‘That’d be lovely,’ I reply, touching his arm again. But as I do I feel him pulling away, just a little, as though he wonders if he’s told me too much.
6th June 2000
My dearest daughter,
I feel as though there is nothing to report this year. I feel that as the years go by there is less and less to report.
I never did get around to doing anything about that community art space. I spoke to the lawyers and the accountants and everyone thought the Art Salon was a wonderful idea.
But, when it came to it, the idea of it overwhelmed me. It was all I could think about for months, and the stress affected my art and my mood. It made me want to drink again. In the end I gave up on it all and just paid the huge tax bills. I’ve done a lot of things I’m not very proud of but never let it be said that Bruce Baldwin dodged his tax.
This time next year you’ll be turning eighteen and you won’t need your old dad any more. Not that you’ve needed him so far. Not that you even know he exists. I’m sorry about that, Julia. I’ve tried to do the best by you, even if it might not seem that way.
I’m still sober. Fourteen years and sixty days. I still go to meetings, work through the steps. I’ve been going to meetings daily recently because the temptation to drink again is getting stronger as I get older. I find myself sitting in bars, staring at the optics like they’re long-lost friends. And then I order a mineral water. Or I just leave. I’m never sure if anyone realises who I am.
I raise that glass of mineral water to you, Julia; enjoy your last twelve months of childhood.
Happy Birthday, Princess.
Your Father
Chapter 13
Edwin and I are standing outside what appears to be a derelict warehouse in the East End shaking hands with a man who is a memory from my childhood. It’s only 9.30 and the sun is beating down already. This is turning into one of those summers we dream of in Britain, but when it finally comes we have no idea how to cope with the heat and pray for rain.
The last time I saw Frank I was in my early teens. He’d been living with us for a while and although I called him ‘Uncle Frank’ then, I had no idea he was, in fact, my uncle. He stands in front of me now holding both my hands in his looking like an older, clean-shaven version of the pictures I’ve seen of my father in his later life. His eyes are a mirror of mine and I realise for the first time that, although people tell me I look exactly like my mother, that’s not entirely true.
I also realise I have no idea what to say to this man. There are so many questions and I don’t know where to start.
‘Shall we take a look inside then?’ Edwin says, shaking the keys to my father’s studio, clearly sensing my discomfort.
Edwin unlocks the big double doors and we all traipse in. Inside is magnificent and it completely takes my breath away. Nothing could have prepared me for this. From the outside it looks like an empty warehouse but in here you feel as though you are right in the heart of an artist. There are paintings in various stages of completion lining the walls but the energy of these paintings is lighter, happier, more at peace than those I saw in my father’s flat. This is it. This is where the Art Salon will be.
‘This is where he painted when he was happy,’ Frank says making a beeline for a pile of canvases and beginning to sort through them. ‘He hadn’t been here for months though. Once he knew he was dying he shut this place up and did all his painting at home. He wanted me to use it, but I couldn’t. I never could paint anywhere near him.’
Edwin tells me the space is about 4000 square feet and getting planning permission to turn it into a multi-occupational use shouldn’t be a problem. If I wanted to separate out the space into different rooms for different disciplines I could use partition walling.
‘You could even create a mezzanine level,’ he says looking up at the vast heights above. ‘Have some smaller rooms up there. Maybe a sewing room?’ he goes on, nudging me.
I smile. ‘I’m no artist,’ I say.
‘Julia makes all her own clothes,’ Edwin says to Frank, pointing at the red and white striped sundress I’m wearing today. I did make this one but suspect it’s a lucky guess on Edwin’s part.
‘Not all of them,’ I say, embarrassed.
‘We’re all artists, Julia,’ Frank says. ‘Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.’
Edwin wanders off and Frank takes me to one side and starts showing me some of my father’s work. He seems to be able to talk to me more easily if he has a Bruce Baldwin original in his hand. I recognise one of the paintings from my internet search.
