by Adele Geras
*
Sean let the cooling stream of the shower fall on his head and wondered how Leonora was managing. The visit to Nanny Mouse had been extraordinary. He’d caught all of what had been said on film, but it was doubtful that he’d use it in that form. He would have loved to discuss his thoughts with Rilla, but a promise was a promise and Leonora had been quite clear that she wanted no one to know what had been spoken about this afternoon. He turned his mind to what he’d seen from his window when he’d first come upstairs.
A car was going down the drive and he thought he saw a woman at the wheel; a flash of blonde hair. She was going much too fast, whoever she was. Not Rilla, or Gwen, who was dark, and neither Chloë nor Leonora, whom he’d seen walking up to the house from the gazebo. Who else was there, he asked himself, and then it came to him. Fiona was a blonde, and even though she’d barely registered on Sean’s radar, he had noticed that she looked miserable for much of the time. In all probability, he thought, she’s had a fight with Efe and driven off in a temper. He hoped very much that she would calm down a little before she got to the main road and then forgot about her completely as his thoughts turned to Rilla. Wherever she was, it would soon be time for dinner and she’d be there. Tonight he would see to it that they were seated next to one another. And perhaps whatever it was that was going on would be explained at last.
He stepped out of the shower, and hummed as he took a clean shirt out of his suitcase. The sight of his birthday present to Leonora made him smile. The family were all going to give her their gifts after dinner tonight and had kindly allowed him to add his parcel to theirs. His present was a small white television and video recorder, on which she would be able to watch his film when it was ready. He was longing to see her face when she opened the box which now stood in the corner, looking a little silly with a pink ribbon stuck on it as an afterthought. Sean didn’t see the point of wrapping, but recognized the inappropriateness of brown cardboard for conveying a feeling of festivity.
*
Sean looked round the table. He’d missed dinner last night, but it struck him how different the atmosphere was now from what it had been for his first meal at Willow Court. All over the house, there was the sort of excitement in the air that he generally associated with Christmas; a sense of secret gift-wrapping, and getting clothes ready, and delicious smells coming from the kitchen. Various members of the family had been whispering to one another during drinks on the terrace, and every so often someone disappeared somewhere only to emerge later looking faintly embarrassed. Efe seemed distracted and his eyes were red-rimmed. If it had been anyone else, Sean would have sworn he’d been crying, but in his case it was probably some kind of allergy to the heat or the pollen.
The weather had been extraordinary for the last few days, as though Leonora had ordered up a perfect English summer to surround the house especially for her birthday. Sometimes Sean felt that Willow Court was separated from the real world; that the entire house and its inhabitants were part of a beautiful arrangement under some gigantic glass dome. He smiled to himself. Too much excellent Chardonnay, that was his problem. That, and being in love, which turned you into the sort of fanciful dork who might easily have a thought like that.
This time, too, the seating plan at the table was different. He was next to Rilla, who looked perfect and smelled of something so delicious that he had to restrain himself from burying his face in the crease of her neck. Fiona was indisposed. Efe had told them she was going to get an early night in order to be ready for tomorrow. She was, according to her husband, sorry to have to miss Leonora opening her presents. Gwen, even in a rather flattering ice-blue silk shirt, looked careworn, with that have I covered all possible contingencies? air that he recognized from every stage manager he’d ever met. Still, James, who had clearly been knocking back the wine, was talking to her in an animated way and she was gradually relaxing. Beth wasn’t eating properly. Sean looked at her pushing Mary’s salmon en croûte around her plate and wondered what was worrying her. She kept glancing across the table at Efe, but it wasn’t the dazed, worshipping gaze he’d noticed when he first saw them together. She was sitting next to Alex and nodding as he spoke to her. There was another change. Alex was neatly dressed in a clean white shirt and dark linen trousers. Chloë and Philip were tucking into their food. He supposed that what she was wearing represented some kind of evening dress, but the effect of a deliberately trashy pearl and diamond tiara stuck into the gelled spikes of her blonde hair, crowning a beige lace blouse and a black taffeta skirt, was more comical than glamorous.
