The Choice Page 3

  “Pierre Tessier…” Walter spells out the words as if he’s uttering a curse. “Is he the fellow I saw with Moira in The Bird and Baby? Tall, blond…” He hesitates. “Handsome in a flamboyant kind of way?”

  “Very handsome. He’s a French aristocrat, thirty years old and exceedingly rich.” Lizzie stares at Walter’s much-washed collar and frayed cuffs. “He asked Moira to go on holiday with him. He told her she needed sunlight on her marvellous skin and wonderful French food. Moira didn’t wait to be asked twice… They left yesterday morning.”

  “Didn’t you try to stop her?” Walter feels as if the centre of his universe has been ripped away from underneath his feet.

  Lizzie digs her hands into her lace-trimmed pockets. “Of course. I said, ‘You’ve only known the man three minutes. You’d be mad to run off with him.’ But you know what Moira’s like when she wants something. Nothing stands in her way.” Lizzie’s hands flutter again to her hair. “Look… Mother and I have to finish a wedding dress and veil by Monday afternoon. The embroidery involves thousands of tiny pearls. Without Moira, we’ll need to work night and day. So if you don’t mind—”

  And she shuts the front door in his face.

  Walter turns away into the sun’s glare, feeling hot, sick and furious. Moira has betrayed him, vanished without a single word – no explanation, no apology, no decent goodbye. He hurls the cornflowers into the gutter and jumps on them, twisting his ankle and gasping with pain. Furiously he limps home, taking the stairs to his attic one at a time. His ankle screams. His legs creak, his knees knock, his teeth grind.

  He bends over, panting, and then looks around at his attic. It’s so shabby. How can he possibly compete with the blond, impeccably dressed, sun-tanned, yacht-owning Tessier?

  He begins to sob with self-pity. A genius he might be, but he sure lacks the money to prove it. Well – he straightens his back – now he’ll do something about it. He’s sick of being poor, of asking Henry for handouts and hardly ever having clean bed-linen.

  Biting his lip, he slides the painting of Moira from its easel, knowing he can’t bear to look at it again. But he’s determined to earn money from it. He wraps the canvas in a grubby sheet and carries the bundle downstairs. Propping it in his bike basket, he wheels it into town.

  A shop that sells ornate antique furniture stands on the corner of King Edward Street. Walter knows its owner, Graham Maynard. They’re regular drinking companions. If Graham likes a painting, he’ll buy it. As Walter walks and pushes, he works out how much money he’ll ask for it. Graham could have two more portraits by the summer’s end. After all, Walter is the Slade’s star pupil of the year. His work is fresh to the market place, a sound investment – one Graham will never regret.

  Walter leans his bike against the nearest wall. Carrying Moira’s portrait, dripping with sweat, angry, defiant and burning with ambition, he pushes his shabby fraying shoulder against Graham’s beautiful antique door – and starts his professional career.

  One Year Later

  Oxford, 1908

  Walter gathers up his sheaf of notes and crams on his Panama. He tells the semi-nude model she can relax, put her clothes on and go home.

  He looks forward to his three teaching afternoons a week in the spacious, well-lit room in the centre of Oxford, close to The Ruskin School of Drawing on Beaumont Street. He likes his groups of enthusiastic but mostly incompetent students who all think he’s a genius. He enjoys stooping towards them as they draw, guiding their hesitant pencils, showing them where they’re going wrong – and on rare occasions admiring their work.

  But nothing compares to standing behind his own canvas with his brushes and oil paints in his Walton Crescent house. Now he rents it on his own, working in his large ground-floor studio whenever the light is good, in blissful, concentrated solitude.

  Not that anyone could call him a recluse. Bridget, his plump and uncomplaining maid, arrives every morning to make him breakfast and luncheon, clean the house, and do his washing, shopping and any other chores. Walter also visits Henry in Wolvercote every Sunday for their usual walk, talk and luncheon. At the end of each working day, back aching, head throbbing, eyes burning, he flings down his brushes. He goes out to eat with his grubby chums, or to drink with his neighbours. He knows everyone in Oxford worth knowing. And if he’s in the mood, there are many elegant ladies, some of whom are also his models, who enjoy sharing his bed. They tell him he’s so handsome, great fun to be with, and such a naughty boy.