‘Ah yes, this one was in his very first exhibition,’ he says, holding up the abstract painted in acrylic. ‘He sold all his work that night, but this one wasn’t for sale. This was the title piece of the exhibition.’
‘What’s it called?’ I ask. I’m nervous about the answer I’ll hear.
‘For the Girl,’ Frank replies. ‘And that girl, if you hadn’t gathered from your internet searches, was you.’
‘I have a friend who loves Bruce’s work,’ I say. ‘I’d never really paid him much attention until recently. I don’t know if Edwin’s told you this but I hadn’t heard of Bruce Baldwin until Edwin first emailed me.’ I feel myself blush with embarrassment.
Frank nods with a smile. ‘Yes, he mentioned it.’
‘Anyway, this friend of mine said that a lot of his work focused on lost children, and fractured relationships. Was that because of me?’
‘Yes,’ Frank says quietly, looking again at the picture in his hand. ‘Partly it was about his own relationship with our parents, which was never very good, but much of it was because of you. You inspired him.’
I swallow. ‘Can you tell me about him?’
‘Oh, he was always my hero,’ he says. ‘Even when we were boys, I would follow him everywhere he went. And when he went to London, I was hot on his heels. I got into St Martin’s of course, but I was never as good as him. Always in his shadow. He could really have been somebody, but he always wanted the art to speak for him.’
‘That’s what Mum said.’
Frank goes very quiet then, looking at the paintings.
‘You should come over and see Mum and Johnny some time,’ I say trying to break the silence. ‘I don’t know what you all fell out about back then, or why you moved out, but I know Mum would love to see you. She won’t admit it of course.’
He smiles. ‘Your mother got tired of me I think. I tried to keep an eye on you and let my brother know how you were but I also tried to get her to tell you who your father was. It wasn’t the only reason I lived at Campden Hill Road, but it was one of them.’
‘Please don’t tell me you had an affair with her too!’
He looks at me startled and then bursts out laughing. ‘God no! Why who else did?’
‘They all seem to be coming out of the woodwork at the moment,’ I say, non-committally. It has crossed my mind that Edwin’s father may have been one of my mother’s lovers, but I’ve decided not to think about that one too much.
‘No, Bruce wasn’t the only one with an addiction, sadly,’ Frank goes on. ‘Gambling was my drug of choice and your mother kindly put me up when I was first in recovery. I’d lost most of my money you see. Your mother always wanted to do the right thing but her jealousy and obsession with Bruce always got in her way.’
‘Honestly, I think it’s water under the bridge now,’ I say with more confidence than I feel. ‘I’m sure she’d love to see you again.’
We lapse back into a more comfortable silence as Frank continues to sort through the many, many canvases.
Edwin comes back clutching a handful of papers and starts boring us all to tears with the ins and outs of planning law again. It turns out I need to apply for planning permission to turn what is essentially still a warehouse into a venue to accommodate members of the public. It will, of course, involve yet another trip to a lawyer.
‘And I presume Jones & Cartwr
ight have such a lawyer to milk me further of my fortune?’ I ask jokingly.
‘You presume correctly,’ Edwin replies with a grin that could melt a heart of stone.
‘Found it!’ Frank crows triumphantly.
He wasn’t just randomly sorting through paintings then. Edwin and I go over to see what it is that he’d been searching for.
It’s rather abstract, big swirls of yellow and blue and green, but it’s quite clearly a picture of a man dancing with his young daughter. It’s rather sweet but, even though I know very little about these things, it doesn’t seem to be Bruce Baldwin’s best work. I’m wondering if it is in fact one of Frank’s paintings, remembering what he just said about living in his brother’s shadow, when I realise Frank and Edwin are looking at me.
‘What?’ I ask.
And then it hits me.
This isn’t any man dancing with his small daughter. This is Bruce Baldwin and me.
