The Very Picture of You

by Isabel Wolff

  I began to paint Iris’s hair. ‘I see.’

  ‘She argued that to have her name besmirched in a “scandal” would damage the girls socially in years to come. She said that in order to protect them from this he would have to be the adulterous party.’

  ‘Oh …’

  ‘She added that if he didn’t consent to this, then she’d make sure that he never saw them again. So, caught between a rock and a hard place, Guy agreed.’

  ‘Poor man.’

  ‘Poor man, indeed,’ Iris concurred. ‘So he went to a hotel somewhere on the south coast, where he met a young woman who’d taken part in this kind of charade before – for a fee, naturally. The chambermaid duly opened the door the next morning to see them sitting up in bed together, and within three months Edith had her divorce. But it turned out that Guy had fallen on his sword for nothing. When, a short time later, Edith married Peter Loden, she changed the girls’ surname to his. Guy, outraged, went to court to contest it, at which point Edith carried out her earlier threat. She got an injunction, barring him from having any contact with his children, who were then just over two years, and twelve months.’

  I mixed a little more zinc white into the hair tone. ‘But how was Edith able to do this?’

  ‘She made all sorts of claims against Guy – the main one being that he was mentally unstable, due to having been gassed during the war. But she must have convinced the judge, because the injunction was granted. For a period of five years Guy was not to contact, or attempt to contact, his children.’

  I lowered my brush. ‘How terrible.’

  ‘It was … inhuman. But he went on working – he needed the distraction of it almost more than the money. And three years later, in the summer of 1934, he was walking through St James Park. He was carrying his easel because he’d just been doing a sitting. As he approached the lake, he saw two little girls of about five and four. He knew at once that they were his daughters. He stood and watched them for a while. They were playing with a red ball, and they had a dog with them, a Norfolk terrier called Bertie.’ I wondered whether Iris also knew the names of the girls, but I didn’t like to stop her in mid-flow to ask.

  She narrowed her eyes as she continued. ‘Their nanny was sitting on a bench nearby, knitting. Guy didn’t at first know what to do. He didn’t speak to the girls – not just because he was forbidden by law from doing so, but because it was clear that they didn’t recognise him. So he spoke to the nanny: he explained that he was a portraitist and asked whether he might have her permission to paint this charming scene. Knowing exactly who he was, she agreed.’ Now I understood the nanny’s expression in the picture – it was one of complicity. ‘So …’ Iris shifted on the sofa a little. ‘Guy set up his easel a few yards away, and painted the girls while they played, occasionally chatting to them. This was the first contact that he’d had with his children for more than three years.’

  ‘How sad,’ I murmured.

  ‘It was tragic.’ Iris heaved a deep sigh. ‘He came to the park every morning for the next four days and continued to paint them. But when he went there the fifth day, they’d gone. He later discovered that their mother had found out – the girls must have said something – and their visits to the park had been stopped.’ She paused. ‘Guy Lennox never saw his children again.’

  ‘Not even when the injunction ended?’

  ‘No. Because by then it was too late.’

  ‘Why? Didn’t his daughters want to see him after so long?’

  ‘No – that wasn’t the reason.’ Iris shook her head. ‘In the spring of 1936 the Spanish Civil War started. In August of that year Guy joined the International Brigade and went to Spain. He survived fierce fighting near Madrid … But in March 1937 he was killed at Guadalajara …’ Tears shone in her eyes.

  ‘Poor man,’ I murmured. ‘Now I understand.’

  Iris looked at me, sharply. ‘What do you understand?’

  ‘Well … why the painting makes you feel so sad. It’s a … heartbreaking story.’ Iris nodded slowly. ‘But, you said that you bought the painting on an impulse, knowing nothing about it – not even who it was by; so you obviously researched its background very thoroughly.’

  ‘I did. Most of it I learned in 1963 from my husband’s friend, Hugh, who took it to show to his uncle.’

  ‘You said that his uncle had known Guy Lennox.’

