by Imogen Clark
I pause. I should probably keep this to myself but I’m tired of dealing with it all on my own.
‘Dad was no saint,’ I continue. ‘I mean, before . . .’ I don’t finish the sentence but there’s no need to. ‘He loved us in his way but he was a difficult man to live with. He had very fixed ideas about how things should be. And so, when I discovered that . . .’
Another pause. I take the roasting tray that I have been scrubbing out of the bowl and balance it on the plate rack. Water drips on to the stainless-steel sink top with a regular rhythm, like a heartbeat.
‘. . . That he didn’t always act in line with the high standards that he imposed on us, then that makes it a bit difficult to accept. The fact that I can’t ask him about it is causing me a bit of a problem.’
She picks up the roasting tray and starts to dry it. I see that I’ve done a terrible job of washing it up. Dark grease smears the tea towel but she ignores this and just wipes it away.
‘Whatever he’s done,’ she says quietly, ‘or whatever you think he’s done, it’s not going to be improved by you getting angry. That’ll just bring resentment and bitterness. And for what? You can’t change the situation and you’re never going to be able to talk to him about it.’
I put the last tray on the draining rack and tip the dirty water down the sink. Some of it splashes up at my dress.
‘For your own sanity, you need to let it go,’ she says.
‘But it’s a really big thing that I think he’s done,’ I say. ‘I mean, really big. It’s affected my entire life.’
‘That may well be so, but it doesn’t alter the fact that the father you think did this thing has gone. If you let it eat away at your insides then you’ll never move on. What did your brother say?’
‘He doesn’t want anything to do with it. He thinks I should ignore it,’ I say.
‘Well, maybe you don’t need to ignore it,’ she says. ‘I mean, you might need to find out more for your own peace of mind.’
I find myself nodding. She is right and Michael is wrong.
‘But, as far as your father is concerned, there’s nothing you can do. He’s never going to be able to tell you anything. You have to accept that.’
‘That’s the problem,’ I say. ‘I’m not sure I can.’
‘I’m not sure you have much option,’ she replies. ‘In the long run, it’ll cause far less pain if you find a way to deal with whatever you think he’s done and move on.’
‘You mean forgive him?’
‘Not necessarily. But you do have to find a way of living with not knowing. We can’t all just forget our past like your father has done.’
She starts taking her apron off, yanking at the strings so that the bow releases. She pulls it over the head.
‘Would you like some help getting him into bed?’ she asks.
The way I feel at the moment, I would happily leave him in the chair to sleep all night, but I know that’s not really an option and I’ll only end up having to move him myself later.
‘Yes please.’
We work in silence, waking Dad gently and manoeuvring him up the stairs while he’s still groggy and then stripping him out of his best clothes and into his nightshirt. We take him to the bathroom, moving as a team until finally he is lying tucked up in his bed. I bend down to turn on his night light and his eyes open. He sees me and smiles. I don’t smile back.
When we get back downstairs I suggest a cup of tea but she shakes her head.
‘It’s been a lovely day,’ she says. ‘Thank you so much for inviting me. But now I really should be going.’
She collects her things and I see her out. It’s only when she’s gone that I realise that we’ve not opened the presents. A little buzz of excitement tingles in me as I kneel on the floor by the Christmas tree and reach underneath for my gift. I take the little gold box in both hands. The tag reads ‘Merry Christmas Cara’, written in neat block lettering. I pull the ribbon and remove the gold paper to reveal a square, black box. Inside is a delicate necklace, a tiny butterfly on a silver chain. It’s exquisite and makes me feel slightly ashamed of the wholly inadequate jar of hand cream that I’ve bought for her. I put the necklace on. The butterfly sits perfectly flat against my skin. Then I open the present for Dad – with slightly less care this time, although it is just as beautifully wrapped. It’s a framed photograph of the oak tree in the garden, the one that loses its leaves over the grass.
CHAPTER THIRTY
The period between Christmas and New Year is generally a time for contemplation and consolidation and this year is no different, especially with Beth away on her honeymoon. Boxing Day passes in a haze of old films and tray meals concocted with very little effort from the enormous quantities of leftovers that my fantasy Christmas Day produced. If Dad is still aware that it’s Christmas then he shows very little sign of it. He sits silently staring at the lights twinkling on the tree.
‘I love Christmas lights, don’t you?’ I ask him, dropping down to my knees by his chair and pointing towards the tree.
There is no response. It’s as if he hasn’t even heard me speak. He’s no longer engaged with the world around him. I don’t know whether it’s because of my changed attitude towards him or whether he really is deteriorating before my eyes but I fear the latter. I wouldn’t want to leave him in the house on his own anymore, not even for a few minutes. As I watch him sit and stare, this shell that was once my father, the realisation that the time has come for full-time care drenches me like a rainstorm in June. This is a new stage, one that I knew would arrive eventually. But, what with the wedding and Christmas occupying my thoughts recently, I hadn’t noticed that it had crept up on us quite as far as it has done. It’s perfectly obvious that Mrs P can’t do it all by herself. I need a new plan.
