I froze, checked out the keyhole for a second then listened again, nothing. I shook my head, got out of bed and made my way to the hallway convincing myself it was simply a mission to get a drink of water from the kitchen. I was shaking when I passed the boxes crowded up in my hallway and I felt inclined to open one, just one, just to see, although it would be, it couldn’t be, could it be, in there?
Dust came dancing over the cardboard flaps and I saw lots of aging biscuit tins, some sepia photo albums and a few ornaments inside. Then, tucked at one end I saw a wooden frame, a dirty white colour. I heaved a sigh, I knew it was it. I pulled out the picture faced away from me and with one neat move, I spun it around. The boy was there, just as I remember, as if time for him was left still. It looked at me, now grownup but with the tear still lodged in my eye. A thousand memories came flooding back, sunny holidays at Gran’s, Christmas dinners and all the times when I was upset, when Gran held me up to meet the boy in the painting. “That’s you,” I heard her voice echo through my head; “You are Bimbo!”
My stupid imagination, how bizarre it was. How I could throw myself out of the real world as a child and land in the midst of an imaginary fantasy of my own choosing, or, if feeling down my imagination could render control and give me unwanted visions, bad dreams and hallucinations. As an adult you forget these, though I like to think that the creative mind still can access it, for the use of his art. Maybe this was the answer, trying to write these songs, the demand for me to get the job done, my imagination was taking over; it was taking control due to fear, or tiredness, stress, perhaps.
Still though that was all it was, overactive imagination trying to creep me out, my own brain working against me, telling me to give it a rest. Concocting a story about a curse within a painting was so senseless, so dumb; for this painting was not even the one. It was not even Bragolin’s Crying Boy at all. Just to confirm it on the back it had the name of the painting on it. The artist was Anna Zinkeisen and the picture was called “Childhood.”
4.
Women don’t like clutter, period. I know this. Women like Rachel don’t like mornings, know this too. Hell, it’s not my fault, the last thing I want is to go against my father, he has been good to me on the whole and he is in a tight spot at the moment. I want to help him out but shit, when I awoke I found my love randomly opening boxes, taking out flowery china mugs and delicate doilies, looking at them in a frustrated manner and shaking her head.
She did not even turn to see me awake behind her, merely she sensed I was there, “what do we want with all this crap?” she whined.
I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes, last night was not a good night for sleep and this morning was not a good time for this, “We don’t have to keep them just……”
“Too fucking right we don’t!” She turned around to face me with a stern look bugling her wonderful features, “I am off to work, sort this shit out today and get rid of it!”
My words of agreement were hardly noted as she stood, then strode over to the door and slammed it shut. I guess she was fed up with this disorder, this mess all over the hallway which was now creeping into the bedroom. I looked about me, I have three hours before band practise, I wanted to write, I felt the inspiration to write something flooding my neurons but I knew it was best to divide the time or perhaps if I could multitask.
With tea in hand I began to sort through it, a thousand Christmas and birthday presents from us grandchildren came back to me, endless ornaments of animals, fairies and little cottages came streaming out of the box. I put them all back in again. Charity shop, I figured, perhaps there is a song title in that?
Glass dessert bowels, more china mugs and plates, perhaps these casserole dishes are worth keeping, they don’t make them like this anymore. I decided to work from the front door back to the bedroom, that way people might just be able to get through the door; that might cheer her up a bit.
Everywhere I went around the flat, putting things into a trash pile or a charity shop pile or even, the stuff I thought we could use, pending girlfriend negotiation, I could feel the presence of someone watching me. I tried to shrug it off, accepting I was still slightly freaked out by the recent goings on but when I passed that picture that I left standing against the far wall of the hallway the feeling intensified. I gave the picture a scorn and from then on those upset eyes followed me around the room. I am not the most perceptive person, I never resort to the ethos that something’s are unexplainable but this was negatively draining my senses, it was spooking me out; I have no other way to describe it.
There was only one person then that could help me, I needed to see her even if it meant getting a reprimand from my band and Rachel too. In no time at all I found myself in my car, punching the postcode to the old people’s home into the sat-nav.
It was there I met a man who was rubbing his chin and looking over the place, he suggested various building work that needed doing to improve the place and directed them with some convincing arguments to a nurse that was following him around. She leaned in and explained to me that he always does this; he was a builder and thought he was there only to assess work that needed to be done and give them a quote. He had been perpetually doing this for three years solid.
It seemed like a nice place though, a wonderful Tudor building with a great view of the gardens outside from every window. I smiled at an old woman with far too much makeup on who scorned a hateful look at me, “I have a boyfriend already and if you don’t watch out,” she snapped, pointing to an old man gazing mindlessly out of the window, “I will tell him!”
It gave me the shakes I must admit, I pondered if my Gran was really as bad as all these, if she really warranted a place here. Then I saw her and all my regrets about visiting this place melted. “Hello,” I shouted at her, “It’s Vinny Gran, Vinny!”
“Have you got the money?” she asked.
“What Gran, it’s me!”
“The money to get me out of here?” she muttered.
“No, Gran, this is your home now, do you like it?”
