‘Honestly, with tempera, there’s really no need for it to be glazed. It’s not in a public gallery where there might be a risk of damage. And the reflections are always annoying so it’s better without, I think.’
‘Me, too.’ She peered at it closely. ‘It’s wonderful without, nothing between the viewer and the woman at all now. It feels quite different… more intimate. Don’t you think, Dad?’ She turned towards him.
Conrad nodded but said nothing.
‘Shall we hang it, then?’ Eleanor and Andrew lifted the painting together. ‘Dad, tell us when it’s straight, will you?’
In the family, this picture was always known, as far as Eleanor could remember, as The Woman in the Window Seat. The subject, her face half in light, half in shadow, seemed to be turning towards you, as if you had just entered the room. One had the odd sense of being not quite sure that she was pleased to see you, and the effect was strangely disconcerting.
It was painted using the very old medium of egg tempera on board, where the powdered pigment is mixed with an emulsion based on egg yolk, and the paint had been applied in very thin layers over a white gesso ground, giving it a radiant, translucent quality. The colours were predominantly greens and blues, against which only the moon-pale oval of the woman’s face and the bright flame of her hair stood out. Her green eyes glinted jewel-like, with points of light reflecting some unseen lamp. Her red hair hung forward over her shoulder in a plait, a brilliant snake charmed into submission. The woman sat with her knees tucked up in front of her, her arms looped round them as if hugging some strange secret to herself. She gazed out at you, seeming like a magical marine creature, watching you from beneath the cool, glimmering depths of the sea. Sometimes her gaze seemed knowing, sometimes sad, but now, today, to Eleanor it looked something akin to pity.
It was undoubtedly a wonderful painting, not just technically accomplished – though that brought pleasure enough on its own – but atmospheric, haunting. Eleanor had always loved it, the way it seemed as if the woman were looking at you in particular, as if she wanted to understand you. After so many years of seeing it, both here and in her father’s much grander study in their familial home, Eleanor found she could barely think of her father without imagining the painting at the same time. Conrad had always said that he had happened to spot it in a gallery in to which he had darted to escape a sudden downpour. He had joked that, if he had only spent a few pounds on an umbrella instead, he’d have saved himself quite a bit of money.
Eleanor’s mother, Marcia, had been rather less in love with the painting, saying it had been an utterly pointless extravagance, quite unjustifiable. As it was, with so many books, they had not enough wall space free of shelves to hang all the pictures they already owned: innumerable antique prints and maps, a handful of unarresting landscapes.
Andrew headed for the door.
‘Well, I’d better be off now. See you at the BM.’ He stood there for a few moments. ‘OK. Conrad…? Bye, then.’
‘Hmm?’ Conrad was standing close to the picture, inspecting the restored area once more.
‘I’m just going…’ Andrew waved. ‘I’ll see myself out.’
‘Oh. Hold fire.’ Conrad pulled himself away and crossed to the desk. Took out a sealed envelope from the top drawer and handed it over. ‘Thank you very much, Andrew.’ He held out his hand to shake. ‘You’ve done an excellent job, really first rate. I’m very glad I entrusted it to you. I knew I was right to wait until I found the best person for the job.’
‘Well, thank you, too. It was entirely a pleasure. There’s really no need…’ He tapped the envelope Conrad had given him.
‘No, no. I insist.’
‘I’ll show you out.’ Eleanor came over. Her father returned to the painting.
‘She’s lovely, isn’t she?’ Andrew gazed back at the painting. ‘I mean it, I suppose.’
Eleanor smiled. ‘Yes, she really is.’
‘I think I’ll miss her, having had her all to myself for a while.’ He laughed at himself. ‘I guess that sounds daft?’
‘Not at all. I’ve always loved that painting. There’s something about her that draws you in. I almost feel as if I know her, or have met her in a dream. Now who sounds daft?’ Eleanor watched as her father stood there, looking at the picture. ‘I’m sure my father hated letting it out of his sight.’
In the kitchen, Eleanor filled the kettle and began to make tea: Darjeeling for her father, limeflower and lavender for herself; she kept a selection of herbal teas there for when she visited; her father would never have bought such a preposterous thing of his own accord. He referred to it as ‘hippy tea’.
