Page 104 of Little Wing
‘But it’s always been there, Nell. Don’t you see? Waiting. Waiting.’
She shrugged. She looked downcast. She thought of Marjorie – why had her aunt set out to deny her only niece the truth? And in those periods that Wendy had been in her right mind, why had she said nothing either? Why had no one, anywhere, contacted her?
Dougie watched her. OK, he thought. OK.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘what happened to me in Manchester back then – I set myself up in a different guise after that,’ he said. ‘I became Camden, I became deludedly self-sufficient, I became resolutely unreachable.’ He paused. ‘I turned the temperature right down – on what I felt, and on what I’d give out. I actively sought out the beige in life – in my career, my social life, women.’ He slid his hand over hers. ‘But that’s not me.’
Nell nodded. ‘When I was a child, I often didn’t feel like a child on account of being a carer, I suppose. So I think I’ve always set my own dials on low because of my mum. I couldn’t forge ahead – I couldn’t – I had to remain close by for her.’ Her fingers curled around his like a new fern and they contemplated their woven hands quietly.
‘I was so protective of my mum – yet I’ve spent most of my life focused on being the opposite of her,’ Nell said quietly. ‘When I was little, I’d kneel by my bed clasping my hands piously – like I’d seen in paintings – andpraynot to be like her.’ She looked down beyond their hands to Dougie’s boots with the brogue pattern at the toe, the brown leather burnished with wear and polish. ‘Such guilt, Dougie, that accompanied that. And my terror and dread of her illness being genetic.’ She shook her head at herself. ‘Dougie – thereliefthat Flora died only of pneumonia. The joy – yes,joy– that Flora had no mental illness.’ She paused. ‘What sort of person does that make me?’
Dougie took a beat. How he wanted to wrap his arms around her. ‘One who wants to embrace life?’ he said. ‘One who is happy to live in the real world. One who wants to be well. I’d say that makes you an extremely healthy person.’ It was a statement and he said it levelly.
Nell had never thought of it like that. ‘For years I’ve told myself that it meant I didn’t love my mum enough.’
Dougie looked at her in disbelief. ‘Nell,’ he said, ‘that love can never, ever be doubted.’
‘But Dougie – this terrible, cruel relief that Wendy isn’t my birth mother. What sort of daughter does that make me?’
‘Seems to me you’ve absolutely nothing to doubt on that front.’
‘And yet – since finding Flora, since learning about who I am, how I came to be, how I came to Wendy – now I know how she had to step up to being a mum against all the odds, in the face of all her challenges. How hard – almost impossible – it was for her.’
‘And look at the great job she’s done with you,’ said Dougie.
Nell brushed away a hot tear. ‘It’s occurred to me that it doesn’t matter, really, if Wendy does think I’m Flora every so often. Doesn’t mean she doesn’t love me. Because what’s very clear to me now is how much she loved her little sister. Her little sister who had the blonde-cheruby pudding baby. And Wendy loved that little baby with all that she is.’
Neither of them was expecting the Caravaggio exhibition to be so uncompromisingly dark, so dramatic, so morbid, so sexual, so sinister. Spotlit, and hung on walls of dark red and blue-grey, were sixteen canvases. That the paintings mostly alluded to biblical scenes appeared to be a foil. Pierced and swiped by dramatic chiaroscuro lighting, bodies writhed and drapery gaped and faces were twisted in torture and ecstasy. The gallery was crowded but nobody talked, not even a whisper. They felt like voyeurs witnessing all manner of death, violence, sex and corruption.
Trafalgar Square in all its dirty grey glory was incongruously bright when they emerged.
‘I need a drink after that,’ Nell laughed.
‘I need to show you something,’ said Dougie quietly.
Nell stood in Dougie’s flat. It was west-facing and warmed by the late-afternoon sun. It smelt good, it smelt clean and of fresh washing. He hadn’t prepared for her arrival; it hadn’t been his intention to ask her back and his clothes were drying on a rack in the living room. Nell noted that he hung things out the way she did; precisely, neatly, minimizing creases and any need to iron. She was transfixed by his great-grandfather’s beautiful hand-drawn map of Harris, all the place names inGàidhlig, and Dougie stood behind her, telling her about his family history. She browsed the books on his shelves; he had the same old Penguin copy ofThe Catcher in the Ryewith the silver jacket design as she did. And she liked the way he’d put the remote controls back by the TV, not strewn around the sofa. Most of all she was captivated by the framed photographs of Harris.
‘Are these yours?’
‘Yes. They’re old.’
‘They seem pretty timeless to me.’
‘Thank you. I keep meaning to change them – I have stacks.’
‘I have four,’ said Nell. ‘Stunning photographs of Yosemite by Ansel Adams. Well, from a calendar. The framing cost a hundred times more than it did.’
Dougie tipped his head. ‘You know, sometimes photography isn’t a caught moment. The photograph – the emotion behind it – is fluid for the photographer. There’s no such thing as a straight print. Ansel Adams would often print the same negative perhaps ten years apart, altering the exposure according to how he felt, to how he perceived his subject on any given day, in any given year. Melancholy one year, lightness the next.’
‘I had no idea,’ said Nell.
‘Some say photography is an art – some say it’s a science. I think it’s both – but there’s alchemy too.’
‘And now you take photos of tools and buckets?’ She looked at him quite levelly.
He shrugged. ‘Product photography is lucrative,’ he said.
‘But Dougie—’ she said, and she pointed at his framed landscapes, raised her arms and dropped them.
