She liked painting them but she also liked doing things with them. At Charleston, when it got to four o’clock and she came out of her studio, she would go down into the kitchen with any grandchildren who were staying and teach them how to make scones. They would watch her take off her rings, and wash her hands, before she weighed out the flour and cut the butter into pieces and rubbed it in, and then they were allowed to do the same. At other times she would gather scraps of material together, colourful fragments left over from the dresses she’d made, and show them how to make doll’s clothes. Once dressed, the dolls came to life as she imagined voices and names for them and gave them a tea party.
All this made her a very good grandmother but in a conventional, traditional manner. What was different about her was that she encouraged rebellion in her granddaughters – rebellion against their parents. The eldest, Amaryllis, her favourite, had lovely long hair, a great lustrous mane, but hated it – it was such a bother to wash and dry and braid and pin up – and wanted to have it all cut off. Her father wouldn’t hear of it. He loved her hair, which was definitely, in the case of Amaryllis, a crowning glory. But Vanessa thought her granddaughter’s wish should prevail. She took Amaryllis to have her hair bobbed. Now that, for my purposes, is interesting: is it a grandmother’s role to side with a young granddaughter against a parent? Is she the superior authority? Did this teach Amaryllis that her grandmother had power over her father? And what did he say when this rebellious act was discovered?
Then I remembered something about Vanessa Bell that might have made her a more than merely fun grandmother to have. Hadn’t she had Angelica, her daughter, by a lover, Duncan Grant? And didn’t she have another lover, Roger Fry? And didn’t they all, at one time, overlap? I wonder what the grandchildren made of that? Grandmothers and sex isn’t something I’ve gone into, and maybe I should. Would it have made Vanessa’s grandchildren proud of her, to be aware of her history of lovers, or embarrassed? But just a minute: she was sixty-four when her first grandchild was born, so she’d be over seventy before they’d start noticing, if she was still sexually active, if Duncan was sharing her bed as well as Clive Bell (but was Clive still there?). No, it is unlikely the granddaughters would be aware of much, I think – but worth trying to find out. If Vanessa encouraged a granddaughter to have her hair bobbed, what else did she encourage her to do?
I think Claudia might be quite pleased with me if I follow this up.
There was absolutely no point in going to Tate Britain to look at the Vanessa Bells on display – they can tell me nothing whatsoever about her grandmothering – but I went there today all the same, convincing myself it would make me feel more in touch with the woman. What nonsense. I’d have been better off tracking down Visits to Charleston, the unpublished memoir of one of her granddaughters. But I enjoyed myself. I like her paintings. I like the colours and the subject matter, everything soft and simple, nothing tricky or violent. There’s a peace, a tranquillity, about them.
Afterwards, I sauntered along the Embankment, having one of those out-of-time experiences when I’m not quite sure who or where I am. I got caught up, near the statue of Sylvia Pankhurst, in a party of Japanese tourists. They surrounded me but they didn’t seem to notice me, though I was very obvious since I was a head taller than any of them. They were all so excited, talking non-stop, a group of about twenty of them sweeping along towards the Houses of Parliament. I half wanted to stay with them and put off returning to being myself, but I had to catch a bus to visit May.
Changing buses in Camden Town, I stood with a group of old women. They’d all been to Sainsbury’s and were laden with bulging carrier bags, which were deposited at their feet on the dirty, litter-strewn pavement, ready to be picked up again when their bus came. Two of them had those tartan trolleys on wheels, ideal for blocking bus aisles and injuring passengers’ ankles. They were probably all grandmothers, still doing their own shopping and not expecting to be looked after. Or maybe I couldn’t see it but they were burning inside with resentment at what was expected of them at their time of life, just like May.
