Half of the Human Race Page 4

  ‘Do you – love him that much?’

  Olivia looked over at her and frowned. ‘What a question. Why do you suppose I agreed to marry him?’

  Connie knew that, were she to answer truthfully at this point, the ensuing froideur would touch the Arctic. Her conviction was that Olivia would never have accepted Lionel while their father was alive and the family’s fortune still intact. Her sister’s self-esteem and discernment would have inclined her to choose a husband on the basis of something other than a career at Barings and the promise of a large house in west London. Even if Lionel’s innate conservatism and snobbishness accorded with her own, Olivia would not have been blind to the kind of man she was marrying. But Connie loved her, in spite of their differences, and kept her own counsel.

  ‘I suppose, then … you must do as you see fit,’ she said to Olivia, in a tone as neutral as she could manage.

  The heat of the day had taken away her appetite. Connie excused herself from lunch and set off from the house wearing stout lace-up boots, though they hardly matched her wrap coat and summer bonnet. There was a good deal of walking ahead. Thornhill Crescent, where the family had lived for nearly twenty years, was close to the teeming slovenliness of Caledonian Road, whose fish shops, pawnbrokers and second-hand furniture sellers seemed quite alien to the genteel respectability of their home. Connie recalled as a girl asking her father, ‘Are we middle class or upper class?’ With an amused look he had replied, ‘The in-between class, I think.’ Only Olivia of them all had openly expressed her distaste for living cheek by jowl with shopkeepers and costermongers.

  Connie’s journey took her past unlovely sights – gasworks, coal depots, towering warehouses – before she gained the outskirts of Camden Town. Yet what she felt amid the thickening clatter of the streets, of wheels clicking on cobbles, of trotting horses and the jingling of tramcar bells, was not disgust, but excitement, a sudden blood-tingling sense of her own potential. Connie wanted to be worth something in the world, and she was not of an age or temperament to be discouraged: there was a future before her to grasp. The roar of traffic on Camden High Street grew louder, and on calling in at a tobacconist’s shop she had to close the door behind her simply to make herself heard. She was about to buy her usual Player’s, but spotting the name of another brand familiar to her, she bought them instead. More expensive, but she imagined the choice might impress him.

  The consciousness of this small extravagance also delighted her as she continued down the High Street, stopping at junctions every so often to let a cavalcade of cyclists, motor cars and trams pour across the thoroughfare. This pulse of headlong movement never failed to amaze, the criss-crossing of so much human and mechanical motivation, and all apparently oblivious to everything but its own need to press on. The sense of the city as some monstrous, million-footed organism would have been disturbing to some – her mother, for one – yet to Connie it seemed a thing of enchantment, of infinite possibility.

  She had reached Mornington Crescent, and only now did it occur to her that Brigstock might not be at home. Who would want to be stuck indoors on a day as warm as this? She followed the curve of the road until she came to his door, a dull, weather-beaten burgundy colour with a dusty crescent fanlight overhanging it. She tapped the knocker, and was answered some moments later by an ancient-looking landlady who thought Mr Brigstock might be in, ‘though I ’aven’t seen ’ide nor ’air of ’im’. Connie, invited to enter, took in the smell of mice and mildew as she walked down the hall and up the uncarpeted stairs. The house, which had doubtless been a smart address back in Regency times, had a tumbledown atmosphere a century later, though she sensed its air of dingy neglect would be to Brigstock’s liking. She came to the second-floor landing where a cat, black with white paws, like spats, was curled on the bottom step. At Connie’s arrival the creature rose languidly and began to pad up the staircase, like a spoilt child conducting a guest through the house. Connie called out a greeting but met with no response, so she followed the cat past the kitchen and living room, and up the next flight of stairs. Before she had reached the top the smell of turpentine and oils wafted down, mixed with tobacco smoke. She put her head round the door as the cat minced in ahead of her.

  ‘Hullo, Maud,’ said the painter, without taking his eyes off the canvas he was working on.

  ‘Hullo to you too,’ replied Connie. He had not heard her soft step, and looked round in mild surprise.

