have spread far and wide because people who had moved away from the district
years ago turned up out of the blue. Celia Merchant was one. She arrived in a late-model
car, lined up her younger self with a camera flash and ran back to the car and drove
off.
When I reported this to Alice she said in a critical voice, ‘That’s Celia.’ Then
she asked, ‘Who else has been down there?’
I said, ‘Hilary Phillips,’ and she answered, ‘Poor Hilary.’
Hilary was the only woman who could put up with the shamelessness of staring at herself
in broad daylight and not give a damn. There were people who refused to believe that
this large, unhealthy-looking woman with emphysema and tiny screwed-up eyes was the
same person as the alert face leaning forward from the crowd of painted women, a
fresh face on the end of a delicate neck seeking engagement. Even the older Hilary
looked doubtful at times. She could even look like she was cross with that young
person. Sometimes you actually heard her talk back to the young woman on the window.
Once I saw her rock back on her heels with laughter at a shared joke. Hilary didn’t
care that anyone was watching. She didn’t give a toss for what people might think
of her. She was past that, and yet when I saw her stand before her younger self she
could look puzzled and worried as though that younger face belonged to a scrupulous
bank clerk with news that she didn’t have as much money in her bank account as she
had thought.
For these women in whom youth had already passed there was a pleasant and exhilarating
feeling of resurrection. Now—and come to think of it, it wasn’t just Hilary, I’d
noticed other women doing this—Hilary turned her face very slowly from the painted
one in the window. The thought was there, so long as she didn’t rush it or make too
sudden a movement, she might take that younger face off into the world with her.
During the day men in farm vehicles pulled over and got out to saunter up to the
painted shop windows and search for certain faces known to them. Family members,
obviously, sons, daughters, grandchildren in tow. I caught myself doing the same
thing. If no one was in the shop I found myself wandering across the street to stare
at the portrait of my mother sitting on that set of porch steps. Here, she is not
yet my mother. She is a woman whose history is still mostly in front of her. In the
portrait she is at least fifteen years younger than the son staring back at her.
A week passed, then another. Yet there was no good reason to take the portraits down.
For one thing, Alma had waited nearly forty years for this exhibition. For another,
the portraits were beginning to attract out-of-town interest. Who were these women?
How had the portraits come into being?
3
In the years 1941 to 1943, Alma painted a whole community of women. He had completed
thirty-seven portraits by the time the men came back from the war, and another five
hundred and eighty sketches of my mother, Alice Hands, as she was known then.
I suppose the sketches amount to slices of life. Hurried drawings of women on all
fours as they weed and tend to their gardens, of them hanging up the washing or idling
at a window alone with their thoughts. Their tinkering inquisitiveness, as they lift
the lid on the letterbox, hope fading. On occasion he liked to employ props. His
explanation was that certain accessories extract a look that would not otherwise
avail itself. The mere touch of something precious and a face will come alive. Place
a teapot in a woman’s hands and look at how it heightens the shoulders and drops
the head. And yet as much as he sketched the women of the district in their everyday
activities, more often than not it was the formal pose that they requested. They
were impatient with the three-quarter perspective where one eye is half concealed
by the bridge of the nose. They wanted to be looked at, which is hardly surprising,
I suppose, since their men were away at the war.
years ago turned up out of the blue. Celia Merchant was one. She arrived in a late-model
car, lined up her younger self with a camera flash and ran back to the car and drove
off.
When I reported this to Alice she said in a critical voice, ‘That’s Celia.’ Then
she asked, ‘Who else has been down there?’
I said, ‘Hilary Phillips,’ and she answered, ‘Poor Hilary.’
Hilary was the only woman who could put up with the shamelessness of staring at herself
in broad daylight and not give a damn. There were people who refused to believe that
this large, unhealthy-looking woman with emphysema and tiny screwed-up eyes was the
same person as the alert face leaning forward from the crowd of painted women, a
fresh face on the end of a delicate neck seeking engagement. Even the older Hilary
looked doubtful at times. She could even look like she was cross with that young
person. Sometimes you actually heard her talk back to the young woman on the window.
Once I saw her rock back on her heels with laughter at a shared joke. Hilary didn’t
care that anyone was watching. She didn’t give a toss for what people might think
of her. She was past that, and yet when I saw her stand before her younger self she
could look puzzled and worried as though that younger face belonged to a scrupulous
bank clerk with news that she didn’t have as much money in her bank account as she
had thought.
For these women in whom youth had already passed there was a pleasant and exhilarating
feeling of resurrection. Now—and come to think of it, it wasn’t just Hilary, I’d
noticed other women doing this—Hilary turned her face very slowly from the painted
one in the window. The thought was there, so long as she didn’t rush it or make too
sudden a movement, she might take that younger face off into the world with her.
During the day men in farm vehicles pulled over and got out to saunter up to the
painted shop windows and search for certain faces known to them. Family members,
obviously, sons, daughters, grandchildren in tow. I caught myself doing the same
thing. If no one was in the shop I found myself wandering across the street to stare
at the portrait of my mother sitting on that set of porch steps. Here, she is not
yet my mother. She is a woman whose history is still mostly in front of her. In the
portrait she is at least fifteen years younger than the son staring back at her.
A week passed, then another. Yet there was no good reason to take the portraits down.
For one thing, Alma had waited nearly forty years for this exhibition. For another,
the portraits were beginning to attract out-of-town interest. Who were these women?
How had the portraits come into being?
3
In the years 1941 to 1943, Alma painted a whole community of women. He had completed
thirty-seven portraits by the time the men came back from the war, and another five
hundred and eighty sketches of my mother, Alice Hands, as she was known then.
I suppose the sketches amount to slices of life. Hurried drawings of women on all
fours as they weed and tend to their gardens, of them hanging up the washing or idling
at a window alone with their thoughts. Their tinkering inquisitiveness, as they lift
the lid on the letterbox, hope fading. On occasion he liked to employ props. His
explanation was that certain accessories extract a look that would not otherwise
avail itself. The mere touch of something precious and a face will come alive. Place
a teapot in a woman’s hands and look at how it heightens the shoulders and drops
the head. And yet as much as he sketched the women of the district in their everyday
activities, more often than not it was the formal pose that they requested. They
were impatient with the three-quarter perspective where one eye is half concealed
by the bridge of the nose. They wanted to be looked at, which is hardly surprising,
I suppose, since their men were away at the war.
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