I ring the agency, assuming that I’ll speak to an answerphone, but my call is answered on the second ring. By the time I put the phone down, we have agreed around-the-clock help, with Mrs P doing most of the care and other, rota staff filling in when she has time off. It’ll cost a fortune but Dad has the money sitting in the bank just waiting for Michael and me to inherit. We don’t need his money, though. We’ve both made our own way in the world, in spite of everything. I don’t need Dad’s money and I don’t want it.
Later, in some kind of pre-New Year frenzy, I decide to tidy out my workroom and carry out an inventory of what I have and what needs replenishing. I start with gusto, pulling out fabrics and files of patterns to dust behind them, but pretty quickly my motivation begins to wane. I’m hopeless at this stuff. I am tempted to just put everything back the way it was but who am I kidding? The mess is made. I might as well try to do a decent job.
As I flick fabric fluff off the shelves, my mind drifts to my mother. The wedding and then Christmas have given me the excuses that I needed to keep my mind closed to the endless possibilities and when I have had time to think, it has been Dad’s letters that have been troubling me. Mrs P was right in what she said on Christmas Day, though. I won’t uncover anything else about my Dad’s past unless I discover who ‘T’ is or was – but how do I go about finding a woman who wrote some letters thirty-odd years ago? Without Dad to ask, there’s no solution to that particular problem. The only way forward is to find my mother as soon as possible and ask her. And with the country at a standstill unless you fancy shopping or a pantomime, I have very little else to distract me.
I make two decisions as I stand in the kitchen, having shut the door on the chaos I have created in my workroom. First, I can’t face cold turkey for lunch again and second, internet searching to trace my mother is not the way to go. As I stand in front of the fridge, systematically removing items from inside and sniffing beneath their cling-film covers, I contemplate how best to proceed. I have to start with what I know for sure. This, when I turn it over and inspect it, is decidedly thin. I know that I had a mother at some point, even though there’s no trace of either her birth or death certificate. We’re not talking immaculat
e conception here. Somebody gave birth to me. After that, the knowns become very shady. The only thing that seems certain about my mother is that she had a sister.
This, therefore, is where I must begin.
My aunt’s name is, or was – I’m learning not to treat these things as black and white – Ursula Kemp. She is, or was, an artist. She may or may not live in San Francisco – and that is it: the sum total of what I know about my aunt and indeed my entire maternal family. It’s not much to go on but it is all I have.
I head to my workroom, steadfastly ignoring the mid-reorganisation devastation, sit down at the computer and type her name into Google. Ursula Kemp . . . and up it all pops. There is a whole page of results for an artist called Ursula Kemp. It’s so surprising that I delete what I’ve typed and re-enter it, even though I can see that my search has no spelling errors. Is this my aunt? Really? She even has the honour of a page on Wikipedia. As I sit and look at the words on the screen, the now-familiar mixture of excitement and nausea floods my body. If this really is her then she appears to be well known, famous even. I should be able to trace her and suddenly it all feels very real.
I start with the Wiki page, which tells me that she was born in 1956 in London, England. I do a quick calculation. This tallies with what little I know about Mum’s background. Feeling more confident that I have the right Ursula Kemp, I read on.
Following school, she was accepted at Goldsmiths where she studied Fine Art. After graduating, she went to San Francisco, California, where she still lives.
My eyes dart to the top of the page to see when it was posted. The entry was originally written a few years ago but has been recently updated. There is a pretty good chance that the information is accurate and Ursula is only sixty-one. It’s not very likely that she’ll have died in the short time since the page was last redone.
There are a couple of links on the page. One to Goldsmiths and another to a simple website displaying some of her work but not giving much information about the woman herself. Returning to the Wiki page, my eyes scan the words, trying to squeeze out the smallest splinter of knowledge. At the bottom of the page, there is a single sentence.
Very little is known about Ursula Kemp’s private life.
I almost laugh out loud. This is starting to feel like a conspiracy. Leaving the Wiki page, I return to my Google search and click on ‘Images’. Mostly what pops up are pictures taken from exhibition catalogues, but towards the bottom of the page there is one photograph with people in it. I click it open. It’s a woman with closely cropped hair staring out defiantly at the camera. She is standing by a white wall on which is mounted a single canvas: dark petrol colours with a red mass pulsing at its heart. Another woman stands slightly back, her arms crossed tightly across her body. The caption reads: ‘Ursula Kemp with woman believed to be her sister, San Francisco, 1990.’
Her sister? I zoom in on the image looking for anything familiar, but the larger I make it the less defined it becomes. I reach for the one photo I have of Mum, my eyes flicking from one face to the other. Is this the same woman? I scan the features, searching for anything definitive. It certainly looks like it might be her and she’s with her sister, which makes perfect sense. Surely if she’d run from Dad she would’ve gone to someone she knew and trusted? I search her face for echoes of mine and think that I can see myself reflected there but it’s hard to tell when the picture I have of her is so small. Then I notice something dangling from her jacket pocket. I zoom in closer. It’s a yellow and blue scarf – the same yellow and blue scarf that ties back her hair in my photo. It is her. It has to be. I think I knew, really, from just looking at her, but this confirms it. So that means that this Ursula Kemp is definitely my aunt. And that my mother was indeed alive in 1990. My breath comes quick and fast.
