by Yaba Badoe
‘Is this creepy or what?’ Polly asked, leading me to another set of canvases. Experimenting with style, Isobel had distorted her daughter’s features, giving them the attributes of birds and animals. She had painted her with arms transformed into the giant wings of an eagle; as a cat, her face obscured by fur; then Polly became a crow, a hedgehog, a deer.
I remember that the pictures made me uncomfortable, but I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what it was about them that I found disturbing. They were flamboyant explorations of Polly’s character: her streak of rebelliousness, which made her clash with her mother; an ingrained wildness that Isobel was unable to contain. She captured the essential Polly, transforming her into an exotic freak of nature. I could tell that Polly was flattered, even though the cumulative effect of the images was unsettling. They sprang out at you, each stroke so vivid in detail, so bright in execution that they lacerated the eye.
Bewildered yet fascinated, Polly and I were intent on deciphering the tantalising code in each of Isobel’s paintings. It was as if we had stumbled on her diary and might find a way of understanding the secret language of her soul. We were on our hands and knees, our backs to the door, the canvas of Polly as an eagle in front of us, when the voice I dreaded hearing interrupted our deliberations. It was Isobel.
‘I see Polly’s brought you into our secret, little one.’
We hadn’t heard her entering the studio. Alarmed that she had discovered us doing exactly what she had forbidden, I was about to apologise when Polly said, ‘Isobel, my mouth isn’t like this!’ She was pointing to the beak her mother had given her in the eagle painting. ‘And why’ve you given me cat’s eyes in this one? And I’m certainly not like this, Mommy dearest!’ Polly went through the canvases, Isobel squatting down beside us. ‘And, hallo? Polly an antelope? I think not.’
Enchanted and perplexed though she was by her mother’s obsession, Polly had a strong sense of how she wanted to be seen, and with a spark of defiance gathering in her eyes, she ended her criticism of Isobel’s oeuvre with a calculated provocation: ‘Bet you can’t paint me for real, Isobel. You know, like with regular eyes, regular nose and real hair. Just me, no animals anywhere. Bet you can’t paint me for Peter.’
To my surprise, Isobel accepted the challenge. Perhaps Belinda and the Spanish brandy had put her in a good mood. Immediately mother and daughter embarked on their first project together: a project for Peter. Isobel was going to paint a portrait of Polly as a gift they could give him together.
‘What do you think I should wear, Isobel?’
Polly never asked her mother’s opinion on anything; at least she had not in my presence as far as I could recall, and certainly not about what to wear: a contentious subject at the best of times. I think her question surprised Isobel too, who paused setting up her easel and looked at her daughter intently before replying: ‘Something blue, I think. Something that brings out your eye-colour. Your eyes are just like your father’s.’
The easel up and Polly clothed, Isobel set to work. Still unsure if her mother could meet her conditions, Polly said once again: ‘You won’t make me look weird, will you? You’ll make me look like a regular person, like me. Promise?’
Isobel promised to do her best.
I spent the rest of the afternoon watching them: Polly seated in a chair, Isobel standing in front of her; sketching at first and then, having established a composition that suited the blueprint in her mind, forging ahead.
She worked quickly, completely absorbed, so that when Polly started asking questions, she was silent, focused on a world of her own creation. The depth of her abstraction reminded me of how my mother had been sometimes. In spite of my determination to remain attentive, on guard, I felt tears clouding my eyes. Mama had often seemed to drift irretrievably from me, far from the shore where I was standing, drowning in her own world. Yet I would rather have had her alive, like Isobel, than cold in her grave.
‘Perhaps we should give him this for Christmas,’ Polly was saying. ‘Do you think he’ll come home for Christmas, Isobel?’
Her mother didn’t reply. She was poised, daubing paint on canvas with an intensity that was strangely compelling. She hadn’t heard a word Polly had said. At least she appeared not to. So Polly tried again.
‘Mommy, do you think he’ll come for Christmas or stay on his boat?’
Again, there was no reply.
‘Isobel, if I ask him and you ask him too, we might persuade him to come home. Just for a few days over the holidays, anyways.’
Isobel sighed. ‘I wouldn’t hold your breath, darling. After what happened, he might not want to come here again. I’m sorry, Polly.’
‘But you will ask him? And whatever happens, you’ll try and have my picture painted by Christmas. Just in case he comes.’
