Amenable Women Read online

  The waiter hovered. She realised she was smiling and that she had drunk half the bottle of champagne. No woman, even if fluent in French, should drink more than half a bottle of champagne at one sitting if she is about to arrive in Gay Paree sans husband. Apart from anything of an indecorous nature that might take place, there were those cobbles. The area around Rosie’s apartment was full of them. If one went down, one might never get up again. With regret she offered the rest of the bottle to the pimply young waiter who – though he clearly found her odd to be sitting alone and smiling – served her kindly. ‘Oh, I like beer,’ he said.

  ‘Give it to your mother,’ said Flora, gesturing cheerfully at the bottle. ‘I expect she’d like it?’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, sadly. ‘She’ll be pleased. She doesn’t go out much. They’re divorced.’

  Flora made the right noise. Sympathetic, enquiring.

  ‘I wish she would go out, to be honest. She’s not best on her own, though. Not like you.’

  ‘Oh, me –’ said Flora smiling broadly. ‘I’m a widow. Still getting used to it.’ Her voice was too chirpy, the smile too broad, she knew. If it looked odd it must have sounded even odder. The waiter moved away, smiling uncertainly, which was understandable.

  Staring at her dark reflection in the speeding window she thought about children and what insidious bullies they were even in this enlightened age. Every single bit of parental behaviour was up for scrutiny: Hilary wanted her bereaved mother to wear black and do a Queen Victoria, and this young waiter wanted his dumped mother to go out all-night clubbing. The answer was very simple. Follow your heart. And lie. At least while the post-bra-burning generation tried to work out what it wanted from its mothers.

  Later as she looked out at the streets and the people and the Napoleonic grandeur of the city, Gay Paree, she lost a little of her confidence in the whole exercise. At least if Edward were in the cab with her he’d be worrying about the fare, or looking in his guidebook, or wondering if you could feasibly abseil the Eiffel Tower – but here she sat, hands folded neatly in her lap, eyes wide to all around her, wondering what – apart from making the acquaintance of Holbein’s portrait of Queen Anna she was going to do with herself for the next few solo days. It seemed there was a difference between being on your own when you were not really, and being truly alone. The confidence gap. Well, she would just have to learn to overcome it. And lovely Paris was as good a place as any for the attempt.

  That evening, at sundown, from Rosie’s small upstairs windows she looked down on those Parisian cobbles, up at the sky. Below her the people went in and out of the boulangerie and above her sat the higgledy-piggledy, ancient rooflines, glowing in the dying light with the shadows of imposing new buildings beyond. For the first time being alone meant something because, banal as it seemed, no one had telephoned to see that she had arrived safely. Hilary would not think of it, but Edward always rang. It was ritual. And once he had rung her the visit would properly begin. When asked why he rang, Edward said that he just wanted to know that she had arrived safely. Now Flora wondered, more to the point, if he had rung to see if she was safely where she was supposed to be and out of the way. Oh what a stain spreads with infidelity. She was rather glad she had never been tempted to try it. It was some small consolation to feel that she had behaved honourably. An Open Marriage, she thought, and never, ever realised it. Who was she trying to fool? Honour was no consolation at all. She wished, with all her heart, that she had attempted the seduction of Ewan Davies. Yes, she did. And when she got back she just might. Gay Paree and the residual champagne talking, obviously. Or maybe not.

  The next morning she sat at a familiar café table with her coffee and her croissant and her notes about Henry and Anna and Holbein and felt a great deal better. She had a purpose which justified her presence. She pictured herself, a woman in sensible black and dark green, greyish hair, unremarkable shape, specs on the end of her nose and deep into her papers. What Parisian would give her a second look?

  Reading about Henry’s fourth queen made her a little sad. The essential story was baldly unromantic. It seemed that Anna of Cleves was no fairytale princess.

  This foreign Queen’s feelings were not spared in her shortlived marriage to Henry VIII and the ensuing process to be rid of her. Henry and his advisers made it quite clear, and very publicly, that the Princess of Cleves was considered ugly, dull, devoid of any courtly skills and personally repugnant to the King. It was the King’s only attempt at an arranged, dynastic marriage and he was quite uncompromising in his displeasure. Political expediency meant that the lady could not be sent back to Cleves and so she continued to live in England, with the status of Sister to the King, First Lady at Court after the Queen and his heirs, Aunt to his children, until her death in 1557. She never married again.

