Dear Vincent (6 page)

I pack up all my paints and brushes, charcoals and
blank canvases. Fold my easel. Carefully balance the two soft-skinned Van Gogh-inspired paintings against the pile. I scrawl the Professor’s address on a piece of paper and tape it to the easel, then go out and brave Ms R head-on.

She’s helping Sarah Gordon with a wire sculpture. ‘Tara. How are you today?’ Her smile is slightly sheepish.

‘I’m fine.’ I force an answering smile. ‘Though I wonder if I could ask a big favour?’

I cringe at the pleasure on her face. ‘Of course! What can I help you with, m’dear?’

‘Family friends have said that I can use their studio to paint. I thought I’d take them up on it this weekend. I wondered if you’d mind dropping my gear around this afternoon. I’ve only got my bike.’

‘Not a problem. Just tell me where to go.’

‘I’ve left the address with my gear. There’s no one home, but if you could just leave it by the front door that would be really great.’

‘That’s fine. I’m glad to help.’

‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘I appreciate it.’
This
, at least, I can say with real conviction. I just hope she forgives me for twisting the truth. ‘If it’s okay with you, I thought I might leave early — I need to ride over to the hospital to check on Dad.’

‘How’s he going?’

‘Good.’ I need to keep this light and breezy now, not trigger any alarms.

‘Okay … though just this once. I can’t have my star pupil wagging class!’ Beside her, Sarah Gordon fires me a moody scowl.

‘Thanks, Ms R — you’re a real champ.’ I hightail it
after that, hoping I’ve convinced her everything’s okay.
When did you get so deceitful, little T? Careful or you’ll grow to like it.

AFTER I’VE LUGGED MY
gear to Ms R’s car and laid the drying paintings on her back seat, I bike over to the hospital, my stomach grumbling to remind me I don’t have any lunch. I’ll wait till I get to work. Thank god Izzy doesn’t mind if I cadge the odd leftover.

As soon as I walk through the hospital doors I feel nervous. Even though logically I know she won’t be here this time of day, I’m worried I’ll run into Mum. I’ve nothing to say to her, though I can guarantee she’ll have a lot to say to me. I reach Dad’s room without a problem and the nurse from yesterday greets me with a smile. ‘No change,’ she says. ‘But that’s all good. It means the medication’s holding any further seizures at bay.’

I sit down next to Dad and take his hand. His eyes are open but they don’t react. ‘It’s me, Dad. Tara. If you can hear me squeeze my hand.’ Nothing.

I once watched a TV psychic tell this woman her mother was sending messages from the other side. The woman shook her head, saying her mother was still alive, though in a coma. The psychic insisted her mother’s spirit had already ‘crossed’. It was actually quite freaky; she seemed to know some very personal things. Maybe Dad’s gone ahead too, shedding his broken shell. Perhaps he’s turning cartwheels somewhere with Van. I almost laugh out loud. No way! Not even in fantasy.

I close my eyes and try again to dredge up one nice memory — anything to help me not hate him. It’s really hard. I keep catching tiny fragments of scenes, but as I play them forwards there’s always something at the end to sour them.

My mind keeps coming back to one particular day. I guess I’m maybe six or seven — just before Van started acting up. I was home from school and for some reason couldn’t stay with Mum, so Dad took me. It must’ve been after he lost the storeman’s job and had to take on anything he could. Truth is he had no choice: he’d fallen out with every firm who’d ever employed him. No one could be bothered with a mouthy Irish scrapper who thought he knew it all.

This day, he was fixing a gate at an old lady’s house. I remember sitting cross-legged on her front lawn, the sun streaming down to light up all the colours with a vibrancy that stays with me still. The grass was the brightest of malachite greens, bejewelled with a carpet of big yellow-faced daisies. That riot of white and yellow against the green was the kind of mix Vincent loved — something about the boldness of the colours as they played off each other. He didn’t care if his colour choices didn’t correspond with real life, so long as they reflected the depth of his emotional response. I feel that way too.

While Dad nailed up the palings I made daisy chains, crowning him with one, ecstatic when he knelt to receive it like a king. When he’d completed the fence he handed me a brush and showed me how to undercoat the strips of wood. The brush in my hand felt so familiar, so very right, and he praised me for my neatness.
You’re a
natural, little lady. You’re a real help to your old da.
I felt the swell of pride; a warmth much stronger than the sun. He praised as rarely as my mother laughed.

After I’d helped him pack his tools away, we went inside and joined the old lady for a cup of tea. She’d stayed a few months in Belfast once and managed to pry open Dad’s usual silence on his past. I listened open-mouthed.

