Colouring In (4 page)

Have to admit I rather wish Carlotta wasn’t going to be there. I haven’t seen her since she was about fifteen. We often met as children because our parents were friends, but we didn’t like each other. She was bossy, a touch humourless, always trying to shock. There was the day in some garden, behind a laurel bush, when she asked me if I’d like to see her knickers. I was fourteen. She must have been about twelve. I said no thanks, and she stomped off in a huff, shouting that only an idiot would turn down such an opportunity. Relations were pretty cool after that, though I seem to remember, in our teens, I did kiss her at a Sailing Club dance in Norfolk, after I’d drunk a great deal of beer and vodka. But Dan has always said I’m wrong about Carlotta: she’s got great qualities, he says, though they aren’t always apparent. Admittedly, he and Isabel have never tried to throw us together. I suppose they asked her this evening just to balance things. It’ll be perfectly all right. All the same, just for this reunion, I do wish they hadn’t asked her.

Isabel can be absolutely
dementing.
She rings me up
mid
-
morning –
how many times have I said Isabel please ring me at dawn? – just as I’m about to go into a meeting, and then sounds put out because I have to cut her off quickly. She rang me at the worst time this morning to ask me to supper – there’s rarely any such thing as a dinner party, these days, chez Dan and Isabel – and in my hurry I just said yes, because although it’s the one night I always like to keep free to catch up with things in the flat, I didn’t want to offend her. She mentioned something about Gilbert Bailey being there. Bert! Heavens. Haven’t seen him for
years
. Remember him as a rather shy little boy, lanky. Then there was a moment – almost eradicated from my mind, at some teenage dance, and a hopelessly inadequate beer-smelling kiss. Can’t say I’ve the slightest inclination to be re-acquainted, but there goes. He’s apparently Dan’s oldest friend.

It’s ridiculous, really, how little I see of Isabel – not my oldest friend, but one of the very best. We live so close and yet it always seems difficult to find time to meet. Perhaps that’s just modern life. I really mind about not seeing her more: she’s a wonderfully calming influence, and makes me laugh in her quiet way. God knows why we get on so well: we could not be more different. She’s absolutely not of this modern world: has no interest in fashion, speed, cutting edge, excitement, technology – she lives in her own little white tower, working away, enormously talented, and I would think a pretty good wife and mother. She scoffs at my interests, my racy life, the things I find compelling. I’ve often invited her to come with me to India or Ceylon or America, and promised I’d take care of her, guide her through all the things she seems to find alarming. But she says no, absolutely not. Her idea of a holiday is Wales or Fife or Norfolk or the West Country. Can’t understand it myself.

I’m not sure how she ever got to Spain, where we met, by herself. I suppose it was the lure of a painting holiday (in the days when she was still trying to discover what she could do) in Trasierra, a fabulous place owned by a friend of hers. We were somehow always side by side at our easels and talked more than we drew or painted. She was quite good, in fact: on a different scale from me. (I was only there for the relaxation, painting as therapy: hopeless, and didn’t even enjoy it). Isabel was of the standard that sells – pretty watercolours competently executed. But she kept saying she wasn’t an
artist
. Proper artists are passionate about their work and nothing can keep them from it, she said. And she wasn’t remotely passionate about her dinky little watercolours, and couldn’t care less if she never painted another picture. But for all our differences we seemed to enjoy talking to each other: she was amazed by stories of my rackety life, while I was equally amazed by the happiness she said her quiet life produced. So our friendship began, ten years ago.

The one subject I avoid with Isabel is Sylvie: she’s something of a monster: precocious, spoilt, boastful. Only child-syndrome and all that, I suppose. And Isabel and Dan think the sun shines … Yes, obviously very bright, and lively, but God she’s irritating. I always try to avoid times when she’s around. I do admit she can be winning sometimes, and even witty. I’m just not keen on children in general. I’m bored rigid by mothers who go on about them all the time – Isabel, to be fair, doesn’t do this – but the domestic problems of women who try to have it all, are deeply tedious and given far too much attention in the media and even novels. Most of my friends are childless.