‘I’ll do my best, darling.’
On my next visit, a fortnight later, they were still hard at work on the portrait. Mother and daughter behaved like friends, casual friends perhaps, but friends all the same. I have to admit that, observing Polly with her mother, I began to doubt my apprehension, which had reignited – despite Mrs Derby’s reassurances – on seeing Isobel’s paintings. For the first time since I had known them, they were laughing together. Polly wore a polo-neck jumper the colour of her eyes, and her hair, brushed furiously that morning, was carefully arranged. She was sitting very still, and her face, bright and alert, revealed a glimmer of mischief. It was the gaze with which she always approached Peter, and, capturing it, Isobel added her own insights into their daughter.
There was boldness in the eyes and behind them a suggestion of vulnerability. True to her word, Isobel depicted her daughter with a tenderness lacking in her previous pictures. There were no animals or birds in sight: no beaks, or claws, or feathers, or paws. Just Polly, incorrigible; resplendent. Sensing the warmth radiating from the half-finished portrait, I let my anxieties slide.
I had believed that Isobel hated Polly, that she wanted to harm her. I was wrong, I decided, in much the same way as I’d been wrong in my first impressions of the Venuses. Grieving for my mother had humbled me, and I began to think that perhaps I hadn’t seen what I’d believed was real after all: Isobel taking and eating the pearls. And even if I had seen her, at the time I’d believed my mother was alive, when in fact she was dead. I no longer trusted myself and my ability to distinguish what was real from what was imagined. Grief, having silenced my voice, was making me question my existence.
Hearing Polly and Isobel laughing, I suddenly remembered what Theo had told me. They might not get on, but they cared for each other. Their laughter slit my heart open as I remembered that once I had laughed with my own mother. On her good days.
I was never going to hear her voice again, or trace the outline of her lips with my thumb. Or experience those moments of intimacy when, putting on my gold earrings, Mama dabbed powder on my face and left a trace of perfume behind my ears. Gazing at me she would say: ‘Ajuba, do you know who’s the most wonderful girl in the world?’ ‘Who, Mama?’ ‘You, my daughter. My beautiful daughter.’ I would never hear her laughter again.
I allowed my grief to wash over me. It no longer frightened me as it had done at the beginning. It was gentler now. And with Isobel’s shout of laughter still ringing in my ears, I felt the radiance of Polly’s smile turning towards me. She winked, and little by little, what was left of my apprehension dissipated, and I joined in the laughter myself.
21
ONE AFTERNOON LATE that November, when the portrait of my friend was almost finished, Polly and I walked down a muddy bridlepath to a copse of trees at the edge of the estate. We were collecting fir cones for Christmas decorations. It was going to be a special Christmas according to Polly, because if she got her way, Peter would return home. It was going to be the last Christmas the Venuses would celebrate as a family, before Isobel and Peter went their separate ways.
Not surprisingly, despite Polly’s persistent entreaties, Peter was reluctant to return t
o the scene of Isobel’s revenge. He said he would think about it. A few days later, when Isobel called him saying their daughter desperately wanted a family Christmas, and wouldn’t he join them, Peter repeated his statement: he was considering their invitation. Isobel, claiming that she wanted nothing more than to give Polly a Christmas to remember, assured him that there was nothing to worry about. They could use the opportunity to discuss their daughter’s future. It wouldn’t hurt to come home for a few days. Unwilling to set aside his reservations completely, Peter promised to let them know what he’d decided a week before the holidays began.
I was invited for Christmas Day as well, and, anticipating that Peter would be with us, Polly and I had decided to put on a show. What we called a show was in fact a rendition of two songs the Venuses loved: an old favourite of Isobel’s, ‘Living Doll’, and Roy Orbison’s ‘Love Hurts’, which Peter adored and used to play at his impromptu parties. That is when he still had a record collection.
I had heard the Cliff Richard song for the first time on Peter’s houseboat, the radio tuned to Capital Gold. It was the only song that Isobel liked that Polly admitted to enjoying. I believe there was a strong streak of sentimentality mixed up with Polly’s love of the macabre, for she adored Bryan Adams’ ‘Everything I do’, as well as most of Cliff Richard’s early songs, and this one we were going to sing as a duet. It was a song for best friends who, having found in each other a perfect Living Doll, are at peace. The Roy Orbison ballad was a sad song about the pain love inflicts on those who experience its power. Sung in the smooth tenor voice of the man in dark glasses with the huge black quiff, it captured precisely my melancholy mood.
