I

THE WIND PUSHED and forced them along, great savage gusts of it, stinging their ears, penetrating their scarves, whipping their uncovered hair into fierce tangles, slicing through their coats and chilling their small bodies so completely they were crying and gasping for breath before ever they reached the steps. Gwen fell. She tried to take the steps two at a time but the wind unbalanced her and she tripped, clutching in vain at the iron handrail. Thornton hauled her up, half dragging her to the door where Winifred, lifted up there by Gus, already cowered. Gus had set her down, and stood with his back to the door, his eyes closed, his arms spread wide to welcome the wind, and a smile on his face.

All four of them, gathered together at last, hammered on the big solid door, thumping it with their fists, rattling the letter-box and yelling to be let in. The door swung violently back, the weight of the wood for once unequal to the powerful thrust of the gale force wind. Closing it, as soon as they were safely inside the hall, took their combined strength. Eluned had not stayed to help. The children collapsed on the tiled floor, pulling at their outdoor garments, removing their boots, which were still thickly caked with mud and under no circumstances to be worn in the rest of the house. Winifred lined the boots up, taking pleasure in the task. On stockinged feet, they pattered down the stairs into the kitchen, eager for the hot milk awaiting them. Thornton and Gus drank greedily, and even Winifred sipped hers quickly. Gwen held her mug tightly, wanting its outer warmth on her hands, but not its contents. One mouthful was enough. The rest she would give to the cat, taking care that Eluned (who would report this to her father) did not see.

Slowly, mug carried carefully, she left the others and went back up the stairs to the hall, and then up the next flight and into her room, where Mudge awaited her, expecting the milk. She emptied her mug into his dish, and he lapped the milk up without looking at her. Closing the door, and sitting on the floor with her back to it, she watched him. He was said to be an ugly cat, the runt of the last litter, but she saw in the dull grey of his coat and the white-lined sharpness of his ears something unusual that stirred her. He was her cat, unloved by others and all the more precious because of it. But he did not like to be fondled or petted. They communicated through staring, at a distance, into each other’s eyes, and by listening for each other’s slightest movement. They did this now, when he’d finished the milk. There were sounds outside the room, of feet approaching. Gwen braced herself. It was Winifred’s room too, but if she pushed back hard enough against the door, Winifred would not, three years younger than she was, be able to open it. She would run complaining to their mother, and Gwen would gain more time.

But the footsteps ran past the door, heavy and hurried. Not Winifred’s, then, but Gus’s. She was safe a while yet. She smiled at Mudge, who turned disdainfully and jumped onto the window seat. She did not join him. Here, on the floor, against the door, the room looked different. The window loomed above the window seat, seeming twice the size she knew it to be. Interested, she followed the shape of it with her eye, measuring it for length and breadth. She wished there were no curtains framing it. The curtains were of dark red plush, thick and heavy, hanging from a brass rail all the way to the floor. She hated them, detested too the cushions covered with the same material on the window seat. Underneath there was wood which she loved to touch, the raised grain of it satisfying to her fingers. She was sitting on wood now. There was a patterned carpet on the floor but it left surrounds of wood on each side. These floorboards, stained dark, were full of splinters but she liked the feel of them and never chose to sit on the carpet. Its swirls of colour and its cloying woolly thickness offended her. So did the wardrobe, gigantic from where she was sitting, seeing herself reflected in its oval mirror. It dwarfed everything in the room. At night-time, waking from dreams, it sometimes seemed to her that its mahogany sides ran with blood.

I am here, but not here, she thought, staring at herself. There is my head, and my hair, untidy as a rag doll’s, and there is my body in its green dress, limp and still, and there are my legs, sticking rudely out. It is me, but not me. And this room is not mine, it has nothing to do with me. I do not inhabit it. It is just a place in which I have been put. I can rise out of it whenever I want. So she rose, first just a little way, enough to hover over the head she had just left, and then higher, until she broke through the ceiling and was in Gus’s room, and then higher still and saw their house below, its roof gleaming in the rain. Then she came back down, satisfied. For the moment. Mudge turned and looked at her. He knew what she had been doing.

Reluctantly, she got up and went over to the window seat, where he allowed her to join him. It still poured with rain, the wind still howled. It was a mad March storm, sweeping in from the sea. They should not have been out in it. Their father, when he came home, and was told by Eluned about their escapade, would be angry. No one was to cause trouble in the house. Trouble, of any sort, upset their mother, and she must not be upset, ever. Mother’s legs hurt, and so did her neck, and her back. She moaned when she moved, and bit her lip. She had stopped drawing and painting and playing the piano, and now she had to have her meat cut up for her because her fingers had no strength. Gwen stared at them at mealtimes. Her mother’s fingers appeared bent and there were strange lumps on the knuckles. She had tried to draw them but they did not look right. Gus had tried too, and was more successful, but he had hidden his drawing, not wanting their mother to see. He showed her instead a drawing of her face, sweet and smiling when she was at rest on the chaise longue. Hands were hard to do and attaching them to arms harder still.

