by Laurel Lindström
He’s ugly, underweight, his face sagging swathes of empty bristled flesh. His eyes peer out from beneath heavy overhangs and his thick bristled brows point up and towards each other like a demon’s. He looks out through a wall of windows at the chaos of plants and shrubs that are his small garden. He wonders just how many rat families have made their homes there. When he catches them indoors in humane traps he gently releases them back into the garden. Sometimes at night he hears their awful squeals as neighbourhood cats carry out periodic culls.
Inside Lol Godley’s bright little house is a different sort of chaos, one where colours reign supreme. Oils, acrylics, watercolours, crayons, felt-tip pens, charcoal and coloured pencils of all sorts litter most available surfaces. But not his stool, his drawing board or his single comfy chair. This is placed strategically close to the radiator, facing the television and as far from the light as possible. There’s a small table beside the chair, tangles of coloured Christmas lights and an ancient persian carpet on the floor. It is threadbare and ingrained with decades of grime, charcoal and pencil shavings. A diary. Dirty curtains block the windows in the front and side of the house and, when occasionally drawn, the glass wall at the back. In the kitchen there is a gas cooker and fridge from forever ago, cups and plates for three: one dirty, one being used and one in the sink. The one in the sink can sometimes stay there for weeks. It’s the same story in the decrepit fridge: one meal half eaten, one meal waiting and one meal yet to be made. Ingredients are limited to cheese, tomatoes, marmite, tinned beans and spaghetti hoops, tinned tomatoes, crackers and crisps. He gets his beer from the pub across the road and on Sundays treats himself to a Sunday roast there.
For many years he has lived this tiny life, rarely leaving his house and sending his work by courier to the people who commission him to do botanical drawings. Lol Godley is known for accuracy with thorns and prickles and spines. But he is very good at flowers, leaves and stems too and has a reputation for punctilious detail, subtle colours and accuracy. He has hard-won fame amongst wealthy plant collectors and in the trade. His reputation is as an eccentric who doesn’t leave his space and for whom visitors are not welcome. He is fine with this. As long as he has some money for beer and comestibles and can buy luxuries such as Easter eggs and Christmas lights, of which he has many sets, some on the walls, some on the floor, he is content. His drawings and pictures are what matters; even the money that builds in his bank account is unimportant to him.
It is a far distance from when he moved into the house all those years ago with his new and extraordinarily beautiful young wife. She was already disconsolate and he was reeling from an unexpected diagnosis. They said it could be years or decades, so he didn’t tell her but worried for the future. He hadn’t noticed her sadness, but when she left he took comfort from the curious return to balance. And from the fact that he didn’t need to worry any more. Now he could just wait. He had always known she wouldn’t stay, that the little corner house with its rear wall of windows and small garden wouldn’t be enough. She was so pretty and he was so very ugly; she was so very clean and tidy and he with his flowers and colours was not, except on the page. They had met at a gallery opening, dated once or twice and he wanted her so. They married. But her fascination with his artistry and the novelty of his curious demonic appearance were short-lived. An easy divorce with no expectations, and an unexpected turn for the better as far as the drawing went. What was he thinking. Such vanity. No more.
Amidst isolation and gradual physical decline he worked and worked. Passing years, as the house and garden also declined and as his artistry distills. Then a sudden break. A gallery show and a private view. And unexpectedly people wanted his work, attracted to its lyrical turns, its precise contours. Waiting to die alone gave him intense concentration and in his hands came a stillness and calm that found its way onto the page. Pain and inconvenience, but not death. Stasis and a steady and unwavering routine. Stressless and nurturing.
And then a commission from a woman in the town who has put many notes in his letterbox, which he has ignored. She comes back again and again and eventually stands outside his paintpeely front door and just keeps knocking and knocking. He peeps out from behind his drawn curtains and sees a large middle aged woman with short red hair that is very thin and very straight and somehow too meagre for her wide, flat face. She’s portly and her clothes fit a little too tightly he fancies. He watches her banging on the door, tapping his foot in time, impressed at her dedication, so much so that he forgets to keep still his hold on the curtain. The tiny movement is enough to draw her eye and arched eyebrows add frame to a laser gaze. She continues to bang and bang and waves at him with her other hand. Lol waves back wondering why she is smiling and why he is waving.