All the same, I had enjoyed our rehearsal that morning, the companionship of dancing and singing together as I choreographed our moves. I had taught Polly to dance Aunt Rose style, hips swivelling and body shaking in celebration of sacred joy. Memorising our steps, synchronising them to the words of the songs, Polly and I moved in unison with audacious glee. The Cliff Richard lyrics reminded me of Rapunzel in her tower and Miss Edith and Miss Fielding. It made me want to tell Polly about my discussion with Miss Edith over the chocolate éclairs. We still hadn’t solved the mystery of the babies’ bones but not for want of trying on my part. The inquest was going to come to a close in February after further interviews. Detective Inspector Roberts had questioned Miss Edith several times but no arrest had been made, so, assuming the old woman was in the clear, I told Polly about my conversation with her.
‘She said I was wrong about Miss Fielding,’ I explained, picking up a fir cone. ‘Then she said the Queen of Hearts loved not wisely but too much.’
‘Meaning what?’ Polly exclaimed.
‘I don’t know. She said Miss Fielding was like someone called Othello.’
‘Who the hell’s she?’
I didn’t know the answer to that question either; all I knew was that Othello was the name of someone in a Shakespeare play. And because I knew the story of Romeo and Juliet, I assumed that Othello had died for love as well.
‘I bet you Peter knows who she is,’ Polly said.
It was a crisp November day with an east wind so vicious it was like a knife against my cheek. The copse, littered with discarded fir cones, was covered in a thin blanket of pine needles.
‘Perhaps Othello was like my mother,’ I wondered out loud.
‘How come?’
‘Well, I think that maybe she loved my father too much, because in the end she couldn’t live without him. When he left us, she killed herself.’
‘You’re kidding me, right?’
I shook my head, and for once Polly was lost for words. She stared at me with a mixture of surprise and awe. I thought she wanted to know more: a detailed description at the very least, a blow-by-blow account of how the deed was done. But I didn’t have the stomach to say anything else. I was cold; I was shivering. I took a hand from the pocket of the grey duffel coat I was wearing, and, after pulling down the knitted hat on my head so that it covered my eyebrows, placed it against my face to contain my misery.
‘It happened over a year ago,’ I added reluctantly. ‘She was very unhappy.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Polly replied. Then, probably because she didn’t know what else to say, she took my hand, warming it against her cheek. She stroked it, then, feeling the chill in it, she brought both my hands to her mouth, blowing over them as she rubbed them together.
‘Why didn’t you tell me, Aj? Why couldn’t you tell me?’
I was crying. I didn’t know how to answer her. Instead of wanting to know the details of my mother’s suicide, Polly wanted to comfort me; to reassure me. Somehow, through her enquiring gaze and the stillness that followed it, she seemed to assimilate what I was feeling, easing the sting of my tears with her touch.
A sudden glint of red distracted us. To our right, in an open field beyond the copse, was a vixen grooming herself. A shaft of autumn sunlight gleamed on the animal’s fur as, licking her paws, she wiped her face clean, staring at us coolly. We watched her for ten precious minutes, her lustrous yellow eyes taking us in as we stood motionless, my hands warming in Polly’s, my tears ceasing. When the fox had finished, she turned her back to us and trotted into the undergrowth.
Polly and I smiled at each other, enraptured by what we’d seen. Arm in arm, we started walking back to the house, our Wellington boots leaving a trail of footprints in the mud.
‘Is that why you’ve been sad lately, remembering your mother?’ Polly asked eventually.
I nodded.
‘Do you want to talk about it?’
It was the sort of question Peter would have asked. I suppose she thought it fitting for the occasion to use words and expressions he would use. He was one of the most understanding adults we knew.
I shook my head and Polly appeared relieved. I was discovering that proximity to violent death isn’t as fascinating close up as most people imagine it will be. My revelation had taken the wind out of her. For all her bravado in claiming to have touched Jacinth’s dead body, Polly preferred reading about death in the pages of True Murder to tackling it head on. Like most of us, she enjoyed it packaged in neat parcels to puzzle over and unravel. To have it touch someone she cared for was quite another matter.