Urgently, I click on to the website from where the image was taken but it is an old WordPress site about the San Francisco art scene that hasn’t been touched in years. There are no other pictures of Ursula. I go back to the picture of the two of them and sit staring at it. Surely this is proof that Mum didn’t die when Dad said she did. I feel sick.
When I start to feel a bit calmer, I return to my search and follow another link to a gallery in San Francisco that displays and sells Ursula’s work. It is hard to get a true impression of the pictures on a small screen, but even without the dimensions I can tell that she paints on a large scale. From what I remember from my art-school days, I think you’d call her style ‘lyrical abstraction’. It’s all about intuition and spontaneity. If there’s any figurative element to her work then it escapes me. It’s all dark, sludgy colours with the occasional flash of harsh red; not my thing at all but, if the number of search results is anything to go by, it’s brought her some success.
I scan the sides of the page to see if there’s anywhere to contact the artist direct but I’m not surprised when the only links seem to be to the gallery itself. I click on the ‘Contact Us’ page and start to compose a message in my head but I don’t get very far. What am I trying to say?
‘I am the artist’s long-lost niece from England who has just discovered that her mother, your client’s sister, didn’t die as was previously believed, but is alive and well and living Lord-only-knows where. Please can you give me your client’s email address?’
Well, that isn’t going to work. If she’s as private as they say, they are hardly going to just pass on her email address to a complete stranger. The gallery might be able to give me some information but it’s not likely to be the details that I need. Maybe they would forward an email to her?
Or I could just go to San Francisco and track her down myself.
This is a ludicrous idea. Even as I consider it, I can hear Michael laughing at me.
‘You want to travel halfway round the world to find some woman who may or may not be there and is highly unlikely to want to talk to you anyway? Are you mad?’
Strangely, though, whereas in the past I would have listened to Michael’s voice in my head, valued his opinion and let it form the major part of my decision-making process, this time he holds no sway. He’s been wholeheartedly unenthusiastic from the outset and so has waived any right he might have had to be involved. I haven’t told him about the love letters and I shan’t tell him about this either, not until I have something concrete to report. I can go to California for a few days on holiday. I need a break. I deserve one. I can keep the purpose of my mission secret and if there’s no trace of Ursula then, well, I can think of worse places to visit.
Even as my mouse clicks its way through to a cheap-flights site, I’m planning what I’ll say to Mrs P – but I know it won’t be a problem. Between her and the other care staff, Dad’ll be more than adequately cared for, spoiled even, and it is not like he’ll miss me. I shake my head and backtrack my thinking. That’s not fair. He might miss me but I will never know.
But then I have a slight wobble. Irritating though it is for the voice of Michael in my head to be right, it would be madness just to fly halfway round the world on a hunch. But now I have the photograph. This isn’t just a hunch anymore. It’s more than that. I click to the gallery site and compose a short email explaining that I will be visiting from England with a view to making a purchase in the next seven days and would like the opportunity to meet the artist if at all possible.
It’s just going dark outside as I leave my workroom, having decided that the rest of the reorganisation will just have to wait until tomorrow. Just as I’m flicking off the light, my laptop pings – an email. I spring back to my desk and click it open. It is from the gallery.
Dear Ms Ferensby,
Thank you for your enquiry. We are delighted that you are interested in Ursula Kemp’s work and would be very happy to discuss this with you. While Ms Kemp generally does her business through us, we can confirm that she will be in town over the next seven days and there may be an opportunity for you to meet with her in person. Please reach out when you arrive so we can make the necessary arrange
ments.
We look forward to doing business with you.
Kind regards,
Skyler T. Murphy
Gallery Director
So it is decided. I will fly to San Francisco, see the Golden Gate Bridge, ride the cable car and find the key to my family’s mysterious history. Just like that.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
It’s no good. I can’t face any more meals scavenged from what remains of the turkey. I must finally venture out and buy fresh food. Even though it’s not yet five o’clock, the sky over the moor is an inky blue and the pavement dotted with puddles of yellow from the streetlights. I head towards the shops, trying to think of things that I fancy to eat. Definitely no meat or cheese. Fruit maybe? Something fishy? I’m lost in thought when I hear a tapping on glass somewhere close.
‘Cara! Cara!’ A muffled voice is calling me. ‘In here.’
Looking up, I see Laura Cross sitting in the window of a bar. Laura is a former client. I made her the most beautifully extravagant gown in gold organza for her wedding two winters back. The dress was exquisite, the marriage less so, not surviving to see its first anniversary. I stop walking and go to talk to her through the window.
‘Hi. Merry Christmas,’ I say, mouthing my words clearly but not speaking loudly enough to be heard either through the plate glass or in the street.
‘Come in,’ she shouts. ‘I haven’t seen you for ages. Come and have a drink with us.’
She is with a mixed group of seven or eight people. I don’t know any of them. I shake my head but I can see her struggling to her feet and sidestepping her way towards me. She sticks her head around the door of the bar, her body remaining inside.
