by Adele Geras
Alex was used to analysing his feelings. He did it more than most people he knew, going over and over things that people said and what they meant by them, and also what he felt about particular events and whether there was anything at all useful he could do to change things and, most of all, if he should speak out or shut up. Most of the time he kept quiet because he honestly couldn’t see that anything he might have to contribute would be of any interest to anyone or of any use in making things clearer or better.
But he did have to talk to Beth, that was becoming obvious. Part of him had always known she loved Efe, but it was only yesterday that he got an inkling that this feeling might be more intense than he’d thought, and of a different order from the brotherly affection he’d always assumed was in her heart. At dinner last night, for instance, she’d looked at Efe all the time, not even bothering to turn and face whoever was talking to her. Also, she followed him around. Today, he could have sworn she was looking for Efe, ready to trail round after him just as she used to do when they were all kids.
There were two questions Alex kept asking himself. Would it do any good to tell her about Efe’s behaviour where women were concerned? Warn her off? If he did that, she’d probably deny she felt anything at all. He reasoned that Beth must feel some sort of embarrassment about her devotion to Efe. They were cousins, for God’s sake. A small voice so far in the back of Alex’s head that he could easily ignore it and pretend that it hadn’t spoken at all said she isn’t really. She’s not related to you and Efe at all. There’s nothing to stop her loving Efe. Nor Efe loving her, if he felt like it. The next thought he had was so unexpected, so devastating, that for a moment he didn’t even acknowledge it: Beth isn’t your cousin either. She’s no relation of yours.
He stood up. He put his camera back into its case and walked slowly towards the house. He was wondering why that thought, that relevation about Beth, which he’d known all his life and which hadn’t affected him in any way at all, should suddenly, just today, burst in on him.
*
Fiona looked out of the window at everyone on the lawn. She’d finished crying now, and felt exactly like a wrung-out flannel. Her eyes were raw and her skin, her porcelain skin (that was what Efe called it, when they’d first started going out together), was blotched all over with reddish patches. You could see them even under all the make-up. I look hideous, Fiona thought in an anguish of self-pity. It’s no wonder that Efe wants to hit me. She felt herself near to tears all over again, and blinked rapidly in an effort at self-control.
Stop thinking like that, she said to herself. It makes Efe sound like some common wife-beater or something, and he’s not. It was just, she knew, that he’d been under tremendous pressure and things sometimes got on top of him. He wouldn’t really hurt her. He loved her, and she was his wife. They almost never disagreed about anything, unlike some couples she knew who were constantly at odds, so there was really nothing to quarrel about. Last night he’d lost his temper with her, just for a couple of seconds, but it was no wonder after everyone had been so dismissive of his plan for the paintings.
Fiona sighed. She’d spent ages and ages with concealer and powder and foundation and now looked practically normal, if only the blotches would go away. She knew she should calm down because, apart from anything else, it wouldn’t do the baby she was carrying any good if she got het up.
It was nearly lunchtime and she’d have to go down and face everyone, and the last thing she wanted was for people to know she’d spent half the morning in floods of tears. Over by the marquee, she could see Douggie on Alex’s shoulders, his legs hanging down on either side of Alex’s neck. Even from this distance, she knew he was laughing with joy. She could just tell. There was Chloë, walking towards them. Had she really only just got up? She certainly looked as though she were still wearing pyjamas. Fiona wrinkled her nose at the sight of her sister-in-law’s royal-blue floppy trousers, which looked, from here, as though they were made of satin. With these, she was wearing a man’s shirt in some sort of garish checked fabric with the sleeves rolled up. The girl had absolutely no idea at all of how to dress, even if you made allowances for the fact that she was a student.
That TV man, Sean, was walking up the drive. Perhaps he’d been talking to Nanny Mouse. Efe did say he was going to film her quite a lot. Who was that with him? Was it Rilla? It was, and something about the way they were walking made Fiona look more closely. Were they holding hands? No, they weren’t. She could see that as they came nearer but they were very close together, and Rilla had her face turned up to look at Sean and she was smiling and then they laughed together about something.
