When I told my mother about the dream, she was puzzled.
“But what’s scary about that? You were never scared of that doll.”
I shook my head, meaning that the doll I’d owned – and barely remembered – had never scared me. “But it was very scary,” I said, meaning that the reappearance of it in my dream had been terrifying.
My mother looked at me, baffled. “But it’s not scary,” she said gently. I’m sure she was trying to make me feel better, and thought this reasonable statement would help. She was absolutely amazed when it had the opposite result, and I burst into tears.
Of course she had no idea why, and of course I couldn’t explain. Now I think – and of course I could be wrong – that what upset me was that I’d just realized that my mother and I were separate people. We didn’t share the same dreams or nightmares. I was alone in the universe, like everybody else. In some confused way, that was what the doll had been telling me. Once it had loved me enough to let me eat its nose; now it would make me wake up screaming.
VI
As soon as I was home and through the back door, sorrow was on me like an untrained, wet and smelly dog.
My kitchen smelled of untreated damp and ancient cooking – an unappetizing combination of mould, old vegetables and fried onions. The creeping patch of black mould had returned to the ceiling in the corner nearest the back door, and the pile of newspapers meant for recycling was weeks old. There were crumbs on the table along with a pile of unanswered mail and three dirty cups; a bath-towel draped across one of the chairs, and an odd sock on the floor. When I’d left, the general dirt and untidiness had been invisibly familiar, but now I saw it as a stranger might, and was dismayed. The very thought of all that needed to be done made me tired.
I couldn’t cope with it now. Without even pausing to make a cup of tea, I dumped my bag in the bedroom and escaped upstairs to the loft-conversion which was my office. There it was untidy, but not noticeably unclean, and the air was filled with the friendly familiar smell of old books. I picked my way through the stacks on the floor to my desk, where I switched on the computer and went straight to my e-mail inbox.
Selwyn, bless him, was already on the case, but along with the rousing words of his faith in my ability to write a “splendid, uniquely insightful biography” of Helen Ralston, his e-mail carried disquieting news. He’d found an article – ‘Masks and Identity in Three American Novels’ – published three years earlier in an academic journal. The author, Lilith Fischler, Tulane University, was said to be working on a book about Helen Elizabeth Ralston.
This should certainly be taken with a grain of salt (he wrote) – academics are required to be always working on some project or other, and very few of these putative books ever appear in print. And if it does exist it is more likely to be a critical study than a biography. But why don’t you ask her and find out?
The prospect scared me right out of the office and back downstairs, where I began to clean the kitchen. As I scrubbed and washed and tidied, I brooded about what to do.
I must write to her, of course. But what should I say? How much should I tell her? How could I get her on my side?
My usual inclination when writing to strangers is to keep the letter short and formal, but I knew that this could backfire. I could come across as cold when I only meant to be unobtrusive, and, in an e-mail, particularly, it was treacherously easy to be misunderstood. What if Lilith Fischler read my formality as arrogance? I didn’t want to alienate her; with a little effort maybe she’d be glad to help. Writing this letter required almost as much care as composing a book proposal to send to an unknown editor.
I considered my approach very carefully, balancing and polishing phrases as I scrubbed the kitchen surfaces. By the time I had the room spruced up, the letter was ready in my head. I ate a sandwich, and went upstairs to write to the address Selwyn had provided.
Next I went looking for my copy of In Troy. It wasn’t on the shelf where I’d remembered it, so I searched all the bookcases, and then, very carefully, investigated every stack and corner of my office. I didn’t remember lending it to anyone, so it was probably in one of the boxes in the loft, where the only way to find a particular book was to crouch down with a flashlight in the dark, and dig.
Instead, I went on line to see what I could find out about Helen Ralston.
My first trawl didn’t net me much, but I was able to find copies of her second and fifth novels, as well as one of the many reprints of Hermine in Cloud-Land available to order. Two first editions of In Troy were listed: the dealer in London was asking $452.82 while one in San Francisco offered a lovingly-described “very fine” copy for a mere $320.00. There were also lots of the Virago edition about, with the cheapest offered at $2.00. On a whim, I added that to my order.
Before I logged off I checked my e-mail again and found that Lilith Fischler had already replied.
My efforts had paid off. Her reply was as transparently open and friendly as I had struggled to make mine seem, and she told me exactly what I had been hoping to hear. She was not writing a biography, only a critical study of In Troy. Her essay would be appearing in an anthology to be published by Weslayan University Press next year – she’d be happy to send me a copy as a file attachment. More importantly, she knew how to get in touch with Helen Ralston:
She was happy to talk about her writing, but not so much about her early life, and especially not about the relationship with W.E. Logan. But she sent very clear and interesting answers to everything else. I don’t know if she will be quite as energetic and coherent now, since she had a stroke last year. Her daughter, Clarissa Breen, wrote to me that she was recovering well, but couldn’t live on her own any more. They sold the flat in London, and Helen is now living with Clarissa in Glasgow. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind me giving you the phone number . . .