  ‘Iris nodded. He’d known him quite well. And when Hugh brought the painting back and told me what his uncle had said about it, I was … shocked.’ She paused. ‘I then took it back to the antique shop where I’d bought it, and I asked the man there about the woman who’d sold it to him. He found her name and address in his purchase book and as she lived close by I went and knocked on her door. She was happy to talk to me and confirmed that she’d found the picture in her late brother’s attic. He’d never married or had children, so she was clearing his house.’

  ‘You said that he’d worked for Guy Lennox.’

  ‘That’s right – he’d been his studio assistant, and an artist himself. She’d thought that the painting might have been by her brother, but since she already had a number of his pictures she’d decided to sell this one. When I told her what I had found out about it she guessed that her brother had taken it to his own home, after Guy’s death, in order to look after it.’

  ‘Would Guy necessarily have told him who the girls in the painting were?’

  ‘Perhaps not – it was so very personal; but she thought it likely that her brother had known as the two had got on very well. She thought that it might have been his intention to try and give the picture to the girls. But then the war started and everything was in chaos, so it had just stayed in his attic until he himself died.’

  ‘You went to so much trouble about the painting, Iris.’

  ‘I did.’ She looked at me for a moment or two. It was an odd, penetrating sort of look and I suddenly realised that she must be tired and was hoping that I’d go. I glanced at my watch. It was ten past three. The sitting was over.

  I began to pack up my easel and paints. ‘Thank you for telling me about it, Iris. I’m glad to have heard the story, sad though it is.’ I clipped her portrait into the canvas carrier then gathered up the dust sheet. ‘So … is the same time next week okay for you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘It’s fine.’ She pushed herself to her feet. ‘So … I’ll see you then, my dear.’

  I picked everything up and we walked to the door. I smiled goodbye, then went out, pulling the front door closed behind me. I walked to the lift and pressed the button. I heard it grind upwards, then it clanked to a halt. And I was about to pull back the grille, when my hand stopped. I turned and looked at Iris’s front door: then, with a fluttering in my gut, I walked back down the corridor and knocked on it.

  After a moment or two I heard the chain being taken off. As she opened the door Iris looked at me expectantly.

  ‘Iris,’ I said, ‘I’ve come back because I’d been wondering what the girls in the painting were called. And I’ve just realised – they were called Agnes and Iris.’

  Iris nodded slowly. ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s you in the painting – you and your sister.’ She nodded again. ‘And Guy Lennox was your father.’

  ‘He was.’ She pulled back the door and I stepped inside. ‘I was waiting for you to understand, Ella. I knew you would.’

  ‘I was so absorbed in the story that I didn’t … make the connection. Then it suddenly came to me with this little “thud”, here.’ I laid my hand on my chest. ‘But that’s why the painting makes you feel so sad.’

  ‘Yes. That’s why. Please come …’ I put my easel and the canvas carrier down then followed Iris to the sitting room. She sat down, propped her stick against the arm, then picked up the painting. I sat down next to her and we held it between us. As I looked at it, I felt the intense sadness and yearning that lay behind its surface charm.

  ‘So that’s why you said you were “shocked” when Hugh t
old you the story,’ I said.

  ‘I was shocked,’ Iris responded softly, ‘because he’d said the name Edith Roche. I’d never known either that my mother had been an artist’s model, or that she’d been married before. But she was, to Guy Lennox.’

  I lifted my hand to the darting figure of the younger girl then glanced at Iris. ‘I can see now that it could be you, though it’s hard to tell because she’s painted in profile, and it’s slightly blurred to give the impression of movement.’

  ‘That’s why I didn’t recognise myself – but then, I didn’t expect to see myself in a portrait. Nor did I recognise Agnes.’ Iris pointed to the older figure. ‘Here her hair’s very long; when the war started she had it cut short, which is how she always wore it after that. There were times, before I knew the truth about the picture, when I fancied the older girl did resemble Agnes, but I dismissed it as coincidence. Again, the nanny’s features are painted in an impressionistic way – added to which this was a model for a larger picture, so Guy hadn’t put in the detail that he would have done, had he been able to continue the painting.’