Her mother was upstairs, in bed, though it was only three in the afternoon. Winifred would have crept up to be with her. She would have crawled under the eiderdown and snuggled up close, and Mother would be cuddling her and stroking her hair and kissing it. Whenever Gwen went into her mother’s bedroom, she stood at the end of the bed, silent and anxious. ‘Come to me!’ her mother would say, and hold out her arms, but though Gwen obediently moved from the foot to the side of the bed, she could not do what Winifred did. She perched on top of the covers, and her mother put her arm round her waist and squeezed her. It felt awkward, and soon she was released. Inside, there would be a swelling of something she feared, a rising pressure of panic which made her hurry out of the room before something happened which she would be unable to control. She did not know what she would do. She might scream or cry or shake so hard that she would frighten her mother. So she left the room.

It was always a relief. The bedroom stifled her and she disliked it even more than she disliked her own. It was so packed with furniture, so overcrowded, and there was a smell which made her feel peculiar, a mixture of the scent her mother used, stephanotis, and the embrocation she rubbed into her limbs. The window was rarely opened, the room rarely aired. She had tried to draw this bedroom but the paper was not large enough to fit in more than half. She had drawn the window, liking the way it sloped inwards, and the view through it of the slate rooftops, but could not work out how to draw the bed and the chest of drawers and the linen box and the dressing table and the wardrobe and the nursing chair – it was too much, it made her dizzy. Her mother had looked at it and smiled and said the wallpaper was well done and the carving on the bedposts excellently rendered. She had said Gwen was ambitious but must learn to walk before she ran, and she had set her to colour in outlines of children playing on the beach, which she had drawn herself, for Gwen and Gus.

Her mother’s paintings hung in the drawing room. They were admired by all who saw them for the first time. ‘Oh, how pretty!’ people said, especially of ‘Oranges and Lemons’, a picture of children playing that game. Gwen could see this was true. Her mother drew figures well. The colours were vivid. There was life in the painting and yet it did not stay in her head. She had stood staring at it for a long time when no one else was in the room and then turned her back and all that was in her mind’s eye was a vague impression of dresses and arms. Something was missing but she did not know what it was. She had asked Gus. He had said he did not know what she meant. She knew that he did but that either he could not say or he did not want to tell her.

Below, she heard the front door open and close. Their father was home from his office. The house seemed to breathe differently. Still sitting on the window seat, Gwen listened, raising her head like Mudge, stretching her neck as he stretched his. She must not move, must not betray her presence. The light, never strong on such a day, was fading. She liked the dimness, it made the room friendlier, as its bulging furniture was half lost in the gloom. She heard her father’s voice below, and the striking of the grandfather clock, and then his footsteps, slow and measured on the stairs. He was going to see her mother. He would send Winifred away and spend half an hour with his wife, alone, and then they would be called to high tea where they would sit silently, eating and drinking. Their father would ask only the occasional question, and Thornton would reply. If their walk had been reported, there would be a lecture. Gus would have to say where they had been, and why. He would tell the truth. So long as he did not mention the Gypsies, it would not matter. They would all say they were sorry.

Winifred looked round the door. ‘Why are you in the dark, Gwen?’ she whispered. Gwen did not reply. She got up from from the window seat and followed Winifred down the stairs to the nursery where Gus was sprawled on the floor in front of the fire, drawing, and Thornton was turning over the pages of his atlas. ‘Mama is going away,’ Winifred said, ‘I heard Papa say so.’ They all looked at her. She was pleased to be important and smiled at them. ‘Nothing to smile about,’ Gus said, ‘the aunts will come again.’ Thornton groaned and slammed his atlas shut. Gwen said nothing. It was always happening. Their mother would be too ill to get out of bed and then, when she seemed a little better, and had come downstairs sometimes, she went away and the aunts came and everything changed, and there was nothing that could be done about it.

They waited at the table for their father to tell them what Winifred had already told them but he said nothing until the meal was over and then he cleared his throat. ‘Two pieces of information for you to digest while you digest your food,’ he said. ‘One, your Mama is going away for the sake of her health. Two, Aunt Rosina and Aunt Leah will come to be with you. You must all be obedient.’ None of them said anything. Gwen wanted to cry but if she wept in front of her father he would want to know why and he would keep her at the table to explain what she felt did not need to be explained. She bent her head and concentrated on her plate, tracing the flowery design over and over, forcing her eyes to follow the outline of the pink roses and up the green stems and round and round the prettily painted leaves decorating the rim. Her father was saying something else. ‘When your Mama returns, we will go to Broad Haven.’

