Sleeping Embers of an Ordinary Mind Read online

  “There’s one essential piece of information—the level of your own eyes when you stand or sit in front of the subject. I can tell from your sketches that your chair was lower than your mother’s, and your eye level would be . . . here. Yes?” He draws a small cross at the side of the sketch to indicate her eye level, and Antonia nods. “Now look what would happen if you sat on a higher chair, or if you were standing.” He takes two more pen sketches, adds a cross on each for the new eye level and shifts the perspective.

  “It’s so much easier to understand when you correct my drawings, after I’ve tried and failed.”

  “Eye level is an important decision. So keep these corrections as a reminder. It affects your composition, and it changes your story and the mood. You see, it matters whether you look up to your subject or look down on her. But that’s something you can consider in the future. For now, work from this chalk drawing for your painting.”

  She sighs heavily.

  “Now, listen to me, Antonia. I wouldn’t normally allow an apprentice to paint at this early stage in their studies, but I’ll allow you to press on before you’ve mastered your drawing skills. We’ve done a few painting exercises together, so you know how to mix the pigment and egg binder. I’ll show you how to use walnut oil another time. Don’t rush your painting, or you will waste my pigments.”

  He wags his finger. “Impress me with your patience first, your skill second. Understand?”

  She nods. “I’m confused about the story. Is it enough that Mother is looking upwards and to the side, that I capture her in a moment of contemplation?”

  “Ah! Like Noah. Looking beyond the frame of the picture.”

  “Do you mind?”

  “Artists are allowed to borrow. And, yes, that’s enough. As long as your female subject does not look straight at you, Antonia. That would be too bold. That would be another story entirely.”

  “Would it?”

  “Yes!”

  “We haven’t talked about composition either. Does it matter for a portrait?”

  “Try to remember how I used colour—the yellow-white hose worn by the soldiers—and how I used the line of the lance in my battle painting. It’s not so complicated for your painting, but you must aim, always, to guide my gaze around the picture.”

  Her shoulders slump.

  “I’ll give you a clue. A lance is a straight line, isn’t it?”

  She stares at her drawing, then looks up and beams a smile. “The folds of the headdress. I could make some small changes . . .”

  “Good. You’re learning to be strategic, but first and foremost, you must enjoy loading your paintbrush with paint and applying that paint with simple, unfussy strokes. If you don’t, you’ll never be a true painter.”

  She piles her drawings, stands to leave and recites to herself: The subject, the story, the eye level, the composition, straight lines, colour, patience. And she must enjoy applying the paint. She walks away from the table but stalls, and turns. “Father, may I ask . . . when will the wooden chest arrive?”

  He bangs the table with his fist. “Is there nothing sacred in this house? Can’t I mention the least matter without the whole of Via della Scala knowing my business by vespers?” He walks slowly towards her and places a heavy hand on her shoulder. “If you must know, it will arrive next week.”

  “Father, have you decided on the scenes you’ll paint? And how many panels—”

  “Off you go, now.”

  He watches her leave. Such a flimsy frame. Will she have the physical strength to be an artist? Maybe she’ll only ever work on a small scale—portraits, still lifes, perhaps some furniture painting. He’ll get her involved with the dowry chest. If he were younger, if he still had a workshop, he would set aside a room for her, and, behind the scenes, she’d assist him on his commissions. What’s the best he can do for her now, in his dotage?

  He can guide her towards sharing his opinion. He believes she’ll welcome the decision he made some weeks ago—that her aunt and the abbess offer the best prospect. Marriage promises a life of frustration. A high-born connection of his kin or a self-important merchant’s son would present one obstacle after another to her ambitions. Though Paolo admits to himself that he’s the one with ambitions for the girl. She’s still a child; her mind is a sleeping ember.

  CHAPTER TEN

  London, 2113

  The pub terrace of the Anchor is, unsurprisingly, packed on a glorious Saturday afternoon. Toniah spots a small table at the corner of the terrace with a fine view of the Thames. “I’ll grab it,” she says.

