by Annie Bullen
She found her in the kitchen with the baby. Young Juanita had just been fed and was having the milky traces wiped from her chin. Propped up and surrounded by cushions in a deep armchair, the baby was making noises in a fat-cheeked bubbling way, eager to respond to any friendly stimulus. This was being provided by Angela, who had discovered that if she poked the child gently in its round tummy and made noises at it, it wriggled with delight, waving its tiny legs and arms in the air in an ecstasy of recognition.
‘Funny how they like being played with all the time,’ said Dorelia absently. ‘Would you like it, if someone came up to you and prodded, making silly faces?’
‘Well, no. But I suppose it’s their only way of communicating. I could hardly ask her what she thought about the war in the Gulf or discuss the significance of the work of Andy Warhol, could I?’
‘That’s exactly what I wanted to see you about.’
‘What, Andy Warhol?’
‘Yes. Well, no. But that sort of thing. Painting, sculpture. Do you know a lot about it?’
‘I suppose I should do. I trained – at the Slade, but I gave up before I’d finished my studies to become a nurse. Not that I was very good at that. And then I was married. But I’ve never stopped painting. Until now.’ Angela paused and looked guiltily at Dorelia. ‘I really must get going again. I mean my stuff’s always sold on the odd occasions I’ve sent it to your father. I didn’t send him that many. I suppose I shall have to consider earning a living that way soon.’
‘Aren’t you going back to France? What about your husband? Look I’m sorry if I’m asking something I shouldn’t.’ Dorelia was not at all sorry, but she needed to know what Angela had planned for the future.
Angela picked up the baby and started walking slowly around the kitchen, patting the child gently on the back as she had seen Kattie do. Far from being embarrassed at Dorelia’s interest she found she welcomed the chance of making a statement.
‘No, I’m not going back to live with Billy.’
‘Oh good!’ Dorelia’s matter-of-fact response made Angela want to laugh. ‘Good. Look, when I asked you if you knew a lot about painting I didn’t mean your own things. Anyone can see they’re good. Dad always says so. No, I mean about other people’s work. You know, Francis Bacon, Peter Blake, Morandi, Patrick Heron, Matthew Smith – all that stuff.’ Dorelia circled the air with her hand, encompassing a vast body of work in the gesture.
‘Well, yes. I mean I know enough about painting to recognize a good picture when I see it, but having lived tucked away for so long, I really don’t know who’s who now, or who is painting what. Why do you ask?’
‘Well, you see …’ The two women stood close together, Dorelia with one long leg twined round the back of the other, Angela stocky and upright, still awkwardly patting the now sleeping baby on the back. Dorelia outlined her plan and Angela at first felt restless and tired with the impracticality and improbability of it. She shook her head several times as the girl talked. Then she turned her back to stare out of the window. There must have been a strong wind in the night. The huge prickly cardoons at the back of the kitchen garden were leaning at an improbable angle, bent and twisted, silver-grey giants being brought slowly to earth. She walked slowly back to the chair and laid the baby gently on the cushions.
‘Have you talked to your father about this? I mean you and I are not businesswomen. We know nothing of the art world. And Paris … well.’ She made a hopeless gesture.
‘That’s not the point. More important I would say was could we work together without getting on each other’s nerves? I know Dad’s always talking about opening up in France. We both speak French, you know a good painting when you see one and I’m sure that I could sell things. The idea sounds all right to me. No one ever did anything without an idea first. I know I’ve got to start doing something, and if you’re not going back to whatsisname, well, it seems sort of right, somehow.’
Angela thought of the long trek back to Les Meaunes. All that sunny beauty that she could only touch through paint. Lonely days and nights with an unyielding and often hostile partner. But was she any better off here, a lame duck? One of a trio of derelicts. Who had said that? Hugh? Hugh and Fergus and Angela. She could not see herself in the same hopeless, helpless light with which she viewed those two, but she supposed that in the eyes of the family she was flotsam just the same. Dorelia was probably right. Any venture had to start with an idea, an approach. Clem would probably laugh it out of court anyway. She looked hard at Dorelia, still standing stork-like on one leg, head to one side, hands clasped together in front of her. An image on canvas superimposed itself, a composition. She reached out and tapped the girl on the arm, shattering the picture.
