Madonna and Child
IT WAS THE FIRST REALLY COLD DAY OF THE YEAR and the track leading down to the sea was beginning to be covered by fallen leaves. This was Cora’s favourite part of the ride: going down the narrow pathway through the wood where the undergrowth was so dense that she could see only a few feet ahead, and then about halfway down the rumble would begin and she began to smell the salty tang of the sea air through the rotting smell of leaf mould. The wood ended and then she was on the cliff overlooking the cove. She thought that it looked like a lady’s drawstring purse, a weighted oval with an opening through a break in the cliffs into the sea. The mist that had lain over Lulworth all week had finally been blown away. Today the sea beyond the cliffs was dark blue and here in the shallower waters of the cove it was almost turquoise. The sun had turned the sandstone cliffs a warm gold. But for the bite in the air, it might have been summer. There were sheep grazing on the fields surrounding her, their white shapes echoed by the stray white clouds in the sky. Cora loved the scale of the cove, the coastline was so charming here compared to the rocky outcrops and pounding surf of Rhode Island. She looked at her pocket watch – eleven o’clock. She should turn back, Ivo might return tonight and she wanted to make sure that everything was ready.
After their week at Conyers they had come back to Lulworth, but Ivo had almost immediately been called away to his estates in Ireland. There had been a rent strike and Ivo did not trust his steward to handle it alone. She had wanted to go with him but there had been Fenian activity in the area and he had declared it too dangerous. The last seven days were the longest they had been apart since their marriage six months ago in March. Ivo had suggested, almost seriously, that she might go back to Conyers while he was away but Cora had chosen to stay at Lulworth. She had wanted to get to know the house, to make it hers. When Ivo was there she was always conscious of his relationship with the house; every inch of it, she knew, had meaning for him. On their return from their honeymoon, Cora had been shown the Duchess’s rooms, a set of exquisitely panelled rooms on the south side of the house facing the sea. She had been delighted with their proportions, their lightness and the distant glimpse of a triangle of sea through the shouldered hills. She had at once decided to make these rooms her own and had ordered new furnishings, jettisoning the red velvets and beaded fringes that the Double Duchess had favoured in favour of a Liberty fabric with birds and pomegranates. The first night after the rooms were finished, Cora had got ready for bed and waited for Ivo. He had been late, it was past eleven, and when he came in, instead of embracing her, he had skirted round the room, touching the curtains and the walls like a dog getting to know unfamiliar territory. In the end she had taken his hand and led him to the bed but there he had been restless and angular and had left her in the small hours. He had even smelt different, there had been a sour undercurrent to his normally warm sweet skin. This behaviour had gone on for three nights, with Ivo behaving as normal during the day but turning into a twitchy facsimile of himself at night. Cora had tried to talk to him about it but he had been evasive, so the next night she had gone to his room, the Duke’s room, and Ivo had fallen on her before she had even closed the door. Clearly no amount of new curtains could erase his mother’s presence from her rooms. After that she only used the Duchess’s apartments during the day when Ivo was out on the estate.
Cora tilted her face to the sun and closed her eyes. It was not warm, thanks to the south-westerly wind, but she enjoyed the light burning through her eyelids. The sun was the thing she missed most; at home she had always taken it for granted but here every sunny day felt like a blessing. She opened her eyes and looked out to sea and saw a flash of white in the waters just beyond the mouth of the cove. She kicked Lincoln’s flanks and trotted along the cliff for a closer look. As she grew nearer she saw that it was a pod of dolphins lacing through the waves. There were about five of them moving in unison as they spiralled through the water. Cora had seen individual dolphins before in Newport but this was the first time she had seen a pod and she found herself smiling till her cheeks ached.
Usually, about halfway back to the house, Lincoln would prick up his ears and she would let him canter home. But today she did not let him have his head but reined him in tightly as they walked sedately back up the hill. Lincoln snorted in protest but Cora did not relent. Normally she liked to be shaken up but today she wanted to prolong her state of dreamy content. As she approached the stables a groom ran out to take Lincoln.
‘Good morning, Your Grace.’ The groom touched his cap and led Lincoln over to the mounting block.
‘What a beautiful day! I saw some dolphins in the bay. Is that common round here?’
The groom scratched his head. ‘Well, I’z bin here close on seventeen years and I ain’t never seen no dolphins, Your Grace.’ The groom clicked his teeth and held out his hand to Cora as she dismounted. ‘They say as dolphins are lucky, and Lulworth ain’t had much luck lately, though I reckon that’s changin’.’ And the groom smiled, showing a row of broken brown teeth, his eyes moving across her body.