They spoke of favourite haunts, famous locals, the quirkiest pubs. Then the old woman asked if he’d had a happy childhood there. He’d balked a moment, but then he laughed.

‘If by happy you mean that there was love and laughter, yes there was. I was the oldest of three, and though my mammy and my da were never there, me and my brothers did okay. It was only later I saw the impact of The Troubles first-hand.’

‘Did your family lose anyone to them?’ I can remember thinking how brave she was to question him. I’d never dare, not even on this most glorious of days.

I watched his face cloud over before it turned to stone. Something dark and evil flitted across the surface of his eyes. He shook himself. Scooped me from my chair and bundled me under his arm. ‘We’d best be off now, before the missus gets wind that I’ve been skiving.’

I felt all my pleasure in the day retreat, wary now in case I did something to set him off. But once we were driving away in his old Commer van, the Pogues blaring from the rigged-up CD player, he relaxed.

When we arrived back home he cooked us soda bread farl, spreading it with lashings of butter and jam. I sprawled on his knee, sharing it off the plate with him,
the butter dripping down my chin.

‘You’re a good girl, my wee Tara,’ he said, using his sandpaper finger to catch a drip. ‘You’ll be a nester like your granny, won’t you girl?’

I didn’t know what he meant, just that he was pleased with me, and that was more than enough. I leaned in against his broad chest, the bristles of his chin snaring my hair. He smelt of cigarettes and paint and sweat. I don’t think I’ve felt so secure either before or since.

That’s when Mum and Van came home, Van bouncing in after school, a typed-up sheet of paper in her hand.

‘Look, Dad, look! I wrote a story and Miss Greaves gave me two gold stars! Two, Dad! Look, right here!’ She shoved it in his face, her eyes gleaming with excitement and pride.

‘Away with you!’ He grabbed her by her extended arm, ignoring the proffered sheet, and steered her roughly to the side, out of his line of sight. Then he stood, shaking me off now like shit on his shoe. ‘Can’t you see I was resting?’ He glared over at Mum. ‘Get that bloody child under control.’

The noises of the hospital swell around me as I withdraw my hand from his. Even after all these years, I can still picture the terrible hurt etched on Van’s face, especially when she’d seen me lounging on Dad’s knee. She had crumpled up the paper, threw it at him, and run crying from the room. Oh, the terrible hurt in her eyes … I felt like Judas, betraying the one person I loved the most. The shame stings me still. And something in me died that day. My heart hardened towards him. I vowed, from that point on, not to accept his favours if they excluded Van.

I leave him now, but as I cycle the busy lunchtime streets the pain lingers. It’s as if this memory has tripped a switch inside my head. I’m flooded with reminders of the many times Van’s spirit was crushed doing things I had got away with only moments before. It was the same with Mum, this strange splitting of allegiances — as though Van’s very presence prickled underneath their skins.

IT’S HARD TO KEEP
cheerful at the rest home. Everywhere I look I am reminded of family — good and bad. Dear Nadine is sitting with her sister May, a tiny woman who clasps tightly to Nadine’s hand. She comes in every second day, even though she buses from the other side of town. To anyone who didn’t know, it might appear that Nadine doesn’t realise she’s there, staring into space as May chatters about her garden and her cat. But if you take the time to watch, you notice Nadine’s eyes swing to her face every few minutes and the dullness in her gaze softens to a loving smile. She pats May’s hand, occasionally bringing it to her lips to kiss. At times the tears stream down May’s face.

I think about the lives they have shared over the past eighty-odd years; the kind of bond that only such a long connection brings. My twelve with Van were not enough. I’ll never know the woman she might’ve been. What would she make of me now? Even more withdrawn and controlled by Mum than when she left. I hate my passivity — how could I have been so unquestioning? Well, the genie’s out of the bottle now. My head is filled with every casual insult and rejection Van endured. I’m so ashamed. I tied myself up in the act of survival and forgot the one thing Van had wished: that I would have a life. It’s trapped me now. There’s no escape.

Other residents have visitors too — the lucky ones have families who come in most days. Even the Professor is entertaining guests in his room. But there are others who spend day after day, week after week, with no one. If they have family they never come. Their days and nights are lived in solitary confinement. I see the yearning in their eyes — they never give up hoping that the next visitor will be for them. It’s heart-breaking the way these people are discarded here, as though their whole lives count for nothing: children raised and gone; partners dead; or, worse, a family who simply can’t be arsed. Welcome to Twilight House: Death’s waiting room for the dispossessed. Will this one day be my lot? To die alone. Like Van.

