by Mary Horlock
Abandoning the still life, I wander downstairs, past etchings of empty northern landscapes and the London Blitz. I have paused on the stairs from time to time and stared at these prints, deciphering the mesh of narrow lines. After Joe died Mary offered a selection of his prints to the British Museum. A curator came to visit but showed little interest in the work that she’d so hoped he would admire, calling my great-grandfather an etcher ‘remembered by few’.3 In the end he only accepted Joe’s etchings because Mary offered him something he did value: a rare 1925 lithograph by Louis Lozowick that she had acquired years earlier. On learning of its importance, she gave it to the museum without hesitation. For her, the real treasure lay somewhere else entirely.
Now I am standing in what my mother calls ‘the family room’. Here, staring down at the chaos of children’s toys, are three of Joe’s later paintings. Picking my way around Lego, I go to the one I like the least. It’s a small, simple landscape – a field of harvested wheat, two neat rows of hayricks stretching towards a high horizon, bordering what resembles a cabbage field. In the distance there’s a blurred line of trees bordering an angry, choppy sky. Joe liked stormy skies and painted them just like he painted the sea, turning clouds into churning foam. The air is heavy with moisture, weighing down on the land. And what of this land? When I look again at the rolling fields, I wonder why I am so sure of these crops. Because Joe made so many sketches of different vegetation, of course. I have little pencil sketches of cabbage patches, drawings of wheat, hops and barley, each carefully annotated as to the precise colour. I look again at the land. The colours are so closely blended that if I screw up my eyes the image disappears.
Just at that moment my mother comes in and stands beside me. We have lived with this painting for decades but we have never yet discussed it.
‘He spent too long on it,’ I tell her, ‘the colours all seem to blend into one.’
‘Yes,’ my mother sighs. ‘It’s mud.’
She’s right. It is the churned earth of a battlefield. I remember the bursting star shell willows upstairs. As Joe grew older, past and present merged. Every painting was still a battlefield. He had survived two world wars, of course he lived with ghosts.
My mother found art difficult – hours and hours of hard work, so much uncertainty for so little acknowledgement. I could romanticise memories of her sketching in the woods whilst Sarah and I built dens, but I’m aware of how frustrated it made her.
Growing up, I was never remotely artistic, although I found myself drawn to those who were. I admired artistic talent but it also made me anxious. I remember, even when I was very young, worrying about what made a painting ‘good’ or ‘bad’, and whether these things came through instinct or hard work. I preferred the certainty of words and facts and books, things that could be learned and quantified.
For all the years that I worked at the Tate, I never envied artists. I remember thinking how hard it must be, to spend all that time alone with an image or idea. I wondered how they did it. Ironically, it was only when I started writing that I began to understand. When you find something you love doing, it’s hard to stop. When you want to get it right, you don’t want anything else.
But there is a skill in knowing when to stop.
It is the thought of Joe’s unseen canvases, stacked up in Mary’s front room, that haunts me now. I cannot let Joe hide any longer, nor will I hide behind him. But I am conscious of where this began, with my grandmother wanting to get her stories straight. I’m worried that if I stop, Maureen will, too. I’m not ready for her to stop, and I do not want her to go.
So I turn to my favourite of all his paintings: a simple farm track curving up and over a hill, bordering a cluster of trees beside a hulking haystack. It’s larger than all the other paintings – standing over three feet wide – and looks almost freshly painted. Why do I like it so much? It’s a rich, blustery image, the style is fast and loose and the colours far bolder than anywhere else – cobalt blue and fiery red. Each tree trunk and branch is streaked in a medley of blacks, yellows, greens and browns. The sky has every imaginable shade of blue. Everything vibrates with life.
I love this painting the most – probably because it isn’t finished. There are snatches of bare canvas amidst the leaves on the trees. They are like breathing spaces. Yes, there is still space left.
‘What are you thinking?’ asks my mother. I’d forgotten she was still here.
I smile and nod to the painting. ‘You never had it framed.’