This news helped. Gwen saw herself at once in her own tiny room there, at the very top of the house, bare except for its truckle bed and the mat on the floor and the stool in the corner. Her mother had wanted her to share with Winifred, as she did at home in Victoria Place, but she had begged and pleaded to be allowed to be by herself at Broad Haven. The room was like a cell, Thornton said, and neither he nor Gus envied her it. She had never been in a cell. But a prison cell would surely have little or no light and her attic room was full of it. She could lie on the bed at night and look up at the moon and the stars through the uncovered skylight, and in the morning the racing clouds, flashes of white, woke her. Winifred’s room, and the boys’ room, had views of the sea, but she did not care. Views of the sky excited her. She had tried to draw the sky, seen through the skylight, but nothing came of it.

*

Yesterday had been market day in Haverfordwest. The streets and squares of the town had been full of activity, thronged with cattle and pigs herded by the drovers and with strong, tall Welsh women carrying creels of oysters on their broad backs. But what had fascinated Gwen and Gus were the Gypsies, great gangs of them, taking the town over, acting like kings and queens in spite of their raggedness. Their encampment was outside the town but Gus had vowed he knew the way to it and she had agreed to let him take her there, though she had not quite believed he would want to do something so dangerous when the time came. But he was determined, and had woken her, and she could not let him go alone. They stole out of the house soon after dawn, using the side door which was the easiest to open, with no big bolts on it like the front and back doors. The single key turned smoothly, and was never taken out of the lock. It led into a narrow, covered passage which they crept along, knowing that the window above was Eluned’s and that she was a light sleeper (or so she claimed). Another door opened into the garden, and then they could run through the bushes down to the hedge and the wooden gate in the middle of it. This was locked, but it was easy to climb over. Gwen tore her dress slightly on a nail, but cheerful Aunt Leah (whom the children called Lily) did not fuss about such things, and Aunt Rosina (known by them as Rose) who did, would never notice because her eyesight was not so good.

Gus knew where to go. They had an hour. If they were back by six, they could slip in the way they had slipped out and neither Eluned nor the aunts would ever know. Even if discovered, they could claim to have wanted to see if there were mushrooms ready in the field opposite. Gus was so very young but his daring astonished her. Gwen was not afraid of the Gypsies but she would never have approached an encampment, or been bold enough to talk to them. It worried her that she was older than Gus and ought to be more responsible and that she should have forbidden him to go where he went instead of agreeing to accompany him. She knew that their father feared that they might be kidnapped by the Gypsies, especially Winifred, though Gus had no fear. He said he would like to be kidnapped and live the life of a Gypsy.

She did not think that she would like it. There was no order, so far as she could tell from spying on them with Gus, and no privacy. But she longed to look inside a caravan, though she did not see how this could be safely managed. She would never go near to one, and would not allow Gus to do so. She had told him she would scream if he left her side. All they were going to do this morning, all she would permit, was to observe the Gypsies from a distance, securely hidden in the long grass. There would be much to see. Today the Gypsies would move on. They would hitch their carts and caravans to their ponies and horses and move away. Their fires would be put out, and their pots and pans packed up and all this would be entertaining enough. It was their clothes that fascinated Gwen most, the startling colours, the voluminous skirts, the rich mixture of textures, so many fabrics thrown carelessly, triumphantly, together. She longed to dress like them, despairing of her sensible attire. Aunt Rose said the dress of Gypsies was vulgar and loud. When Gwen ventured to express the opinion that, on the contrary, it was colourful, and cheerful, a half-hour lecture on the sin of vanity followed.

The sun had risen, a red glow spreading low on the horizon, and the mist, though still dense elsewhere, was lifting from the fields outside the town. They hurried along the lanes, making for the woods on the slope of the hill. For a small boy, Gus had an unerring sense of direction. The path by the River Cleddau was narrow and often muddy but today, after the long hot spell, it was dry most of the way. She could see the dark bulk of the castle looming out of the rising mist across the grey tidal flats on the other side of the river. Gus did not pause to check that she was following but rushed along, his footsteps loud slaps in the silence. The path ended abruptly. To enter the wood they had to ford the river over stepping stones. Gwen skipped from one stone to another without wetting her feet, but Gus slipped and soaked his right boot, another thing that would have to be explained later. In the wood the undergrowth was thick with bramble bushes, but Gus knew the path. She followed him closely, glad that he now kept stopping and turning, finger to his lips. He was being cautions, and it struck her that in spite of his bravado he was as frightened as she was. Then they saw and smelled smoke. Gus halted, gesturing that she should turn with him to the right, and take another half-overgrown track. She wondered how he had come to find it, so far from the walks they had all taken together with their father. But now they had emerged on top of a small hill, and below them was the Gypsy encampment. The noise rising up from all the activity was tremendous, the shouting and yelling, the cries of the horses, the screams of babies, the clattering and crashing of goods being loaded onto carts. They lay on their stomachs and watched without speaking. The biggest, most decorated caravan was directly in line with Gwen’s vision. She was looking down on to the top of it, but the window at the side was propped open with a cane, and she could just see into the caravan’s bottom. There was a blanket, red and white, thrown over something, and yellow cushions with tassels, and a glimpse of a table top with a blue teapot on it. She imagined the rest and tried to draw herself into that space, but she was baffled – she could not fit herself into it.

