‘Yellow and pink and orange? You’re mad!’
She is laughing still, but I look back at her, serious. ‘Don’t say that.’
‘Oh Louisa, darling, it’s only a figure of speech.’
‘I know. But sometimes I wonder.’ I look up at her and she returns my gaze, steady and kind. ‘Oh Viola, do you ever feel so sad, so heavy with sorrow, so sick of being you, that it’s all you can do not to fall to the ground and slip deep into the earth?’
‘No. No, Louisa, I don’t.’ She leans forward across the table with its pretty embroidered cloth and puts her small soft hand on mine. ‘Who makes you feel that way?’
‘That’s just it; I do. It’s all me. But there are times too when I feel as if I have special gifts, as if I can see and hear and understand the world like no one else, or I would, if only I could catch the thoughts that race through my mind. But they move at such a speed all I ever catch is the echo. I run, Viola, I run and sometimes I get so close that I see the very gates of heaven about to open before me. But I never get there in time.’
Viola keeps her hand on mine. ‘I think you live in an unkind household.’
I stare at her. ‘But Arthur is the kindest man. Although I know he doesn’t always seem that way. And he’s given me my son. No one loves you the way your child does. It makes me weep sometimes, when I look into those eyes of his and know that I’m the most precious thing in this world to him and he to me.’
‘Why should that make you weep?’
‘Because what if we should lose each other? And because my love is destined to last whereas his will weaken as his world grows. With each year and with each new door he opens it’s bound to weaken; that’s nature’s way.’
Viola has withdrawn her hand and is pouring us both another cup of tea scented with rose petals. She dries the petals herself and mixes them with the ordinary leaves from the grocer in the village. ‘You have a bleak view of life.’
‘It’s what I see.’ It’s my turn to lean close and take her hand. ‘Do you know, the odd thing is I wouldn’t want to swap. That’s what I mean when I think I might be mad; I can hate myself and feel a sadness so profound I fear nothing can banish it, yet I am glad I’m me because I feel that one day that view will be my very saviour. Oh, I know that sounds contradictory.’ I look away, laugh to lighten the mood. ‘I have no idea how I shall accomplish this. I was never any good at music. I’ve tried my hand at poetry but my work made me blush and giggle with its earnest pretensions. I do love to paint, but look what happens: my work does not delight the eye and inspire the soul.’ I look at her and burst out laughing. ‘It repels.’
‘It doesn’t repel me,’ Viola says. ‘But maybe if you want an audience you need to learn from men like your husband and our monsieur how to please.’
‘But I never know what I am meant to do and that’s when Monsieur Grandjean gets impatient with me. It’s as if I’m following some rhythm in my head towards a clear goal and then, when I look at what I have achieved, I see the faulty proportions and the childish lines and lack of detail and I understand the poor man’s frustration.’
‘Maybe you should concentrate on your drawing skills for now,’ Viola says. ‘You have the heart for the work; all you need is for your hand to catch up.’
I tell Arthur what Viola has said and he agrees with her about the need for me to pay more attention to my drawing techniques. ‘Even a hobby is worth taking seriously,’ he says. ‘And if you are intent on improving you have to heed the advice of those who know better. Unless of course you belong to the school of thought so fashionable in some circles that all that matters is expressing yourself with no more skill than a child let loose with his brushes.’
‘No, no, of course I want to learn. But Arthur, don’t you feel sometimes that the essence of a thing can get buried under too much attention to its exact appearance?’
‘I don’t think I follow you, Louisa. Surely it’s by the skilled and artful portrayal of your subject that you shall reach its essence. Or maybe you are an admirer of Surrealism? Maybe you yearn to follow the style of Señor Dali? Or maybe you believe that you will understand a person better if you paint him with one eye and four ears and a mouth the size of a cavern?’
‘I don’t think I’ve seen enough examples of that kind of work to have an opinion,’ I tell my husband. ‘But from your description I suspect the answer should be no, I don’t.’
So I tried to follow the advice of those who know so much more than I.
