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Page 30 of Annabel and Her Sisters

I went round to see Joan the following day.

No point ringing– she rarely answered her phone, and no one rang her anyway, except my mother– so I just drove across.

She lived just off the high street in Belsize Park.

I stared up at the house, looking at it with far more interest than I ever had before.

I hadn’t been here for ages, which isn’t great, to be honest, when your aunt lives alone.

But to be fair, she barely saw anyone. I’d been astonished she’d invited herself to Ginnie’s, we all had.

I could hardly see the brickwork, it was so overgrown– covered with ivy and Virginia creeper– and with a huge lime tree outside, but it was Georgian, for heaven’s sake– those tall sash windows told me that– not even Victorian as ours had been.

It was in a gentrified part of town, in a row of elegant houses painted the colours of Neapolitan ice cream, but which, back in the day, had gone for a song, like this one when Joan had bought it in…

ooh, the early seventies? Across the road were a few council houses where an old terrace had had been bombed in the war.

The front garden was such a tangle of weeds and brambles it was like something Prince Charming had to fight his way through before he got to his Sleeping Beauty.

I was pretty sure the analogy would end at the brambles.

I navigated them as best I could, but when Joan opened the door, the thorns had done their worst.

‘You’re bleeding,’ she told me, before I attempted to kiss her. I looked down at the trickle of blood on my leg.

‘Flesh wound,’ I assured her, as she took the paint rag in her hand and dabbed at it for me. The turps made me wince.

‘There. Come in. I keep it like that to stop them posting junk through my door.’

‘You don’t want your post?’

‘Oh, Mark leaves that in a box.’ She pointed to an ASOS shoe box by the gate. ‘But I don’t open much.’

‘Right,’ I said faintly. She didn’t seem surprised to see me and left me to shut the front door as she strode back to her studio at the back of the house.

It occurred to me, as I followed, that her house was similar in some ways to Clarissa’s.

Joan only lived in two rooms now, my mother had told me as much: the sitting room at the front, and her studio at the back.

She’d abandoned the upstairs, not on account of the stairs– she was still nimble, like Mum– but because she couldn’t be bothered.

She simply drew a rug over herself in front of the television on an old sofa and slept there.

Don’t ask me about her bathroom arrangements, I’ve no idea.

All I know is that when a room became too unmanageable, she simply shut the door and moved to another one, until, like now, there were only two left.

Except there must be… I passed the shut dining room, the closed study…

yes, the kitchen still existed. Just. I poked my nose in.

Very basic. And there were quite a few rooms upstairs, I recalled, from my childhood, and an abandoned basement.

But actually, what were elderly people on their own supposed to do?

Maintain a huge house like this alone? Hoover all those rooms?

Or pay for help? Or, shuffle obediently off to a care home as millennials eagerly grabbed it and tarted it up?

You had to hand it to Joan for doing none of those things and living in her own house, on her own terms, which meant making it smaller, which naturally made sense.

Joan did as she pleased, as many old people with chutzpah and attitude did.

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple.

Clarissa was different. She wasn’t old. And it was also something of an affectation on the part of my sister.

It would be too frivolous and shallow to keep a clean house like Ginnie and me.

Joan, on the other hand, was the real deal.

I followed her into the studio, a fair-sized dark green room filled with canvases stacked against the walls, nearly all of which were nudes.

I realized with surprise that a lot of them were self-portraits.

I could have been shocked, particularly since there was a large mirror on the wall behind her easel, but somehow I wasn’t.

Plus there were abstracts too, and some landscapes, one of which was on the easel now.

The colours in all the paintings were so vivid I wondered if she was going blind.

‘That’s nice,’ I said politely, as she carried on daubing away at some sort of livid fuchsia sky with green clouds.

‘Won’t be a moment,’ she muttered, narrowing her eyes and adding another splash. She turned. Wiped her brush. ‘Now. What can I do for you?’

Direct. No flannel. And no social graces either. Like my sister. And Ginnie and I always fell in, as my mother did too, adopting their style. They never adopted ours. I came to the point, knowing the sitting room with tea and biscuits was out of the question.

‘Joan, I don’t think this arrangement with Mum is working.

I’ve just been to see her at Clarissa’s and she looks dreadfully unhappy, although she’s protesting she’s fine, and the dogs are penned up in a stable.

Could she come and live with you? I mean just you, not the three of us.

And maybe say that you’d like the company, so she doesn’t feel like she’s being rescued, which she’d hate. ’

It’s not often I’ve seen my aunt shocked, but she was, and not at what you might imagine.