  ‘When I first came here, Iris, I asked you if you’d ever had your portrait painted before. You replied that you had, but a long time ago.’ I looked at the painting. ‘This is that portrait.’

  She nodded. ‘And when I saw it for the first time, in that shop, I felt as though I’d been not just drawn to it, but almost guided to it. I had this overwhelming sense that I was connected to it, but I couldn’t have known how or why.’

  ‘But you said you showed it to your mother.’

  ‘I did – because I was staying with her at the time. She reacted to it negatively. I assumed that this was because she thought I’d been extravagant, but I was wrong. It was because she knew at once what the picture was and who had painted it. It must have made her feel guilty, because after that an enduring sadness seemed to descend on her.’

  ‘So you didn’t know, all that time, that Guy Lennox was your father?’

  ‘I didn’t know.’ Iris paused. ‘Agnes and I were only twenty-one months and six months when our parents divorced. We had no idea, as we grew up, that the man we called “Daddy” was really our stepfather, or that our names had been changed from Lennox to Loden.’

  ‘But you must have asked your mother how she met your “father”.’

  ‘We did: she just told us that they’d met at a party that Peter gave – which wasn’t a lie.’ Iris shrugged. ‘But wasn’t exactly the truth.’

  ‘What happened when you found out the truth? Did you ever confront your mother about it?’

  ‘I never had the opportunity, because she’d died a few months before. It was during the dreadful winter of 1963 when the country was snowbound. Agnes lived in Kent and couldn’t get up to London. I was in Yugoslavia. Our mother, who was already frail, caught pneumonia.’

  ‘So … she never talked about your father to either of you?’

  ‘Never – not even when she saw this painting, which must have taken considerable self-control. But she’d concealed the truth for so long that she probably found it impossible to reveal.’ I thought of what my own mother had concealed from me. ‘But it’s just as well,’ Iris went on. ‘Because if I had known the truth while my mother was alive, then I don’t think I could have forgiven her. My sister still hasn’t, nearly fifty years on.’

  ‘Did Agnes remember your father painting you both?’

  ‘She did, because she was nearly six. She told me that that’s how she always thinks of him – standing behind the easel, chatting to us and smiling. But I have no recollection of him at all – though I’m sure it was some deeply buried memory that led me to notice the painting in the first place; I do remember feeling this sense of … familiarity.’ Iris sighed, then ran her fingers lightly across the top of the frame. ‘I often think about how much my father must have missed us, and longed to be with us. He was deprived of us, as we were of him.’ She looked at me in surprise. ‘But there are tears in your eyes. Don’t cry, Ella, please.’ She laid her hand on mine. ‘I didn’t mean to make you cry.’

  I fumbled for a tissue. ‘It’s just so sad – to think how near you were to him.’

  She exhaled. ‘We were near – and at the same time … so far. But Agnes and I would give anything to have known him.’

  I thought of my own father, wanting to know me. I thought of him sitting in that café for hours, anxiously looking at the passers-by. I let out a sigh. ‘So now I know why this painting’s priceless.’

  Iris nodded. ‘It is priceless – to my sister and me. I asked Agnes whether she’d like to have it for a while, but she said she didn’t want to because it upsets her so much. So I keep it close to me, beside my bed, and every day I look at it and try to imagine what my father was like. Agnes and I were fortunate in that we were able to visit Hugh’s uncle. We talked to him about Guy and heard his recollections of him, and even looked at some photographs of Guy that he had, so that was at least some comfort.’

  ‘But … there must have been people who knew that Peter Loden wasn’t your father.’

  ‘There were – but they wouldn’t have discussed it in front of us. They probably assumed that we knew, or that we’d been told that our father had betrayed our mother and that we didn’t see him any more. Guy’s name was simply never mentioned. But after I knew the truth, I stopped referring to Peter Loden as my late “father”, and referred to him as my late “stepfather”.’