  Well, thought Flora crisply, there are worse things than remaining single.

  The owner of the café came over and shook her hand. He had heard from her sister, he told her, about her unfortunate loss (sounded like an umbrella on a bus, she very nearly put up her hand to say, Oh it’s nothing) . . . She thanked him and said she was here to try to forget all about it. He nodded and agreed that that was good, very good. But when he asked where her sister was and she told him that Rosie was in Japan, he looked very anxious. How like Rosie not to say, ‘I’m ringing from Tokyo’ as if it were just down the road . . . This was not good, he told her, Japan. He called his wife. This is not good, she agreed. They spoke above her head as if she were a child and they immediately decided that he must escort her to some places that afternoon, she must not struggle around on her own, he would be her companion. Flora straightened her shoulders and said that she could not possibly allow him to do such a thing, it was kind, it was generous, it was thoughtful – but she would prefer – if they would understand – to be on her own.

  In the widowed state it seemed impossible to offend anyone what the widow wants the widow must have. In this case, if it was solitude, so be it. They looked both relieved and understanding. She was left alone to read through her pages and all that happened was that her bill was withheld – and that was kind and acceptable. She thanked them and tucked her papers back into her bag. What was the point of all the theories and descriptions – culled, she supposed, from a handful of art luminaries – without seeing the real thing? The Louvre was no more than twenty minutes’ walk away, the weather was fine, and the world – or at any rate this little bit of it – belonged to her for the day. She would investigate the portrait of Anna of Cleves and then she would have steak-frites while she also digested what she had seen. Accordingly she set off.

  Back in Hurcott Ducis Pauline Pike, who had not been out of Pond Cottage for twenty-four hours being now enraged and mortified as well as sad and mourning her lover, decided to dry her eyes and face the world. She had not enjoyed the interview with Flora Chapman. Her idea of Flora was a dull woman with none of the flirtatious skills and prettiness that would make her any kind of superior – yet in that interview Pauline had not felt – quite – on top. Edward had told her that Flora would not mind very much about them, but she had rather liked to think that she would. Frankly it was a bit insulting to think that their affair was not important enough to hide so she chose not to believe him. She was wrong. And that, Pauline Pike found, was very definitely galling. ‘We are not exactly star-crossed lovers, my sweet,’ Edward once joked. But Pauline liked to think that they were. He was so poetic, Edward. Starcrossed lovers was a lovely way to talk about what they had been up to. Edward was so unhappy, so very unhappy, when he first came into her life – though he denied it of course – and she liked believing that because of her he had died happy.

  Pauline, meanwhile, had pity on herself. Poor Pauline, she thought. Poor, poor Pauline, knowing now that Flora knew. She wondered, despite Flora’s suggestion of discretion, how many others knew, too, and rather hoped they did. It would give her a bit of status – or what she called oomph. Pity for herself cheered her up enou
gh to go out to town, now that it was Saturday, and do a little bit of shopping on her little feet. The bank had been very understanding when she said that a dear friend had died and she somehow could not shake off the sorrow but she would probably go back on Monday.

  In truth the other young women at the bank gave knowing nods and winks after Pauline’s call, while the young man at the bank looked at the knowing nods and winks in puzzlement. When Andy Cooper finally asked June Pepper – who – like Andy – lived in Hurcott Ducis, ‘Why are you going all girlie like that?’ June Pepper – who rather hoped to get married to a bank manager one day and who thought Andy might make the grade – told him. ‘It’s no dear friend,’ she whispered, tickling his ear with her soft breath as she did so. ‘It’s that Mrs Chapman’s husband. From Lodge Cottage. They were an item. And then he died.’

