Testament, p.37
Testament, page 37
Was that what her longing for a child was — just a primitive instinct to perpetuate her genes? But if it was that simple, Neil’s proposal would instantly have presented itself as the obvious solution, instead of the cause of yet another round of self-doubt.
Turning away from the door, as if by doing so she could prevent a return to the endless internal debate, Damia strode over to the painting and hefted it into her arms. Whatever lurked beneath the corporate packaging, it would be easier to deal with in the garden, a space she hardly, yet, felt ownership of.
Awkward with her unwieldy load, Damia made her way through straggling grass towards the arbour that some previous owner of the house had placed at the end of the garden to catch the morning sun. She swept a hand across its slatted seat to remove dried bird droppings and sat down gingerly, sliding the parcel down until it rested against her knees.
There had been no message alerting her to the arrival of a package from New York. Damia had heard nothing from her lover since her accusatory email about Neil and she worried that Catz had spent her time brooding on the apparent impasse in their relationship.
She pulled tentatively at the top seal, opening the flat carton’s short side, and then, with greater force, tore down the long edge. Pulling away the free corner, she saw that the unframed canvas was swathed in bubble-wrap. Her apprehension prolonged uncomfortably, she used both hands to pull the painting out, turning it over to pick at the edges of the Sellotape binding.
There was a letter stuck to the bubble-wrap with a simple address: Mia.
Her stomach clenching into a sudden knot, Damia detached the envelope and opened it. The letter was handwritten in Catz’s over-fluent hand and the uncharacteristic evenness of the writing suggested to Damia that it had been composed and copied rather than simply written headlong.
Typically, there was no salutation.
New York, Thursday
Feel like I’ve been writing this all day. Still probably haven’t got it right but anyway.
I’m sending you a painting. The one you wanted for your art auction. I know you’ve changed the idea to an Art Prize now (good move, you can have a prize every year but it’d look damn funny if you had a fundraising auction every year) but I thought if you had a painting by somebody who was already known then you could use that to encourage people to enter the prize. I know if I’d seen the name of somebody I knew associated with a new prize when I was an art student, it would’ve encouraged me to enter.
I wanted to do this even though you’re not coming to New York and I’m staying here
That line, Damia realised, spelled the unambiguous end of their relationship. She had been asked to join Catz and had declined. She had told Catz that if she wanted them to be together she would have to return to Britain, to Salster, and Catz was declining to do so.
because I want to prove to you that you’re wrong. That I have been listening when you’ve talked about you, the college, the wall painting.
You were right not to come, Mia. I couldn’t have painted this if you’d been here. I almost couldn’t paint it anyway, it was hard to get into. I did 17 different sketches (you can see them if you like — I’ve put them on the ‘work in progress’ page on my website, along with the photos you sent me of the wall painting) before I got what I wanted. Whoever painted the ‘Sin Cycle’ was a hell of an artist — he says so much in so little. I’ve tried to do the same.
The other reason you were right not to come is I need to prove to myself that I’m OK on my own — that I don’t depend on exploitative relationships to produce work. (Yes, before you ask, I am seeing a therapist. It’s like going to the toilet here, people can’t understand how you manage to function if you don’t.) Making you stay away all week while I painted was exploitative. But I don’t know how far I can push myself. I might cope with living with someone but a kid too? A step too far. You know what I’m like, I’m obsessed when I’m painting. Not focused, not intent, obsessed. I’m in another world and if you drag me back into the real one the spell is shattered and I hate you. Hate. A child couldn’t cope with that kind of thing, shouldn’t have to. And it would come between you and me and you’d end up hating me and leaving and that wouldn’t be good for the kid either. I’m not going to put myself in a position where any kid feels rejected by me.
So, there you go. That’s the product of a day’s sitting here and writing and rewriting. Not to mention weeks of therapy. I’m guessing you could have told me all that in about week three of our relationship. Except the bit about the kid, because you wouldn’t want to see that, you’d be in denial as my therapist would say. He’s called Joel by the way. I deliberately picked a guy so I didn’t have to fall in love with my therapist as per the cliché.