Where was Efe? She looked for him among the workmen and all over the garden and couldn’t see him anywhere. Beth was just coming out of the house and walking towards Alex and Douggie. Leonora wasn’t there either, so that was maybe where Efe was, talking to her. What would she be saying? Couldn’t she see how fantastic it would be if the paintings were hung in some white, shining building in a city where lots and lots of people could come and see them, and where everyone could have a cup of coffee and a cake after they’d been round the exhibition, and then buy postcards and reproductions in the museum shop? A pleasant vision of herself at the opening of such a place, in some shimmering dress and shaking hands with all the important visitors, flashed into her mind. She could almost visualize the photographs in the magazines.
Fiona shook her head. That was a long way away, and if they weren’t careful, Leonora would get her way and Efe would be permanently cross. Then there was the question of the money. It never seemed to last long, however much there was. Efe’s work seemed to swallow more and more of it, and Fiona didn’t really understand why. Then, of course, with the new baby coming, there were bound to be extra expenses. Perhaps there was something she could do to persuade Leonora? She could see that this was a bit unlikely, but she’d ask Efe about it at the very next opportunity. When he saw how eager she was to help him, he’d stop being so angry and irritated with her, she was almost sure of it.
She looked in the mirror to make sure that her hair was tidy and there was no lipstick on her teeth or anything like that. At least the shirt she had put on was exactly the right shade of pinky-red which flattered her and made her look slightly less washed out. You got what you paid for, her mother always said, and she was right. This shirt had cost nearly two hundred pounds but it was worth every penny. Efe said once that she looked like a peach when she wore it, and it made her happy just to think about that. She opened the door and went downstairs, ready to face whatever there was to face.
*
Beth sat at one end of the table and listened to the conversation going on between Leonora, Gwen and Rilla. Everyone else, it seemed, was going to be late for some reason or other. Surely Chloë ought to be hungry by now? Efe and James were expected back from town. They’d volunteered to talk to Bridget, the caterer, about last-minute arrangements, which Gwen considered was kind of them. Beth privately thought they wanted to be as far as possible from whatever flak Leonora decided to dish out today. Fiona had nibbled at something and made sure that Douggie didn’t lay waste to all about him and then excused herself because she had to settle her son down for an afternoon nap, but said she’d return to the table when Efe arrived. Alex could be anywhere. He never ate lunch and was probably in some corner of the garden, taking photos of bits of it that no one had ever thought of looking at before. Sean had joined his crew, who were setting up equipment in the Studio. The plan was for Leonora to show him round the room where the pictures had been painted and for the cameras to film the interview. That leaves us, Beth thought, and decided to keep her head down and get out as soon as she decently could.
‘I’m rather glad it’s just us,’ Leonora said, as though she’d been reading Beth’s mind. ‘I’m interested to hear what everyone has to say, but in the end it’s my decision.’
‘Yes, Mother.’ Gwen took a sip from her glass of mineral water and looked for support from
Rilla, whose attention seemed to be fixed on the asparagus quiche and bits of salad greenery on her plate.
‘I do think,’ Gwen continued bravely, ‘that you should listen to Efe, Mother. He may not have set everything out properly last night. It was naughty of him to take you by surprise like that, but you might find it’s not such a terrible offer as all that. And think of the money!’
Leonora looked scornful and sniffed in a way, Beth thought, that just showed she’d never had to worry about where the next penny was coming from.
‘This has nothing to do with money,’ Leonora said, mildly. ‘I have – we all have – quite sufficient money for our needs and most of it has nothing to do with the paintings, as you know, but is the result of some rather wise investment by my grandfather and my late father-in-law. The house, these pictures, are a kind of separate world. Visitors like coming here. They enjoy seeing everything together. The place where the pictures were painted at the same time as the pictures themselves. If you can’t see the value of that, and that it’s far, far preferable to some concrete monstrosity somewhere in America, then you’re more foolish than I thought.’
Leonora looked at Rilla, who was still concentrating on her food, and spoke with some irritation.