  Andy Cooper longed to ask if it was the wife who had killed him (he read a lot of Patricia Highsmith). He had a feeling that he remembered the man bouncing out of a balloon in the sky and it seemed possible that it was the wife up there with him who had bounced him out. But Andy did not ask June about this. If there was one thing he was aware of besides her warm breath in his ear and her not insubstantial breasts coming quite close – it was that she could run rings round him. Rings. ‘Well,’ he said, which seemed safe.

  ‘Yes,’ said June. ‘And what’s more – nobody knows.’

  Pauline Pike walked delicately over the cobbles of the ancient market square. She was on her way to the greengrocer’s shop to buy lemons and ginger root to perk herself up and try to overcome the heartache. Pauline’s next-door neighbour, Gideon Wells, who had a way of throwing his arms around and wearing pastels that did not altogether smack of masculinity, said as she left home that morning that Pauline had the very thing to help her growing in her own borders at Pond Cottage, little pansy faces (he said this quite unselfconsciously, she noted) called Heartsease. But she did not trust the information. Frankly, having seen death so closely and so recently she did not fancy poisoning herself. Well, not unless she meant it, at any rate. Probably, she thought, Flora Chapman would like that, like her to put an end to it all so that the secret remained safe. Bad enough, it was, that her lover should die (and on film) but that his wife had to go and come round to Pond Cottage fiddling with her posy pot and making her feel small and wicked and dirty was shameless, really. A wife like that – separate bedrooms – should hide away for her carelessness and not go stalking the one woman who had managed to give her suffering husband so much pleasure in his last years. That is how Pauline Pike saw it and that is how she settled it in her head as she made her dainty, grieving way over the cobbles.

  Flora Chapman was in Paris, not she, and that hurt. In fact, it made her see red. Having a married lover was quite a challenge and she had expected some kind of reward for it but no – nothing – gone, gone, gone. And then the woman – whom she and Edward giggled over calling Bun-Face – had the cheek to say that she had a lover anyway. Or the possibility. She did not deserve one, she did not, she did not. And Pauline Pike, who worried away at the information as if it were an itchy scab, did. Who could the saint of a professional man with the wife be?

  She muttered gone, gone, gone to the cobbled street as she bent her head and wended her way and she remembered how Edward had described the streets of Paris – cobbled like these and a melancholy stole over Pauline’s little heart at the thought that she would never, now, visit that place of romance with her beloved, ever. It was no comfort, absolutely no comfort, to know that neither would widow Chapman. She might be in Paris now, but she was in Paris alone. Pauline had never quite believed that Edward’s wife could take or leave him. In Pauline’s experience, wives always bothered about their husbands once Pauline was about. If Flora Chapman did not then she’d be the first. Usually one word on the subject of divorce and they were either off back to their wives or their indifferent wives suddenly turned tiger. Edward had taken the issue of the mention of divorce several steps further and gone to meet his Maker. Pauline wept again. Rage, frustration, righteousness coursed through her veins. She was a woman wronged and with no way of revenging it. She, alone, was left to suffer in secret without the decency of neighbourly comfort in her loss. Who, she wondered, again, was Flora’s heart’s desire? Who was a man of standing and suffering in his marriage? Who?

  As she tottered towards the Naked Banana Pauline experienced a sudden warm moment of memory. The morning, not so long ago, that Eddy had arrived at her place when he should have been checking some fencing damage up at Pope Deeping. When he saw her he was like a young boy again. All energetic and carefree and – well – desperate. Desperation in a man was always good. He was wearing the yellow jumper she had knitted him – three ply – took ages especially as it must be knitted in secret from him – and he looked – as she said – Oh my . . . They sat side by side on the settee and he announced his grand plan – they would go away to the Game Fair together. They would have three days and two nights together and he would hold her arm in public and all that sort of thing she craved. It was the happiest time of her life, bar none, that Game Fair. Edward wore that yellow jumper every day with a nice checked tie and he looked so squire-like in every way that whenever possible she dropped him a curtsy. How he laughed. She was smiling as she thought of it, that yellow jumper, for he had loved it, loved the fact that it was her little hands that had made it for him – his wife was probably useless at that sort of thing though Edward did say she could sew . . .