She uttered through her false teeth, she looked confused but admittedly she looked in far better health than she had done for some months before her relocation. “The nurses suck shit!” she whispered.
I laughed, she still had her sarcastic sense of humour; “So, how have you been Gran?”
“Oh, I’m alright son,” she finally smiled as if she suddenly remembered me, patting my hand with her own bony fingers, “it’s all the others.”
“Gran I have a question,” although she could not recall what happened five minutes ago if you prompted her about the past she opened up, “you remember when I was little…..”
“Of course!” she snapped, “snotty nosed brat you were. Oh, the times I helped you out of trouble, always in trouble with your mum. I used to say don’t do that, mum will moan at you, but did you listen? No, I had to pick up the pieces!”
“Yes, you did Gran, I never thanked you for it!” I giggled.
“A bit late now, wouldn’t you say son, huh?” she turned her head as if she really wasn’t jesting. I could not be sure.
I saw my chance though and dived straight in, “Gran, you remember the picture, with the boy crying? You had it hanging on the wall and when I was upset…..”
“Balling your eyes out, snot everywhere, of course I remember it son, it was yesterday for me,” she interrupted, “you never understood about that painting.”
“What? I need to know now, what about the painting?” I asked, sure that we were getting somewhere. I urged forwards and looked into her worn eyes as she flicked them into a look of fear.
“I was a young girl; it was all so long ago,” she sighed.
“Tell me what you know, tell me the story….” I sensed she knew something.
“Well, it was when I worked at St Mary’s hospital in Paddington during the war son, it was hard work there, and I’ll tell yer. Well, she came in, the artist that painted the picture; she worked as a medical artist
. Anna her name was…..”
I gasped and moved closer to her, overwhelmed that she could recount this story, “Go on,” I encouraged.
“Well son, it wasn’t very nice. You see, she had to draw pictures of the injuries caused by the blitz or the soldier’s wounds. Anyway, we talked quite a lot; she was a lovely old lady and I was a young girl, eager to get on in nursing. Anyway she showed me some of her other work, before the war when I went to her house for a cup of tea. It was lovely paintings like, really was good she was,” then my Gran stopped and looked out of the window.
“Go on Gran…..about the artist Anna, what did she show you?”
“What artist?”
“Anna, from the hospital,” I continued, trying to not get annoyed.
“Anna who love? There is no artist here,” she giggled to herself, “that I can assure you!”
I tried and I tried to prompt her about it, to get her memory back on track but it was useless, she had no idea she was ever talking about it. I started back up by changing the subject, we talked about Rachel; not that she really knew who she was. She told me that I needed to marry her, to settle down, have kids. I laughed and agreed. Then, convinced that this was getting nowhere I made my excuses. By then though it was not necessary, I think she forgot I was even there. I stood up, looked at her gazing out of the window. I kissed her on her cheek; it was just as I remember kissing my Gran when I was little, but she did not react this time.
Silently I went to leave. A few steps away from her she looked up to me with a tear in her eye, “It was you, you know that don’t you son?” she uttered so quietly.
I froze on the spot, “the boy in the picture? How though Gran? How could it be me?”
“Anna told me it was; I asked her when she showed me the painting if she used a model. She laughed and said not for this one, she said think of it as your grandson, when he is born.”
This could not be true, simply could not be I thought, shivering as I did so. “Is that true Gran, or are you trying to scare me?”
“Horrible little kid you was!” she shouted, seeming quite serious. She always jested this with me before but now I was not sure if she was hiding her satirical side. I shivered again, harder this time. “Always had to be burning something you did!”
With that I walked away, she was seething and the nurse had come over and instructed that I go, “visit her another time, I am sorry, they get like this sometimes.”
5.
The light from the screen beamed out this new information at me as if it was trying to penetrate my skull. I sat in darkness, glancing occasionally at the painting and back to the screen of the laptop. Does it really look like me? A bit I guess, going from old photos. I had got the point where I was willing to take anything on board, the mumblings of an insane lady, the idea that I was the subject of a painting before I was even born, a premonition painting, is that possible? Does it matter now because here, before me it would seem Wikipedia did not give the full story, however some further research did.
I found some blogs about the whole incident. I started on Wikipedia, Gran was right according to the page of Anna Zinkeisen she was indeed a medical artist at St Mary’s in Paddington during the war years. The rest of the page did not open many new doors; she was Scottish, moved to Middlesex as a young girl. She studied sculpture at Harrow before attending the Royal Academy and from there she worked on many cruise ships as a portrait painter. It said nothing of the series of paintings she created titled “Childhood.”
Looking further afield every time I searched for the painting itself I would not find much information about when it was painted and who the subject was. The articles were full of stories about the curse. It would seem from these pages that there was some confusion as to what painting had the curse. Any painting of a crying boy at the time was eligible for inclusion in the urban myth and while the original house fire preserved the Crying Boy by Giovanni Bragolin once hysteria began to blow, these stories where concocted about Anna Zinkeisen’s painting “Childhood” as well.