‘Perhaps it is worth thinking about. You’d better talk to your father.’ A whirlwind twirl, a flash of red hair and white teeth and Dorelia scampered from the room. Angela almost laughed out loud at the craziness of it all as she bent once more to pick up the baby to lay her in her basket on the floor.
Would the time ever come again when she could move easily through each day, a swimmer in a calm sea? Or would she have to go through the rest of her life pausing to think out each movement, agonizing over each little decision? Now I’ll brew some coffee, perhaps then I’ll stroll in the garden, pull out a few weeds and then go to make my bed, taking me nicely up to lunchtime. But what afterwards? She had forgotten what it was not to have to consider time as it flowed past, taking her with it, accepting the days as they came and went, with herself as a natural part of that rhythm. Going to the dentist to have her tooth shored up had been a major event, an excitement even. The young Angela would have found the whole business a nuisance to be got out of the way, a distraction in the proper pattern of living. Perhaps this idea of Dorelia’s was a good one; she didn’t know. But it felt like another plunge into rough waves where she would have to struggle to hold her head above the water, to fight with a current not of her own making, to keep afloat.
What was it that Marjorie Pelham had said to her as she was leaving yesterday? She had been too confused by the encounter to realize that she was probably being given advice, albeit in an oblique way. The woman had remained seated as Angela, thanking her for the tea, had got up to leave. They’d spoken a little of Toby, but Angela had felt they were talking about two different people, like strangers at a party who think they have an acquaintance in common but even at the end of their conversation are still not sure that they are speaking of the same person and therefore talk vaguely, each looking over the other’s shoulder to hide uncertainty. Angela knew that she must leave without the thing she had been seeking – guidance possibly, or confirmation that she had been right to leave Billy and strike out on her own. But no approbation was forthcoming and indeed why should there have been? Toby’s mother was not a priestess or a Sibyl who knew the perils that lay ahead and the paths to take. She had vaguely acknowledged Angela’s imminent departure and, sensing that something more was required of her, had impatiently said, ‘You paint rather well, don’t you? That’s all right then.’ And she had looked straight at Angela, who knew herself to be dismissed.
‘That’s all right then,’ Angela thought, a shade bitterly, as she walked out of the kitchen to wind up her clock, La Grandmère. But of course that was another clock in another house, she realized with a small shake of the head, standing, displaced, in the stone-flagged hallway. There she found Fergus, muttering to himself as he placed some letters on the hall table.
‘I’m off then, Angela. Look, these came this morning. Forgot them. Nothing for you though. One for Hugh. Looks interesting.’ Fergus grinned as he thought of the contents of that one. Serve the silly old bugger right, he thought. He felt a slight twinge of an emotion which he did not recognize as guilt as he thought of the letters which had arrived from France for Angela, most of which had been too badly torn in the steaming process to pass on.
‘What do you mean you’re off – for the day?’
‘No, got to get mese
lf together. I’ll come for my things later.’
‘What about Kattie? Aren’t you going to let her know?’
‘Oh yeah. Course I am. But she’s busy now and I’ve got to get moving. I’ll be back to talk to her. See you later.’ Denim-jacketed and leather-booted, he ran down the front steps and out of the house.
That evening a sense of the former unity seemed to settle on the household. Four of them sat down to dinner at the kitchen table, one end of which Dorelia had made bright by lighting candles. The shaded end stretched towards the glass-fronted dresser, lengthened by the dark shadows. All the strength of the home seemed to be assembled in the pool of light. Clem, at the head of the table, took up the carving knife and fork to deal briskly with the chicken in front of him. Three swift strokes and he delivered breast and wing to Angela. A decisive slash and a leg was Dorelia’s. The other leg and some more breast for himself. Kattie heaped her plate with vegetables and grated some cheese onto a jacket potato. Hugh was not with them, but they could hear the distant rise and fall of notes from the piano in the ballroom directly above. This reinforced the cosy family feeling of the four around the table.
