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The late afternoon sun warms the back of my neck as I sit on my tiny terrace at the top of the metal backstairs to the flat. There’s a scent of damp earth from the watered pots, a hint of jasmine, someone’s fried dinner. It’s been a while since I’ve sketched like this. I can’t stop the thoughts from surfacing, but I can at least give them less attention.
Reducing the world to shapes and colour. A hazy memory of the old apartment block where we lived until I was four: the blocks of colour cast onto the marbled floor from the stained-glass panel above the main front door. Skipping between them, like a fairy playing hopscotch, as Dad would say.
I drift into images of my early days. Lying on the sofa with Mum after lunch, the itchiness of the green baize upholstery, smell of milk and stale crumbs. Listen with Mother on the wireless, the theme tune called Dolly that she could play on the piano. Jonathan home from school, pulling upside-down faces through the triangle of his legs. Dad reading me stories of exploited Victorian children: The Little Match Girl, The Water Babies, along with the nonsense of Edward Lear sounding so funny in his sing-song Welsh accent.
And Mum, after the sofa days? I see her as if from a distance, acting the stylish, witty faculty wife. Then when it was just the family, she would find something to moan about, to blame me for. Retreating into my colouring book patterns to block her threats of punishment.
I bring my attention back to the sketching, the orange against the blue. Turn the page now, closer into the brickwork.
When I was about fourteen, in a rare moment of intimacy, Mum told me of two miscarriages between Jonathan and me – how she’d been desperate for another child, had hoped for a girl. Shattering my assumption that she’d never wanted me and confirming that I was a massive disappointment because I wasn’t a clone of her perfect self.
Surely Gethin has better memories of me. What about our sofa days, watching ET when we first got the telly? Taking him stargazing up on the moors, blanket spread, hot chocolate and toffee? Talking, always talking, his whys stretching back to the origins of the universe. Until one day he stopped. Or did I just make it impossible for him?
Curve of paint-can flower-pot intersecting the brickwork. I have sketched through the crunch-points of my life. I was sketching at Greenham when Gaynor was released: the Which side are you on?songthreaded through the circle of women surrounding tiny bailiffs. Gaynor had Nora with her, a Christian from Violet Gate, who’d been her cellmate. Gaynor was unnaturally calm, talking about God being the spirit within as I carried on sketching. Now I stab at the paper with the still raw wound of knowing that day I’d lost the love of my life.
This was my therapy when I first moved here, fighting post-Greenham, post-miners’ strike, alone in the fucked-up world depression. I would sit here sketching over and over, looking for that intersection of shape and colour of the Russian Suprematists that inspired me as a student. It provided some solace against the hopelessness, but I felt dead to any new inspiration, even after Karen helped lift the depression.
In the end Gethin became my source of hope. The idea of him sparked by my mother complaining she felt excluded from her friends with their married daughters expecting children. ‘Who’s to say I won’t have a child?’ I retorted. That set her off on a tirade, of course, but it planted the germ of the idea in me. Before then I’d assumed I would stay childless. So, it really was about rebelling for the sake of it. The thought rises like a shock wave, and I throw my pastel off the terrace in frustration. So much for the mind-stilling therapy.
‘Whoa, flying missiles!’
The shout from below makes me jump, the sketchbook sliding off my lap as I leap up to lean over the rail. ‘Karen!’
She holds the pastel stick like a trophy. ‘You’ll need better ammunition than this to keep me away!’
I pull a tight smile. I’m not at all sure I want to deal with Karen right now, but I crave relief from the aching loneliness.
‘Come up, I’ll put the kettle on,’ I call down
‘Just the thing!’ She brandishes a large cake tin.
We settle on the sofa in the living room, with large slices of her chocolate and raspberry gateau. I pour the tea while she glances round the room.
‘Wow, Pat, it looks so different in here. What have you done?’
‘Oh, I cleared a load of stuff for Gethin’s party; it’s all piled up in my room.’
‘You can actually see your quirky style without the piles of crap everywhere.’
I look at the rugs on the scuffed polished floorboards: the deep red Persian at an angle to the blue and brown sixties swirls; the pale Moroccan runner between the windows. Then the eclectic mix of pictures: the Hannah Hoch collage poster next to my moody teenage Norfolk landscape, and my Greenham picture If You Go Down to the Woods, with the women dressed as animals leading the soldiers in a dance through the barbed wire.
‘This room invites quirkiness, you know,’ I say. ‘The way it curves around the corner above the shops.’
‘Yes, that side wall coming out at an angle,’ Karen adds.
‘I loved this flat as soon as I saw it, I was so lucky to get it.’
‘It’s always suited you.’
I catch myself feeling grateful she’s here. Why was I so pissed off with her? I take a forkful of her delicious cake and look around the room again. I cleared all my ornaments, leaving just Gethin’s dragon collection on the corner unit, and the gilded plaster cherub sitting fat on the mantelpiece.
‘I should move my clutter back in. Now it’s just remnants from the life Gethin doesn’t want anymore.’
‘Hey, come on now.’ Karen leans over, touches my hand.
‘He spent all his pocket money buying that cherub for me from the school fair, you know,’ I say, my voice choking.
‘Pat, you’re mourning the loss of your little boy. It’s only natural.’
