A Brighter Tomorrow by Maggie Ford (read with me .txt) 📕

she was living, had been so kind, walking her back to her own lodgings. ‘Young women should not be alone walking these streets after dark,’ he’d warned. ‘Perhaps I can continue walking you back.’

She had readily agreed, but bad weather, with Christmas approaching, had turned people off pausing to gaze at the displayed efforts of casual street artists and she had only seen Felix once more. Nor had Mr ‘Celebrated’ Hunnard shown up. No doubt such an eminent person wouldn’t brave the cold even in a coach and, as Christmas came and went, she suspected she’d seen the last of him, that it had been just a flash in the pan.

Even so, she had been encouraged to buy some decent materials and so far had spent her time keeping to her room, rushing off easier landscapes at odd moments while trying to transfer her ‘inner self’ to canvas. All she’d achieved was this uncompleted effort, trying to capture the endless shapes and colours that invaded her head.

The portrait would be of her mother, or her memory of her – thin-faced with care-worn features, the eyes, oddly misplaced as with those others of her portraits, sad and empty from loss of hope for the future, the mouth, though smiling, as Ellie felt the need to portray, that smile false and bitter.

She painted her as she always did when these dark moods took her – using heavy applications of purples, browns, dark shades of green, black, and here and there streaks of stark yellow and white and touches of vermilion, the shadows always a sombre Prussian blue. The colours and the unusual shapes that took her thoughts expressed how she felt. She supposed this was what Hunnard had meant by that word he’d used – ‘expressionism’. She couldn’t recall Michael referring to it. He’d tried to get her to emulate the old landscape masters, with no idea of the secret images that lurked in her head.

They were still there but refused to be transferred on to the canvas, even though, time after time, she’d overpainted the work in an effort to get them out of herself. At one time she’d even picked up the canvas from the broken chair on which it was propped to fling it across the room, spoiling the still wet image she had so laboriously worked on, so that she had to start that part again. Maybe she would be better off painting pretty pictures to sell until she saved enough to support her former quest.

Ellie gazed around the room, a far more comfortable one than when she had first arrived. She had bought a secondhand armchair, a table and two upright chairs as well as a passable mattress, another pillow, a pair of twill sheets and two blankets, all second-hand but clean. But her money was beginning to dwindle and she was growing a little desperate. The way things were going she would never have enough to go in search of her father.

The thought depressed her even to the point of asking the question why was she bothering. But it only needed her once to cast her mind back to those days when she had been helpless before him, and that other awful time having Doctor Lowe look on her private parts in helping her rid herself of the vile results of her father’s attentions.

Where was Charlie now? Would he have found out where their father was? If she went to see the Sharps, they might have had some news by now. There was also a chance of seeing Ronnie again, but she doubted it, him being taken up with that girl he intended to marry.

Washing up the supper plate, Ellie prepared for bed, taking a last look at the painting she’d been doing. Perhaps in the light of day it would look better. She was just wasting her time trying to apply colour by gaslight.

Lying in bed, her thoughts zipped from one memory to another: Mum, Charlie, Dora – she’d have to write to Dora soon – Bertram Lowe and his wife, her time with Michael. At that her heart slumped, making her thoughts turn quickly to Ronnie Sharp, then to Felix, whom she’d not seen since being walked home by him over a week ago.

Bells began to peal, waking her from a half-sleep. They were pealing in a new year – nineteen hundred and two. People in the street below had begun singing and laughing and calling out to each other, ‘Happy New Year!’ over and over. And she lay up here alone.

She heard her own voice explode in a single intake of self-pity. A tear trickled from the corner of her eye.

In a flash she was up, sweeping away the tear and in her rough twill nightgown she ran to the window and threw it open.

‘Happy New Year down there!’ she yelled.

A voice yelled back, slurred and jolly, ‘An’ ’Appy New Year t’you too!’

Ellie’s laugh gulped in her throat. So this was her new year, alone up here. She knew no one except Felix and he hadn’t shown any interest in her other than by walking her home – as a sort of gallant duty, perhaps. Of his life she knew nothing. By the time she took her paintings out to sell – who knew? – he might probably have moved on. Dejected again, that brief but hearty exchange of good wishes behind her, she made her way back to bed, trying not to listen to the still pealing bells, the noises of hilarity in the street below that had set dogs barking from every quarter.

A tap on her door stopped her. ‘Who’s there?’ she called in alarm. A muffled voice answered her. ‘It’s me – Felix.’

‘Felix?’

‘Reese. Surely you haven’t forgotten me.’

‘What do you want?’

‘Open the door.’

‘I can’t: I’m ready for bed.’

‘Come on!’ There came another bout of tapping. ‘I don’t care! Open the door.’

Ellie stood hesitating. She was in her nightgown. How could she open the door to a casual stranger? But she