Chapter One
Chapter One
The morning rush-hour at the Queen’s Way Station in Bayswater had reached its peak.
There was no room left at any of the round ticket barriers, and more and more people were coming in and out to wait front of the counters by the customer service. People who had their tickets wandered about between platforms in search of a spot they could squeeze into, or a place someone was about to leave, but there was no place. The roar of the shuffling feet, voices, and the rat-tat-tat of the tracks were like a swarm of hornets in a beehive.
Evelyn reached for a cigarette, remembered for the tenth time that she could not smoke in Mr. Waltman’s living-room, then took one anyway. Again and again, her eyes dropped to the stubborn, fascinating crowd out the window over the flame of her lighter. She smoked in slow, steady pulls, and a sudden feeling of tragedy, almost of regret, filled her.
‘I wish you’d stop, Evelyn,’ her father had often told her. And often, Evelyn tried to comply.
‘Father,’ Evelyn whispered carefully, the sibilant syllables comforting her.
She could see her father’s face, bony and yellowish like orange stone when the sunlight was on it, and the green eyes set deeply in their wide sockets. Her father’s long figure coming around a corner in their home, between the weathered easels by large window. She could see her father’s hands beginning to bind themselves with arthritis, veins pulsing in blue rivers under his skin, her father in a hundred places. She could see her father handing her the garnet-green dress wrapped in a thin cloth, not smiling, only presenting it to her directly, with hardly a word, on Evelyn’s sixteenth birthday.
Evelyn had kept the dress in a wooden drawer, for years after her father had passed away. The cloth had become yellow and stiff like an ancient parchment, and still she had not worn the dress. Finally, it was too little to wear.
She put out her cigarette in a teacup on the windowsill, because someone was coming into the room.
The maid peered her head from the door, grimaced at the smell of smoke, but only said something about Mr. Waltman being ready, and went on to the hallway.
Evelyn hurried down after her, past the tea room bustling with trays and smell of pastries, and up the stairs. The head-servant asked if she’d like to eat on her way, but she shook her head.
‘I hope the room is to your liking,’ the maid said, suddenly apologetic.
‘It’s wonderful.’ Evelyn smiled slowly. The drawing-room was well lit, with windows facing south, north and west, and there was a small balcony overlooking the busy street. It amused her and gave her a welcoming sense of seclusion. She took of her coat and ran her fingers through her hair, once on either side, and looked at the maid.
‘How long is he willing to see me today?’
Mr. Waltman was a round man. His brows hung heavily over his moon-shaped glasses that made larger or smaller, and there was a slight distaste of a downward slope on his mouth, Evelyn saw. He prompted the paintings on his desk, and looked intently at the work she showed him. She had brought only four paintings to the manor, her very best ones.
Mr. Waltman waited so long to speak, Evelyn though he was not going to.
‘All landscapes,’ Mr. Waltman muttered.
‘Is that bad?’ Evelyn leaned against the balcony sill, and wondered if he would know the scene. Behind her, a train whistle made a pale noise in the day, and disappeared. ‘I finally mixed the right colour for the sky.’
‘They are very attractive. You know that.’ The shadow of Mr. Waltman’s moustache deepened the bent creases on either side of his mouth, and he had dead little eyes that had darkish rims around their dark irises, like a doll’s blank and steady eyes. He peered at Evelyn behind one of the little suspended canvases. ‘Perhaps too much like your fathers.' He offered Evelyn a cigarette.
Evelyn said nothing, and took one. An inarticulate anxiety jammed itself in her throat, so for a moment she felt she could hardly breathe. She had an impulse to ask him what was it about her father’s paintings, but she didn’t. She leaned toward the match Mr. Waltman was holding for her, toward the plum hand with trimmed nails and sprinkling of white hair on its back.
‘You are not satisfied,’ she announced, eventually, admitting it. She drew from the cigarette, felt the first soothing warmth of the smoke spread through her, and saw a crease twitch in Mr. Waltman’s cheek.
‘Do you think I’m weak?’ she tried again.
‘You are about as weak as this match.’ Mr. Waltman had the match burning for a moment after he lighted his cigarette. ‘But given the right tools, you could burn this city to its core, couldn’t you?’
‘I understand,’ Evelyn said, but she didn’t.
‘Your talent, Evelyn, is undeniable. But I sense a strong trace of Frederick’s influence in your work. What I need is a spark that is uniquely yours.’ Mr. Waltman was watching her, and his dark eyes smiled, over the silver smoke from his cigarette. ‘Leave your best one here. Go home and paint another. Come back to see me in a month on your day off.’
‘Next month.’ Evelyn nodded, trying to look agreeable. She felt the knot in her throat grow painful to swallow.
Mr. Waltman then said something about being hungry, and this was the end of it, Evelyn supposed, and nothing was definite. A moment later she was at the door, putting on her coat.
The air was cool and sweet on her forehead, made a feathery sound like wings past her ears, and she felt she flew across the street and up the curbs. She caught the uptown train to Piccadilly, thrust herself through the crowds, walked Westward, down the alley to her apartment, and regretted not taking the car to the Waltman’s.
A young man ran past Evelyn down the street toward the park, looking over his shoulder, and stepped right into a puddle on the curb. He groaned, failing. ‘Come on, Marie. We will miss the wind!’ He was trying to get a kite up by running with it.
Evelyn watched the woman hurrying after him, put her head up and turn in all directions, as if she had lost something in the air. ‘There it is!’ She laughed, pointing. ‘Let me hold it!’
‘Wait till it gets higher!’ the man went on, winding the kite. He pumped its white string, fat as a worm, with long swings of his arm again, and the grey dome of the kite wagged from side to side, as if saying no, and the grey tail followed in loop.
Evelyn lifted her head and let the wind blow her hair back from her face. It was a sled kite, shaped like a stingray and spread its wings on sides, its slim frame notched and tied at the corners. The kite jerked up as if something had spring it, made a big arc, then steadied and stopped, like a painting of a stingray pasted on the thick white sky. Evelyn didn’t take her eyes from it. A bird flew under the kite. She stared at the triangle growing smaller and smaller, and felt the kite meant something, this particular kite, at this moment. She wished the spring would break. That it would take on the wind and go all the way up under the first tap of rain, until it was all but invisible beyond the fluted dome of the cathedral and clouds. The narrow ends of her coat flew crudely between her legs, but she didn’t bother to worry about it.
‘There is no more string!’
‘Let’s cut it! It’s more fun!’
Evelyn couldn’t believe she had heard it, but glancing down at the woman, she saw her reaching under the man’s overcoat for a pocket knife.
‘Don’t!’ the man yelled at her. ‘Have you lost your mind? We will never find it!’ His hands clung all the harder to the stick. He jerked it sideways, out of her reach, and two spots of red had come in his cheeks in anger.
‘Cut it! Cut it! It’s only a kite!’
Evelyn watched in vain, speechless with amazement, even for the dangling string in the man’s hand. The kite wobbled straight up, faster and faster, leaping crazily in the sky.
The man sprinted after it, shouting, waving his arms, and the woman leaping and bolting after him, lean as a cat, craning up at the rain.
Evelyn climbed her front steps and opened her mailbox. There were two or three letters in it, applications from students, one from an older client. When she looked into the sky again, the kite was gone, like something she had imagined, like one in a dream, and smiled in spite of herself.