Leonora had chosen to wear black. She looked pale and rather fragile, and the pearls of her necklace were lustrous against the waterfall of chiffon that formed the lapels of her blouse. She had been quieter than usual, even though he’d tried to engage her in conversation several times. She’d eaten very little of the avocado cocktail and hardly any salmon at all. Sean had watched many, many after-dinner speakers and some of the more nervous ones behaved exactly as Leonora was behaving now. He wondered whether the excitement of the party tomorrow might have had this effect, and doubted it. There had to be something else. He was just on the point of asking her, tactfully, whether anything was wrong, when she tapped gently on the side of her wine glass with her fork. Everybody fell silent.
‘Thank you, everyone,’ she said. ‘I have something to tell all of you now, which is somewhat difficult and also extremely important, and I thought it would be best to do it now, before dessert is served. This is going to be an ordeal for me, so I hope you’ll all bear with me and let me finish what I have to say before you ask any questions.’
Sean looked round the table at the family, nodding and murmuring their agreement, turning their faces to Leonora. She opened her sequinned handbag and took out a sheet of paper, which she unfolded carefully and laid on the tablecloth. Then, very slowly, she opened her spectacle case and put on her reading-glasses. She did this quietly, but there was an element of theatricality in the way she then looked all around the table before she spoke.
‘This’, she said, tapping the sheet of paper with one finger, ‘is a suicide note written by my mother.’
For a moment, Leonora thought she would faint. The faces all round the table seemed to be blurring: white circles against the dark walls of the dining room. Something caught the light and glittered. That ridiculous headdress Chloë was wearing, which reminded Leonora of the kind of thing Rilla and Gwen used to like to take out of the dressing-up box in the nursery when they were little girls. She could feel the silence stretching out and knew that she had to speak again. It had taken every ounce of her strength to keep the contents of this letter to herself from the time that Chloë had brought it to her until now.
At first, she had been in a state of shock. While she and Chloë were still in the gazebo, she’d wept and sobbed in a completely undignified way, and the poor child hadn’t known what to do to comfort her. Leonora had accepted the endearments and the soothing sounds she’d made, but couldn’t begin to explain to her granddaughter that her tears were as much from blinding rage as sorrow. Ethan, her father – if he’d been in front of her at that moment, she would have attacked him with her bare hands. How could he? was the thought that exploded in every corner of her mind. How could he steal from his own wife the very thing that she most valued? How could he deceive his only daughter, and go on accepting the love of an innocent child when he’d behaved so badly? Leonora shook with fury at the sheer injustice of it. After a while, she had no more tears left to shed and told Chloë that she was fine, really, and would like to go back to the house now, please. She’d been led up over the lawn so gently that for a moment she really did feel like the old lady she was supposed to be.
She’d kissed Chloë and gone straight to her room, where she sat unmoving for a full fifteen minutes before all the separate pieces of what she had learned came together to make some kind of sense. She felt as though some giant had taken up her whole life and shaken it about and the
n set it down again, with everything about it differently arranged; all her memories, her entire past, everything. But in the end, she’d pulled herself together and had even managed to be her normal self when she’d spoken to Rilla. I’m used to it, she said to herself. I’m used to putting a brave face on things. It’s what I’ve been brought up to do.
Now, she looked round at her family, who were all staring up at her in total silence. Ought she to explain the background before she started? Or later, when they’d listened to these words that had been hidden for so long? No, she would plunge straight in and let her mother’s voice be heard at last. She coughed and began to read, concentrating on the marks on the paper; trying to think neither of her audience nor of the writer, but only of the words themselves:
‘Went up to the Studio where your voice didn’t reach and painted every hour of the day. Solace. Comfort. Consolation, in those days. Didn’t care if the pictures went out under another name. Didn’t care at all. Unimportant, all that was. Paint mattered. What was coming to life under my fingers, that was the important thing. Light shone in from the window, brushing the side of a teapot and for hours and hours nothing mattered but getting that highlight exactly right. Not precisely as it was in life, but more than it was; object (or subject) had to be what it was and also be all the possibilities, dreams, memories of what it was. Terribly hard to explain, all this, but when a painting was finished, wanted it to be like a source of light to whoever looked at it. Wanted everything to glow and shine and leap out of the frame. Wanted to make beautiful things, and knew how to do that and they didn’t cry or break and didn’t bruise under my hands.
