CRUMBS OF ANCIENT LEAVES thick on the polished concrete. A bright smell of mould coats her nostrils and tickles the back of her mouth. Valerie is too awkward for this space – her loose hair, her loud, dirty breath. The squeak of her shoes cuts into the mossy, hermit coldness.
As a child, she saw Grandad’s studio only on rare and illicit occasions, and only with Freya there for courage. They snuck in during Grandad’s tea break, or while he was entertaining guests. Even then, they stayed only briefly, never touching the canvases or paints, careful to leave no trace of themselves.
The first room, where Grandad used to work, comprises two walls of unpainted breezeblock, two walls of glass and a sloping roof with big skylights in it. To her memory it was always filled with very pale, surgical light. Now, the dim September bears in like a threat, and brown leaves suck hungrily at the glass overhead. She never liked it in here; the oily rags and the half-fleshed faces, the bare stool and the chaise longue for positioning models, bottles of turpentine and tattered drawings. There was something sinister and too functional about it, like a taxidermist’s lair. Her mother has switched on the small lamp in Grandad’s ‘office’ – which is really three plyboard walls erected around a big sink, with little square shelves built above it, a cupboard beneath, and a chair where Grandma sat to mix pigment powders for him and arrange his tubes of paint according to a system no one else understood. There were once many old, forensically detailed Renaissance prints hanging there, and newspaper clippings stuck on with tacks. Most of them are gone now.
Beyond the studio is a darker room with bars on the windows and a complex locking system on the door. That’s where Valerie’s mum emerges from now, struggling with a large, unframed canvas, her face flushing purple-red with the effort.
‘The henhouse stinks,’ says Valerie, though she didn’t expect to say that, and her voice sounds big and contrived now in all the empty space, as on a theatre stage. ‘It needs to be cleaned out…’
‘Yes. Well we might just get someone in to dismantle it. No one keeps hens anymore, not so close to the city. I doubt Grandma even has planning permission…’
‘She was wondering where you were.’
‘There’s a lovely fur coat in the cloakroom, Valerie. You should take it back with you to London for the winter… Grandma won’t be wearing it again.’
Valerie grasps the upper edge of the painting. ‘Oh for goodness sake, Valerie,’ says her mum, jerking away from her, ‘don’t be a ninny-hammer. Get some gloves on before you handle the canvas.’ As she says the word ‘canvas’, it slides from her latex grip and topples face down on the floor with an unceremonious pat. ‘Shit Valerie! Now look what you’ve done! Go to the cupboard and get yourself some gloves.’ She kneels suddenly and tilts her head.
Stretching a latex glove over one hand, Valerie squats beside her.
‘Oh Daddy,’ says her mum, looking dreamily at the underside of the canvas.
An eerie portrait of a girl. She looks far away, or under water, with enormous, searching eyes. Or is it two faces? A ghost face over a living one? Her features are a clash of delicate brushstrokes and thick valleys where a second, cleaner outline has been scraped into the paint, right down to the stained canvas.
The lips are lightly touching, the eyes too frank, trying to see out at them from another world.
Mum’s voice catches at the back of her throat. ‘Look at that!’ she says, ‘Oh Daddy…’ Then, with a frown, ‘Go on, Valerie – put on the other glove there and help me to wrap this…’ And, as an afterthought, ‘That will increase the value, I think. I think so… can’t do any harm.’
*
When they have wrapped five paintings and packed them into the car, Valerie and Aoife return to find the carer sitting in the TV room with a book.
‘Well, Aoife,’ says Grandma. She nods politely at Valerie, her lips pursed. ‘Hello.’
‘We have some private business to arrange,’ says Valerie’s mum, ‘so, Polina, maybe you’d like to give us a moment?’
‘Of course,’ says Polina. ‘But Aoife, could I speak with you for a moment, in the hall…’
Mum rolls her eyes. With a sigh, she drops a large brown envelope on the kitchen table and marches out to the hallway saying, ‘What is it then, Polina, I don’t have much time…’
Valerie stands with her back to the TV. ‘Would you like a cup of tea, Grandma?’
‘I don’t know, darling, what do you think?’
‘Well, or coffee? I’ll make us some coffee, will I?’
‘You could. And make a cup for the nice girl as well, will you please?’
‘Sure.’
‘Lovely girl.’
While the kettle boils, Valerie sets four mugs on the table and puts one of her grandma’s coffee filters on top of each. She glances at the door and, very quietly, she lifts the edge of the envelope and pulls out the contents – a small wad of white A4 pages with the letterhead ‘Dunlin & Son Solicitors.’
The kettle lid shudders violently, the water spitting from the spout – she didn’t close it properly. She whacks the lid down quickly; the switch flicks off and the boiling subsides.
Valerie slides the papers back into the envelope. She begins to pour the boiled water into the coffee filters, then stops when she hears her mum’s voice rising from the hall: ‘Do you not now? What are you – a doctor now too, is it?
The carer’s voice is softer. ‘Well, I am experienced. I think a doctor will say that she’s not fit to make decisions…’
‘What makes you think you know better than me? She is my mother, and this is my business.’
She comes into the room quickly, head down.
‘Mum?’
Her face snaps up, lips tight, eyes small and fierce. ‘Don’t worry, Valerie. Just some busybody non-national got a bit big for her boots…’
Until Grandma’s fall, Valerie had never seen her mother cry. She had never considered her fragile like this. She can’t bear it.
The carer stands by the door, her hands clasped before her.
From the TV room, Grandma’s voice carries like a caw, straining as loud as her breath will allow: ‘Fifi, darling, stop it now. What do you want, darling?’
Valerie brings a mug into the TV room, sits on the footstool and takes her grandmother’s hand. Grandma’s face is squeezed up, her brow low and her mouth tense; two very red patches have emerged under her eyes, as though she might cry.
‘Coffee is just filtering, Grandma…’
The carer’s voice is very quiet, very steady. ‘She is confused,’ she says, ‘and it’s distressing for her. There are strategies that can help. I really don’t understand why you won’t get an assessment…’
Aoife is sitting at the table now, her back to the door and the envelope on her knee. She hulks around like a cornered animal, glaring up at the carer.
‘How dare you?’ she says, her voice a simmer. ‘She is my mother, and I refuse to treat her like an old woman. I refuse to tip-toe around her. She is my mother, and, and…’
Painful pity unfolds in Valerie’s chest. Her mother looks old. She looks wretched.
‘… and who are you? Do the agency know you carry on like this? I hired you to do your job, not to stick your nose into family affairs. She’s my mother. MY mother, do you understand?’