‘Are you pleased to have her back then?’ Eleanor said, teasingly.
Conrad gave a small nod, then looked out of the kitchen window.
‘So, Hannah is trotting off in search of the other end of the rainbow this evening. What next?’
‘What next for who?’
‘Whom. For you, of course.’
‘What do you mean?’ Eleanor crossed to the fridge to fetch the milk for her father.
‘I mean: have you given any thought to this next stage of your life?’
‘Empty nest and all that?’ She shrugged. ‘You mean will I be bored because I’ll have less laundry to do? Hardly. Anyway, they’ll both be back soon enough.’ Eleanor’s son, Daniel, had just begun his second year at Bristol University. She laughed, her tone breezy, unconcerned. ‘I still have work – such as it is – plus the choir, swimming, print-making. Friends.’
‘And Roger.’ Her father’s expression was unreadable but she thought she noted the smallest twitch of his lips.
‘Well, of course, Roger. But he’s not in nappies, Dad; looking after a grown-up husband is hardly a full-time occupation.’
‘No indeed.’
Eleanor ignored his tone and the implied jibe – not usually.
‘Hannah will be OK.’ Telling herself as much as him. ‘Won’t she?’
Conrad nodded, then said, ‘Sensible girl, on the whole. Still, it’s normal to worry. You’re a mother.’
‘Hmm.’ Eleanor picked up both mugs, raised her eyebrows – a tacit question.
‘Back to the study, I think.’ Conrad stood back to let her go first. ‘Marginally warmer.’
Eleanor set her father’s mug down on a folded newspaper on his desk and took her own over to the green velvet chaise longue. Conrad eschewed any kind of coaster or drinks mat, regarding them as near-iconic symbols of bourgeois pretension.
‘But you didn’t worry about me much, did you? You and Mum, I mean.’ Eleanor shucked off her shoes and curled her legs up to one side in her favourite position.
Conrad sat at his desk and swivelled his chair to face her. He looked down into his mug then shook his head slightly.
‘Not about you, certainly. Never needed to. You seemed to know what you were about even when you were just a tot of four or five.’
Eleanor made a face. ‘Hmm. I don’t remember Mum fussing about my safety. Ever. That time I fell out of the willow tree into the pond, she was only upset because I trailed mud the entire length of the hall.’
‘Well, perhaps she didn’t need to fuss because you could usually be trusted to be sensible.’
‘For which read dull.’
‘Hardly. Still, it’s an underrated virtue, perhaps.’
‘I didn’t choose to be the sensible one. Maybe I would have liked a day off every now and then to be wild?’
‘Maybe.’ He nodded. ‘Though you’re still young – perhaps your wild days are ahead of you?’
‘I doubt it. Talking of wild, I’m sure I saw that bonkers woman in the street the other day, the anorexic blonde one who lived with him for a while. I wondered if I should ask her if she’d seen him, but she looked quite feral. Do you remember her?’
Conrad did not need to ask which ‘him’: Benedict. Always Benedict: her younger brother.
He shook his head, met her eyes for a moment, then looked away a
gain. There was nothing to be gained by discussing Benedict. Neither of them had seen or heard from him for over five years; what more was there to say?
‘Oh – present, present.’ He started patting the various piles of paper on his enormous desk. ‘Where did I – ah, here it is.’ He held it out to her and she came to receive it. It was still in its paper bag. She didn’t think her father had ever been known to wrap a present; of course, he hadn’t needed to until five years ago, when Eleanor’s mother had died. What on earth would be the point in wrapping something in silly patterned paper when it would only then be unwrapped and the paper discarded?
She started to open it, then spotted something peeping out from beneath a stack of papers.
‘Oh, did I leave my sketchbook here?’ She reached for it. It was dark red, hardback, spiral-bound, the same type she always used.
‘No.’ His hand pressed down on the pile. ‘No. It’s just an old notebook of mine. Very old. I was looking for some notes on something.’