‘But it’s not right,’ I say one day. I had enjoyed the approval but could no longer deny how hollow it rang within me. I am looking at the small painting of Viola that I had produced and brought back for my husband to see.
‘What’s not right? It’s not a bad likeness, not a bad likeness at all, considering you’re still a novice. I’ve seen many a student, less quick to learn than you, who has gone on to do very pleasing work. Did I not say so just the other day, Jane?’
I had not noticed her sitting at the small desk in the window alcove. Jane is as quiet as a mouse, Arthur always says. In my experience mice are not quiet in the slightest. They pitter-patter across the floors and squeak and squeal as they fight over crumbs of food. And if you have not heard them their droppings show that they have been in even the most unexpected places.
‘Louisa is a credit to you,’ Jane says. ‘Better be careful or before you know it she will be stealing your commissions.’ Her laugh, I have often thought, has a musical quality to it and I think Arthur has noticed too because he turns and laughs with her, although he says, ‘I think I shall sleep soundly for a while yet.’ Arthur hands me back the sketch. The room descends into silence. Silence, Arthur is fond of saying, is his favourite sound. I asked him once how silence, the absence of noise, could be described as a sound. I knew that absence can be a stronger currency than presence. If Georgie is with me in the room I might pay less attention to him, knowing he is close at hand, but when he is elsewhere I miss him and worry about him and wonder what he is doing. I had tried to explain to Monsieur Grandjean that such thoughts led me to paint the things he could not see in the scenes before us. I had tried to explain the presence on my canvas of hard hands training wire round the rambling rose and a bird caught in the mesh of the fruit-cage, a wing broken from its attempts at flying free. But Monsieur Grandjean had put a large charcoal X across the things he said only I could see and had told me to start again. So now I was painting the pictures he and my husband wished me to paint, garnering praise at last and only, it seemed, because I was no longer true to myself.
Monsieur Grandjean has decided to return to his native country. Arthur is absorbed in work on his Island canvas, so when a friend of his suggests his son, just out of the Slade, to take the Belgian’s place he agrees.
I find a very different teacher waiting in Viola’s studio at my next lesson.
Grace found Noah stretched out on the sofa in the library, feet on the armrest and his fair head resting on a tapestry cushion. He looked comfortable and not so different from the boy she had once known. Sleep took years off people; it was letting go, she supposed. She picked up a magazine and dropped it on the floor deliberately. He stirred and turned round, lifting his head. His hair was messy and damp from sleep and his eyes were pained.
‘Finn used to look just like that when he woke up; all puffy and long-suffering,’ she said.
‘I don’t suppose that ever stopped you from waking him?’
‘Not really.’ Grace brushed his feet off the sofa so that she could sit down. ‘I don’t know why she isn’t telling, but I’m pretty sure she knows who Forbes is. She is forgetful and sometimes she comes out with something that seems to be several steps to the side of what we were talking about, but that’s when we’re in the now. Take her back to the past and she is as clear as a bell. Something she said just now makes me think he might even have been her art teacher. Although why she would keep that quiet, I do not know. Have you ever seen any of Louisa’s paintings?�
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Noah straightened and yawned, showing white even teeth with several black fillings. ‘My mother has one, only because it’s supposed to be of my father and Aunt Lillian. I just remember it being weird, as if a child had painted it. I don’t think it was much more than a hobby; women like her did that kind of thing, you know: piano, watercolours. I expect she found it a bit difficult to hold her own with Grandpa being who he was.’
‘Self-obsessed and insensitive, you mean.’
Noah sat up. ‘What brought that on?’
Grace had turned pink. ‘Sorry. It’s just that listening to Louisa – well, I don’t think he was quite as lovely as you think.’ She raised her hand. ‘And before you say anything …’
‘I wouldn’t dare.’
Grace pulled a face. ‘She is not complaining. She’s not poor Marjory getting her own back, she’s just remembering.’
‘If she had such a trying time with Grandfather, why don’t I know about it?’