‘Do you know that Fergus asked me to go out with him tonight?’ Dorelia looked at her mother as she spoke. Not much had been said about Fergus’ abrupt departure in the afternoon, but Angela sensed that Kattie’s vague expression of regret and failure had been tempered by guilty relief.
‘Asked you out. Where? Why?’ Kattie was occupied with scooping the crumbling yellow potato flesh out of its crisp jacket ready to mix it with the butter and cheese. She put down her fork and looked at Dorelia, whose mouth was full.
‘Why does anyone ask someone out?’ Dorelia finished her mouthful and scooped some more beans onto her fork. ‘He said would I like to go dancing with him. To a disco I suppose.’ She shrugged and carried on eating.
‘And what did you say?’ Kattie, satisfied that the cheese was just beginning to melt into the heat of the potato, turned the mixture gently onto her plate.
‘No. Thank you. Very much.’ Dorelia looked wide-eyed round the table, mimicking shy disdain, then she burst out laughing. ‘He said he wanted me to meet these friends of his who have just come back from India, I think he said, or was it China. Yes, China. They’ve been abroad for ages and ages and have just got back and he wanted to meet them tonight. At a disco.’
‘I didn’t know Fergus had any friends.’ Clem was contemplating what was left of the chicken, ready with his carving knife again.
‘Perhaps that’s why he left here – because you wouldn’t go out with him,’ said Kattie doubtfully. She didn’t believe the bit about the friends.
‘Oh rubbish,’ said Dorelia. ‘Fergus is perfectly well able to look after himself.’ Angela remembered using those words herself, with less certainty, a few hours earlier when Fergus had questioned her about Dorelia.
‘Oh – listen!’ Dorelia put down her knife and fork and turned her face to the ceiling. The others did the same. A new melody could be heard, strung together from the runs and phrases that had filtered down earlier. ‘That’s our piece. For the organ. He played me a bit earlier on. Pretty isn’t it?’
‘It sounds like a little dance. Something old-fashioned. A minuet or a gavotte. Something that one would curtsy to when it started up.’ Angela listened for a little longer. ‘Will it sound the same on the organ? Isn’t it too …’ she searched for the right word. ‘Too tripping?’
‘I shouldn’t think so,’ said Clem. ‘Hugh knows what he’s doing. Whatever his unreliability in other directions – in all other directions’ – he looked pointedly at the shadow on the floor that was Juanita in her Moses basket – ‘his musical integrity is beyond question.’ Angela understood perfectly, and she was about to question Clem further on Hugh’s work when the tripping phrases which had been lilting up and up fell into a chasm of discord, a crashing roar of solid sound, as if Hugh had brought his hands hard down on the keys, or slumped forward, smashing the harmony. Only Dorelia was unperturbed, carrying on calmly with her meal. Clem groaned and Kattie, ready for the next disturbance, pushed her chair back. Angela put out a hand to stop her.
‘Don’t worry. He’s probably just got to a tricky bit. Frustration.’
‘No, there’s something wrong. Something more than usually wrong. I mean. He hasn’t eaten all day and this afternoon it was as if– as if he was turning his face to the wall, if you know what I mean.’
Angela did not. She thought instantly of a faraway history lesson when she had been told of a king who, finally accepting defeat in some battle, had turned his face to the wall and died.
‘You mean he’s giving up? But the music just now …’
‘Oh, that was his distraction. A little thing. Perhaps I should go up and see what’s wrong. Don’t worry. Look, there’s some cheese on top of the fridge and some figs. I think they’re ripe. I won’t be long.’
‘Figs! Goody goody.’ Dorelia, without waiting to finish her last mouthful of chicken, got up to move the fruit and cheese on to the table. Clem tapped Angela on the hand.
‘May I have a chat with you later? In the sitting room?’
Angela nodded. ‘Of course.’
