‘Did I say diddums? Absolutely not. Anyway, if you really don’t want to do it, just tell your aunt she’ll have to find someone else.’
‘It’s not so easy. Lillian had already told Arthur about her plans. He, the old show-off, got incredibly excited. He even went up to London and ordered a suit.’ Noah smiled and shook his head. ‘He died before it was finished.’
‘Oh dear,’ Mrs Shield said. ‘I do hope they didn’t charge him.’
‘So it ended up being a bit of a deathbed promise.’
‘Now I’m here I would still like to say hello to your grandmother,’ Grace said.
‘I’m sure she’d like to see you too, although, well she is very old. She’ll probably remember you …’
‘That means you think she might not, and why should she? Some kid that hung around the place a quarter of a century ago.’
‘I should have come to the funeral, your grandfather’s that is,’ Mrs Shield said. ‘But I was still in Selbourne. I know it’s not very far, but by the time I read the obituary it was too late. Of course if someone had thought to tell me. Your grandmother must be quite lost without him. She was never one to be out and about or get involved, was she? I always thought of them as a pair of birds, him all showy colourful plumage and her the little dull-feathered female at his side. Although she isn’t little at all, is she?’
Noah took Grace upstairs to his grandmother’s sitting room on the first floor. He went in on his own to warn her that she had a visitor. Louisa told him she would be glad to see Grace Shield again. Grace paused in the doorway, surprised by the stark simplicity of the room. The walls were white and there were no curtains, just white-painted wooden shutters. There were two upholstered armchairs in striped bleached-blue linen, a round table and some lamps, a bookcase filled with books and several framed photographs: snapshots, the kind you found on the mantelpieces of most family homes. She recognised Noah in several, and Arthur. There was a sturdy frowning girl who grew up to be a sturdy frowning woman; Noah’s Aunt Lillian? And a young man who might have been Noah but for the clothes and a hair-cut that dated from an earlier time. Noah’s father, Grace thought. Most surprisingly, for the wife of an artist, there was not a single painting on the walls.
Louisa sat in a high-backed wooden chair close to the artificial gas fire with all bars burning; like all old people she felt the cold as keenly as a bud. The light from the tall north-facing windows bored into every line and wrinkle, highlighting the spider veins that lay like a fine mesh across her face. But there was beauty too, if you bothered to look: in the shape of her eyes, and in the structure beneath the sagging skin. ‘Seeing Noah again, being back here in this house, I can almost smell my childhood,’ Grace said.
Louisa smiled and bid her sit down as if their last meeting had been yesterday. ‘Noah tells me you have some questions. I don’t know that I’ll be much use. I have no idea why they built it; ugly old-fashioned-looking thing.’
‘What’s that?’
‘The Dome, Grace.’
‘Oh, the Dome.’ Grace sat down. ‘No, I can’t say that I do either.’
‘So what else did you want to know?’
‘It’s about this painting, I have been given a wonderful painting, and wondered if you knew the artist, A.L. Forbes.’ There seemed to be no flash of recognition in Louisa’s eyes and next thing she had turned her head, looking around, asking where her cup of coffee was. ‘I always have a cup of coffee and a biscuit at eleven.’
‘Noah said you probably wouldn’t know, but I thought I’d ask anyway. You see, it’s such a wonderful painting. I’ll bring it down to show you next time I’m here.’
‘You say Noah didn’t think I’d know this Forbes?’
‘He just said you didn’t mix that much with your husband’s artist friends.’
‘He is right. I never got on with them.’
Louisa
From My Window I can see Grace Shield get into her car with her stepmother. I remember Grace, Noah’s friend. She has grown up to be beautiful, but otherwise she has not changed much. She is still asking questions. It used to be about the ghost. Now she asks did Arthur, did I, know a painter called Forbes?
The dramas of our lives, Arthur’s and mine, were played out in different times. Now my grandson wants to write a biography and he has asked me, most solicitously, how I feel about the prospect of our story being told. I said to him that he must do as he wishes. It doesn’t do to stand in people’s way when they wish to create something. And Grace Shield talks of her artist. She loves his work. When you get very old you tend to run out of tears, and pain comes to you muffled, bundled up against the years, but after Grace Shield left I cried.
