Gillespie and I (13 page)

Matters only grew worse, in July, when Sibyl's school closed for the summer and her teachers, the Misses Walkinshaw, left on their annual trip to Florence. With the child at home all day long, it was even harder to keep her out of mischief. That same week, scribbled drawings began to appear on the walls of number 11. Then, one morning, Annie picked up Rose's shoes, only to discover that the entire contents of the pin box had been tipped inside them: thank goodness that the child was too young to dress herself, otherwise she might have pricked her wee foot.

The following evening, Elspeth was on her way to visit the apartment when she noticed several unopened tubes of paint lying in the street. Assuming that these belonged to her son, she gathered them up and brought them inside. In fact, the paints had been a gift, from myself to Annie: I had only recently presented them to her. According to Elspeth, they were scattered on the pavement outside the building, as though they had been hurled, in a temper, from the parlour window. I happened to be there when Annie confronted Sibyl with this latest misdemeanour, sitting her on the piano stool to question her. In response to Annie's accusations, the child's eyes narrowed, and I must admit that I found it disquieting to see the horrid change that came over her face. She hunched her shoulders, clenched her jaw, and adopted an expression of such extreme malevolence as she gazed back at her poor mother that I found myself getting quite cross, on Annie's behalf.

‘Please tell the truth, dear,' she pleaded with her daughter. ‘Tell the truth and shame the Devil. Did you throw the paints out the window?'

But come what may, Sibyl refused to admit her guilt, and she grew increasingly hostile until, eventually, she threw herself down upon the floor and erupted into a screaming tantrum that was almost frightening to behold.

Later that week, in another, more sinister development, the scribbles on the wall began to change. To begin with, they had been simple childish doodles. However, as time went on, the drawings became more disturbing. Both girls had access to crayons, but Sibyl was the more likely culprit since she was known as the troublemaker, and the drawings were apparently too sophisticated to have been executed by her sister. On one memorable occasion, when Annie had gone to fetch something from the kitchen, I heard her gasp and, upon her return to the parlour, she did admit that she had come across something horrible that one of the children had scribbled on the wall. Whatever it was, she must have washed it away immediately, for when I took our teacups through to the sink only a few minutes later, I saw no drawing, only a damp patch on the plaster where one might have been, and I was left to wonder what form this horrid scribble might have taken.

It so happened that, towards the end of the month, I did witness one such scrawl, during a portrait session with Annie. The weather had been cold and damp for a few days, but we had heaped up the fire and made ourselves quite cosy in the parlour. Upstairs in the studio, Ned was working on his
Eastern Palace
, which he hoped would be finished in time to submit to the Selection Committee. My portrait had also made some progress: Annie had begun to tackle the complicated folds of my skirts. Now that she had settled down to working in oils, she seemed more focused and self-assured, but she did look tired, perhaps because of the problems with Sibyl. That afternoon was dull and cloudy. I seem to remember that we had just gone back to work, after one of our rest breaks, and Annie was pacing back and forth, glancing over at my position, as she usually did, to check that my skirts were correctly draped, when, of a sudden, the sun came out, and a blast of light illuminated one side of the room. Annie paused, in the act of wiping her brush, and a strange expression transformed her face. I realised that, instead of studying my pose, she was gazing beyond me, at the corner, near the window. She looked positively alarmed.

As I turned to see what had caught her attention, she swept past my chair and, crouching down at the skirting board, began to rub at the wall with her cloth.

‘What is it?' I asked.

‘Nothing,' she said, sharply. ‘Just a mark on the wall.'

The ‘mark', as she called it, was executed in red and black pastel crayon. Presumably, to avoid alarming me, Annie had endeavoured to shield it from my view, but I caught a glimpse of it, over her shoulder. What I saw can only be described as obscene. It was a crude drawing, about the size of a small marrow, boldly executed, and yet, clearly, the work of a child. I found myself chilled to the bone at the thought that a little girl could have produced such an explicit image.

Perhaps, up to that point, I had failed to realise how grave the situation with Sibyl had become. Although I had overheard Elspeth and Mabel discussing Sibyl's new habit of defacing the walls, I had not realised that what she scribbled would be so brutish and disturbing. However, the sight of that drawing convinced me that the child ought to be brought under control, as quickly as possible.

