Keeping the World Away by Margaret Forster Page A

them she did.
    It was the beer, she supposed, but towards the end of last evening she had become convinced that Ambrose was singling her out for meaningful attention. So often he evaded her eyes but then suddenly he looked into them and his expression changed. It was exhilarating and yet tantalising. She wanted him to take her hand, or put his arm round her, as Gus had his round Ida. And then she could lay her head on his shoulder and close her eyes and feel him embrace her … But he went no further than a look and it made her want to cry. What did she have to do? Ida needed to do nothing, Gus did it all. And Ambrose had not come back to Fitzroy Street with them afterwards, as he usually did. They had parted in the street. He and Grilda walked in one direction, she and Gus and Ida in the other. She had felt bereft and cold, and once home had flung herself onto her bed and bitten her pillow in fury.
    It was all gone now, the anger, the frustration. So long as she was here, in the gallery, in front of Rembrandt she was safe from unseemly emotion. It was people, people who were alive, who caused disturbance in her. What she must do was cut herself off from them, and yet to do so would be perverse. She loved her group, all women artist friends. They had taken her to their hearts and enriched her life immeasurably – what folly to discard them. Men, then. They were the disturbance, even Gus – especially Gus. Look at Edna, only nineteen and about to be married and already her dedication was wavering. Was it, then, to be a choice? Was Ida going to make this choice?
    Gwen stared at Rembrandt. She would paint herself and try to bring into her portrait all this seething beneath the surface and with it the determination to save herself.
    *
    The summer vacation came and her money did not stretch to staying on in London, so she was obliged to go to Tenby, though she no longer thought of it as home. Agony to take the train back to Tenby, knowing that Ida and another Gwen, Gwen Salmond, were going to Paris where she had never been and longed to go. They were to try to study at the Académie Julien, where Bonnard and Vuillard had studied, and were in a state of excitement so extreme that it came off them like heat. It was quite unbearable. Is this jealousy, raw and ugly? Gwen asked herself, and the answer came quickly enough – yes, she was jealous to the point of angry tears.
    Her father had no patience with tears. She knew that. They only irritated him. But tears trickled down her pale cheeks every time she confronted him in his cold, dull house and she could not seem to stop them. ‘Please,’ she said. She would do anything, she would go without anything. For long enough she had existed merely on bread and nuts and a little fruit and could exist on bread and water entirely if only he would finance a brief trip to Paris. Her begging – and she had held her hands out, like a beggar – maddened him. Why, he asked, was she not content? Once, London, the Slade School, had been all she craved. He had given it to her, and now – he was reading
Oliver Twist
again – she wanted
more
.
    So for three days, Gwen ate nothing. She drank water and weak tea but closed her lips firmly against food. She sat at the table with her father and Winifred and refused all sustenance. On the fourth day, she fainted. It was no ploy. She rose from the table as her father rose, at the end of the meal, and she could not get to the door. Silently, gracefully, she slid to the floor, her skirt crumpling around her, rustling as it settled. Winifred told her how alarmed their father had been, how he had rushed to Gwen’s side and anxiously felt her pulse and – Winifred vowed it was true – kissed her forehead. But she knew nothing of that. When she came to, her father was not in the room. Winifred was kneeling beside her, pressing a damp cloth to her face. ‘You must eat,’ her sister said. ‘You must eat, or you will not be strong enough to travel to