  ‘And … what happened to him?’

  ‘He was a very busy, and powerful man.’ Iris gave a shrug. ‘He was nice enough to Agnes and me; how much he ever thought about Guy Lennox, and the way he’d destroyed Guy’s life, I’ll never know. But my stepfather lost everything after the war. I told you that he laid the first oil pipeline to Romania?’ I nodded. ‘When Romania became part of the Eastern Bloc, the pipeline was nationalised. My stepfather’s losses were catastrophic. He had to give up his offices in the City. The house in Mayfair had to go …’

  ‘You said that it was very grand.’

  ‘It was – it was just off Park Lane. It was lovely – like something out of the—’

  ‘Forsyte Saga,’ I interjected. ‘That’s what you said when you first started to tell me the story. I wondered how you could have known that – it was because it was your home.’

  Iris nodded. ‘We lived there until 1941; then my sister and I were evacuated. But in 1948 it was sold and my mother and stepfather moved to a small house in Bayswater. Their later years were very hard. After he died in 1958, Agnes would come up to town and help my mother, who was by then already quite frail. I’d spend time with my mother when I was back in London though, as I say, she never told me the truth. Then I chanced upon the painting and found out the truth – or perhaps it wasn’t chance. Perhaps my father guided me to it. But it’s a story I’ve told very few people, Ella. Only my two girls and their families know it. Now you do too.’

  I clutched the tissue. ‘I’m very touched that you’ve shared it with me – but, why have you, Iris?’

  ‘Because you’re a portraitist, just as he was – and because I saw that you were drawn to the painting: I think you instinctively recognised the intense longing that went into every brushstroke.’

  ‘I did recognise that longing … yes …’ I felt my eyes fill. ‘But … I ought to go now.’ I didn’t want to cry again in front of Iris, or have to explain to her that my tears were prompted not just by her story, but by my own. I stood up. ‘So … I’ll see you next week.’

  ‘I look forward to it, my dear.’ Iris got up and came with me to the door. I picked up my easel, bag and the canvas carrier, smiled goodbye, then left.

  I didn’t wait for the lift, but walked down the stairs, my mind filled with the image of my father looking through the window of the café. I imagined his sorrow when he realised that I wasn’t going to come. I thought of him waiting there again yesterday, then going back there this morning.

  I left the building and hailed a
cab. As it turned off Kensington High Street I saw the sign for my father’s hotel, and was about to ask the driver to stop, when I realised that my father wouldn’t be there. His flight was leaving in less than an hour. He’d be in Departures or making his way to the gate. I got out my phone and re-read his last message.

  I hope you’ll find it in your heart …

  I hadn’t done so. Now, because of Iris’s painting, I felt that I could. I looked at his mobile number then, with no idea of what I would say or how I would even find the voice with which to say it, I began to dial. 07856 53944 … I pressed the last digit. Call?

  I stared at the screen, my hand shaking. Guy Lennox hadn’t abandoned his children. He’d fought to keep them, and had suffered injustice in his attempt to remain close to them. My father had simply left me, and had never looked back.

  With a sinking feeling I realised that my mother, for all her bitterness, had been right. It was too late. I pressed the red button then put the phone in my bag.

  I’d made my decision, I reasoned as I arrived home: my father was now leaving, and after all the agonising and the tears it was time to let things lie.

  Which is what I would have done, but for the e-mail that I received two days later …

  It was Friday night, very late. I’d been to see a film with Polly, then we’d had a drink. I’d just got home and was in the studio, thinking about my sitting with Nate, who was coming in the morning, when I heard an e-mail drop into my inbox.

  I went to the computer and saw that the message was from my father. I didn’t want to hear from him again. I’d made it clear that I didn’t wish to be in touch with him. What could there be to say? For a moment I toyed with the idea of deleting it without reading it. Then, with a weary sigh, I opened it. I was surprised to see that he’d written at length.

  Dear Ella