Cora’s understanding lagged behind as she struggled to decipher the man’s thick Dorset accent, but then she felt herself flushing. What did he mean? How could he possibly know? She had only begun to suspect herself these last few days. No one else knew, except possibly Bertha, and she was unlikely to start gossiping to the grooms. She threw down her whip and gloves and stalked off towards the house. As she reached the garden entrance, the butler appeared with a telegram on a silver salver. She tore it open.
‘It’s from the Duke, Bugler, to say he will be here for dinner. Have they finished in the chapel?’
‘Yes, Your Grace. I think the men are only waiting for you to come and approve their work.’
‘Have you seen it? Do you think the Duke will be pleased?’
Bugler looked at her from under his hooded eyelids. He had worked at the house for thirty years, starting as a footman, then under-butler, and he had been in his present position for the last ten years. He had many duties: the upkeep of the family silver, the maintenance of the cellar, upholding good behaviour in the servants’ hall, even the conveying of bad news (it had fallen to him to tell Duchess Fanny about her older son’s death) but he was not paid to have opinions. The new American Duchess should know better than to ask.
‘I really couldn’t say, Your Grace.’
‘But you saw the old one, do you think this one is as good?’
‘They both seem to be of the same size, Your Grace.’
Cora gave up. ‘Tell them I will be up there directly I’ve changed.’
Bugler noted with disapproval that the new Duchess ran up the stairs to her rooms, holding her habit so high that he could see her legs nearly to her knees. Cora was running because she had felt an overwhelming desire to be sick. If only she could reach her room first. But her door was a good hundred yards away. To her horror she found herself on her knees retching on the carpet in the corridor. She prayed that Bugler had not seen. Feeling clammy and shaky, she got to her room and rang for Bertha.
Before Bertha reached the Duchess, the mess on the carpet had been cleaned up by Mabel the housemaid, who had seen the whole episode. By the time that Bertha had sponged her mistress’s temples with eau de cologne and had helped her into her morning dress, and the cook had sent up some dry toast and weak tea, the news of the Duchess’s indisposition had spread through the servants’ hall, much to the jubilation of the second footman, who had drawn May in the downstairs sweepstake on the birth of an heir.
Aloysius and Jerome, the Duke’s dogs, followed Cora as she walked up the path to the chapel. It had been nearly a year since she had first seen the chapel. Every time she had entered it since then, she had felt reproached by the rectangle of light paint above the altar. In Venice she had written to Duveen Brothers, the art dealers who her mother used, and asked them if they could trace the painting of St Cecilia that had hung there. In July she had received a letter telling her that the painting had been sold to one Cyrus Guest of San Francisco, who was not minded to sell. Undaunted, Cora had asked the dealers to find another painting by Rubens that would fit in the alcove above the altar in the Lulworth chapel. Two weeks later Duveen wrote to say that there was a Madonna and Child by the same painter being offered for sale by an impoverished Irish earl. Was the Duchess interested in viewing it? Cora decided to buy the painting on the spot. A Rubens was a Rubens, after all. The price had been higher than she had expected but she had found that reassuring.
She told the dogs to stay on the steps of the chapel. They did not mind her as they minded Ivo, so she went into the chapel quickly, shutting the door behind her so they would not follow her in. At first she could not see anything, but then a shaft of light broke through the windows in the cupola and fell directly on the altar and lit up the painting. The Madonna, who was wearing an orange robe, was clutching the infant Jesus to her with one arm and looking at an illuminated book that rested in the other. They were in a bower of pale pink roses, and the book that Mary was looking at lay on an intricately patterned Persian carpet. Cora was struck by the picture’s tenderness, the way that Jesus, blond and naked as a cherub, was resting his head so trustingly on his mother’s breast. She could not help noticing that the Madonna had hair of the same chestnut hue as her own.
A voice behind her said, ‘They say that Rubens used his wife and baby son as models for this picture. I think that gives the picture its intimacy.’
Cora turned to see a small dark man in a very white collar, smiling at her.
‘Ambrose Fox, Your Grace. Mr Duveen asked me to come down with the painting to make sure you were happy with it.’
Cora held out her hand and after a moment’s hesitation the man shook it.
‘Tell him it is perfect. I think it looks very well here in the chapel, don’t you, Mr Fox?’
‘Yes indeed, Your Grace. It looks quite settled.’
‘I am so relieved. You see it is a surprise for the Duke. There was another Rubens here before, but it was sold and I wanted to replace it. The other one was of St Cecilia but I think the Madonna and Child is just as good, perhaps even more appropriate. I wonder, have you seen the other picture? I never did but if you have you could tell me whether this one is as good.’
