Aunt Margaret's Lover (2 page)

She said, 'It's for the stockings, dear.'

I said, 'Tights, actually.'

She said, 'I wonder if they are as
hygienic?'

'I don't know,' I said. 'But at least you don't need suspenders and all that bother.'

'Yes,' she said, 'I can see that must be quite a plus. Nowadays all I have to do is hook mine over my knees and they stay there. So simple. I used to hate suspenders. Give me garters every time.' She said all this quite loudly and then lifted her skirt up a little way to prove it.

A middle-aged man with a pink cravat, yellow shirt and long curling hair gurgled
embarrassedly behind us. It was
hardly the conversation of the cognoscenti. I laughed. Shook her hand. Moved on. As I moved away she called me back.

'Why are you so interested in the framing of things?'

'It's important to me,' I said, and added, more pompously than I meant, 'And it's important to the picture. It's my job.'

She wheeled herself forward, looked interested. 'You do it for a living?'

'Yes,' I said. 'Though not for much of one.'

'Give me your telephone number,' she said, 'and I shall put a bit of business your way.'

'I'll bet,' I thought.

But I was wrong. I reframed the Rosenquist exactly as I had described it and it did look very good. And when I delivered it to her house in Parson's Green I understood what a genuine connoisseur of the contemporary she was. She might look like Arsenic and O
ld Lace but her collection, mostl
y drawings and prints, was unrelentingly modern.

'Why?' I asked.

'Why not?' she said briskly. 'Enough of me lives in the past already.' She raised a finger. 'Perpetual modernness is the measure of merit in every work of art. So said Emerson and I quite agree with him. He was about eighty when he died, so it kept him going.' She smiled. 'I expect it will do the same for me
..
.'

From then on everything Mrs Mortimer bought came to me to be framed. And other smaller stuff that she kept in portfolios and drawers was g
radually sifted through - Dubuf
fet to Dine, Hepworth to Pollock. Infinite variety showing catholic taste and a positive eye. She was not fond of, and did not buy, Hockney. I was surprised. He was, after all, highly sought. 'JVbf a very good painter, dear,' she said. 'And not much above being a common or garden graphic artist. If you want to see a really lovely line look at Matisse or Roger Hilton . . .'

She had a small Matisse
Head of a Girl
which I coveted beyond anything. It made me feel like crying - it was so

11
lovely, so tender and in it I could recognize Saskia's innocent childishness. Matisse had captured the melancholy beauty of transience, that feeling the owners of children seldom experience in their company unless they observe them asleep. When I looked at this, through the blurry haze of emotion, I saw exactly what she meant about the lovely line.

Through Mrs Mortimer's connection I also picked up a modest amount of other business, though I was never going to be, nor did I want to be, a contract framer. I left the hotels and restaurants to others and concentrated on galleries and private customers. Sometimes I framed pictures for the artists themselves and I dreaded this. Either they had no clue about
what
they wanted but knew, in abundance, what they did not want. Or they knew
exactly
what they wanted to the nth degree. I never worked out which was worse.

So I was busy and eventually moved the business out of the studio and into a small shop near Hammersmith. My niece grew up alongside me self-aware, self-assured, happy. She looked so like Lorna that I sometimes ached. She had her mannerisms too - a way of putting her head on one side, a half-smiling pucker of the lips when she wanted something but didn't quite know how to ask.

Its most poignant appearance came when she had a question about her mother. What kind of clothes did she wear? Did she tell jokes, eat spinach, wear her hair long or short best, like cats? Easy to answer. Easy to get out the photo album.

Its most excruciating appearance was when she wanted to know something about her father. I always felt this was a betrayal. After all, she knew he had killed her mother. How could she want to know more than that? But of course death is only a word to a child, only that, not a concept of taking-away. Since Saskia had no real concept of what had been taken away,
ergo
the deed was not especially heinous or inexpiable. Her friends had fathers, even if they did not live with them, and so must she. I could not deny her questions, but they hurt because, really, I wanted her to hate him and hate what he had done. I did.

I don't know exactly when my resolute bitterness about him faded to just plain contempt. Around the time my father died, I think. I remember hearing the name Dickie on someone's lips at the funeral. They were looking at Saskia, recognizing what I chose not to in her. And I was aware, suddenly, of it somehow being less painful. I hadn't wanted Lorna to die, she had died far, far too soon, and she was my beloved sister. But I looked at Dad's grave. At some point, I thought, we
must
set things down. Or at least bury them a long way out of sight.

Gradually it became as easy to answer those questions -Did he live here for long? What kind of pictures did he paint? Was he handsome? - as it was to talk about Lorna. Time is not only a healer, it is an instructor. It teaches you how to respond to what is important in the past, and what to set aside. Saskia had a father. It could not be ignored for ever.

Grudgingly I brought out photographs, the ones I was unable to destroy, of Lorna and Dickie together - usually laughing, certainly alway
s looking the beautiful couple
and Saskia kept them in her room, innoce
ntly
glad to have them. She had been made by two people and I had to accept it. In any case, she soon began to show a talent for drawing and painting, and not only a talent but a passion. As she studied this or that picture waiting for collection, she had such a look of her father about her that it would have been pointless to pretend. One day, I knew, she would seek him out.

Dickie was somewhere in Canada. He had been sighted, like a rare and fabulous creature - only once - by a friend of mine who was passing through Montreal.

'How does he look?' I asked, galled.

'Thinner, wiser and embarrassed to see me. He's not exhibiting so far as I know. It was all quite by chance.' 'He's still painting, then?'

