by Lucy Foley
The room began to exert a pull upon me. Eventually, in the early hours of one morning, I made my way there with the fixed yet unconscious purpose of a sleepwalker, pushing open the door to reveal the dark mound of possessions in the centre of the rug – smaller than might be expected, but no less significant for that.
For someone who had been born into money, Evie had not surrounded herself with much, never one for jewellery or expensive clothing or any of those other accoutrements of wealth. But there were treasures of another order to discover here: an inventory of memories. A small pair of silk ballet slippers, hopelessly battered and worn: the blush pink faded to a sullen grey. Made for tiny feet, I realized, those of a child. Possibly, considering the size and age, my mother’s first-ever pair. I found myself gripping them, holding them to my chest like a magical talisman, as though they might still exude some essence of her.
There were programme brochures from what might have been every performance Mum had ever danced in, the earliest among them already desiccated with age. There were photographs, too, and I took my time looking through these, suspended somewhere between pleasure and pain. One thing that gave me pause was the number of photos there were of me, and not only those in which I appeared alongside Mum. There I was in my primary school uniform on my first day, a look of ill-concealed terror on my face – I was a painfully shy child. Then one of me as a teenager, dressed in T-shirt and shorts in Battersea Park, in what seemed from the seared grass in the background to be midsummer, my camera slung about my neck. Another of me on my twenty-first birthday, in the black crêpe de Chine I wore for supper with my mother. I felt a pang then, because I remembered how pleased I had been that it would only be the two of us … that Evie wasn’t coming. And she had kept the photograph here for all these years, along with her most treasured memories of Mum.
I came to the letters next. There were hundreds – maybe even thousands – each stack tied neatly together with string. Seeing that vast number, collected here, I could understand how tempting it might have been for Evie to tell herself that the letter had merely come from another fan. There were so many that it was hard to believe that each represented a person who had sat down and written a letter to my mother, to tell her how her performance had affected them. But that was Mum for you, I suppose. That was how talented she was – although it had often seemed something greater than talent, almost a magical power.
I did not know exactly what I hoped to achieve, when I untied the string on the nearest bundle. I read the first few letters from start to finish and would have carried on like this, had I not realized that I would be there for days if I did. So I began to sift through them, instead – my gaze catching on those phrases that demanded to be read: … the most exquisite thing I have ever seen … I will remember you as long as I live …
A small part of me felt a kind of indignant possessiveness as I read the most recent ones, those letters that had flooded in after her death. I knew it was irrational, but it felt as though these people – these strangers – were clamouring for a part of her to keep for themselves. Did they not understand that the memory of her was a precious, finite quantity, not one upon which they could stake their claim?
I left these, and moved instead to the letters that were faded and frail with age, some so delicate that they had to be handled with great care, making it a painstaking process.
Then I found it, what I had been hoping – and fearing – to discover. It was the handwriting that I noticed first: so distinctive as to be unmistakable, though it could not be definitive proof on its own. But there was the name, too.
I read it through, quickly, in such a state of nervous excitement that I didn’t take any of it in. Then a second time, forcing myself to go more slowly. If I had been hoping for something revelatory this was not it. In many ways it read like any another fan letter, remarkable only for its brevity. What made it special was the fact that it was from her, Célia:
16 November 1956
Dear June,
I came to the performance last night and watched you dance as Giselle. You made me believe so strongly that you were that little peasant girl, lifted and then cruelly broken by love, that the ending was, in a word, shattering. It was perhaps the most beautiful thing I have ever seen … and the most tragic.
Yours,
Célia
I went back to my pile, fingers trembling as I sifted carefully through brittle leaves of paper. After a few minutes of searching I found another. The same handwriting, another short note … and then that name. It struck me then as an unusual name. It could have been ordinary, English – save for that accent on the ‘e’, which made it instantly foreign. Italian, possibly, or French.
Quickly, taking less time to be delicate now, I began to hunt through the other piles … just in case. What I discovered was far greater than I could have imagined. A letter, it appeared, for every year that my mum had been performing. I laid them all out together, and they covered the entire rug. I sat back on my heels and stared at them, the blood beating loud in my head with excitement and something not unlike fear. Had Evie seen these? She must have done. Mum, too, must have seen them, though she had never remarked on them. Then again, there was nothing exceptional in the fact of the letters themselves. Many particularly avid fans might write again and again. Only when placed in the context of that first, all-important letter did they attain a new significance.
Suddenly it looked like the evidence of an obsession: decades of the sender’s life devoted to this one-sided communication. The breathtaking futility of it. But perhaps she – this Célia – had not thought it futile. Maybe she had believed it would eventually bring Mum to her. What did that say about her … about the state of her mind?
This secret that Evie had forced me to acknowledge had suddenly become all the more compelling. At the same time, I perceived a danger in it that I had not been aware of before. Possibly, even when she had believed her reasons to be selfish, Evie truly had been protecting Mum from her past. Perhaps it was enough that she had been able to unburden herself of her secret, without my needing to explore any further. What good could come of it? It was all so long ago, and if the woman who had written the letter were Evie’s age, she might also now be gone.