Cora knew she was talking too much to someone whose status was not clear – was he someone you invited for lunch or sent to the housekeeper? But she felt overwhelmed by the painting. She had not known when she had agreed to buy it how apt it was. She had never had much to do with children, but there was something about the way that the baby’s hand was spread out so possessively on his mother’s breast that made her realise, for the first time since her suspicions began, where she was heading. Would her baby lean on her like that, claiming her for his own?
‘The St Cecilia is generally regarded as one of Ruben’s finest works but I would have thought it a little imposing for a chapel of this size. I think that this work is of the right scale and, dare I say it, the right mood for this place.’
Cora looked at him sharply. Was he suggesting anything? But Mr Fox gazed back at her unblinkingly. His confidence impressed her, she would ask him for lunch. There were, after all, plenty of other pictures that needed replacing.
The dogs were waiting for her outside, and they began to bark when they saw the stranger with her.
‘Please don’t mind them, Mr Fox, they will calm down once they realise you are with me.’
‘These are the famous Lulworth lurchers I suppose, I recognise them from the Van Dyck portrait of the first Duke. Splendid creatures.’ But in spite of his confident words, Cora couldn’t help noticing that Mr Fox looked extremely nervous. She batted the dogs away with her hand and motioned for him to follow her back to the house.
Ivo looked surprised when Cora suggested they visit the chapel after dinner.
‘Of course, if you want to go, but wouldn’t you rather go in daylight? There is no gaslight in the chapel.’
‘Oh, but there are candles, it will look much prettier.’ Cora had already asked Bugler to have the candles lit.
She rushed through dinner, twitching impatiently as Ivo cleared his plate. At last he put his napkin down and she stood up.
‘Shall we go now? Up to the chapel?’
‘Can’t it wait until I have had a cigarette?’
‘I really don’t think so, Ivo. Please, darling.’
With exaggerated slowness, Ivo got up and started to move towards the door. Cora was by now in a frenzy of impatience. She took him by the arm and pulled him through the door.
‘You American girls are such hoydens,’ he said, laughing at her vehemence, but he took her arm and they walked up the path. He teased her all the way about being an American bully until they turned the corner and he saw that the chapel was lit up inside. Cora felt his hand tense around her arm.
‘Is there something wrong?’
‘No, it’s just that I haven’t seen the chapel lit up at night for a while. The last time was when Guy was laid out here.’
Another evening Cora would have shuddered at her thoughtlessness. But tonight she was too full of the revelations to come to pay complete attention to his mood. As they reached the chapel doors she stopped.
‘I have something to show you, but I want it to be a surprise, so close your eyes.’
‘Do you have the Holy Father in there, or the Holy Grail? Really, Cora, we will make a Catholic of you yet.’
‘Ssh, stop talking, just shut your eyes and come with me.’
At last Ivo closed his eyes and she guided him into the chapel.
The Madonna and Child glowed in the candlelight. Cora felt she would burst with her own cleverness; she was making Lulworth magnificent again.
‘You can open your eyes now.’ She turned away from the painting to look at Ivo’s face.
He opened his eyes and looked around him puzzled, and then he saw the Rubens and went very still, gazing at the painting with an expression that Cora could not read. She waited for his set face to crack open with surprise and pleasure. When he did nothing but stare, she thought perhaps he did not know what it was.
‘It’s a Rubens, you know, like the one you had before.’
Still Ivo was silent. She put a hand on his arm, but he did not move. He was gazing at the painting, his face completely motionless. The muscles of his arm were hard under her hand. Part of her knew to be silent but another piece of her wanted to scream. This was her surprise and he was not playing his part.
She willed herself to wait, watching a rivulet of wax run down the side of one of the candles. Finally when its warmth had gone and the drop had stiffened, she spoke again.
‘I did try to get the other Rubens, the one that was here before, the one of St Cecilia, but the man who bought it was American—’
‘And he didn’t need the money.’ Ivo’s voice was flat, this was a statement not a question. Could it be that he was angry because she had not been able to buy the original painting?
‘Of course I haven’t seen the painting of St Cecilia but Mr Fox, who brought the painting down from Duveen’s, has, and he thought that the Madonna was actually better suited to this position.’
‘It is a fine picture.’ Ivo’s voice was still colourless.