‘Did you ever ask? Anyway, she probably didn’t want you to have to take sides. It’s generally both easier and safer to talk about important matters with comparative strangers.’
‘She knows I’m doing the biography. Why has she not wanted to give her side of the story?’
‘Because you’re not doing her story, are you; you’re doing the big boy. And she adores you and wants you to have your little fun. And, unbelievably, she retained some affection for her husband and is glad that he is celebrated. She’s not a selfish woman.’ Grace looked him up and down. ‘It’s uncanny how like your father you are to look at, at least judging by the photographs on Louisa’s mantelpiece.’ She handed him a small notebook. ‘I have made some notes of the things she’s been telling me; just in case you’d find it useful. You need patience when you listen to someone that age. I’m patient. It comes with the job. The job I had, that is.’
‘The job you should and could still have if you weren’t quite so keen to send yourself to hell before anyone else gets the chance.’
Grace, who had been walking towards the door, swung round and looked at him. ‘Hell. You think it’s hell for me, not doing photography?’
‘Well, isn’t it?’
She shrugged. ‘It’s empty; I suppose that’s a kind of hell.’ She turned in the doorway on her way out. ‘Oh, and has she ever mentioned Viola Glastonbury to you? Her family were friends of yours. They used to own Mrs Shield’s development.’
Noah shook his head. ‘No, not really. Why?’
‘They seem to have been very close, Louisa and Viola, that’s all.’
Mrs Shield was feeling left out. Grace, looking through some old correspondence of Arthur’s passed on to her by Noah, could tell from the way she circled the table humming a little ditty. She craned her neck and peered over Grace’s shoulder, giving a groan of pain. She made several comments about Grace always being busy. ‘You’re like your father. He was always busy with something or another, even when there seemed to be nothing to be that busy with. Not that I’m complaining, I never did. I’m a busy person myself. And I know I’m very fortunate to have you here for your holidays.’
‘Not all my holidays, Evie. I’ll stay until you manage on your own but then I’ve got things to do, lots of things.’ But she remembered that moon-face peering round the door of her father’s study, hoping for an invitation to enter. She remembered sitting in her room with a group of friends and Mrs Shield bustling in with a tray of cocoa that no one wanted, lingering just in case she was needed, before disappearing back to that chill corner of the house where the leftover people go. It was Mrs Shield’s peculiar tragedy, wanting so much to be needed that in the end she became the needy one.
‘But I’m really enjoying us spending some time together,’ Grace said, feeling guilty. ‘It’s been ages. And it’s a help to me too, you know, being able to bunker down for a while.’
‘That’s the point of family,’ Mrs Shield said, cheeks pink with pleasure, ‘providing refuge. So have you found out anything more about your picture?’
Grace shook her head. ‘I thought of driving up to London just for the day to fetch it so I can show it to Louisa; see if that jogs her memory.’
‘Tomorrow is my little party. You haven’t forgotten, have you? You did say you’d cook. I don’t think I could manage on my own yet … although I would have to try and do my best.’
‘Of course I’ll do it,’ Grace said. ‘Although I can’t see why you thought it was a good idea to arrange a dinner party just when you’ve broken your ribs.’
‘I thought it would be nice for everyone to meet up. I’ve got Percy coming, and Elsa, and poor Marjory of course, and Noah. I did ask if he thought Louisa might like to come but he said she never goes out. I was quite relieved, I have to admit; old people can be very hard work.’
