The portrait of my mother hangs over the fireplace. She looks like a young version of the Queen, with her neatly permed brown hair, red cardigan and prim white shirt. She is sitting on an armchair. I was given it when I went up to York for Grandma’s funeral. It must have hung in her house for over fifty years, along with the other objects collected carefully over decades.
As Grandma got older, she got rid off a lot of her stuff, either by selling it off, or giving it away. Things she could no longer clean, like her brasses and fancy coal scuttle. Ornaments she could no longer dust, or was afraid might get damaged. She kept the things around her that reminded her of people or places. Her glass chandelier that she brought back in pieces from a holiday in Italy. It took her a week to assemble it onto a web of wires. A liquid-filled forest enclosed in a plastic dome, which when shaken, made a snow scene. An hour glass filled with coloured sand. China and porcelain tucked neatly away, and out of danger, in the display cabinet.
She gave a lot to me. When I set up home alone, she was one of the few people who gave me practical things such as baking trays, crockery, cutlery, bed linen and towels. She also gave me some fancy things, heirlooms in a way. A silver set of fish cutlery my Grandad had won in a fishing competition on engraved with an S. My great-grandmother’s rolling pin. Some silver jam spoons with mother of pearl handles. A pretty flower patterned tea service with sandwich plates and a small and large milk jug and sugar bowl. Tiny serving bowls with lids that have holes for the serving spoons. A 1950s papier-mâché cocktail tray. Linen place mats, table cloths, tray cloths and napkins, which were made by her, or finished by embroidery. Treasures.
Although her house was important to her, her garden was her passion, her true love. I made a point of walking round it before her funeral, as I usually did when I visited, and the house too, with the rooms cleared of the detritus of old age. In her later years, walking sticks, then Zimmer frames had appeared, along with piles of papers and clothes that were easier for her, being at hand. It all seemed as it had done when I was a child.
The garden was designed very simply, mainly for production. It was long and narrow, a small lawn on one side, a fishpond on the other and a concrete path slicing it in two till nearly the end, where Grandad’s greenhouse was. He used to grow tomatoes there, yellow and red ones. Grandma’s greenhouse was about halfway up. She used to do her bedding plants there for around the lawns, and cuttings. When Grandad died, this was transferred to his greenhouse, and a grapevine slowly overtook hers. She took great pride in her home-grown grapes, which tasted slightly acid despite them being a dessert variety.
The land between Grandad’s greenhouse and Grandma’s greenhouse was vegetable, and between her’s and the house was garden. Lilac and apple trees, a glorious white magnolia tree which flowered in late spring. The border between the garden and the vegetables on one side was a row of asparagus, which seemed to come year after year.
On the other side it was more variable; sometimes peas, or broad beans or cabbage. Thereafter row after row of vegetable was planted, according to their season. Cabbages, onions, radish, beetroot, leeks, carrots, potatoes, rhubarb, raspberries, strawberries, lettuce spring onions – the list goes on. When Grandad was alive he had multi-colour rows dahlias and chrysanthemums, for cutting, and sweet peas too.
The garden changed very little over the years – Grandma had the pond filled in so she wouldn’t trip and fall in it on her way down the garden. Apart from that, I recall no significant changes. When Grandma got less able to dig and weed, my uncle took over. She would sit on a chair and watch. Along with her dogs, her ashes are buried there, under the magnolia.
The house seemed to change the most; the inevitable kitchen extension, conversion to central heating when she could no longer ‘mend’ the fire, installing a downstairs bathroom when she could no longer manage the stairs. A team of carers gradually came to help her, so the surfaces were not as polished as she would have liked. Her world became narrower, her conversations quite limited, but she always seemed to expand and brighten when she talked about my mother. What she did, what she said. She had always talked about my mother.
My mother was her eldest child, favoured in a way by her brightness. Though my Grandma never said it, she worked and saved hard to send her to college, at a time when there were no such things as grants or student loans and few places. Working class people rarely made it beyond secondary education. She told me about how my mother used to telegraph her, when she needed more money, as a student in London. Or how my mother would adapt her costumes, as she called them, and go out wearing quite curious ensembles – there are some photographs somewhere.
She also gave me things that had belonged to my mother, or were made by her. Things she must have given her at some time, or things left at home. There is an oil miniature of peonies, slightly abstract, in an old wooden frame. I imagine she might have bought it in a junk shop and inserted her painting in it. Also some pottery she made. One bowl in brown ceramic has prawns carved into the clay beneath. I keep some shells I collected in Florida in it. Another shallow bowl, almost a plate, has a curious green glaze. I keep coins and stamps in that one.
Then there are things she gave me that must have come from my mother and father’s travels. A copper plate, inlaid with silver, probably from their time in Syria and Iraq. It is a figurative Islamic design which looks like two seven pointed stars interwoven, with alternate silver spirals in the centre sections. A brass candleholder, engraved with an almost floral design and a finger holder. You would carry it with you on your journey.
From who knows where came the glass or crystal inkstand, which is cut and shaped so that if the inkwell is filled, light is caught in a rainbow.
Grandma also gave me photographs. Though I now have many images, hers were the first and the only ones of when my mother was young. When I saw them I could well understand why she used to call me by my mother’s name. I especially like the ones taken of her when she was a baby, then my mother. I can find ones of me or my twin sister as babies about the same age. You can see a thread of likeness running through us.
When I got the portrait home, I saw how warped it was – all those years hanging alone no doubt. I had it restored and re-framed. When the old frame was taken off and backing removed a name in pencil was revealed, presumably the friend that painted it. Now that it is cleaned up, the whorls of oil show up, giving it a texture. The red dahlias in the background seem alive, the blue covers on the armchair freshly washed. In the picture she is sitting sideways on the armchair, paper perched, writing.
New Directions 