I need to sit down but there aren’t any chairs. We need chairs in here, I think irrationally and completely off topic. I feel dizzy.
‘Are you OK?’ I hear Edwin ask.
‘That was the night I danced with my father to Penny Lane,’ I say.
‘You can remember that?’ Frank asks.
‘I think it’s my earliest memory. Were you there?’
He nods.
‘Were you?’ I ask Edwin.
‘Yup,’ he replies. ‘Although I was only eight; I didn’t really know what was going on.’
I look at these two men standing in my dead father’s art studio and realise, once again, how much my life has changed in the last month. How the quiet life I lived in Cambridge is ebbing away and the holes that had been left by never knowing who my father was are starting to be filled. I think I’m going to cry again when Edwin clears his throat suddenly and announces it’s time for lunch.
*
We eat scampi and chips and drink beer in a local pub as Frank regales us with stories of his childhood in Yorkshire and the scrapes he and Bruce got into as kids. An awful lot of them seem to revolve around stealing cider and cigarettes which, given the reputations of both of them, shouldn’t be much of a surprise.
‘Did you miss him when he went to London?’ I ask.
‘Desperately. It was just me and Dad at home then, and Dad wasn’t the most talkative of people. It wasn’t a lot of fun, but it gave me the impetus to work hard at school to make bloody sure I’d get into St Martin’s too, although looking back it’s a miracle I did really. I’ve often wondered if I got in on the Baldwin name alone.’
I smile as he carries on talking about him and his brother in London but I’m not really listening. My head is whirling with a million thoughts about who I am and where I’ve come from and what life would have been like if I’d known my father. I’ve been trying hard not to think too much about all of this, but I can’t help wondering if things would be different. Would I still have made the same mistakes? Would I still have been so scared of commitment? Would I have gone to law school? There are some things, I realise, that we will never know. Thinking about the ‘what ifs’ isn’t very helpful. I should be thinking about the ‘what nows’.
Edwin gets up to pay the bill and Frank takes this as his cue to leave. ‘I can see you’ve got a lot to think about so I’ll leave you youngsters to it,’ he says. ‘Look after that painting wisely.’
I smile and place a protective hand on the canvas of my father and me dancing that Frank has wrapped up for me. I’m not quite sure how Mum will like that hanging in the house but there are some things she’s going to have to put up with.
‘I will,’ I say, standing up to hug my uncle goodbye. ‘Thank you so much for today, for the painting and the stories and for being my uncle. I’ll see you soon? You’ll help with the Art Salon, won’t you?’
‘Oh of course I will, Julia. Nothing would make me happier. And, Julia?’
‘Yes.’
‘Go gently with Edwin. He’s not had an easy life, and it looks like he’s finally met someone who …’ he pauses ‘…well someone he’s very fond of.’ And with a wink at me and a wave to Edwin, he’s gone. I sit down and feel slightly deflated, and more than a little confused. I’m very aware of how I feel about Edwin but I certainly hadn’t got the impression that he felt anything for me other than an obligation to keep his promise to my father.
‘He’s a nice guy – Frank,’ Edwin says, as he sits back down next to me. ‘He’ll look after you.’
‘Do I need looking after?’
Edwin looks at me. ‘Everyone needs looking after,’ he says.
‘Who looks after you?’
‘What do you think of Bruce’s studio?’ he asks, ignoring my question.
‘It’s perfect. I can see exactly what he had in mind when he talked about the Art Salon in his letters. Do you really think we could do this?’
‘Absolutely,’ he says, meeting my eyes and smiling that smile that could light up a whole room.
I find myself wondering what Frank meant by treating Edwin gently, why he left so suddenly to leave us ‘youngsters’ alone. Edwin’s still looking at me and I find myself wondering what it would be like to kiss him.
‘What are you up to this weekend?’ he asks, breaking the silence.
