Mrs P's Journey

by Sarah Hartley

  The initial three-day roaring nightmare of withdrawal took Phyllis back to her mother’s cell in Bedlam. But when she saw the grey skin on her own flinching face in the mirror, Phyllis vowed she would not linger there.

  Through intense prayers and light strolls through the woods and across the downs, Phyllis began to breathe in a happy peace. The emotional race that she had pushed her body to run over the past twenty years, was beginning to feel meaningless.

  For once, enjoying the freedom of her own solitude was not as agreeable as passing the hours with the female companions she made at Backsettown. Over a cream tea at the fireside or under the cherry trees, she would paint or talk. It was here that she was introduced to a friend of Octavia’s called Dr Esme Wren, a brilliant heart consultant. The two women became the best of friends. They shared a sociable, intelligent wit, a love of travel and a greed for books. As for chatter, they could talk about any subject until the Backsettown cows came home. In later years, they moved to be near each other in Shoreham-on-Sea, and it was Esme who cared for Phyllis in her final days.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  A Path for My Family to Follow

  Protection and strengthening of the weak. This demands impartiality; no self-righteousness; but readiness to listen, kind firmness and definiteness; and the generous and patient imparting of one’s own knowledge and experience. Even temper and no moodiness; praise for good work and gently constructive criticism.

  Paragraph D in Phyllis Pearsall’s letter of intent to trustees on foundation of The Geographers’ Map Trust

  From the very beginning, the atmosphere that Phyllis had created at the Geographers’ Map Company gave her staff a powerful sense of her leadership, whether she was present or not. It was a superb management technique, for although Phyllis had a desk in the office, according to her staff, from the late 1950s until she died, little time was spent there, as she trailed around Europe with Esme, painting to her heart’s content, and it would often be covered in maps ready for packing.

  Like her mother, Phyllis had realised that if she could encourage and motivate her staff, and keep them happy, then they in turn would be diligent and loyal.

  Like all successful company directors, Phyllis knew every single detail of all the map projects that were being worked on, and every piece of company gossip. With each Annual Report, Phyllis became aware of the passing of time. Like any parent, she felt it vital to protect her family, especially as she had witnessed so many firms being bought out by brash upstarts who fired old-timers and employees not considered profitable.

  After years of research and under the guidance of Sir Bernard Miller of The John Lewis Partnership, Phyllis consulted the company lawyers and in 1966 formed a trust – The Geographers’ Map Trust. Instead of giving every employee shares, there is just one joint share to protect them against takeover bids and safeguard their jobs.

  Although Phyllis had never received a huge sum from the company, by making this decision she would legally lose all profits and earnings from it. However, a unanimous vote kept her as Chairman until her death in 1996. Any profits, she made clear, must always come second to the welfare of the staff and their families.

  ‘In some small way I am banishing the memory of my father’s two bankruptcies by establishing an unshakable and peaceful environment for those who have shown me the kindness of their loyalty and commitment.’

  It was the ultimate gift to her staff, and an acknowledgement from Phyllis that they had warmed her life with their love; the very thing that she never received from her parents.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  In the End is the Beginning

  ‘The older I get, the happier I become. When you’re a baby, you’re the centre of everything. But as the years pass, you’re no longer standing in your own shadow.’

  When it came to choosing the right spot for her painting, Phyllis behaved like a small child; she lacked the self-conscious inhibition that frequently stops adults from doing what they would truly love to do. There she would be, sitting on the pavement in Grosvenor Square, or huddled on the steps of the Bridge of Sighs over the River Cam in Cambridge, as if setting up home with her easel and paints.

  The anxiety that taps old age on the shoulder, did not dare approach Phyllis, who ignored her own physical deterioration and her vulnerability. If she ever set off on a day trip alone, Esme would worry terribly that she would be mugged, or worse. ‘Don’t worry, Esme,’ she would call out. ‘Never worry.’

  For sixty years, curiosity and the need to achieve had driven her onwards, whereas old age, Phyllis discovered, offered all the contentment and freedom she could desire.