I flicked through the thoughts of general superstitions of paintings; particularly portraits falling from the wall would mean a death in the family but I did shiver when it mentioned the age old scene setter in early horror films where eyes in a painting would follow you around a room. Then I thought again, I couldn’t take that notion as scary after endless episodes of Scooby-Doo. Ron and May Hall from Rotherham were the first to be reported by the Sun newspaper in 1985 to have their house burned down by a chip-pan fire but the painting survived. It was Ron Hall’s brother that was the firefighter, I stretch back in the chair, the hoax then starts here, I figured, the fireman tells of other similar incidents where a crying boy painting was the only thing not to burn in house fires in order to sell the story and claim back some money for the damage; perhaps he had no house insurance.
The fireman apparently never used the word “cursed,” but the newspaper added this for artistic licence. The Sun was desperate for stories that the competitors would not print; the blog mentioned the classic nonsense headliners at the time such as “Freddie Starr Ate My Hamster!” The editor of the Sun used the phrase, “this one has legs,” meaning it was a story that would run and run. From this site it was clearly a hoax devised by the paper. It also noted that department stores announced that 50,000 prints of Bragolin’s painting had sold in Britain alone. The chances of the picture being in a house that burned were more than likely.
It told on another blog that the child in Bragolin’s painting was Don Bonillo, an orphan he found on the streets on Madrid. After witnessing the death of his parents in a fire he chose not to speak again. It said that wherever the boy settled, fires would mysteriously start, he became known to the locals as Diablo or devil.
Bragolin was warned by a Catholic priest that the boy was jinxed. The artist maintained to paint the picture anyway and is rumoured to have tried beating the curse out of him. When the artist's studio burnt down in a blaze he blamed the orphan boy, and Bragolin fell into ruins when his popularity dwindled. It is said that the boy died in a car accident when the car he was in exploded into flames, he was nineteen. Nobody came forward to claim his body.
I looked down at the picture; still nothing really says how Anna Zinkeisen’s Childhood painting came into play here. In order to spread the myth and make it plausible the two painting get confused, many house fires did not have Bragolin’s painting at all but just happened to have Zinkeisen’s instead. This did not bother the Sun; they continued to create the stories that would build up into the frenzy of burning the paintings. The only similarity was that all the “crying boy” paintings were examples of cheap, mass-produced prints sold in great numbers by English department stores during the 1960s and 70s. The geographical cluster simply reflected their popularity among working class communities in that part of the North.
With that looked into I could settle my mind, I even found a YouTube video by Steve Punt who burned Bragolin’s painting, it did not burn, it was, as experts suggested covered with the fireproof coating. All this was leading me nowhere and I found myself doubting the reason why it was occupying so much of my time. Had I not got enough problems, the band, could we get it back together again? Without that bastard Daniel managing us perhaps we could. I had to get everyone together and sack him. He never showed an interest anymore, never even turned up to brief us. He was a slimy guy, young, but somehow caught in a time of yore with his attitude. Ricky, the bass-player was his biggest foe; he told me that he knew he abused his children. I find this a little over the top but he was adamant this was true. Ricky was a good guy, known him for years and I didn’t want to doubt him but you know it is something one could never prove.
Looking at the image with all this myth surrounding it one could wonder why on earth either of the paintings were so popular in the first place, they were all eerie, disturbing and not positive at all. It made me think hard about why people would get pleasure out of seeing a child cry, so much of this h
orror goes on, through history and through recent news stories of abusive celebrities and politicians. Maybe Ricky was right about Daniel. I called him, asked him about how he knew such a secret. Ricky replied that he lived nearby and could see the children they looked beaten. The social services got involved but never followed the case up. Now I was really spooked, could the curse, if it was a real curse be burning the houses down of child abusers? If the curse was true that would surely be a good thing.
As I came to this conclusion I turned and looked at the painting again, the boy knew, he knew something, why else did he cry? Time stood still, it was all too much for my mind. Then the door slammed, “Fucking hell Vinny!” Rachel shouted, “You have done fuck all!”
I ran to the hallway, “I done some, sorry, I got side-tracked, honey!”
“What the fuck have you been doing, you didn’t even go to band practise!” she shouted which led me onto question, how the hell did she know that?
“How did you know…..” I began my question to which she suddenly looked flustered.
“Where have you been all day?” she snapped, “with another woman?”
I jumped back, how dare she accuse me of such a thing, “yeah, my Gran!” I bellowed, “If you must know!”
She began to run around the room in a circle, collecting my things, my things, “Get out!” she shouted, a rage boiling in her face, her arms flapping around.
“It’s my…..” I began, then I lowered my tone, “look honey, I don’t know what has gotten into you, I went to see Gran, honest,” I laughed at the stupidity of it all, it was a silly, irrational thing to do, a kind of unbelievable belly laugh, “I’m not seeing anyone els……”
“Just shut up and get out now!” she screeched. I knew at that point it was not worth arguing.
“This isn’t over, I give you the night to calm down and we talk about it then, you are being irrational Rachel, I love you, just you.” With that I walked out, she needed a cooling off period and I was so shocked that this seemed to come out of the blue.
Tales of Worrow Volume II Page 3