by Adele Geras
For the first time since Willow Court had stopped being a convalescent home for wounded soldiers, music was being played. As soon as Peter came into the house, he put a record on the gramophone in the drawing room. Glenn Miller, Duke Ellington, Lester Young, Billie Holiday, and wonderful Louis Armstrong: they were the ones she loved best. The names on the labels were unfamiliar at first, but the melodies lodged in Leonora’s mind and heart. ‘String of Pearls’, ‘Mood Indigo’, ‘The Man I Love’, and ‘I Can’t Give You Anything But Love’, the song that Peter used to sing to her, imitating Armstrong’s gravelly voice very badly indeed and making her laugh.
The garden was already being improved. For the first few days after Ethan’s death, Leonora found that working with plants and earth was a comfort. Because she’d always associated gardening with her mother, she didn’t constantly hear her father’s voice as she dug and weeded and looked at catalogues to choose new shrubs and flowers to order. She’d decided some time ago to undertake the redesign of the Quiet Garden. She would care for the neglected espaliered trees, and intended to uproot some of the less interesting things growing in the borders and restock them with azaleas and Japanese quinces and pink and white peonies.
Sometimes, when Peter was at work, or in town seeing to all the financial and legal arrangements, Leonora sat on the bench under the magnolia tree with Nanny Mouse, who had known Ethan even longer than she had. She said, ‘It’s funny, Nanny. Daddy wasn’t the chattiest person in the world, and yet I feel as though I can hear his voice in my ear all the time.’
‘Well, dear, he hadn’t been himself for some while, had he? Not really. He wasn’t the man he used to be.’
That was true. Since the end of the war, Ethan Walsh had grown increasingly moody and distant, and in the months leading up to his death, he’d become a brooding, silent presence in the house. During the winter, he would sit for hours staring at the fire, and in summer he walked for miles round and round the lake.
‘I know,’ Leonora answered. ‘But I miss him, because he’s always been there, all my life and …’ She didn’t know how to continue. He’s my father, she wanted to say. My only family, and now he’s gone, and there’s me and no one else.
‘You won’t be on your own for long, dear,’ Nanny Mouse said soothingly. ‘You’ll have a husband soon and children of your own. A proper family.’
‘Wake up, my love,’ said a voice in Leonora’s ear. ‘Wake up, Mrs Simmonds.’
‘I’ve been awake for ages,’ Leonora whispered. ‘I’ve been thinking about all sorts of things and waiting for you to wake up.’
‘What were you thinking about? Tell me.’
He started to kiss her then, and she wanted to say I can’t remember. I can’t remember anything. You’re the only thing I can think of. Just you. But the words were starting to slip and slide about in her head and soon she had no thoughts that could properly be called thoughts at all.
*
Gwendolen Elizabeth Simmonds was born in her parents’ bedroom at Willow Court on 7th February, 1952. King George VI had died the day before the birth, and all the papers carried photographs of the new Queen, who used to be Princess Elizabeth, together with her mother and grandmother, wearing black and heavily veiled at the King’s funeral. Leonora’s labour had only lasted for six hours and, even though she’d been in agony and shrieking like a banshee for what seemed to her like years, the midwife told her she’d had an easy time of it, and it was perfectly true that within minutes of the birth, every bit of pain seemed to have been banished and forgotten in the joy of meeting the daughter that she and Peter together had made.
The whole country was feeling sad, but Leonora and Peter were happier than they’d ever been and a little guilty at their own joy. Calling their baby after the new queen, even only as a second name, was their way of showing how sorry they were to lose the King, who’d been much too young to die.
Gwendolen’s first name honoured Peter’s late grandmother. Leonora had thought that perhaps she would name the baby after her own mother, but then they’d both agreed that, thanks to Tennyson, Maude sounded too old-fashioned and Victorian.
Towards the end of her pregnancy, Leonora had worried about being able to love the child when it was born. She and Peter were so bound up in one another that it seemed to her anyone else coming into their lives was sure to receive short rations.