Leaning his forehead against the glass he’s nodding now in time to her rhythm and then a sudden silence and she stops to come closer to the window and press her own forehead against the dirty glass, against his. When she takes it away because he is opening the door, there is a pale pink imprint of foundation. It is an irregular shape lined with her very own wrinkles, her personal stamp. It stays there for many months, traffic dirt sticking to it, the expensive make-up formula immune to rain until eventually it succumbs.
“What are you doing! Why are you banging on my door?” He peers out from a tiny crack and looks up at the woman blocking the light and exterior colours. She is a huge silouette standing between their two worlds, a galaxy of her own replete with stars and dark matter. “We don’t have much time, but I want you to do some pictures for me.” A low and whispery voice like rustling paper. She continued,“there will be eleven pictures altogether and we must get started as soon as possible”. “Eleven?” he said back dubiously, trying to get some impression of what this monstrous big lady looked like. “I can’t possibly. I am very busy with a special commission for the Royal Society and cannot possibly take on anything else now.” He was lying and tried to shut the door, but she leant into it with a massive forearm and blocked even more light. “I want four pictures of my garden, based on four photographs, one for each view taken from the middle of the garden. And I want seven more pictures, one each of seven different plants. The plants tell a story, my story and I want to remember”. She took away her arm and leaned her face down towards him. “The pictures each tell a story you see, but I am afraid of forgetting the stories. We have wasted too much time already.”
He looked at her in confusion and eased the door just a tiny little bit and the big woman stepped forward her hand once more outreached. “You have to take this on because it has to be done soon. I do not have much time.” Her voice still slightly breathy and childish. As she stepped forward he took an involuntary step back away from her and it was enough to let her hand push on the door and her foot to cross the threshold. Inside the small space her presence oozed up and out into every corner and yet he had the impression of frailty, something cobwebby about her as if he could blow her away.
Inside his house Mandy inhaled turpentine and wax, fermented bodily odours and mouldering washing up. She said she understood, but her voice trailed to silence and she didn’t finish her sentence. He didn’t understand but together they stood in the halfdark hall and inhaled each others’ scent, two creatures stuck in their own cages, stuck in this shared cage and staring at one another. Within half an hour and with some reluctance he had agreed to the commission and was ushering her out of his space. He had explained that he couldn’t come to her garden “Bring me the photos of the four views and of the plants you want me to draw. Maybe some samples. I can put them in water. It won’t take long for me to finish the pictures. Watercolours, I think.” Her large overpainted face grew sadder. “It cannot take long for me to see them.” He stared back puzzled at the comment and working out how to fit this curious commission into his routine. It could of course be done.
There was the money, so briefly they talked about that, and then there was the process and they argued at length about that. “You don’t understand, I have to sit with you to watch you draw and paint. I have to be part of their creation, I have to join with you and tell you their stories. I have to remember.” Lol Godley drew up slightly taller and launched into a long ode to his illness, his need for privacy and routine and his own precious process. She listened head on one side, eyes focused on his buried deep in their folds, and nodded as he explained his artistly vanities. And then she said, “I am dying you see, my brain is fading, getting more and more moth-eaten every day and I would say to you that this will be the best work you have ever done because it will live on for you and for me, long after both of us have forgotten my stories or why the plants and flowers matter. Your story and mine will be in these images you see.” The torrent of words left her breathless and tears were welling up in her eyes. Mascara running. Colours seeping along the wrinkles around her eyes and down her cheeks. He turned away as she moved towards the door and waved a vague hand.