Eleanor withdrew her hand and opened the bag her father had given her. It was an early hardback edition of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, bearing the legend: ‘Price unchanged in spite of war’. Perfect.
‘Thank you very much.’ Eleanor bent to kiss him, still seated in his chair. ‘You know I will treasure it.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Don’t let me stay too long… Roger…’
‘And you can tell him the painting is perfect now.’ Conrad gave a small smile as he silently removed the spiral-bound book from the pile in front of him and slid it into a desk drawer. ‘I mean, just in case he’s been fretting about it.’
‘Now, now, Father-dear, play nicely. In fact, Roger was very concerned, and he offered to pay for the restoration and reframing, as you know.’
‘I don’t need his money.’
‘But you’re not cross with him any more? You promise?’
‘Cross? Why should I be cross? I’m sure he can’t help being a clumsy oaf—’
‘Dad! Come on now – that’s hardly fair.’
‘Ah, dear Eleanor, always so desperate to keep the peace. I promise to behave myself. Really.’ He looked at her and arched one eyebrow. ‘It’ll be fine.’
They both smiled at his echoing of her most familiar phrase. She couldn’t remember exactly when she had first started saying it, almost as punctuation, but it must have been more than thirty years ago. Benedict had been the first to point it out, joking that it would make a perfect epitaph for her gravestone: ‘Eleanor Marriott’, her dates and ‘It’ll be fine’. How bad would things have to be, after all, for Eleanor to admit that they were not fine?
Conrad leaned right back in his chair, stretching his long legs out straight in front of him.
‘And how is the dear old BM?’ Eleanor asked, moving on to safer territory. She copied her father’s habit of referring to the British Museum this way, as if it were a much-loved friend of long acquaintance. Conrad had been Keeper of Prints and Drawings, in charge of the collection there for many years, but had retired nearly ten years ago.
‘Wonderful and infuriating in equal measure. As ever.’ He had been working on his third book – an academic tome on early copper engravings – for nearly four years, so still went into his old department at least a couple of times a week for research purposes, but also, Eleanor suspected, because he couldn’t bear to leave it. ‘And your work?’
Eleanor wrinkled her nose. She did voluntary work two days a week at a local conservation organisation, but she knew her father was asking about her print-making: Eleanor sometimes made small wood engravings of rural scenes based on sketches she drew on country walks or while on holiday – trees, hills, tiny cottages, grazing sheep – but it was hard to find the time to fit it in.
‘I haven’t done any for ages.’
‘And why’s that, do you think?’
‘Because I’ve been busy.’
Her father looked at her but said nothing.
‘What? I know you think that’s a feeble excuse.’
‘Not at all. I have no doubt that you are extremely busy. The question one might ask oneself is, is one being busy doing things one really wants to do? And if not, might one do better to make some alterations to one’s schedule? Perhaps lose any inessential distractions?’
‘Don’t go all impersonal pronoun on me, Dad, I can’t bear it. You mean one should just shove aside all one’s other commitments, tell one’s husband to iron his own fucking shirts, and barricade oneself in to one’s studio?’
Conrad raised his eyebrows a fraction, but whether at her rare employment of a swear word or the idea of her asserting herself in such a way, it was hard to tell.
She sipped her tea.
‘Roger’s talking about taking early retirement.’
‘Is he now? He’s, what, only fifty-five, fifty-six? Why the rush?’ Conrad had retired at sixty-five, and then only extremely reluctantly. Even now, he was still asked to give occasional talks on his particular area of expertise, plus he sat on the boards of two important charities and was working on his book.
‘Fifty-eight. His work can be very stressful, as you know.’ Her husband was a senior partner in a law firm, and he specialised in property development law. ‘He needs a rest. He wants us to go on a long cruise.’
‘How perfectly hideous. Rather you than me.’
Eleanor made a face. ‘Some people would love it.’
‘So?’
She shrugged and said nothing.
‘Eleanor. So?’
A tiny shake of the head.
‘Time, if I may say, to water your own garden. For your own benefit and pleasure. For you.’
‘But Roger wants—’
‘For you alone.’
‘You’re not instructing me to be selfish, surely?’