‘The dogs aren’t with her?’

‘No, they’re in the stable all day. Unlike at Ginnie’s, where they had a paddock and came in at night.’

‘But that’s like taking my paints away.’

‘Isn’t it?’ I agreed urgently. ‘Her lifeline. Clarissa says they’re too much of a handful.’

Joan snorted. She plonked herself down on a stool. I found one in a corner and pulled it up. ‘That girl makes work for herself. Busies herself to stop herself confronting her useless, empty life. Yes, of course she can come here. How’s Polly getting on?’

‘Oh– um, er, fine,’ I faltered.

‘Found a foundry?’

‘Oh, er, yes… it’s just down the road. Parsons Green.’

‘I know. Andrew and Matt. They’re good. Did that one for me.’ She pointed to a small bronze nude on the window ledge.

‘Right. Joan, are you sure? About Mum?’

‘Of course I’m sure, she’s my sister.’

‘And you don’t mind the dogs?’

She snorted again in derision and I knew she was offended: that I shouldn’t have asked. She got up suddenly. Went all squinty-eyed as she approached the canvas again. ‘Needs red,’ she murmured.

She swooped and picked up her palette from the table crowded with tubes of oils and rags and daubed away. Then suddenly she stopped. Turned. ‘She doesn’t ever want to stop and think, that’s her trouble.’

I was confused. ‘Mum?’

‘No, Clarissa. She’s too scared.’ She made a face. ‘She’s got to get over that. Live her own life.’

‘Yes… well, I suppose she helps Derek, on the farm…’

‘He indulges her. She’s a hindrance, not a help. And she never rides those horses, a ridiculous expense. He’s too soft.’

‘Well, I’ve never heard him called that before.’

‘No, but you and Ginnie were never great judges of character.’ She turned back to paint again. I was staggered. ‘And I knew it wouldn’t work for Leanora.’

I swallowed. ‘That’s what Hebe said.’

‘Sensible girl. Now she’s a bright spark. Got a good head on her shoulders. And of course she’s never forgiven her.’

Now I really was lost. ‘Hebe?’

‘No, Clarissa. Do keep up.’

‘Never forgiven Mum?’

‘Exactly.’

‘For what?’

‘For having someone like her.’ I stared at Joan as she painted, silenced. She turned. ‘Usually it’s the other way round, a beautiful mother shocked at producing such a plain child, but not in this case.’

‘I’m not sure Clarissa cares about being beautiful…’ I said doubtfully.

‘Bollocks,’ she scoffed, going back to her painting.

I shook my head to regroup. I decided to change tack.

‘Joan, would you mind– I mean, you and Mum are very different, albeit close– but would you mind, um, if when she came, she maybe– you know– cleared up a bit?’ I stammered.

‘If we all did? Ginnie and me, at least. It’s just, I think she’d be happier if the house was… ’

‘Spotless?’

‘Well, no, but… tidy.’

‘Yes, she can do what she likes.’ She carried on painting. Then she turned smartly. Wagged her brush at me. ‘As long as no one comes in here. I’m in here all day, or sometimes in the garden, and I sleep on the sofa. Got it?’

‘Got it,’ I agreed. ‘And actually Joan,’ I said somewhat bravely, ‘your sister knows what your lifelines are, just as you know hers.’

‘She does,’ she agreed tenderly. Honestly, it was said like that, it’s the only word I can use. ‘Tell her to come. And tell her,’ she turned again, ‘that I’d like to have her. You don’t have to fib, I would. And the dogs.’

I almost kissed her– she looked horrified as I got up off the stool and lunged– so I just managed to stop myself. I grinned instead.

‘Thanks, Joan. I don’t know why we didn’t think of it.’

‘Because you were too obsessed with the shallow and superficial, that’s why.

Didn’t look further than my modus vivendi.

Too busy dealing in appearances. Which I expect from the others, but I’m surprised at you, a writer.

Tell Polly to come and see me, by the way.

She asked if she could sculpt me. She can do it over there, if she wants, while I paint.

’ She nodded to a corner of the room with a small table.

‘I’ve set it up for her. Happy to take everything off.

’ She glanced down at the usual kit: huge bra and dirty slip.

I gaped, for many reasons. ‘Right. I didn’t know you and Poll…’

‘She pops in. And she says you’re seeing a vicar.’

‘Well, not seeing exactly,’ I spluttered, astonished. ‘But–’

‘Well, at least it’s someone, that’s a start. Shame you can’t see what’s under your nose, she says.’