They’d had three years together, and Leonora could truly say that she loved Peter more than she did when they’d first married. Not only that, but they still found it hard to restrain their desire. Leonora discovered almost as soon as she became a wife that the reticence which (combined with ignorance) had kept her friends from talking freely about sex disappeared as soon as they were married.
These days, everyone seemed quite happy to share the details of their personal lives. Bunny, who was married a month after Leonora, and who had given birth to her first child within a year, confessed to Leonora that quite often her mind was on other matters while she was, in her words, ‘at it’.
‘Or rather,’ she said, only last week, when she’d come to tea ‘while Nigel’s at it, really. I don’t seem to be there, to be quite frank. D’you know what I mean? There he is, poor darling, going at it hammer and tongs, and I’m miles away, working out some domestic thing or another, like whether we’ll have roast chicken for dinner when the Colonel and his wife come round on Wednesday. I can never stop myself from seeing it all from someone else’s point of view. Imagine! It’s such a ludicrous posture, when all’s said and done. Don’t you agree?’ She smiled brightly and helped herself to another biscuit.
Leonora sat quietly when Bunny or one of her other friends went on in this vein. They all did, and she wondered sometimes whether it was just a pretence, and whether they said such things because they were ashamed to confess their real feelings. She herself was always noncommittal. She smiled back at Bunny and said almost nothing and made every effort to change the subject to something she found easier to discuss.
There were no words with which she could have expressed what she felt for Peter; no way of telling anyone of the transformation that overcame both of them when they were alone. How they turned from normal, quite ordinary people who went to work in a firm of insurance brokers, or managed the house and estate, or oversaw the decoration of the nursery, or had dinner and tea with their friends and drank gin and tonic and cups of tea, into panting, heedless creatures who bit and sucked and kissed every part of each other’s bodies for hours and yet ended up wanting only more and more of one another. Their bed was a separate universe where none of the daily rules applied and where even speech was unrecognizable; where words and sentences fractured and splintered into a private, intimate language of their own.
Now here was this tiny creature with her waving pink fingers and her tightly shut eyes and Leonora looked down at her and realized that the love she felt for this baby was different from anything she had ever felt before, but, miraculously, no less strong. Peter, she could see, was enchanted by his daughter and sat beside the bed staring at her, hardly able to speak.
‘She’s the most beautiful baby in the whole world,’ he said, and immediately grinned. ‘I bet every father says that, but it’s true in this case. She looks just like you.’
‘She looks like a baby,’ Leonora said, gazing at her daughter, and literally feeling love flow into every part of her in exactly the same way as the milk was coming into her breasts. She glanced from Peter to Gwendolen and the thought crossed her mind that if she were to stop breathing now, at this very moment, she’d die completely and totally happy.
‘I’m so happy, my precious darling,’ Peter said. ‘I love you both so much.’
Leonora’s eyes filled with tears. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I love you both too, and I don’t mean to be crying. I’m happy, too, truly. Nanny Mouse says that new mothers cry all the time.’
Peter leaned over the baby and kissed Leonora on the mouth. ‘You’re my darlings. I couldn’t p
ossibly love you more than I do, and now Gwendolen’s going to be the most adored baby in the world.’
Leonora couldn’t find any words to express what she wanted to say. She closed her eyes and leaned back against the heaped-up pillows.
*
Gwendolen Elizabeth soon became Gwen. She was a most untroublesome baby. She loved sleeping; she never stopped smiling; she didn’t mind Nanny Mouse looking after her when her mother was otherwise occupied; she murmured and burbled at her father whenever he picked her up, and everyone agreed that she was the best-tempered child they’d ever seen. Bunny and Nigel’s little boy, whose name was Richard, was a different sort of creature altogether and Leonora rather dreaded the times when Bunny came to tea, bringing her son, as she put it, ‘to play’. Richard never did play, not really, and in any case Gwen was much too little to play with.