She looked better, more alert, more her old self. And she sounded it. ‘Here you are,’ she greeted me. ‘Better late than never.’ I thought about saying I couldn’t be late because I hadn’t said what time I’d be coming, but I didn’t. Instead, I told her she was looking well. Mistake. Looks were apparently deceiving. But she made the tea herself, all the while berating the carer, who had put everything in the wrong place. This carer comes in each morning to help her dress and make her breakfast (the word ‘carer’ was said each time with full sarcastic emphasis). May doesn’t want this help but claims it was forced upon her and she has no choice. She has, however, adamantly refused to have meals-on-wheels – ‘I’d rather eat grass,’ she said. Oh, she was on form again.
We sat in the kitchen, as ever, the heat overpowering. I took my jacket off, and then my sweater, and still I was hot. May said I was looking washed out, what had I been up to? I tried to tell her about Vanessa Bell, of whom she had never, of course, heard – why should she have? – and in whom she had no interest whatsoever. Any talk about art annoys her. She’d told me scores of times that a picture was a picture, some nice, some not, and that was that, why go on about them. My outings in the past to art exhibitions with Isa had made her laugh scornfully. She didn’t use the word ‘affected’ but she didn’t need to. I fell silent, thinking of the effect it would have if I changed from twittering on about Vanessa Bell to telling her Isa was not really my grandmother.
‘What’s up with you?’ she said. ‘You look as if you’ve swallowed a golf ball.’
‘A golf ball?’
‘Never mind what sort of ball, you know what I mean.’
‘No I don’t.’
‘Yes you do, madam. What’s up?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Something.’
‘Nothing. My work’s not going well . . .’
‘Your work! I meant your ’ealth, what’s up with that? You’re looking like a little ghost.’
‘I’m tired.’
‘Tired? Tired? Dear me, at your age – tired! What with, eh?’
‘I told you. My work isn’t going well, and I’ve spent hours and hours reading stuff and trying to sort it out and write it up and thinking about it, and it’s tiring, that’s all. I haven’t had time to eat properly or go to the gym, or—’
‘Go to the gym! Oh dear, dear me – the gym! In the name of God!’
‘Fine. You asked. Mock away, why don’t you?’
‘You’re not telling me something.’
‘There’s nothing else to tell.’
‘Maybe. But you look peaky. You look like your mum looked when she was expecting you.’
I laughed, glad to be able to. I said I was not expecting, she could dream on.
‘Your mum and dad would like a grandchild,’ she said.
‘They couldn’t care less,’ I said.
‘Yes they do. It’s natural. You want your kids to have kids.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s natural.’
We could have gone on like that for hours – the ‘natural’ argument was one May employed all the time. If she could say something was natural she felt she had won – it was no good pointing out that a lot of things that are natural are bad. I’d cite endless examples of something that was natural nevertheless not being good, but she would never listen. Anyway, she is wrong about my parents pining for a grandchild. May knows perfectly well – in fact, she holds it against her – that my mum is not the maternal, earth-mother type. She loves me, and wanted more children, that’s true, but her work is far more important to her than being a grandmother. If I eventually want to have a baby, then fine, she’ll be delighted, but if I don’t, she won’t make me feel guilty. Unlike May, who definitely will, though she has no right to.
I let her win that one – it’s always a case of winning or losing with May. She smirked and pulled her shawl more securely round
her shoulders. She’s suddenly taken to wearing this shawl though it’s far too warm in her house ever to need such an extra layer. It’s her new badge of status: look at me, I am old, respect me, or that’s how I choose to interpret it. She crocheted this shawl herself, for her own mother – she always tells me this as though implying that I, too, ought to be crocheting a shawl for my mother, or Mum should have done the same for her. We don’t crochet, or knit, or sew. She despairs of us.
‘You look like the granny in “Little Red Riding Hood” in that shawl.’
‘Where’s the basket of food you’ve brought me then?’ she shot back, smart as anything.
‘I forgot it. Why, is there something you want?’
‘You could go and get some eggs,’ she said. ‘I fancy a boiled egg. I need my protein, see. What you laughing at? Think I don’t know about protein? Think I’m ignorant ’cos I’m old?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘the old are wise, especially old women. Do you really want eggs?’