  After Graham had bought the portrait of Moira for more money than Walter had ever held before – which he’d stuffed with joy into his fraying leather wallet – he’d never looked back. Determined to prove his worth, his speed, and his dedicated brilliance, he accepts most commissions. He’s courteous and grateful to his clients, helpful to his students and never too drunk to walk home. When childish brawls break out in The Bird and Baby, Walter makes for the door, intent on keeping out of trouble, his reputation pristine.

  If he still dreams about Moira every night, hears her glorious voice in his head every morning, hopes to catch a glimpse of her on every Oxford street – well, that’s nobody’s business but his. He never talks about her to a living soul.

  Once a month, Henry brings Moira’s name into their desultory Sunday conversations, as if he’s testing the waters.

  “I’ve no idea where she is, Papa, let alone how she is or what she’s doing,” Walter says, turning his head away. He’d listen to Henry’s predictable “Thank God for that then!” and deliberately change the subject.

  One Saturday in spring, he comes face to face with Lizzie on St Giles, her arms full of cotton remnants. Holding his nerve, Walter merely tips his hat and says a cool, “Afternoon, Lizzie,” before moving on, even though he’s longing to ask, “What news of Moira?”

  How he longs to ask.

  He refuses to walk past Moira’s house and stare into its windows, as if he’s a lovelorn adolescent, even if in his heart that’s exactly how he feels.

  ***

  That afternoon, after class, Walter decides to take tea in the café in Oxford’s Covered Market. It’s a meal he rarely has time for at home, but one that always reminds him of his childhood, when toasted crumpets by the fire and sponge cakes topped with icing were the highlight of his day.

  He lingers over his fragrant pot of Lipton’s tea and munches on a slice of fruit cake. Then he buys a packet of Bells’s Three Nuns tobacco, a bottle of old Madeira and some Rowntree’s cocoa for Henry. He hesitates over a smart leather waistcoat but decides it is too hot to wear in summer weather and turns into the Winsor and Newton art-supplies shop where he always buys his equipment. He needs new brushes, and more of those wonderful fat tubes of oil paint: every colour he can name, from cobalt blue and buttercup yellow to sizzling aquamarine.

  Inside, the shop is cool and dim. It looks as if he’ll have it to himself: there seem to be no other customers. After his busy class and the bustling heat of the market, Walter draws a breath of relief. He takes off his Panama, runs a hand through his damp hair. Here he can browse, think about his current canvas and emerge with his purchases, refreshed and ready for work.

  Except that – wait a minute – he’s not alone. A woman stands at the far end of the shop. She’s talking to the sales assistant. That voice…Walter recognises it in an instant. He’d sail the stormy seas to hear it, climb the highest mountain, disappear down the darkest coalmine to have it in his ears.

  It’s Moira’s.

  Walter squints across the shop. Moira isn’t a floating mirage. She’s there, standing by the counter, wearing a tight-fitting lacy pale-lilac frock topped by an enormous purple hat that’s all frothy net and feathers.

  Walter walks towards her, his legs shaking, the beat of his heart barely able to keep up its wild race.

  “Thank you so much,” Moira says to the shop assistant. “I
f you could wrap these, I’ll take them straight home.”

  Walter stands beside her. He can smell the scent of cloves. Moira’s dark curls cling to the nape of her neck. He longs to touch her, to pull off the hat and let her hair tumble into his hand.

  “Moira?” he says. “I can hardly believe my eyes.”

  He takes Moira’s parcel from her, insisting he carry it, grateful he can feast his eyes on her, glad he doesn’t have his bicycle so he’s free to walk beside her. Buying new oil paints and brushes can wait. Everything else in the world can wait. Finally Walter is walking beside his beloved girl again…

  He’d forgotten how elegant she is, how she swings her hips as she moves, twisting her lovely sloping shoulders to avoid the crowds.

