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

you approach your subject. It is filled with pain,’ he added as she began to look confused. ‘I cannot put it in any simpler terms.’

‘No, of course not,’ she had said stupidly, trying to look learned.

She had still been unsure of what he’d been talking about as she finally came away, left to find her own way back to where she had left her other pictures. Even so she had felt good about herself and, with money in her pocket, she actually took a cab, if only one of the cheaper ones, known as growlers because the driver was seldom polite, as if he begrudged his job, and might become quite surly if pressed to do anything out of the ordinary such as carry someone’s parcels.

With her head full of all the nonsense Hunnard seemed to talk, Ellie had approached a grinning Felix. ‘Well?’ he’d asked.

‘Well,’ she had shrugged. ‘He did talk a load of rubbish, but at least I gathered he thinks my paintings have promise.’ She hadn’t told him of their deal. It might not come off and she might find herself landed with unsold pictures and nothing to show for it. But the man wasn’t going to get his twenty quid back and that was certain.

After a moment’s thought about the letter she was writing this evening, Ellie added a bit about this afternoon’s event, unable to keep it to herself any longer. And it would look good to Dora, perhaps make her feel even more discontented with her lot and want to come and live with her instead. What fun they’d have if she did: no restrictions, doing what they liked without having to ask anyone, going out together when they felt like it. It would be just lovely. And she did miss Dora so.

Twenty-Five

‘You’ve been among us for almost two months,’ Felix was saying as he lifted her exhibits along with his own onto the old perambulator he used to get his work home after a day of trying to sell them. ‘But you don’t mix.’

That was true. Other than at the New Year party, he was the only one she really knew. Perhaps she could have pushed herself forward more, but she felt she was still an outsider.

She thought he might have given his support, introduced her to a few of his friends, at least the man he was living with, but he hadn’t. Perhaps to him she did appear to prefer her own company, but it was only because she didn’t quite know how she, a stranger, could break through what she saw as a barrier. By nature she was lively, but on strange ground, and she didn’t want to show herself up in a community whose only conversation seemed to revolve forever around its work, the outside world being another sphere.

‘Not much I can do about it,’ she said huffily.

‘Don’t you want to?’ he queried.

Yes, more than anything she wanted to. ‘Well, I don’t know anyone. And no one seems to want to know me, apart from you.’

‘Well, with Robert C. Hunnard buying your paintings, they’ll soon want to know you. We’re all struggling. One or two make it, but not many.’

‘I haven’t made it,’ she retorted. ‘All I’ve done is sell a couple of paintings to him.’

‘Which now hang in the Hunnard Gallery. He doesn’t buy paintings that he doesn’t think will bring him a good profit. You don’t know, but he could make your name for you. Lucky girl!’

‘Or perhaps he won’t!’ she snapped.

Felix gave a little chuckle. ‘There’s that to it, I suppose. Meantime you’re stuck in that one little room of yours like some anchorite, seeing no one except when you’re here hawking your work, and even then you don’t talk to anyone but me.’

‘I know you,’ she explained. ‘I don’t know anyone else.’

He looked at her quizzically. ‘Then do you want to meet some of us?’

‘Of course I do, but I can’t just push my way into other people’s private conversation. Anyway, they’re men artists and I’d feel out of place.’

Felix became serious. ‘Is that what you’re worried about? Well, my love, there are quite a few lady painters. This evening I’m off to meet a few friends. Come along with me. I don’t guarantee another female painter will be there, but most of us do have female friends… They’re nice,’ he added hurriedly as Ellie grimaced. ‘One or two even have wives. Will you come?’ Ellie lifted her head and nodded. Some had lady friends. Some were married. It made her feel better.

As Felix walked her home, she wondered about the person he shared his room with. Surely it was really a woman and not a he? Was she more to him than just a room mate? He hardly ever spoke of her. But Ellie knew these people by now – sleeping together didn’t seem to worry them overmuch and it could be that Felix and this woman shared the same bed as well as the same room. Still, it could be only a casual relationship, a natural consequence of living there together, say until the woman moved on, found someone else. If it was only that, then perhaps she had a chance with him. He was likeable, considerate, not rough or brusque. Yes, she could be happy with someone like Felix.

As he helped her home with her paintings Ellie made up her mind to have him herself, and luckily, not having met his partner, she’d feel no guilt. It did occur to her that going with Felix could spoil her plans for tracing her father, but she couldn’t go on turning down love and making her own life a misery. It would only be adding to the damage he’d already done to her and she didn’t see why she couldn’t enjoy life yet still keep to her plan. Only lack of money, not lack of someone to love, was stopping her. Why couldn’t she have both?

As she and Felix reached her destination, she took