Sleeping Embers of an Ordinary Mind Read online

  “Let’s take a closer look at you, shall we?” murmurs Toniah.

  What she sees is a searingly tender portrayal of a woman approaching her middle years. Or maybe she’s older. Did the artist shave a few years off the sitter? It’s fairly safe to assume so. The woman is lost in thought; it’s dream-like.

  What can be deduced by simply looking at the picture? Toniah asks herself. The sitter is wearing a plain headdress, so she’s unlikely to belong to the highest strata of Florentine society. Maybe she’s a merchant’s wife who wishes to appear particularly humble, or she’s an artisan’s wife. Alternatively, this is an informal, intimate portrait—the sitter may be a member of the artist’s own household, a servant or a relative. This would chime with the times, since a female artist would perhaps have difficulty finding sitters. How many men were willing to pay for portraits of their wives or daughters?

  Certainly, a female artist would depend on the women around her as she practised her skills. Women were tied to the family home, especially younger women, who could venture out only with chaperones and maybe no farther than the church or a relative’s home. Lower-class women had more freedom, whereas Paolo Uccello’s daughter would experience many restrictions, as Paolo’s mother, Antonia di Giovanni Castello del Beccuto, came from an old family of high social status.

  Toniah decides to make a stab at this painting. The painter is Antonia Uccello, and the sitter is someone in her household. This woman may be a servant—after all, Antonia would have to practise on somebody—or she’s a relative. Toniah’s best guess is that the sitter is her mother, Tomasa di Benedetto Malifici, or an aunt, or a cousin. It’s likely to remain a mystery, but she enjoys the speculation.

  Putting the sitter’s identity aside, she examines the painting’s composition. These half-length devotional figures were becoming popular in the quattrocento. Toniah recalls a similar portrait—who was it by . . . Antonello da Messina? She pulls up his painting. The Virgin Annunciate. In this painting, the figure also gazes to the side, but downwards. Antonia’s painting is slightly more audacious by the standards of the day—the figure is looking upwards, it’s less humble, and it reveals a woman inspired by her reading. It’s more inspirational, more uplifting.

  Although the blue-petals painting is simple at first sight, Toniah can see the artist’s mind at work. The line of the table’s edge leads your gaze to the woman’s hand, and from there, the folds of the headdress take you to her face. Her eyes are blue, and, no doubt by design, there’s a niche in the wall on a level with her shoulder with a simple wooden cross and blue petals sprinkled at the base. That’s clever. And then, the folds in the headdress lead you from the petals back to the sitter’s hands. There’s a strong contrast, a chiaroscuro effect, created by a raking light, which accentuates all the folds.

  She makes a note: A sophisticated composition, but the handling of the paint may be slightly less accomplished. She would love to stand in front of this painting. Maybe she’ll send Aurelia a proposal. See if the Academy might send her to Italy while she’s still on a temporary contract.

  Carmen and Toniah meet in the plush reception of the gestation clinic attached to Guy’s Hospital. Their tour starts in fifteen minutes, so they sit together on a sofa. Instantly, the latest news bulletins appear over their coffee table: the latest fine art auction sales for Toniah and a report on the London property scene for Carmen. They both wave the bulletins away. It seems absurd to Toniah to watch the news in this setting. Why would people focus on mundanities when they’re thinking about bringing a child into being?

  “I think I can afford this. I’ve been looking at the prices,” says Carmen quietly.

  “How much does it cost?”

  “It’s not straightforward. There’s a basic package, but the options are so tempting. The sky’s the limit. Tests for this, tests for that. But then if they find something wrong, or if something needs a bit of tweaking”—she shrugs—“it costs more.”

  “I did have colleagues at the university who carried their pregnancies, and they were mostly happy . . . Well, not exactly happy, but, you know . . . They survived.” Which didn’t sound as light-hearted as Toniah intended.

  “I mentioned the idea to my boss last week. He looked at me like I was mad. I think he took it personally, like I was saying the company didn’t pay me enough. Even the others, the other property agents, weren’t too impressed.”