The next morning a stiff envelope arrived full of pictures of her garden and the seven varieties of flowers he was to draw and paint. The four views were ordinary enough. One of a fence with delphiniums climbing high in their distain to tease at an unruly honeysuckle and a rambling rose. He could see the honey bees creeping and the summer haze rising. There was another view all in shadow under tall forbidding laurels, guardians of a dilapidated shed and overseeing dead mud where once was lawn. A small pile of leaves rotting in a corner, a birdbath full of decay and ancient bayberries. And then there was a view of an open garden fence with a washing line and prop in the foreground, neat flower beds and hints of a next door garden’s untidy mess showing through from the other side. The fourth view was of the back of the house, with another small shed to one side and french windows that let into the house from the patio where elaborately planted terracotta pots screamed aloud their chaotic summer mayhem. A vigorous pear sapling was between the terrace and the lawn, planted in the wrong place for a tree that would grow too large for its position.
There was also a note that said she would come every Wednesday morning to sit and watch him work, as agreed. He did not remember agreeing. When the first Wednesday morning came he ushered her into his armchair which he had shifted to be behind his stool and drawing table. They started with the flowers, with the rose she had brought now lolling over, lazy and wanton in water in a paintstained jam jar. He recognised the flower from one of the four scenes of her garden, the rose that appeared to be colluding with the honeysuckle and squabbling with the delphiniums.
“I planted this rose for my husband after he died” she began as he sketched a light pencil outline and soon lost track of the murmurous sound of her voice. She was explaining in hushed tones that she wanted to remember the husband with love, so she chose a rose. This particular rose is called Kiss Me Kate and its big blowsy flowers, she fancies, are rather like her when he wanted to hurt. Pink and tumbling over. Often she was pink and tumbling over, for her husband was not a gentle man, nor was he kind. But looking at the riotous fluffy pinks of Kiss Me Kate in bloom, she could see only beauty and perhaps would soon remember him differently. She wanted to picture someone less mean, less nasty. Soon her memory would help her believe her own version of their story, unpolluted by his.
The watercolour of the rose was quickly done and when she arrived for their next session some Wednesdays later and off-schedule, it was with much greater joy. She couldn’t stay still, her massive frame quivering and her gap-toothed smile unceasing. “This Peony is for me and who I used to be” she gushed, “because I have always been big and beautiful, always full of colour and life. I like to remember myself as Paeonia and someone else as Apollo, although I am not sure why.” Her voice trailed away and then suddenly, “You can use the roots and seeds for pain relief, you know. Although I don’t really think it works.” And in some forgotten space in her head an angry fist is forcing peony seeds into her mouth and laughing at her foolishness. She catches her breath and turns away, and in his hand his pencil stops as he turns to look over his shoulder. She stares back and slowly smiles away the memory. She sits down heavily in the lumpy armchair, smiling again, embarrassed. He got up from his stool and took the deep crimson flower to place it in a jam jar of water. He waited for the petals to suddenly fall and leave the peony unclothed, a stalk of naked green. Would that make a more interesting image? he wondered. The two of them looked at the peony, both waiting: he wondering about the image and she searching the remnants of memory for more of the story.
When the stargazer lilies arrived in a massive bunch he was not sure if they would open in time for the next Wednesday session. Tight waxy buds and striated leaves were his starting point. And when she finally arrived, late but still on a Wednesday, when she saw them opened she blurted out “Lilies!!” before sinking into the armchair. Quietly she said, “They are supposed to be for the dead but for me they are passion and a memory of a lover long since gone.” She started to weep soft childish tears that cut through her excessive makeup, creeping along the crevices of her face, fast running tramlines. Snivelling into her sleeve she said. “He always brought me lilies. I don’t even know where Senegal is or if his name was really Moussa”. Lol watched the way she wiped her nose on her sleeve and finished off with an upward swipe of her palm that spread lipstick onto her upper lip and the tip of her nose. He quietly told her that Senegal is in West Africa as she looked back blank and uncomprehending. He turned back to his work silent, a little confused but beginning to understand.
