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“Mary Russell,” I said, introducing myself to her for the second time that night. “You're a sculptress, aren't you?”
She beamed. “You've heard of me?”
I hadn't the heart to admit that her hands had told me her avocation. “Oh, yes. But forgive me, Ro
“Ro
“D. H.,” Ro
I nodded solemnly, and gave way to an unkind impulse. “Are you published yet?”
“The publishing world is run by Philistines and capitalists,” he growled. “But I had several poems published while I was still up at Cambridge.”
“I look forward to seeing your work,” I assured him.
Alice remembered what we had been talking about. “Why are you looking for her, anyway?”
“For Yolanda? I'm more trying to find her husband, Damian. He's an old friend, known him for years, and as I said, I'm recently back in town. I was hoping to see him.”
The arch smile Alice gave indicated that she had read all the wrong meaning into my desire to see Damian Adler, but I caught back the impulse to set her straight: If it made her think me a denizen of the artistic underworld, so much the better. I shrugged, as if to admit that she was right.
The Café was being tidied for the night, the chairs arranged around the marble tabletops, glasses polished and set back on the shelves. The remaining seven members of our party were one of three tables still occupied, and we would soon be politely expected to depart.
Fortunately, before I could come up with a reason to attach myself to them, my two new friends claimed me instead.
“Would you like to go on for a drink?” Alice asked.
“The Fitzroy?” Ro
“I'm ru
“Why not pop on home?” Alice interrupted, before they could find themselves paying for the rest of the evening. “Someone left a couple of bottles there, and Bu
Having encountered such a wide variety of human relations that evening, I should have been willing to bet that Bu
Outside on the street, we all three blinked under the impact of fresh air. After a moment, a man came out of the Café and pressed an object into my hand-the bag containing the skirt and blouse that I had put on in Sussex many long hours before. I thanked him, but he vanished before I could find a coin for him, and I joined my two companions as they turned up Regent Street, braced together against the sway of the pavement. My own feet meandered uncertainly, but once my ears stopped ringing and the stinging sensation in my eyes cleared, I discovered that it was a very pleasant evening.
Alice talked at me over her shoulder, in tones that reached those in the buildings around us as well. She was a modern sculptress, she said, providing a woman's perspective to the most male bastion of all the arts. Her main problem, apart from the disinclination of the art world to treat women seriously, was finding a studio large enough to contain her vision. When we reached their home and studio, half a mile away in Soho, I saw what she meant.
The garret she worked in, four sagging flights up from street level, was intended to house servants, not to support a ton and a half of scrap iron. I started to follow the two inside, then spotted the object in the middle of the floor and stopped dead. Surely it was my imagination that put such a dip to the floorboards?
“I call it ‘Freedom,’” Alice told me with pride. The sculpture appeared to have some vague representational basis, but whether the extremities were the arms of a number of women strewing chicken feed, or the legs of war horses, I could not tell.
“It's autobiographical,” Ro
“Bu
Lord, a kiln as well? “Are there people underneath us?” I asked.
“Just Bu
“How…” I stopped, at a loss for words.
“How am I going to get it out? The back wall is merely brick and tin, I'll invite a bunch of friends over to bash out a hole and help lower it down.” She seemed proud that she had already solved that problem.
“Honestly, are there people living below? Because I really don't think the floorboards are sturdy enough to support your… vision.”
This struck the two as fu
“We're the only ones here, us and Bu
It didn't look to me as if he'd have to wait for the end of a court case to see the demolition of the building, but I was relieved that there were no families sleeping beneath us.
“I'm not altogether certain I don't own the building,” Ro
“The law is so patriarchal,” Alice commented to me.
“Er,” I said.
“The husband has rights to his wife's possessions,” she explained.
“So, Ro
“Bu
“ Alice!” Ro
She giggled again, and finished the sentence. “-about reproducing. Three children in four years indicates a certain enthusiasm, don't you think? But yes, she and Ro
I was not about to confess to any shock at the doctrines of free love, but I did go back to my initial concern with renewed urgency.
“Are the children living here?”
“Not at the moment. Bu
I breathed more easily; at least I didn't have the safety of i
Ro
“When did you meet the Adlers?” I asked bluntly. It had been a long day, and I figured these two were in no condition to require subtlety.
“The winter sometime.”
“It was at the Epsteins' Christmas party, remember?” Ro
“Jacob Epstein gave a Christmas party?” I asked.
“It wasn't so much a Christmas party as a party at Christmas,” Alice explained helpfully. “His wife gave it to show that she wasn't still angry at Kathleen. You know Jacob's wife, Margaret? She took a shot at one of Jacob's lovers last year, when she found out Kathleen was pregnant, although she'd been perfectly willing to raise the little girl he had by someone else five or six years before. She's usually perfectly content to let Jacob's lovers live with them, but for some reason she took against Kathleen. Anyway, that's settled now.”