  ‘Why, if it isn’t Miss Callaway,’ he said, smiling genially, though without bothering to stand up and greet her. ‘Please, come in – have a seat.’

  ‘Your landlady seemed not to know whether you were at home,’ said Connie, wandering in and looking about her. She had not been to his studio before, though an invitation had been extended some time ago. Taking off her gloves and bonnet, she folded herself onto an old horsehair sofa whose blanket was coated in cat hairs. Canvases and frames were propped higgledy-piggledy against the walls. Lemony daylight flooded through an open skylight, and a casual arrangement of mirrors lent the room a deceptive sense of space. Brigstock had lain down his brush and was wiping his hands with a rag.

  ‘I keep, um, irregular hours,’ he said by way of explanation. ‘I don’t believe I’ve seen Mrs Geraghty all week. Did she seem to be missing me?’

  Connie laughed. ‘Not that one would notice.’

  Brigstock sighed, then focused his gaze upon her. ‘I’ve been wondering when you’d drop by.’

  ‘I happened to be walking this way,’ Connie said. ‘I’ve not made a special trip.’

  He acknowledged the slight rebuff by a tolerant inclination of his head. Connie was telling the truth, but she did feel glad to see him again. She also felt as if they were resuming an interrupted conversation. Brigstock had a drawling ironic voice which fell agreeably on her ear, though she was never sure how much of his talk was meant to be taken seriously. He was a man in his late forties, with a relaxed slouch that seemed of a piece with his rather unconventional style. His face and neck were tribally smudged and flecked with paint, and his clothes, while reasonably clean, carried the air of the pawn shop. He wore no collar, and his shirt was unbuttoned to his chest; his dark, curly hair hung to his neck, and seemed never to have known a brush or comb. Connie supposed it the calculated look of the ‘starving artist’, though she had gathered that Brigstock was far from being poor.

  He was now looking at her very steadily. ‘It’s quite alarming –’ he said, and stopped.

  ‘What is?’ asked Connie with an uncertain smile.

  ‘How pleased I am to see you.’ He spoke as if he couldn’t quite believe the words himself. ‘I’ve always been with Wilde – you know, “youth is a gift wasted on the young”. But you make an honourable exception.’

  ‘Do you rehearse this sort of flattery, Mr Brigstock?’

  ‘Oh, please, call me Dab. “Mr Brigstock” makes me sound like a bank manager.’

  Connie rose from the sofa and made her way around the easel where he sat. Brigstock had made a reputation from nudes, but he was also known for his scenes of London lowlife. The canvas before him today was of a music hall, as seen from the vertiginous angle of the audience in the gallery. It was gaily coloured, yet Connie discerned in the watching figures an inexpressible melancholy.

  ‘I was at the Bedford the other night. Couldn’t get this picture out of my head. I do love a music hall … they give one so many ideas.’

  Connie nodded at it approvingly. ‘It’s very good,’ she said.

  ‘Do you swear it?’ asked Brigstock with sudden intensity, and they both laughed. He reached over for his cigarettes and offered her one, but Connie declined, and dipped into her coat pocket.

  ‘Have one of mine,’ she said, breaking the seal on the packet. Brigstock arched his eyebrows as he took one.

  ‘Sullivans? There’s fancy …’

  They smoked for a while in silence. It was odd, Connie thought, how they had become companionable on such a brief acquaintance. They had m
et some months before when an establishment selling artists’ supplies opened next door to Hignett’s bookshop. When Connie first saw him she had mistaken his dishevelled appearance for destitution; only when he appeared up close had she realised his dowdy attire was a kind of raffishness. She watched him out of the corner of her eye, and rather liked his air of abstraction as he pored over a book. Then she had become conscious that, more often, he was watching her, until one day during a lull he had sidled up to the counter as she sat reading and asked about the book in which she was absorbed. Connie had held forth its spine for the man’s inspection – it was a Rhoda Broughton novel – confident that he would never have heard of the lady. Brigstock had taken in the title, and nodded.

  ‘Not one of her best,’ he had said, astonishing her.