‘Darling, do lift your head from your plate for one second and tell us what you think.’
Beth watched Rilla swallow quickly, and pat her mouth with a napkin. She’s embarrassed, Beth thought. How surprising to see your mother wrong-footed like that, made to seem no more than a child. That was Leonora’s speciality: making everyone seem young and somehow less than they were. Much as she adored her grandmother, Beth knew that it was never a good idea to get into her bad books.
Rilla said, ‘I think you’re probably right, Mother, but I see Gwen’s point of view as well. Maybe it would be good for the paintings to be more … well, to be seen by more people. I don’t really know why it is, but somehow everyone seems to be more willing to visit museums in the States than a country house in Wiltshire.’
‘Ethan Walsh was an English painter and his work is intimately bound up with this place,’ said Leonora, and that sounded to Beth very much like the last word on the subject, for the moment at least. Leonora stood up and said, ‘There can’t be more than a dozen or so things by him in other collections, and those are very early works. All the rest is here, in one place, and here is where they should stay. I’m expected up in the Studio but when Efe gets back, please tell him I want to speak to him at once.’
The moment Leonora left the room, Rilla helped herself to another slice of quiche.
‘Phew!’ she said. ‘We can all come out of our foxholes now. That wasn’t nearly as hairy as it could have been, was it, Gwennie?’
‘Efe’s the one,’ Gwen said. ‘He’ll get it in the neck, I’m sure. And I don’t quite know what you’re looking so bloody happy about, Rilla.’
Gwen’s right, thought Beth. She does look a lot happier than she’s done for ages. Something good has happened to her. She waited until Gwen had finished her lunch and gone off on some errand or other and then she said, ‘Come on, Rilla, you can tell me. What’s happened? You look like the cat who’s swallowed the cream.’
‘I’m not saying a word at this stage,’ Rilla blushed. She got up from her chair and smiled down at her daughter. ‘There may be nothing in it.’
‘It doesn’t suit you to be enigmatic, Rilla. Do tell me what’s going on.’
‘The minute something goes on, as you put it, you’ll be the first to know, my love. The only thing I’ll tell you is that I’m not annoyed with Gwen. I expected to be. I thought her constantly looking overworked and yet not inviting me to help her in any way would get to me, but it hasn’t.’
As she made her way out of the room. Beth stared after her, somewhat at a loss. Could she have had a phone call from Ivan? Beth doubted that it would have had this effect on Rilla. Gus wandered over to the table and twined himself around Beth’s legs. She bent down and picked him up and buried her face in his fur.
‘Gus, if you’re looking for bits of ham, you’re out of luck. They’ve eaten every last scrap.’
*
‘My father,’ Leonora spoke over her shoulder to Sean, ‘used to spend hours and hours up here. I was never allowed across the threshold, of course. He hated anyone to see him working.’
‘But what about all the portraits of you? You must have sat for him, surely.’
Leonora looked out of the window for a long time, and something made her shiver. A goose walking over your grave, Nanny Mouse used to say years ago. She wasn’t going to admit it to Sean but the Studio gave her the creeps and always had. She hated the silence up here, away from the life of the house. The place felt cold, even though nowadays it was centrally heated like the rest of Willow Court. She remembered her father’s anger on the one occasion when he’d found her sitting on the chaise longue that Sean was sitting on this very minute, making notes before the filming began.
‘No,’ she answered at last. ‘I never did sit for him that I can remember. I suppose he painted those portraits from sketches.’
‘Do you remember him sketching you?’ Sean asked.
‘No, not really. My mother did, sometimes. She never showed the sketches to anyone, though, and just stuck them into a kind of writing case she had. I have no idea what happened to them.’
‘Could your father have used your mother’s sketches?’
‘I suppose he could, but I think it most unlikely. He … he didn’t have a very high opinion of her, I don’t think.’
‘As an artist, do you mean?’
Again, Leonora thought for a few seconds before answering.