They were off. Mounted horses led the procession of carts and caravans, pulled slowly by older, heavier horses. Children ran alongside and so did the dogs, howling and barking and jumping. The silence they left behind was eerie. Suddenly, Gwen could hear birds singing and the cracking of twigs all around. She got up. ‘Come on,’ she said, touching Gus gently with her foot. He still lay prone. She prodded him again, and he rose, his face a scowl. This time, she led the way, remembering it perfectly, but he was slow, and he dawdled. She had no means of knowing the time but she feared it must be nearly time for Eluned to go into the kitchen and she did not want to have to face her. But Gus did not care. He was in a dream, away with the Gypsies. The thought of home made him miserable. Their mother had been away a long time. Gwen was miserable, too, but she would not care to show it. It did not do to show her feelings. Crying brought unwelcome attention. She wanted to hide, to find her room at Broad Haven and lock herself into it.

At the gate in the hedge, she waited for Gus. His head was down, but he was coming along a little more quickly. They tiptoed through the garden. Gwen noticed her father’s curtains were still drawn. So were all the others in the house so it could not be six o’clock yet. On the stairs, she paused, waiting for Gus, and squeezed his hand. He squeezed back. Softly, she crept into the bedroom she shared with Winifred and got into bed, fully clothed. In a short while, the household would come to life. She knew all the sounds off by heart, though the order varied. Sometimes Aunt Rose sang her hymns as she got up, sometimes she did not. Sometimes both aunts waited until Father had breakfasted and left for the office before emerging themselves. Today, none of the sounds were right. A faint click downstairs told her Eluned was up, but none of the other usual sounds followed. She lay there, alert. There was whispering on the landing above. Who? The aunts never whispered. Her father, to one of the aunts? He never whispered either, never. She sat up. More whispers, this time passing her door. Then a gentle knock. ‘Gwendoline? You are to dress, and dress Winifred, and come downstairs. Your father wishes to see everyone.’

She got up and drew open the curtains on the bright August day. She helped her sister to dress and brushed her hair as best she could. She heard her brothers jumping down the stairs and a loud ‘Sssh!’ from Aunt Lily. Her heart began to beat a little rapidly. She put her hand over the place where the beating was and held it there. Winifred looked up at her anxiously, and she tried to smile. Hand in hand they descended. Eluned and Gwenda and Josiah were standing in the hall, side by side. Aunt Lily emerged from the morning room and beckoned to them. Thornton and Gus were already there, standing awkwardly in front of their father, who had his back to the fireplace. He stood very still and erect, gazing far off over the heads of the boys. Then he told them. Afterwards, barely pausing, but touching Winifred’s hair as he passed, he walked into the hall and repeated the news. Then he went up the stairs, steadily, not holding on to the banister. They heard his bedroom door close. Winifred was weeping and Aunt Rose went to her and tried to embrace her but she wanted only Gwen. Gwen let out a loud ‘Oh!’, almost a shout, and Gus echoed it louder, and called out, ‘Mama! Mama is dead!’ and began to run round the room hitting things, and Aunt Rose could not stop him. He ran out into the hall and the other children followed him, crying and laughing at the same time, and he yelled over and over that Mama was dead and they laughed hysterically and sobbed and clutched each other. The aunts and the servants did not know what to do.

All day, curtains and blinds were pulled tight shut, and the aunts sorted out sombre clothing for them. Mama was dead. How? Gwen wanted to know. When? Where? And did this mean they would not go to Broad Haven? Gus drew, all day. He covered white page after white page with mysterious crosses drawn in thick black charcoal. Gwen longed to be outside, anywhere. Inside, the walls pressed in on her and the ceilings lowered towards her and the doors came to meet her. She felt she would burst. She had to shut her eyes tight and rise out of the house and hover above. It was so exhausting and frightening.

‘Gwendoline has not wept a single tear,’ she heard Aunt Lily say to their father.

*

They were going to leave Haverfordwest and move to Tenby. No reason was given. Eluned was going with them, and Gwenda, who helped her. Gwen heard Eluned tell Aunt Rose that she would give it a try but did not know if she would take to Tenby. Gwen felt superior. She had been to Tenby many times, with her mother. She remembered the bay, and the beach with the bathing huts on it, and the palm trees. She felt glad to be going there, away from the house to which Mother would never return. It hurt so much to look into her bedroom and see Mother lying there and know she was not really there at all, that it was only her imagination. The room was empty. Her father had moved out of it. He had taken his clothes and moved to the bedroom next to the boys’, and no one went into that other room any more. Except for Gwen. She did not put the light on, or open the curtains, but stood with her back to the door, and looked. The room was all shadows, merging into each other, streaming across the quilt on the bed, an army of them. Half-closing her eyes, she made sinister figures out of them. They were frightening but that suited her mood. Being frightened was preferable to aching with misery.

