Page 9 of The Christmas Retreat
‘She’s pleased I’m writing a life of her great-aunt, because she thinks her work has been very underrated.’
‘Could she tell you any more about Milly?’
‘She did fill the picture in a little; quite literally, since she still has a lot of her work and copies of all the books she illustrated, which she will loan to me if I can’t get copies of them.’
‘Great! It sounds as if you will be able to collect a lot more factual material for this biography than some of the others.’
I knew how hard it often was to trace women artists who, once they had ceased their studies, tended to vanish from history. This was mainly, it seemed, because they were denied access to the usual means of artists to sell and promote their work, including acceptance into the Royal Academy.
‘I simply can’t think why I didn’t research Milly earlier, when my mother was still alive,’ Evie said. ‘I might have managed to winkle a little more information out of her, about Milly’s friends among the other artists, for instance.’
I barely remembered the tall, austere figure of the grandmother I had seen on just a couple of occasions in early childhood. Just as Frances had rebelled against her own bohemian upbringing, Evie had rebelled against her strict upbringing by turning into a wild child and living a life almost as scandalous in Granny’s eyes as Milly’s had been.
I had appeared when Evie was in her late thirties, settled and successful, and although my upbringing might have been unusual, I knew Evie and Liv both loved me in their way and I had felt no need to rebel outright about anything … unless you counted the unheralded introduction of Mrs Snowboots into the London flat.
Evie was such a strong character that I’d always found it bestjust to quietly and stubbornly get on with what I really wanted to do.
‘Charlotte told me more about her grandfather, Edwin Vane, who was a few years older than his sister, Milly, and became a respectable London-based artist and member of the Royal Academy,’ Evie continued. ‘But something Charlotte said in her last email was really interesting. She thinks Milly had met your great-grandmother Arwen Madoc when they were both studying at the Slade School of Art.’
‘You mean,Arwenwasn’t just an artist’s model, but an artist too?’
‘I’m going to check out the records and see if it’s true. It seems likely, because Charlotte has a couple of small oil seascapes signed by “A. Madoc”, which she thinks may have been painted by her.’
I could hear Evie restlessly drumming her fingers on some hard surface. ‘According to Charlotte, when Milly developed MS and moved into a home for artists and actors and her cottage was packed up, everything came to the London house except two boxes of Arwen Madoc’s personal belongings, which she instructed were to be sent to my mother. But,’ she added, ‘Milly kept what she always called her “Memory Box”, full of letters and photographs.’
‘Which could be a valuable resource?’ I suggested. I was finding this all really fascinating and a welcome distraction from everything else going on in my life.
‘Of course. What’s more, Charlotte thinks it is still in the attics somewhere, only so far she hasn’t had time to go and search for it.’
I could feel Evie’s impatience over the phone and knew shewould have loved to have gone and ferreted out the information herself!
I was proved right, for she now added regretfully, ‘I offered to go and search for them myself but Charlotte said she would prefer to do it.’
‘Frustrating,’ I commiserated.
‘I’ll keep chivvying her till she gets on with it,’ she said determinedly.
I was sure she would, but I thought a busy hospital consultant with three small children, the flu season upon us and Christmas popping up on the horizon would have other priorities.
‘It’s intriguing that my great-grandmother might have been an artist,’ I said. ‘Perhaps you will end up writingherlife, too.’
‘It’s likely to be a short one, if so, since she died so young, but I’m certainly going to track down as much information about her as I can. I want to see those two paintings Charlotte thought were hers, for a start, and she said if I popped round one weekday morning, the au pair would show them to me.’
That sounded as if a somewhat harassed Charlotte had thrown her a sop to keep her off her back! But Evie now had lots of leads to follow up, not just for Milly Vane, but also the tantalizing prospect of excavating the life and work of her own grandmother from the past, and then polishing her new-found treasure, like a jewel, until it shone in its rightful setting.
*
By the end of the first week of December a kind of seasonal delirium had usually overtaken me, but that year I was justgoing through the motions out of a stubborn determination to have one more Christmas at the cottage.
I adored Christmas and all the traditions. I think I was trying to make up for the austere ones of my childhood, when Liv supplied a modicum of traditional celebration by taking me, in the teeth of Evie’s objections, to see Santa at a large store, and to the pantomime.
There was also always a stocking on Christmas morning. That was something I used to do for Will every year, too, once we’d got back together after our first split. He never thought of doing the same for me.
This year, although my heart simply wasn’t in it, I made and iced my Christmas cake and filled the small freezer with mince pies.
I unpacked and set up a little glass Christmas tree, but I somehow couldn’t bring myself to get out the artificial half-tree, which usually hung on the wall, well out of Mrs Snowboots’ reach. My collection of vintage glass baubles, the fruit of eBay and Etsy searches, stayed packed in their holly-printed storage box.
As I put up the paper garlands, I played carols to try to drown out the sounds of mayhem and carnage being wreaked on the estate all around me.