I suspected that Mabel would have disciplined Sibyl more severely than either of the parents, since she pulled disapproving faces whenever her niece misbehaved—or, indeed, when Annie nursed Rose—and she was the only person who really insisted on keeping the children out of the studio, although, paradoxically, Mabel herself was always up there, talking to her brother. On several occasions, when we had been left alone in the parlour at number 11, she had wasted no time in speaking with me, quite openly, about herself, her broken engagement, and her family. Initially, I had found it hard to warm to Ned's sister, with her puzzling blend of personality traits: she seemed well intentioned, yet pugnacious; sanctimonious, yet confiding. Although she was often abrupt, one could not help but admire her forthright attitude. I soon came to the conclusion that her self-righteous demeanour was the result of having been ignored as a child. Not only did Elspeth, like many mothers, prefer her sons, but her every waking hour was devoted to the coming of God's Kingdom on Earth; to charitable works; and to the various waifs, strays and exotic personages that she collected from around the globe, her particular favourite being the Jews, whom she believed ought to be first in line for conversion to Christianity, which accounted for her initial interest in
me
, when she had assumed that I was Jewish. It did not take much imagination to picture Ned's sister as a child, overshadowed by her brothers, neglected, whilst her mother entertained a multi-hued houseful of guests: Negro evangelists, pallid Polish Jews, olive-skinned Rajahs, dusky Moslem pedlars and all manner of Western missionaries. I had concluded that what Mabel lacked was attention; she yearned to be listened to, and taken seriously. With this in mind, I made it my habit to consult her advice on all things. I sought her counsel on where to find the finest grocer's, and on how I should best pin my hair. She was, at first, I believe, a trifle suspicious; but ultimately, much too opinionated to refrain from giving me the benefit of her wisdom. I made sure to act promptly upon her recommendations, and always congratulated her excellent taste or admirable sense—and, in this way, she began to warm to me.

One afternoon, she joined me at Queen's Crescent, for coffee, which I had taken up drinking on her recommendation. Although Mabel and I had been in the same company together on several previous occasions, this was, I believe, the first time that we had arranged to meet, alone: a crucial milestone in female friendship, as you may be aware, and one at which all might be forever lost, should the general atmosphere not achieve a correct and harmonious (yet somehow indefinable) balance of warmth and mutual respect. Regrettably, I was obliged to maintain a sense of humour that afternoon, since Ned's sister was in a sniffy mood to begin with, and made little effort to endear herself. As soon as she arrived, she found fault with the fabric of the curtains in my sitting room; and then she implied that the view from my window was not quite as attractive as one might have expected; my choice of coffee beans failed to meet with her unmitigated approval; and at the table, she made a great performance of selecting a biscuit, which she then scrutinised, doubtfully, before finally discarding it onto her plate, uneaten.

‘I see you don't share Elspeth's sweet tooth,' I said, in an effort to engage her. ‘You're so slender in comparison. I'd never take you for mother and daughter.'

‘Really?'

‘Not at all! And besides, you and Elspeth seem so different.'

‘Do we?'

The scowl disappeared; her face brightened: it was as if the sun had peeked through the scullery window, unexpectedly, to put a gleam on the pots and pans.

‘Yes indeed!' I cried, sensing that I was onto something. (Of course, poor dear, she loved her mama, but this love was combined, as is so often the case in daughters, with a deep-seated desire to be as different from her as possible.) ‘Presumably you and she do not have the same tendency to gain weight; and as for character—well, in some respects, you and your mother are like night and day!'

‘Oh, I do gain weight,' said Mabel, unable to resist contradicting me. ‘Unless I'm very careful about what I eat. But I have indeed often thought that Mother and I are quite different, temperamentally.'

‘Exactly! And is that not often the case? Annie and Sibyl, for instance—'

‘Och, Sibyl!' said Mabel, and cast her eyes towards the ceiling.