I don’t want this to be the end for us, Mia. I know it has to be the end of us being together because of the baby. I couldn’t give up painting and I’m guessing you feel the same about having a baby so that isn’t going to work. But I don’t want you not to be in my life. Can we work out something which is a bit more equal — a friendship where I’m not calling the shots? If I don’t have to be paranoid about protecting space for my work, I think we might be good friends.
Anyway, that’s it.
I love you.
Catz.
At first sight, the canvas showed a straightforward representation of the Toby Yard, in which three people were placed at various points in relation to the viewer. However, closer examination revealed that the yard had been foreshortened in the manner of pre-Renaissance painting to allow the symbolic juxtaposition of buildings.
The left foreground of the painting was occupied entirely by the head and shoulders of a woman standing with her back to the viewer so that one was, as it were, obliged to look over her shoulder into the sunlit Yard beyond. The green dress and neatly wound white coif identified her as the woman who cradled her swaddled child so tenderly in the wall painting’s second oval.
Sitting on the Yard’s flagstones in the uncluttered centre of the canvas was the cross-legged figure of a boy-child, gazing up at the ‘prisoner’ statue in its niche on the western wall. In this rapt little boy, Catz had brought to life the lithe, tiptoe figure of the Toby statue. His blond hair fell into waves around his ears, as if pushed back the better to see; his tunic, over a linen undershirt visible at neckline and cuff, looked worn and soft from a thousand boyish expeditions, muddied and scrubbed clean so often that its azure colour — which drew the eye immediately to this, the focus of the painting — was muted from the blue of heaven to a more earthy tone.
Though Catz had stayed faithful to the statue and reproduced his soft-leather boots in stained and dusty tan, she had chosen to paint him bare-legged, with knees as scabbed and brown as those of boys everywhere.
Beyond the boy stood a bearded man of average height. Though his clothes were more vibrantly coloured, his stance more naturalistic, his face animated by a skilled portraitist’s touch, this was clearly the mason who occupied the wall painting’s first oval. Simon of Kineton stood, his face in shadow, his gaze fixed on the sunlit son he had wished for, half turned away from the shadowed western wall and the son he had been given.
Only on a more critical examination of the painting did Damia notice the almost disembodied hand that stretched out from the figure of Gwyneth of Kineton towards her child. The trajectory of the outstretched fingers could be extended to either boy — flesh and blood or stone resemblance — allowing the longing in the gesture to extend to either vision of her son.
The ring on the hand’s third finger was less ambiguous.
With its green stone and white gold, it was an exact copy of the one Catz had given Damia for her thirty-second birthday.
From: Damia.Miller@kdc.sal.ac.uk
To: Toby Alumni
Subject: Extraordinary Meeting of Governing Body
On Friday afternoon at 5 p.m. there is to be an extraordinary meeting of the governing body of Kineton and Dacre College. This has been called as a result of a formal takeover bid, made to the governing body and fellows of the college, by Sir Ian Baird, president of Northgate College.
To have launched such a bid, Sir Ian must feel that he has a good deal of support within the college; therefore if you oppose it (as I sincerely hope you do) please take a few minutes to register your support for our Regent Master, Edmund Norris. If sufficient support is received — online, on paper or on the phone — Dr Norris will go into the meeting with a greater degree of confidence that he speaks for the whole college community in rejecting Northgate’s bid.
I am sorry to have to ask you for your support yet again this year but, as you will appreciate, the future of the college does, genuinely, depend on those associated with the college standing up for Toby.
With many thanks,
Damia Miller
PS Don’t forget to come and support our runners on Fairings Day or, at least, tune in and cheer them on. Whether they win or lose, I can promise you a Toby performance you will never forget!