I went back to my room, and took the drawing out of its envelope. Once again I was transfixed by it – by this woman who was so similar in appearance to my mother that I, her own daughter, had at first been convinced it was her. Every time I saw it, it stole my breath from me. How could a mere few strokes of pen do that, exert such a pull of memory and emotion? I had no doubt that it was the work of a master – and I knew, too, that I could not rest until I had found out more.
5
London, July 1986
‘I was wondering whether you could take a look at it?’
‘Well, of course, sweetheart, but I can’t promise anything.’
‘Charlie. If anyone can find something out about this drawing, it’s you.’
Charlie was a friend of mine from the Slade. He had also been my boyfriend, briefly, though I generally chose to forget that part. I had at one time thought myself in love with him – hardly able to believe that someone like him, so confident and so talented, would be interested in me. Yet it transpired that he wasn’t well suited to monogamy. When it ended I had thought that what I felt was heartbreak. It was only after Mum’s death, when I knew the true meaning of that word, that I understood it had not been so. It had been an infatuation, and my hurt and embarrassment, while terrible, had not been the true symptoms of a broken heart.
Perhaps further proof of this was the fact that our friendship had survived the break-up. The only thing it hadn’t survived, ultimately, was Mum’s death – and this was entirely my own fault. Or at least, I thought it had not survived. Now I was surprised at how ordinary it felt to chat to him, almost as though only a few days had passed without our talking – rather than a good six months or so. I had expected formality or even coldness, but he sounded, if
anything, pleased to hear from me.
Charlie had been one of the few of us who had been able to make a career from his work – which was well deserved, as he was phenomenally talented. He also boasted an almost encyclopedic knowledge of the art world. It’s my experience that most artists tend to go either way in their attitude to the artistic canon. Either they decide to reject knowledge of everything that has gone before, wanting to create ‘freely’, without the weight this awareness would bring, or they know the art world and its history inside out. Charlie was of the latter school. He’d told me once that he couldn’t engage with subjects that didn’t interest him – hence his limping away from his school years with a bare handful of O Levels – but when it came to things that did, such as his chosen field, he was astonishingly knowledgeable.
He seemed pleased by my flattery, as I had guessed he would be. ‘All right. I’ll give it a glance. Over dinner? I could cook for you.’
This was dangerous. I wasn’t flattering myself – given an opportunity to seduce anyone, anything, Charlie would probably take it.
‘I don’t want to put you to any trouble over it. Why don’t we meet somewhere in your neighbourhood? My treat.’
We ate at a cheap, workaday Italian where Charlie seemed known to the staff, though it was unclear whether they treated every customer, regular or otherwise, with the same ersatz bonhomie. When I got up to use the ladies’ I saw one of the waiters lurking outside the back door, cigarette in hand, scowling at the pavement, and I felt myself blush, as though I’d witnessed him in a state of undress.
We ordered two vast buttery plates of linguine vongole and some cheap red wine. It was Charlie who brought up the subject of the drawing.
‘Well, let’s see it then.’ He wiped his mouth with his napkin and sat back in his chair, prepared, I thought, to be unimpressed.
I drew the envelope out of my bag, suddenly nervous, my fingers clumsy and my heart thudding. Though it was the purpose of our meeting, I think I had been subconsciously putting off this part. I had a moment of hesitation: did I definitely want to show him? I had convinced myself that it was in some way exceptional. If it was, to do so could be to set something in motion – something over which I might have no control. Though perhaps even worse than that would be to hear that it was nothing special after all, that I had been mistaken.
I slid the drawing out and saw her face again. That geometric hair, those arching eyebrows like two elegant parentheses, and the softness of the other features that contrasted with them: the full lips, the quizzical, intelligent gaze. It was a simple sketch, as I have said, perhaps a study for a more permanent work. Yet each time I looked I saw something in it that I had not noticed before. This time it was the fingernails on the elegant hand, the one held to her neck. They were bitten down, like a child’s. The detail convinced me that the artist knew the subject well. In a more considered study there would have been time to notice and incorporate such a feature. In a quick sketch, the work of a moment such as this, the artist would have to have known of it already.
Charlie was silent for a long time as he studied it. His face, usually so mobile, was rigid with concentration, his eyebrows drawn together. He moved the paper closer and closer to his face until his nose almost touched its surface, and it would have made me laugh had I not felt so anxious. I sat there for several excruciating minutes, as the chatter of the room washed over me and a siren blared past along the road outside. Finally, he looked up. His expression was impossible to read.
‘Kate.’ It was only then I became aware of his excitement, heard the tremor of it in his voice.
‘Yes?’
‘I think – I mean, I’m almost certain … that you might have something rather interesting here.’
I leaned forward, ready with my questions. He put out a hand, and shook his head.
‘I don’t want to get your hopes up before I’ve checked it out.’
‘But you recognize the signature? You know who it’s by?’
‘Well, that’s the thing – I might do, but I need to make sure. I’ll need to borrow it for a couple of days.’
‘No! You can’t, I’m sorry.’ I reached to take it from him.
