Ice Cream in Winter

by Ice Cream in Winter (retail) (epub)

  Matthew went to the cottage straight from the railway station and was suprised at how neat and well cared for it was. He looked first for the portrait of Vanessa and was disappointed to find it gone. He sat in each room for a long time, remembering how he had planned to live there and start a family. He remembered his plans for the garden, of making a real pond out of the boggy area, and building a swing for their children. But his thoughts were of Vanessa, not Patricia, to whom he had been within hours of marrying.

  He stayed in the cottage for more than three hours, imagining how it might have been. In his mind, Vanessa was no longer the helpless, spoilt child, but a woman with whom he would have found complete happiness. Then he went to see Mrs Drew.

  She hesitated to open the door when she saw him. Then she realised he was on the verge of tears and relented and allowed him in.

  ‘I’ve been to the cottage and the portrait has gone,’ he said in a whisper. ‘All the time I’ve been away I’ve imagined it there, in her favourite room, waiting for me.’

  ‘Roland collected it and brought it here,’ she explained. ‘He knew I’d want it and there was the danger of it being attacked by damp and dirt if we left it there.’

  ‘Can I have it back?’

  ‘I don’t know. Roland lacks the talent of his poor dear sister but it’s very like her and I don’t have another.’

  ‘Please. I can’t face the cottage without her there.’

  Concerned by his strangeness and the urgency of his request, she said, ‘Perhaps Roland will do a copy. I’ll ask him.’

  ‘No! There mustn’t be a copy. I want the only one. She belongs in the cottage, doesn’t she? All the rest was a terrible mistake, my plan to marry Patricia. All a mistake, she knew I wouldn’t ever stop loving her. She knew that, you can see it on her face.’

  ‘Would you like to see it? I’ve hung it in her room.’ Mrs Drew led him up the stairs to where the room was as Vanessa had left it; put right after its enforced occupation by the soldiers. Her harp, moved from the living room, now stood in a corner; her sewing on a small table near a treadle sewing machine. Her wedding gown, almost completed, hung covered with tissue paper pinned over it to protect it from sunlight and dust. Even the curtains she had been making for the cottage were folded and placed on a shelf. Matthew recognised them; he had helped her choose.

  ‘I’ll leave you here for a few moments, then you must come down and have a cup of tea.’

  It was the first of many visits to the Drew’s house but Matthew never came when Roland was there. Roland had returned to school and his hours were regular enough for Matthew to avoid him without trouble. Mrs Drew said nothing about Matthew’s visits to her son. She kept them a secret, an opportunity to indulge herself in remembering her lovely daughter and to heap more recriminations on Patricia, an activity in which Matthew willingly joined.

  It was Julia who told him that Patricia was working at the flower shop and living in the caravan.

  ‘She seems very happy at the moment, really content with her life, and has great plans for the future.’ Implicit in Julia’s words was a warning for him not to step into her life again and spoil it.

  Matthew smiled and assured her that his interest in Patricia was minimal, but secretly he felt cheated at the thought of her rebuilding a contented life, after the tragedy of Vanessa’s death. He would never be happy again, and it seemed to him in his misery that she should be as melancholy as himself.

  Sally Drew was in the shop one April day in 1946 when he went into order flowers for Mrs Drew on the anniversary of her daughter’s death. While she stepped out of the shop to find her order book, he quickly changed the names and messages on several of the bunches ready for delivery.

  Then he went into town and ordered another bouquet. It was also addressed to the Drew’s, and the card he wrote on was one taken from Cottage Flowers.

  There were several floral tributes on the anniversary of Vanessa’s death, including one from Patricia. This one Mrs Drew discarded, pushing it upside down into the ash bin. There was a huge bunch of chrysanthemums from Matthew with a loving message attached. Then there was one with a Cottage Flowers label, but delivered by a firm from the next town, reading ‘Congratulations on another happy year, long may the celebrations of that special day, April the tenth, 1941, continue.’

