery has to be oiled if it is to work.” Dorcas passed me a cup of tea. “Don’t believe in skipping meals, three squares a day, that’s my way. Never gain or lose an ounce. But can’t all be alike, Ellie is a big girl.…”

“You said it, I didn’t.” The glutton, who was downing his ninth sandwich, grinned.

“Harassment never achieved a thing other than rebellion!” Dorcas turned staunchly towards him. “You write your book and let Ellie do what she has to do. She knows the score. Never did agree with all this pressure to turn women into rows of garden rakes. Look at me! Thin as bone. Does that make me a sex symbol? Huh! No man has ever wanted my figure.”

For an earthquaking moment I thought from the glint in Ben’s eye that he was about to make her an offer.

I finished my tea and refilled my cup. “I wonder what killed off our portrait lady?”

“Rabies, I would think.” Ben looked content and replete lounging in his chair. “From the expression on that pug face he looks ready to chomp down at any minute.”

“Having your likeness taken can’t be much fun for a dog,” I said. And, Tobias to show what he thought of canine models, yawned and leapt off my lap.

Ben picked up the portrait which he had leaned up against the coal scuttle. “Did women in those days always wear gloves?”

“Even in the bath—pretty nearly. One more fight against the lure of the flesh! I wonder if the Victorians and Edwardians ever thought about anything other than sex. But I have always liked the frothy hats and parasols.”

“Actually”—Ben held the painting away from him—“I rather like her. The portrait is lousy, but she has a quality that appeals. She reminds me of someone.”

“Oh really!” Dorcas spilled a little tea from the pot and was busy mopping it up, her face a little flushed. Clumsiness in a games mistress must be considered a major vice.

“Here, Ben, let me look.” Reaching out impatiently I took the painting from him. “She certainly isn’t a beauty, not even pretty—face is too long and flat and her nose too pointed. The hairdo doesn’t help either. I always call that style the bird’s nest.”

“You’re very critical.” Ben sounded irritated.

“Not at all,” I soothed. “I’m looking for the source of her charm because I agree with you there is something about her,
something in the eyes. She’s the kind they don’t make any more.” Finding the right words wasn’t easy; the woman in the portrait was watching me, listening patiently. “An honest-to-goodness old-fashioned English lady,” I floundered, “the type who made soup for everyone in the village and never turned a beggar away; but not a prig. There is humour and vulnerability as well as strength in that face. She wouldn’t have been scared of gipsies, or afraid to blacken her hands at the stove, and she would have kicked off her shoes to share a cup of tea with her maid.…”

Ben looked impressed but said dryly, “Don’t you think you are jumping to conclusions reading a whole character dossier from a very mediocre painting? We all agree that the artist should have joined his father’s accounting firm or become a …”

“Chauvinist!” I said without rancour. “Why assume the artist was a man? If we are looking for an amateur, a female is a much likelier candidate. Girls of that era were all raised to work samplers, crochet, net purses and paint in watercolours and oils. Application, not talent, was considered the necessary requirement. And where would a dutiful daughter find a model? In the lady of the house, of course.”

“I still think the style is masculine,” objected Ben. Dorcas winced and shook her head slightly but apparently she had decided to stay out of the ring. Was Ben right, did she feel an intruder in the midst of this discussion? I got up and opened the door to let in Tobias, who was sharpening his claws on the woodwork. The grandfather clock in the hall chimed out the news that it was 9:30. Critiquing was turning into a lengthy business.

Ben grimaced but returned to his artistic commentary. “There are several other aspects concerning this portrait that I consider worthy of note. Ladies, are you ready?”

“I’m all ears,” I said, returning to my seat. “Tobias, don’t park on Uncle Ben’s foot. He’s a bit off you at present.”