  But Moira has changed. There’s something different about her, although Walter can’t decide exactly what. Her face is fuller. Dark shadows are etched beneath her eyes. Her voice is deeper; its inflexions seem darkened by fatigue.

  “Tea?” Walter suggests. “A cool lemonade? Let me buy you a drink… It’s so wonderful to see you again.” He guides her into the café he’d left half an hour ago. “Where are you living? Are you…” He hardly dares to say the word ‘married’. “Lizzie told me you were on holiday… Is that fellow Tessier with you?”

  Moira flinches. “No, he isn’t,” she says tersely. “It didn’t work out.” She settles in her chair, smoothing her sleeves, adjusting her hat. “I’m back with Lizzie and Mrs Farrell. We wrote to each other every week. Where else should I be?”

  Walter’s heart fills with a joy so enormous that he wants to dance around the café, flinging his hat in the air, whooping with relief.

  He tries to control his voice. “I’m glad to hear it, Moira. It’s marvellous to have you back.”

  “Is it?” Moira’s eyes fill with tears. “How kind of you to be so forgiving, Walter, so tolerant. I thought you might not want to see me again. Lizzie keeps saying ‘I told you so’—”

  “Well, your disappearance was rather sudden.”

  “I know.” Moira pulls at the fingers of her cotton gloves. “I left everyone in the lurch. I’m sorry. I couldn’t help myself.” She gives Walter a straight look. “But I’ve learned my lesson and I’m back. I’ll never leave Oxford again.”

  Moira is surprisingly vague about what she’s actually done during their year apart. Walter presses her for details but she tells him little. She’d spent the previous summer in the south of France, and had lived for a time in Paris, in an apartment on the Avenue des Champs-Elysées.

  Then, abruptly, she clams up. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she says, raising her cup to her lips, but putting it down without drinking. “You don’t need to know… Tell me about yourself.”

  So Walter does, babbling about his work, his commissions, his teaching and his house, as if he only has one brief chance to impress Moira in case she vanishes again.

  They walk through the centre of Oxford and pause in Walton Street. Walter hands Moira her parcel.

  “Why the art paper and watercolours?”

  “I discovered I could draw and paint,” Moira says. “On holiday in the Mediterranean. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do, but never had the time. That is, not until…” She touches his arm. “Why don’t you come in and look at some of my work? I brought twelve watercolours home with me.” She hesitates. “And something else from France, too. Well, not something, someone. You might like to meet him.”

  “Oh?” Walter’s heart misses a beat. Is Moira telling him she left Oxford with one beau and returned with another? Will he have to face a rival so soon? Before he has even come to blissful terms that Moira’s back? Surely not… Please God not…

  He summons his wits, manages to say, “I should love to meet whoever is with you,” even though if it really is a rival he’ll want to punch him in the face.

  ***

  The living room at the front of Lizzie Farrell’s house is small and oppressively hot, as if it has captured the warmth of the afternoon and is holding onto it for dear life.

  A peculiar smell meets Walter’s nose: one he vaguely identifies as sour milk. But as the kitchen is at the back of the house and there are no signs of tea-cups or milk-jugs, he can’t imagine where it’s coming from.

  Lizzie sits on the narrow sofa, stitching a lace hem onto a linen skirt. She glances up at Moira, nods to Walter, says a brisk, “Good afternoon,” and responds to Moira’s signal by getting to her feet.

  “Would you excuse me? I have a dress to finish in the workshop.”

  Moira stands by the hearth, reaching up to remove her hat, patting her hair, and then stepping to one side. She gestures to a wooden crib, half hidden by her long skirt.

  “Here he is, Walter… The person I want you to meet. He’s in there, fast asleep. My baby son. He’s six weeks old.”

  Walter gasps and tries to swallow. The walls of the room seem to zoom in around his ears and away again, as if he’s mounted a swing at St Giles Fair and is being flung around on it. He slumps onto the nearest chair and then stands up again, his legs shaking.

  “Good God, Moira… That was quick work.”

  Moira flushes. “Yes.” A mixture of guilt and triumph, sadness and joy flit across her face. “Of course, Pierre and I, we never meant—”

  “No. I don’t suppose for a minute that you did.”

