Denton concentrated on the chicken and let the words drown in the general hubbub. He glanced towards the table where Gwen John was sitting with several other young women and a couple of young men — late-adolescent boys, really — all the women swathed like her in gypsy-like bits and pieces of colourful cloth. The young men expressed themselves in long hair and collarless shirts with scarves; one wore the blue cotton jacket of a French working-man, possibly the badge of a summer in Paris. They certainly looked unconventional, he thought, probably the reason for the costume, at least among the women — the gypsy look just then was the Bohemian uniform, to judge from the young women he had seen near the Slade — but there was also the possibility that they dressed like this because it was cheap. Like Janet Striker, perhaps they didn’t have money for clothes: the problem was the same, the solution different. Theirs, he had to admit, was more attractive.
‘Ever hear of the Russian ballet?’ Harris was saying. Denton had no idea how he’d got there from Rowlandson.
‘Can’t say I have.’
‘You’re impossible. Like talking to a cow. Did you know I was a cowboy once? In Kansas?’
‘I’ve heard you say so.’
‘Don’t you believe me? I was in Chicago, and these four cowboys came into a hotel where I was-’
Denton looked at the young artists again. Gwen John was looking at him, her right hand making quick movements over a small sketch pad. When she saw him looking, she gave an automatic, close-mouthed smile and went on.
‘So I left the hotel business and went into cattle-driving. Many adventures. I was younger then. You aren’t listening, are you?’
‘I’m tired.’
Harris got up. He was perfectly amiable. ‘I need an audience. If you have some extra money, let me know — I’ll put you on to a good thing.’ He strode away, heading back towards his end of the room.
Denton finished the last of the chicken pie, then the wine, and ordered coffee. A couple of minutes later, to his surprise, Gwen John came and stood by the table. ‘I want to apologize for being so abrupt,’ she said.
‘Oh — you weren’t. It was nothing.’
‘I can’t stand Harris. He’s wetter than a water meadow. Is he a friend of yours? I’m sorry if he is. I say what I think.’
She might have been all of twenty-two or — three, he thought, yet she had the settled sombreness of a middle-aged woman. She was not pretty, didn’t seem to care. He said, ‘Won’t you sit down?’
‘I’m with people.’ She looked back at them.
‘Would they recognize the girl in the drawing?’
‘Not if she’s at the Slade now. We’ve all been out for a while.’ She sat down. She didn’t want anything to drink. She looked at the drawing again and shook her head. ‘I was quite serious, actually, just didn’t say it very nicely — this was done by somebody with academic training. It’s good of its kind — quite good of its kind — but I don’t like the kind.’ She became suddenly almost accusing. ‘What’s your interest in her?’
‘She wrote me a letter, said somebody might hurt her. People write to me like that — they have an idea I’m some sort of-The newspapers have given people the wrong idea.’
‘Is it the wrong idea? You seem to be trying to help her.’
‘It’s a kind of obligation. I was away when she wrote — her letter was waiting for me-’ He wanted to change the subject. ‘I saw you drawing me. Was it the nose?’
‘You have a strong face.’
‘A strong nose.’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t care about pretty or handsome or that blather. It’s character I like.’ Then her friends came over and surrounded the table and said they were moving on. To his surprise, Gwen John said to him, ‘Why don’t you come? Some current Slade people will be there. Maybe they’ll recognize your drawing.’
He glanced at the others; they weren’t paying any particular attention to him. I’m too old, too different. ‘I’d be intruding.’
‘No, you wouldn’t. Mark says you’re a serious writer.’ Mark was apparently one of the young men, ‘serious writer’ apparently a ticket to their world. She stood. ‘Coming?’
Well, he thought, maybe it would be an adventure, although he didn’t need an adventure. He’d just got back from an adventure. Thinking of Janet Striker, that a love affair is also an adventure, venturing into the landscape of her, her unmapped territory.
Out on Regent Street, there were introductions of a sort — this is Edna, this is Ursula, this is Gwen (a different Gwen), this is Tony, Mark, Andrew. They all began walking. They had pulled on an assortment of capes, outdated military overcoats, one bearskin coat so worn the pale hide showed through in patches. The boy in the French working-man’s jacket was now seen to be wearing rope-soled shoes, as well.
‘Is it a party?’ Denton said.
One of the young men — was it Andrew? — turned and said, ‘The Duchess of Devonshire’s evening salon.’ There was laughter.
Denton spent little time with young people. These seemed to him rather puppyish, innocent, the women apparently more mature than the men. There was no sense of who belonged to whom, if such arrangements in fact existed. They seemed rather jolly overall.
Gwen John walked next to him as if he had become her responsibility. Denton said, ‘I expected to see your brother at the Café Royal.’
‘He’s in Liverpool.’
Despite himself, Denton laughed. It seemed a strange place for Augustus John, with his earrings and his gypsy hats. She said, ‘He took a job teaching. He got married, you know.’ It seemed to make her cross; perhaps this was simply her manner, as she and her brother’s wife were, she said, old friends. Still, she said, ‘Ida’s had to give up her painting. I could never do that.’
‘Gave it up to be a wife?’
‘She’s going to have a child.’
They were heading for Charlotte Street. They were all good walkers, and, despite their sometimes overstated idea of themselves as ‘different’, as decorous as the middle class they despised but from which they’d sprung. They stepped aside for other pedestrians, shushed each other when somebody got boisterous, guided an old woman through the Oxford Street traffic. Their goal was a big house that must have once been somebody’s prize. Now a rooming house, it had a studio at the top, he was told, although they weren’t going that far: their destination was a big, seemingly unfurnished room on the third floor
A cheer rose as they came in, the dozen or so people already there clearly eager for these older, real artists to validate their gathering. The room, he found, was not quite bare (his first sense had been that it was empty except for the dim figures), the walls partly covered with pinned-up drawings ‘from the life’, the floor with pillows made from the sort of bright scraps the women wore. Two crates were holding up a board with a jug of beer, a large bottle, and a dozen or so mismatched cups and glasses. Denton found it politic almost at once to pay for a second pitcher of beer, which somebody fetched from ‘the Fitz’, apparently the local. He was offered a glass, only slightly grubby, with something from the bottle that was brown, sweetish and disgusting, ostensibly Madeira.
‘Are you the chap looking to identify a girl from some dreadful drawing?’ a plump young woman said to him after he’d been around the room once.
‘News travels fast.’
‘Gwen’s told us. I’m Caroline. This is my room.’