May #3
It turned out that, as well as dropping round the lemon drizzle cake while we were out walking, Peggy had delivered three dressed Norfolk crabs.
Apparently, she’d called my mother that morning and asked if she could pick up any shopping for her while she was in town.
I was pleasantly surprised. Usually, my mother made a point of cooking a roast when we came to stay because she knew that in London we tried to avoid eating too much meat.
Protein, she would announce, as she piled flesh and bones onto our plates.
After showering I returned to the kitchen to find her sighing at her homemade chips, which hadn’t crisped up to her liking.
‘Do you want some help, Mum?’
‘No, I’m all right,’ she said, shuffling them about in the tray and returning them to the oven. ‘Unless you want to trim that samphire?’
‘Absolutely.’ I unwrapped the vibrant green stalks and gave them a good rinse. As I reached for a knife, she told me it would be easier and quicker with scissors. I found a pair in the drawer and started snipping.
‘Why don’t you sit down?’ she asked, flicking her wrist towards the table.
‘I’m fine,’ I said, tapping my toes, wondering if she was going to resume our conversation from the beach and why she suddenly seemed tetchy.
Five minutes later, her lips were pressed together, and I was standing still. She’d never been good at multitasking and right now the mayonnaise required her undivided attention.
‘Janey, what can I do?’
Noah had appeared in the threshold, wearing a cotton jumper with a high neck that nudged up against his stubble, his winter beard hibernating in anticipation of the summer.
‘How’s work, darling?’ She was whisking, and clearly talking to me. Occasionally Noah was darling man, but never darling.
I widened my eyes at him, and he shrugged his shoulders and nodded for me to go ahead. ‘Work’s great, thanks, Mum.’ I started to talk about my progress with the seascape, then I paused. ‘Can Noah help with anything?’
Her eyes flashed towards him. ‘Oh, Noah, I didn’t see you there.’
We exchanged another look.
‘Not to worry, Janey,’ he said. ‘How about I lay the table?’
‘That would be lovely. Plates are up here, in this cupboard, and cutlery is in that drawer.’
‘Great. And in the meantime, you should ask Cathy about her whale.’
‘What whale?’ she asked, looking me in the eye for the first time since I’d come downstairs.
‘In the painting.’ I smiled, her peculiar mood forgotten as I launched into the latest news of Hendrick.
I was stuffed when we went to bed and as I crept downstairs the following morning to make my mother’s card – a birthday tradition – I still felt full.
I knelt on the carpet in front of the TV and opened the cupboard below, which was filled with old family photos.
That Christmas I’d helped her organise them into three broad categories : family, friends, holidays.
We’d laughed at past fashions and more than a handful of dodgy haircuts.
She regretted that my father had always been the one behind the camera.
I pulled the family box out of the cupboard and onto my knee.
I knew what I was letting myself in for, and yet, my stomach started to jitter when I saw the first photo.
It showed my mother on the living-room floor with me, fresh from the womb, with sallow skin ; it must have been just a few minutes later that the midwife phoned for an ambulance.
My dark hair was wet and flat against my tiny skull, my legs like a frog’s, and my fingers sticking out at crooked angles – not unlike my mother’s now, old and arthritic.
She looked exhausted, her own hair wet with sweat, shoulders slumped, face red.
Exhausted, but ecstatic. A grin extended across her cheeks, which were streaked with tears of joy, relief.
The jitteriness soon turned to nausea, and I hadn’t drunk enough wine the night before to call it a hangover.
‘Everything all right in here?’
The photo slipped through my fingers and back into the box, which I returned to the cupboard. In its place I pulled out the holidays compilation.
‘Cathy?’
I turned around and smiled at Noah, who smelled fresh after a shower and was already dressed. ‘All good, just finding a photo for Mum’s card.’
He came and sat in the nearest chair, and I handed him a small pile.
‘How about this one?’ he asked, a minute later, holding up a picture of her dressed as if for the runway with the green and pleasant Welsh hills rolling in the background.
I remember my father telling me that it was one of the first photos he’d taken of her, on his first camera – a bulky black thing that he wore around his neck on a thick leather strap.
They were on their honeymoon. Her hair was blown out and a pair of big dark glasses concealed half her face.
Again, she was grinning, but not with the same abandon. Still.
‘It’s perfect,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’
He touched his hand to my shoulder and told me he would put the kettle on.
