How You See Me (6 page)

‘First things first. You need to get a bed down here for him. He’s been sleeping on that chair for months now, after he filled that boxroom upstairs with clutter. You can get him one of those beds down from the attic room. Mabel’s old wire-spring should be still packed up there in bits. And I should know: it was me that packed the bloody thing in the first place.

‘Now don’t you go disappearing down those bags – I can see to putting this lot away and you can make a start. I’ll give you a shout before I leave. See how much you can get done before then. Might even be a cup of tea in it for you.’

So I was set to my task. When will she remember that she isn’t actually our mother? I stamped up the stairs like a truculent teenager. Then I faced the attic. It’s going to take me at least a week to clear. Dad seems to have been using it as a dumping ground since I left.

Our little sleeping den under the rafters. Do you remember it, Mab? You must. It’s our childhoods that are packed away in that room. Our memories.

(Later)

If they are our memories, then how come I don’t remember any of them? There are toy planes and a doll’s house, for Christ’s sake! I’m going to have to hire a skip for all this crap. I’ll send you the receipt in my next letter.

(Later)

You will not believe what I found in the attic. Maggie’s Tarot pack. Well, parts of it. Do you remember that summer she tried to convince us she was a gypsy? Massive Maggie, the butcher’s daughter, decked out in dangly earrings, fringed scarves and long skirts, whispering fortunes to us in our cots. You, of course, too tall for yours and too wise for either me or Maggie.

‘It’s unlucky,’ you told her. ‘You shouldn’t buy a Tarot pack, you have to steal them.’

‘Maggie Cotton is no thief. And I’ll have you know these cards are a family heirloom, passed down through the generations.’

We could hear her struggling with the cellophane wrapping. In fact, I’d been with her the day before when she bought them in the hippie shop that had just opened up
in town. She’d let me get a pack of joss sticks. I broke them up and used them to pretend to smoke. The attic stank of patchouli.

‘You can have one card each and then to sleep. No, Mabel, do it properly. Take it with your left hand, like it says to in the book.’

She sat down heavily on my feet and fanned the cards for you. The Fool. I sniggered.

‘Shut up, idiot.’

‘No, the Fool is a good card. Now, let me see,’ Maggie opened the book that came with the cards, careful not to crack the spine. ‘Here we go: adventure and travel; new starts and new beginnings.’

‘I like the dog.’

‘Now it’s Danny’s turn.’

‘This is stupid,’ you said, but I saw you slip the Fool under your pillow.

I chose the Lovers and you laughed at me. I was embarrassed, but was too young to know why. Maggie was sweet to me, telling me whatever fortune they had written down; stroking my hair. My bones rocked as she shifted her haunches.

‘Plenty of time for all that when you’re a big boy.’

But I knew I was already a big boy. They were always telling me so at school.

She left me with the card and eventually I stole yours. Did you know that? They’re not with the pack I found, but I can still remember the faces.

The Lovers were a pair of figures in courtly dress and would not meet my eye, so absorbed were they by each
other’s. The man had long hair, almost as long as the woman’s. Their faces were so alike, they could have been transferred one from the other. A naked cherub hung from the branches of the trees that twined around them and aimed its dart at their linked hands as if to cut them in two.

Your Fool’s moonlike face gazed wistfully towards a decorative border, where bolts of gold paint were twisted into the assumption of a sun. The little mongrel dog appeared in the bottom right-hand corner, his jaws agape, seeming ready to nip at the heels of his master and frighten him off the cliff-edge that threatened his feet. That’s what you’d liked; that’s what you’d thought was funny.

They were such treasures to me at one time. I would look at them every night you were away. They must be somewhere in all this mess. Perhaps, if I had been a normal boy, I would have had a treasure chest of some kind. A tobacco tin bound up in rubber bands and tape, which I buried in the garden, like those time capsules they have on TV, for other kids to find and wonder at. Perhaps, if I had been a normal boy, I would understand more about the contents of this room than a shabby pack of cheap Tarot cards.

I haven’t even found the beds yet.

I enclose a letter for Freya.

Daniel

P.S. Thank you for the present. I’m still not sure what to make of it. I’ve hung it over my bed until I decide.