‘Look, trust me, please. I’ll treat it as carefully as gold dust, I promise. If I’m right, it practically is gold dust. Better, in fact.’
‘That’s not why I—’
He put up his palms. ‘I know, I know, but as I say, I have to check. I have someone who will be able to tell me, unequivocally, either way.’ He looked at me beseechingly.
‘Fine.’ I couldn’t quite believe I’d said it. ‘But you must promise—’
‘I promise.’ He covered my hand with his. ‘I’ll guard it with my life.’
I returned home excited and anxious – trying not to remember that time Charlie had lost the portfolio for his final degree piece in Waterloo station. And I didn’t sleep well the next couple of nights, envisaging terrifying scenarios in which he’d left the drawing on the tube or set fire to it accidentally. It came as a huge relief when, three days later, he finally called with directions to a private gallery in Islington. I was to meet him there at seven, after they’d closed to visitors for the day.
When I got there, five minutes early, Charlie was already sitting on the step outside, drawing hungrily on the remains of a cigarette, his foot tapping. When he saw me he dropped the butt and jumped up, launching himself towards me. He was vibrating with excitement, I could tell, though I tried not to infer too much from the sight of it. He took my arm. ‘Come and meet Agnes.’
Agnes was Swiss-German, in her fifties, with a handsome face framed by large round spectacles, grey hair drawn into a utilitarian topknot. I suppressed a smile. I’d assumed, knowing Charlie, that she would be some ravishing young ingénue with hair to her waist. She treated me to a firm handshake, and ushered us into an immaculate office behind the exhibition space. The only colour came from the jewel-coloured spines of books on a shelf behind the desk, and a vast canvas of riotous, tessellated watercolour squares on the opposite wall that I recognized as a Paul Klee.
Agnes was eager to get straight to business. She reached into the drawer of her desk and removed the drawing carefully, placing it between us with, it seemed, a certain reverence. Against the lacquered black wood of the desk, in a pristine new dustsheet, it looked decidedly small, old and grubby.
‘So.’ Agnes leaned forward and fixed me with pale blue eyes surreally magnified by her lenses. ‘Kate – remind me where you came across this work, please.’
‘Well … it’s difficult to explain.’ I searched for the best way of putting it. ‘It’s been in the family for a while, and it’s recently come into my possession.’
Agnes nodded. ‘The reason I ask is that I believe you have something extremely precious here. You had a suspicion of this before?’
‘I – I didn’t know, to be honest. I’ve no eye for these things, not like Charlie, say, but it did seem good to me. I suppose I hoped it might be special.’
‘Indeed. Tell me,’ she peered at me, ‘are you aware of an artist named Thomas Stafford?’
I laughed. ‘Well, yes – of course I am.’ You didn’t have to be an art historian to have heard of the man: he had achieved the distinction of becoming a national treasure. There had been a big retrospective of his work only a few months previously at the Tate, and I’d seen the poster for it on tube platforms. It had stayed with me particularly, that image, because it had been in such contrast to the rain-sodden April weather we had at the time. It showed a view out across a sun-bleached window shelf: a blue wedge of sea, the white triangles of sails stark against it.
‘But the drawing doesn’t look like anything I’ve seen of his.’ Yet even as I said it I was thinking of those initials. S and T, T and S. Could it be?
‘No,’ said Agnes, patiently, ‘it certainly doesn’t look like his recent work … or, indeed, most of the work for which he is known.’
Charlie cut in: ‘But you’re somet
hing of an expert on his work, aren’t you, Agnes?’
Agnes gave a modest nod. ‘I’ve had to be. I wrote my thesis on him.’ She looked fondly down at the drawing. ‘This is, in fact, similar to other early works I’ve seen in style, execution – even the materials used. He favoured pen and ink or charcoal in the early years, you see … perhaps before he’d got fully confident with using some of the more complex mediums. And, I think, because they were quick. He could get the effect of spontaneity that you see here. It was his later works, after the war, that got him noticed in a big way.’ She smiled. ‘Several of his biggest fans, myself included, think that the earlier works have their own quiet brilliance, but this’ – her voice trembled with excitement – ‘is the earliest piece I have seen – by a few years. The other earliest known works are from the thirties.’ She stroked the dust jacket. ‘This is perhaps the best I’ve seen: the most fluent, the most true.’
I leaned forward. ‘So you’re sure? That it’s by him?’
She nodded her head, adamant. ‘I’d bet quite a sum on it being his.’ I watched as her finger traced the lines of the subject’s face. ‘Do you know who this woman is, though? I’m curious about her.’
A thrill went through me. ‘I think she might be my relative.’
Agnes raised her eyebrows. ‘Well, it seems a very …’ she searched for the right word, ‘familiar, almost intimate piece.’
I nodded. ‘I thought so too.’
‘But she doesn’t appear later on, as far as I can recall. So perhaps not.’
‘That’s why I’m interested in the picture,’ I said, ‘because of her. Oh, it’s a long story, but I didn’t know until recently that she existed.’
‘The best person to ask,’ Agnes said, ruminatively, ‘would be the artist himself.’