At nine o’clock the next morning, I rang the number Lilith Fischler had given me, and asked the woman who answered if I could speak to Helen Ralston.
“May I ask who’s calling?”
I gave my name, adding quickly, “She doesn’t know me; I’m a writer. I wanted to talk to her about her work.”
“Hold on a minute, I’ll just get her.”
Much more than a minute passed before the phone was picked up again, and I heard the same woman’s voice saying, “I’m sorry, she doesn’t want to speak on the phone; can you come here?”
I was so startled I could hardly speak at first. I’d assumed that this invitation would come much later, if at all. I finally managed to say, “Of course. If you’ll give me directions. But I’m quite a distance away – in Argyll, on the west coast. It’ll take me a couple of hours to drive to Glasgow.”
“Ah. Well, tomorrow would be better, then. She’s at her best in the mornings; she flags a bit around mid-day.”
“I could come tomorrow. Whatever time suits you.”
“Nine o’clock?”
“I’ll be there.”
“Thank you,” she said warmly, surprising me. “I know mother is looking forward to meeting you. She doesn’t have much excitement in her life these days – it was a real blow to her to have to leave London. The mention of your name perked her right up.”
“That’s nice,” I said, surprised that my name should mean anything to Helen Ralston. “Can you tell me how to get to your house?”
“Do you know Glasgow at all? Well, it’s not difficult, if you come in on the Great Western Road . . .”
VII
Helen Ralston lived with her daughter in an ordinary two-storey, semi-detached house in a quiet neighbourhood on the north-western edge of the city. The drive through Argyll, along the narrow, loch-hugging road, switching back upon itself again and again as it crossed a land divided and defined by water, up into the mountains and then down again, went more swiftly than I’d dared to hope, without any of the delays that could be caused by log-lorries, farm vehicles and road works, and I was parking on the street in front of the house at five
minutes after nine o’clock the following morning. I got out of the car stiffly, feeling numb and a little dazed by the speed of it all – that so soon after deciding I wanted to write about Helen Ralston I should be meeting her seemed little short of miraculous.
Her picture “My Death” was in the boot of the car, well-wrapped, ready to be handed back to its rightful owner, yet now that I was here in front of her house, I hesitated. Remembering my own initial strong, visceral reaction to it, I could not expect that the artist’s reaction would be the ordinary one of someone to whom a piece of lost property has been returned. What if she was angry that I’d seen it? I decided to wait and see, try to find out her likely response before admitting that I had it.
That settled, I opened the side door to take out my bag, and hesitated again at the sight of my new tape recorder, bought yesterday in the Woolworths in Oban.
I was unprepared for this interview in more ways than one.
Yesterday, I had discovered that the cassette recorder which had seen me through more than ten years of occasional interviewing was no longer working. I’d driven off to Oban immediately to buy one, only to find that the electronics shop I’d remembered had closed down – driven out of business, I guessed, by the stacks of cut-price VCRs, DVD players, printers, personal stereos and telephones on sale in the aisles of Tesco. Alas for me, Tesco did not sell cassette recorders – players, yes, but nothing with a recording function. The closest equivalent I’d been able to find after searching every store in town was a toy for young children. It was the size of a school lunch-box and made of bright red and yellow plastic, with a bright blue microphone attached to it by a curly yellow cord. But it worked, and so I’d bought it.
Now, though, I knew I couldn’t possibly arrive for my first meeting with Helen Elizabeth Ralston clutching this children’s toy. In any case, she hadn’t agreed to an interview; I hadn’t even spoken to her yet. I couldn’t remember if I’d told her daughter that I was planning to write a biography, but I was pretty sure I’d said only that I admired her mother’s work and wanted to talk to her about it. Best if this first meeting should be informal, relaxed, a friendly conversation. Questions “for the record” could come later.
With some relief, I left the childish machine in the car and locked the door behind me. Now my dissatisfaction with the few questions I’d been able to formulate no longer mattered, no more than the fact that I could barely remember anything about In Troy (I’d spent a fruitless hour searching the loft for it) and hadn’t yet even seen any of her other books. We were just going to talk.
From the first moment I saw her, I knew I would like Clarissa Breen. Sometimes it happens like that: you seem to recognize someone you’ve never set eyes on before, and feel drawn to them, as if you’re both members of the same, far-flung family. I don’t know why it should be, but those instantaneous feelings are nearly always right.
I smiled at her, and she smiled back, and from the warmth and interest in her grey eyes I knew she felt the same about me.
She was a slight, trim woman who appeared to be about my own age, her light brown hair in a short, feathery cut. The only faintly whispered echo of Circe’s features were in her deep-set, luminous eyes; her own face was softer, wider, friendlier, her chin and nose less prominent, and she had a lovely, long smiling mouth.
As I liked her, so I also felt immediately at home in her house. I liked the dramatic mauve colour of the entrance hall, the atmospheric black and white photographs hanging on the wall opposite the stairs, the scent of fresh coffee and something baking that wafted through from the back of the house.
