The Buttonmaker’s Daughter. Merryn Allingham
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in the summerhouse. For a while, they sat in silence looking across the lake until he said, ‘My mother and father are dead but I have brothers.’
She was surprised. He seemed so self-contained, so much a man who had made his way in the world completely alone. ‘Do you ever see them?’
‘We’ve gone our different ways,’ he said shortly.
That was a part of his story, but a part he was unwilling to tell. At least for now. She tried another tack. ‘So where will you go after you’ve finished at Summerhayes?’
‘I’m not certain. I’ve had one or two offers – through Jonathan. They’re jobs that would give me independence, but they’re small projects and a little uninteresting.’
‘Isn’t small the best way to start?’
‘Possibly, but I’d rather think big from the beginning.’
She smiled at his earnestness. ‘Big, like Summerhayes,’ she murmured.
‘Indeed. It’s been brilliant. Passing examinations is one thing, but you can’t beat practical experience, and being on site with Jonathan has been a hundred times more valuable than sitting in a dusty office working from drawings.’
His enthusiasm was catching, but she found herself asking, ‘How likely is it that you’ll gain a large commission?’
‘Most unlikely. This country can be a closed shop. Canada would be different though.’
She was startled. ‘Canada!’
‘I have a cousin in Ontario. That’s eastern Canada. He writes to me that Toronto is a city that’s growing all the time. It’s one of the main destinations for immigrants and there’s a huge amount of new building. The sky could be the limit, he said.’
‘And do you believe him?’
‘Why not? Canada is a new country. It’s also very large.’
She felt a strange emptiness. Since their meeting in the churchyard, she had seen him only once. He had brought to the house the architect’s final drawings for her father to lock away in his safe, and they’d met in the black and white tiled hall. A brief conversation only, interrupted by Joshua’s emergence from his smoking room, but enough for her to want more, to have time to talk with him, time to know him.
She scolded herself. He was her father’s employee and a chance-met acquaintance; she would be foolish to think him anything more. Imagine her family’s reaction if they were ever to become close. But they wouldn’t – and it shouldn’t matter to her where he went. Instead, she should be cheering him for his ambition, for the passion he owned for his work and the new life he wished to build. His sense of adventure was something she understood. It was what she loved in her father, what she would wish for herself, if she were not a girl.
She wanted to know more of his cousin, but she’d already asked far too many questions. So she sat quietly by his side, enjoying the coolness of flint and stone. The summerhouse afforded a welcome retreat in what was becoming another broiling day.
‘My cousin sailed from Ireland several years ago.’ It was as though he had divined her thoughts. ‘There was no future for him in Galway. He’s working on the railway in Canada and rents a small house for his family on the outskirts of Toronto. He’s offered me a room until I find my feet.’
‘It seems you’ve already decided your future.’
‘Not yet. Not quite.’ He looked at her as though he wanted to say more, but then abruptly changed direction. ‘And what about yours? Do you intend to stay here?’
‘You asked me that before.’
‘And I never got an answer. Your father is making Summerhayes a life’s work, but it’s his life, not yours. You have your own creativity. Don’t you want the world to share it?’
She pulled a face. ‘How very grand that sounds! I paint for myself, that’s all.’
‘You should want more. I saw one of your paintings. I’d say you need some formal training, but you’re certainly not the dauber you claim. Women are beginning to be taken seriously as painters, you know. You should go to London, enrol in one of the art schools. The Slade perhaps.’
She knew about the Slade. Someone she’d met last year, on one of the interminable morning calls she’d been forced to make with her mother, had told her with a shocked expression that women students there had actually been allowed to draw a semi-clothed male. Right now, that was an uncomfortable image, and she found herself challenging him more strongly than she intended. ‘Are you trying to organise my life? How did you see a painting of mine?’
‘It was hanging in the hall when I called last week.’
Her father’s portrait, of course. Joshua had been so pleased with it that he’d had the picture framed and insisted on hanging it with his most precious trophies, the Tiffany wall lights he’d bid for at extortionate cost. And Aiden Kellaway had taken note of the artist’s name, written very small and in the furthest right-hand corner of the canvas. The man was certainly acute.
‘I’m happy to stay an amateur.’ Her tone verged on the brusque.
‘Then just go to the city and enjoy its pleasures. You’re very young to be hiding away.’
‘I’m not hiding,’ she said indignantly. ‘And I’ve been to London already. I told you.’
‘And you didn’t like it?’
‘Not much.’
Four months of hedonistic pleasure filled with parties and receptions and dances, and with no time for painting. She couldn’t deny it had been exciting, but the excitement had been gossamer thin. Beneath it always a feeling of being demeaned, of having her essential self disregarded, chipped away bit by bit, day by day. The buying and selling of young women, that was the truth of the Season.
‘Why did you go?’
‘Papa was keen that I was introduced to polite society,’ she said blandly.
‘Polite society,’ he mimicked, and she giggled.
‘I shouldn’t laugh. It cost him a great deal of money and I turned out a disappointment.’
‘How is that?’
‘I didn’t “take”, as the saying goes. I think I was a little too different – maybe a little too candid.’
‘I think maybe you were, Miss Summer.’ He seemed to find it amusing. ‘Or may I call you Elizabeth?’
‘I imagine you can. We seem acquainted enough to be discussing my prospects of making a good marriage.’
‘So that’s what the foray into polite society was all about. Presumably, you didn’t advance your “prospects”?’ He was still grinning.
‘I received two proposals, if that’s what you mean,’ she said tartly. ‘I turned them down.’
He nodded as though he could not imagine her giving any other answer. ‘I dare say you were in trouble for that.’
‘For a while. Papa fretted and fumed. Told me I was an ungrateful girl, but in the end I don’t think he minded. Not really. It’s true he spent a lot of money but he’s a generous man.’ For all his irascibility, she could have added.
‘And you are his darling.’ It was a statement of fact.
‘I suppose so,’ she said, blushing a little.
‘I don’t think he’d want you to be talking to me. Your mama certainly didn’t.’
The scene at the churchyard came vividly to mind, her mother frosty and unusually forceful. What had that been about? First, she’d been instructed to greet her aunt and uncle, then commanded in no uncertain terms to disappear. She’d been baffled and just a little