  After that, they had talked to one another whenever he had visited the shop. He would sometimes make a show of asking her about a new novel or book of poetry, although it soon became clear that his interest centred upon her rather than literary chit-chat. Their acquaintance entered a new phase one Sunday afternoon when, out walking on Hampstead Heath with Olivia and her mother, she happened to see Brigstock ambling towards them. He had caught her eye, but with an unexpected delicacy of manner he refrained from greeting her until she hailed him. Connie proceeded with introductions, and was briefly mortified to notice Olivia affording the stranger her frankest head-to-toe appraisal, like a beady dowager inspecting a suitor for her niece. Brigstock, dressed for the occasion and too suave to mind such scrutiny, was already making himself agreeable to Mrs Callaway, who by the end of this little encounter seemed utterly beguiled by him. As they walked off she quietly confessed her admiration of his ‘beautiful manners’ and thought that for an artist he was – no higher praise – ‘quite respectable’. Olivia was also favourably impressed, though when her mother suggested inviting him to dinner, she demurred. ‘Did you see the dirt under his fingernails?’

  Connie had also entertained the idea of inviting him to dinner and rejected it, though not for any unease about his personal grooming. She suspected that Brigstock was a little spoony about her, and while the thought of his infatuation was pleasing, she did not want to be seen to encourage any advances. Now, as they sat there smoking together, she wondered if she should test him.

  ‘Awfully warm, isn’t it?’ she said absently.

  ‘I should say so. Too warm to be wearing …’ Brigstock had a mischievous glitter in his eyes.

  ‘Yes?’ she prompted.

  ‘… anything but a smile.’ Connie looked away, so as to hide what was, indeed, a smile. ‘Have you thought any more about my offer?’ he continued.

  ‘Oh, is it an offer, then? I imagined you to be making a request.’

  Brigstock shrugged, and pulled a droll face. ‘I can make it a request, of course.’

  Connie was silent for a moment, then said, ‘I expect you would prefer … without clothes?’

  Brigstock allowed himself a slow smirk. ‘Why would you expect that? I rather like you in your clothes.’

  Connie blushed furiously, perceiving that she had been tricked into forwardness. Brigstock, seeing her flustered, came to the rescue.

  ‘Forgive me, Miss Callaway, I already have a number of models who pose for me – professionally – and there would be a frightful fuss if they got wind that another young lady was taking work from them.’

  ‘I feel rather – foolish –’

  ‘Truly, they’re as touchy as sopranos,’ he added, talking over her. ‘But you’d do me a great service if you agreed to sit – for an hour or two?’

  Connie, still embarrassed, only nodded. Brigstock rose and walked over to his work desk, returning with a little camp-stool and a wooden drawing board with ivory-coloured sheets of paper clipped against it. He took out a stubby pencil from his waistcoat pocket and examined its point.

  ‘You mean to – begin?’ she asked, startled.

  ‘If you have a moment.’

  She glanced at her watch. ‘I’m meeting a friend at half past four …’

  ‘I’ll be sure to let you go in good time. No, don’t get up – I’d like you just where you’re sitting.’ He had seated himself on the stool, and was now making a few preliminary marks. The cat, which had been skulking around the room since Connie arrived, now joined her on the sofa.

  ‘Maud,’ he said, ‘get off there, please.’ The cat ignored him, and curled up next to Connie. For the next half-hour Brigstock worked silently, his eyes shifting from his drawing board to Connie and back again. It had grown so warm that she briefly daydreamed of throwing off her clothes and disporting herself in the nude, but then his remark about liking her in clothes re-echoed within and made her cringe. She studied his lean, unshaven jaw and furrowed brow, then his long, bony hands; she wondered how they would feel on her skin. It occurred to her that Brigstock was the sort of man to whom women devoted themselves; he carried an air of sexual experience, but also of sexual competence – something quite different. He would perhaps pride himself on his ability to make a woman feel … whatever it was she was meant to feel. It frustrated her that she hadn’t even the language to describe it. She, who had spent her whole life reading romantic novels. Would he be surprised by her innocence? Probably not: he was not the surprisable type.