The Wednesdays were not always Wednesdays but he came to welcome her arrival, even when Mandy showed up on the wrong day. He was keen to show her the progress with the watercolours as he finished them, surprised at himself to be so inclined to share. Together they called the days Wednesdays even if it wasn’t Wednesday at all. And one day, “These. These. I cannot find stems to bring you.” She stepped from foot to foot in her distress and then with his hand on her arm was able to focus. “Black tulips. I wanted black tulips for you and for my dogs, so many, and I have to keep planting them because they stop coming after a while. I don’t know why.” She fell back into her familiar chair and glanced down at the book he had placed on her knees. “Like these, and like the ones you gave me photos of?” She looked up at him wide-eyed and smiling. “Yes.” And he turned away, sat on his stool and started to draw.
Soon it was impossible for Mandy to come alone, because she couldn’t find the little corner house. She hired a taxi, with a lengthy and expensive contract, to bring her there every Wednesday and to wait and to take her home when she left the house. Her daughter came with her once and waited outside in the taxi to escort her mother back home. Lol showed Donna the completed drawings but she turned away to look at something far away, unconvinced. “Very nice.”
The picture of the herbs was hardest for him. He found it difficult to capture them without spaces in between, but she wanted a riot of herbs. She said “And these herbs, parsley for happiness, rosemary for remembrance. Basil for sorrow,” this last with a wry smile. This last the hardest of all, with delicate white flowers whispering rejuvenation, the promise of new life. One day, chasing the fading light they did two plants in a single session that lasted all day, with no breaks. She clutching at the images in a mind turning threadbare and faded, staring at his work and the way his hands moved with minute graceful touches across the paper. He worked, alternately staring at the plants and the page and the colours, his hands moving fast against the changing light.
And then “Hellebores in many colours to remind me of a quicker journey, and lupins too.” He didn’t understand and paused before he started to sketch. “What, what do you mean a quicker journey? Whose journey?” She smiled with a hint of wickedness and her softly vacant eyes focused for a brief moment on some hidden evil intent. “A quicker journey? You know. A quicker journey away, away to being dead.” He shook his head failing to understand and waited. “They can kill you you know, hellebores and lupin seeds, if you eat too many of them.” “Are you sure?” he ventured and waited again as she gathered her thoughts, running her eyes up and down his face, distracted. “I am not really sure of anything any more, but I did think that perhaps he would be on his journey sooner, if I put enough of them into his food. But I was never bold enough, never sure enough and anyway, I am not a what is it, someone who kills.” She gave a little laugh and sighed. “You see I want to remember that I might once have been brave. This picture with these two plants is that story.”
The final picture of the seven was of “a choisia because its always green and its scent reminds me to come out into the garden. And there’s something else, but …” She never finished the story for the choisia but eventually found the words to explain that she was forgetting to leave the house more and more, and that her daughter came to visit more often now. She said she wasn’t sure, but perhaps Donna (was it Donna?) was living with her now.
The four views were more challenging for Lol. Mandy’s rambling stories and his own inexperience at painting what were essentially landscapes, gave him pause. He started with the back of the house and asked her, “what do you remember about this scene?” She held a photocopy of the A4 shot on her lap and with many pauses started to tell him the story. “It’s where I lived after he died. It’s my house. The one here. The one in this town and it is where I have been so very happy. Moussa used to come down from London with an armload of lilies and we would sit in the garden.” A long pause and the room and the light inhaling them both before she continued. “Their scent would rise and mingle with the rest of the flower scents and when dusk brought the midges we would go in through those doors, taking the lilies with us with our wine and our lust up to bed.”
Mandy paused again scraping at the details, struggling to arrange them and staring for minutes at a time at the image held tight in her two hands. “In the mornings Moussa would put our breakfast out on the patio, whatever the weather. Sometimes it was in the snow and sometimes in the rain. He loved the rain. He loved the pear tree even though I put it in the wrong place.” But now she stopped, out of puff, out of frames, stuck at the end of a cul de sac. “I’m sorry. I can’t remember what happened to him or why he stopped coming.” “Can you picture him, can you tell me what he looks like?” She closed her eyes and pushed her fists tight into them and with a smile replied: “I know that he was hugely tall and muscular with a very wide nose and an even wider smile. Lots of teeth he had, far too many.” This last she whispered with a blushing smile and a look away at the door into the grubby kitchen on the other side of the room. “What about the shed?” he asked and she returned her gaze to the photograph. “It’s where I kept the grandchildren’s outside toys and their paddling pool. I wonder if they are still there. I wonder what they look like.”