‘It didn’t seem to need it,’ she replies. ‘It almost escapes off the wall, doesn’t it? It’s like he painted it yesterday.’
This is absolutely true. It is fresh, vibrant, very much alive. It makes me question again what it means to finish. Perhaps what completes a painting is the viewer, because we each see something different in a picture, and so we carry the story on. There are no endings, just new beginnings. If I stop writing, I am merely handing the story over for someone else to start.
I hear the front door slam and the sound of my children coming in from outside.
‘And this, of course.’ Mum points to the painting beside it. ‘This is the one I told you about. The one with the cat that kept disappearing.’
It is a tree in full blossom, set against a high brick wall. I am reminded of the story and I picture my mother at nineteen, sitting beside Joe as he paints it.
‘What kind of tree is it?’
Mum pulls a face. ‘You know, I can’t remember.’
There are demands for food coming from the kitchen. I know we don’t have long.
‘Quick, help me take it off the wall.’
The label on the back reads The Almond Tree, Marlow. Turning it back around, I frown at this picture – at the thin dark branches stretching upwards into snow-white blossom. The brick wall behind the tree is traced in staccato dabs of red and brown. The brushstrokes look light, and again there is bare canvas. It doesn’t look like a picture Joe went back to again and again. I ask my mother if this is definitely the painting she thinks it is. She smiles and points. There at the base of the tree trunk, to the left, I see a shadow: a smudge of greens and blacks, indistinct brushstrokes layered far too thickly. It jars with the delicate dappled strokes elsewhere.
‘Not so well hidden, is it?’
And suddenly I am the one sitting on a paint-splattered stool, arms folded, frowning.
‘Where’s the cat?’ I ask Joe. He shrugs coyly. It’s a bit of a pantomime, our familiar routine. He smiles indulgently and rubs at his chin. Eventually, he will relent, I will make him paint the cat back.
Glancing at my mother now, I wonder what would have happened if she hadn’t married and moved to Australia. Would the cat have stayed in the picture? Probably not. But maybe Joe painted the cat back in once or twice, just to be sure.
It takes the two of us to return the painting to the wall. Here it has sat for at least a decade, and will hopefully sit for decades more. Standing close, beside Mum, I think of all the times I have stood beside her at exhibitions, our elbows almost touching.
Before I can say anything else my oldest daughter bursts in, her copper curls swinging behind her. She is searching the floor for a crucial lost pencil, and she holds in her hand her newest creation, a drawing in need of the last dash of colour. When she sees us, her mother and grandmother caught in quiet contemplation, she stops suddenly and cocks her head.
‘What are you two doing?’ she asks, clearly outraged to find us existing without her.
I rest an arm on her shoulder and then point at Joe’s picture, directing her sharp eyes to the base of the tree.
‘Your grandmother and I, we are looking for something in this picture,’ I say. ‘I wonder if you can see it? It is something very special.’
She leans close. I wait.
‘I promise if you concentrate hard you will find it.’
Because it’s not what you see on a surface that gives the answers. Don’t be afraid of the shadows. Screw up your eye
s really tight. Lean in, open wide and look again.
There.
Those two small pointed ears, the curve of a tail.
Yes. You can see it.
You can really see it.
Notes
CAB = Cabinet Papers
CD, TC, CDTC = Camouglage Development and Training Centre
HO= Home Office
IWM = Imperial War Museum
PREM = Prime Minister’s Office Records
TNA = The National Archives
WO = War Office
Jack Sayer, ‘The Camouflage Game’, refers to his unpublished, hand-written memoir, courtesy of Gillian Ward.
To avoid repetition, the majority of quotes from Joseph’s letters to Mary are not noted. Unless stated otherwise, they form part of the Barclay family archive. Similarly, images reproduced form part of this archive, except where credited otherwise.