They all had to help to pack. The aunts had tried to organise the packing before they themselves left, but they were too distressed, and too concerned with their own departure, to succeed in getting the children to empty their drawers and cupboards and put the contents in trunks. Gwen had been surprised the aunts were not coming to Tenby, and had not understood why. It was, she thought, something to do with her father. Did he dislike his sisters-in-law? It was impossible to tell who or what her father liked. He did not talk to them, unless to give orders, and he had said nothing about the aunts, except that they had done their duty and he was grateful. Aunt Rose’s face, when he said that, in front of them all, was strange. Gwen did not know whether she had seen anger or contempt there, or perhaps only pain. There was no point in thinking about it. There was no point in thinking about a great many things, but she could not help brooding.

It was exciting taking the Tenby road out of Haverfordwest. They had all wondered if they would cry when the door of No. 7 was shut for the last time, but nobody did, and nobody looked back. ‘Where are we going?’ Winifred whispered. Tenby meant nothing to her. She was only five, and had never been there. ‘Beside the sea,’ Gwen said, feeling that was all she needed to know. Beside the sea. But when they got to Tenby, glimpsing the tawny sails of the fishing smacks, they found that their new home was not exactly beside the sea. It was not one of the tall yellow houses above the harbour but was up a dreary side street off the Esplanade, one in a row. The paint was peeling off the window frames and it had a shuttered, dingy look. No one said anything. They were afraid to offend their father by expressing their dismay. Silently, they entered the house which seemed dark and crowded with mahogany furniture. It was a tall house, with a basement and three floors and attics above. ‘Soon we will be settled,’ their father announced, but there seemed no comfort in his words. Gwen hardly dared to climb the stairs behind her father. On and on he went, never turning to look at her and Winifred, never speaking. ‘Wait,’ was all he said, when they reached the top landing. He opened the doors to the three attics, looked in them, and then gestured that the girls should enter the middle one.

There was a lot to be thankful for. Gwen kept telling herself that. For a start, there was light, two skylights without blinds. And the walls, though papered, had bland, creamy-coloured flowers wandering across a pale yellow background. There was cracked and horrid linoleum on the floor, but the two rag rugs, one beside each bed, were pretty. There was a small chest of drawers, and above it a painting in a gilt frame. It was of a boy wearing a red velvet suit. He was standing with his hands in his pockets, one foot resting on a dog. Gwen shuddered. Her father noticed, and to her surprise said, ‘You may take it down.’ He took it down for her and carried it away. The nail it had hung on looked odd above the blank square below. She would draw something herself to hang there.

The first night was hard. Nothing felt right, and they all longed for the morning when their father would go to the office and they could escape onto the beach. But he did not go. When Gus asked at what time he would be leaving he said he would not be going to an office again, ever. He would work at home. The news appalled them. They stared at him. They could not work it out. Father always went to the office. He had impressed upon them many times how hard he worked, how necessary it was for him to work to cater for their many needs. What would happen now? ‘You will go to school,’ he told them. ‘It is being arranged. Until then, we will take walks.’ So they put coats on and followed him out, and he walked ahead, as he always did, his carriage rigidly upright, his nose in the air, and they half-ran to keep up. At least they were outside and nothing was so bad. The sun shone, the sky was nearly all blue. Once they got to the Esplanade the sight of the sea lifted their spirits. ‘Breathe deeply, in, out,’ their father said, and they stood in a line and did what he said, in, out, many times. Down on the beach, where they were then permitted to go, they ran away from him, Gus leading, shouting and yelling and chasing the seagulls. The tide was out and there were patches of hard sand where Gus drew pictures with a stick he picked up. Gwen and Winifred looked for shells, collecting them to take home, and Thornton gathered up seaweed and popped it. All this time, their father stood where they had left him, watching, but there was something unusually patient about him. He did not bother them.

*

There were caves under the crumbling town walls, dangerous places where the boys went. Gus had told Gwen about them, how dark they were, how damp to the touch the rocky sides felt, how strange the smell of putrid sea water. The boys took candles into the caves and lit them and frightened each other with the shadows they cast. Gus said he would take her one day, but not Winifred, who would be sure to scream. Gwen did not think she wished to go with him though she was curious to see what the caves were like. She wondered if she could live in a cave, if she had to, if some peculiar set of circumstances made it imperative. She imagined herself running away and having nowhere to go and no money to obtain shelter. She imagined what she would need to take with her to make a cave into a home. A blanket to sit on, a paraffin lamp to see by, a wooden crate to put her clothes in. She would cower there and no one would know where to find her. It would be quiet, so quiet, and she would hear drips of water falling from the rock above and her own breath going in and out. She would be alone, huddled into a ball, almost invisible in the gloom.