For the rest of the day, Polly was solicitous towards me. She watched me as we sat cross-legged in front of a log fire painting the fir cones gold. Flecks of paint splattered our fingernails and cheeks. Engrossed in the task, the fire illuminating the colours of our skin, I was aware of Polly’s intermittent gaze. Eventually I said to her: ‘I’m still the same, Polly.’
‘No, you’re not,’ she answered. ‘You’re different; like I was different when I started my periods. But you’re still my best friend, aren’t you?’
‘Of course. Are you still my best friend?’
‘Always.’ She put down her fir cone and, inching closer to me, she put her hands on my knees. ‘Whatever happens, Aj, promise you’ll always be my best friend.’
I promised that I would. To mark the occasion, Polly decided we should become blood sisters. She found one of Isobel’s needles and pricked my forefinger. Then she drew blood from her own, mingling it with mine. To ensure that we were bound, one to the other, with the exclusivity of twins, she licked my finger clean, while I licked hers. We would be as one for eternity, we promised. We would never divorce. We were blood sisters, each other’s living dolls. Then, because we understood the importance of ritual when making a never-ending pact, we sang the Roy Orbison song we had memorised. And singing it, I realised that the man with the quiff was right. Love hurts.
22
HE WAS COMING home. Peter was coming home for Christmas, and Isobel, as jubilant as Polly and me, was trying to contain her excitement. With the precision of politicians preparing for an election, Polly and Isobel laid plans for the four days of Peter’s holiday. Of course, I joined in as well, and we spent hours decorating the house with baubles and tinsel. There were Christmas cards on t
he walls and on mantelpieces; and in the entrance hall a tree, laden with gold and silver fir cones, sparkled with blood-red candles at the tips of its branches. Together, the Venus women were intent on pleasing Peter. But while Polly’s aim was to have a good time with her father – she had no idea when she would be seeing him again after he moved to Paris – I sensed that Isobel’s excitement was tinged with longing.
I’m told by Mrs Bradshaw that Isobel laughed at Robert, her counsellor, when he had tried to warn her of her emotional susceptibility. The past was the past, she asserted; she was thinking of her future; she had no intention of re-entering hell. Anyway, Peter was only coming home for a few days. What harm could that do? ‘He’s such an old woman,’ she confided to Belinda Bradshaw, indignant at Robert’s lack of trust in her emotional stability. ‘I’ve never felt better. I’m over the worst now, and Polly and I are good friends. I’m a new woman.’
Belinda accepted what she said. I would have done as well had I been in her position. Physically, Isobel was radiant, glowing with inner vitality. And there was about her a sense of direction, a new sense of purpose, which Polly and I responded to. Isobel, no longer despondent, was excellent company. She made us laugh, mimicking the rude noises Polly and I practised when we were in the bath together. Her talent was such that she held us spellbound while she was icing the Christmas cake, as she pretended to emit a series of stupendously loud farts. I begged her to make the noises again and again and she happily complied, a mischievous smile on her face, while Polly, gasping, shrieked in disgust. Apparently, pre-teens weren’t even supposed to pretend to fart in public. Not when adults were around at any rate. I was delighted, none the less. Isobel could burp on demand as well. She was kind enough to teach me how to do the same trick, demonstrating that, just like with singing, it was a question of breath control. ‘Control is everything, Ajuba,’ she insisted. ‘Everything.’
As Christmas loomed closer, Peter casually informed Polly and Isobel of the day he would be coming home with Theo by car. I noticed that Isobel was immersing herself in the business of festivity with the same energy she’d deployed in decorating her home. Her standards were exacting, her organisation meticulous. Like a Prussian general involved in military manoeuvres, she made lists and work plans, allocating her time with tactical zeal. She chose an organic turkey from a neighbouring farm, she made delicious mince pies, dainty sausage rolls; she stocked the house with drinks and liqueurs, chocolates, Turkish delight, Brazil nuts, hazelnuts, walnuts. She even bought chestnuts for roasting on the fire, and, for Christmas stockings, succulent, bright clementines. Such was her excitement that I’m convinced that with every food purchase she made, every present she bought, she made a wish that this Christmas it would all come right; they would be happy together; and somehow, they would be a family again.