Back at Mrs Shield’s flat there was a bundled-up newspaper left on the doormat. Grace picked it up and handed it to Mrs Shield. A green Post-it note in the shape of a Christmas tree announced it had been left there by poor Marjory Reynolds. Another Post-it marked the page.
Inside, Grace helped Mrs Shield off with her lace-ups and handed her her Doctor Scholls. ‘I’ll make us a cup of tea,’ she said, disappearing into the kitchen as Mrs Shield settled down to read. ‘Oh dear,’ Grace heard. ‘Goodness me, now that is unfortunate.’
Grace appeared and put the mugs down on the coffee table. ‘What did Marjory want you to read?’ She looked over Mrs Shield’s shoulder. ‘What the hell …’ She snatched the paper.
There was a photograph accompanying this piece too. They had used the old trick of choosing one that cast their villain – Grace – quite literally in a bad light. Whereas in the picture alongside Nell Gordon’s article Grace had looked simply wan, here she looked mean. Her pale face showed up flour-white and, unusually, she was wearing the kind of bright-red lipstick that suggested she had just had a sip of human blood. Her straight brows were knitted together in a frown and there were dark circles under her eyes.
Sandy Lodge-Archer was a tabloid columnist known for her brisk proud-to-be-British, great-to-be-northern, can’t-stand-whingers, roll-up-your-sleeves, tighten-your-belt, ready-with-a-quip, spirit-of-the-blitz, Old Mother Brown views which she shared with the nation twice a week on Mondays and Thursdays. Lately she had been posing this question: Is the New Woman turning into Yesterday’s Man? Grace had read one of the pieces and found the question at least worth debating, until this particular Monday. The entire column, apart from a couple of lines in the bottom right-hand corner dedicated to the wonders of a 95-year-old actress who still put on her make-up every day just to let the cat out, was about Grace. Grace by name, but not by nature. Ungrateful Grace. Disloyal Grace. Immoral Grace. Calamity Grace. Disgraceful Grace.
Sandy Lodge-Archer referred to Nell Gordon’s piece as a recent article in a Sunday broadsheet; it doesn’t do to give credit to a rival. And Sandy herself had got to work, digging up an old newspaper cutting from Grace’s first ever exhibition where, aged twenty-five, she had spoken with all the humility and wisdom of youth and most definitely not knowing how her words would be stored and used against her when life was very much more serious. ‘The picture is the only thing that matters,’ the young Grace had said. ‘My aim is to take perfect photographs of our imperfect world.’ She had finished by paraphrasing Faulkner’s words on writing. ‘Everything goes by the board: honour, pride, decency … to get the right shot. If I had to rob my own grandmother to get the work done I would. The picture is worth any amount of old ladies.’
In the light of what happened years later, those words were the last ones Grace would have wished to see reappear in print.
Sandy Lodge-Archer had also spoken to Robina Abbot, Grace’s one-time mother-in-law.
It seemed that she too had objected to the portrayal of Grace as a sad victim of unhappy circumstances, but for quite a different reason. Under Sandy Lodge-Archer’s heading of Daughter-in-Law From Hell, Robina explained that she did not blame Grace for her son’s misery nor for the humiliation she had visited on the Abbot family, since it was obvious that Grace was mentally unstable
. You only had to look at her work. Here Robina went on to describe in surprising detail (Grace had never thought her mother-in-law paid much attention) a series of photographs, a commentary on cosmetic plastic surgery, that Grace had exhibited towards the end of her marriage. Decomposing bodies with surgically enhanced lips and pert silicone breasts … ‘I didn’t use real bodies, you foolish woman,’ Grace muttered.
Mrs Shield said, ‘I have to admit, I never really liked those photographs either. I know they were much admired, but personally I prefer something a little less morbid, shall we say? But then you always did have a morbid side to you, even as a little girl. I remember I couldn’t get you away from that book of photographs of people with leprosy. You had to know every detail. “Did their noses really fall off? How did they walk without toes?” The poor nuns didn’t know what to make of you.’