  “None of their business.”

  “Except they think I’d be having doctor’s appointments all the time. And all those antenatal classes.”

  “Is that what they actually said?”

  “No. Amy, the office manager, asked what I’ll do about morning sickness. Would I be cancelling early viewings?”

  “Oh. Very caring.”

  “They made me feel, you know, really skanky. Like I was letting the side down. I reckon they’d take me off the high-worth properties. Wouldn’t want me waddling around like trailer trash.”

  “You could take them to court if they downgrade your job.”

  “No way. I’d never do that . . . I think I’ll bite the bullet, take the basic package.” She leans into Toniah and whispers, “But I’ll tell them at work that I’m having all the extras.” She laughs. “Just to piss off Amy—she wanted all the adjustments, but she and her fella couldn’t afford it.”

  They stand in the viewing gallery above the second-trimester ward with a young administrator. In the dim light, they peer down through a tangle of tubes, which partly obscure a precisely ordered grid of “baby bottles,” as most people call them.

  “There’s no need to see the first- and third-trimester wards,” says the woman. “There isn’t much to see in the first ward—the foetuses aren’t visible from the viewing gallery. And in the third ward, the technicians are a little too busy for us this evening—I believe there are six foetus flasks being transferred for birthing. We schedule most of our births for the evenings—it’s more convenient for the parents.”

  Toniah feels a shiver. Our births. The administrator talks as though the hospital has joint custody.

  “Where do the births take place?” asks Toniah. In her mind’s eye, she conjures a surreal vision—a bunch of technicians pushing the flasks across the car park to the main building of Guy’s Hospital.

  “In the birthing suites, alongside the third-trimester ward.”

  A technician passes through the ward below and is tracked by a pool of light. She stops in the middle of the front row of flasks. Eight rows of—Toniah counts up—twenty flasks.

  “Why’s the background lighting so low?” says Carmen.

  “The foetuses are sensitive to light. We try to mimic conditions in an organic womb. We also play the voices of their parents, plus the maternal heartbeat, and any music requests—music that the foetus might hear if the mother were relaxing at home.”

  “You play this continually?” says Toniah.

  “No.” She laughs. “We switch off the voices and music at night-time and simply play the maternal heartbeat. We do try to keep everything as natural as possible.”

  Toniah hesitates and then asks, “Do the babies thrive the same . . . whether they have one or two parental voices?” Carmen looks at her quizzically.

  “I wouldn’t know; you’d have to ask a clinician.” The administrator points their attention to a bank of screens at the end of the ward. “We monitor all the vital signs, around the clock, as well as nutrient levels, oxygen feed, waste removal. It’s safer than a natural pregnancy once the fertilized egg has bonded with the womb lining—that all happens in the first-trimester ward. In here, our technicians monitor the data stream, and, for rows A and B”—she points to the authoritative serif capitals suspended from the ceiling—“they administer a range of interventions according to the optional extras selected by parents in their gestation contracts.

  “Now, let me tell you about visiting hours . . .”

  Toniah stops listening. She notices a foetus in the front row, row A. It move
s as though it’s shadow-boxing. She can’t tell if it’s a boy or a girl, but it has hair already. She remembers the photograph of the boy sitting on Nana Stone’s knee. His hair was brushed back off his high forehead, like Nana Stone’s forehead—and hers and Poppy’s, and Eva’s—but the shape of his face was markedly different, squarer, an alien intervention among all-too-familiar features.

  “I’d visit the ward with you once or twice a week,” says Toniah. And she imagines Carmen sitting in the second-trimester ward, her hand resting on the baby bottle—a modern-day Madonna and Child.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  London, 2015

  Her dad coaxes the log-burning stove towards optimum combustion by cutting the cold air feed and increasing the hot air circulation. The flames no longer flicker. They roll around and lick the smouldering logs, a miniature aurora over a miniature landscape. It’s the perfect welcome, Toni feels, for Natalie—her favourite auntie, her mum’s younger sister. A fire makes a house feel like a home. Cosy.

  He picks up the television controller from the coffee table by Toni’s side.