The work on Willow Court went on and on, and neither Leonora nor Peter ever tired of making things more beautiful. One day in May, just before the Coronation, Peter said, ‘It’s time now, darling. Let’s go up to the Studio and bring all the paintings down. Let’s hang them everywhere.’
At first, Leonora didn’t know what she felt about seeing her father’s pictures all over the house, but after thinking about it for a while, she knew she would be happy to have them around her again.
‘It’s taken me a bit of time to realize it,’ she said to Peter at dinner, ‘but Willow Court didn’t feel right without them, did it? And they deserve to be seen, don’t they?’
Peter picked up his glass and took a sip of wine.
‘Actually,’ he said. ‘I think it’s a pity we can’t sell just a few. There was that chap, don’t you remember? The one who came to see you after Ethan died? He said they were very valuable, didn’t he? He wanted to pay you a great deal of money, as I recall, for that portrait of you in the lilac dress.’
‘I’m not allowed to, Peter. You know that. Daddy’s will made that quite clear. The paintings are to stay at Willow Court.’
Peter knew very well why she couldn’t sell the paintings. He understood better than she did the complicated legal clauses which meant that her children would have no claim on the estate if the paintings were sold. It was all too confusing, but she’d never made the effort to understand the detail for the simple reason that she had no intention whatsoever of selling the pictures her father had created. They were part of him, the very best part, and now that she could see them again, she realized how much she loved them. How much she would enjoy looking at them every day.
‘I want to remember Daddy as he was when he made them, and to try and forget what he’d become towards the end of his life. Anyway, I gave him my word.’
She thought about her father while Peter poured the coffee. Being a widower hadn’t suited him. He’d stopped painting altogether, and nothing Leonora said or did made any difference. She used to have to choose her moment carefully if she wanted to talk to him about this. If the timing was wrong, he was quite capable of flying into a black rage, which meant that he retired to his bedroom with the brandy bottle and everyone had to tiptoe round the house and pray that he wouldn’t come out into the corridors to storm and rage at them.
When the sun came out: that was the best time for conversation. Walking in the Quiet Garden, sitting under the magnolia tree, Leonora would sometimes dare to ask gently, ‘Wouldn’t this make a painting, Daddy? Isn’t it beautiful?’
‘Sentimental nonsense, flowers,’ he’d answer. ‘Not my sort of thing. Not now.’
‘But the waterlily pictures, Daddy! And the one with the roses on the table. You do paint flowers so beautifully. And everyone loves them. We could make a lot of money, you know, if you sold some of them.’
A mistake. It was always a mistake to mention selling the canvases. He father frowned, but on this occasion, all he said was, ‘Over my dead body. The pictures stay here, at Willow Court.’ Suddenly, he leaned forward and stared into Leonora’s eyes. ‘Promise me, Leonora,’ he said. ‘Promise me they’ll never be sold. Not even when I’m dead. Promise.’
And I did promise, Leonora thought. I had to. Daddy always got his way and here he was still getting it, more than four years after his death. She said to Peter, ‘I kept that man’s card. The man from the gallery. He left it and I put it somewhere. I shall telephone him, and ask his advice. His name is Jeremy Bland. I’ll ask him down to have a look and tell me what he thinks of the paintings. We can make money from them, don’t you think? We might let the public into Willow Court to see them. If they’re as good as all that, everyone will be longing to come, won’t they?’
‘But would you want every Tom, Dick and Harry traipsing round the house? Think of the work! The mud they’ll tread into the carpets. I don’t know if I think it’s such a good idea, darling. I don’t really.’
‘Nonsense, Peter! We’d become famous. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? We don’t have to open the house every day, either. We can choose when we let people in. Bunny’s cousin knows someone who works for the Tatler. I’ll telephone him and I’m sure he’ll oblige. Imagine, there might be photographs of us in a magazine! Or an article perhaps. And I’ll get in touch with the Women’s Institute and offer Willow Court for their annual Garden Party. Maybe they’ll let me give a talk or something about the paintings.’