‘She is a handful,' I agreed. ‘These terrible drawings…'

Mabel shook her head in disgust. As it transpired, she was of the opinion that an investigation should be conducted at Sibyl's school, to see if any of the other children might be leading her astray. It was a mixed school, with (according to Mabel) a very rough set of boys. However, since all the pupils and teachers had dispersed for the summer, any enquiry in that arena would have to wait.

‘How on earth does Ned concentrate on his work?' I asked her. ‘Sibyl is up in the studio bothering him most of the time now she's on holiday.'

‘Och, I know! We do try to keep her out, myself especially.'

‘When I was a child, I wasn't allowed to set foot in my stepfather's study.'

‘Of course not!' said Mabel. ‘A man needs somewhere quiet to do his work.'

‘I remember once, when I was about Sibyl's age, I crept in there, while he was upstairs with my mother. He had a collection of kaleidoscopes, you see, that I was curious about. I tiptoed in, and picked one up, and then—suddenly—I heard him coming back downstairs and heading towards the study.'

‘Oh dear!' said Mabel.

‘Yes, I got such a fright, I dropped the kaleidoscope with a clatter, and some of the paint chipped off. My stepfather came bounding in and when he saw what I'd done, he drew back his fist and punched me in the stomach, as though he might have punched a grown man—so hard, in fact, that he lifted me clean off my feet, and I flew into the air and—rather comically, I think—bounced right off the windowpane.'

‘Mercy me!'

‘Oh, the glass didn't break, thankfully, I just bounced off. Landed on my own two feet and scampered out of the room as fast as my little legs would carry me.'

We both laughed.

‘That was that,' I said. ‘Not that I ever minded being hit, and I forgot all about what happened that day, for years, so it can't have done me any harm. But, as you can imagine, I never went near his study again. He could smoke his cigars in there in peace, and think great thoughts about business, without being bothered.'

‘Quite.'

‘Talking of cigarettes…'

I produced one, and proceeded to light it, an act that caused Mabel to hoot with laughter, since I had never previously smoked in her presence. She was shocked, of course, but too proud to show it, hence her forced amusement.

‘Harriet—you're
smoking
?'

‘Oh yes, I've done it for years. Recently, I've found it goes very well with coffee. And it allows one to skip meals, without ever going hungry.'

‘Is that so?' said Mabel, and her gaze fell, with a certain amount of fresh interest, upon the cigarette box.

I blew out a long stream of smoke.

‘Of course, I wouldn't suggest that they box Sibyl's ears, not for a moment, but perhaps she needs to be discouraged, more firmly.'

‘Yes, indeed,' agreed Mabel. ‘I've always maintained they ought to discipline her in some way, so that she knows the difference between right and wrong.'

Unlike Mabel, Ned's mother—no doubt relishing her role as sole grandparent—was inclined to spoil the children. Of course, Elspeth herself required veneration and attention much as others require air to breathe, but she liked to be seen to dote on the girls, particularly Sibyl who, as the firstborn—and, arguably, the prettier child—was her favourite. Perhaps she also felt some guilt at having ignored her own offspring while they were growing up, and compensated for this by being an over-indulgent grandmama. She fussed over Sibyl, with hugs, kisses, and shrieks of delight—perhaps in the knowledge that such a charming ‘tableau of the generations' was bound to attract admiring glances from anyone present. Naturally, most of the admiration was directed at the child, but Elspeth was more than content to bask in the reflected glow. Needless to say, she never scolded Sibyl, and did all that she could to remain in the child's favour.

By contrast, Annie did try to be firm with her daughter, but Sibyl merely had to throw a prolonged and terrifying tantrum in order to get her own way. Ned tended to be even more indulgent than his wife, so that, unfortunately, the two parents often contradicted each other. For instance, Annie might spend all afternoon denying Sibyl more sweet things to eat, only for Ned to give her some Coulter's Candy, in an attempt to stop her whining. Annie did
try
to keep the girl out of his studio, but the artist himself would often crumble before Sibyl's pleading, and invite her in, and then we would hear her leaping around up there like a little flea, pestering him, and keeping him from his work. No matter how great Ned's powers of concentration, his darling Sibyl always found it easy to distract him.