“What’s this? Strawberries! You allowed Sophie to order strawberries in May!” Father raises his eyes from the offending item, javelins of suspicion. I open my mouth to explain. I want to tell him about the look that comes across Sophie’s face if I try to contradict her. I want to confess my lack of experience. I want to ask for his help. His eyes have already turned back to the page.

“Salmon! Do you mean to tell me that the fish we ate Tuesday last was salmon? Look at the price, girl! Why this extravagance? Would whiting not have sufficed?” I stare at the floor. I think of the ivy curtaining the kitchen window and its green tinge on Sophie’s cheek as she quashed my protests about the fish. My silence seems to goad Father on.

“You stand there like a block of stone! Do you have nothing to say to me?”

I think of the gash in your coat, the money I must conjure for sanitary towels and turps. I can enter none of these things in the rigid grid Father has devised.

“Do you wish to ruin me?” Father slams the book shut and pushes it toward me. I think of how he would behave, rationally, man to man, if it were George or Thoby presenting the accounts instead of me.

“Can you not imagine what it is like for me now? Have you no pity?” It is bearing down on me, Father’s beak. I feel it ripping into my flesh, ravenous for sympathy.

Finally I am released. I go out onto the landing bowed down by my failure. You are sitting on the bottom stair. I can tell from your expression that you have been listening to our exchange. Your eyes signal your compassion, your powerlessness to help.

“Damn him!” I burst out.

I realize from the tapering light in your eyes that I have gone too far. You look away. You are only a partial accomplice. I sense from the set of your shoulders, a sudden movement of your arm, that though you acknowledge Father’s tyranny you love him still.

I lift my head from my page and try to peer back through the alleys of the past. It seems extraordinary to me now that we survived that time. Only to you could I confess some of what I felt. Only you shared my dream. Secretly, but with increasing resolve, we sketched out a life where we were each free to pursue our chosen art.

Neither of us realized how much we sacrificed in the process. We placated each other by exaggerating our differences, renouncing all claim to the other’s field. I, always less skillful with words than you, relinquished them to you entirely. I took painting for myself.

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