  Ben emerges some minutes later from the bar with two beers, and she notices how small the pint glasses look in his broad-palmed hands. She wonders what it would be like having a man around the place, at home—not Ben, but a male housemate instead of Carmen. Or a male relative—someone who drops by unannounced, comes to birthday parties. And you always keep a couple of his favourite beers in the fridge, just in case.

  He sets the drinks down carefully but catches the table leg as he sits down. Beer slops out and splatters across the table. “Sod’s law,” he says. As he attempts to wipe the beer away with the side of his hand, he asks, “Does Poppy know we’re . . . ?”

  “No. I didn’t bother to tell her. She’s busy.”

  “You don’t think she’d be . . . ?”

  She shrugs. It’s sort of endearing, she thinks; he’s the kind of man who can’t finish difficult sentences. “Don’t worry, Ben. We talked the other day, and she thinks we’d get on well. She knows I’m making an effort to meet new people.” She tastes her beer, catching froth on her upper lip. “See, I’ve arrived back home, and most of my friends have moved away.”

  “I’m part of a strategy? Anyway . . .” He shifts his chair an inch closer to Toniah’s. “I’m not sure I’ll be visiting your sister from now on.” He pauses and raises his eyebrows at her. “I guess I should tell Poppy first, but, you know . . . you’re here.” Taking a deep breath, he makes a further effort. “I don’t think Poppy will be too bothered.”

  The pause is sufficiently stretched that each knows the other could say more but is holding back.

  “I want something . . .”

  “Something . . . ?” she says, coaxing.

  “Um. When this contract finishes, I’d like something more than . . .”

  Come on, she thinks. You can do it.

  “Well . . . everything at the moment is on Poppy’s terms, and that’s been fine. But I reckon I’m more the family type, and that isn’t part of the deal with Poppy.” He sups his beer and leans back, looking more relaxed; the awkward stuff is nearly out of the way. “I wanted to explain.” He laughs. “I’ve pretty much, you know, fucked up my social life with these contracts. Everyone assumes I’m not around, or they get tired of inviting me and getting the same old reply. I’m having a complete rethink now. I’m looking forward to being in one place for a few years.”

  “Good plan.”

  “How about you? Are you sticking around?”

  “It’s good to be home again. I’ll have to see how this job works out.”

  She wants to mention the photograph, but why would she tell Ben, for heaven’s sake? She only met him on Monday. And it’s a bit heavy for a first date, if that’s what this is.

  They reach for their pints at the same moment, her little finger crooked, his straight.

  “You and Poppy are quite different, aren’t you?”

  “Why? Did you expect a duplicate?”

  “Not really. I’ve known a partho family before, and they looked pretty similar, too. I’m more surprised your characters are so different. You’re—”

  “Please tell . . .”

  “How should I say it . . . ? You’re calm, without being quiet. Whereas—”

  “To be fair, Ben, Poppy is a busy mother, and she has a day job, too.”

  “You and Carmen help out, though, don’t you? You take Eva to school and the like.”

  “Yes, and it’s lovely. B
ut Poppy keeps the schedule, makes sure the homework’s done, makes sure there’s a meal ready at the right time for Eva. Carmen and I can breeze in and out. But, sure, I’m an extra pair of hands, a free baby-sitter.”

  “It works well, then? The arrangement.”

  “It’s fun. And I love Eva. I never feel lonely, and that counts for a lot, don’t you think?”

  “It does.” He’s nodding his head. “Absolutely, it does.”

  “So, if I’ve put your mind at rest about Poppy’s reaction, I’m wondering . . . could we start seeing one another?”

  “I’d like that. Not under house rules, though.”

  “That’s easily sorted; I can come to your place.”

  “Damn. How dozy,” Toniah mutters. She knew this was the stickiest stretch of pavement, but she finds herself ripping across flagstones while having no recollection of walking the last hundred yards. She looks up into the canopies of three lime trees, closely spaced. Those aphids don’t let up.