‘Oh, well,’ said Peter, ‘if it means that much to you, I won’t object.’
‘You’re a darling.’ Leonora smiled at him. ‘I hadn’t realized how much I’ve missed those pictures. Daddy would be pleased, wouldn’t he? He’d have loved the idea of people walking round admiring his handiwork. I shall telephone Mr Bland once we’ve hung everything in a good place.’
*
After several hours of back-breaking labour, it was over. The paintings had been brought downstairs from the Studio to the dining room. Tyler and his two young assistants came in from the garden to help move things around. Gwen’s playpen had been positioned in the hall and she was gazing round at everything with great interest. Peter was at the office, but Nanny Mouse was there to help matters along. The canvases were stacked against the wall.
‘Just till we can sort out what goes where,’ Leonora said. ‘I’ve been trying to remember where things used to be. Nanny, you must remember, surely? There were pictures all along the corridor, upstairs, weren’t there?’
‘Yes, yes there were. I expect I might recognize some of them if I see them again, though to tell you the truth, after a bit you don’t notice things on walls, do you? I don’t, I’m sure.’
Leonora shivered suddenly. For what was probably only a split second, something that might have been a dream she’d once had (when?) passed into her mind and then out of it again before she’d had a chance to examine it. Herself running down the hall staircase, and the pictures looming above her, enormous, much larger than they were in real life. A portrait of someone she didn’t recognize – someone with a hat on, shadowing their face. A landscape showing the drive as it was at this very moment, with every leaf on the scarlet oaks the colour of fresh blood, that was all she could remember clearly, but she was left with a sense of there being something else, something just out of sight that she might catch a glimpse of – but it was gone and all that was left was unease of some kind. Leonora shook her head to dispel such thoughts and said to Nanny Mouse, ‘I must have walked past all these pictures a thousand times. It’s like seeing old friends again. Here’s the blue teapot … I love that! Surely between us we can find the same places for most of them, can’t we?’
‘I wouldn’t trust my memory, after all this while,’ said Nanny Mouse. ‘I think you should just put everything where you think best.’
*
‘It’s a very interesting collection, Mrs Simmonds,’ said Mr Bland, glancing over Leonora’s shoulder at the painting on the wall behind her, a landscape recognizable as the view out of the window next to which she’d hung it. ‘And I admire the clever way you’ve placed some of these pictures so that whoever looks at them sees the
original, as it were, beside it.’
Leonora smiled. ‘It’ll only be a match for part of the year, of course, but I thought it might be amusing.’
‘Indeed.’ Mr Bland, who had not asked her to call him by his first name, was not much older than she was, but his formal manner and mode of dress kept her at some distance. Today, he was visiting Willow Court to gather some biographical information for a brochure his gallery was eager to produce. At first, Leonora couldn’t understand why a dealership which was not strictly representing her father as an artist, not selling his pictures, should be so keen to do this, and she’d asked Mr Bland this question.
‘It’s the reflected glory,’ he’d answered. ‘We shall advertise our gallery in its pages of course. Also one never knows what the future may bring, does one? Perhaps things may change in relation to these pictures.’
‘It’s most unlikely,’ said Leonora. ‘The terms of my father’s will are quite clear.’
They went into the small drawing room, where Mr Bland took out a notebook and began to question her as she poured tea from the blue pot that was the subject of what he had confessed was one of the Ethan Walsh paintings he loved best.
‘Your father was one of the generation of artists working just before and just after the First World War,’ he said, and Leonora nodded.
‘He died four years ago, I believe?’
Leonora smiled. ‘Yes, and it was what they call an easy death, but of course death is never easy, is it? Certainly not for the people who are left behind.’
‘Please accept my condolences,’ Mr Bland said quietly.