By the time I bike back to the Professor’s house, I’m stuffed. I trigger a security light, which saves me fumbling to unlock the door, and find my paintings and easel neatly stacked inside. Johannes must have brought them in.

There’s a note on the kitchen bench, beside a
Tupperware container of lentil soup.
Mum left the freezer stocked with way too much food — I thought you might be hungry when you got home.
Johannes’ handwriting is crimped and rushed. Very male. No doubt his grandfather put him up to this — it’s not the kind of thing a boy thinks of on his own. I’m a bit spooked he’s got a key, though. I hadn’t thought of that.

The soup is full of garlic and spices, with enough chilli to warm me from the inside out. I probably should thank him. But the past few nights are catching up on me. It takes the very last of my energy to stand under the shower and wash away the day. As soon as I have my pyjamas on, I crawl into bed.

I luxuriate in the heat of the electric blanket and wrap the pillow around my head to blunt the sharpness of the silence. No rest home snoring. No jagged gasps from Dad. I try to still my mind. Tomorrow is my one day off, the first I’ve really had in ages. I’m not sure what to do; it’s been a long time since I was left alone. Paint; of course I’ll paint.

But as the hours tick by sleep evades me and guilt nibbles at this uncharted freedom. Saturday’s the day I usually clean the house for Mum. Change the sheets. Dust out all the corners and attack the mould. She’ll be tired after work and all the worry of Dad — and even more pissed off.

When I finally get to sleep I dream of her prowling the house, pelting me with pots and pans, musty towels, brushes and brooms.
You’ll be the death of me
, she roars, her face melting before my eyes. I watch the skin peel off, the flesh drip from her bones — until all that’s left is her mouldering skull. I jolt awake, my heart
thrumming as I flounder in a pool of sweat. Even in my dreams Mum takes control.

Somehow I manage to push the image far away enough to doze till dawn, when a thin accusing finger of light snakes in through the gaps between the curtains. I don’t feel rested and my head throbs in a bitchy pulse. If I was sensible I’d use this time to catch up on the set book for English … if I was sensible I’d not be here at all. I dress and head for the sun porch to set up my painting gear, trying not to think about my lack of breakfast, and by the time the sun floods the backyard I’m hard at work.

I’m tackling one of Vincent’s favourite paintings,
The Potato Eaters
. Working on it makes me smile. For years he considered this his finest work, though Theo and his arty friends complained it was too dark; too rough in every way. Too raw. His peasants were ugly, their faces crude, ‘uncivilised’, yet he painted this same family and their friends again and again. I think I recognise what he was striving for. He thought it noble that they’d toiled for their food. Said he didn’t want anyone to admire the painting or approve of it without understanding the background. My guess is that he hated being dependent on the one person he loved the most. He truly longed to earn his own keep, but lacked the mediocrity required to score a job. Much like Van.
Van.
Van. Van.
Everything leads back to Van.

I sketch the five contorted figures around a table lit by one small overhanging lamp. But instead of Vincent’s peasant family I flesh in my own: my mother, father, Van and me … the fifth is Death. He sits at our table every night, waiting to claim us in his own good time.

In the wee small hours it had struck me how the Irish are Potato Eaters too. Most had no choice: the English confiscated great swathes of land. What was left was chopped into such small lots the Irish struggled to feed their kids. When the blight destroyed whole potato crops, the people starved.
An Gorta Mór
, Dad called it: the Great Hunger. Over a million dead — and even more forced to leave Ireland for good. He labelled it genocide; would spit on the ground, then pray for English deaths. When he’d had too much to drink he’d make me recite his favourite poem.

At first it was Van’s job to perform it when he had his mates around, the only party trick he’d let her share.
But when I was old enough to memorise the poem, Dad ditched Van overnight. It didn’t stop her chanting it aloud to me: she loved that it was written by the mother of the man who wrote ‘The Happy Prince’. I wonder if that’s when Van started writing her own poems. Another fact about her I don’t know. Yet it’s funny how all these things are linked. Once you start digging, everything’s connected.

There’s a tapping on the door. Johannes, looking sheepish.

‘Hey.’ He’s wearing a sweatshirt with pink lettering that says
I’m pink, therefore I’m spam.
If it’s a joke I don’t get it.

‘Hey. Thanks for bringing in my gear — and for the soup.’

‘No problem.’ He nods towards the canvas on the easel. ‘Your paintings — they’re really intense.’ I stare down at my feet. He stumbles on. ‘I mean, they’re really good.
Really
good. Just … kind of … bleak.’

‘Yeah, well, Vincent’s work was always bleak. That’s how he saw the world.’ A dead flower in amongst the live ones. A flock of crows. A coarseness to remind us life is hard.

