She looked forward to Tuesdays with the eagerness of a child going on a jaunt. As summer waned they were spending less and less time on her elocution lessons and more on her painting. They talked a lot together. He was exciting to talk with and at those times never corrected her when she got the odd word wrong. She queried it once.
He laughed. ‘You’re quick to learn. You speak well when called on to do so, such as when the doctor’s about. So long as he sees you coming along and pays me, I’m content.’ That had them both laughing. But a few minutes later, he sobered. ‘It’s your art that troubles me,’ he said slowly.
She was still giggling. ‘Why should it trouble you? You said I do well and you like what I paint or draw for you.’
‘It’s what you draw and paint for yourself that bothers me. It’s weird.’
‘Oh, that.’ She made light of the words. ‘Every exceptional artist has whims and fantasies – a dark side,’ she offered in a lighter vein as he continued to look at her. She made another, feebler attempt at jocularity. ‘I’m not an exceptional artist, of course.’
‘I’m beginning to think you are,’ Michael said, ‘or have the makings of one.’
‘Well, that’s good,’ she said, still trying to be merry; but she knew that Michael was not happy to leave it there.
‘I’ve seen some of the drawings you’ve done lately.’
‘You couldn’t have. I never show them to anyone.’ She pulled herself up too late, but he didn’t seem to notice the error.
‘The doctor showed me a couple of them. He said they bothered him and he asked for my opinion.’
‘He’s got no right!’ she exploded angrily. ‘That was private.’
‘I agree, Ellie. But now I’ve seen some, it bothers me too.’
‘I don’t see why it should. It’s what I fancied doing at the time and what I do in private is my business, no one else’s.’
‘But every drawing’s the same: a male figure and a recumbent female figure. There are lots of them – and proper: not sketches but meticulous drawings, done with care and full of detail. At least from what one can see for the black mess overlaying them.’
‘It’s just a bit of silliness.’
‘But always the same picture?’
‘What did Doctor Lowe say about them?’ she challenged, alarmed.
Michael shrugged. ‘He merely asked what I thought they represented. I said I had no idea and he put them away. But it has me stumped now. So why always the same drawing?’
It was Ellie’s turn to shrug. ‘Nothing. Just what I fancy doing.’
He lightened a little. ‘Well, one thing. You draw the human form with great skill and accuracy, Ellie. You could become a portrait painter.’
Ellie too brightened. ‘I wouldn’t mind that,’ she said. ‘But different.’
‘How do you mean – different?’
‘The way I’d see faces.’ She couldn’t explain what she meant, but she knew there’d be dark, dark thoughts hidden, only hinted at with a brush, every twist of the features cruelly and starkly revealed. The idea brought a small thrill, but she couldn’t tell that to Michael. It would have worried him.
Fourteen
Ellie was having breakfast with Doctor Lowe when Mrs Jenkins brought the post. Nearly a month had gone by since he had told Ellie that eating in his study was rather silly.
‘The staff are quite aware of the situation, my dear,’ he’d said. ‘I say that whether they accept it or not is up to them. I intend us to have our meals in the dining room together in future.’
Until now, other than breakfast in his study, he’d snatch a quick lunch in the dining room between surgery hours. In the evening he would eat there alone as he’d always done, though he seldom entertained since his wife had left. For Ellie those two meals had been taken up to her in the study.
Now it was being openly recognized that he’d practically adopted her, unofficially of course. He’d even started taking her on little outings now and again, maybe on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon.
So far he’d taken her to Hyde Park, where ladies and gentlemen on horseback would parade up and down the soft, well-trodden bridleway called Rotten Row, ladies riding side saddle, sedate and elegant, as they socialized with friends and acquaintances, a great attraction to others. In the still-light evenings of late summer, similar people would drive back and forth between Marble Arch and Hyde Park Corner while the crowds strolled by. Seeing it all, Ellie decided that she would one day have a carriage worthy of the upper crust.
Once, he’d taken her to visit a museum, which intrigued her; another time the National Art Gallery, which had her eyes boggling at all the wonderful paintings that put her own petty efforts to shame.
He had also taken her up west for a lunch at the Ritz. She’d felt out of her depth and, though vowing that one day coming here would be second nature to her, on that day with elegant waiters seeming to be looking down on her despite her nice dress and hat, and with all that tinkling of fine china and the hushed conversation, she was glad when it was time to leave.
They’d gone once by Underground, she having told him that up to the time of her mother’s death she’d never been out of her own neighbourhood. She savoured the novelty of it with every inch of her being.
On a couple of occasions he’d taken a cab; other than that, they’d be in the small doctor’s carriage used for making his rounds. Until then she’d never been in a carriage, private or otherwise, and felt quite the lady. But more than once, stuck in a seething jam of cabs and carts, carriages and horse buses, it seemed the Underground was probably quicker and safer.
On Sunday mornings he had begun taking her to church. In the old days it had been