1 Kurt Vonnegut, Bluebeard, Dell Publishing, New York, 1987, p. 278
2 Ibid., p. 298
3 Antony Griffiths in S. Coppel, The American Scene – Prints from Hopper to Pollock 1905–1960, ex. cat. British Museum, London, 2008, p. 8
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Acknowledgements
I am enormously grateful to Adrian Harvey, curator of the Andrew Paterson Collection, who shared early letters between Joe and Paterson, and many of Joe’s working drawings and war sketches. Adrian cemented my contacts with both the Black Watch Museum in Perth and the Highlander’s Museum in Fort George, where Joe’s work is held, and created the website www.josephgray.co.uk, which has brought forth many new sources. People whose relatives served with or knew Joe have generously shared documents, artworks and memories. Charles Beddington, Paul McCririck, John and Louise Mollo, Richard Van Oss, Julius Strathmore Schofield, and Sally Ashburton (née Churchill) have all offered insights into the fascinating characters in this story, and I was lucky to meet James Meade and interview him several times before his death. Harold Dickens, the grandson of Joe’s London print dealer, H. W. Dickens, kindly shared his grandfather’s original diary, documenting a decade of their transactions. I am also indebted to Gillian Ward, the daughter of Jack Sayer, who gave me a copy of her father’s charming and perceptive memoir, The Camouflage Game, which is widely quoted in these pages.
As I tracked Joe up and down the country, I visited many archives, public record offices and museums. I’m especially grateful to David Powell at DC Thomson and Tommy Smyth, the archivist at the Black Watch Museum. Thank you also to Celia Lee for her knowledge of all things Churchill, and for introducing me to Chris and Christine Halsall at RAF Medmenham where Peregrine Churchill’s photographs are housed and where Johnny Churchill once worked, and to Henrietta Goodden, whose own excellent book on art and camouflage has been hugely inspiring.
When I first began writing Joe’s story I wasn’t sure of the shape it would take. Darian Leader helped at every stage with his thoughtful prompts and queries, and his loving support has meant the world to me. Once I began writing I was encouraged along the way by many people: Ailah Ahmed, Chloe Aridjis, Devorah Baum, Marie Darieussecq, Nigel Cooke, Natasha Fairweather, Antony Gormley, the late Guy Hartcup, Gary Hume, Rachel Kneebone, Vicken Parsons, Anya Serota, Ian Strathcarron and Sarah Wood to name but a few.
The idea to make Joe’s story into an ABC came from the archives of the Imperial War Museum. I altered later verses of this poem to fit my own agenda – but the original copy remains in the files of Major Denis Pavitt. Thank you to all the staff of that museum who dealt with my endless visits and enquiries, and a special thank you to curator Sara Bevan, who was always happy to usher me into the stores, just as Ernest Blaikley did for Joe.
This book was a long time coming but I’m eternal
ly grateful to Mathew Clayton, Anna Simpson and the great people at Unbound for their enthusiasm and committment, and to all the supporters who generously funded the project. Several are family members, or extended family, and have helped make the book what it is. Charlotte Lewis, Mary’s niece, entrusted me with private letters and diaries that first brought her to life. Tom Meade, Mary’s nephew, gave a new perspective and showed me yet more of Joe’s paintings. My aunts Victoria Barclay, Kitty Richardson and Fiona Paice were constantly revisiting the past on my behalf, and a special thanks must go to my mother Patricia Whitford for her tolerance of my interrogations.
But of course the person I most need to thank is my grandmother, Alice Maureen Barclay, whose stories about her father first started me on this process. Although she didn’t live to see this book physically published, I was able to read the draft to her in her final hours. She has left us now, but she is here on every page, as firmly as she is fixed in our hearts.
Index
Abel-Truchet, Louis, (i)
Abstractionists, (i)
aerial photography, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii)
Air Raid Precautions, (i), (ii)
Alexander, General Harold, (i), (ii)
Armory Show, (i)
Arras, Battle of, (i)
Arts Council, (i)
Arts Review, (i)
Aubers Ridge, (i), (ii)
Auchinleck, General Claude, (i), (ii)
Ayscough, Captain, A. H., (i)
Baldwin, Stanley, (i)
‘Bambi’, (i)
Barclay, Catriona (Kitty), (i), (ii)
Barclay, David, (i)