Love Always

She shakes her head. ‘I have to go and pick my tickets up from the machine.’

‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Right.’

We are silent. I look down at my black boots. I pul ed them on this morning, at five-thirty, in the dark. It seems like a lifetime ago.

‘So, I’ve already got my ticket,’ I say, waving the orange card at her. ‘I think I’l —’

‘Yes, yes,’ she says, a touch too eagerly. ‘Wel , it was . . .’ she trails off. ‘Er, good to see you.’

Someone hurries past us, dragging a suitcase on wheels. It crackles loudly over the tarmac. ‘Look, Natasha,’ Octavia says, after another silence. ‘I’m sorry. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said it like that.’ She holds her hands up. Don’t blame me. ‘I just thought you’d have heard. You know, everyone’s always . . .’ She trails off again, and crosses her arms defensively. ‘It’s al water under the bridge, I suppose.’

‘It’s clearly not though, is it?’ I say. ‘It’s anything but that. It explains a lot, anyway.’ I’m trying not to sound angry. ‘Look, your mum’s always had it in for my mum and I’ve never known why, and now I do. That’s why I’m not surprised.’

‘You understand why now.’ Octavia nods, as if to say, Good. She’s final y getting it.

‘No, I don’t believe it, Octavia. What I mean is,’ I say, breathing deeply, ‘I understand why you’ve always been so vile to us now. I mean, did your mother tel you this herself?’

‘Not in so many words,’ Octavia says. ‘You don’t sit down and explain something like that – we just always knew. Dad, too. And Uncle Jeremy.

That’s why he never comes back.’ She shrugs.

‘Wel , as you like. I don’t believe for a second, a second –’ and I raise my voice so I’m speaking as loudly as possible without shouting, and I can hear myself, high above the clinking masts in the harbour, above the train engine – ‘that my mother kil ed Cecily, or anyone. I don’t know what happened, but I know that much.’ I sling my bag over my shoulder.

‘Hey –’ she begins. ‘That’s just what they say. I’m just saying—’

‘No,’ I interrupt. ‘Let’s not go into it again, OK? I think I’m going to get on, now. See you around then. Thanks for—‘ I don’t know what to thank her for, but since I’ve started I think I’d better finish. ‘Er – thanks for sharing the taxi fare with me.’

Octavia nods back – what else can she do? – and says, ‘No problem.’

I don’t look back at her as I walk towards the train. I pray I don’t bump into her again, but I’m pretty sure she’l steer clear of me this time. She thinks she’s done me a favour. That’s what upsets me most of al . Pointed out how stupid I’ve been.

In the summer the buffet car is always ful ; people arrive as early as possible to get a seat so they’re not shut into their cabins, which are initial y cute but soon become claustrophobic. In winter, the car is nearly empty, and after I have dumped my bag in the single-bed cabin and admired the free set of toiletries, I settle down into one of the single seats by the window, with a table and a lamp, and put my bag in front of me. I look around hastily again, but Octavia hasn’t appeared. The diary pages are stil in my pocket. I sit there, and the train pul s slowly away from the station, and I don’t know what to feel.

There’s a Times on the opposite seat – the guard obviously missed it – and I pick it up. I order some tea and biscuits, even though I’m not hungry, and I start reading the paper. The news absorbs me. I read about a cabinet plot to oust the Prime Minister, the flooding al over the country, the travails of a minor sportsman and his ‘celebrity’ wife, what’s happening in a reality TV show, which MP has tried to claim an antique rug on expenses. I feel as if I’ve been away for a long time, and I am gathering information to piece myself back together, bit by bit.

I know before I turn the page to the Obituaries section that I wil see a photo of my grandmother, scarf in her hair, a broad smile curling over her perfect teeth, brush in hand, a mug of tea and painting paraphernalia – palette, brushes, rags, turps – cluttered around her, in the studio I was standing in over an hour ago. It looks completely different, crammed with canvases, postcards stuck on the wal s, pot plants, a gramophone.

Something catches in my throat. She is smiling out at me. It’s like Cecily’s face, shining out of the drawer.

Frances Seymour

Highly acclaimed observer of Cornish landscape who never painted after 1963

Frances Seymour, who has died at the age of eighty-nine, was what one would cal a star. Not for her the flamboyance, the tantrums and temperamentality, cliches of the artist: she was universal y beloved, charismatic and beautiful, a magnet for men and women alike; her house, the beautiful Summercove near Treen in Cornwal , open to al and a haven for friends and family. She lit up every room she was in and her company was a rare gift.

Because of her charm and force of personality it is easy to forget, therefore, the gap Seymour created when she abandoned painting after the death of her youngest daughter Cecily, in a tragic accident. Frances never forgave herself for her daughter’s death, and some have speculated this was her form of penance, for the events of that summer in 1963. This is not established. What it is important to establish, however, is the role Frances Seymour played before that in sealing the reputation of British painting in the mid-twentieth century.

Frances Seymour was not a Cornish painter, or a female painter. She was simply one of the most talented artists of the last century.

This was my grandmother, I want to shout. I want to wave the paper out of the window, like the Kind Old Gentleman in The Railway Children.

Look how clever she was, how bril iant!

Tears come to my eyes, and I’m crying, I can’t help it. I don’t understand anything any more. I keep hearing Octavia’s voice, and when I close my eyes I can see her large grey eyes, her pointy noise, looming at me in the dark, as she oh-so-careful y stabs my mother in the back, over and over again. I want to hate her, to laugh at her, but I can’t. I ask myself why I can’t.

Because, despite what I said to her only an hour before, I’m terrified that she’s right.