her to look full at him. He put his head on one side, as if appraising what he saw. He enjoyed the suppressed whisper of protest from the mothers.
Pilgrim decided that the girls were pretty enough, and that it would be amusing to launch a leisurely, elaborate tease on the parents. He was also, he reminded himself, in serious need of their money. They would get their portrait, but it would be the picture that he chose to paint.
‘Very well,’ he snapped. ‘I accept the commission. For the first sitting, my studio at number twenty-two Charlotte Street, next Wednesday at three o’clock sharp, if you please.’
Afterwards, Clio said to Grace, ‘Well. What did you make of that?’
Grace yawned, pretending lazy indifference. ‘Of those clothes, and that hat? And was it my imagination, or did he smell, rather?’
‘He smelt.’
‘But he did have quite wonderful eyes,’ Grace added. They were coal-black, under thick black brows that met over the bridge of his nose.
‘He did, didn’t he? Do you suppose anyone has ever before appeared in Aunt Blanche’s drawing room looking so unshaven, so disreputable?’
‘Never. Wasn’t it delicious? They took it like lambs. He must be very clever or sought-after, or something.’
‘What do you think it will be like having our portrait painted?’
‘Less boring than I had feared,’ Grace answered.
The first sitting took place as Pilgrim had commanded. Grace and Clio presented themselves at his studio in their white dresses, with Blanche as chaperone. Pilgrim found her a hard chair in a corner, and then turned his back on her. Blanche noted that the high room under its glass skylight was clean, if bare, and that Pilgrim himself was clean-shaven and tidily dressed in a blue painter’s smock over flannel trousers.
He spent a long time positioning the girls, prowling around them and lifting an arm or turning a shoulder. At length, he had them sitting side by side, but so close together that Clio’s shoulder was in front of Grace’s. They looked as if they were leaning together for support, but their heads were turned in opposite directions, away from each other. Pilgrim was satisfied. He retreated behind his easel and began to work, making quick flicks with his wrist. The only sounds in the studio were his cuff brushing over the canvas, and the dim popping of the gas fire. Blanche was only too aware that she had been sitting still for an hour and a half without so much as a cup of tea. The painter took regular draughts from a cup at his elbow, but he didn’t offer anything to the sitters or their chaperone.
At last, he stood back from his work.
‘That is enough for today,’ he announced.
Blanche stood up with relief and strolled over to look at what he had done. She was surprised to see that there was a sheet of coarse paper pinned over the canvas, and the only marks on it were a series of rectangles, thick charcoal lines, boxes within boxes, receding within themselves like a Chinese puzzle.
Pilgrim removed the paper. ‘I prefer not to have my work in progress inspected in ignorance,’ he said.
‘I’m very sorry,’ Blanche said humbly. Grace and Clio looked at each other with awed expressions.
At dinner that evening, Blanche told John that she had found the portrait sitting very boring and uncomfortable, and that she did not intend to stay for the next. ‘There are two of them, after all,’ she reasoned. ‘I would not leave one of them alone with him, but they can look after each other. I’m sure Eleanor would agree, if she were here.’ Eleanor had gone back to Nathaniel and her younger children in Oxford. ‘Don’t you think so, John?’
‘If you say so, my dear,’ John Leominster answered, without much interest.
For their next sitting, Blanche’s chauffeur drove the girls to Charlotte Street, and was instructed to call back for them in two hours’ time. Pilgrim met them at the door.
‘No Mama today?’ he enquired.
‘I’m afraid that Mama found your studio draughty and dull,’ Grace answered.
‘Is that so?’ Pilgrim was all innocent surprise.
This time they found that the room under the skylights was much warmer, almost cosy, that tea had been assembled on a little table near the fire, and that the bench on which he had originally posed them had metamorphosed into a divan covered with shawls.
‘Shall we have some tea first?’ the painter invited. ‘Tea and conversation?’ He handed cups and plates as decorously as if he were in a Belgravia drawing room. Clio and Grace drew their chairs up, lulled by the normality.
‘I can’t paint you in those terrible clothes,’ Pilgrim announced after a few minutes.
‘Why not?’ Grace was indignant. She was pleased with her Reville & Rossiter silk.
‘They make you look like virgin sacrifices.’
‘Isn’t that the idea of débutante dresses?’ Clio retaliated.
Pilgrim was delighted. ‘Oh yes, of course. But I still can’t paint you in them. What have you got on underneath?’
The teacups and iced cake were suddenly incongruous. Grace rose to the challenge, determined not to reveal that she was not constantly answering such questions.
She recited, ‘Underskirt, with panniers stitched into it to give extra fullness to the skirt. Two petticoats beneath that, one stiffened, one not. Silk stockings. Silk chemise and knickers.’
Clio said, when Pilgrim looked at her in turn. ‘The same, in less luxurious versions.’
‘Good. We’ll try the chemises, then. You can go behind the screen, if you wish.’
They didn’t dare look at one another. A moment ago they had been sipping tea. Evidently Pilgrim thought nothing of leaping straight from conventional to alarming behaviour. They felt embarrassed by their own inexperience, and unwilling to reveal that they were shocked.
Pilgrim read every scruple in their faces. He was lazily excited by their similarity, and by the small shades of difference. He saw their rivalry, too, and counted it out for himself like currency. He would use it later, to make his purchases.
‘I am a painter,’ he told them patiently. ‘I am used to working with female models, clothed and unclothed. I am also a designer of theatre sets and costumes and I have dressed ballerinas and actresses. I have seen women’s legs before this afternoon.’
They went behind the screen and emerged again with their heads up, daring him and each other. Pilgrim’s interest quickened.
He studied them, sitting side by side on the divan. ‘Good skin,’ he said at last. ‘I like the light and the dark.’ He touched Clio’s white shoulder and stroked Grace’s hair. They shivered, although it was warm in the studio.
‘The hair is too formal.’
As deftly as a ladies’ maid, he took out the pins and combs. Hair fell down in thick, dark waves over the pale skin.
‘Good.