‘Poor old Hugh.’ Dorelia swayed back to the table bearing the heavy oval dish with its pieces of cheese and blue-green figs as if she were presenting someone’s head on a platter. ‘Do you know what he had to go through when this little one was born?’ She gestured with her foot towards the Moses basket. Clem reached over and picked out a fig and a slice of soft cheese. Angela was still eating her chicken. Dorelia sat down and carried on.
‘Well she, Anna that is, decided she was going to have the baby at home, and the doctors weren’t happy about that but in the end they said yes and sent over a midwife. Anna started to have the baby and gave poor Hugh a long list of all the things she had to have.’ Clem cut his fig into neat quarters and started to suck away the juicy flesh.
‘Hot water and brown paper, I suppose?’ he enquired, half facetiously.
‘Oh no!’ Dorelia sounded shocked. ‘Candles, lots of them. Bunches of special herbs. Raspberry leaves to make some sort of a brew. Hugh had to calm the midwife. And then she refused to get into bed so there was a bit of a scene. She took off all her clothes and bathed and then put on this special gown – embroidered all over, Hugh said, imagine – and said she was going to squat down on the floor. When the midwife complained Anna told her she was a silly bitch and Hugh had to calm her all over again. The midwife.’
‘When did Hugh tell you all this?’ Angela interrupted.
‘Oh, this afternoon, I think. Yes, after he got that letter. Anyway, there they all were in this dark room. Just the candles flickering, Anna pacing up and down in her birthgown. Big bunches of herbs from the garden strewn, Hugh says, all over the place. On the floor, on the mantelpiece. He had to keep on chopping up the raspberry leaves and pouring boiling water on them to make her tea, to ease her pain, he said. And when it got too bad he rubbed her back with olive oil that he warmed in a little silver dish over one of the candles. The midwife clucked like an old chicken, can’t you just imagine? It must have been like black magic, don’t you think? Hugh says he started to enjoy it.’
‘What an entry into the world,’ laughed Angela, pushing her plate away.
‘Well, it wasn’t, you see, because something went wrong and she had to be carted off to hospital with the midwife saying, “I told you so” and Hugh racing along behind with all the herbs she’d ordered him to bring. It’s a shame about her wanting a divorce after all that.’
And that, it transpired, was what the letter was about. Kattie, rushing breathlessly down the stairs, confirmed that Anna had met a younger (and richer) man who had fallen, moth-like, into the flame of her brilliance. She wanted an immediate severance of her ties with Hugh and had flown to America with her new man and the older child. The baby, little Ju, as Dorelia now fondly called the infant, was to be a bargaining counter for the maintenance s
he expected for the children.
Clem failed to see how the baby could be any sort of bargaining point, as Hugh clearly had no money to send nor did he exhibit any overt signs of parental affection for either child. But the three women instantly reacted to this terrible lack of maternal love, with anguish over the foundling state of the soundly sleeping child and with pity for poor Hugh, so heartlessly deserted.
‘She’s probably trying to show everyone just how ruthless she can be. Anyone who can desert a tiny baby could go to any lengths,’ said Kattie, and Angela knew that the beginnings of tears were gathering in her eyes.
‘Lots of women desert their babies – some even expose them on hilltops,’ said Clem. He was beginning to wish he hadn’t come back today. ‘Anyway, she can’t expect maintenance for a baby she’s not maintaining.’
But the women would have none of it. They settled, murmuring and cooing like large birds, around the motionless child, whispering to each other. Clem sighed, poured himself another glass of wine, and got up to leave the table. As he scraped back his chair Angela lifted her head. He caught her eye and nodded towards the other room. She bowed her head to show that she understood.
‘Have you seen these, Angela?’ Clem, putting his hands on her shoulders, steered her across the room and stood her in front of a group of small paintings tucked away in a corner behind a standard lamp. Angela took in, without too much interest, a general impression of pretty Victorian scenes. Then she gasped and started to laugh.
‘These are really very naughty, Clem. I didn’t know you went in for this sort of thing.’