But after one night with the delicate creature snuggled against her, Gloria had known that Sugar was never going anywhere else.
‘Are you tired?’ she asked once she and Sugar completed their second stately walk around the square.
Sugar looked loyally up at her mistress as if to say yes. They were both a bit physically fragile, Gloria thought, which meant they suited each other perfectly.
‘Aunt Gloria,’ said a voice, and Gloria turned to see her niece walking towards her. ‘I hoped I’d catch you. Hello, Sugar.’ Lou bent and petted the little dog and then hugged her aunt.
‘Welcome back,’ said Gloria. ‘How was it?’
Her tone was cautious. She wasn’t really sure she wanted to know. Lou had messaged her from Sicily to say she’d met Angelo.
He’s a wonderful person but he’s not Dad, Lou had written, which had made Gloria so relieved.
She missed her brother, Bob, and she’d felt so protective of his memory, knowing Lou was meeting Angelo. Thank goodness Lou seemed to understand the difference between a biological father and a present one.
‘Wonderful. I’ve a lot to tell you,’ Lou said.
‘It’s a beautiful day. We could sit in the garden and have tea?’ said Gloria. ‘Or are you rushing? I know a person always has lots to do when they get back.’
‘No, I came to see you and tell you everything,’ said Lou happily.
Her aunt looked tired, Lou thought, and once they were back in the big house, she insisted that Gloria sit in the garden while she prepared the tea tray, with the pale blue enamel teapot her aunt had used since the year dot.
Gloria’s back garden was mainly paved now, great stone slabs with raised beds here and there so that her aunt, who could no longer bend easily, could tend her flowers and herbs. Looking out the window, she saw Gloria shiver as a breeze rippled around the garden and called out: ‘I’ll get you a cardigan.’
Lou ran upstairs, mentally listing all the things she had to do that day: she planned to redo her CV and start looking for a new job. Not that she’d resigned from the old one, but she was working her way up to that. She was popping into her mother’s later too, to do some tidying. Lillian, true to form, hadn’t so much as lifted a duster while Lou had been away and the surfaces were all sticky with drink rings. Lou itched to get it all clean again.
She hurried upstairs, up to Gloria’s bedroom, which was, as ever, perfectly tidy. There was a tiny white orchid in a crimson pot beside the bed where Gloria’s stack of books and her reading glasses lay.
Cardigans, thought Lou, looking around for one. Gloria normally had a couple of soft shawls and one of her cardigans on a chair by her dressing table. There. Lou picked up a soft grey one and was about to hurry out of the room when she stopped.
The painting ...
She turned to look over the bed again. She’d glanced at the painting that had hung for years over Gloria’s bed when she’d entered the room but, in the way of things a person had seen forever, she’d barely noticed it.
Gloria had lots of old pictures in the house: mainly ones from her parents’ day but lots of pretty watercolours and amateur oils, things she’d bought at various Whitehaven events over the years. The painting over the bed was different, though: a large canvas in an old-fashioned white frame, it was clearly a scene of the Atlantic with a beach and a peak in the foreground, crashing wild waves in the distance.
It had been there ever since Lou could remember. It was easily recognisable as Whitehaven Beach and Mermaid’s Peak. But now, with new eyes, Lou could recognise the style. The confident brushstrokes, the way he painted clouds and the wild drift of the ocean. The painting over Gloria’s bed had been painted by Angelo Mulraney.
Late May 1973
Gloria Cooper freewheeled down the road on her bike, enjoying the sense of the sun on her skin and the wind blowing back her fair hair. She had a few days’ holiday and she was going to head down to the beach and find somewhere nice to sit and sketch, maybe even play with her watercolours. On the beach in the right place, nobody would notice her or come up to see her work. Having a degree in fine art meant a person was very aware of their inadequacies as an artist and Gloria was in no doubt as to her abilities.
‘I know I’m not very good,’ she always said to her brother, Bob. ‘But I love it.’
Bob had looked at her thoughtfully. ‘It’s not important that we’re good at everything,’ he said. ‘It’s important that you enjoy doing it. I’m not very good at dancing and Lillian tells me that often enough,’ he said ruefully. ‘But I enjoy doing it. I love music.’
Gloria smiled. She adored her older brother. He was so kind and gentle. She worried about him. In particular, she worried about him and Lillian Foyle because Lillian was cut from far harsher cloth than Bob Cooper.
Lillian had come to Whitehaven the year before and had caught gentle Bob Cooper’s eye immediately. She’d been to teacher training college but was taking time out and working in the local hotel as a chambermaid, so she could build up her portfolio. She still had hopes of a career in art.
Gloria had been astonished at Bob’s new girlfriend. This girl, with her mini skirt, vertiginous white platform boots, and a bolshie attitude that nobody could ignore, was very different from Bob’s normal type. Until now, Bob had dated girls he’d known for years, but he’d never found the perfect person, he said.
‘It’s very difficult,’ Lillian told both Bob and Gloria, the first time he introduced her to his sister. ‘The art world’s all male-oriented. Nobody’s interested in women artists. Feminism hasn’t hit Ireland yet,’ she said angrily.
Feminismhadhit Ireland, but in the seventies the country still had a way to go. Still Lillian didn’t seem that pushed about feminism for other women. Only for herself. When Gloria tried to interest her in raising funds locally for the unmarried mothers’ group that Gloria volunteered for in Dublin, Lillian had said she was too busy.
‘I don’t have time to help girls who get knocked up,’ she said with a sniff. ‘I’m either being worked to the bone by that old cow in the hotel or I’m trying to paint. You can’t do other things when you want to be a painter. You have to give everything to it.’