Grace tried to concentrate on the paper. Robina Abbot went on. She accused Grace of having caused a rift between Robina and her daughter Kate, only recently healed.
‘I can hardly help it if Kate took my side,’ Grace said. ‘I was her friend.’
And then there was the final, the great betrayal! She made us, her own family, a laughing stock, Robina told Sandy Lodge-Archer.
‘You did poke the most awful fun at poor Robina.’ Mrs Shield could not hide a little smirk of satisfaction. ‘For someone who is as serious as you, you always did have a humorous side. A little too humorous sometimes, perhaps.’
‘And didn’t she deserve it?’
She only bothered with her work, her so-called art, but cared nothing for her husband’s career nor did she join in the community and she never lent a hand with our charities. Sandy Lodge-Archer added her own comment. Of course we remember the words ‘The picture is worth any amount of old ladies’ when we see this ruthless commitment to her career repeated over and over again, culminating in the grossly exploitative pictures that won her the prestigious Unibank Award but also condemnation from the Church and this newspaper in particular. Grace took a deep breath and counted to ten as she looked out of the bay window and on to the muddy field beyond.
‘At least she’s not feeling sorry for me,’ she said. ‘No, really, it’s not so bad.’ She picked up the paper to read the last paragraph. A lonely recluse with her career and personal life in tatters, Grace Shield has paid a high price for her mistakes.
Grace sat with her head in her hands. She didn’t look up when she felt the paper being pulled away. I’m not going to cry, she told herself. I’m not the crying type and, anyway, it would provide Mrs Shield with far more excitement than is good for her. She felt a hand on her shoulder. ‘Pay no attention, dear.’ Mrs Shield’s voice was quieter than usual. ‘Really, it’s not worth it. Everyone knows that people say all kinds of things they don’t mean when they’re listened to. I always think that’s their greatest gift, journalists, being able to listen as if they really care.’
Grace looked up. She was smiling but there was hopelessness in her eyes and in the way her shoulders slumped. ‘I know all that. And I don’t really give a damn what a load of strangers say or think of me. Or I know that I mustn’t. Define yourself through the opinions of others and you’ll never be defined at all, you’ll just be this hapless weathervane. But I can’t stand pity. And I can’t help … well, you were right, Evie, I can’t help wondering if they’ve all got a point.’
‘But, Grace, you always seem so sure … of everything.’
‘Just because I’m not walking around with a big sign saying Hard-nosed Bitches Have Doubts Too doesn’t mean I don’t. I even have feelings. And what am I, just some blank wall waiting for graffiti?’
The phone rang and Grace reached across to answer. It was poor Marjory asking if they had seen ‘that dreadful piece’.
‘What piece would that be?’ Grace asked, her voice all innocent enquiry. Mrs Shield frowned at her, snatching away the receiver and putting it to her ear. ‘It’s me, Marjory. Of course we’ve seen it. It was good of you to bring it across. Yes … yes … yes … absolutely … I know, I know, God only knows; yes, you have, Marjory, you really have. Thank you, dear … bless you … yes … bless you … byee.’ She handed the receiver to Grace who hung up.
‘I don’t know what you have against poor Marjory! You’ve never liked her and she’s such a sweet person.’
‘Sweet, Marjory?’ Grace said thoughtfully. ‘You remember Jake, Finn’s pet snake? Finn always said we just didn’t know Jake. “Jake is so sweet,” he said. And maybe he was, but personally I always found the sight of him devouring live mice kind of off-putting. And don’t say, “Don’t be silly, Grace. Poor Marjory’s never eaten a live mouse in her life,” because I won’t believe you.’
‘Now you’re just being childish. Marjory is a very dear friend, and she hasn’t had an easy life.’
‘And, boy, do we all know about it. It’s amazing, isn’t it, that someone so sweet nevertheless manages to let everyone know how hard-done-by she is. Funny how we all seem to know that her husband was a philandering bastard and that her children are heartless money-grabbing ingrates.’