From: JSTodd15@gmail.com
To: Damia.Miller@kdc.sal.ac.uk
Subject: Re: Extraordinary Meeting of Governing Body
Attachment: A modest proposal…
Dear Ms Miller
I wonder if you would be kind enough to read the attached document and, if you think it is suitable, send it to all Tobyites who have committed themselves to supporting the college financially? I think it would make the Governing Body sit up and take notice, don’t you?
Julia Todd
(Toby 1995)
Fifty-six
Salster, late summer 1397
A rumour traces a swift path through the rows and streets of Salster. Its origin is the house of the mayor, Nicholas Brygge and its first stopping place is the site of Richard Daker’s strange, mistrusted building outside the city wall. Nearby the shacks of beggars and paupers cling with draughty, verminous tenacity to the high stone protection behind them and, here, the words have most potency and move most swiftly.
‘Obit,’ the whisper flies, and — the word sweet on tongues more accustomed to bitterness — ‘alms’. The following day, four years from his death, Richard Daker’s son is to be mourned and prayed for, remembered in the light of candles and, more to the benefit of the poor, in shillings and pence.
Murmurs, had they passing trails like the silent snail, would now be seen entering and emerging from every dwelling in the city; neither the poorest nor the richest immune to the scent of something out of the ordinary.
An obit after four years? When none was commemorated at his death? No week-mind, no month-mind, no obit at his year-mind pleaded for the young Daker’s soul nor gladdened the hearts of the poor of Salster.
Why now? they ask.
The swollen, hazy sun of several days past was gone, and over the college and its crowds hung a heavy, rumbling sky that allowed no escape to the fetid air of the city and left the citizenry sluggish beneath its oppression.
Rain, Gwyneth reflected, would be welcome.
She remembered John’s funeral, four years ago to the day. Though drought had broken hours before the interment, the cathedral gravediggers had been hard put to it to cleave the soil, so dry had it been baked.
John’s burial in the priory graveyard had shocked many. Some had held that the boy’s body would certainly be taken to London for burial. Others were sure his father would secure a site for him inside the cathedral, to lie with others of rank.
But Richard had confounded them all and consigned his beloved son’s remains to the graveyard where all Salster’s residents not high-born or cloistered were destined — the crowded green.
John’s funeral, in the nave, had been the first of three, the other bodies also lying on biers in the great belly of the church. Salster was a thriving city: where so much life took place, one had also to look for death as a daily occurrence.
But not a death like John’s, Gwyneth thought, now. Death from age or infirmity was expected; as it was in the perilous venture of childbirth. But a hale young man cut down by a chance movement —
‘Did the cripple have a hand in it?’
Now, as then, the words slithered into her ear despite her efforts not to hear them. She knew that Toby had not been to blame; she knew also that his presence on the building site had led, inescapably, to John Daker’s death.
Gwyneth stood in the rutted street as her masons, each holding a candle, each flame flattened by its holder’s grave step, walked around the outside aspect of the college. Three times they had been instructed to circumnavigate the site before halting. Gwyneth, knowing these men, had calculated that on the first pass their embarrassment at this sombre and unaccustomed ritual would preclude the air of solemnity that the occasion demanded. On the second turn, they would begin to achieve a degree of tolerance to the stares of the crowd, as the city’s folk watched masons walk in ceremonial silence. On the third circuit, Gwyneth reckoned, their faces would be properly grave, their movement in procession and the candles that they held beneath the lowering sky drawing them towards a state of readiness for what was to come.
Three times they passed before her — Edwin Gore and the college’s masons — three times around the high walls of the outer buildings and the wide arches that beckoned the eye towards the nearly complete Octagon, before coming to a halt, each man a pace from his neighbour, along the college’s southern wall. Every mason stood, his face towards the crowd, unsmiling now, his candle held at his breast.
These movements were unrehearsed — Gwyneth would not be accused of gaudy —instructions had simply been issued to the masons with their candles. Some had asked what priest would lead them, to conduct the appropriate prayers: Gwyneth had replied simply that there would be no priest.