When I was done with my card, I joined him in the kitchen.
Together we made pancakes – another birthday tradition – and when my mother appeared we sang to her.
The three of us sat at the table and I told her to make a wish before blowing out the candles I’d poked into the stack between blueberries.
She grumbled.
‘Don’t worry, Janey, seventy is the new fifty,’ said Noah.
‘I’ll remind you of that when you turn fifty, Noah. When is that?’
‘Touché.’
‘Do you have to rush off after breakfast?’ she asked, popping a blueberry in her mouth. Then, while chewing : ‘Is there somewhere you need to be?’
‘No, Mum,’ I said, glancing at Noah, who smiled and nodded. ‘Nowhere other than here.’
He knew I always found it hard to say goodbye, especially now that she was living on her own.
In the end, we stayed an extra night and got up at five o’clock the next morning to drive back to London, the sky brightening above us, a wash of pink and lilac.
Back at work, I’d uncovered the tip of the whale’s tail and now it was time to make a start on its head.
Strictly speaking, only conservationists are supposed to enter the studios, but I’d had more than a few curious members of museum staff poke their heads in as they ‘just happened to be passing’.
I’d also had a visiting request from seven-year-old Allie, who had been sitting between me and Daniel at dinner earlier that week and caught her father’s enthusiasm.
So, you were right about that triangle being a fin?
he’d asked, a forkful of green beans hovering mid-air.
That’s amazing, Cathy! Allie quickly swallowed her mouthful and echoed his sentiments : Amazing! Amazing!
As I chipped away at the overpaint, I began to think again about my body and the way it sheds hair, skin, blood.
The way it’s constantly changing and renewing, dead cells breaking away to make space for new cells to grow.
To grow, or, as in the whale’s case, to reappear.
While the human body flushes those cells of its own accord, works of art need a helping hand.
For a moment, I imagined a layer of overpaint on my skull, cloaking any unsolicited thoughts.
Frank could tell I was distracted, I’m sure. He was across the room carrying out a moisture treatment on a canvas and kept sneaking glances at me and – unlike my mother – probing.
He slipped on his Latex gloves, the artificial shade of mouthwash, and asked me if I was feeling all right. ‘You know, the whale can wait if not.’
‘I’m fine,’ I said, pushing my optivisor up onto my head as I would a pair of sunglasses and leaning back to get a broader look at the work I’d done so far.
As if to prove it, I turned to him and started talking about the first time I’d tried the kind of treatment he was doing.
‘I was terrified,’ I said, shaking my head as he pulled the cork out of a glass bottle of white spirit with a satisfying pop and tipped a small amount directly onto the surface.
‘I mean, I knew it was harmless, but that didn’t make me any less anxious about pouring solvent onto a centuries-old painting. ’
‘You and me both,’ he said, temporarily accepting my diversion.
He picked up a cloth and spread the clear liquid across the canvas, rubbing it in a circular motion until he was satisfied it had soaked in.
I watched as he picked at the corners of the protective tissue covering the surface and, like human skin after it’s been badly burned, peeled it off in mostly large pieces.
‘So?’
I glanced up from his fingertips to his face, which was steady, giving nothing away. ‘So, what?’
‘Are you going to tell me what’s on your mind?’
I laughed.
‘You know I’m not one to give up.’
‘I’m not sure if you want to hear it this time, Frank.’ We’d never spoken about anything to do with reproduction – perhaps because we had a mutual understanding.
‘Try me.’
I looked at the whale, then back at him. ‘Children.’
He repeated the word back to me, nodding thoughtfully. ‘You’re considering it – or, rather, them?’
‘Not exactly.’
Again, he nodded.
‘Did you?’ I asked. ‘Consider it.’
‘Ah, well,’ he said, smiling, ‘I thought we were talking about you.’
‘We are.’
Again, he accepted the slight digression. ‘We considered it.’
We. He and Douglas. Together.
‘Too seriously, you might say.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Parenting isn’t something that could just sort of happen for us, for obvious reasons,’ he said.
‘It would require extra steps, and the logistics and money involved in those steps meant we had to be sure – beyond sure, really.’ He laughed as he added, ‘If we were heterosexual, we might have just said, Fuck it.’
I felt myself stiffen on my stool, and Frank must have noticed.
‘No, of course, it’s better this way – to carefully consider it rather than just do what everyone else does.’ He waved a hand towards the door, as if indicating the general public.