‘It was Christina’s lifelong home. That’s why she’s looking up at it with such reverence and longing. She’s enraptured by her memories.’
We stand there, together, not saying anything, just observing the enigmatic Christina. For some reason, the easiness between us makes me think of my mother, by contrast – how lacking in harmony we were when we were together, how stilted the conversations. It was always there between us. The distance. Her disappointments. Things she should say, but was never going to say. Sometimes, it’s hard to believe she’s been gone for four years, and other times it feels like she’s still here, loosely in my sphere, still as much a mystery to me as any of the women in these paintings.
‘I’m under the spell of her,’ this lady says. ‘Aren’t you?’ She’s a good five inches shorter than me, and cute in a way that makes me imagine her having been the lead singer in a 1960s all-girl group. Yet despite the apparent soft centre, there’s a certain fortitude and forbearance about her. The combination is slightly infatuating.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Actually, Christina is more real to me than anyone I’ve encountered in art. I just feel like I want to ask her about her life. I want to know what it is that she’s so nostalgic for, because there’s something. I can feel it.’
It’s an oddly intimate confession between strangers. Most visitors to the gallery ask very predictable questions or make superficial observations; they never actually connect with you on a level beyond the obvious, so she is refreshing. ‘I forget who it was that said everyone you meet loves something, longs for something and has lost something. Maybe that’s why she’s so easy to relate to. Because we see ourselves in her.’
Suddenly, Justin’s absence hits me with belting force. It’s like the way you hear bad news – that swoop to your senses, the felling that comes right before you’ve had a chance to disbelieve it. Good God. Panic rises from my feet and disperses to every cell of my being. I don’t want to see myself in Christina – alone and somewhat thrown down in the middle of nowhere, staring at memories of a past happiness I can’t find my way back to.
This woman is observing me as though she has the gift of reading my thoughts. ‘Have you looked at all the other works? The Hoppers? Wyeth’s Helga?’ I ask, quickly glancing down the room so she won’t see the horror or despair or whatever the hell it is that must register on my face.
‘No,’ she says. ‘I’m only interested in Christina.’ She turns her eyes back to the painting. Somehow, with the calmness of her demeanour, and her quiet focus, my terror subsides. I gaze at the girl in the pale pink dress. ‘You know, someone who once wrote about Wyeth’s work said you notice the flint first. You have to get close to feel the fire.’
She says nothing. But I know she feels the fire. We are strangers, but I know.
‘I often wonder if she was in love with Wyeth.’ I find myself dreaming again, slightly. ‘How they spent their days . . . I can imagine it would be quite easy to fall for someone who was so fascinated by you that they were prepared to immortalise you in art history.’
‘Or, maybe, like many of us, she was in love with a time. A time when she was loved.’
Her words – or perhaps it’s the way she looks at me, with a certain explicit tenderness and longing – give me a small aftershock.
What about the time when I was loved?
‘I think I should probably leave you and Christina alone now, and get back to work,’ I tell her, almost unable to get the words out.
‘It has been lovely speaking with you,’ she says. ‘I do hope we repeat this. I intend to come back.’ Before I can say, You too, her gaze has already returned to Christina. I look at her for a moment, at the angelic line of her face in profile, but she doesn’t seem to register me any longer.
As I walk away, I happen to notice she’s wearing the kind of excruciatingly pointed kitten heels that even I gave up on years ago.
I can’t help but smile.
FOUR
The flat is eerily quiet. I don’t think I’ve ever noticed how silence is a sound of its own. Walking in is surreal. Normally, just the very expectation of him coming home soon would lend a fullness to the air. I stand there stock still, barely in the kitchen, and for a moment his absence draws air from my body again.
I can’t even tell myself he’s away, in London, on business; he’ll be back Friday. Because it doesn’t even feel like that scenario either. The numerals on the oven’s clock flash at me. The fridge suddenly ticks to life. And yet there is that same cavernous emptiness both inside and all around me.
Absently, I pull off my jacket, and kick my shoes on to the small rug by the door. I walk into the bedroom, unzipping my skirt, letting it drop on the floor – things I would never do with tidy Justin around. His shirt-sleeve is still dangling out of the laundry bin like it was this morning. It seems to take up more space than a sleeve has a right to. If he was home, he would correct that; Justin can’t handle sloppiness. He would pair up my shoes in the cupboard, remove the hair from my brush in the bathroom. ‘How will you ever live with a slob?’ I once asked him. He said, ‘Oh, I’m quite enjoying learning every day.’ His dry-cleaning is still hanging in see-through bags behind the bedroom door: two of his best suits that he’ll need for work at some point. Doesn’t he want his things? If he is staying in a hotel – one I’ve overlooked – is he sending out his laundry? Washing his underwear in the sink? Justin would hate that. He needs order. He’ll want his things. If he’s managed to come from the airport and pick up his car, why has he left his clothes if he really is leaving me? So does this mean he isn’t really leaving me?