Chloë Ashby

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Second Self

February

It had never happened to me before. I’m not someone who struggles to make sense of my emotions. Ask me why and I would say it’s because I pay attention to them, because I have a fondness for precision. My mother would insist it’s because I’ve been fortunate enough to inherit what she calls her ‘gut feeling’. When I was a child, I imagined it glowing inside her like a traffic light – red, amber, green. If ever I caught her undressing or lying in the bath, arms floating by her side, the pad of one big toe poking at the tap, I would stare at her soft stomach and try to detect the beams beneath her pearly skin.

Maybe it was the absence of any feeling in my gut that morning that made me think of her. My period was late, and I was waiting. Waiting to react. Waiting to feel . . . anything. Anxiety, frustration, fear. Panic, perhaps, though at thirty-five that would have been a bit dramatic; I knew there were options. I tried to sit still, which was difficult on the Tube, the carriages rattling through the tunnel, dark and compact. I closed my eyes and clamped my hands on my knee. The appropriate response had to be there; I just needed to concentrate.

Noah had told me early on that he didn’t want children. I can still see the look on his face as he said it, lips rolling in on one another, eyes tapering. He was bracing himself for me to say it was a deal-breaker, the way other women had done before. That’s fine, I remember replying, laughing, I’m not exactly yearning for motherhood. He asked me if I was sure, and when I said yes, relief flooded his face. I stopped laughing, because he was serious and so was I. We went on with our day, and the days after that. The days turned to weeks, months, years.

We met when I was twenty-five and he was thirty-six. By now, we’d been together for ten years and married for eight. We’d established a routine, a way of living. With only ourselves to worry about, we could afford to be selfish, prioritising our relationship, our work – that was the way we liked it. During the week, we were out more often than we were in. Weekends were quiet and free. We rarely ate dinner before eight o’clock, and we always drank wine. Sunday mornings were spent in bed, reading the papers, and doing other more intimate things.

My period being late should at least have been a nuisance. An unwelcome surprise, like rain without an umbrella, or off milk on cereal. The one and only time it had been this late before, it had been more than that.

I blinked open my eyes and let my gaze brush over my fellow commuters. A young guy in a shiny new suit. An older woman bundled up in a bobble hat and scarf, nose-deep in a book. Some teenagers drinking cans of Coke on their way to school. Behind them, the passenger alarm: ‘Lift flap and pull handle.’ Still drawing a blank, I considered the possibility that I was simply tired and in need of a jumpstart.

 

*

 

My period was late, and so was my mother. It was twenty past one and I was sitting in the café at the National Gallery. I’d accepted a job at the museum a couple of months before Noah and I got married, a small ceremony at the local town hall followed by tonnes of sharing plates at a restaurant we loved right nearby. When we met, I was finishing my postgraduate diploma in conservation, exploring the techniques and materials of artists from the Middle Ages to the twenty-first century, learning how to identify signs of deterioration and conduct both remedial treatments and emergency interventions.

As soon as the minute hand began to lean to the right, I felt an itch of nerves on my forearms, because she was never not on time. I snuffed it out with thoughts of sandwich fillings. We were both keen on the poached salmon one, with ochre mayonnaise and peppery watercress that caught in the cracks between our teeth; before saying goodbye, we’d direct each other’s little-fingernail towards the most conspicuous pieces of green. I left my coat on the back of my chair and slid two of those sandwiches onto a plastic tray, then after a split-second hesitation – my mind flickering to the box of untouched tampons in my bag – ordered two small glasses of white wine. By the time I was back at our table, like a shell her chair remained empty.

I called her mobile and it rang before going to voicemail, so she couldn’t be stuck on the Tube without signal. Maybe she was walking, and it was buried deep in the belly of her handbag, so she hadn’t heard it ring or felt it vibrate. Maybe she’d arrived early and decided to visit the permanent collection before instead of after lunch, as she usually did, and lost track of time. The itch crept up my arms towards my chest. I glanced again at the clock, the long hand advancing, and drank some wine. The self-reproach that made itself known in my reddening face took me by surprise.

When the table started to tremble, and the word ‘Home’ appeared on the illuminated screen of my phone, I almost knocked over my glass. ‘Mum?’

‘Cathy, darling, sorry I missed your call – I’ve been on the phone with the council all morning.’

‘You’re in Norfolk?’

A gentle laugh. ‘Yes.’

‘We’re supposed to be having lunch.’ I tried not to let the disappointment leak into my voice.

‘Today?’

‘Now.’

‘Now?’ I heard the jangle of beads as she slipped on the red-rimmed reading glasses that were a regular feature around her neck. Next, the licking of forefinger and thumb, and the leafing of pages – she’d always kept a diary by the phone, filled with writing that sloped to the right. ‘Oh my god.’

I pictured her cheeks, pinched with guilt.

‘I can’t believe it.’

I drank some more wine, forcibly opening my throat when, involuntarily, it threatened to close up. I watched with interest as my free hand went to touch my stomach, then I tilted my head back and felt the cool liquid slip down inside me.

‘I’m so sorry, darling.’

‘It’s OK.’

‘It’s not OK.’ Her voice cracked. ‘I’ve never missed your birthday.’