  “Don’t change the channel, Dad. I’m watching that.” She pulls out one of her earpieces.

  “You’re writing on your laptop and listening to music.”

  What’s the point in stating the obvious? she thinks. “So? I’m waiting for the best bit when Amy Pond—”

  “Is that homework, young lady?”

  She tips her head to one side. “I’m doing something easy. As in half-a-brain-cell easy.”

  “So . . . listening to music, doing your homework, reading messages no doubt, watching television.”

  “It’s completely straightforward. I’m making a questionnaire for my history project.”

  Toni rolls her eyes as her dad turns to leave the room. Multitasking—that’s a major problem for her dad, she thinks. If she’s in the car with him and they’re listening to music, he actually turns down the volume when he starts a conversation. Even if it’s just a question. Yesterday, on the way to school, he turned the volume down and asked, “Are you happy to have yesterday’s leftover curry for dinner?” She said, “Yes,” and immediately turned the volume up.

  Her history project—now she’s sorted out her ideas—will be a cinch. All she needs to do is ask her friends a few simple questions. The questions must be simple; if they demand more than thirty seconds’ attention, her friends won’t bother answering. And it’s got to sound dramatic.

  Do you have a relative who died in a major disaster or war? Did this relative die before ever having children? Please tell me his or her name, age (roughly) at death, how he or she died and one interesting thing that you know about this person.

  Is that asking too much? she muses.

  She’ll ask her friends to forward the questions to anyone they know in Costa Rica or India or New Zealand, or anywhere interesting—that is, outside England. Global reach will get extra marks—it’s more data. It’s not exactly scientific, but then this is a history project.

  Toni looks up as Amy Pond says, “I think that’s the first time I’ve laughed in thirty-six years.” It’s a brilliant line. Toni hits Rewind and presses Play again. She listens to Amy’s laugh—the first in thirty-six years. It’s so convincing. She wonders if she got it right the first time or if she practised thirty-six times. Toni laughs at her own joke, which she knows isn’t cool.

  “The Girl Who Waited”—it’s the tenth episode of the sixth series, with Matt Smith, her favourite, as the Doctor—though he doesn’t appear much in this episode. He’s had the bright idea to take Amy Pond and her boyfriend, Rory, on a holiday to this planet Apalapucia. To Toni’s eyes, Amy Pond is almost impossibly beautiful. And she looks convincing as a warrior with her shield and her club. If Toni could choose to be anyone in the universe, she’d choose to be Amy Pond.

  Back to the project. Toni has already decided that she’ll use the Historypin app to put all the dead relatives on a map and share it with everyone, including her teacher, Mrs. O’Brien.

  On reflection, she realizes that most of these dead relatives will be men, because so many men died in wars. So she changes “died in a major disaster or war” to “died in a natural disaster, an accident, war, epidemic or childbirth.” That makes it clear that Spanish flu is included, and all her friends have now studied Spanish flu. It could include being plain unlucky—death by lightning strike, crushed by a falling tree—but she doesn’t want any car accidents in her project, so she deletes “an accident.”

  What else? Definitely photographs—because this app is all about pinning photos with a shortish comment. Pictures say a thousand words, et cetera. Is that another aphorism? she wonders. Probably not. Doesn’t sound very spiritual, very Buddhist.

  Toni knows she should give an example with the history questions, so she’ll send out the invitation when she thinks of one. Maybe she should invent one. Also, she needs a good title for the project. “Dead Ends on Your Family Tree.” “The Missing Families.” “The Families That Never Were.” Not bad. “Toni’s History Project—Missing Persons.” That’s better. She jumps up from the sofa and swipes the air with an imaginary club. She’s got it: “Toni’s History Project—Persons Unknown.” Yes, then it’s clear that she’s really interested in the people who were never born, and it sounds a bit like The X-Files.

  Rory’s mad, and he’s screaming at the Doctor back in his Tardis. This is the bit she’s waiting for, so she pauses the programme, gathers herself for total concentration and presses the Play button. Rory shouts at the Doctor, “This is your fault. You should look at a history book once in a while. See if there’s been an outbreak of plague or not.”