As for Dan: Dan’s lovely. If he wasn’t married to Isabel I’d fancy him like crazy. He’s a
gentle
man in the real meaning of the word. Bit of a mystery, I’ve always thought: absolutely obsessed about writing his plays, wonderfully considerate husband, I would think. I’ve picked up from Isabel he can be a touch moody (she’d never be so disloyal as to complain about anything concerning Dan). But goodness, is he a good listener? – something most of the men I know simply
aren’t.
He’s wise and learned and marvellously straight. If he was my husband, of course, there’d have to be certain changes in his clothes and ties, though as someone else’s husband I find them terribly endearing – his father’s suits. He’s proud of them. Opens the jacket and points to the date on the inside pocket: ‘1957 and still going strong’, he says, pleased as anything. I daresay I shall never meet anyone as generally desirable as Dan. I often tell Isabel this and she laughs and says what nonsense. I don’t think she regards me in any way as a dangerous force: surely I wouldn’t tell her how wonderful I think her husband is if I really fancied him.

So I practice a sort of double bluff.

I’ve so often wondered why some mornings
,
outwardly like any other morning, I’m filled with a feeling of unease, pessimism, almost alarm. I can find no answer. But on such mornings I’m more than usually keen to shut myself away in my studio as quickly as possible, hurry through the farewells, the finding of Sylvie’s maths book, the straightening of Dan’s tie.

It was like that this morning. I ran up the stairs, sat down a little out of breath and rather shaky, looked all round at the familiar things necessary to my trade. For the hundredth time I marvelled about how it had all come to be. Chance, luck, those wayward things that so rarely strike, chose me at a time I was becoming desperate.

I had spent so many years – as a child, an undergraduate, a young woman, trying to work out what precisely I should do. I’d wasted – was it wasted? – so much time experimenting. I did not come into that bleak category of not having
any
clue about what I wanted to do: I came into the next category up of those who have a vague idea but nothing specific gels in the mind. Arts, rather than sciences, was the field I inclined towards. But what, in the arts, that wasn’t an administrative job, could I do? As a child I had briefly wanted to be a concert pianist when, after six months of dawn practising, I managed to get to the end of the
Hungarian Rhapsody
, but I knew in my heart I was a conscientious rather than a talented pianist. I could draw quite well, I could write a better essay than most of my contemporaries. But I knew beyond doubt that I was neither a writer nor a painter. Then I took up ballet but quickly had to give it up when I grew too tall. I thought of teaching, but dismissed that idea on the grounds that I was not good enough myself to teach others either English or art in more than a merely competent way. And my belief has always been that teachers should be so passionate about their subject that they can’t fail to inspire their pupils. I got a reasonable degree in history at York, but had no thoughts of carrying on with things historical.

Before marrying Dan I went from one dull job to another: working in a gallery, assisting a photographer, organising events for charity. I contemplated going to some third world country and being, at least, useful. But when I tried to do this I came up against so many stumbling blocks I gave up: apparently energy and enthusiasm were not enough. Qualifications were needed that I did not have. These were years in which I felt wasted and frustrated with myself for not being able to put my finger on what I might really enjoy and be good at. I wrote furious, bad poetry and wondered how this hopelessness might be resolved. It was resolved by getting married, of course. And time was for a while taken up with buying and organising the house, deflecting melancholy about my inability to discover what I really wanted to do. Dan said there was no need for me to work: he was well able to take care of us both. But of course, if it made me happier, he’d support me in whatever it was.

Sylvie was born. I became a full time mother. I loved it. I loved her. The need for a job waned. I seemed to be constantly kept busy by domestic matters. I was happy. Seven years flew by.

Then, Sylvie being at school till mid afternoon, the days began to empty and lengthen, and the old yearning returned: also the old dilemma. What to do? But this time a solution dropped mercifully into my lap.

A friend rang to say she was going to a masked ball and there was not the kind of mask she wanted to be had in London. Could I make her one? I remember laughing. What on earth made her think I could make a mask? She knew I was good with my hands, she said. What proof had she? Apparently I’d once covered a shoebox in sequins and ribbons, and enamelled the inside, and given it to her full of soap for a present. ‘Oh
that’
, I said. ‘Hardly proof I’m a natural mask maker’. But she was persuasive. Eventually I said I’d have a try. I’d nothing else to do…

And then came that molten warmth of challenge, the ridiculous excitement about so minuscule a project. Suddenly the afternoon, full of purpose, was lighted. I hurried off to the Portobello Road, bought a basket full of feathers and sequins and baubles, scraps of ribbon and lace. I bought glue and paint, needles and cotton, and spent a fortune on feathers both upright and shining, and others languidly curling. I found some plastic mask-bases in a theatrical shop, and was ready to begin. That evening Dan came home to find me kneeling on the sitting room floor surrounded by what he called ‘mysterious paraphernalia’. What was I doing? Was there anything for supper?

