Cordelia
She had been bleeding again. And they had been arguing again. They never did it in front of her, but the raised voices always drifted up to her room. She would hear the sharp, angry tones of her rather and the near hysterical shrieks of her mother, like some eternal cacophonous duet. These days she never went downstairs after the rows, knowing what she would find. Her mother red-eyed, silent. Her father dark, brooding. Yet both contriving somehow to give the impression that nothing was amiss. Of course, it was all hopeless
And then the bleeding. It seemed to get worse every month, each time the stains a deeper, fuller red. Cordelia had come to see it as the nature of things. She dreaded the inevitable onset, and yet in a strange way she welcomed it as the one point of stability in her existence. Those few days, at least, were consistent. She would bleed heavily on the first day, then less and less until a few days later everything was normal again. Then there was flux and movement until it was time again.
‘‘And then a Plank in Reason, broke, and I dropped down, and down - And hit a World, at every plunge, and Finished knowing - then -,’’ she murmured softly to herself..
The painting was called simply ‘Nude. North London.’ Cordelia often caught herself staring keenly at a painting without having any notion of what she was staring at. It was more as if she were staring through it. Now she realised that she had been in front of this work for several minutes, and forced her eyes to focus on it. It was by a minor artist of the Camden Town group-. A naked adolescent girl lay across a bed and appeared to gaze past the painter into a far distance. She had delicate pale skin and long brown hair, which fell anarchically over her shoulders. She was fine-featured with a thin-face and deep-brown eyes. She conveyed an impression of profound melancholy. Her head was propped on her right arm, while her left lay over her back so that the hand could not be seen. Her limbs were long and lean.
The bed was in the centre of a large room which was cosy in a shabby sort of way. To the left there was an old chest of drawers, polished and shining but scuffed in several places. On top stood a vase of daffodils, some of which were just beginning to wilt, and a few old books between some marble book-ends. To the right of the bed, the corner of an oak wardrobe was just visible. The floor was covered by a tatty beige carpet with a flowered design.
‘Okay, that’ll do.’ His voice was gentle and deep. Cordelia stirred.
‘Sorry?’
‘That’ll do for now. We can’t have you catching a cold.’ He got up from his easel, an enormous towering presence that almost seemed to fill the room, and moved across to the sink. His voice seemed to come from the depths of his immense, uncultivated beard.
Cordelia rolled off the bed, a little dazed, and stepped behind a screen. There, over a chair, lay a blouse, a light summer skirt and some underclothes. It seemed to her that she had seen them before, though she could not remember where. She dressed quickly, for there was a slight chill in the room, and emerged.
The Artist was placing his brushes in a jar of turpentine. ‘We’re as good as done now,’ he said. ‘One more session should see it finished.
‘Can I see??’ Cordelia’s voice sounded exceptionally light after his soft growl. She moved across the room in her bare feet and came to stand next to him.
‘I fear I’m not as beautiful as you make me,’ she said quietly, turning to him and looking up what seemed an enormous distance into his eyes.
‘And I fear I do not do you justice,’ he returned, the eyes full of gentleness but his face, engulfed in beard, apparently without expression.
Cordelia looked carefully at his work. It was only with a determined effort that she could believe the beautiful figure on the bed was, indeed, her. And yet all the features corresponded very closely to her own.
‘You have more beauty than you imagine,’ the Artist was saying, ‘more than you have ever realised.’
As she stared into the painting Cordelia began to feel a little unsteady, as if her body were suddenly weightless. She became aware of the swell of her small breasts against the cotton of the blouse, of the clutch of the soft white knickers between her legs.
‘And now,’ said the Artist, ‘you deserve some reward for your labours, if ever anyone did.’ He opened the door and lowered his great head so he could leave the room, and she followed him down a narrow staircase and along an unlit passage that smelled rather musty into the warmth of a kitchen.
She was seated at an old wooden table while the Artist set about the preparation of crumpets and tea.
‘They say they’re for winter afternoons, ‘ he growled, ‘but I say, why keep a good thing for the dark times?’
As he said this, Cordelia thought she saw him wink, but his eye-brows were so bushy it was difficult to be sure.
Soon they were gorging themselves on plates of crumpets dripping butter, and cup upon cup of hot, sweet tea.
‘This is the life, I think!’ the Artist boomed.
‘And now,’ he went on when their appetites were satiated, ‘we should, I think, pay a visit to my very good friend.’
Cordelia started to pile the cups and plates into the kitchen sink, and was just turning on the taps to start the washing-up when, all of a sudden, she felt quite light again. This time was more severe than before. Now she felt she was abandoning her own body for ever, and that some detachable part of herself was drifting up towards the ether. All she could hear was the sound of water, the running taps, the faintest trickle... And then the water was breaking on the shore and she was riding on the back of the Artist as he strode bare-foot across the wet sand at the edge of the sea. She felt herself at a great height so that she could almost reach out and touch the clouds. Her hair was blowing behind her in the breeze, and the deep voice somewhere below her was booming, ‘Nearly there.’
She looked ahead and saw a long, low white building at the end of the beach. As they approached she made out the form of a woman, small and slight, standing in the doorway. She came out to meet them. She looked about thirty-five, and had a mass of red hair. She was not beautiful but she was smiling broadly and her smile lit up her face. She stood on tiptoe to kiss the Artist lightly on the lips when they came near.
Cordelia somehow knew at once that she was a poet. She led them into the house, into a white sun-drenched room at the end of which stood a table with a small Imperial typewriter on it. Above, a window gave on to the vast blue sea. They all sat down, the Artist taking up position in a rocking chair beside the unlit fire. There was silence in the room, relieved only by the breaking from time to time of a large wave on the shore.
Cordelia felt very strange, as if her limbs were growing perceptibly. She glanced down at her bare calves and feet, but she could detect no movement. The Artist seemed to be lost in thought. The Poet was smiling and looking at Cordelia keenly with bright, intense eyes. Cordelia felt she already knew this woman as well as she had ever known anybody. She had a brief vision of herself naked in this woman’s arms, but now her limbs seemed to have grown smaller and her hair, her beautiful hair was much much shorter. A sound escaped her mouth, like a baby’s cry. It cut the silence in the room.
‘You must take part in the bicycle rally,’ the Poet was saying, and before Cordelia knew what was happening, she was outside on the beach and sitting astride a bicycle. She was in the middle of a row of girls, all about her own age and each on a gleaming bicycle.
‘We thought you were never coming,’ said the girl next to her, her sun-tanned face contrasting deeply with her long blond hair, which seemed to have been bleached even whiter by the sun.
Cordelia looked at her vaguely. Somewhere, further down the beach, there seemed to be a man with a whistle. But everything was indistinct. The sun imbued the beach with a peculiar quality of light and shade. Not only the sand, but all the girls and the bicycles and the sky seemed to be composed of so many spots of colour. Wearily she waited for the man to blow his whistle. She waited and waited but nothing and no-one moved, and then the scene was fixed and she was staring at herself in the far distance, somewhere in a line of girls on bicycles by the sea shore. Lee Jeunes Filles à Mainville. All so very indistinct, so very hazy.
Then she was falling slowly, but a great arm caught her before she hit the ground. She felt herself guided to a chair and became aware of voices around her.
‘I’ll fetch a glass of water,’ a woman was saying.
‘I expect it was the heat,’ said another.
She lay back in the soft folds of the chair and breathed deeply. After a few moments she opened her eyes.
‘Is that better?’ asked a deep voice somewhere above her.
‘Much. Thanks,’ she managed to reply. And looked up in time to see a large, bearded man ambling towards the exit.
Page(s) 8-9
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