After Clare by Marjorie Eccles Page B

Painting?
Models?
’
    â€˜Female students are not allowed to draw or paint them undraped, Aunt Lottie.’
    Her aunt paused, silver teapot in hand, and stared at Clare, trying to believe she was not being impertinent. ‘So I should hope, miss.’
    Lottie had a mental list of young men whose mothers she knew, who were of the right age, had been born into the required station in life and with sufficient wealth, whom she had already earmarked for one or other of the girls. Now she turned her attention to this, more important than any mere girlish whim of the moment. Clare stiffened when, regardless of what had just been said, their aunt began to outline her plans.
    â€˜Not just now, Lottie,’ Anthony pleaded, as little anxious to hear this as Clare. Though he had at last roused himself somewhat from the dazed disbelief which had followed Leila’s death, he had grown increasingly grey and stooped, and more than ever wished for nothing to disturb his quiet life.
    â€˜Yes,
now
. The child cannot possibly know what’s best for her. This is one thing you cannot close your eyes to, Anthony. Your girls won’t stop growing up – and I’m quite prepared to give up my time and see them both through their first season. It’s what Leila would have wanted,’ she finished, incontrovertibly.
    When this conversation had taken place, Victoria had still been on the throne. Women had magnificent bosoms and wasp waists, due to the corsets they wore, and Mrs Arbuthnot was no exception, though her whaleboning was not allowed to creak like Nanny Kate’s did when she moved, or a roll of fat to appear across her shoulders where the stays ended. She stood in front of Anthony, adamant, as upright as if she had a ruler down her back, as indeed she might have had as a child, to improve her posture.
    Anthony said evasively, ‘Lottie, don’t you think it might be more of a question of what Clare really wants?’
    â€˜Nonsense! Clare is barely eighteen years old, she cannot possibly know what she wants. I’m afraid you are spoiling your girls, Anthony – don’t you wish them to make the most of their chances? Do you want to see them condemned to become
spinsters
? Even you must allow that one is simply nothing without a husband!’ If she had had a fan with her, she would have rapped his knuckles smartly.
    â€˜Well, of course, everyone knows that’s what it’s all about,’ Clare observed. ‘Why else would parents spend so much money on a mere girl, if not to get them married off?’
    She looked particularly angelic as she spoke, almost childlike, with her pale, soft skin and the fall of her flax-blonde hair. It was impossible to believe the remark had come from her, until you saw the expression in those green-gold eyes. Mrs Arbuthnot, for once, was rendered speechless.
    â€˜My dear,’ said Anthony, looking helpless, or as helpless as a big, shambling bear could look, bewildered at these signs of defiance in this child who was perhaps his favourite, but whom he had never really understood. ‘My dear Clare.’ But he was wavering, and after a week of Clare’s determination not to give in, he put up no more opposition. He had always been a man easy to persuade, and easily defeated. And paradoxically, like many such people, he could be stubborn once he had made his mind up. Clare was, as all her family knew, already a talented artist, and she mattered more to him than Aunt Lottie. Foiled of her role of chaperone and matchmaker, Mrs Arbuthnot washed her hands of the whole business and departed in a huff to take the cure in Marienbad.
    Clare, then, had not been forced into enduring the ritual of coming out. No presentation at court in a white silk dress with Prince of Wales feathers in her hair, no hours spent learning to curtsey and walk backwards from the royal presence without tripping over one’s long train, no parties and dancing with