  Still smiling, she looked up from the street and her little tapping feet that dealt with the cobbles so delicately and saw – Oh, but it couldn’t, it couldn’t – another man – or was it Edward himself – walking along with his hands in his pockets, a cheerful air about him and for all the world looking just as Edward had looked at the Game Fair – checked shirt, yellow jumper (she could recognise the extra deep ribbing), checked cap and all. Her eyes, never her strongest feature, went blurry. He seemed to be smiling at her as he strode onwards. She put her hand up – gave a tentative little wave – got into a tremendous visionary muddle – and fainted.

  It was a secret no longer, Pauline Pike’s secret love. She, being scooped up by the owner of the Naked Banana and dragged seemingly lifeless into his shop, came to and firmly told all. By then Ewan Davies had melted away. It was such a relief to tell people – and also it stopped them from thinking she was mad. Eventually, the knowledge would find its way into the bank where Andy Cooper would be astonished to hear it all over again from Becky Quinn whose mother ran the riding school. And later from Arnold Wilkes, High Class Butcher.

  And even later still from his own mother, Molly. Whence, for she did his cleaning, it found its way that very day into the household of Ewan Davies via the somewhat muddled recounting of Dilly. But Ewan, who was attending a golf club meeting that morning and had stopped in town to pick something up from the office when the ghastliness happened – on returning home late (managed to get a round in as well) got the gist and shook his head and said to himself that it was no wonder Flora had started to drink and how odd it was that Edward’s inamorata had fainted at his feet. Him of all people. Well, life was odd, and he should know. Poor Flora. He knew a thing or two about public humiliation. He must do what he could. He told Dilly they were going out for a drink and she, delighted, staggered off to put her coat on.

  ‘First decent thing you’ve suggested for years,’ she said as they walked towards the Priory Arms.

  He raised his chin and refused to take the bait. This was no time for marital pain. His friend – and client – Flora needed his help.

  As he feared, the Priory Arms was agog with the news. He bought Dilly and himself one drink each and talked to a few people at the bar. So did Dilly. When he finally got her home he made several phone calls to other people in the village. He would do what he could. At least being away for a few days might see Flora over the worst. Dilly, meanwhile, sprawled beautifully in the sitting room, said that he was showing mor
e life that night than he had for many a year. In her déshabillé and quite untouchable she then fell happily asleep on the sofa.

  In the flat above the Naked Banana the saviour of Pauline Pike sat sipping tea. ‘It was that solicitor was wearing it,’ he said to his wife. ‘She thought it was a ghost but I told her – it was no ghost – it was the solicitor. And you know what she said then?’

  His wife, also sipping tea, said that she did not.

  ‘She said – all smiling again and smoothing down her hair like a cat that had the cream – she said, Well, he looked very nice in it, don’t you think? – Not like a saint of a man at all.’ These, then, are the events that unfolded in Hurcott Ducis on the day that Flora Chapman made her way towards the portrait of Anna of Cleves.

  part two

  6

  Meeting a Reject

  On her way to the Louvre Flora read Wilfred Clement’s extracted 1958 lecture on the Northern tradition in portraiture: Holbein, the English Face and the Anna portrait. The art critic obviously admired both the picture and the painter. Flora thought that Holbein sounded interestingly masculine for an artist – creative sensitivity was presumably not required to be displayed at Henry VIII’s Court – and she wondered – a little wistfully – how he might have painted her.

  Hans Holbein was born in 1497 in Augsburg, a thriving, important part of what is today called Germany. It was a good place for a painter to begin his trade. He was six years younger than his greatest patron, Henry VIII, but like the King he was a man of two sides – the sensitive artist and the man who liked to ride and wrestle and live well. Both had broken noses from their love of sport, both were ambitious and brilliant; Henry liked Holbein as a man and revered him as an artist. He came to the Tudor Court on various occasions and for various periods of time between the years 1526 and his death in 1543. He was a man who could turn his hand to anything – from designing gold or silver cups and jewellery to creating arbours for masques – but his greatest achievement, the work for which Henry and his court and the world thereafter held him in the highest esteem, was his portrait painting. He had the eyes and skills of a genius and used both as no artist had done before.