He looks at me like I’m crazy. ‘Vincent?’

‘Van Gogh. They’re adapted from his. It’s for Scholarship art.’

‘Oh, okay. That makes more sense.’ He stands in front of the easel, eyeing my sketch. ‘You know I’ve seen some of his originals. They blew my mind.’

‘You’re kidding? Where?’ Jealousy stirs.

‘Paris. I went there on the way back from Vienna with Mum and Opa this time last year.’

‘My god! Did you go to the Musée d’Orsay? The Impressionist museum?’

He laughs, embarrassed. ‘Probably! I just went where I was told.’

‘What was Paris like?’

‘Incredible. You feel like you’re in one of the time travel episodes of
Dr Who
. Vienna too. They have the most amazing buildings. It’s completely overwhelming. You can see why going back there breaks poor Opa’s heart.’

‘It must be hard for him.’

‘It is. He says it’s like walking back into a past life, except everyone he knew and loved is dead.’

I shudder. ‘He told me he’d lost a lot of family.’

Johannes perches on the window sill and nods. ‘His father was Jewish, and though he’d converted to Catholicism that wasn’t going to guarantee they’d be safe from Hitler. It turns out he was right. He sent Opa and his mother ahead to London, to ask for help from the Red Cross. By the time Opa’s father was due to follow them, he and the whole extended family had been rounded up. They all died in the camps, and when Opa and his mother came to New Zealand as refugees she died within a year. Opa was only seventeen. He says his mother died from a broken heart.’

Seventeen. My age. The age that Van was when she died.

I think how scary it would have been: arriving in a country where they spoke a different language; in a culture as removed from Austria as they could get. They must’ve felt like they’d landed in a backwater of Hell. Mum and Dad complained that even in 1990 when they
arrived we were way behind the ‘real’ world — though their idea of culture solely consisted of steak-and-Guinness pies, and
Top of the Pops.

‘Actually,’ Johannes says, ‘it’s because of Opa that I’m here. I’m going to take him for a drive around the bays. He wondered if you’d like to come and then join us for lunch. His shout.’

‘Thanks, but I’d—’
Are you kidding, Miss T? You’re free to do exactly as you like.
‘Yeah, okay. Why not? That would be nice.’

‘Cool. I’m going to pick him up at ten thirty, so if you can be ready by quarter past, that should be sweet.’ He gallops up the outside stairs, climbing two with each long-legged stride.

I STILL HAVE TIME
to finish the rough sketching in before I try to make myself a little more presentable. I don’t know what to wear. All my clothes are ancient, most are second-hand. In the end I have no choice: I wriggle into my tidiest jeans and choose a coral pink sweatshirt with a black cardy over the top. My hair refuses to behave. I look a mess. The bruise I gave myself is now a rotting yellow, which clashes with the purple rings under my eyes. Impressionist colour matches they may be, but it’s not a good look in the flesh.

At quarter past ten I’m lurking around the front door. Johannes reverses a small silver car out of the garage, a wheelchair rack attached to its back. I climb in beside him and buckle up, ridiculously nervous.

He drives through the busy Saturday morning streets while I wrack my brain for something to say. ‘So, what’s with the words on your shirt?’

He glances down, snorting as if surprised by what he sees. ‘It’s a Monty Python play on words. You know, Descartes’
Cogito ergo sum … I think, therefore I am.’

‘What does it mean?’

‘It’s one of the fundamental foundations of Western philosophy. If we can wonder whether we exist then it proves that something — the “I” in our head — exists to do the thinking. The thought can’t be separate from the “I”. You see?’

I shrug, not sure enough to commit myself. ‘So he’s talking about consciousness?’

‘Exactly. He called thought
cogitation
. He gives an example of a piece of wax.’ His hand conducts his words. ‘We look at it and our senses give us all this information, like its size, shape, texture, colour, smell — and we give it the name wax. But if we hold the wax up to a flame all those things change, yet we still know that it’s the same piece of wax, just in a form that’s different to our senses.’

He meets my eye for a second, then carries on. ‘So, you see, it’s best we put our senses aside. Something that we thought we were seeing with our eyes is, in fact, grasped solely by the faculty of judgement that is in our mind.’ Now he sounds as if he’s quoting from a textbook.

I can’t tell if he’s pretentious, genuinely caught up in it or trying to impress me. Whichever, I’m still not sure I understand. My brain’s not firing today. ‘But how do emotions fit? How does he explain being moved to tears
by a piece of art, or music — or grief. That’s not logical, yet it controls us all the time.’ Especially me.