All My Sisters: A sumptuous wartime novel of love and loss by Judith Lennox

Author:Judith Lennox [Lennox, Judith]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Headline
Published: 2015-05-06T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

Eva went back to Gabriel because she could not have done otherwise. She needed him, needed his energy, his love of life and his easy laughter.

Something had changed, though. Her loathing for Nerissa was black and jealous. It made her watch Gabriel, suspicious of where he might have been, who he might have been with. And Gabriel hadn’t painted for months. ‘A fallow period,’ he said moodily. ‘Whenever this happens to me, I’m afraid that’s it, I’ll never paint again.’

In July Eva helped Lydia Bowen move into a new flat. They painted walls, hung curtains and made chair covers. When the decorating was finished, Lydia gave an impromptu house-warming party. Jars and vases filled with long-stemmed daisies stood on tables and mantelpieces. Light streamed through high arched windows. Guests crowded into the rooms and the pop of champagne corks beat a rhythm to the music of the gramophone.

Though she had arrived at the party with Gabriel, Eva seemed to keep losing him in the crowd. He would be there, at her side, and then she would spend a few minutes talking to a friend and look round and find him gone. It seemed imperative to her to stay with Gabriel. Familiar faces flickered in the crowds: her fellow students and tutors from the Slade, Lydia’s suffragette friends, artists and patrons Eva had met at Lydia’s gallery.

Talking to Lydia and May Jackson, Eva lost track of Gabriel. Excusing herself, she wove round the huddles of guests in search of him. She caught sight of him at last, standing at the far end of the hallway. He was talking to a girl. The girl was dark and slender; she wore an ankle-length, emerald-green velvet skirt and a black knitted sweater. Her feet were bare and her wild, curling hair fell free of pins or ribbons down her back. When she laughed, she threw her head back, displaying the long, pale column of her throat.

At around midnight the guests began to drift away. Lydia’s escort, a wiry, foreign-looking man, took his leave of them as Eva stood in the kitchen, washing glasses. ‘Fabrice is a fearfully dull conversationalist, but the most divine dancer,’ confided Lydia after she had seen him out of the front door.

‘Have you ever been in love, Lydia?’ asked Eva.

‘Just the once. Cigarette, my dear?’

‘Please.’ Eva dried her hands on a tea towel. ‘What was he like?’

‘Laurence?’ Lydia smiled sadly. ‘He was tall and rather thin and he had eyes the colour of black coffee. I think that’s why I fell in love with him, because of his eyes.’

‘But you didn’t marry him?’

‘No.’ Lydia flicked a lighter. ‘Those lovely eyes had a habit of roaming, I’m afraid. Laurence collected beautiful things. Dutch interiors and pretty young women. He was married when I met him. To be fair, he never made a secret of it. So you could say that I knew what I was doing. Though one never does, of course. One never does.’

The silence seemed to hang rather heavily in the air.

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