Someone to Hold

Mr. Cunningham set his book down in order to help construct battlements about the top of the tower—until the little boy whose hair he had ruffled came along and knocked the whole thing down with one swipe of his arm and a giggle. There were cries of outrage from the children who had built it, and Mr. Cunningham stood up, roaring ferociously, grabbed the child, tossed him at the ceiling, and caught him on the way down. The little boy shrieked with fright and glee and then helped Mr. Cunningham and the other two gather up the fallen bricks and start again.

Other children claimed his attention and he spent some time with each group before exchanging a few words with one of the older housemothers. He had brought the cook some fresh eggs from the market, Camille heard him say, and had wrangled an invitation to stay for luncheon.

“But you don’t need an invitation, Joel,” the woman told him. “You know that. Not to come home.”

He laughed and sat down on a chair, his back half turned to Camille—he still had not seen her—and began to draw something in his sketchbook. The baby in his cradle, perhaps—he now had both feet clutched in his hands and was rocking from side to side, jabbering happily to himself. Or perhaps the girls engrossed in their game with the rag dolls. Or perhaps six-year-old Caroline Williams, one of the younger children at the school, who appeared to be reading aloud to an old doll from a large book, sounding out the words and following them along the page with one forefinger. Camille knew that in fact she had difficulty reading, something that was going to have to be addressed in the coming week.

The baby in her arms gave a hiccup of a sob and Camille looked down as one little hand waved in the air and came to rest against her bosom and clutch the fabric of her dress, even though the child did not wake. And then she did. She twitched, opened her eyes, gazed solemnly up at Camille, and . . . smiled a broad, bright, toothless smile. It felt like one of life’s random and unearned gifts, Camille thought, smiling back, smitten with unexpected happiness. It was a totally unfamiliar feeling. She had never cultivated happiness—or unhappiness for that matter.

They were interrupted by Hannah, who had come to take the baby to change her nappy before feeding her. “The children have been sent to wash their hands before luncheon,” she told Camille. “You will be wanting to go and eat too, Miss Westcott. I think Sarah has taken to you. She will soon settle here. They all do.”

Mr. Cunningham was standing close by when Camille got to her feet. He had seen her at last and appeared to be waiting to go into the dining room with her. “Madonna and Child, do you think?” he asked her, holding up his sketchbook, its topmost page facing toward her, so that she could see what he had been drawing. “Or is that too popish a title for your liking?”

It was a charcoal sketch of a woman seated on a low chair, a baby, swaddled in a blanket, asleep in her arms. The drawing was rough, but it suggested a strong emotional connection between the child and the woman, who was gazing down at it, something like adoration on her face. The child was unmistakably Sarah, and the woman, Camille realized with a jolt, was herself, though not as she had ever seen herself in any mirror.

“But you did not even see me when you came in,” she protested. “And you were sitting almost with your back to me while you sketched.”

“Oh, I saw you, Miss Westcott,” he said. “And like any self-respecting teacher, I have eyes in the back of my head.”

She did not have a chance against him, Camille thought, not quite understanding what she meant. Within just a few minutes and with only paper and charcoal, he had reproduced exactly how she had been feeling as she held that child. Almost honored. Almost tearful. Almost maternal. Almost adoring. She looked at him, a little disturbed. And she wished, suddenly cross, that he was not handsome. Not that he was handsome exactly, only good-looking. What she really wished was that he was not attractive. Because he was, and she did not like it one bit. She was not accustomed to characterizing men according to their physical appeal. Though it was not all physical with him, was it?

“Shall we go for luncheon?” he asked, indicating the door. They were the last two left in the room.

“May I have the sketch?” she asked him.

“Madonna and Child?” he said.

“May I?”

He detached it from the book and held it out to her, holding her eyes as she took it from him.

“Thank you,” she said.

“It is not a crime, you know,” he said, “to love a child.”

* * *

Joel had left Edwina’s house earlier than usual last night despite her sleepy protests. He was working on a painting, he had told her, and was burning up on the inside with the need to get back to it before his vision dimmed. He had not even been lying, though he had felt a bit as though he were, for the arrangement with Mrs. Kingsley had been that he would start with her younger granddaughter next week and leave the elder until later, perhaps even the autumn.

He had been up until dawn, working by candlelight, capturing her laughter-full face and then her averted, tear-streaked profile—two sides of the same coin. But, unlike a coin, she had more than two sides. How many more he did not yet know.

He had snatched a few hours of sleep but had got up earlier than he intended, restless and impatient with the two portraits he must finish before getting too deeply involved in the new project. He ate his breakfast standing up and, gazing at one of the portraits on his easel, trying to feel the excitement of a character almost captured in paint with only a few slight tweaks remaining to be done. Then he sat down and wrote to inform Mr. Cox-Phillips that he would call on him on Tuesday. He did not really want to go at all. He wanted to finish the outstanding projects and then concentrate upon the two portraits that had captured his interest far more than he had expected. But it would not do to turn down the possibility of another commission out of hand. Who knew when they would dry up altogether and leave him without further income?