Her father, who throughout her entire childhood and teenage years, had usually backed up her mother, Marcia, every time she reprimanded Eleanor for wanting her own way or being disobedient or showing off. While her younger brother, who lost his books, flunked his exams, got fired with increasing regularity, who couldn’t say no to drink, to drugs, to whatever, whoever was up for a laugh, a jaunt, a tumble, got away with everything – the golden boy who could do no wrong.
‘A little, yes. Why ever not?’
As if on cue, her mobile rang: ‘ROGER’. Summoned, she rose to her feet.
4
Andrew
When he returned home from Conrad’s flat, Andrew found a wall of boxes and bulging black bin bags like a barricade across the end of the drive. Vicki appeared as he got out of the car and, at the same moment as he was thinking: Ahh, she’s come out to meet me, that’s sweet, she folded her arms and said, ‘It’s time to move on, Andrew.’
For a few moments, he imagined she was suggesting that they move house, perhaps buy a place together at last. Clearly, she had been making a start by packing things into boxes. But then he realised that what she actually meant was, ‘It’s time for you to move out.’
He stood there, hands in pockets and droopy-mouthed, like a child who knows he’s done something wrong but hasn’t a clue what it might be, while she set out the situation – there was no one else, it was just that she couldn’t envision a future for them long term, going forward, as a couple, together. Andrew disliked any kind of change; he didn’t even like it when someone else took ‘his’ mug at work. So he found himself saying things that didn’t sound like him just so all could carry on as before.
‘Is it that you want to get married, is that it? Let’s get married!’
Vicki compressed her thin lips so that they disappeared into a line.
‘Please don’t do this – we’re good together, aren’t we?’ He reached for her hand but she withdrew it after a second as if he had slipped a clammy, dead fish into her palm. ‘But where am I supposed to go?’ A whining note had crept into his voice, which even he realised was unlikely to make him seem irresistible.
‘Not really my problemo, Andrew, is it?’ The lips disa
ppeared from view once more. ‘Call a friend. Go round your mum and dad’s. You’re a big boy now – work it out.’
That stung. It wasn’t the first time he had heard it from a girlfriend – soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend. At first, perhaps it was that touch of the little boy lost that was part of Andrew’s appeal, but after a while a woman always started wanting him to ‘man up’ or ‘grow a pair’, when he couldn’t get the waiter’s attention, or was last to be served at the bar, or let another man nick the parking space he had been waiting patiently for.
So, he bit the inside of his lip, yanked open his car boot, and began jamming in the boxes and bags any old how, just to annoy her. Even watching him hurl boxes in – on their sides, at an angle, jabbing his foot down on one to make it fit – must be killing her. She gave a small sniff, told him he could stack – neatly! – any boxes that he couldn’t manage now in the garage and collect them at a later date.
‘Where will you go, then?’
‘Not really your problemo, is it?’ Andrew twirled his car key in what he hoped was a devil-may-care manner, and attempted to curl his lip in a sneer. God, she could be a pretentious twat, he thought, getting into his car and slamming the door. He clung to this thought as he drove round north London, trying to decide where the hell to go. Not Mike’s (really not in the mood for three screaming children this minute); not Gabriel’s, as he was away; not Dave’s, as he had a brand-new girlfriend so was still in the must-shag-every-spare-second mode and would not appreciate having Andrew appear on his doorstep. He mentally listed all the things that annoyed him about Vicki. He had reached Number 14: Sighing when I sit on the couch in an ‘untidy’ way, when he realised he was already round the corner from his parents’ house. They would welcome him – of course they would – but still… Andrew speeded up and instead drove back north again to his favourite café, the one he usually went to when Vicki wanted him out from under her feet. He could spend ages reading the papers there; she didn’t like newspapers in the house because they made such a mess. It made her beautiful home look like a rubbish tip. And you could always watch the news on the telly if you wanted to but it was the same things mostly, wasn’t it, bearded men being angry in the Middle East, children in Africa with flies on them, and fussing about money and the banks in Europe, and there was nothing you could do in any case, so why make yourself miserable over it?
Growing Up for Beginners Page 3