  ‘The odd thing was that from the moment I had started in business I stopped worrying about what my painting was going to look like,’ she once said. ‘I didn’t care about the result any more, I just enjoyed the act of painting and stopped making comparisons with my previous work. This turned out to be an enormous joy and freedom. I can’t ever achieve a painting as beautiful as what I see, but I simply don’t compare it; and this is something I would recommend to other painters.’

  The weather, apparently, was never allowed to dictate whether it was a suitable day or not for painting. It was always good weather. Even if the rain rapped hard against the windows, Phyllis never moaned or cursed the heavens. Instead, she would look rather pleased and say, ‘Look at that beautiful rain. This is the day the Lord hath given us. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.’

  Unable to sleep more than a few hours each night, Phyllis would manage to set up camp on Westminster Bridge, to paint the Houses of Parliament, by six-thirty in the morning. Oblivious to early morning traffic and commuters, her hands would hurry and scurry across the paper, trying to catch those first glimmers of sunlight that would cast the Gothic stone in gold. She might have been perched on the Champs Elysées painting the Café l’Alsace or sodden under a dripping umbrella for Rain over Dartmoor, but when Phyllis unlocked her box of paints, the world around her disappeared. There was no pain in her back, no headache, no past, no present. Her face became grave as she fell into a deep concentration. Passers-by who clustered at her shoulder to watch an image appear, could not distract her from a trance that would last hour after hour.

  Early one April morning, the eighty-two-year-old had driven up to London and parked her red BMW at the Speaker’s Yard, courtesy of her friend, Jack Weatherill. Next, she lugged her equipment for forty minutes, past Downing Street and all the way up Whitehall to the Haymarket. There, the little figure in waterproofs, a Liberty print scarf at her neck, with one paintbrush tucked in her shock of hair, painted the grand colonnades of the Theatre Royal, until early afternoon. With only a few touches needed to complete the painting that would later be presented to actor Sir Peter Ustinov, she paused for her first break, to eat a banana.

  ‘Excuse me,’ a tourist asked her, ‘can you tell me the name of a good hotel?’

  ‘No. Go away. I’m having my lunch.’

  Rare flashes such as this, betraying some sort of temper, are quite refreshing. After all, who doesn’t want to believe that underneath the sunny charm of Phyllis Pearsall, a more ordinary woman existed, plagued with foibles like the rest of us?

  In this last stage of her life’s journey, Phyllis did indeed do exactly as she pleased. An inheritance from her father kept her comfortably off, although she never received money from the company.

  Time, she understood, would not let her drag her heels. Sleep would become irrelevant as her obsession with the day in, day out reality of painting overtook her. Still the Chairman and Joint Managing Director of the company, her role was now honorary and at last her art was no longer a morsel of luxury, to be sneaked in around interviews and board meetings. It was time to catch up on all those years, when her brother had run away with his talents, while she had tied hers together and diverted them into business.

  A final surge of energy fired through her last twenty years. Her output increased and in 1980 her entire Brittany water colour
s were bought by a private collector, as were the Scottish Border water colours, three years later. Since 1984, her informal commissions had been overshadowed by more elaborate and corporate ones: Speaker’s House for Lord Weatherill, 1984, The Houses of Parliament for David Mitchell MP, in 1986, Shoreham Panorama for Sir Richard Luce, 1992, The Peak, Hong Kong for Chris Patten, Governor General, and in 1995 Trafalgar Square for the Royal Bank of Scotland, Drummonds Branch, and Edinburgh Castle for John Menzies.

  Those who knew Phyllis never expected the tight girth to slacken on her modest life, despite her quietly hidden wealth. The materialism and emotional avarice that plagued Sandor and Bella in their own lives, had thankfully not inflicted itself on their daughter.

  Even if she had not become a devout Christian, Phyllis would never have frittered away her money. Phyllis wisely counted every penny in and every penny out. Wine, bought for presents, was sent down by the crate from Berry Bros, in St James’s. Lacking a sweet tooth, she never indulged in chocolates, cakes or biscuits. She preferred a simple diet of fresh fish and chicken, speedily cooked in a microwave oven. Her money might have been invested in artwork, jewellery, a seaview mansion or a new BMW every year. Surprisingly, for such an acutely observant woman, aesthetic beauty was irrelevant. Home was a sunny, spartan, one-bedroom flat, with polished wooden floors, bordered with Portuguese tiles, that housed hundreds of her paintings.

