A Mad, Wicked Folly by Sharon Biggs Waller Read Free Book Online

drawing, I sat on a chair on the artist’s dais, with
one leg tucked under the other, leaning forward with my
elbow on my leg, my chin in one hand, looking out at my
fellow artists. The expression he had drawn on my face
was one of contentment and strength. Did he really see me
that way?
I dropped my head against the headboard and stared
out at my room. My mother had not yet turned her redecorating attention here. It still had the same dark, fanciful
furniture of my childhood; drawings and paintings I had
made through the years festooned the doors of my wardrobe. Pinned onto the corner of a pastel sketch I had done
of a fishmonger’s cart was the RCA leaflet. I should just
throw it in the rubbish. Throw it all in the rubbish. But I
couldn’t bring myself to.
A chance for a different life. Just a chance was all I
asked. If I got into the RCA, maybe my mother would see I
had talent to be an artist and talk my father round. Maybe,
just like with Freddy, Father would think my art success
was his own making.
But how could I get near the RCA to apply when my
mother had me on a short lead, like a dancing bear in a
circus?
Then I swung my feet to the ground and sat up. Heart
thudding in my ears and hope shooting through me like
quicksilver, I fetched my art satchel from my wardrobe
and slung it over my shoulder.
My mother might have forbidden me to walk out the
front door.
But she had said nothing about the window.
    five
Darling residence, wisteria vine, second-floor window,
Thursday, eighteenth of March
     
M
     
AYBE CLIMBING OUT the window wasn’t
such a brilliant idea.
    I clung to the ancient wisteria vine and
tried not to look down. A branch under my left
boot snapped, and I scrambled against the wall. The trellis
    creaked. Of course, I had timed my climb out of the window badly and now my skirt was caught above me on my
bedroom-window latch, frillies on show for all the world to
see if they cared to look up.
    I stifled a whimper and reached up to pat around the
window ledge, trying to find the end of the skirt. I had to
do something quickly, or I could possibly hang there forever with the breeze whistling round my underthings.
    I yanked on the garment as hard as I could until it
ripped. I hoped it wasn’t too badly rent. It wouldn’t do to
pitch up at the RCA with my skirt in tatters.
    I climbed down as far as I could and then jumped the
rest of the way. The impact with the ground caused me to
stumble and I sat down hard.
    That was when I saw our gardener, Harold, with clippers hoisted midchop over the privet hedge, his mouth
open wide in bewilderment.
    “Oh!” I said from my seat on the ground.
“Afternoon, Miss Darling,” he mumbled.
Blast! How long had he been there? How much had he
    seen? The look on his face told me he had seen everything.
His ruddy, weather-beaten features were even redder than
usual. His glance traced from me to my window, where a
long streamer of lace hung out, billowing in the wind.
    I looked at my skirt missing its wide lace edging.
I didn’t care about the skirt, but I might as well have
left a calling card for my mother telling her exactly how I
had escaped.
With as much dignity as I could muster, I struggled to
my feet, waved at Harold, and ran.
    BY THE TIME
I reached a busier street where I could flag a
cab, I was panting like a hound, and my side ached. I found
a hansom cab and directed the driver to the Royal College
of Art.
    The school surprised me. It was housed inside what
appeared to be an unimposing building, hardly the sort
of place where great artists would be nurtured. But on the
inside it was magical. In the anteroom, honored paintings
from former students hung from floor to ceiling. I stopped
to scan the paintings, and my eyes lit on one I hadn’t
seen before that looked inspired by the Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood.
    The PRB was a small group of Victorian artists famous
for painting women from myth and story. Waterhouse,
the painter of A Mermaid , was an inheritor of their