Tyringham Park by Rosemary McLoughlin

Author:Rosemary McLoughlin
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781781990025
Publisher: Poolbeg
Published: 2012-10-02T06:32:31.751000+00:00

40

During the six months while Waldron was resisting any attempts by Cormac to change his rigid ideas about art, Charlotte painted conscientiously. Cormac dropped by every afternoon to follow her progress and tell her how terrific she was. “You’re on your own now,” he told her. “There’s nothing more I can teach you. When I come back to check on you in a few years’ time, I expect to be even more dazzled by your singular vision than I already am.”

After Cormac finally left the townhouse for Paris Charlotte was gripped by a sudden and terrible loneliness. Deprived of his exuberance and support, she slid into a state of inertia. Her old sense of worthlessness returned as if it had never left. Week by week, the walls of the safe Dublin world that Cormac had created around her began to crumble and fall and she felt as if she was trapped in a basement, cut off from all sources of light. The speed of her loss filled her with the same sense of helplessness and fear she had felt as a child when Nurse Dixon was in authority over her.

Along with the desolation there was a perverse sense of comfort in reverting to a state that was familiar to her. She had lived in a dark basement for a long time in the past and was now returning to it. It was as simple as that. Cormac’s good opinion of her that had buoyed her up for six years had been fuelled by his own optimistic outlook and bore no relation to what she knew to be her own lack of value.

Victoria, her face contorted with pain, appeared in a dream, holding out her hands in an appeal for help. Charlotte tried to run to save her but her legs wouldn’t function, and she could only look on while Nurse Dixon seized Victoria and slammed her against the nursery wall to punish her for being such a cry-baby. Charlotte woke, disorientated with sick disgust at not being able to protect her little sister.

After staying hidden for so long, Charlotte asked, why have you chosen to show yourself now, Victoria, when I haven’t the strength to help you?

Charlotte stood in front of a finished painting and was suffused with a hatred for it and for all her work. Cormac had told her not to waste her life on trivia, but what could be more trivial than this useless object when one compared it to the actuality of a lost sister? Daubs of colour on a canvas, arranged this way and that and then framed and hung on a wall, achieving nothing. Decoration. Nothing but decoration. How could she take herself seriously? Two of her favourite brushes lay on the easel ledge, hardened by paint she had forgotten to rinse out with turpentine and she didn’t care. All those various shades of grey were pathetic in their lifelessness. She took up a tube of vermilion, squeezed it on to the canvas and spread it around with the palm of her hand, but felt no release of frustration.

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