‘I think you’re very unkind, Grace. And Marjory only called to say how very sorry she felt for you …’
Grace shot to her feet. ‘Poor Marjory Reynolds is feeling sorry for me! I’m going for a walk. I’ll take an umbrella, shall I? Just in case any more of your friends want to weep all over me.’
The sun was shining. The bright red and yellow tea roses on parade in the newly dug borders were on their second flowering. Those roses, said the brochure for Northbourne Gardens Golden Agers, were a feature with a thought, the thought being that a second flowering can be just as beautiful as the first. Overhead a bird was singing in the still air.
‘Fuck you, Nell Gordon,’ Grace said. ‘Fuck you very much for making me the object of pity of a woman whose sole purpose in life is to make others say, “Well, at least I’m not Marjory Reynolds.”’
The bird answered with a peal of notes ending in a drawn-out melancholy A flat.
Nell Gordon: In her late twenties a hasty marriage and a move away from her creative hinterland put the pause button on a promising career.
Grace had been living in her top-floor studio flat on Talgarth Road for five years. She felt protective of that flat of hers. When Angelica Lane asked her what she saw in it – all right, so it had once been an artist’s studio, so the windows were large and the light was good, but the building was not far off derelict and the street was a mess – Grace told her a story her father had told her when she was a child.
Once upon a time there was a poor maiden in faraway Persia who, though as beautiful as the golden dawn, was as lonely as the sky once the sun had set and the moon refused to play. It was her smell; beggars and noblemen alike would stop and marvel at her beauty, but their ardour soon vanished as her foul stench reached them. And it wasn’t as if she didn’t wash, Grace’s father had explained. Oh no, the poor girl was as clean as spring water, washing and scrubbing her poor lovely limbs; but to no avail: the smell, like that of rotten fish, remained, as much a part of her as her radiant wasted beauty. But one day the prince himself rode by and, catching sight of the lovely young woman, dismounted. The poor girl stood, her head lowered, waiting for him to shy away. Instead he remained standing not one hand away, showing no sign of wanting to be anywhere else. Surprised, she looked up into his face that was as beautiful as her own and, forgetting everything but the warmth of his smile, she smiled back and when he spoke to her she spoke back in a voice so sweet the birds in the trees above ceased their singing to listen. The prince fell in love and vowed then and there to marry her. What about the smell? Don’t you mind it? All around people were asking the question. But the prince said that all he noticed was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen smiling at him and speaking words sweeter than the sweetest music.
‘So let me see if I got this right,’ Angelica said. ‘You see yourself as a beautiful prince and your flat as a lovely though malodorous dams
el in distress?’
‘No. I’m saying that you need to look further than your nose to appreciate this place. In fact, even the estate agent tried to talk me out of buying it.’
True, the building was on a busy road where the air was so bad that however hard you scrubbed at the sills and surfaces, a dusting like black snow returned almost as soon as you were done. True, people left their rubbish out any day of the week, regardless of whether it was collection day or not, and stepping out of the building it was advisable to look out for vomit and worse. Pity Aurora, godess of dawn, who had to wake and show her rosy cheeks to streets like that, but Grace was all right, tucked up inside her bright light room with its high ceilings and tall arched wrought-iron windows and the memories of artists’ dreams permeating the walls.
Grace, not exactly a goddess of dawn, nevertheless greeted most mornings with quiet satisfaction. Between her and each new day there existed the kind of comradely cheer of co-workers engaged on a mutually satisfying project. The project, now as it had been for the best part of ten years, was photography. Photography to Grace was a roof over her head and bread in her mouth. It was a pick-me-up and her dreams at night. It was her point of reference and her interpreter. It was her pride and joy and, quite possibly, her one true love. Taking pictures was making love.
She had relationships with men, the longest lasting just under a year, but she remained, stubbornly, living on her own. All but once she walked away. A couple of times it had been a matter of jumping before she was pushed and once it was about jumping just because. She had a streak in her of making big decisions for next to no obvious reason. Angelica said she was probably following her inner voice. Grace thought she did not have so much an inner voice as an inner jester. But mostly she simply woke from the dream, rubbed the stars from her eyes and saw that the man by her side was just a trick of the light, a projection of her hopes and longings.
Shooting Butterflies Page 9