Ben ignored me. “The lady in the portrait lived in this house. You ask, naturally enough, how I cleverly divined this fact, which …”

Dorcas promptly raised her hand. I was glad she had decided to participate in “Questions and Answers.” “Fireplace shown in background, very much out of proportion, but it is the one in this room. No mistaking carved cherubs worked into the wooden moulding. Quite unique, I would say.”

“Very good,” applauded Ben.

“The man thinks you are almost as clever as he is,” I told Dorcas kindly.

“May we have a little hush!” Ben took the painting from me and paced up and down facing us, rotating it slowly so we could see all angles. “What I find interesting about the portrait is not its execution—we have all decided that is poor—but the fact that it is not titled or signed. Our artist may have wished to remain anonymous. I sympathize, but I do not think that is the explanation. Look again.”

“It’s not finished,” I said slowly. “We have been looking at the woman, not at the background, and I suppose I put ‘the something missing’ down to the artist’s inability to express what he saw, but when I get up close I can see that only the woman is completed and she doesn’t have any feet.”

“Not wishing to cast a blight on your observation”—Dorcas leaned forward—“but must ask, does it matter whether picture is finished or not? If a schoolgirl did indeed paint the piece, lack of perseverance is typical. Sun shines, out comes the tennis outfit and away go the paint pots and brushes.”

“Agreed.” Ben accepted the comment in good part. “But we have to assume the portrait is significant in some way, which means searching for straws. As clues go I’m not ecstatic about this one.”

“Have you prodded the canvas to see if some message is tucked inside it? That’s the way books do it. In
The Counterfeit Mona Lisa
the portrait has a false back, which fell off in the hero’s hands,” I suggested sleepily. I caught myself yawning. I still had to show Dorcas her room, which meant finding one with the smallest accumulation of dust and putting fresh sheets on the bed. Dorcas was collecting up the cups and saucers while Ben held up the portrait to the light for one last look.

“If you are hoping to find a hidden masterpiece shining through the top layer of paint, I think you are doomed to disappointment. I doubt if any of the artist’s earlier efforts were superior to this one. And I can’t see some amateur plastering his own work over a Renoir or Van Gogh.”

“I don’t know so much. Where Uncle Merlin is involved I think we must expect something lunatic.… We write off the picture as junk, store it in the attic, and six months from now we find …”

“Speaking of the attic.” I yawned again. “That’s another place I have to explore. So perhaps we should all get a little shut-eye. Ben, bring in Dorcas’s luggage while I see about her room.”

“Can’t have you waiting on me.” Dorcas attempted to take the tray out of my hands. “I’m here to work, not sit lazing around.”

“Nonsense.” Ben held the door open for her. “Ellie and I think of you as one of the family. More of a companion than a housekeeper.”

Dorcas flushed, a painful mottled red which clashed with her hair. Seeing her embarrassment at a rather mild compliment, I shook my head. “She doesn’t want to be one of those. Companions are always downtrodden grey ladies banished with their tatting box to the draughtiest corner of the room, and only tolerated because they are distantly related to the family.” I spoke lightly but as I did so, a thought occurred. Another name applied to Dorcas’s services in this house: “chaperone.” Ben and I would no longer be alone at night. Was this, rather than a concern for my detergent hands, the reason he had placed the advertisement in the paper?

While Dorcas did the washing up, I went upstairs and collected bed linen. I gave her the room next to mine, Spartanly furnished with a single bed and a plain oak chest of drawers. When Ben came up with the cases I was spreading an eiderdown over the blankets. He agreed that the room was not very inviting but at least the wallpaper was not peeling damply from the walls, and the curtains did not crumble to dust at the touch of human hand. Dorcas, appearing moments later,
seemed quite satisfied. “Certainly no worse than my cubicle at school. Shouldn’t have made the bed up though, quite capable of fending for myself.”

“Dorcas.” I touched her gently on the arm and looked very directly into the hazel eyes under the shaggy brows. “Please climb down from your high horse. I have never been an employer, except once,”—I sent Ben a smouldering sidelong glance—“and that is best forgotten. I thought we agreed earlier that this was going to be a team effort?”