  Her sole indulgence was travel, so that she might paint wherever in the world she desired.

  ‘What about Paris, Esme?’ Phyllis would throw into the conversation every now and then.

  ‘That sounds a wonderful idea.’

  Packing, for Phyllis, took minutes and weeks of planning were tedious. So by now, Esme was unfazed to find herself booked on a flight the following day.

  In Paris, their favourite haunt was the smart Lancaster Hotel on the Rue de Berri, off the Champs Elysées, where Phyllis became something of a fixture with her easel, painting the façade furiously, day after day.

  ‘Would Madame care to sell the hotel one of her exquisite paintings?’

  ‘Absolutely not. They are for an exhibition.’

  ‘Would Madame like to be a guest of the hotel, another time, so she might paint a picture for us at her leisure?’

  ‘Madame would be delighted.’

  Often, after a week or two, the friends would drive further south to the Loire Valley, and stop wherever Phyllis spotted her next conquest. Set up on a long grassy verge she might be absorbed by the Château Chenanceaux, the shadows of a bridge on the river, or a field of sunflowers with a dilapidated barn. While she worked, her devoted friend Esme was quite content to sit and read her book.

  One water colour of a crowded garden café was executed at dawn. But what were all those people doing, up so early? That was Esme. Every ten minutes or so, Phyllis asked her to move tables and sit differently, to make up for the fact that the place was deserted.

  From 1992 onwards, every November, Phyllis and Esme would fly to Hong Kong for a three-week visit to Government House, as guests of Chris and Lavender Patten. During the Blitz, Phyllis had lived in Golders Green with Lavender’s mother, Joan Walker-Smith. Sadly, Joan’s husband was killed a month before she was due to give birth, so it was Phyllis who had helped ease her distress, by organising a gynaecologist and a taxi to the hospital. At sixteen years old, Lavender found the affectionate bond between herself and Phyllis grow a little stronger, when her mother died.

  In contrast to her own quiet Church of England family, Lavender found herself amazed at the spiritual zeal that guided Phyllis’s life, and how happily she would talk about God.

  To the Patten family, Phyllis was known as Auntie Pig – the perfect, self-sufficient guest who would keep family and dinner-party guests alike entertained with the most extraordinary stories.

  ‘We used to give Phyllis one of the bedrooms with an outside terrace,’ says Lavender, ‘and she used to hold court; all the stewards, cleaners and aides would go to see her, apparently to look at her painting, but they just loved having chats with her. Phyllis was one of those people who could talk to anyone easily, no matter their nationality or background.

  ‘We admired her for breaking free of her previous existence and for having done so well on her own. Growing up, there had been periods when I didn’t see her for years and years, and then she would appear and bowl us over with her personality. She was my brother Malcolm’s Godmother but we didn’t see her a great deal. Phyllis would dive into your life briefly, fill it with excitement and then leave; she was like a shooting star.’

  Phyllis adored her surrogate family, describing the Governor General as the most huggable of men, with a tremendously affectionate nature. No matter which dignitary the Governor was with, if he caught sight of a hat above an easel among the eucalyptus trees, he would shout out, ‘Hello there, Auntie Pig!’

  In the late afternoons, Phyllis would set aside time to write letters on official crested notepaper to her friends the broadcaster and journalist Derek Jameson and his wife Ellen. As usual, Phyllis could hardly contain her excitement at painting in such a beautiful location: Marvellously spoilt are Esme and I . . . Water colours from the terrace of our suite, from dawn till dusk.

  Yet her moments caught on camera are not serene. And it was in Hong Kong that she showed Esme a mole on her upper arm that had been bothering her. That mole would later prove to be the first symptom of malignant melanoma cancer.