Away from the patio view he was looking to where the delphiniums climbed to the honeysuckle and the Kiss Me Kate rose flounced. He could see the scents and shadows in the image shifting as the days drew to a close. He could see the romance and the passion and hear the laughter as the light and the wine diminished. Honey bees would not stay long to gather their nectar but the bumblebees would keep bouncing around until the last possible moment. He fancied the lily perfumes would confuse them and that later sounds of passion would echo across the darkened flowerscape. He turned to ask her more about this view but she was gently snoring in her chair, her head to one side and a thread of drool slowing reaching down and seeping softly into her shoulder.
The view towards the back of the garden was a mass of blacks and browns, dark leaves, damp dirt where once a lawn had prospered. Towering bay trees overhung the end of the garden, a shadowland where nothing could grow. Even the lower reaches of the bay trees were leafless in the drear. He was working on this view alone, keen to finish the commission so that she could still enjoy looking at the images from her bed. Donna had told him that Mandy would not be coming any more as she was sleeping so much and she became so confused when she left the house. He had one more picture to finish he said, and he would bring it to her if that was ok. The daughter did not smile. “Yes” she said. “That should work, I suppose.”
Lol stood on her doorstep, map in one hand and a portfolio under his arm. He had tried to wash a little, but had forgotten about his hair which stuck to his head, a greasy cap of thin black streaked grey hair. In her bedroom Mandy was staring out of the window across the top of the bay trees at a distant sea, a static and solid blue.
They spent many afternoons together in this way, he seated beside her and her looking at the horizon or at one of the eleven pictures. She seemed to find comfort in the images and in Lol’s random presentation of them. “Let’s talk about this one. Tell me its story.” On the day they shared the last image, he told Mandy he could not come next week as he would be in hospital. But she did not respond. “Tell me what this picture says.” It was the view of the washing line and its prop, the view that drew the gaze into a distance across other gardens. Lol had looked through the fence into these new worlds when Donna had taken him into the garden to explain that her mother was getting less and less coherent and that occasionally she would shout for no reason and even become very distressed. Standing there in the cold with her he looked through the broken palisade and saw down the hill a miscellany of other gardens, other lives. In his image the next door garden’s weeds were green and bright, a litter of wild flowers and bees and birds. But now there was an autumn’s worth of decay, the bright colours turned dingy and ugly, the greens flat and tired. There were no bees, no birds.
Back upstairs Mandy was asleep again, snoring softly, her big hands twitching on the cover from time to time. What dreams did she have? He wondered if the eleven pictures where part of the parade. Earlier they had looked together at the view of the fence and the distant gardens, the empty washing line, the prop that held aloft the washing as it dried. “What is that?” she was pointing at the prop. “Why is there a stick in the picture?” “It’s a prop” he said as Donna came in with the tea. They paused to look at her and at the tray. Mandy looked away and said again “Why is there a stick in the picture?” Lol answered once again “It’s a prop. It’s a prop for the washing on the line. To keep it up in the air, away from the ground.” She smiled and turned away again, ignoring the tea and her daughter. Ignoring him. Ignoring the picture on her lap, lost in a labyrinth of memories and imaginings where flowers and plants and shrubs lit her way and where all the stories were hers.
Laurel has a rewarding career as a journalist, writing as Laurel Brunner. Her career began in the 1980s during studies at UCLA. Her work has been published globally. A Linguistics & English degree has helped Laurel to develop writing and analytical skills supporting technology writing and fiction. Her first novel, The Draftsman, was published April 2021.