‘Honestly, don’t worry about it, Mum. Is everything all right at home?’

‘Oh, everything’s fine, it’s just this new proposal for an offshore windfarm.’ My mother was one of the few inhabitants in her local area to care more about clean electricity than the skyline. ‘It could power almost five hundred thousand homes, isn’t that incredible?’

‘Incredible.’

‘It is, and you can just imagine the response from some of this lot.’

I peeled open the clear plastic packaging of my sandwich as she started rebuking the naysayers.

‘They’re objecting because of the birds.’

‘The birds?’

‘The birds!’

Apparently, there was a risk of them colliding with the rotor blades.

‘Anyway, enough of that.’ The jangle of beads, followed by the turning of another page. ‘Do you have lunch plans on Tuesday?’

‘Hang on,’ I said, moving my phone away from my ear and in front of my face. I could vaguely hear her talking into the receiver as I checked my calendar. I nodded to no one in particular, then: ‘No plans.’

‘Well, keep it free – it’s on me.’

‘Will do.’ I glanced at the clock one last time and told her I should probably go.

‘Happy birthday, darling.’

‘Thanks, Mum.’

 

*

 

Frank was waiting for me inside the staff entrance. When he saw me, he raised a hand in greeting. He’d started at the museum around the same time as me. At some point during my first week, or it could have been the second, we were summoned by HR and instructed to stand next to one another and smile for an awkward double portrait that we later learned was circulated internally. We’d been friends ever since.

‘Good lunch?’ His voice was deep, the kind of deep you would attach to a large man with broad shoulders and big feet (like me, Frank had to stand on a stool to reach the solutions we kept on the studio’s top shelf, right above the paintbrushes and pots of ground pigments). It was also coarse from sucking on skinny cigarettes that he rolled at high speed with liquorice-flavoured paper. Apparently, his partner, a kind and supportive Scotsman called Douglas, had tried to help him quit for years before giving in and taking up smoking himself.

‘It was fine, thanks.’

He arched a single grey eyebrow, quite capable of reading me by now. ‘Well, I have something for you.’ I was trying to work out how word of my birthday could have got out when he added: ‘It’s ready.’

My lips curled up at the corners, any lingering disappointment about being stood up by my mother dispelled. ‘The beach scene?’ I whispered.

He nodded at a speed that told me he, too, was excited, though for different reasons. I was looking forward to working on the somewhat unexceptional View of Scheveningen Sands because it reminded me of home, while Frank had a thing for Dutch Golden Age paintings. He appreciated the departure from biblical themes and the focus on daily life. The tabletop arrangements, portraits, domestic interiors, landscapes. This one was nicely done in a muted palette of inexpensive browns, greys, yellows and blues, but admittedly nothing special. It had only come to me because the room where it hung was being renovated.

‘Shall we?’ Instead of opening one of the double doors, he gripped both handles and pushed them wide. As he did so, his mouth broke into a grin. There was something boyish about his features, which were all a tad too big for his face, as if he were still growing into them in his fifties. When he told me that one of the reasons he liked the decidedly secular subjects of the Dutch was because he’d been force-fed Catholicism as a child, his eyes had flashed left and right – the way they do whenever he lets me in on a secret.

I followed him down another set of stairs to the lower conservation studios, the sound of museumgoers muffled, the temperature a degree or two lower, or at least that’s always how it feels. It might have something to do with the dusky-blue walls, and the chunky white lights hanging in front of them, vaguely resembling floating icebergs.

‘Here are our findings,’ said Frank, passing me a plastic folder of printed notes, the results of various investigations, including analysis under ultraviolet light. He was in the scientific department but often helped out with structural work, as dextrous with canvas and wood as he was with rolling papers. ‘Also on the server, of course.’

‘Of course,’ I said, smiling first at his professionalism and then at the way he was eagerly rocking back and forth on his heels. I held the folder snugly to my chest as I approached the painting, which was resting on an easel in the corner.

The beach stretched out beneath a clouded sky; together with the heavy coats and boots of the men, women and children gathered on the shore, it told the viewer it was a gusty winter’s day. On the left, a couple of old fishing boats rested against the grassy dunes, and further along a few more had been pulled up onto the sand, fresh from the waves.

‘So, there’s the split in the lower wood panel – that’s one issue – and then there’s the discoloured varnish.’

‘Right.’ The entire scene had a sallow tinge to it from where the natural resin varnish, applied to protect the paint, had darkened over time.

‘Obviously there’s only so much we can tell at the moment,’ he added, following my gaze. ‘We’ll do some more investigations after your initial clean.’

‘Mm-hm.’ Like a camera lens on autofocus, my eyes zoomed in and started scanning the surface for losses. The sky was muddy with overpaint, probably from an earlier restoration. So was the sea.

‘I’ll leave you to it then,’ he said, talking to me but looking at the painting. ‘Will I see you at Mara’s leaving drinks?’

I wondered aloud why the waves ran perpendicular to the beach in places, instead of parallel with it.

‘Catherine?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Mara?’

‘Oh, sure.’

As his footsteps receded along the corridor, I heard him chuckling. I closed my eyes and tried to breathe in the salty sea air.