Page 42 of The Christmas Retreat
Arwen
Letter from Arwen Madoc to Milly Vane, Thursday 12 June 1919
Dearest Milly,
Your letter arrived on Wednesday by the second post and I read it over my tea when we had finished work in the studio for the day, while Bea and Maudie were engaged in one of their endless discussions about what Bea should wear when she is finally admitted to Mark Prynne’s presence.
Your description of the situation of Lamorna, near cliffs and a beach, sounds perfect, as does the cottage – so quaint! I long to come and keep house for you and for us to work together, as we planned.
Although I am finding Cosmo surprisingly congenial company and appreciate and respect his opinion on my work, I miss the company of you and Edwin and our other friends, and the fun we used to have. I am hoping I might meet some of the other local artists when I finally have time to walk into St Melangell, even though both Cosmo and Maudie seem to think them below mynotice, like Gwendoline Sutler. I have now met her companion, Effie Parker, for she began to pose for us in the studio in her Morgana le Fay guise on Monday.
She has a slight Cockney accent, no airs and graces, and is very pretty, with a cloud of raven hair and bright, dark eyes.
She wore a long, light-blue tunic and mantle, which Mr Jones told me he had borrowed from the costumes kept for the annual Winter and Summer Solstice ceremonies, which sound like some kind of pageant or procession through the village and up the hill to Mab’s Grave. In one hand Effie held a glass orb – actually, a paperweight – into which she was intently gazing.
She chattered away cheerfully while the pose was set and we prepared to make our preliminary sketches before Cosmo and I began our paintings and Mr Jones his clay model. But when Cosmo requested her to keep silent, she gave me an impish wink before fixing her gaze back on the orb once more.
I was soon so absorbed in my painting that I lost track of time, until recalled by Effie needing to take a break.
During this, while the men were out of the room, I managed a little chat with her and she was very open and friendly, telling me that her father was a costermonger and her mother Italian, and she had met Gwendoline while modelling for other artists.
Since then, we have continued every day, working until teatime, and both my painting and Mr Jones’s model, which is very fine, are almost completed. Cosmo, who is working on a very large canvas, will need more time to finish the background of his. He suggested this morning that he might let me complete the background for him, but I assume he was joking.
Cosmo said I had captured the pose very well, which pleased me, and Mr Jones was also complimentary, saying that I painted very boldly and confidently for one so young.
We finished earlier than usual today, because Cosmo and his friend had business at the pottery, so I went out for some fresh air and scrambled down to the little pebble cove in the cliffs, now a favourite haunt of mine on my early morning walks. I love the smell of the fresh salt air and seaweed, and the shushing sound the waves make on the pebbles. How could I have lived so long without realizing how wonderful and ever-changing the sea and sky are and how so often you can’t see where one ends and the other begins!
On Tuesday, after we had stopped work, Mr Jones took me to see the pottery, which is in the converted stables and outbuildings about a hundred yards from the house. It has been much altered and extended, of course, with different areas for the various processes, and the kilns are currently being installed. He has a studio there too, where I saw some of his other models and designs. I think he and Cosmo hope to have all finished by early autumn, and Mr Jones intends to import some of the ladies who paint the porcelain in his family’s factory in the Midlands to train some of the local women in the art.
Mr Jones also said that my being at Triskelion had done his friend Cosmo good and he had not seen him so cheerful and talkative for a long time, for to his already reclusive nature had been added an increasing melancholy of late. This was flattering, but I said perhaps he should encourage Cosmo to go out in society more. But no, he has tried this and failed. I asked him about Cosmo’s late wife and he told me she had been very like Bea, but they had only been married a few months before she died giving birth to her daughter.
I wondered if he meant that she had been like Bea in character as well as beauty, which I could not imagine suiting Cosmo in the least, although, of course, many a man has lost his senses when hefell in love and regretted it afterwards. Mr Jones himself would be the same, were Bea to accept his suit.
My only other news is that Bea finally saw Mark Prynne yesterday, being allowed a short visit to the invalid.
She seemed horrified by the scarring to his face, but more upset by his lameness, for it would prevent him from dancing! She barely snatched a few private words with him, for his mother and Lily Trimble, whom the Prynnes seem to treat as a daughter of the house, were in the room the whole time, but during Bea’s visit he reiterated what he had said in his letters: that he was a hopeless invalid who longed only for the quiet of the country and she should put any thoughts of a future for them together out of her head.
Other than that, she complained that he talked only of his new passion for gardening and the plans he was sharing with Miss Stretton, the daughter of the house in Devon where he had been convalescing, who had awoken this interest in him. This might have been thought to make Bea jealous, but since her friends told her Miss Stretton was very plain and almost thirty, their friendship does not seem to trouble her.
I’m afraid she is just as shallow as I suspected and doesn’t really love the poor man at all. He is just her best prospect of leaving the country she loathes so much for the bright lights of the metropolis!
What he thinks, I have no idea. Perhaps he does love her and the sight of her prettiness has rekindled that love.
Maudie agreed, however, that the young man could talk of nothing but gardening and how much he had learned about the subject in Devon.
Mrs Prynne did not let them stay long, saying Mark must rest. I fear this is no longer a match made in heaven. The carefree and gaiety-loving young man who fell in love with Bea has been foreverchanged by his experiences in the war, as all our fighting men must have been, while she has not changed in the least and, moreover, I suspect her incapable of understanding this.
Your loving friend,
Arwen
13
Settling In
Feeling the need to be alone for a while after lunch, I retired to my cosy bedroom.
There I arranged my desk, laying out my paints and bottles of drawing ink around the table easel, before erecting the bigger easel and putting it in the window, then tightening the nuts as much as I could because the thing always tried to slowly close itself up, like a faulty umbrella.