‘I thought I might go back to Cambridge for a few days,’ I say as calmly as I can, my pulse still racing. ‘I still have quite a bit to sort out there…’
‘I’m sorry, I’m holding you up aren’t I?’ he says, standing up. ‘Can I walk you back to the tube station?’
‘Um…yes OK.’ He suddenly seems in a hurry to leave as though he knew what I was thinking about kissing him.
‘I’ll carry that if you like,’ he says taking my painting from me.
We walk side by side, not touching. There’s a strange sense of awkwardness between us, as though a line has been crossed and we both know we can’t go back. I try to think of something I can say to break the silence but I can’t. I just keep walking, acutely aware of his presence next to me.
‘Are you OK?’ I ask tentatively when we get to Whitechapel station.
‘I’m fine, Julia, really.’ He puts his hand on my back, between my shoulder blades, as he gives my painting back to me. ‘When you’re back, would you like to come out for a drink or something, as friends rather than lawyer and client’s daughter?’ He blushes slightly as he asks and my stomach flips over.
‘That would be lovely,’ I reply.
Chapter 14
I’m standing on the concourse at Kings Cross waiting for the platform announcement for the next train back to Cambridge. The heat, like my mood, is oppressive and the whole world seems to be trying to get out of London. There’s a storm brewing and I hope I can get back before it hits.
I hadn’t really planned to go back to Cambridge again so soon but there was something I’d forgotten, something I was desperate for, something I’d been thinking about since Edwin first told Frank I made my own clothes.
Some people meditate, some go to church, some, like my mother, shop as though it is a religion. I run and I sew. I’ve been able to run relatively regularly since I found out about Bruce Baldwin, but I haven’t sewn in ages and I miss it desperately. I miss my sewing machine. I miss the feeling of fabric between my fingers, the excitement and nervousness of that first swipe of the scissors against new material, the possibility of what might be.
I haven’t created since before my birthday, before all of this started, before Edwin’s big announcement. All the talk of my father, of his art, of his letters, of his need to create has made me want to create too. I need to sew some clothes!
A sudden wave of people begins to rush towards Platform 9 as the Cambridge train is announced. My overnight bag cracks against my shins as I let the seemingly billions of Cambridge-bound travellers through the gates ahead of me. The chances of my getting a seat are slim to none.
As the train moves away from the station I lean ag
ainst the luggage rack and allow my thoughts to turn to Edwin again; Frank’s gentle warning echoes in my head. Go gently. Go gently with the guy who’s spent his adult life looking after his paraplegic brother and running his father’s law firm, the guy who seemingly doesn’t have friends, never mind a girlfriend, the guy who seems to be so different from the man I thought he was just a few weeks ago.
But I am still raw after Alec. You can’t walk out of a ten-year relationship completely unscathed. I’m not even sure if I want another relationship. I’m not even sure I’m capable of it. And after all the secrets I’ve heard over the last few weeks, I’m not even sure who I am or how I feel any more.
I guess that’s why I’m sitting here on this train heading back to the city I’ve called home for the last twelve years. I need to get away from Marco’s restaurant, from my mother’s house, that turns out to be my house, from my new uncle, from my mother’s solicitor. I need to work out what I want, where I want to go from here, what I want to do for a living. I might not have any money worries ahead of me any more, but that doesn’t mean I want to be a lady of leisure for the rest of my life.
I need some time on my own. Some time and space to find out who I am again, to see if I can dig out any of those dreams I had as a teenager, the dreams that disappeared somewhere along the way.
It’s starting to get dark outside the train windows even though it’s only late afternoon and, as the train leaves Stevenage station, I hear the first rumbles of thunder. By the time we’re at Letchworth lightning is flashing and the rain is coming down so loudly that all conversations in the train carriage have stopped. By Baldock we’re at a complete standstill. All we’re being told is that some of the electricity cables have been struck by lightning and there will be a delay.
I rest my head in my hands and wait. This is as good a place as any to think about the future.
The Many Colours of Us Page 10