Free Keeping the World Away by Margaret Forster

whimpered.
    Ida looked beautiful nursing him. Gus drew and drew her, lightning quick sketches, but Gwen merely looked, noting the swell of the breasts lessening as the baby sucked, and the way his nose was flattened against them. She stored the images in her head and thought one day she might make use of them, but not now. Now, she was finishing another and much better self-portrait and it had drained her. She needed this break, it gave her time to stand back and gain some objectivity before she returned to work . It was strange, she could not help thinking, that seeing Ida’s child made her own work more important, not less so. She did not look at their baby and pine for one of her own, nor did the baby make her work seem irrelevant. On the contrary, he made it seem vital. She herself was not going to create a baby. All her creative talents had to go into her painting, all her feelings and emotions, all her ideas and plans, all her hopes and fears, all the turmoil within her, everything that was precious.
    She could see now how life, her life, had turned out.
    *
    Another baby, another boy, Caspar, born in March 1903, barely fifteen months after David. This time, Gwen saw the baby at once, living as she was in Howland Street, with Ida and Gus back in Fitzroy Street. A newborn infant, she suddenly realised, was more alarmingly fragile than beautiful and she contemplated him with awe, wondering how he could survive and grow into the sturdy toddler David had become. Ida was distracted and not nearly as glowing with motherhood. Her radiance was dimmed and Gwen felt concern for her. Was she eating enough, was she sleeping? Ida laughed at both questions. She ate when she could and she snatched sleep when she could. All was chaos in her household, and Gus nowhere to be seen. Mrs Nettleship was outraged at her son-in-law’s neglect of her daughter, but Ida defended him. She did not want him to be bored. Let him go to the Café Royal, let him mix with his friends. He had a new friend, she told Gwen. He was painting her. It was so convenient since this new friend and model lived in the basement of a house in their street.
    Gwen met her coming into the house. She had seen her somewhere before, at a party, given by an artist friend of Gus’s. She stopped, stood stock-still, and said, ‘Dorelia?’ Dorelia McNeill, only twenty-two, sultry and beautiful, with high, prominent cheekbones, slanting eyes and an air of detachment about her.
    No wonder Gus was painting her. Who could resist?

III
    A GLORIOUS AUGUST day, the dirty Thames for once a sparkling silver and the sky as blue and cloudless as ever it could be in France. But the steamer was not what they had expected. Their cabin was hardly worthy of the name – so tiny, the door without a lock, the single porthole covered in salt and impossible to clean from inside. Their painting equipment filled most of the space. They were going to have to climb over the wrapped-up easels every time they went in or out, like climbing over rocks. Each had a cloth bag of clothes which went on their bunks, under the thin pillows. If they were seasick, this would be a dreadful place to suffer.
    But they were not seasick, not once. They spent most of their time on deck, leaning on the rails, eyes closed, smiling into the wind. Away! They were away, from London, from Fitzroy Street, from poor Ida and her noisy babies, from Gus and his demands. Hardly anything had been decided. ‘Come with me,’ Gwen had urged, ‘walk with me to Rome.’ And Dorelia had stared at her, and raised her eyebrows, and put her hands on her hips, and her head on one side, and then she nodded. She left all the preparation to Gwen, who launched herself immediately into a flurry of timetables and tickets and maps. They would sail to Bordeaux and walk the rest of the way along the Garonne and then to the Mediterranean coast and so into Italy. It was mad, quite mad. Everyone said so. ‘Walk?’ people exclaimed, and they lifted