  Brigstock seemed to emerge from a trance. ‘So …’ he began, still focused on his board, ‘this friend you’re meeting. A young man?’

  Connie shook her head. ‘A young woman – we’ve been friends since school.’

  ‘How sweet.’

  ‘We’re joining the procession this afternoon.’

  ‘Procession – for what?’

  ‘An international procession of women suffragists. We start at the Embankment, and then march through town to the Albert Hall. You haven’t read about it?’ Brigstock shook his head, and Connie sighed with slight irritation. ‘I suppose you regard women’s suffrage as rather absurd.’

  ‘You assume a great deal about me, Miss Callaway, most of it erroneous. Suffrage does not seem to me at all absurd. I think that any measure intended to raise women from their present state of ignorance is to be encouraged.’

  ‘So you think women ignorant, then?’

  ‘The vast majority, yes. And men are to blame. They have kept women at a childish stage of development, and then make complaint that they are childish. We cannot hope for any kind of social progress until women are intellectually trained as men are. Why do you smile?’

  ‘Because I have never heard a man speak such common sense before. Indeed, I feel I should insist you march with us this afternoon. We have a common cause, after all.’

  Brigstock shook his head. ‘No, no. I don’t join movements, and I certainly don’t go marching. Besides, giving the vote to women is not necessarily to emancipate them. There will be many still sunk in drudgery, and just as many idling away their time until marriage offers.’

  ‘Marriage is sometimes the only means of escape a woman has.’

  ‘True – but what a disastrous basis on which to wed! If I made the laws no girl should be allowed to grow up without a profession, however rich her family. Then there would be no reason for them to mope and maunder in useless waiting. In the long term men would benefit from it, too – they would have wives with whom they could share a proper conversation and intellectual respect. And everything that a marriage of equals has to offer.’

  Such as a sexual relationship, Connie wanted to say, but did not dare. ‘My sister works in teaching, which she loathes. Her fiancé has advised her to give it up in anticipation of their marriage, and I assure you, she is delighted to comply.’

  ‘Teaching is a puzzler. Men become schoolteachers after solid preparation. Women enter the profession mainly because there is nothing else for them to do. I dare say your sister might have prospered in another line of work, but her choice was limited. Could not the same be said of yourself? Is it really your heart’s desire to work in a bookshop?’

  ‘I like it there,’
said Connie mildly. ‘But there are things I would much rather do.’

  ‘Such as?’

  A sad smile crept over her features. ‘You’ll laugh to hear it.’

  ‘Unlikely – given what you know of my views.’

  ‘Well, I had rather a serious illness when I was younger. I was in hospital for weeks – it felt like years at the time – but there was a surgeon there who was friendly to me. Much friendlier than the nurses. I remember being in his consulting room and always staring at a full-length diagram of the human anatomy, all the bones, the arteries and what have you. I became rather fascinated with it, and during the days and weeks of being confined I learned every single part. The surgeon, Mr Swain, was quite charmed by this, I recall, and joked that I’d soon be joining the Royal College of Surgeons, or some such. For years after I wondered if I could be a surgeon – it seemed to me so noble. Heroic, almost. But the commonest line of advice was that nursing would be the profession best suited to a girl …’

  Her voice tailed off. Brigstock, who had been listening intently, said, ‘Could you not have applied to a medical college?’

  ‘I did. And studied for a year at the London School of Medicine for Women. But in the autumn my father died, and we discovered that he had left his finances in some disorder. A living had to be earned, and so –’ She spread out her palms in a gesture of philosophical resignation.

  ‘That’s unfortunate,’ said Brigstock musingly. ‘I rather like the idea of you wielding a scapel. You don’t fear the sight of blood, then?’

  ‘No. Do you?’

  ‘Only my own,’ he chuckled, and took out his watch. ‘I suppose you ought to be getting along. There’s a tram that runs from here down to Trafalgar Square – mustn’t be late for your march.’

  Connie put out the cigarette she’d been smoking. ‘So I can’t persuade you to accompany us?’ she said archly.