Art History

I had not been back inside Clare Lodge since before our divorce, three years ago. It seemed odd to be knocking on the door of the house which had been my home for, what, seventeen years. Equally odd to be shown into the large lounge by the new owner. How different it looked now – furniture of a conservative style, a luxurious pale fitted carpet, a much more traditional approach to decoration with subdued floral wallpaper, and of course none of Cynthia’s striking abstract pictures on the walls.

“Do sit down,” Shirley McCrachan invited. “I’ve made us some tea”.

She poured the very pale liquid into delicate cups, added milk and passed it to me on a small tray along with a matching lidded bowl containing sugar in white lumps. It would have been my own hand-made large, barely clean mugs, possibly chipped, in our time, filled with strong builder’s tea.

“I know you were no longer together but it must still be something of an awful shock”, she suggested. “How are your children coping?”

“My son, he’s 19 now, appears to be getting on with things. He’s in his first year at Nottingham. His sister is finding it very hard, losing her mother like that. Did you ever meet them?”

“Not exactly”, she replied. “I think we saw them fleetingly when we were shown round by the estate agent. They looked lovely children.”

“They are”, I told her. “I’m very proud of them.” I tried her tea, possibly Darjeeling. “You’ve made a lot of changes here”.

“Well, it was certainly an artist’s house when we bought it”, she replied. “The house itsefl is lovely but it wasn’t our style at all. I’m sure you understand.”

I did. Cynthia’s studio would now be another chintzy sitting room or something. My pottery across the yard had been converted into a double garage, I had noticed.

I’d arrived sort of hoping that I could have a good look around, but now I wasn’t at all sure that was such a good idea. Our marriage didn’t end well, but the house had remained fresh in my mind, full of wonderful warm memories.

When Cynthia’s father bought it for us as a wedding present, it was in a poor state, but that was part of its charm really. Who cared.

It was large and bright and suited our careless love. Friends crashed out there, parties were held. Then two things happened, more or less simultaneously. Cynthia was ‘discovered’ and also pregnant.

We’d met at art college, she doing fine art, me ceramics. We were young, committed rather than ambitious, and naïve. By the time we graduated we were living together, me with my Stoke-on-Trent frugality, she with a comfortable allowance from her something-in-the-City father.  

We’d got married at a time when none of our friends would have dreamed of such a formal nod to convention. I still don’t totally understand why, but she was the one who went down on one knee and proposed. I wasn’t ever going to refuse that was I. Perhaps it was just an excuse to have a no-holds-barred party.

Then ‘the Lodge’. I thought we might be given a little car by her parents – but we got that, too.

It certainly changed things, and then when Simon Wurtzer (of the gallery with the same name) took her on as one of his three finds of the year it was beyond our wildest dreams. Not quite Charles Saatchi, but not far behind.

Cynthia threw herself into her work with new zeal, and I threw myself into being a dad and a husband. My pottery was sidelined.

First Kai, as the roller-coaster of art shows and gallery sales started, then three years later Ophelia, when Cynthia was a ‘name’ and she was really in the groove.

It wasn’t all roses. We had our rows. Boy, did we have our rows. Red wine, among other things, loosened both our tongues, I guess. But hey! They were mostly good times. More than mostly.

At first, I went to all the openings and art events, but I was never very good at being the invisible partner. It wasn’t that I was jealous. It was more that the Cynthia I knew and loved became a different person when she was in the culture spotlight-of-praise. The free nature of her appealing images of yellow-and-black, painted with a joy and abandon somehow became ‘thoughtful and profound expressions of sincere disquiet at the state of the nation.’ It was, she told me, what the art market required, and it more than kept the wolves from our door!

I, on the other hand, loved being the coping parent, taking the children to nursery, to school, for days out. Cooking, shopping, washing. I didn’t have to clean the house too carefully or to do much ironing, which I still hate. When she wasn’t working, touring or ‘networking’ I was sitting down in the late evening with my restless, quite famous wife. Whatever I wanted to express though ‘my ceramic journey’ could certainly wait.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about our break-up was that it didn’t come sooner. I’ve looked back on our years together with wonderment, for despite our very different paths, I think our relationship worked really well most of the time. We provided our children with a secure, loving home and the care and attention they deserved. As a couple, we got on really well together most of the time

And when the break-up came, it was relatively quick and not as destructive as some. Of course, Cynthia had taken up with someone else – it goes with the territory, really, doesn’t it although it didn’t feel like that at the time. Damien, son of gallery owner Simon, was the lucky one – and he didn’t have a “grating Midlands accent,” which now, apparently, had been an irritation from day one.

He moved in, I moved out. I was treated generously in terms of assets, and stayed in the area so the children could stay with me when they wanted. If our marriage was easy, so was our separation and divorce.

Then she died. One day she was being a successful, talented painter. The next she was gone. No warning, no illness, an undiagnosed aneurysm. She didn’t even make it to hospital. In her early forties.

Now the three of us have the closeness that was always there, but there’s a slightly awkward piece of the jigsaw that is missing and can never be replaced. Not for the children. Not for me either.

I’m not in touch with Damien, why would I be? But thankfully, really, they weren’t married and so the Lodge was sold to the McCrachans.

Two months ago, I received a letter from them, advising me that there were two of Cynthia’s large canvases which had not been cleared from the house when it was sold but were found in a corner of the roof-space. Would I like them?

I have to say I was gobsmacked. Good ones go for more than the price of a large family car.

Then my law student son explained to me that when you buy a new home, anything left behind if not specifically mentioned in the sale agreement, still belongs to the vendor.

Actually, that made the pictures part of my ex-wife estate, not mine. It was a point which he was clear about, but I was not entirely sure how I was going to deal with the niceties of that.

“I’m so glad you could come to collect the pictures”, Shirley said as she finished her tea and put down the delicate cup. “We never realised that they were there until I contacted you, was it last month?

“We have managed to get them down and they are in our day-room round the side. Come and collect them”.

I, too, put down my cup, mostly drunk, and she led me out of the lounge, across the hall and into what had been Cynthia’s studio and was, obviously now, the day room.

I gasped as I came in for there, leaning against one wall were two of her most lovely early paintings, propped up as they might have been more than twenty years before. They were from her degree show at Central St Martins.

I had trouble swallowing, my eyes watered and I stood still in the doorway. No aspect of what they called the day-room was the same except for the huge north-light windows, which was the very first D-i-Y project I did on the house after we moved in - with outside help of course. But the pictures seemed to fill the whole room with their presence

They weren’t mine, but I decided there and then I would take them and sort out the legalities later.

It is now two years later. Kai has just graduated and is still in Nottingham, where he is doing a further law qualification and hoping to do some lecturing. Ophelia is somewhere in the far east on gap-year travels.

And I have just come in from the pottery workshop and am sitting the front room, facing a white wall which is emblazoned with two of the loveliest abstract paintings I know.