Falling Angels. Tracy Chevalier
Grandmother.
‘Good idea, Maude,’ Mummy said. ‘If she’ll agree.’
Daddy looked up from the Mail. ‘I would be very surprised if she agreed to see such an unsavoury thing.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Mummy said. ‘I think it’s rather a clever idea. I’m surprised you don’t, given how much you like urns.’
When I heard the word urn, I knew they would argue, so I ran down to the bottom of the garden to tell Lavinia that we might go to the cemetery the next day. Daddy and Mr Waterhouse have put up ladders so that we can climb the fence more easily, after I sprained my wrist once from falling.
I am rather frightened of Grandmother. She looks as if she has swallowed a fishbone and can’t get it out, and she says things that I would be punished for saying. Today when she arrived she looked at me and said, ‘Lord, child, you are plain. No one would guess you were Kitty’s daughter. Or my granddaughter, for that matter.’ She always likes to remind everyone that she was a beauty when she was younger.
We went up to the morning room, and Grandmother said once again that she did not approve of the colours Mummy had done the room in. I rather like them. They remind me of the workman’s café Jenny sometimes takes me to as a treat, where there is a pot of mustard and a bottle of brown sauce on each table. Perhaps Mummy saw them there and decided to use them in her morning room – though it is hard to imagine Mummy in a workman’s café, with all the smoke and grease and the men who have not shaved. Mummy has always said she prefers a man with smooth skin like Daddy’s.
Mummy ignored Grandmother’s remarks. ‘Coffee, please, Jenny,’ she ordered.
‘Not for me,’ Grandmother said. ‘Just a cup of hot water and a slice of lemon.’
I stood behind them by the window so that I could look out through the venetian blinds. It was dusty outside, what with all the activity in the street – horses pulling carts loaded with milk, coal, ice, the baker’s boy going door to door with his basket of bread, boys bringing letters, maids running errands. Jenny always says she is at war with dust and is losing the battle.
I liked looking out. When I turned back to the room, where dust floated in a shaft of sunlight, it seemed very still.
‘Why are you lurking back there?’ Grandmother said. ‘Come out so we can see you. Play us something on the piano.’
I looked at Mummy, horrified. She knew I hated playing.
She was no help. ‘Go on, Maude,’ she said. ‘Play us something from your last lesson.’
I sat down at the piano and wiped my hands on my pinafore. I knew Grandmother would prefer a hymn to Mozart, so I began to play ‘Abide with me’, which I know Mummy hates. After a few bars Grandmother said, ‘Gracious, child, that’s terrible. Can’t you play better than that?’
I stopped and stared down at the keys; my hands were trembling. I hated Grandmother’s visits.
‘Come, now, Mother Coleman, she’s nine years old,’ Mummy at last defended me. ‘She hasn’t been taking lessons for long.’
‘A girl needs to learn these things. How’s her sewing?’
‘Not good,’ Mummy answered frankly. ‘She’s inherited that from me. But she reads very well. She’s reading Sense and Sensibility, aren’t you, Maude?’
I nodded. ‘And Through the Looking-Glass again. Daddy and I have been recreating the chess game from it.’
‘Reading,’ Grandmother said, her fishbone look even stronger. ‘That won’t get a girl anywhere. It’ll just put ideas in her head. Especially rubbish like those Alice books.’
Mummy sat up a little straighter. She read all the time. ‘What’s the matter with a girl having ideas, Mother Coleman?’
‘She won’t be satisfied with her life if she has ideas,’ Grandmother said. ‘Like you. I always said to my son that you wouldn’t be happy. “Marry her if you must,” I said, “but she’ll never be satisfied.” I was right. You always want something more, but all your ideas don’t tell you what.’
Mummy didn’t say anything, but sat with her hands clasped so tightly in her lap I could see the whites of her knuckles.
‘But I know what you need.’
Mummy glanced at me, then shook her head at Grandmother, which meant Grandmother was about to say something I should not hear. ‘You should have more children,’ she said, ignoring Mummy. She always ignores Mummy. ‘The doctor said there’s no physical reason why you can’t. You’d like a brother or sister, wouldn’t you, Maude?’
I looked from Grandmother to Mummy. ‘Yes,’ I said, to punish Mummy for making me play the piano. I felt bad the moment I said it, but it was true, after all. I am often jealous of Lavinia because she has Ivy May, even though Ivy May can be a nuisance when she has to come everywhere with us.
Just then Jenny arrived with a tray, and we were all relieved to see her. When she had served them I managed to slip out after her as she left. Mummy was saying something about the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy. ‘It’s sure to be rubbish,’ Grandmother was saying as I shut the door.
‘Rubbish,’ Jenny repeated when we were in the kitchen, her head shaking and her nose wrinkling. She sounded so much like Grandmother that I laughed till my stomach hurt.
I sometimes wonder why Grandmother bothers to visit. She and Mummy disagree on almost everything, and Grandmother is not very polite about it. It is always left to Mummy to smooth things over. ‘The privilege of age,’ Daddy says whenever Mummy complains.
For a moment I felt bad about abandoning Mummy upstairs, but I was still angry that she said my sewing was as bad as my piano. So I stayed in the kitchen and helped Mrs Baker with lunch. We were to have cold cow’s tongue and salad, and lady’s fingers for pudding. Lunches with Grandmother are never very interesting.
When Jenny came down with the coffee tray she said she had overheard Grandmother say she does want to visit the columbarium, ‘even though it is for heathens.’ I didn’t wait for her to finish, but ran to get Lavinia.
Frankly I was surprised that Mrs Coleman was so keen on seeing the columbarium. I expect the idea appeals to her sense of tidiness and economy, though she made it clear it would never be appropriate for Christians.
At any rate I was relieved to have something to do with her. I always dread her visits, though it is easier than when I was first married. It has taken these ten years of marriage to learn to handle her – like a horse, except that I have never managed a horse – they are so big and clumsy.
But handle her I have. The portraits, for example. As a wedding present she gave us several dark oil portraits of various Colemans from the last century or so, all with the same dour expression that she wears as well – which is remarkable given that she married into the family rather than inheriting the look.
They are dreary things, but Mrs Coleman insisted they be hung in the hallway where every visitor could see and admire them; and Richard did nothing to dissuade her. It is rare he will cross her. His one rebellious act has been to marry a doctor’s daughter from Lincolnshire, and he will probably spend the rest of his days avoiding other conflicts. So up went the portraits. After six months I found some botanical watercolours exactly the same size, and hung them instead, replacing them with the portraits whenever Mrs Coleman came to call. Luckily she is not the kind of woman to pay surprise visits – she always announces her arrival the day before, giving me plenty of time to switch paintings.
After several years of swapping I grew more confident, and at last felt able to leave up the watercolours. Of course on arrival she noticed