“It seems,” Edith said in a strained voice, “that our son has left you a bequest”

Norah walked briskly down the street towards the studio she kept near the school. Ellen had never been there, but she knew Norah used it for portraits. She felt a stirring of curiosity as Norah ushered her into a large room with long windows letting in the sunlight. Canvases lay stacked against a wall, and a few were propped on easels and shrouded with sheets. Ellen breathed in the scents of turpentine and linseed oil.

She stood in the doorway while Norah searched through some canvases in the back of the studio, clearly looking for something in particular.

“Here.” She brandished an oil painting and Ellen took a moment to study it.

It was classic Norah, a portrait of a mother with a boy; the woman wore a white dress that slid from her shoulders with a loose bouquet of flowers in her lap.

The boy, in a yellow smock, leaned against her, and she had her arm around him as she gazed at him, her mouth turned down in what Ellen wasn’t sure was a frown of resignation or an expression of her devotion.

“What do you see when you look at this?” Norah demanded, and Ellen’s startled gaze flew up to meet her landlady’s.

Sorrow

“What emotion do you see, Ellen?” she pressed. “What do you feel when you look at this painting?”

“I –” Ellen licked her lips. “Sorrow, I suppose, though I’m not sure why. The mother looks as if she is afraid she’s going to lose her son. Or...” She paused, and Norah raised her eyebrows.

“Or?” Norah asked. There was a fierce light in her eyes that took Ellen aback. “Or as if she’d already lost him.”

“Yes.” Norah lowered the painting, and the light in her eyes dimmed, replaced by something that looked like grief. “Yes, exactly.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The people in this painting are models,” Norah stated. “They’re not even related. I scoured the streets before I found what I was looking for, and brought them here.”

Ellen felt a flicker of disappointment. She’d assumed there was a story behind the painting, because she could feel the emotion in it.

“The truth of this painting is not who the people are. It’s the feeling that went into capturing them on canvas.” She let out a long breath. “I’ve never been a mother, and I never will be.”

“You might,” Ellen protested. Although with her sophistication and success she seemed older, Norah was only 30 years old.

“It is a decision I made a long time ago. If I married, my dedication to painting would be compromised. But it doesn’t mean I haven’t grieved the children I will never have.”

She rested her gaze meaningfully on Ellen. “The life I will never have. That is what I have communicated with this painting.”

Ellen swallowed. “I never meant to presume that you hadn’t...” she began and Norah shook her head impatiently.

“I am not telling you all this so you feel sorry for me. I am telling you this because I want you to do what I did. Pour your emotion, your grief, into your work. It will help you.” She gave a small, sad smile. “And perhaps it will produce a great work of art.”

Emotions

Several weeks later Norah’s charge was still echoing through Ellen as she went about her lessons.

She felt a desire and even a need building inside her to paint something of what she’d felt in losing Henry, and yet also of the joy she’d had in knowing him.

She’d started something in pencil, but the medium she’d loved seemed insipid for the message she wanted to convey now, the emotions she longed to pour out.

Then one night as she sat curled up in her armchair and gazed out at the night sky, the first stars just beginning to appear like pinpricks on a dark cloth, an idea came to her.

An idea that was enormous and frightening and yet wonderfully right.

The next day she asked Norah if she could use some of her studio space, and armed with oils and brushes she began a work the likes of which she’d never even dreamed of before.

At the end of June, Ellen received another summons to Dowanhill. She mounted the steps of the villa with trepidation. Edith had not reached out to her since Henry’s funeral and Ellen hadn’t expected ever to see the woman again.

Ellen had barely stepped across the threshold before Edith Mccallister came to the point. She bustled into the sitting-room, where Ellen had been directed by the parlourmaid.

It was not the spacious drawing-room of before and Ellen wondered if the change of room was meant as a slight.

“It seems,” Edith said in a strained voice, “our son has left you a bequest.”

Ellen blinked, too stunned to reply. Edith’s mouth compressed. “Did you know about it?”

“No, of course not.” Ellen’s mind whirled. Clearly Edith thought she was a gold-digger who had sunk her greedy claws into her son.

Ellen shook her head. “I never asked for anything from Henry. And if you feel it is inappropriate, then I will refuse.”

“I do not know whether to believe you,” Edith returned coolly. “But it was my son’s wish that you be provided for, and I will honour his request.”

Ellen flushed.

Chilly expression

Edith arched an eyebrow.

“My solicitor will deliver the details of the bequest to you,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone. “I thought I should see you in person to inform you of my son’s wishes. I do not expect we shall meet again, Miss Copley.”

“As you wish, Mrs Mccallister.” Something in the woman’s chilly expression, the grief Ellen thought she saw behind the coldness in her eyes, made her step forward.

She reached out with one hand to touch Edith’s hand before she thought better of it and dropped it. “I miss him, too, Mrs Mccallister. Terribly.” Edith’s face contorted, and for a moment Ellen thought she might cry. Then her features smoothed out and she turned away from Ellen.

“Good day to you, Miss Copley,” she said in a choked voice and left the room.

More tomorrow.

On Renfrew Street was previously a serial in The People’s Friend. For more great fiction, get The People’s Friend every week, £1.30 from newsagents and supermarkets.

Artwork: Dave Young