Palladian by Elizabeth Taylor Page B

bed for half an hour, reading an old bound copy of
Little Folks
. When she had rested they would go for a walk, collecting grasses in the park, to be brought back, classified, and pressed between pieces of clean blotting-paper.
    Margaret was standing before her long mirror in a petticoat, her frizzy hair untidy from trying on frocks.
    ‘Oh, Cassandra!’ – like anyone putting aside the formality of a surname, she used the alternative unnaturally often – it seemed to have a tiresome attraction for her – ‘Cassandra, I was just wondering … would you care to have this frock? I shall never get into it again. It clips in under my behind and will burst asunder soon across the chest. With a little pleat here and here and a bit of easing in on the shoulder, it would be all right. It is scarcely worn.’
    But the frock was Margaret and could not be otherwise.
    ‘What do you think? Try it on.’
    Meekly, but outraged, Cassandra slipped her shoulders out of her blouse, let her skirt fall to the floor. Margaret dropped the frock over her head and began pulling in and tweaking, pinning, going round the hem on her hands and knees, pins fringing her mouth. Cassandra, from her superior level, studied the room, the opened drawers revealing a rich untidiness of clothes, the mannish dressing-gown with all the grandeur of looped and whorled and twisted cord, the large shoes lying about.
    ‘Now look in the mirror.’ Margaret sat back on her heels, her belly rounded beneath the white slip, and her face flushed from all the crawling and bending.
    Out of the wide sleeves Cassandra’s arms emerged pathetically, mauve against the cruel blue of the dress.
    ‘There, that looks heavenly on you. Much better than on me,’ said Margaret enthusiastically. ‘Will you let me cobble it up for you, then?’
    Expressing gratitude did not come easily; what would come even less easily would be the miserable business of wearing the dress, as obviously she would now have to.
    ‘Ben always liked this dress,’ Margaret went on with simple pleasure. Everything she said to enhance the gift, detracted from it.
    Cassandra left her sitting on the window-seat, her bare arms among the folds of saxe-blue, the silver thimble tapping and flashing, her face calm with goodwill and satisfaction.
    The landing smelt of warm carpet; the kitchen cat lay in the patch of sun which spread in the shape of the window across the floor. Cassandra tidied her hair, picked up her wild-flower book, put on the look of a governess and then paused to listen, fancying she heard running footsteps along the passage.
    *
    Sophy stood in the doorway of Tom’s room. Her face was so pale that it reflected her red dress. He was sitting by the window drawing.
    ‘Have you run away?’ he inquired.
    ‘It was time for me to get up, but she just didn’t come.’
    ‘She?’ His pen scratched and finicked on the paper.
    ‘Miss Dashwood?’
    ‘Oh, yes.’
    ‘What are you doing?’
    ‘What should you think I am doing?’
    ‘Drawring,’ she suggested.
    ‘“Drawing.” Don’t talk like a baby.’
    She came nearer and looked over his shoulder.
    ‘What is it? It’s like a skeleton with a bush on his head.’
    ‘The arteries of the body.’
    The fine leaves wavered out like the fingers of a sea-plant.
    ‘Or one of those natives dressed up like a tree. A medicineman. What’s it for?’
    ‘Are all your drawings
for
something?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Oh, I see.’
    ‘How do you remember how it all goes? Is it what you have to know to be a doctor? Does Margaret know all this?’ She watched with half-closed eyes, the hair-fine sepia lines fascinating her.
    ‘It is all immensely inaccurate and rather old-fashioned, the bastard of art and science.’
    ‘Miss Dashwood says the word differently.’
    ‘Oh, she does, does she?’
    ‘She says “bastard”. Like that.’
    ‘And does she use the word frequently?’
    ‘It comes in
King John
. It means an armour-bearer.’
    ‘Is that how Miss