The room to which she led me was a combination of kitchen and living room. At one end, a wicker couch was set into a window recess, grouped together with a glass-topped table and a couple of arm chairs. My eyes were briefly distracted by the green of the garden beyond the window, where birds hopped and hovered around a bird-table, and then I caught sight of the shrivelled, white-haired figure hunched in a chair, and my heart gave a great, frightened leap.
“Mum, here’s someone come to see you.”
Feeling horribly self-conscious, more awkward than I had since the first few interviews I’d done for a student newspaper, I went forward on legs that felt like sticks of wood. Bending down to her, speaking in a voice that struck my own ears as harsh and unnatural, I introduced myself and began to explain my interest. I hadn’t got very far before she interrupted.
“I know who you are,” she said sharply, blinking watery blue eyes. “I was wondering when you’d finally get here.”
Although I felt intimidated, I said, “I left home before seven. I think I made pretty good time.”
The old lady made an impatient, huffing sound and stretched out an arm. “That’s not what I meant. Never mind. I suppose we should say how do you do.”
Awkward still, and wishing that my heart would stop racing, I took her skinny, age-spotted hand gently in mine. “I’m very pleased to meet you. Thank you so much for letting me come.”
“You’re younger than I thought you’d be. I suppose you think you’re old.”
I smiled uncertainly. “I think I’m middle-aged, although that’s right only if I live to a hundred.”
She made a little sound, half sniff, half grunt. “Well, sit down,” she said. “I suppose you’ll want to ask me questions about my life?”
Clarissa came over with a tray. “Coffee all right for you? Mum, do you want anything else?” She turned to me. “I’ll be in my office, down the hall, first door on the right – just come and knock if you need anything, but I’m sure Mum will look after you.”
I felt sorry to see her go.
“Like her?”
Helen’s question startled me. “She seems very nice.”
“She is. She’s a wonderful daughter, but, more than that, I think we’d be friends even if we weren’t related.”
“That must be nice, to feel like that. To have that sort of relationship.” I waited tensely for the inevitable next question, but it didn’t come.
“Yes. It is.”
I took a sip of coffee, then put the cup down and rummaged in my bag for notepad and pen. “I thought . . . do you mind if I take a few notes? Or, or would you rather we just talked, and I could record a more formal interview later?”
“It’s up to you. Why ask me? Surely you’ve done this sort of thing before.” She sounded disapproving, and I didn’t blame her. I didn’t understand myself what had thrown me into such a flutter, as if I were a kid again, the novice reporter speechless before her first visiting celebrity. I’d interviewed more than a hundred people, most of them more famous than Helen Elizabeth Ralston. But this was different, not only because this wasn’t an assignment – there was no newspaper behind me, I didn’t even have a contract for a book – but because it was her. She mattered so much; I wanted her to like me; I wanted to be friends with the author of In Troy.
And I knew that if I wanted to prove myself to her, I was going about it in exactly the wrong way.
“I want you to be comfortable,” I said, as firmly as I could. “I did think that we might start by chatting – I’ll bring a recorder next time – and if there’s anything you don’t want to talk about . . .”
“I’ll let you know.”
“Okay, then.” I took a deep breath and took the plunge. “What made you, an American, decide to come to Glasgow to study art?”
She peered at me. “Right to the heart of it? All right, let’s get this over with. It was for W.E. Logan.”
“You knew his work?”
“I had seen one painting, a landscape. One of my teachers, the head of the art department at Syracuse, owned it. He had met Logan and some other Scottish painters on a visit to the South of France a few years earlier, and been very impressed by his work . . . although not, I think, quite as greatly impressed by it as I was. I don’t know, young people, they’re so wild, so ready to fly off at the slightest encouragement, don’t you think?” She shot me a little, co
nspiratorial smile. “Well, I was, anyway. I must have been searching for a mentor, as young people often do. At any rate, soon after seeing this picture, which I convinced myself was a masterpiece, I wrote off to the artist, Mr Logan, in far-away Scotland, and I sent him some of my sketches, and I asked for his comments and advice.
“And his advice – now, you may find this hard to believe, but I still have the letter; I’ve kept it all these years, and I’ll let you see it later – his response was to praise my work to the skies and tell me that the next step was to find the right teacher and embark on a proper course of study. Despite my living so far away – had he even noticed where the letter came from? – the school that he recommended was his own, where he could be my teacher. At that age, and in my impressionable state of mind, a suggestion from W.E. Logan had the force of a command.”
She paused to pick up a glass of water from the table and take a small sip.
I was astonished. How was it that Logan’s biographer hadn’t known this? And why had Logan himself tried to cover it up, with his little fantasy about Helen’s prophetic dreams? “I’d love to see your sketches from that time.”
“They’re gone.”
“Oh, no! What happened?”
She lifted her narrow shoulders. “I don’t know what became of them. They’re long gone. I didn’t take them with me when I left Glasgow. I suppose Willy – or his wife – might have destroyed them.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her about the painting in the car. “Maybe not all of them.”
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