She said she did, and made a performance of finding the correct money for them (with another little contest over whether I knew the price of six eggs, which I did not). I didn’t want her money, but it was produced from the Jubilee tea caddy and pressed into my palm. She had a funny look in her eye, one I knew well. She didn’t really want the eggs – it was all some kind of challenge for me. There would be a hidden purpose to this apparently simple task. Maybe she’d wanted me to say I hadn’t time so that she could use my reluctance to show how little I cared for her. If this sounds unnaturally devious, May is devious. Well, I thwarted it by setting off for the eggs.
She hadn’t said which shop I should go to, which ought to have been a clue. It was ages since I’d walked along May’s street, or any in her area, because these days I mostly drive, but I hadn’t even noticed on my way to her house from the stop on Holloway Road that her corner shop had gone. It sold everything, and the family that ran it had been there as long as May. I used to love going on ‘messages’ there when I was little, May’s leather shopping bag in one hand, trailing on the ground, the handles too long for me, and her purse in the other. I was always so thrilled to be trusted with both bag and money – it gave an excitement to shopping that wasn’t there when I went round a supermarket with my mother. I stood in front of what is now a video rental shop and thought how sad. May must miss it. Until recently, she could still get to it herself, her daily outing, I expect. Why hadn’t she mentioned it had gone?
I walked on, vaguely recalling a larger shop, a sort of mini-market place that I’d noticed earlier. They had no eggs, didn’t sell any kind of dairy produce, only some tired-looking fruit and veg, and some tinned stuff. By then I was nearly back at the Holloway Road, where there were plenty of shops. I bought the required six eggs, but then made a mistake, thinking I knew the area well enough to take a short cut back to May’s. I didn’t. I came to the overground railway line and couldn’t find a way across it and had to go all the way back to the main road and retrace my steps.
‘Been watching the hens laying them?’ May said. ‘The time you’ve been, blimey!’
‘I couldn’t find a corner shop.’
‘Corner shop? They’ve all gone from round here. It’s a disgrace. Poor old folk like me, we don’t have no cars, what are we supposed to do?’
‘I never noticed,’ I said, trying to be humble.
‘Course you didn’t, with your nose stuck in books all day. Put them eggs in the pantry and I’ll have one later.’
I left a few minutes later, with May now cheerful, having seen me flustered. She told me not to slam the front door as I left or it would come off its hinges. I closed it with exaggerated care. The neighbour next door, Mrs Patel, the one who had phoned for the police, was just going into her house and stopped to ask how Mrs Wright was feeling now. I said she was much better, only just managing not to add better enough to be her old difficult self. ‘She has good family,’ Mrs Patel said, ‘good, good family. You good granddaughter – granddaughter, yes? – good help.’ I smiled. May would be observing this interchange from behind her net curtain, longing to know what was being said. I would tell her, when next I visited, that I had been called a treasure and told that my grandmother was very lucky to have me.
May and her shawl – the image persisted for the rest of the day, the way she’d clutched it round her shoulders, the way she used it to flag up her frailty. It isn’t a shawl like the one Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother always wears in illustrations to the tale. It’s a flamboyant shawl, the colours of the wool clashing violently, shades all the way from magenta to a lurid lime green, because it was crocheted from scraps. May is not like Little Red Riding Hood’s granny either, not yet. She’s not in bed all day, not dependent on her granddaughter bringing her food.
It is odd, that. Little Red Riding Hood’s granny being on her own, I mean, living in that isolated cottage in the middle of a wood. Little Red Riding Hood certainly wouldn’t have wanted to be her grandmother. After all, what kind of life was Granny living, and that’s without bringing wolves into it. If I remember correctly, in the original story, the wolf eats the grandmother and there is no woodcutter hanging about to come and cut her free. What kind of inspiration is that? And why wasn’t Little Red Riding Hood’s granny living with her family, eh? The poor old thing. The more I think about it, the worse the image of grandmothers in children’s stories gets. Grandmothers are always peripheral, unlike stepmothers, who are crucial to so many plots and always wonderfully cruel or wicked.
