She pays the small entrance fee and buys a program to read as she walks. There are lots of virgins. Virgins with child, Virgins in ascension. Virgins as no-longer virgins but mothers weeping over dead sons. Lots of Baptists. Baptists pointing at lambs; Baptists with conches; Baptists in itchy camel clothing; Baptists with no heads; Baptists with no bodies; Salome with her silver platter; Herodias looking on. Apostles, evangelists. Sinners damned. Bodies engulfed. The gaping mouth of hell. There’s a room at the end devoted to contemporary photography from Iberia and Latin America. The photographs are posed, and reflect the compositions of the earlier paintings. One photographer has gone into a woman’s prison and taken photographs of the inmates as the various incarnations of Maria. Maria the virgin; Maria the mother; Maria the demigod. The women in the photographs are tattooed. Some bear obvious scars of childbirth, violence, drug use, and these scars are emphasized.
Agatha considers this half of the exhibition to be bland, predictable. The themes illuminated by the photographs draw upon standard modes of leftist disaffection. The usual moaning. Perhaps these people think they’re being very clever, but as far as Agatha is concerned, the work is derivative. She returns to one of the earlier rooms to look again at an El Greco.
A nearby infant wails and won’t stop. Agatha tells the mother to take the infant outside, but the mother refuses and becomes angry. There’s a dispute, which Agatha wins by remaining calm while the mother becomes hysterical, drawing the attentions of the gallery attendant and subsequently the security team.
Agatha returns home to hear laughter rattling around in the basement. One of the voices belongs to Roster. The other is female, though just as familiar. Agatha descends and pushes open the door to Roster’s rooms. She doesn’t knock. She sees Roster sitting back on his grubby old armchair and her mother, Anastasia, lounging on his lap. Roster is wearing his usual black suit. Anastasia is wearing a fitted minidress. They both hold large glasses of brandy that tip dangerously as they cackle. Anastasia’s hand has found its way between the buttons of Roster’s shirt. His necktie is askew.
Agatha is unsurprised by the tableau. “You don’t have to sit down here. You can sit in the upstairs rooms.”
“But I wanted to see my Reggie. Lovely Reggie.”
She means Roster. Anastasia always uses his first name.
“Take him upstairs as well. For goodness sake, why would you choose to sit down here?”
Agatha turns her back on the pair and goes to the stairs. As she ascends, Anastasia rushes up behind her.
“Are you happy to see me, my darling?” She says this in Russian. “Will you kiss me?”
Agatha turns and brushes her lips gracefully against her mother’s cheek. She continues up the stairs and into the main reception room at the front of the house. It has a view of the park. Her mother follows and so does Roster, who doesn’t sit with the women but instead stands by the door. He has buttoned up and tucked in his shirt, and straightened his tie.
“Come here and sit with me, Reggie, sweetie.”
“He won’t,” says Agatha.
“He won’t if you remain so cold to him. Why are you so cold to him? He’s family.”
“He just won’t. When he comes upstairs he’s working. It’s nothing to do with me. I just know that he won’t sit with us.”
“Come here, Reggie.”
“A man must have structure in his life. I am now at work.”
“Bollocks to that. Come and cuddle me. Come over here with that ox’s cock.” Anastasia turns to her daughter. “Did you know that our man here is hung like an ox? The devil blessed him with a big one as reward for all the sins he would commit.”
Anastasia laughs at her own joke.
Agatha does not look at Roster. She asks her mother why she has come to visit.
“What a welcome! Perhaps one day you will at least pretend to be happy to see me.”
“I didn’t say I wasn’t happy to see you. I just wondered what, in particular, prompted the visit.”
“Reggie phoned me. He tells me you’re having more trouble with those bitch sisters. And with a pack of whores that won’t budge.”
Agatha looks at her driver, who’s still standing stiffly by the door, like a gallery attendant.
“I talk to your mother on the phone every now and then,” he says, “and it happened to come up during our last conversation.”
“So I came immediately,” interrupts Anastasia. “You are too weak with these people, Agy. You let them get the better of you.”
“I do no such thing. I am dealing with both situations.”
When they sat down, Agatha chose the sofa opposite her mother. Now Anastasia gets up and squeezes herself into the small space between her daughter and the armrest, moving one of the cushions onto the floor to make room, sitting with her feet up and drawn into her body.
Agatha begins to shift over but Anastasia wraps her arms around her and puts her head on her shoulder.
“Do you have a boyfriend, Agy? Or a girlfriend? I wouldn’t mind. It would be a bit more difficult to have children, but only a little. It would just require additional planning.”
Agatha’s posture stiffens. She tells her mother she has no boyfriend, but that it would be a boyfriend if there were anyone.
Anastasia takes hold of a lock of her daughter’s long blonde hair and runs it through her fingers. “Is it wrong of me to want grandchildren? I know that not every woman wants to be a mother, but I know for certain that every mother wants to be a grandmother. If you had had a child at the same age I was when I had you, I could almost be a great-grandmother.”
“You’re not even fifty yet,” Agatha points out.
Anastasia makes a little noise at the mention of her age. “If Roster had started as young as I did, he could have a whole clan by now. He would be like Genghis Khan, with his genes spread