20th November

The Studio

Dear Freya –

Thank you for your letter. And I must apologise for mine. You must be sick of comments like this, but – for me, in my head – you will always be that little girl who scratched at the door of my sick room in Corsica, ready to play and always asking for another game. But now I must think of you as an elegant young lady of fifteen. This makes me feel about a hundred years old.

I’m more than happy to be an excuse for you to use your written English – which is excellent, by the way. This is another thing I can’t imagine: you and your mother chatting away in French. She was always hopeless at languages at school. Believe me, I’ve seen the reports.

Your grandad is doing fine. I’m sure your mum will explain better than I can, but he’s not up to writing just yet. I did read him your letter and I’m sure he was as pleased as me to hear all your news, especially about your art lessons. We’d love to hear some more and I’m sure that a picture or two would really brighten up the house, if you feel like sharing. It can be pretty lonely here, with just your grandad and Tatty for company, but we’re all getting on all right.

Hope to hear from you again soon,

Uncle Dan

23rd November

The Studio

Dear Alice –

Usually when people meet me it’s my father they want to know about. Not you, my darling; you didn’t even make the connection, did you? And now I refuse to sit here and write another letter about the great men in my life, Aubrey Tolburgh and Michael Laird. It was the women who were important. For me at least.

When I was a child, they came through the studio one by one, only occasionally in groups, rows of limbs and breasts and arses. Quite an education. I watched them as they posed and during their breaks. Some bound themselves up in robes; some paraded naked, stretching out cramps and scratching at pubic hair and armpits. Carols, Karens, Susans, Jennifers and Janes; even a Gertrude and a Heidi. Some were kind to me. Some I loved.

Katie. She was a delicate thing, with scuffed knees and long dark marks on her forearms and thighs. She said she bruised like soft fruit; that it was nothing to worry about. She was so slight that my father had to force her into complicated and painful poses to get some sense of undulation.

‘What do you think of when you’re posing, Katie?’

‘I don’t know. It’s a long concentration. I think about everything and nothing. Mostly just try and forget about the pain. Sing songs in my head. Make lists of what I have to do.’

‘I think about the ways I’ll put your father to death if he doesn’t give me the break he promised.’ That was another
one. There was a group of girls gathered round the kitchen table with cups of tea and cigarettes. They laughed at the other girl’s comment, but I wanted to hear more from Katie. I wanted to hear the right answer to my question: that, when she modelled, she thought of me.

Katie was one of the first girls he submerged. This was before Sarah arrived and the pool was dug; Katie had to make do with the downstairs bath and Dad hanging over the shower rail. Her dark hair was so thin you could see segments of white scalp between the wet locks. That night, I lay in the same bath, the tack tack of my fist familiar against the perfumed water as I brought myself off, to thoughts of Katie lowering her bony behind on to my cock, my fingers gripping and marking her pale flesh with bruises my father would have to paint in the next day.

I bumped into Victoria (‘call me Vicky’) in the village shop yesterday. She was another of the local girls, now married with children in high school ties by her side and a basket full of sweet breakfast cereal and fizzy drinks. I managed to ask after Katie and she told me she’d disappeared to the city with a bad lot after Dad stopped booking her. I was grateful that, after the first shock of recognition, I could remember I never much cared for Victoria. She looked old and faded and seemed annoyed, even nervous, at meeting me. You’d think she’d be grateful for the distraction, for the chance to relive better days.

Maggie was the one that never left. She was the mother hen with the frying pan at the stove, distributing tea and cigarettes, laughing, and chiding the girls who complained about the poses they’d been set, the length of time they’d been forced to sit, the large boy who followed them about
and destroyed their concentration. Maggie would hear no criticism of me, and those models who dared it had short careers in the Laird studio. Dad was famous enough by that time; there would always be more girls. Until there was Sarah, of course. And then there was only Sarah.

For me, now it will only be you.

Your Daniel x

27th November

The Studio

Dear Aubrey –

You’ll probably have a hundred reasons in a file somewhere to explain why I’m saying this, but really, Aubrey, you must take this as my final word: I have no use for more of your pills. Your letters, however, I have to admit are welcome. It’s good to have someone objective to write to; someone who’s not tied up in the emotional stuff going on here.