I still have all my childhood books, stacks of them. It amuses Ian. He claims, correctly, that I never look at them, whereas I look at my art books often. So why let them take up so much of our limited shelf space? But I love to have them, to know they are there. I just like to see them – they seem part of me. And they are pretty volumes, artistic, worth displaying for their own sake and never mind the contents. Many are tattered, especially the Beatrix Potters (no noteworthy grandmothers there). Some – the Arthur Ransomes – are first editions. My dad got them for me and they have illustrations I used to pore over, identifying myself with Titty and her parrot. Ian says those are probably worth something, unlike the rest.
Hans Andersen surely had something to say about grandmothers, but I couldn’t think of one of his stories that featured any of them in major roles. I sat with the two-volume edition I have, the one illustrated by Heath Robinson, and flicked through it, stopping at the drawing ‘she was on the whole a sensible sort of lady’ in the story of the Little Mermaid – a grandmother, at last. She was the person who told the six infant mermaids about life above the waves. The youngest, who was fascinated by humans, asked if they lived for ever, and her granny said no, they all die, none of them live as long as us, we can live three hundred years then turn into foam. The princess said she’d still rather be a human because they have souls that live on after they die, and that’s better than living three hundred years then turning to foam. Her granny is cross with her. She tells her not to be silly, but the princess asks if there is any way a mer-person could get a soul. Granny agrees there is. If she can get a human man to love and marry her, then she will have a share of his soul. This, though, is not going to happen because human men find mer-tails repulsive – they want bodies to finish in two ugly pillars called legs . . .
I sat there on the floor and read the whole volume, soon forgetting I was supposedly reading with a purpose. And then, putting the book back, I saw Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and remembered the grandmothers in it. Grandma Josephine and Grandma Georgina, who slept together in the same bed with Grandpa Joe and Grandpa George. The grandmas were so old and so tired they never got out of bed (how did they pee? I used to ask Dad, and he whispered that they had bedpans in the bed and I shrieked with disgust). They were as shrivelled as prunes and bony as skeletons. Their faces were hideously wrinkled and their necks scraggy. Not desirable role models, then. It was a field worth exploring, though. But would Claudia approve? Impor
tance, significance of the grandmother in children’s literature, etc.? It would give me a very nice time, reading all my childhood books again. I could hear May saying, ‘Call that work!’
Claudia might say the same; she might complain I am once more going off on a pointless tangent. I can imagine her glaring at me and inviting me to clarify my objectives in dredging through children’s stories for evidence that grandmothers exert an influence of value on their granddaughters and explain how this supports my main contention, which my dissertation is based on, that . . . that what? Here it is again, this struggle to identify what it is I am about – I know something is there, flitting around as ever at the corners of my mind, lurking there, waiting for a strong light to illuminate it. But a strong light might, on the contrary, banish it altogether. Claudia is the strong light. She stares, she raises her eyebrows, she asks one pertinent question and what I think I have almost within my grasp vanishes. Nothing there. Emptiness.
I wish I were a carpenter with planks of wood in my hands, and a hammer, and nails and, hey presto, shelves put up. Instead, I have words and ideas and feelings – it’s the ‘feelings’ that do the damage. Dangerous, insubstantial things. So what is it that I feel, in this instance? I’ll try yet again: I feel there is a link between grandmothers and granddaughters that is not just the obvious genetic one. I feel this link is to do with experience. I feel a kind of osmosis must take place and that it is important, this unconscious assimilation of what has been endured, that it somehow passes from woman to woman. I feel it is a strengthening force – yes, that’s it, a strengthening force. That’s what I’m after, what I’m trying to prove. So, how to do it? How to tie everything together?
Isa and May Page 14