Dorcas blinked rapidly, gave a slight sniff and, extending a hand, shook mine fiercely. “Never looked forward to anything more in my life. Together we’ll win this game of hide-and-seek.”

“And the best of British luck to all of us.” Ben leaned against the door jamb. “Don’t stay up too late, ladies, we don’t want to spoil sport for the ghosts, shy creatures that they are. They won’t start their prowling until everyone is tucked up in bed.”

“The only person who prowls is Aunt Sybil,” I said. “The night we moved in I caught her at it, and a couple of times since. A lot of elderly people have trouble sleeping.”

“Ellie, you are so naïve,” scoffed Ben. “Under that frumpy old lady exterior Aunt Sybil is quite as weird as the rest of your batty relations. I expect the moon was full and she was stretching her vocal coras.”

I was the one who had trouble sleeping that night. The day had been so eventful that hunger had remained at bay, a small plaintive hand tapping at the outside of my consciousness. Flat on my back with the light turned off starvation threatened to storm the citadel. Worse! I began to entertain lustful thoughts. I desired a roast beef sandwich with horse-radish and pickled onions with a wanton savagery that I had never felt for any man.

I have often read, in those “true life experience” magazines, how in moments of deepest crises people have been rescued from the chasm by a voice floating out of nowhere, with warnings such as: “Marge dearest, do not marry the man with the black handlebar moustache and the eagle talons
where his hands should be. Fernando is a fortune-hunter who has murdered nineteen wives and wants to make an even number.” My experience was not quite that uncanny but as I swung my legs over the side of the bed and fumbled for my bedroom slippers, I remembered some quite simple words Ben had spoken to Dorcas that evening, so ordinary in fact that at the time I had not attached any significance to them. I replayed them now: “Ellie and I think of you as one of the family.”

Ben could as easily have said “part of the group” or “one of the gang” but he had said “family.” He had linked himself with me, however momentarily, in a warmer bond. I lay back and held those fragile words to me like a flower, touching each syllable, each petal, gently, until one by one they fell away and drifted off into the night. Smiling into the darkness I wriggled into the hollow spot of my lumpy mattress and kissed the roast beef sandwich goodnight.

I awoke the following morning feeling rather more rational. Sentimentality looks a little silly in broad daylight, but my determination to stick with my diet had fixed. At breakfast I watched Dorcas and Ben chomping down on bacon and eggs without too strong a pang. Half a grapefruit didn’t do much for my appetite but it promised (rather sourly) to do marvellous things for my figure.

Dorcas spread chunky orange marmalade on her toast. “Not much of a cook, I’m afraid, always thought cookery books harder to decipher than Greek but if you’re not afraid of being poisoned, I’ll do my best.”

“Tell the expert,” I said, taking a mouth-shuddering spoonful of grapefruit. “Ben’s Cordon Bleu.”

“No dice.” The recipient of this soap-job looked up briefly from the book he was reading between mouthfuls. “I told you I’m retired. This morning was different, I gave Dorcas a hand with the ‘fry’ because she is new and …” He drank a sip of coffee and spluttered, “Yuck! Dorcas, what blend did you use for this witch’s brew? Tobacco juice and ashes?”

“Instant.”

“I give in!” said Ben. “If you can do this to hot water and a teaspoon of brown crystals I daren’t think what you might do to dinner. You and Ellie can have the fun jobs like swabbing floors; I’ll be the resident chef.”

“Motion carried.” I poured myself a glass of tomato juice and raised it in salute. “Don’t think, Ben, that I fail to realize why I was never considered for the job. But I’m not resentful. Cooking is a very dangerous occupation in my state of transition and the less time I spend in the kitchen the better. On the subject of food, how is Jonas Phipps managing? I gather he has cooking facilities in his rooms, but what about shopping? I know there is a bus but …”