‘Where are you taking me today?’ Rachel says, by way of a greeting.
‘The Blue Moon.’
‘I’ve never heard of it.’
‘It’s on Norfolk Street.’
The sun is hot and glints off the steel street furniture on Fargate. The grey cobbles of Italian granite press up through Rachel’s soles, displacing her thin heels. They turn off down Norfolk Street. Outside a café, people are seated at white metal tables.
‘Why did you choose here, Edward?’
He looks at her, shading his eyes from the sun, ‘Why? Don’t you like it?’
She peers in through the doorway, ‘Not quite up to your usual standard.’
‘I thought you might like a change, somewhere a bit more casual.’
‘Why?’ she says. ‘I like going to nice places.’
Edward pulls out a chair and nods towards the café, ‘Shall we give it a try?’
Reluctantly, she sits down. ‘I’m not sure it’s quite warm enough to sit outside yet.’
‘I think,’ Edward says, ‘that the menu is written on the chalk-board inside.’
He asks the girl behind the counter to bring the board out to their table. Rachel chooses a Stilton and Broccoli quiche, with salad and new potatoes. He has a leek and mushroom bake in a round earthenware dish.
‘You said in your letter, Mother, that you went to Leeds.’
She nods, her mouth still full.
‘Did you go to the art gallery? If I remember rightly, there are some very fine Grimshaws there. Do you remember that time you took me?’
‘I never took you, Edward.’
‘I’m sure you did, or was it Father?’
‘Your father wouldn’t take you either. Wasn’t his sort of thing.’
‘He did take me. I remember now. You’d gone to visit your mother in the Infirmary. We arranged to meet you at the station and it was raining and Father couldn’t make up his mind whether to catch the bus out to the museum at Kirkstall or to take me in the Art Gallery. Then suddenly he said: ‘Let’s go in the art gallery, lad. I haven’t been in there for years. I used to love going in there as a kid’.’
‘Well, he never told me about it.’ Rachel says.
‘Maybe it was his little secret.’
‘He probably went on a school visit once.’
Edward shakes his head in disbelief. ‘You’d never allow the poor man any graces, would you? Or allow me the illusion of him having had any.’
‘Your father always said he was a simple man, with simple pleasures. And he was.’
‘And does that not include art?’
‘Can you ever remember any other instances where he was interested in art, reading, or anything else cultural? I’m not trying to discredit him. I’m simply telling the truth.’
‘Why did you marry him if you had so little in common?’
Rachel examines Edward’s face. There is something strange about him today, he seems agitated. What can she say to him? She shrugs, ‘Why does anyone get married?’
‘For love?’
‘Very rarely, I fear. We got married because we met and there was no one else, and it just sort of happened.’
‘Do you think he loved you?’
Where has this line of questioning come from? She wonders. After all these years why does he want to dig all this up? ‘Yes, I think he did in his own way.’
‘But his love wasn’t good enough.’
‘I’m surprised you don’t think it was me that wasn’t good enough for him.’ She is gratified to see him redden slightly. He changes the subject, ‘How’s your lunch?’
‘Contrary to all expectations, it’s very nice. Just a shame about the lack of ambience.’
‘What more could you want, Mother? The sun is out, you have a clear blue sky, and my company.’
‘More comfortable chairs.’
‘There, I have to agree with you.’
She raises her fork daintily to her lips and chews slowly whilst busying herself in preparation for the next mouthful. ‘By the way, did I tell you that girl, Angela, came to see me? She brought me that portrait.’
‘The one of your father?’
Rachel nods.
‘Are you going to tell me, Mother, how you are related to that French woman?’
‘Oh, you do go on. My father’s mother was French. All right?’
‘Why don’t you ever want to talk about these things?’
‘What’s the point? They’re all in the past.’
‘Yes, but don’t you see,’ Edward says, gesturing with his hands, ‘that’s why I want to talk about them.’
‘She seems a nice enough girl. Interested, almost passionate, about art.’
‘I presume we’re talking about Angela, now.’
‘Yes,’ she smiles. ‘Someone in the present.’
‘She asked me to model for her.’
Rachel thinks she has misheard. ‘What did you say?
‘She’s asked me to model for her.’
Rachel feels her face stiffen. ‘What a nerve. What did you say?’
‘I’ve been going to her studio for about a month now.’
He sounds very pleased with himself.
She ponders for a moment, ‘Not … nude?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Are you crazy?’ She shakes her head. ‘Why on earth would she want to draw you?’
‘Maybe, unlike you and most other people, she doesn’t find me grotesque.’
‘She’s using you, more like. How dare she?’
‘I am a grown man,’ he says quietly. ‘Perfectly capable of looking after myself.’
‘Edward, you mustn’t let her do this. It’s wrong, very wrong.’
His voice rises in pitch, ‘Why, for God’s sake?’
‘What do you think she is going to do with the drawings when she’s finished? Put them in a drawer and forget about them? No. She’s going to display them. Tell me you feel comfortable having your naked body paraded before the world.’
‘You mean, like a freak show?’
She notices the tone of his voice is now lower. ‘Always you have to twist what I say. Look at you. You walk through life hoping no-one will notice you and then some girl comes along and flatters your vanity and you end up naked. What if you got your portrait in the newspaper? How would that feel?’
‘Don’t worry, Mother. I won’t tell them I’m Rachel Anderson’s son –the woman who surrounds herself with beauty, but didn’t quite manage it with her son. Anyway, what about when you did it?”
She searches his face. Surely, she thinks, he doesn’t know, couldn’t know. How could he?
‘Did what?’ she whispers.
He looks down into his lap and fiddles with the end of his tie.
‘Edward? Did what?’ Her voice is unsteady.
He looks straight at her. ‘When you were an artist’s model?’
She finds it difficult to take in what he has just said. He wasn’t alluding to Uncle Jack after all, but this. ‘How did you find out about that?’ She sits back in her chair.
‘Angela told me. Were you doing it while Father was still alive? While I was still living at home?’
She can feel all the blood drain from her face. ‘I can’t remember,’ she stammers.
‘Well, Mother. Why did you do it?’
‘Listen to you.’ She sits forward, suddenly angry. She picks up her bag from the table. ‘What right do you have to pry into my private life?’
Rachel stands waiting for the bus. She is still shaking with rage. How dare he question her on her private life, and how dare he question the way she had treated his father. He had no idea what she’d had to put up with.
She had met him at a dance in the City Hall. He was a good-looking lad, in an ordinary sort of way. He kissed her on their third date. It was a good, sweet kiss, but nothing else. She wished he had at least attempted something else, like some of the other boys had. Their desire for her had made her want to go further, but with George, there was none of that. Was he too respectful? He obviously liked her. She was puzzled. War broke out and before he went off to the front he asked her to marry him. The war brought with it a sense of possibility, a smell of change, so she said, ‘Maybe, maybe not!’
Her mother had been furious with her. ‘You silly girl,’ she’d said. ‘You could be getting and saving his wage, ready for when he comes home.’ Rachel hadn’t cared. She wanted to see what other hands the cards dealt her and, until they were married, she was still free.
She remembers him coming home on leave in 1944, two days after her twentieth birthday. He seemed different. He had become quieter, stronger and thinner; and Rachel could see the muscles in his face twitch taut. They went to Whitby for their honeymoon. Two days in a boarding house. Rachel wanted to ask him if he’d ever done it before, or if it was just her that he felt no passion for?
Edward must have been conceived in those two days; silent sex in the dark each night before they went to sleep.
Nine months later, Edward was born while George was still in Germany. For reasons of her own she had expected that the baby might come after seven months.
By the time George came back, Edward was already three months old.