I’ve been thinking a little lately about our relationship. Maybe sometimes I am unfair to you. I blame you for not playing a part, and I’m not even sure anyone informed you that we were on stage.

I’m with Dad at the hospital for his check-up. Isn’t everyone meant to say they hate hospitals? I have to say I don’t mind them. I find the waiting rather restful. There’s the smell, of course – sanitised wards imbued with the stench of stewed shit – but it just makes it more intimate, like using a toilet when the seat’s still warm.

We wait with the very old. I try to mimic the other carers with their loud whispered questions and concerns. It’s hard to keep Dad in his chair. He keeps twitching his fingers against the armrests and then trying to haul himself up. I don’t know where else he thinks he needs to be, but, wherever it is, he wants to get there in a hurry. I’m getting kind of pissed off with him, but one of the other carers gives me a smile-grimace of sympathy and I’m forced to play the dutiful son. I get Dad a magazine and turn the pages of glossy smiles under his chin, trying to catch his attention. I’m like a child with a buttercup:
do you like butter?
What I want to do is just sit here and watch the nurses and the doctors and the patients. I want to be ignored by the women busy behind their desks and carry a chit of paper from the blue waiting room to the red waiting room. I want to follow the biro lines round every completed word search and drink overpriced watered-down coffee in the cafeteria. I could live here quite happily for months. I realise I’m hoping they’ll say that Dad’s too bad to go home, that we’ll get a little holiday in the hospital.

The doctor says he’s progressing well, but slowly. He says Dad’s speech still isn’t great, but he does have some words now, which should cut down on the frustration and tantrums. He mentions small strokes occurring all the time. Landmines in his brain. He reads all this off a clipboard after greeting Dad and taking hold of his hand. He lets Dad keep hold of his hand while he reads. Dad is very quiet. He watches the doctor’s face. I find myself embarrassed by the fact that the doctor is talking to me and not Dad. I also worry Dad’s about to say something. He has that look more
and more these days, as if he’s just going to come out and say it: ‘I hate this man. This is the son I hate. This is the son I had to beat nearly to death to get out of my house. This is who you have taking care of me. Who you have living with me. Help me.’

But he doesn’t say anything, just twists his mouth and watches the doctor talk. I notice how dirty Dad’s glasses are, and the stains on his trousers. I should have dressed him up for the doctor. I should be doing a better job. If I do a better job, maybe when the time comes he’ll forgive me for whatever it was I did so wrong.

Daniel

28th November

The Studio

Dear Mab –

I’ve been digging into the attic for days now and I finally reached your bed. Maggie was right, it was packed into pieces, and piled on top of it were canvases. New paintings. I’m not talking about a few pieces here, Mab. There are over twenty – and that’s not counting the sketches. The weirdest thing is: they are all portraits. They’re obviously Dad’s work, but I’ve never seen them before. Do you know anything about them?

Whoever stored them here couldn’t have cared much about the condition they would be found in. They’ve been piled face to face, so the oils have to be peeled free of each other, leaving eyes and ears and lip smears on the face
of their partner. Some I’m too scared to touch, they’re so bound together and dried into place.

There are three subjects: me, Sarah, and Dad himself. When could he have painted these? Oh, why do I ask you that question, when we both know when he must have done it?

But, they’re good, Mab. Really good. I think they must be some of his best work. And they are so different from the Nudes series. It’s not just that they’re portraits; the quality of brushwork and the insight is exquisite. They are like nothing I’ve ever seen before. But they are definitely Dad’s.

It was right at the bottom of the pile that I found the self-portraits. I have one propped in front of me while I write. He must have used several mirrors, because he doesn’t meet the eye. (In fact, thinking about it, most of the subjects are looking away into the far corners of the paintings… that old life model trick about never meeting the artist’s eye.) I know how you feel about self-portraits, but there’s none of that strained intensity you hate so much. He just looks as if he’s sitting there thinking about something, as if he’s watching TV. There’s a cigarette in his hand rather than a brush, and his glasses show a film of grime and slight reflections of the light from the window. There’s no trace of vanity in this painting; you can see the marks of age, the old man he is becoming. No paint-splattered clothing or easel intersecting the canvas; no painful landmarks to his trade. He is just another subject to be examined.