‘Neither as an artist nor as a woman. I never …’ she looked down at the floor, ‘… had the impression that he loved her very much. Although, naturally, I didn’t know about their life together. Everything was different in those days, it really was. I didn’t know my parents in the way young people do today. Or even in the way Gwen and Rilla know me. Life was full of rules. It was all very formal. And also, although no one spoke about it, Nanny Mouse always maintained that Daddy was never the same after he came back from France at the end of the War. The First World War, I mean. What I do recall, though, was how heartbroken Daddy was after Mummy’s death. He certainly wasn’t the same person after that.’
The crew was ready, gathered near the door, talking about technical matters. The lights were on already, shining too brightly. The sun was out, so why did they need them? Leonora wondered, but didn’t ask because she supposed they must know their own business best.
‘Right, Leonora, just turn to me a little. I’m going to ask you some questions and you answer and pretend it’s only me you’re talking to. I’m going to ask you a little about your mother’s tragic death. Take no notice of the camera or the microphone.’ He nodded at the crew and then said, ‘Tell me a little about your mother. Did you have a good relationship with her?’
‘I think I was rather irritated by her, to tell you the truth.’ Leonora smiled at him. ‘You know how uncharitable children are. I think I felt that her constant indisposition and the fact that she was so often laid up in her bedroom was in a funny way designed to avoid me, to avoid having anything to do with me. All nonsense, of course, as her early death proved. She was properly ill all along, it seemed.’
‘Do you remember her funeral?’ Sean said gently.
‘That whole time is very hazy. I was ill too, at that time. I didn’t go to the funeral because of that. She was buried up there, in the graveyard of the village church. Of course, I visit her grave when I go and …’ Leonora closed her eyes and seemed to gather her strength. ‘I go and see Peter’s memorial of course, and so I make sure that … everyone else has a tidy grave as well. I see to the flowers.’
She turned the wedding ring round and round on her finger, lost in her memories. Then she squared her shoulders and turned her full attention to Sean again.
‘I’m sorry, Sean. I was thinking abo
ut … never mind. We were talking about my childhood. When I think of it now, it’s like peering through a misty curtain. I can make out some shadows and flickering things in corners but nothing’s clear. Nothing at all. I do remember that it was shortly after my mother’s death that I came up here for the very first time.’
‘And what sort of life did you have after that? Was it a normal childhood?’
‘I suppose so. I didn’t really notice much difference, day to day. Nanny Mouse looked after me, just as she always had. I went to school and my friends were particularly kind to me for a while because of my bereavement. So were the teachers. And my father, well, he became like the person in the story about the Snow Queen. Chilly, as though a splinter of ice had entered his heart.’
‘Cut!’ Sean called out and to Leonora he said, ‘That was wonderful, Leonora. Thank you so much. I think we’ve got enough now, from up here. May I escort you downstairs again?’
‘No, no, thank you. I think I’ll stay up here for a moment, if you don’t mind.’
She couldn’t have said why she wanted to do that. The words simply came out of her mouth before she’d thought about them. She watched the crew pack up the equipment and leave the room and then Sean was gone as well and she was alone.
It had been quite warm here while the interview was going on but now, as she sat down on the faded velvet of the chaise-longue, she felt chilly again. This room is cold because no one ever comes in here and because it’s empty, she told herself. Nothing sinister about it at all. White walls, no curtains at the window, high ceiling. The easel empty, but standing in the corner as though someone were about to come in and start painting. The palette, Ethan Walsh’s palette, on the table over there. Visitors to the house liked seeing that, with the colours dried on to it. They liked looking at the paintbrushes too, in a jar on the table.
Bertie the cat pushed at the half-open door and came into the room. He considered possible places to settle and chose Leonora’s lap. ‘Come on, then, Bertie,’ she said. ‘Let’s sit here for a minute.’ She stroked the pale orange fur and suddenly remembered Mr Nibs, the black and white cat who’d lived at Willow Court during the war and just after it. Nanny Mouse had named him. Leonora closed her eyes and listened to the silence. No one would miss her if she stayed here for a while. If only it weren’t so cold.