She tried to draw the cave as she imagined it. She put nothing in it except some stones, some shells. She used pastels, dark brown and grey melded together and a lighter brown for the ground. It was hard to draw the entrance. Could the sea be glimpsed? Would the sun strike through it? She needed help but Miss Wilson did not teach drawing beyond tracing outlines of flowers. Gwen would get no help from her. Gus, who could help, was now away at school, and her mother was dead. She imagined that the grave her mother lay in was a kind of earth-cave, but it would be alive with insects and worms weaving their way through the heaving soil. Her head was spinning, thinking of it, and she had to stop. Drawing Winifred settled her dizziness. Winifred wearing a hat, or Winifred with a ribbon in her hair, or herself, looking straight into the mirror.

It was disturbing, staring at herself, but she grew used to it. After a while, she saw a person who was not familiar but a stranger and then she could begin to draw. This person in front of her had such a cold, haughty look, as though proud of herself but unlikely to say why. She was not pretty. Her face was too flat, none of its features had any charm. The lips were thin, the chin receded, the eyebrows were too marked. The expression in the eyes bothered her and would not translate to paper. Only the clothes were easy. She liked clothes. She and Winifred had very few and none that were fashionable but with no mother and no aunts in the house they were allowed to choose material and instruct the dressmaker themselves. They spent hours hunting for fabrics beautiful to the touch but serviceable, knowing that the dresses must last a long time. They liked subtle colours, dark reds, deep greens, nothing too light or bright. Their mother’s clothes had mysteriously disappeared but they had her jewellery and wore her brooches and some of her necklaces and bracelets and cameos. When they were older, they would try the earrings, especially the pearls.

They had special skirts made for cycling, in black worsted material, but the waists had white ribbons sewn into them which streamed behind as they pedalled. They had jackets made with tight sleeves, and cut into the waist so that the wind would not ride up them. Clothes were a comfort. Clothes were something they had control over and they could make their own even if they could not dress like the Gypsies. Their dressmaker said they had good figures. Even though they had yet to fill out, she commented, rather impertinently, that for their age (Gwen fifteen, Winifred twelve) they were developing nicely. Gwen was pleased, though she did not show it. Her body was easier to look at in the mirror than her face. Having no eyes, her body did not challenge her. She could look at it and try to draw it and not feel irritated. Breasts were interesting to draw. Hers were not large, or not yet, but she liked their shape, round and high with brown nipples, pert and almost sharp. Pubic hair was difficult. She had seen Gwenda’s bush, when they had changed together on the beach at Broad Haven, and it had made her draw in her breath and want to touch the auburn fuzz, so springy-looking and plentiful, and spreading high and wide on Gwenda’s lower belly. Touching her own was disappointing. It was dark and sparse and she would rather it had not grown at all.

She was too old now to run naked on the beach, or so people would say. It made her curl her lip in contempt when she saw the bathing cabins being taken out to sea so that the modesty of the female bathers might be preserved. It was not the way to bathe. She longed still to stand on the beach and disrobe and walk naked into the waves but she could not face her father’s fury when such a scandal was reported to him, as it surely would be. He would call her wanton and say she tempted men to sin. He was the one tempted to sin, she knew that. He hung pictures of naked women in his bedroom. He humiliated her and Winifred with his attempts at courting women. They knew why he wanted another wife and his need disgusted them. She had tried to draw the male body but her attempts were unsatisfactory. There was something ridiculous about the genitals which her pencil exaggerated and she had torn these drawings up, but not before Gus had seen them. He had shaken his head and asked did she want to draw him. He would pose for her, and she could pose for him. Why not? She did not know why not, but she had shaken her head, said no. But when Gus was sent away to boarding school, she regretted her refusal.

It made her shiver to think of what she had missed.

*

‘Sit,’ their father said, and the girls sat, smoothing their skirts down and folding their hands demurely on their laps. Their eyes were lowered, ready for him to begin. Gwen stared at his feet, encased in black slippers, side by side, absolutely flat on the carpet. He kept them so very still all the time he was reading, and his knees too, firmly pressed neatly together, never one leg restless or flung over the other. ‘The red room,’ he read, ‘was a spare chamber, very seldom slept in; I might say never, indeed, unless when a chance influx of visitors at Gateshead Hall rendered it necessary to turn to account all the accommodation it contained; and yet it was one of the largest and stateliest chambers in the mansion. A bed supported on massive pillars of mahogany, hung with curtains of deep red damask, stood out like a tabernacle in the centre; the two large windows, with their blinds always drawn down, were shrouded in festoons and falls of similar drapery; the carpet was red; the table at the foot of the bed was covered with a crimson cloth; the walls were a soft fawn colour, with a blush of pink in it …’ He read on, but Gwen heard no more, only the rise and fall of his voice. She was in the room with Jane Eyre, oppressed by the mahogany and stifled by the red drapes. She fought for breath and there was a hissing in her head. It was the room of her nightmares. Her father noticed nothing. He loved to read to them and paid little attention to the effect of the words he read out. Should he look up from the book, he had Winifred to be gratified by. She sat, rapt, her mouth slightly open and her expression one of utter concentration.