No, there wasn’t. Sylvie was with a friend for a night and no thoughts of cooking had entered my mind as I experimented with all my glorious bits and pieces. Dan was wonderful. He took me out to supper so that I could concentrate on explaining what had happened. His encouragement (which, if I’d had time to think about it, I wouldn’t have expected) was amazing. He leapt ahead a little, further encouraging. ‘If this works,’ he said, ‘you could set up a business at home: we could convert the attic into a studio, put a huge window in the roof’. He was smiling – was he serious? I didn’t know, and didn’t ask. ‘I don’t expect there are many mask-makers in London, are there?’ he asked. ‘No,’ I said: ‘none’. My only source of information was my friend who had ‘looked everywhere’ and found nothing. But by now we were both so caught up in the excitement of the whole idea that her scant research seemed encouragement enough. ‘If it works, if you can do it,’ Dan said again, ‘this might be the answer to what you’ve been looking for, for so long…’

It did work. That first mask was a wild, beautiful thing, sparkling, catching the light, twinkling with the iridescent colours of a mallard’s breast. Now, looking back, I see it was too uncontrolled. It was over the top: I’d thrown everything I had at it in patterns, led by my fingers that seemed to understand. I’ve stopped using sequins now. These days my masks are a little less flamboyant, though I still aim for measured extravagance, beauty, mystery. But to that ‘first, fine careless rapture’ of a first mask I owe everything: it set me on my way. My friend was enchanted, triumphant. ‘I told you you could do it,’ she said. ‘You can be grateful to me for enabling you to discover what you’re really good at, can’t you?’ I wouldn’t let her pay for it, though she offered me a huge sum. ‘I’d rather just lend it,’ I said, ‘then keep it to remind myself how I started if – that is, if I was to go on.’

Which I was. Someone at the ball, where the mask won first prize, owned an antique shop which needed a decorative mask in the window. From there it snowballed, word of mouth. Dan took me to Venice for a week to research both the history and the art of mask-making by the masters of that art. The attic was quickly converted. I was once or twice photographed for magazines with a selection of my masks. A very rich singer ordered four for his dining-room table. Recently, half a dozen giant masks were commissioned for the carnival in Rio. I’m established now, I think I can say, some seven years after my first attempt.

That first attempt now stands on my desk under a Victorian glass dome. Most days, looking at it, I’m filled with wonder – not at the mask, which is technically pretty crude by my present standards – but at how long it took me to discover what I could do with considerable skill – even art of a minor kind. Chance was my saviour. How reliant we all are on chance. How despairing it is if it eludes us. How lucky I was.

For besides the love I have for Dan and Sylvie, my life now has a point. Half my day is spent creating something wanted by people unknown to me, and those speeding hours, concentrating on the challenge, give pleasure hard to express. Apart from that, I am now a considerable earner. I love being able to contribute financially to our lives, not to have to ask Dan (never anything but generous, but that’s not the point) for money for things for myself: able to pay for presents and theatre tickets and surprises, and to give to charities of my choosing. I love all that. And most of all I love the solitude my work affords me. Every morning I bury myself in my small world of fragments that will go to make up a whole, and I’m free to reflect, to plan, to feel thankful in the refuge that my studio has become.

On the morning after Gilbert and Carlotta came to supper I sat for a while doing nothing. The huge skylight was filled with cloudless blue. The parrot tulips on my desk were bent lower over the sides of the glass vase than they were yesterday. Their white petals scratched with fine pen lines of shadow, their edges ruched like the silk of a century ago. I like white flowers in the studio: colour comes from my feathers and beads and flaring scraps of material. It had gone off all right, really, supper. Very nice seeing Gilbert again, scarcely older looking, a little disoriented having only just got back from New York after so long, and uncertain what he would do next. Carlotta was her usual ebullient self, full of extravagant praise for my cooking though I noticed she left half her cheesecake. When she said, as she was leaving, she had a ticket for a Brahms recital at the Wigmore Hall next evening – her mother had let her down – and would anyone like to go, I would have liked to have accepted the invitation. But it would be Dan’s last night before a business trip to Rome, so I said nothing. Gilbert, with no apparent enthusiasm, offered himself. Carlotta was very curt: took his telephone number and said she’d ring him about arrangements. She left quickly. At the front door – Dan was outside trying to get a taxi – Gilbert said if I needed company for an evening while Dan was away, he’d love to take me to a film, or whatever. I said ‘Good idea. Lovely. Why not?’