A Story Lately Told: Coming of Age in Ireland, London, and New York by Huston Anjelica

Author:Huston, Anjelica [Huston, Anjelica]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2013-11-19T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 10

Anjelica with Allegra in the garden at Maida Avenue, 1965

Away from Ireland, from the green fields and the open air, 31 Maida Avenue, a graceful cream-colored Georgian town house on a quiet street in Little Venice, became the center of our new way of life in London. It looked onto the Regents Canal, an estuary that flows from the East End to the heart of nearby Paddington. Houseboats were moored on either side, and in summer the light filtered through the leaves of the plane trees lining the pavement above its banks.

There were steps leading up to the front door, which Mum had chosen to paint a muddy green to reflect the water. The house, like all of Mum’s creations, was beautiful. There was a large basement kitchen with flagstone floors and unvarnished pine cabinets that looked out onto an overgrown garden, at the far end of which was a wrought-iron four-poster bed, where we lounged after long Sunday lunches, when friends would come to eat or stop by after other dates, for drinks and dancing.

The living room at Maida Avenue was painted, in Mum’s words, “Irish-sky gray.” She had applied the color with rags, so the effect was uneven and cloudy. The wall that separated the living and dining room on the first floor had been removed, and the light came streaming through tall windows on both sides. Against the far wall, between the windows, the philosopher Rousseau’s daybed, framed by the curving necks of two red swans with golden beaks, had made the passage from Ireland alongside the figure of a bronze Shiva. Anemones in apothecary vials were clustered on top of a piano. A Regency chaise stood on clawed feet.

Mum’s bedroom was next to mine, off the upper landing, overlooking the canal. She had hung a turquoise Navajo chieftain’s necklace that Dad had given her after The Misfits on a wall the color of blackberry fool, a British dessert, above an Egyptian revival bed. Her bathroom was lined in antique mirror she’d found at junk stores and had recut, and she had commissioned Maro, the daughter of Arshile Gorky and Magouche Phillips, to paint an angel on her bathtub. Maro was going out with Lizzie’s brother, Matthew.

My room had pale salmon walls and carpet the color of burnt orange, with a huge oval mirror, gold and garlanded, with candelabra on either side. Mum and I found it together, antiquing in Burford, on a trip to Oxfordshire. A dressmaker’s cabinet stood opposite, its shelves and drawers crammed with my antique bead-and-ribbon collection, my treasures from the Portobello Road and Antiquarius, and the ever popular hand-me-downs from Joan and Lizzie, who was kindly providing me use of her brassieres, as Mum said I didn’t need them yet. My bed was by the window overlooking the garden, with a Chinese flag we had converted into a bedspread—tongues of flame embroidered on a midnight-blue silk background. My bathroom had a fireplace. I used to lock the door, draw the bath, light the fire, and read Marjorie Proops’s Problem Page in Woman magazine.

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