It was after tea, on Sunday. This was part of the Sunday ritual and it was not unpleasant. The fire burned brightly in the drawing room and they were full of plum cake. That morning they had been to St Mary’s where their father had played the organ for the service. They had walked there, as usual, even though it was raining and there was a bitter wind. Without the boys, both long since away at boarding school, it seemed a dismal and embarrassing walk. They were too old now to be led through the streets by their father, stalking ahead in his top hat. It would have been more bearable, and more fitting for their ages, that he should walk with them, side by side, he in the middle, in a dignified way. As it was, they felt they were scurrying after him. Anger burned in Gwen at this enforced humiliation and she could only manage her rage by projecting herself into a future where she would walk by herself and never have to follow anyone.

On the walk back from church, they had passed a woman to whom their father had doffed his hat. He stopped and exchanged greetings, and they had been obliged to stop too, though they took care to stand some way off. He had not introduced them, though in fact they knew her by sight. She was called Mrs Thomas and had a little girl, Stella, who had red hair and was pretty. They might have been servants, but for once Gwen was glad of the insult. She did not want to have to speak to Mrs Thomas. There were other women to whom their father made tentative advances. His manner was always proper but his intentions, Gwen was quite convinced, were not. The woman, today, had blushed. It was not, both girls afterwards reckoned, a blush of pleasure at a compliment but rather a colouring caused by unease. Mrs Thomas, they knew, was a widow. She had not wanted his attentions. But he failed to appreciate this. Afterwards, when they had walked on, there had been a spring in his step and a foolish smile on his normally unsmiling face. They hated his complacency.

‘I will continue next Sunday,’ their father said.

*

Gwenda left, to be married. She went back to Haverfordwest and she was not replaced. Then Eluned went home to nurse her mother though their father made it clear that he thought her first loyalty should be to them. There were tears when her brother came to take her home, her tears, not Gwen’s, though Winifred managed a few. Unlike Gwenda, Eluned would have to be replaced so an advertisement was put in the paper. A series of what their father described as highly unsuitable women applied for the post before someone was found. ‘You are old enough, Gwendoline,’ her father said, ‘to take your place as head of my household. You must learn how to manage the servants and see that it runs smoothly.’ Gwen stared at him in disbelief. Eluned had never been ‘managed’. Not even Aunt Rose had managed her. She had done what she thought needed to be done and her word had been law. Their father did not seem to realise this. His notion of how their household was run was founded on a myth to which he had clung in the face of all the evidence. Gwen kept quiet. She had no intention of learning how to manage any running of the household. It could continue to jerk along as it had always done, though without Eluned and Gwenda it was difficult to see how.

The new cook was a Mrs Ellis, who came in daily, and therefore breakfast was half an hour beyond the usual time, which did not suit Father at all. But Mrs Ellis could not arrive before seven in the morning, for reasons so long-winded and tedious that Father did not hear them out, but was obliged to accept the change in his timetable. Gwen was forced to speak to Mrs Ellis on her first day. ‘You may cook what you think fitting,’ she told her, ‘as long as it is within your budget.’ Fortunately, Eluned had left a list of their preferences and dislikes, and Mrs Ellis seemed content to work from that. Gwen had added a few dishes to the list of family dislikes. Rice pudding was one. She loathed it with a passion, but in the past her father had made her eat every last slithery spoonful. She wondered how long it would be before her father enquired of her why Mrs Ellis never gave them rice pudding.

Mrs Ellis expressed surprise at the meagreness of the budget. Gwen told her that her master liked plain food and had no desire for luxuries at his table. But she felt ashamed on her father’s behalf. There was no need, she was sure, for them to live on boiled mutton and scrag-end beef and have every last scrap of inferior meat turned into rissoles. Food did not matter to her unless it was fatty or stringy. She preferred to eat bread and cheese and fruit, and had vowed that when she left home and lived by herself that is all her diet would consist of. Winifred ventured the opinion that without meat Gwen might not grow, but Gwen replied that by the time this happy day came she would already be fully grown. ‘Then you might faint,’ Winifred argued. ‘Your blood would not be rich enough without meat.’ Gwen did not believe it. Meat was disgusting. She could not bear the sight of it. She had tried to explain this to her father as she sat, tearful, with lumps of meat in a stew before her, but he had said she was too squeamish. ‘You cannot go through life squeamish,’ he had said. ‘It is not possible. Eat.’ He told her that she was too pale, too thin and that it was her duty to eat what was good for her or she would become ill. Once, he began a sentence, or what seemed likely to be about to be a sentence, with the words, ‘Your mother became ill …’ and then stopped abruptly and played with his silver napkin ring. He bowed his head, and Gwen waited. Had he intended to blame her mother for her own illness? Had he meant to go on to say that if she did not eat what was put before her she, too, would become ill? ‘Eat,’ he repeated, but his tone was soft.