‘Maude, me, I was the better artist, that was all it was. Ethan saw that. Even while we were still both at art school, my paintings were more praised than his. Also, he realized that there was a fortune and a reputation to be made. Clever. He is, clever and clever. Didn’t know how to stop him. Didn’t question his words for years. He said doesn’t matter whose name it is on the canvas. He said the work abides. Paint never lies. You should be satisfied, he said, with being able to make such things, and not ask for fame and glory on top of that. He said you’re delicate, Maude. He said you’re fragile. You’ll crack under all the attention. He swore he’d keep the world away from my door, and he succeeded and now I bitterly regret it all. Bitterly. Have tried to say this to him, but it is too late and he doesn’t listen to me at all. Barely looks at me. Deception is too deep, and has gone on for too many years to change now, he says. If you say anything (he says this all the time, many times) I’ll tell them you’re mad mad mad, and point to my signature. I’ll say you’re deluded, he whispers in my ear. They would believe him. He is very believable. No one doubts him.
‘There is a way out. Will take it. Very soon. Am not braver than I used to be, only tired of everything, weary in my very bones of all the pain. Nothing pleases me any longer. Want to punish and hurt him, but not brave enough to speak of what he has made me do, because he would destroy me if I did. Know he would. He is a cruel man, however he may charm people with his smile and clever talk. Have lost count now of times he has hit me, but days and days have kept to my room so that world shouldn’t see the bruises and red eyes from the crying. Eyes always red now, but shall stop it all soon. No more pictures, ever, from my hand, and that will hurt him more than anything else. That may make him cry. Not losing me, but losing the paintings he has almost persuaded himself are his own. He has swallowed me up so that everything of mine is part of him. My fault. My weakness and my cowardice. Am such a coward. Cannot forgive myself for that, for locking myself away from my darling baby when she was so tiny. For not speaking. For not packing a suitcase and walking down the drive. But how? How to leave my child and my garden and my house that I love? Am a coward, a dreadful weakling and hate myself beyond anything else. Cannot look at myself in the mirror without feeling disgust and horror. Will end it. But have made a surprise for Leonora’s birthday … it’s very soon and so will try to wait till after that is over before stopping my painting for ever. There is one thing he doesn’t know. No one knows. Have signed my own paintings. There, said it now. My own paintings. Somewhere in each one have made an arrangement of lines or colours in the shape of a lion. Very tiny lion, for Leonora, who is fierce and unafraid like her father, and beautiful and for whom only wish is that she may face the light always and never turn away to cry into the darkness, like me, like me. Darling child, forgive me. Forgive me. Have loved you from the moment you were born and think of you every moment of every day. Your mother, Maude Walsh.’
Leonora looked up from the page. The familiar faces around the table had been transformed into creatures from a nightmare. Beth gasped, her eyes wide. Gwen had her hand clamped over her mouth, and Rilla was openly weeping. Alex had both hands over his face, covering his eyes. Chloë and Philip were sitting very upright, and James was reaching for the wine bottle. Darkness had gathered in the corners of the dining room while she’d been speaking. Leonora broke the silence.
‘It’s rather a long letter, I’m afraid, but I felt I should read all of it, so that you would understand. It was written on the back of the wallpaper used to cover the entire dolls’ house roof, and I’m very grateful to Philip and Chloë for removing it so carefully that not a word has been lost, and for making me the typed copy I’ve just read. The original is very faint and hard to make out. Thank you, both of you.’
Still no one spoke. She continued. ‘I hope that my mother’s somewhat disjointed style wasn’t too difficult to follow. What this letter does not make clear – how could it? – is that I found her. I found her dead, floating in the lake, just before my eighth birthday. The shock of it made me ill and when I got better, well, they’d decided – my father decided, I suppose, and Nanny Mouse went along with his plan – that I shouldn’t be told the truth. I expect they thought it would upset me too much to be reminded of such a dreadful thing.’
