Barbara Vine - The Minotaur

That made him laugh. He patted her shoulder, a bare shoulder in that sleeveless dress, and she shivered. We went into the house, one bedsitter and a kitchen that doubled as a bathroom downstairs, furnished by a landlord not generous with domestic comforts and occupied by a man who never washed dishes or put anything away. A ladder went up through a square hole in the floor above to the studio proper.

‘I can't bring them down,’ he said. ‘Can you climb up in those shoes?’

‘I can take them off.’

Ella managed to sound as if she would take anything off, strip herself naked if necessary, for the sake of seeing his pictures. She took off her shoes and suddenly ceased to be a tall woman, barely reaching to his shoulder. He seemed to like that, for, smiling down at her, he said, ‘Here, let me carry those.’

Why she needed shoes upstairs was not clear. Perhaps he wanted to demonstrate his prowess at shinning up a steep ladder with widely spaced steps, a pair of white strappy sandals hanging from two of his fingers. He glanced at them, smiling, as some women look at babies. By this time it seemed to me that seeing the paintings themselves, ostensibly the purpose of our visit, had become irrelevant. But none of us was going to say this. We stepped off the ladder into a big room with a ceiling window, a broad sheet of glass that I suppose gave a north light. I was obviously not in need of help to step off the ladder but Felix put his hand out to Ella, who took it tentatively yet with a kind of gravity, so that it seemed symbolic of a much more significant contract than an accepted offer to prevent her falling.

Canvases were everywhere, some turned away towards the wall, some in a transition stage, and there were stacks of hardboard sheets for painting on with acrylic. His finished work he brought out as one canvas after another and placed them on the two easels. Studying his face, I hoped to see there some sign of emotion at thus displaying to comparative strangers what must surely be the most important achievements of his life. But it had become as blank as John Cosway's and I wondered if this assumption of a deadpan glaze was his way of defending himself against Ella's ‘strict honesty’ and what he saw as my indifference. Within seconds expression had returned and he was turning on Ella his habitual highwayman's grin.

‘I think they're lovely!’ Whether she was as enraptured as she sounded or putting on a very good show of it, I don't know. ‘I love this one.’ She had chosen an abstract – but they were all abstracts – in blues, greys and the pink of her dress. ‘Wouldn't it look marvellous in a room with a blue carpet, Kerstin? What is it called?’

‘Ocular Orgasm,’ he said.

No one talked much about orgasms in those days. ‘Climax’ was the word more often used if it was used at all. Ella surprised me, and him too perhaps, by saying coolly, ‘Oh, yes, we had to read Reich while I was in college.’

We went down and Ella put on her shoes, Felix holding one after the other up to her on the palm of his hand like Prince Charming with the glass slipper. Leaving, I went down the path ahead of her, she lingering to be whispered to by him, and when she caught me up, flushed and giggling, she told me he had asked her out.

‘I'm to have a drink with him in the Rose on Monday evening, Kerstin.’

That was nice, I said, while wondering if he ever took women anywhere but to the nearest pub. Not many village locals served anything more than a pie or a sandwich then and I thought Ella might have to wait a long time before she got taken out to dinner.

‘I was afraid he'd ask you ,’ she said confidingly. ‘You're quite good-looking really and much younger than I am.’

‘There was no chance of that,’ I said.

‘What do you think Winifred will say? She's got so pompous since she landed Eric.’ My impatience with her changed abruptly to pity as she said, ‘I'll have to stop biting my nails. I'll have to grow them.’ She looked into my face. ‘I'd like to get married, Kerstin. Do you think it's awful of me to confess that? Women aren't supposed to.’

I said that of course I didn't think it was awful. Most women wanted to be married some time or other.

‘Do they? Winifred always used to say she didn't care – till Eric asked her, that is.’

There is something frightening about being aware that a friend is heading in the completely wrong direction and knowing too that warning them will be useless and only offend. I knew, as surely as I knew any fact, that Felix Dunsford would never marry Ella, that he would probably not marry for years and when he did his choice would be to marry money. It was impossible for me to say this to her, a woman thirteen years older than myself. Even if I could she would have ignored it and been angry, as people always are when warned off someone else.

I drew her that evening. She too had a whole page to herself in her pink striped dress and the shoes Felix had carried upstairs for her. My sketch pleased me and I thought I was getting better at it. I resisted a sudden impulse to draw a balloon coming out of her mouth. I couldn't think of anything for her to say.

11

Hoping to see more of the Dunsford drama unfold, I decided to go to church in the morning. Several surprises awaited me. The geode was back on the table where I had first seen it, though Ella had apparently lost heart when it came to restoring the watercolours. In the hallway I found Mrs Cosway with Winifred, her shapeless trousers and jumper changed for a pinstriped suit and a small felt hat.

‘You're coming to church, are you, Kerstin? It's just as well Ida says she will take care of John then, isn't it?’

Mrs Cosway had a way of making blameless, even virtuous, behaviour sound self-indulgent. ‘I'll stay here if you like,’ I said. I had too little to do in this house as it was and had left her to accompany John on the previous day. But it was she who had told me to go with Ella and she who in the usual course of things never went to church. ‘I really don't have to go.’

‘No, no. You must go if you want to. Ida has volunteered.’

She said it with a sigh, as if my destination was a nightclub. Because she was with us we had to go in the car and as a result got to church very early. Ella had maintained her elegance, though the torturous sandals had been abandoned. We walked around the churchyard, looking at tombs. It was a warm sunny day and the flowers people had placed on relatives' graves were wilting in the heat. The others stopped in front of one on which a pink marble slab was engraved with the name John Henry Cosway and the dates 1830–1907. I was told that he was the discoverer of the geode but no one said anything about his being the founder of the labyrinth library.

Eric arrived in a rush, his cassock billowing and his face shiny with sweat. He paused to kiss Winifred on the cheek and I noticed that she wiped her face afterwards on her handkerchief, smearing it with brown and pink make-up. Her hair newly washed and glossy, her nails painted a silvery pink – to prevent further biting? – Ella watched her sister with a small superior smile.

As it happened, Felix failed to turn up. Events too intensely anticipated often fail to come off. Probably he felt he had exhausted the possibilities of church. Of the only pretty women he had encountered there, one was engaged and he had already begun his onslaught on the other. Dr Lombard arrived instead. He came in soon after we did. I was sitting in the aisle seat, Winifred next to me, Ella next to her and Mrs Cosway at the end. Perhaps they had arranged things that way for Dr Lombard to slip in next to his friend. A whispered conversation began between them, neither of them being among those who dropped to their knees for silent prayer, and when the service began they remained seated, their heads bowed and their eyes closed. On our way out, presumably because we were inside a place of worship, Dr Lombard told me that wedding cakes were shaped in pillared tiers like St Bride's, Fleet Street, because, long ago, a baker had made one which was a small replica of the church for a marriage reception and created a precedent.