  It’s Monday morning, and her head is thick. She had a late night on Saturday when she stayed over with Ben—she let Poppy assume she was staying with a workmate. At home on Sunday, she argued back and forth with herself over whether she should do an ancestry search on Nana Stone. When she woke this morning, her jaw was aching; she’d been grinding her teeth in her sleep.

  She couldn’t bring herself to do the ancestry search. It felt disrespectful; her grandmother evidently didn’t want the family to know about the boy. The thing that bugs Toniah is that her grandmother’s friends would have known the child, but no word had ever filtered down to Poppy or herself, or to their mother, presumably. At some point in the past, Nana Stone must have clammed up even among her friends, and maybe they knew better than to revive painful memories. Simply put, this little boy was left behind.

  Toniah knows herself too well. She won’t hold out much longer; she’ll want to find some answers. The facts will be easy to uncover, no doubt about that, but she wants to consider the consequences before she starts digging. It’s odd, she muses, that in her day job, she doesn’t blink about unearthing the past. No one’s going to get hurt. Whereas if she were to uncover a family secret—even though her nana is dead and the boy, too, most likely—she’d face a tricky decision. Would she keep the revelation to herself or tell Poppy? One day, Eva might need to know.

  If she’s honest with herself, she doesn’t want to be disappointed by Poppy’s reaction. She doesn’t want to hear an offhand dismissal. She knows this photograph is beyond easy explanation. It was locked in the box.

  In her own mind, the boy must be her uncle. If he were the child of one of Nana’s friends, why would she hide the photograph? That wouldn’t make sense. So the possibilities are reduced to two. Either the boy was Nana’s son and he died, or the boy was her son and she gave him away. Could her nana have been a surrogate mother at some point? Was the photograph taken during a brief reunion? Toniah knows she’s letting her imagination get away from her.

  She sees a patch of water ahead where a resident has hosed down a section of pavement. She slip-slides across the paving slabs to clean up the soles of her shoes, stops and lifts her heel to see if it’s worked. It hasn’t. Skeletal leaves have already glued themselves to the gooeyness.

  A maglev shuttle is pulling in as she descends the staircase, and she walks farther along the platform than necessary, towards a man who’s holding a young boy by the hand—an unusual sight during rush hour. On boarding the shuttle, she takes a seat almost opposite them, two seats away. She wonders if she’s getting broody. The man sits the boy on his knee, and Toniah is struck by how similar they are; their faces have an identical shape, and they have the same deep-set eyes. Yet the father’s eyes are brown, and the boy’s eyes are ice blue. And the boy’s hair is a lighter shade of brown. She imagines this man and his son at home, sprawled out on sofas. It’s a game she often plays on the shuttle. Commuters seem sullen when they’re self-contained among strangers. Self-absorbed. Yet she knows each of these strangers would become instantly animated if a friend stepped onboard.

  At home, this man would be laughing over a game with his son and the boy’s mother. She creates the mother, in her mind’s eye, based on the dissimilarities between the father and son; she’ll have ice-blue eyes, blonde hair most likely, small ears. They sit together, the parents—in this imaginary sitting room—watching him play, and they play their own game of untangling their genetic reach. His mother claims his eyes, hair and high-arched feet; his father laughs and claims everything else. But then she claims the boy’s calm temperament, which of course Toniah must accept in her daydream because she can’t tell anything beyond immediate appearances, while he claims the boy’s fussiness over his clothes. Toniah notices that the boy’s socks are a perfect match for his T-shirt. What she finds fascinating is that a child can look like one parent but have the personality of the other.

  If one day she decides to have a partho child, as Poppy did and as Carmen is about to, she’d miss out on this game of parental reach. It must be fun. She suspects if she loved a man, really loved a man—that is, if she were besotted (and she accepts that she may never find that man)—she’d want to know how their genes would mix.

  For a moment she regrets offering to go with Carmen to the clinic this evening. It seems less of an adventure making a baby the parthenogenetic way. Two of your own eggs of different maturity—one converted to a pseudosperm—enough to create another little being, a baby girl, very similar in appearance to her mother, though not identical. Toniah doubts she loves herself enough. She takes a last look at the boy as he and his father leave the shuttle. Her heart beats hard.