As they stood, silent before the taut and expectant crowd, a warm breeze stirred and hands were swiftly raised to cup easily doused flames. Gwyneth felt her flaming cheeks cool as she stepped forward, took a bundle of clothes from a hand cart that stood between Alysoun and Henry and handed them to her foster-son. He accepted the bundle in silent acknowledgement and made his way to the archway at the south-westernmost corner of the college, where he took up a station before the candlebearers and looked out impassively at the crowd.
Stepping forward as Henry came to rest and taking another bundle, Gwyneth held it out to an approaching figure in sombre black. Piers Mottis bowed his dark-capped head slightly as he received his bundle and made his way wordlessly past Henry to his allotted post at the south-eastern archway. Gwyneth, and Nicholas Brygge whose intelligence of the city and its inhabitants was second to none, had, together, decided which elderly paupers should receive the woollen coats with their blue octagon sewn into the breast. Now, standing with the candlebearers at her back, she called out, in turn, the names that she had committed to memory. The crowd murmured as if in agreement with the selection of those to be favoured and made way for the men and women thus summoned as they shuffled forward to stand before Gwyneth, their faces torn between seemly humility and eager expectation, their eyes darting constantly to Gwyneth’s face and away again, as if her countenance scorched their eyes and yet they were compelled to fix their gaze on her.
As she looked out at these despised ones of the city, the unfortunates against whose hardships the rest of the populace measured its blessings, Gwyneth felt a contraction within herself as she remembered that even these people had turned away from her boy, had made the hated sign against the evil eye, had muttered against him, against his very life. Abomination. Devil’s child. Accursed.
Bile rose in her throat, and for a moment she felt that she might spit at the row of hopeful faces before her.
Instead, she breathed deeply and concentrated on her purpose.
‘This place,’ she began abruptly, her voice strong and clear in the still air, ‘will, in future times, be called Daker’s College, founded and endowed by Richard Daker, vintner of the guild and of the city of London. And here, most unfittingly, died his son, John Daker, ending his father’s line and name. Now the name of Daker will live only in this college. To honour the memory of Richard Daker and his son John, these alms are given you. In recognition of this gift, will you promise to pray for the future completion and good governance of this college every day of your life?’
Her eyes, which had played along the line of waiting recipients, now focused on the figure nearest to her — a thin, elderly man who supported his hunched form on a crutch, one leg twisted under him as if a broken hip had mended awry. He returned Gwyneth’s intense glare for no more than two heartbeats before lowering his eyes and bowing his head further.
‘I will so pray,’ he conceded, as if cowed, jerking his face sideways to see whether his fellow paupers were prepared to do likewise. All joined in the chorus, assenting that they, too, would so pray.
As Gwyneth motioned them towards Henry and their coats, she barred her ears to the half-muttered questions that rose from the crowd and battered at her. She knew her words had shaken and disturbed them. Prayers for the dead were the usual fee for alms; prayers for the prosperity of a building, for this building, raised hackles. ‘No priest,’ she heard. ‘How can she speak of such things? It is a priest’s task.’
Well, she had known they would not be likely to welcome such novelty.
Before the crowd’s uncertain muttering was transformed into the outraged baying of a mob, Gwyneth stepped forward and quieted the half-guarded discontent before her with her still silence.
‘Friends,’ she began, when the hubbub had abated to let her speak, ‘as you have seen alms delivered in kind to the poor and lowly of our city, so you will see also, in due course, alms given to the young.’
She raked the crowd with a long look, drawing them back to her, so that her words could find their mark.
‘John Daker was not yet a man when he died but a youth on the threshold of manhood. Such are the young men who his father, Master Richard Daker, hoped would come — from our city of Salster — to his college.’ She flung her gaze far and wide, seeking the eyes of the young men who might have been John’s companions, had he lived.
