After You Left(15)

I can’t help but smile. I remember telling the woman to bring them on a Wednesday afternoon – the day when the gallery is least busy. ‘How many of them are there?’ I ask. I forget what she’s told me before.

‘Only three,’ Evelyn says. ‘Ronnie, Martin and Eddy.’

She is impeccably dressed in wide-legged cream trousers, and a cream, three-quarter-sleeved cashmere jumper. ‘Go on!’ she gives Michael a not-so-subtle nudge.

‘Yes, ma’am!’ he salutes her, then glances at me and there’s a twinkle in his eye. ‘I bet you can guess who wears the trousers in this relationship,’ he says. Then, ‘I better go get them before they break out and ransack Eldon Square.’



In the room that houses the paintings, Ronnie and Martin appear agitated, even a touch afraid, giving me doubts that this initiative is going to be a success. Somehow, though, Michael manages to coax them into sitting on the bench in front of Hopper’s Morning Sun, and they settle down a little, thankfully.

The tall, slim and no doubt once handsome man – Eddy – is different. He doesn’t appear to be bothered by being here at all. In fact, he seems lost in a world of his own. Evelyn catches me looking at him.

‘You know, Saul Bellow said that everybody needs their memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door.’

‘That’s beautiful!’ I say. ‘Or tragic. I’m not sure which.’

‘It’s both.’ Because she isn’t very tall, she has to look up at me when she speaks. With her appealing intensity and sweet little face, it’s like being won over by a tiny pocket angel. ‘When you think about it, all we really have is our ability to place ourselves in the context of meaningful things – the family we were born into, the people we have loved. Those things are our emotional compass. If we don’t have that, we have nothing.’ She stares at the backs of the three men sitting on the bench, lined up like soldiers waiting for a train to war.

Suddenly, I am filled with thoughts of Justin. Of life without him. Of the end of my life without him.

‘What do you think of when you look at this painting of a woman sitting on a bed in the sunshine, Ronnie?’ Michael says. He has a nice voice. It’s calm, and somehow brings me back to the present.

‘I think of a woman on a bed in the sunshine,’ Ronnie parrots him.

‘Would you say she looks happy?’ Michael ruffles his hair again – clearly a habit. I imagine it’d be either endearing or slightly irritating if you got to know him. ‘How do you think she feels, sitting alone in this empty room?’

‘Have you tried guessing how a woman feels? If you have, good luck.’

Michael chuckles, and glances at me. We smile. ‘Ronnie, I do believe you’ve got a point there,’ he says.

Suddenly, Ronnie is looking at me, too. He’s eggshell bald, with rounded, almost black eyes that are soulful and make me think of a seal. ‘What about the naked one?’ he asks me.

For a second or two, I’m puzzled. ‘Ah!’ He means the girl on the stool by the window, turning her face toward the shade. ‘That’s Andrew Wyeth’s Helga. Someone he painted for fourteen years without his wife or the model’s husband knowing. It caused quite a scandal in the art world when so many sketches and drawings of her eventually came to light.’

‘He’s not emotionally attached to her.’ Martin suddenly joins in. ‘If he was, he wouldn’t let everyone see her with no clothes.’ For an elderly man, his voice has a remarkable ability to project itself.

‘Oh, come on!’ Evelyn shoots me a look that says, What kind of old curmudgeon is he? ‘She likes him seeing her naked. It empowers her.’

Michael and I smile again.

‘They seem very sensible,’ I whisper to him as Evelyn trots off to the other end of the gallery. ‘Is this what normally happens? I suppose when she told me they had Alzheimer’s, I wasn’t sure what to expect.’

‘Well, there really isn’t any normal.’ His kind brown eyes meet mine. ‘We do a lot of creative therapy at Sunrise, in particular music and art therapy. Sometimes we paint, or we show them the work of famous artists. Paintings can help them remember things – usually things stored in their long-term memory. They’ll tell us stories, presumably about past events in their lives. They tend to remember a point rather than a period of time. They can be quite chatty and find words that they normally can’t access. It’s fascinating to hear what it can draw out of them.’ A look of pride comes over his face, which seems so sweet. ‘Their families, loved ones, they often can’t believe the transformation . . .’

Listening to him talking, it suddenly dawns on me what’s so puzzling about him. He has a tender, compassionate side that doesn’t fit with his tough-guy exterior. In fact, he’s a bit of an intriguing contradiction altogether.

‘Alzheimer’s has phases. Language is very often one of the first things to go, but creativity is lost much later. So the therapies allow them to express feelings they can’t express any other way. They get to bypass their limitations and go to their strengths. It’s amazing how well they can respond to the scale, colour and vibrancy of a painting. They process it in a way that’s real and in the moment.’

He looks at me the whole time while he talks. It’s a long, languishing gaze that’s calming to me, rather like his voice. He clearly loves his job. ‘I’ve got lots of fascinating articles on it. I’ll email you them, if you’d like.’