  More in temper than grief, Mrs Drew ran to Cottage Flowers and demanded that Patricia were sacked. In the confusion of explanations, Patricia stuttered her innocence and to Mrs Drew, her confusion was an obvious sign of guilt.

  ‘Knowing Matthew is back and refusing to see you, you had to show your real feelings, didn’t you? You say you were Vanessa’s friend and yet you could do this, try to ruin her memory with sick messages like this.’

  In vain Patricia insisted she knew nothing about the card or the flowers but sadly, neither Mrs Drew, or Sally Drew believed her. She was once again without a job.

  Roland was angry when he heard what had happened.

  ‘You ought to know without her needing to deny it that Patricia isn’t capable of such a thing!’ he said.

  A discussion with Sally followed and she willingly offered Patricia the job back.

  ‘It was your Mam,’ she explained to him. ‘So insistent she was and so upset I thought it best to agree with her.

  Patricia returned to the shop where she had been contentedly employed but the atmosphere was spoilt. She no longer felt happy there.

  Chapter Nine

  Julia felt very tired. She had spent hours on futile attempts to persuade Patricia to consider a career. Now she no longer worked at Cottage Flowers there was a real opportunity for her to start something worthwhile. She remembered with aching sadness her own daughter, and how she had coaxed her out of lethargy and urged her on. That had been futile too. As soon as she had met Leonard Lloyd, she had wanted nothing more than to be his wife. A fine doctor she would have made, if only she had had more determination.

  She began to accept that her granddaughter, Patricia, had similar traits to her daughter. Donna had been difficult to motivate. She had been thankful to escape from the efforts of study into domesticity. She admitted that Leonard had at least run a small business successfully, until the death of his wife had forced him to give it up in order to concentrate on bringing up his three daughters. Plenty of determination there.

  The fault, if fault it was, must come from her side, yet looking back through the three generations of which she was aware, there had been nothing but a strong need to improve their lot and provide better things for their children. Why couldn’t she instil that in Patricia? She was failing with her as she had failed with Donna Maria.

  She looked at the clock. Time to go for her train. She no longer had the car. She was going to the seaside town of Castell Newyth. There was a small pleasure beach there and she had received details of a property for sale that might be what she was looking for. Wearily she gathered her coat and hat and gloves. Probably another wasted journey.

  * * *

  Roland was restless. He had set up a studio in the back bedroom of his parents’ house and having finished recreating his wartime sketches, had begun to experiment with colour and portraiture. His mother didn’t like it. It was as if she considered it an offence to Vanessa’s memory for him to presume an artistic talent. Vanessa had been the clever one.

  ‘Besides,’ she informed him, ‘men paint as a hobby and you are jeopardising your career as a teacher by spending so much time on work of your own.’ He just smiled and carried on.

  It was only Patricia and Julia who encouraged him and persuaded him that his talent was worthy of the time he was giving it.

  ‘One day, you’re going to be famous,’ Julia said, ‘and the rest of us will boast of knowing you. Being a friend of Roland Drew will be our only claim to fame and we’ll enjoy it, won’t we, Patricia?’

  ‘I boast of being his friend already,’ Patricia said. ‘The war drawings are wonderful. I don’t understand how, but they tell us much
more than words could, what it was like to live through such awful times.’

  He was at Rose Cottage one day, doing preliminary drawings for a portrait of Julia, doodling and searching for a way of showing how he saw her, when quite suddenly a theme, a style, came into his mind. Colour. He saw with his artist’s eye that for every person there was a colour or shade that truly belonged to no one else. Julia he saw as pink. The pink cottage would be the background and everything about the painting would be shades of pink.

  His mother he saw in beiges and browns; his memory of his father showed him shadowy greys and a hint of blue. He looked across to where Patricia was sitting surrounded by the glow of the fire. What colour represented her? It was not the reds and yellows which were around her at that moment in the moving flames. He visualised her in every colour in his pallette, but couldn’t get it.

  As he began to plan Julia’s portrait he was distracted constantly by thoughts of Patricia. He tried for days but Patricia wouldn’t come. Purples and greens and maroons and reds, semi-colours like soft peach, pale yellows and orange. None of them were Patricia. Putting aside the vexing enigma of Patricia he began on the portrait of Julia.