Grace had decided on the menu for Mrs Shield’s party: scallops, followed by duck in morello-cherry sauce, then cheese. Mrs Shield would protest that men need something sweet to finish off their meal, but Grace, a reluctant cook at the best of times, decided the best she could do was a box of mint chocolates. The small market town was full of women just like her, walking back to their cars, squinting against the rain, no hand to hold the umbrella, gorilla arms trailing heavy carrier bags. Oh, Nell Gordon, she thought, if you could see me now I would be obligingly as you described: a love lost, a promise unfulfilled, a talent squandered … What else can I add to that impressive CV? Oh yes, dottily seeking Forbes. Her face contorted, her eyes shut tight squeezing out tears that mingled with the drops of rain running down her cheeks. ‘It isn’t fair, you know, Jefferson,’ she mumbled. ‘You make me love you and then you leave me, twice, and you’re still not content but you send me a picture to fall in love with too, by another man I cannot find. So what hope have I of ever getting free of you?’ She opened her eyes and realised that she was providing entertainment – sad old woman talking to herself – for a group of giggling teenage girls all topknots and dangly earrings and jackets like puffed-up frogs. She was right outside the Lion and Lamb Antique and Tea Shop and she escaped inside. Putting her bags of groceries down on the floor, she stopped to admire a white enamel bucket with Soiled Dressings painted in large black letters. It would look good in her kitchen, she thought. And she could not resist leafing through some old magazines from the 1940s, full of brave good cheer, recipes and handy tips for making the rations go further. She was tempted to buy a tin box containing a primus camping stove but rightly decided she would never use it and passed on by. There was a glass-topped display table with silver and enamel boxes and some cigarette cases. One she especially liked: a plain silver case that looked long enough to take filter tips. She asked if she could take a closer look and was told to go ahead, the glass top lifted right up. She picked out the case, thinking it probably dated from the late 1920s, early 1930s. She would have to check the hallmark with a magnifying glass to be sure. There was quite a dent in the side, she noticed. That should bring the price down to affordable. She opened the case and saw that there was an inscription. It read Forbes Forever.
‘I stood there, mouth open, heart beating,’ Grace told Noah at the dinner table. ‘I know Forbes is not that uncommon a name, but still …’
Percy said that unfortunately scallops didn’t really agree with him. Used to, but not any more.
‘I’m not usually given to flights of fancy but I can’t help feeling that this was some kind of sign.’
Noah finished his scallops and leant back in his chair. ‘A sign?’
‘You know, as in find me.’
Noah was quiet for a moment and then he said, in a voice so low that only Grace, sitting next to him, could hear. ‘The most preposterous idea’s just occurred to me. Think if my upright old granny and your Forbes were lovers? I know there was some kind of major drama back before the war. That could be it and it would explain your feeling that she knows more than she’s letting on.’
Grace nodded slowly, taking it in. ‘You could be right.’
‘I think you’ve got that wrong,’ Grace said. It had been too much to hope that the subject of those wretched articles would not be brought up. But at least he did not sound as if he was feeling sorry for her. She smiled as she said, ‘There’s no television.’ Just then she caught sight of Mrs Shield. Her moon-face was blushing red as Mars and she refused to look at Grace as she busied herself with clearing the plates, grimacing from the discomfort of her damaged ribs.
‘Evie,’ Grace used her mildest voice, ‘do you know anything about a television programme?’
The pile of plates had to be rescued by Percy. Mrs Shield sat down again. ‘Oh dear, I quite forgot in all the excitement of our little party, but there was a call for you, when you were out, from a very charming young man putting together something for The West Bank Show...’
‘South Bank,’ Grace corrected automatically.
Mrs Shield perked up. ‘There, you know it. They would be so pleased if you could come on the programme and speak about … well, I don’t exactly remember what, but it’s to do with your award. A new shortlist, I think they said. Anyway,’ she paused and, not quite looking at Grace, added quickly, ‘I said I was sure you’d be only too happy. He was so grateful, Grace. You should be pleased to be so highly thought of.’
Noah was covering his mouth with his napkin but it was obvious he was laughing. Grace shot him a mean look before getting to her feet, saying to the table in general, ‘If you’ll excuse me, I have to go and slice the duck with a very sharp knife. Care to come with me, Evangeline?’ Mrs Shield got up from the table clumsily, supporting herself on the back of her chair. Grace felt instantly ashamed; in the topsy-turvy world of ageing, she had the power to turn her stepmother into a chastised child. It was not a power she wished to have.
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