  After two hours’ immersion in the angst of the late nineteenth-century art world, Toniah dispatches her comments on the Gauguin paper to Aurelia Tett. She highlighted a few confusing passages and a handful of multiple-claused sentences that were almost impossible to negotiate. In an endnote, she added her own comments on the connection between the soldiers’ armour in Émile Bernard’s and Paolo Uccello’s paintings. A bit embarrassing on reflection; her first contribution at the Academy is a clarification of how one male artist may have influenced another male artist. She felt it worth recording her observation, though, partly because she was proud of herself for noticing the connection. And you never know, she thinks; it might help to nibble away at a sacred tenet—that Japanese art and all those tribal masks leaching from Africa into private collections in Europe were the main springboards for modernism, for Picasso’s cubist portraits, et cetera.

  Toniah sighs and stretches. Maybe it’s fanciful, she muses. She stares as if in a trance. The quattrocento has always been seen as a minor influence, but maybe its impact is simply less noticeable to critics, easily overlooked because of the era’s familiarity. It sits within our own heritage. How could this influence compete when art collectors, artists and writers were agog over exotica? Japanese prints were flooding Europe from the middle of the nineteenth century, and the flattened space of those prints took more credit for kick-starting modernism than the flattened space of our own Italian paintings, by our own Christian primitive painters.

  After her lunchtime jog, Toniah decides to pre-empt Aurelia Tett delegating another project to her by making her own suggestion:

  Aurelia,

  I hope my comments on the Gauguin project are useful. Thanks for inviting me to contribute.

  I’m turning my attention to the artists I mentioned during my interview for this post—those Italian artists of the early Renaissance who practised their art within nunneries. A painting has turned up in Italy that’s quite likely to be attributed to Antonia Uccello, the daughter of the recognized artist Paolo Uccello. She is the least known of the nun painters. As this painting would be the first attribution to Uccello’s daughter, I feel this offers the Academy a unique opportunity to revisit the early nun painters in Italy, some of whom are already reasonably well documented (e.g., Caterina dei Vigri, Maria Ormani, Plautilla Nelli, Barbara Ragnoni)
.

  Regards, Toniah

  She receives an almost immediate reply: Thanks. Go ahead. A.

  She shakes her head. No small talk with underlings. She responds: Thanks. T.

  At last, Toniah can slip back into the quattrocento. She pulls up the limited information that’s currently available on Antonia Uccello, plus the image of the painting that’s awaiting attribution and the all-important letter signed by the abbess of the convent of San Donato in Polverosa—found in a private archive nearly two years ago. The abbess is writing to one of the convent’s patrons. This patron is a wealthy woman, a member of the Florentine elite; as evident from the letter, she has approached the abbess for advice regarding a commission she wishes to make for a portrait of her daughter. Toniah knows from her research that the convents were active in commissioning art not only for their own use but also for various churches in their environs. In the translated letter, the abbess writes:

  You could consider our own Sister Antonia. She is a trained painter, and, as you may know, she is the daughter of the esteemed master painter Paolo Uccello. Sister Antonia has experience in painting portraits, and I can reveal her talents by way of a small painting that we hold here at the convent. It is a discreet and delicately painted devotional portrait, simple and humble. The only decorative element is a scattering of blue petals, which lie at the base of a plain crucifix within a niche. Your daughter could sit for the portrait here at the convent, which would alleviate your concerns regarding propriety and your daughter’s security.

  The description of the niche was specific and unusual, so the hunt began for this small portrait. It was correctly assumed that the medium would be egg tempera on wood—typical for a fifteenth-century work. And seven months after the art media first publicized the letter, a retired archivist—on hearing of the search at a lunchtime reunion with former colleagues—recalled seeing one such painting in storage during her service at a small museum in rural Tuscany. The museum rarely rotated its art collection, and according to its rather patchy records, the blue-petals painting had never reached the public galleries of the museum.