  The original idea to use the cottage as a background went immediately. There was nothing but colour. Her colour. He worked feverishly, afraid of losing the swirling colours in his mind as he looked at her. The palette changed rapidly as he chose pinks from palest blush to deepest rose. With white and cream forcing changes and exciting him, he added to the canvas until there was a thick textured cover of paint through which the clear, smiling face of Julia appeared. It was done at great speed, the vision in his mind urging him on, and at times he was actually breathless with the thrill of it.

  Working from early morning, it was finished by nightfall and he knew it was the best thing he had done. When he invited her to view it he felt physically sick with fear that she would be disapppointed.

  Julia gasped as she slowly examined the painting. It was not what she had expected. All his previous work had been factual, this was bordering on fantasy. A three-quarter face with a good likeness, her clothes shown with clarity down to the last stitch, these were what she had been prepared to see, but what he had done was amazing and, she was sure, brilliantly clever.

  ‘You don’t like it?’ Roland asked.

  ‘I think it’s wonderful! I’ve only seen your war sketches and they were extremely well drawn. But this! I never expected anything so, so, brilliantly clever. Roland, you have a remarkable talent.’

  ‘I haven’t done anything like this before but I think I want to do it again. The trouble is, who do I ask to sit?’

  ‘Would Patricia make a suitable subject?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He frowned and tried again to see Patricia’s colour and failed. ‘I want to paint her, but I can’t get her, not yet.’

  ‘Your mother?’

  He shook his head. ‘Her colour is wrong.’

  Julia didn’t understand what he meant but didn’t question it.

  ‘Where is Patricia?’ he asked later, when they sat drinking tea.

  ‘Employment exchange, looking for a job. I wish she’d go back to nursing or at least find herself something with a future. I’ve tried to persuade her.’

  ‘Perhaps the ice cream idea might come off?’

  ‘At least it would give her a secure future. It brought my family out of poverty. The kind of poverty that only immigrants, arriving here with no one and nothing, could know. An entrepreneurial spirit and the ability to work damned hard. That’s all my family had when they came here.’

  ‘What happened to the flower shop? I thought she was happy there with Auntie Sally?’

  ‘She was, but the business of the bouquet sent to your mother on the anniversary of Vanessa’s death has upset things.’

  ‘I thought that was sorted?’

  ‘There were other mistakes on the same day. Patricia can’t be sure they believe her. She doesn’t want to work there any more with an atmosphere of doubt.’

  ‘What rubbish!’ he said packing away his palette and paints. ‘I’m going to see my mother and sort this out. How could either of them think Patricia would play such a cruel joke!’

  Later that day there was a visitor to the caravan in Julia’s garden, just as Patricia returned from her trip into town. Sally Drew had come to apologise and ask Patricia to return to Cottage Flowers on the following morning.

  ‘There’s daft I was, thinking for even a split second that you’d do such a thing. My own sense should have told me she was overreacting. Very upset she was. But I was soft to listen to her, mind. Blind she’s always been so far as Vanessa is concerned. Anyway I should have known it wasn’t true. Sorry to my ’eart I am for upsetting you like that. Please, come back to the shop. I miss you no end.’

  Running in to tell Julia the good news that the job was again hers, Patricia was shown the portrait and she at once burst into tears.

  ‘It’s marvellous,’ she said, between sobs. ‘He shows you just as I see you. How can he do that?’

  ‘He’s a man with a great talent. I hope he’s encouraged to use it to the full.’

  Patrica hardly heard her. She was still staring at the remarkable portrait of her friend. She looked younger, more like the young woman in the photographs scattered around the room but there was nothing false about the likeness. It was Julia then and now and always.

  ‘You have a special sort of happiness, Julia, and, although it isn’t drawn on your face, it’s there, in the portrait. I can almost hear the laughter.’ She also saw the sarcastic wit in the lines of her mouth and eyes. ‘Love is there too, and the warmth that makes you such a wonderful friend. Oh, Julia, isn’t he a clever man?’ she added as tears broke out anew.