  That’s it. She knew someone mentioned plague in this episode. The planet of Apalapucia is under quarantine because of a deadly virus, Chen-7. Anyone with two hearts, like the Doctor, will be dead within an hour. That’s why Matt Smith is staying put in the Tardis. And Amy has accidentally stepped into an accelerated timeline, so there are now two versions of Amy Pond. One Amy is her usual gorgeous self, and the other Amy is ageing, fast. She’s been waiting thirty-six years for the Doctor and Rory to save her, even though they think she’s been waiting a few hours. Old Amy, all wrinkled but still lovely, is talking to Rory through the closed door of the Tardis. She tells him to leave her behind on Apalapucia. “Tell your Amy I’m giving her the days, the days with you.”

  Toni hasn’t watched this episode since her mum died. Her stomach knots. Poor Old Amy. She died before she had a child. A log slips within the stove, and the fire sparks. Toni decides to pin a picture of Amy in her project. She’s a TV character, but Toni can borrow her; like her dad says, you can borrow anything you like these days. Anything goes. But where should she pin her?

  Somewhere in Scotland; she speaks with a Scottish accent. She types a search question: Where does Amy Pond live? Answer: The English village of Leadworth. Is that a real place? Google Maps says . . . it isn’t.

  Toni does another search, this time on Leadworth, and the search result brings up a Doctor Who fan who has trawled—unbelievable—the entire British Isles on Google Maps and Street View to find Amy Pond’s home as it appears in several Doctor Who episodes. In the real world, Leadworth is Llandaff—a village in Wales.

  Toni pins Old Amy Pond in Llandaff and adds a few lines of text: Old Amy Pond stayed behind on the planet of Apalapucia in an act of heroism so that Young Amy Pond could live out her life with Rory (“The Girl Who Waited,” Episode 10, Series 6, Doctor Who). Teachers like references.

  There’s a mechanical screaming from the kitchen, and Toni knows her dad is blending the tomato sauce for the pizzas. It’s her favourite meal, and she thinks she’s lucky having a dad who makes home-made pizzas. She slams down the lid of the laptop, folds her arms and, between fingers and thumbs, pinches the skin in the crooks of her elbows until it hurts. She feels bad; if she had to choose between her mum and dad, she imagines she might have chosen her dad. She shuts her eyes and concentrates hard on her mum’
s prawn risotto.

  The weird thing is, she didn’t think about her mum too much in China. Now that she’s home, she thinks about her all the time.

  She leaves the sitting room and pulls the pizza toppings from the fridge. Pineapple, ham and mushrooms for herself, and ham, mushrooms and olives for her dad. Her mum liked anchovies, and there’s still a flat tin of anchovies in the fridge. It’s been there over a year, and neither Toni nor her dad has felt like moving it. Toni touches the tin for several moments, as she does every time she goes to the fridge.

  Toni hears the back door open, and she spins around expecting to see Natalie, but it’s Anna Robecchi carrying a dish.

  “Smells good in here, guys,” she says.

  “Anna, you’re too busy to look after us like this,” says Toni’s dad. Anna places the dish—baked peaches in custard—on the kitchen island and looks towards Toni, eyebrows raised, inviting a response.

  “Look!” Her dad points to a hardback book on the island. “I’ve bought some pudding recipes. You’ve inspired me.”

  Toni is impressed. Her dad always uses the Internet to find recipes, so he’s bought the book purely to make the point to Anna. And that’s why he left it lying around; he usually keeps his kitchen tidy.

  What’s more, he wouldn’t make the point if anything were actually going on between them. Toni feels relieved, but embarrassed, too. So, by way of apology to her dad, she says, “Thank you, Anna. Looks awesome.”

  Then her dad goes too far. “Stay and have pizza. Natalie’s coming round in ten minutes. We’ll make it a party.”

  “No. That’s kind, but I’ve made plans. I can’t stop.”

  He gives Anna a friendly hug, and she leaves.