‘To my shift?’
‘No, all of it.’
‘You mean—’
‘Yes, all of it off.’
Odette stands stock still, suddenly unsure what to do with any of her limbs. She feels burningly hot. ‘Do I have to? Can’t I just leave my shift on, and you make it up?’
‘Make it up? Do you know how hard we had to fight as women artists to draw from life? This is about craft and skill and expression. How can we ever be taken seriously as artists if we do not do as all the greats do and study the human form?’
Odette wraps her arms around her chest. ‘I suppose. Maybe we could do it another time?’ It is all unreal. She cannot think. Her mind is a great empty white space, like some Arctic waste.
‘Don’t be prudish. It’s not anything I haven’t seen before; I looked after you as a baby, or have you forgotten I am your mother?’
Odette stares at her. There is a frantic light about Lydia’s face that she had thought was excitement, pleasure – now, with the gaunt hollows of her cheeks so pronounced and the sheen of sweat across her ashen forehead, Odette is struck again by the horror of her mother’s illness.
She is not well. She is badly ill.
Now may be all they have.
She cannot bear to disappoint her mother.
Odette unbuttons her shirtwaist and unfastens her skirt, folding them to place them on a chair. With her back to Lydia, she takes off her petticoat, loosens her corset, removes her stockings. And then her shift.
She is naked, and the air is colder than she thought. The studio is such a big place, high ceilinged and all glass and empty air.
Lydia gives her instructions on where and how to stand, and she does so, acutely aware of her breasts and her stomach and her hips. She is on display. Her body will be displayed in a painting. Perhaps there will be mezzotints or prints made. Perhaps the show will be a wild success and half of London will go. She thinks, wildly, of asking her mother to paint a different face. But speaking is impossible. She is only a collection of parts.
She is gone.
*
The birthday party brings all the usual crowd to the dining room that evening: Mr King, of course, and Eddie Rutherford, and the simpering Mr Wrexham, and a new libretto writer of whom her father considers himself patron, the earl of somewhere Odette can never remember, an old school friend of her father’s, who is an amateur philosopher, and many countless others who come teeming in when the gong is struck. Lydia is swaying a little from a glass or two of wine too many, playing the hostess well.
The meal is not to Odette’s taste at all: far too fussy and formal, complicated dishes that take a long time and taste of little.Fricandeau de veau à la Jardinièreandcapon à la Financière.It smacks of Claudine’s orders to the kitchen, and Odette swallows down any disappointment that no one who knows her better took charge. Cecilia catches her eye and gives her a commiserating look. A few gifts are presented – a new pen, a silk square, a delicate bottle of scent – while beneath the table, Cecilia keeps her hand on Odette’s thigh. Her father presents her with an academic diary for her first year at Cambridge and she strokes the soft leather of its cover with a bloom of hope. Her fatherdoesthink of her.
Then, the real entertainment starts.
The weather is still fine, so the party moves to the garden, and a few scratch recitals are given as more wine is passed around. Penelope makes a show of fanning herself, insisting she could not possibly be called on to recite, having been retired for so many years, but sure enough, a moment later, she is working her way through a soliloquy fromAs You Like It. Leo joins his light tenor voice with another guest’s for a duet of a music hall number about Maria Marten, murdered by her lover in the famous Red Barn. George eschews the limelight, watching his household, Odette thinks with pleasure, but she realises perhaps she does not understand him as well as she believed. Whatdoeshe want with all these hangers-on? Is he content with his talented wife, or does he feel overshadowed? It is strange, she felt so sure he thought as she thought, but it seems she has got everything round the wrong way.
Odette stays as close to Cecilia as she can risk, legs pressed together where they sit on a blanket, hands carefully apart. Even Claudine seems to be making something of the evening, holding court with a rotating cast of admirers to whom she dispenses bon mots and witticisms, as though she is mistress of the house and not her sister.
Abruptly, Odette notices that Lydia is not here.
‘Where’s my mother?’ she asks Cecilia, peering around. ‘Have you seen her?’
Panic thrums in Odette’s chest, and she is struck by the image of her mother collapsing, red blood splattering across her shoes.
But then Lydia arrives in a burst of colour, timed, somehow, to a flare in the music as she steps through the French windows.
‘Darlings. How dare you have fun without me.’
She is sly, tipsy, posing against the doorframe as though she is Sarah Bernhardt in a photograph card. Behind her are several boxes of fabric and props that she has dragged from the studio.
‘I think we can make a few good scenes together, don’t you?’
There is something like a cheer, and wine is pressed into Lydia’s hands, and she is ushered into the circle, the boxes pulled after her and outfits handed out.