*

The journey was long, but they were glad to make it. Hours and hours they sat in the train, straight-backed, silent enough to please their father, books open on their knees. Gwen was reading Far from the Madding Crowd and did not know what to make of it. They had neither food nor drink with them. Their father thought it ridiculous not to be able to endure six hours without sustenance. They would eat and drink when they arrived in London. He knew a teashop near the National Gallery which was modest and gave good value. There they would refresh themselves before proceeding to the pictures.

Once inside the galleries, it did not matter that their father ignored them. Gwen was glad of it. Within minutes she had lost him and could stop and look at whatever she wished. It would have been better to have had Gus with her but really she had no need of anyone. Even Winifred was a distraction, soon whispering that she would like to sit down. Gwen left her in front of a picture of a winter scene with skaters and went to find Vermeer’s A Young Woman Standing at a Virginal, which she very much wanted to see. She was annoyed to come upon a small crowd in front of the painting and she hung around the doorway until it had dispersed somewhat. First she viewed the picture from the other side of the room and then slowly moved forwards. She admired it more from a distance, and this seemed curious to her. She thought it meant that the artist was outside the painting and not condensed within it. She herself was in what she drew and painted. She knew she was.

Winifred fell asleep in the theatre. They were in the circle, front row (about some things their father could be startlingly generous). Red plush, comfortable seats, proper arm-rests with tiny binoculars inset, which they were allowed to use, their father willingly providing the coins for both of them. But Winifred dozed, exhausted by the travelling and the walking round the galleries and streets, her head nodding forward after the first half-hour. It was a stupid play but Gwen was happy. She had her sketchbook and worked rapidly, drawing the costumes one after the other, and then started on the set. The action of the play was in a drawing room. It was boring to draw the furniture but there was a spiral staircase in one corner which was a challenge and she drew it in minute detail, using the little binoculars to scrutinise the ivy embellishments on the wrought-iron banisters.

Their father was absorbed. He kept lifting his binoculars again and again to study the leading actress, whose voice Gwen thought shrill. She had already made two sketches of the actress, for no other reason than that her costume was ravishing. She wore a dress of striped silk, with gorgeous panels of purple and gold in the skirt, its sleeves, wide and full, in shimmering gold. Gwen thought that the sleeves, cunningly devised so that again and again the actress’s perfect white arms were displayed, were of a different, heavier, material from the skirt. Satin, probably. She spent a great deal of time shading the sleeves to convey this difference. There was plenty of bosom on display too. The top of the dress was tightly corseted, pushing up the actress’s breasts. Gwen, staring critically, found she was not envious. She did not wish either to have such breasts or to flaunt them. But she thought how, stripped of the dress and the corset underneath, the actress’s body would be interesting to draw.

Coming out into the Haymarket, they were confused by the commotion, by the many carriages waiting for the theatregoers and by the press of people pouring out of the theatre. Their father seemed to hesitate, unsure which way to go, unused to crowds. Gwen was happy to stand there with him, taking in bits of overheard conversation and watching the expressions in the faces around her. At last their father decided where they would go. For once, he held both of them, one either side, clutching them just above the elbow and squeezing hard enough almost to hurt, and led them round to the left where the crowd was not so dense. There was no question of a cab. They walked again, quickly, and were soon at their lodgings in Covent Garden.

Winifred slept the moment she got into bed but Gwen sat awhile, looking at her sketches. Some she thought good, worth keeping, but most she tore up, upset that she had wasted the special paper. She never liked to tear up paper, and tried hard to concentrate and think carefully before making any mark in her precious sketchbooks. She did not like to rub out, it was messy, so once she had made her drawing it had to stand or be destroyed. Painting was less wasteful. She had learned already that paint was amenable to alteration, oils especially. She could paint in layers and rectify mistakes. She wished she could learn more of the subtleties involved in the use of paint about which she felt she knew so little. It was no good trying to teach herself these practical things. She needed a teacher, and access to materials which she did not have. Her hunger to learn was ferocious.

Gus was going to learn. It had been agreed. Their father, astonishingly, was willing to pay for him to enrol at the Slade School of Art, and he was to begin soon. Gwen’s envy was violent; she could hardly bear to think of what lay ahead for Gus, and she had said so. She had told their father that she wanted to follow Gus. ‘Do not think of such a thing,’ he had said.

But he had not said no.