  ‘Go and tell him,’ Julia said, ‘but wipe those tears away first or he’ll think you hate it and are afraid to tell him so.’

  ‘I can’t. Mrs Drew won’t answer the door to me,’ she said between sobs.

  ‘At least try. I think your opinion will be important to him.’

  ‘How can what I think matter? I know nothing about art.’

  ‘Nevertheless, I think you should tell him straight away how impressed you are.’ Patricia was still staring at the portrait and for a long time Julia stood with her, just marvelling at the ability of a man to impart so much with streaks of paint.

  * * *

  When Patrica finally moved away and put on her coat, Julia asked, ‘Oh, what was it you were rushing in to tell me?’

  ‘I’ve got the job back. Sally Drew said I can go back to the shop tomorrow.’

  ‘Very good of her considering how foolish and unkind she’s been to you,’ Julia didn’t try to hide the sarcasm that Roland had so subtly caught in his portrait of her.

  ‘It wasn’t really her fault. Mrs Drew dislikes me so much and she’s very persuasive.’

  ‘Well, I suppose it’s a good thing in one way. It will do until you really decide what you’ll do with your life, my dear.’

  Patricia hid a sigh. She was very fond of Julia but she did go on so.

  * * *

  Roland let himself into the house on Ebenezer Street and went up to his room. Passing the half-open door of Vanessa’s bedroom he saw his mother sitting on a chair beside the bed, reading a book. ‘I’ve just completed a portrait,’ he told her, standing in the doorway, still breathless with excitement. ‘It’s something I’ve never done before. I was, er, quite pleased with it. Would you like to see it? It’s at Julia’s.’

  ‘Why is it there?’

  ‘It was Julia I painted and I wanted her to sit in her own room. I don’t know why but it seemed important.’

  ‘Bring it over and I will look at it later.’ She lowered her head and returned to her reading.

  He felt he was expected to offer a humble, ‘thank you’ but he didn’t.

  Although he was very tired and wanted nothing more than to flop out on his bed and sleep, he couldn’t stay in the house. It was dark, but
he set off, intending to walk to a public house and have a drink, but he was relieved when he met Patricia coming to see him and went back to her caravan instead.

  ‘To me, everyone has a colour,’ he told her after she had given her opinion on the portrait. ‘Don’t laugh, I can’t explain what I mean, but I could see Julia’s so clearly. I want to try again but I don’t know who to use as a subject.’

  ‘You’re mother might be pleased, she probably isn’t pleased that you chose Julia for your first sitter,’ she surprised him by saying.

  ‘You might be right, but I don’t want to paint my mother. It would be like painting a thunderstorm.’

  ‘Paint Richard,’ Patricia suggested. ‘If you can keep him still long enough to see him! A beautiful child for a subject must be like painting a rainbow.’

  Roland stared at her and smiled, amazed at her perspicacity. ‘You understand, don’t you?’

  ‘Perhaps, a little,’ she smiled.

  Watching the child play, both at the farm where he was still cared for by Mrs Francis, and at Leonard’s home, Roland began to build up that kaleidoscope of colour in his mind until he was ready to paint.

  The child wouldn’t keep still of course, being a little over two-and-a-half, and it worried Patricia, afraid he would lose that tightly coiled impression of the picture in his mind, and be unable to transfer it onto the canvas. But it was no problem. While Richard played with coloured bricks, toy cars and a musical box, and copied Roland by drawing with enthusiasm on a writing pad, Roland painted. He worked with the same speed with which he had worked on the portrait of Julia.

  The result was even more exciting. There was movement in the picture, it was a living thing. The beautiful face of the child came out of swirling colours thickly applied and within the mixture of soft sage greens and yellows, his features emerged, grew out of the colours in a way that Patricia, who was allowed to watch, found magical. The baby-soft skin was touched with the colours of the background out of which he had appeared, blonde hair and blue eyes blending with the yellows and palest greens. There were toys too, just hints of them, half hidden, so they were sometimes seen, sometimes not.