  Phyllis always grumbled about wearing what must have been a badly-fitting set of false teeth. Dreadful! So as not to detract from the enjoyment of painting, when she was out alone with her easel, she refused to put them in. Her appearance, Lavender Patten remembers as a hoot: ‘She really did look like a tramp, with a painting hat – one of those wide, floppy cloche hats and old painting clothes. And once, when we had the Duchess of Kent staying, Phyllis had gone downstairs in her painting kit, without her teeth, and they met in the front hall.’

  ‘Well, I thought I’d better curtsey,’ Phyllis later told her hostess, ‘but then I apologised for not having my teeth in.’

  As a result of her yet-to-be-discovered illness – and a lack of teeth – most of the photographs in Hong Kong capture her with sunken cheeks, while her eyes have the startled darkness of a bush-baby.

  The directors of the Geographers’ Map Company planned a surprise eightieth birthday party for Phyllis at the Berkeley Hotel, in London, on 6 September 1986. At a champagne reception, their founder was presented with a red rose from eighty of her employees. In the corner of the room was the surprise present, which Esme had succeeded in keeping a secret from Phyllis. Underneath layers of wrapping paper and bows was an oil painting – a portrait of Bella done by Alfred in 1933 – two years before her death. It had later been sold to a private collector in the Cotswolds.

  No one in the company had ever heard Phyllis speak about her late mother. The indignity of Bella’s final days had stained her image for ever, as far as Phyllis was concerned. Whereas she had known and loved her mother, others, she believed, could not understand the distortion of insanity. Rather than allow the slightest word to taint her further, Phyllis chose not to speak of her at all. But Bella was never far from her thoughts.

  ‘We knew there was a portrait of her which we managed to track down,’ Nigel Syrett recalled. ‘We didn’t know what Mrs P would think, so we just went for it.’

  As everyone gathered around to watch Phyllis receive her gift, to Esme’s horror, as she tore the paper from the four-foot frame, her face stretched with shock. ‘Mama, Mama,’ she cried. The tears that ran down her face were, the guests believed, of sheer happiness at being reunited with her darling Mama.

  For some six months afterwards, the dark painting dominated the Shoreham flat and Esme would catch Phyllis paralysed by its gaze; lost in the past and lost in the face of her mother. In the portrait, her once-happy cheeks are now firmly set, unable to smile. Dark wavy hair sits rigidly on her head and echoes her dark, open-necked blouse a
nd eyes, that reveal she is beaten. Beaten by disappointment and beaten by her husbands.

  ‘I had no idea what Phyllis was thinking,’ Esme said, ‘for she would never talk about it.’

  After lunch one day with Phyllis at her Shoreham flat, Ellen Jameson remembers her saying, ‘I’ll show you something very special,’ as she led Ellen to Bella’s portrait.

  Silence. For just one connection with her mother’s face still overwhelmed Phyllis in quite an extraordinary way.

  ‘Who do you think this is?’ she asked quietly.

  ‘Your mother?’

  ‘Yes. You must look at this and forget all the other things you may have heard about her.’

  On life’s journey, the past can be a heavy load. It can follow you into your future or it can drag you back.

  One morning, the weight of Bella’s unhappiness suddenly became too much to carry. ‘Get rid of it, Esme,’ Phyllis cried. ‘I detest that painting!’

  Today, Bella’s portrait belongs to Mary West, daughter of Tony and Daisy Gross, and it hangs at her home in King George Street, Greenwich. Here is the house where Tony and Daisy lived for many years. Upstairs is the whitewashed bedroom converted into Tony’s studio, and in the courtyard garden is the printing workshop. The walls are adorned by Tony’s works and Daisy’s fashion sketches.

  Mary’s father has been gone for over sixteen years, her mother fourteen. Propped up on one of his long wooden tables is a black and white framed photograph of Tony and Daisy. In a floral print dress, she squints at the camera, her head on one side while Tony, in a white shirt, with a neat moustache and his hair combed back like his father’s, lets the hand with his cigarette relax. Between them is a little boy – their son, Jean-Pierre, and on Daisy’s knee, Mary is perched in a gingham frock.

  Shortly before the photograph was taken, the family had experienced a major domestic upheaval. In 1939, France was no place to be for a half-Jewish Englishman.