'Faces and torsoes mo
stly
. I think he sells, just doesn't show.'

I remembered how Lorna had looked after they pieced her together. 'Apposite subject matter,' I said grimly. 'Don't tell Saskia. Not yet.'

One day, I told myself, but not yet. And when the time came, around her sixteenth birthday, for her to say in sudden and illuminated wonder, 'I should like to meet my father,' I concurred. Time, the aged nurse, had more or less rocked me to patience
...
Nothing was for ever except time itself and I didn't own
that, only a small piece of it’
The only certainty was change.

I went on working hard and enjoying it. And being Aunt Margaret - a title coined at the beginning by friends and well-wishers in amused deference to my tender years and which, for some reason, was never dropped. I was as social as any single parent can be, took Saskia on holiday to places like Club Med where she made friends while I read and lazed and had occasional dalliances, flitted around galleries in London, went to the theatre and cinema. Generally I was quite happy. Very occasionally I had flings - but not many, and I was certainly not interested in anything deeper.

Colin, my last lover in those days of yore, was quite nice really - Saskia named her hamster after him - but the potential between us was more than I wanted and I let it go. Besides, hamster or not, Saskia at five could make any man feel he was a usurper. Colin put a bolt on my bedroom door to counter the possibility of mistaken child rape. A timely precaution since once, when we were actually at it, we suddenly found we had a threesome. Saskia had slipped under the duvet. Than which, I declare, there is nothing more designed to deflate one's sexual appetite; the guilt of the corrupting harm unleashed by one's frivolous, selfishly adult pursuits on an innocent child (or so I looked upon her apparent guilelessness then) was salutary. He went straight down to B&Qthe next morning with a very determined jaw-line.

But Colin's lock, of course, did not work. She just banged on the door with her fists. And I defy anybody to deal with a small child bent on being disruptive. Yes, certainly, you can put them back to bed - but try getting smoochy with a background melody of hysterical screaming. You can get a babysitter and go to a hotel for a night - but
...
Well, the courtesan anonymity soon wears off and you find yourself wanting your own bathroom. You can get a babysitter and go to his place, and there is a certain delicious wickedness in driving back across London still steamy from your lover's embrace and paying off the babysitter while trying not to simper. You can do all these, and more, but what you cannot do is
relax.
And so, at the end of the day, I chose tranquillity. It was just easier. Besides, I was working so hard it was scarcely a choice. And if I had
really
wanted to -if I had met the combined talents of Picasso, Shostakovich and Auden, with the physical attractions of Paul Newman and a
Playgirl
centrefold - then it might have been different. But the combination never presented itself. Besides, I was aware that the kind of man who attracted me had just those elements - dash, style, danger - that had killed my sister. I was not going to risk Saskia's affections being betrayed or usurped again. The sandal-and-sockers with their patient smiles and caring dispositions left me yawning into the distance, so I stayed with friendship and company, which was a very reasonable compromise.

Marriage? A love match? I never came near. I met Roger when Saskia was sixteen. He was undemanding, pleasant company and went fishing a lot. He also loved music, Schubert and Grand Opera in particular, which is where he must have sunk all his passions. This made it easy. We buffered each other and seldom did anything of a hands-on nature. It was so dull if we did. He was in his forties, and a schoolteacher. He suited my purpose. Ovid says you should never tell a failing lover what their faults are unless you want to bind them closer, for they will try to improve them. Good advice if you wish to remain free.

Colin was still around, too, but only as a friend. He went away, after the door-locking incident, and then came back again years later and lodged with me for a while. He had married, divorced and had a son who lived with his ex-wife. He had been caught cock-naked, as he put it, humping the Spanish au pair spoonlike into the linen cupboard. Apparently she was always bending down with her legs straight and wore skirts. He assured me it was the quintessential male fantasy and irresistible. I made a vow never to do such a thing myself - which was unlikely anyway since I mostly wore jeans or leggings - and I told him that, while he stayed with me, if he ever saw me approaching a linen cupboard, he should jolly well shut his eyes.

But what he described going through in ending his marriage redoubled my resolve about serious relationships. He laughed and said that if I hadn't chucked him out, he would never have got into the mess in the first place. I thought, Oh yes you would - only you would be doing it with
my
au pair. I had to admit it was a sexy notion, though - not the au pair but the manner of it. I dallied with the fantasy of such fun for about an hour and then set it to one side. Fun could happen later, if at all, and certainly after Saskia had grown and flown . . . Anyway, fun did not necessarily mean being wedged into a small space smelling of Persil with your face down in a pile of towels.

Roger was definitely not the linen cupboard type, so that was that. I suppose the sustaining aspect of
him
was that he was fully house-trained and you could take him anywhere. And if you didn't take him, he didn't seem to mind.
He
was more amenable than amusing, more reliable than desirable, but he was kind and patient, especially with Saskia, who, though essentially good, nevertheless had her moments. And if these virtues of his did not set the world alight, they certainly oiled the turn of its axis. But it was not the bedrock of a fun-packed relationship. And nothing to do with that other activity, either, the one that makes hearts beat, blood pump, joy and despair crave equal partnership
...
No. Nothing to do with love.

Around about the time that we started preparing for

Saskia's departure a certain restlessness invaded me, which gave everything a new and disturbing edge. I put it down to the immense change about to occur in my life, the menopause of surrogacy, and thought, as I helped Saskia plan her trip, of Mrs Mortimer and how enviable she was in her tranquillity. I longed to get to that point, to being a fulfilled woman, a woman at peace, and to end my days like that. She had her collection, her home, her routines, and her daily woman. She seemed to lack for nothing.