‘Rubens used his wife and baby as his models.’ She moved closer to the painting. Every time she looked at it she saw more in it. There was a basket of fruit in the lower right-hand corner, with grapes and plums. Some of the grapes had been eaten. Behind the Virgin’s right shoulder there were trees opening on to a rural landscape that looked green and cool. Underneath her orange robe the Virgin was wearing a sleeve of damask pink. She wondered if she might have a dress made up in those very colours when she had her baby.
‘Look at the baby’s hand, Ivo. See how tightly he is holding on to his mother.’ She reached out her own hand to him, willing him to come forward.
But Ivo did not move. ‘I know the painting.’
Cora was astonished. ‘Really? But how? Duveen’s said it had never been on the market before.’
‘No, it hasn’t.’
‘So how did you…’ Cora trailed off when she realised where Ivo must have seen the picture.
‘It was in the Kinsale family for two hundred years. It used to hang in their chapel.’ Ivo’s voice was expressionless.
‘I didn’t realise you knew the owners.’ Cora began to feel cold. She persisted. ‘But does it matter, Ivo? They needed the money. I gave them a good price and now you have a Rubens over the altar again.’
Ivo raised his arms. For a moment Cora thought he was going to embrace her, but then he dropped them and was once more still.
‘Ivo, what’s wrong? I only did this because I thought it would make you happy. You minded about the other picture, I know you did.’ Cora ground her shoe into the stone floor in frustration.
‘Of course I minded! But Cora, you can’t make everything better just by buying a new picture. The Lulworth Rubens had been here since the Fourth Duke. When I came into the chapel I used to think of all my ancestors who had knelt in front of the same painting saying the same words. Now St Cecilia is in California and we have a lovely new Rubens courtesy of my very rich wife.’ He looked at her face and shook his head. ‘You don’t understand what I’m saying, do you? And why should you? My scruples must seem absurd to you.’
‘Not absurd, just puzzling. I thought you wanted my money for what it could do here.’ She peered at him, trying to read his face.
‘No Cora, I needed it. There’s a difference, but I see you don’t understand.’
It was true she didn’t understand. She had bought the picture to show him how she would make Lulworth great again, but instead of pleasing him she had offended him instead. How could she have misjudged him so badly? She realised that she really knew very little about the man she had married.
At last he walked over to her and looked down at her. She put her arms on his shoulders and after a pause he reciprocated by putting his arms round her waist.
‘Oh Cora, can you believe that there are some things in life that can’t be bought?’
She looked up at his dark face and noticed the light creases that ran between his nose and chin and the flicker in his eyelid. She was relieved that whatever had made him so sombre was passing. She had felt for a moment, there, that he was a stranger.
‘Of course I know that. Would you like to hear about one of them?’ She smiled, having won the conversation back on to her territory.
He looked at her closely and his glance moved down her body. ‘Do you mean that you are…’
‘Yes I do – well, I’m almost certain. I was sick this morning, and my corsets won’t lace properly.’ She put her hands to her still tiny waist.
He took a step away from her as if he had been pushed backwards by the force of her news, put a hand on one of the pews to steady himself, but missed it and almost lost his balance. Cora looked at him bemused, it was unlike Ivo to be clumsy, but then he straightened up and his face re-formed into a smile.
‘I am glad. It was too melancholy being the last of the Maltravers. Have you seen a doctor?’
‘Not yet, I wanted to tell you first, although some of the servants seem to have guessed.’
‘They always know everything first. Do you have any idea when it will…’
‘May. Well, at least I think so. I can’t be sure until I have seen the doctor.’
‘My clever girl.’ He bent his head and kissed her on the forehead.
‘So you see, I had my reasons for buying a Madonna and Child,’ she said a little reproachfully.
Ivo hung his head in mock supplication. ‘Of course you did. Everything you do is perfectly reasonable. I have been churlish, Cora, and you must forgive me. We do things differently, that’s all.’
He put his arms round her neck and pulled her to him. She remembered the first time they had kissed, here in the chapel. He had been unexpected then, the speed of his proposal, the certainty of his embrace; and now, did she really know him better? Physically perhaps, when they kissed now it was a communication, not an exploration, but there was a part of him that was still opaque. But she dismissed this from her mind. Whatever he thought about the Rubens, there could be no doubt that he wanted an heir.
It was days later before she allowed herself to think about the scene in the chapel again. She thought of his cold, still face and the way he had not looked at her but only at the picture. Afterwards it was all right, although Cora could not help noticing that now when he entered the chapel he never looked straight ahead; he would enter, dip his fingers in the stoup of holy water and walk to the altar with his head bowed. It was only when he approached the altar to take Communion that he would raise his head and look at the picture, as if it was his own particular cross to bear.