Gwen and Rilla cried out almost in unison, ‘Oh, Mother, Mother, oh how … how …’ and both started to get up from their chairs. Leonora put out a hand to stop them, and they sank back. Gwen was as white as the tablecloth in front of her and Rilla’s tears were running unchecked down her face. She saw Sean hesitate, then lean towards her, touching her arm to comfort her.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, looking at him, and dabbing at her cheeks with a napkin. ‘Only it’s such a shock. It’s so awful. I can hardly believe it.’
Sean whispered something to her and put an arm around her shoulders.
‘I wish I could have kept this from all of you,’ said Leonora. ‘At least until after the party, but I know that I will feel easier in my mind if everyone is aware of the truth. When I say it baldly, out loud like this, I still find it hard to believe, but it’s true. Maude Walsh, my mother, is the person who painted the pictures hanging all over the house. He, my father, took her work and passed it off as his. Oh, it’s a monstrous thing to have done. Monstrous.’
‘But I don’t understand how he did it,’ Efe said. ‘He must have started out by doing some painting himself, surely? I mean, he was an artist, wasn’t he? When did he decide on the deception? And how come he wasn’t discovered during Maude’s lifetime?’
Leonora said, ‘I don’t suppose we’ll ever know the answers to those questions. The only person who might have been able to tell us is Nanny Mouse, and she’s becoming more and more confused. But I think perhaps he realized almost as soon as they were married that Maude’s paintings were much better than his own, and he couldn’t bear it. Maybe a dealer offered a good sum for one of her canvases and that gave him the idea. I don’t know. But he took the credit for her art while she was alive, and once she was dead, he made sure that her work was as near to being buried alive as possible. That, I think, and nothing else, accounted for the fact that he wouldn’t hear of her paintings leaving Willow Court.’
‘And don’t forget, Leonora,’ said James, ‘that there were a few of his very early paintings out there, because he’d sold t
hem before he was even married to your mother. If anyone had started comparing the early and late Walshes, his plan probably wouldn’t have worked. Even as it is, he took a risk.’
‘He could have said he’d changed his style,’ Chloë suggested. ‘Artists are always doing that. If anyone had asked him why the paintings were so different.’
‘That’s true,’ said Efe. ‘But what a scam!’
‘You sound as though you admire him, Efe,’ Beth said, angrily. ‘It’s one of the cruellest things I’ve ever heard. Worse than his physical cruelty.’
Leonora saw Efe blush as Beth glared at him. Had they been quarrelling? She had no time or energy to worry about it if they had. There was enough, quite enough, to take in without concerning herself with her grandchildren’s squabbles. She took her reading glasses off and leaned forward. ‘It is a dreadful thing, of course. No one would deny that, but finding it out like this, so many years later, is perhaps even worse, because now I have to look back at almost my whole life knowing that there was a lie at the heart of it. And my father acted in a way that I find quite unforgivable. Appalling. Terrible. He not only destroyed my mother with his physical cruelty and unkindness, but also stole from her the one thing, the best thing, she had and made it his own. And the very worst thing of all is …’
Leonora stopped speaking. She felt her lower lip tremble and tears come to her eyes. She blinked fiercely to stop them from falling and took two deep breaths before continuing. ‘This is very hard for me. The worst thing of all is that I’ve helped him. I’ve spent most of my adult life making certain that his work, his art, should be shown to its best advantage. I’ve guarded the canvases from the world in exactly the way he wanted. And I’ve loved him. I’ve loved him and his memory all my life and now I can’t any longer. The person I loved didn’t exist. Most of what he really was he covered up. He dressed himself in my mother’s talent and helped himself to the honour that should have been hers. And to all my love. I didn’t have any left over for her. I’ve overlooked her, not only since she died but also while she was alive. Ethan Walsh sucked up all the attention, everyone’s attention, all the time.’