  “And giving birth… the pain was indescribable. I nearly died.” Moira bites her lip. The shadows beneath her eyes darken. She glances at the crib. “But now the baby’s here, having him lying there, a real tiny human being, complete with fingers and toes, I realise it’s the most wonderful thing that’s ever happened to me. The minute the midwife put him in my arms, I knew I’d have to bring him home to Oxford. I don’t care what anyone thinks of me—”

  “I’m exceedingly glad you did!”

  Walter hesitates. The implications of this astonishing revelation begin to dawn on him. Of course, part of him is deeply shocked. A child out of wedlock, and from Moira of all people. He’d never even imagined her as a mother, not with her self-possession, her confidence, her style. Then the situation hits him afresh. A baby… This could give Walter the upper hand. For the first time, Moira’s truly vulnerable, even at his mercy. What if… oh, God, what indescribable joy… what if he chooses to play her protector, their protector. What power he could have over them!

  “May I take a closer look?”

  “Of course.” Moira bends over the crib. “He may be illegitimate, but who gives a pinch of snuff about all that nonsense? I’ve never cared two hoots about what the mealy-mouthed gossips jabber on about. All I know is, my baby couldn’t be closer to my heart.”

  With a swift, practised movement, as if she’d been making it all her life, she lifts the blanket-wrapped bundle into her arms and swings it round for Walter to inspect.

  He looks down at a pudgy face, a small fist emerging from its blanket, a pink, toothless mouth opening ready to howl, damp wisps of blond curls – and two dark-blue eyes looking straight at him.

  Walter feels as if someone has pushed him off a steep cliff. He’s falling down a mountainside into a pit of instant, devoted and permanent adoration.

  “Oh, Moira!” he says. “He’s absolutely beautiful!”

  Tentatively, he reaches out a finger to touch the soft, round cheek. The howl stops instantly. The baby stares up at him with wondering eyes. Walter smiles.

  “His name’s Felix,” Moira says with all the pride in the world.

  Walter takes the bundle from her. For the first time in his life, he stands in the middle of a room with the wonderful weight of a baby in his arms.

  “That’s beautiful, too,” he says. “It’s from the Latin felicitas. It means happiness.”

  On the Home Front

  Oxford, 1908

  Walter races bac
k to Walton Crescent, his heart on fire, his head buzzing with plans. Bridget has left for the day. His house feels cool, quiet and empty: absurdly large for its solitary occupant. In contrast, the house on Walton Street is bursting at the seams with women, workshops, sewing machines. There’s barely room to swing a cat, let alone a bouncing baby.

  Walter dumps his tobacco and Henry’s gifts in the hall. He rushes up to the attic. It’ll make a marvellous nursery. There’s room for a crib, a nanny’s bed, space for the child to crawl on the floor, for new cupboards to fill with toys!

  He flings a window open. Warm air gusts into his face as he lets his imagination run riot. He’ll buy a copy of The Oxford Times, and look through the SITUATIONS WANTED AND VACANT columns for a qualified nanny: someone experienced and reliable, but with a sense of fun.

  On the first floor, Moira can have a bedroom of her own, all to herself, at least when she and the baby first arrive. This will, of course, be a crucial factor in her agreeing to live with him. He’ll insist they’re merely sharing the house as good companions. She can use a second bedroom as a studio, where she’ll be able to paint to her heart’s content. She’s shown him her canvases. They’re perfectly acceptable background art – fruit or flowers, on wooden tables in soft sunlight – the kind of paintings people hang on their walls and never bother to look at. But Moira takes them seriously – and Walter intends to encourage her.

  It’s extraordinary, Walter tells himself as he flops downstairs to the kitchen and searches in the pantry for bread and cheese. His house is ready for Moira and Felix, as if it’s been expecting them. He’ll smarten up the sitting room, buy a comfortable Chesterfield, ask a decorator friend to hang new wallpaper. Bridget can cook and clean for them all. He’ll increase her pay, of course, and she’ll be delighted.