Helen of Orpington

OZ calls The Tin Woman

  I still feel guilty sometimes, would I still have felt this way about Emma if she had not asked me to help her? That simple request that would change my life and make us close. The change started when she had come into the sitting room while I was listening to the Archers. I had nothing more on my mind at that moment, than the promise of a cup of Complan and a sponge finger before bed. She put her head round the door and asked if I had a moment. Being mildly irritated I put down the paper I was holding and followed her into the hall. I remember asking if she was ‘all right’, as it was so rare for her to ask for anything from us in those days. I think she knew deep down, we were not really interested in the art course. We were interested in her education and progress but not the art itself.

  Since we could not longer use our garage, Emma had set up her studio up in the now empty space. This had come to pass as she had got ink on her curtains in her bedroom, so we gave her an ultimatum: ‘paint at college or the garage’. Kenneth always kept the garage spotlessly clean. Sheets of paper had been laid on the floor to prevent oil stains. All the tools would be stored up on the appointed hook, with the outline of the tools outlined in marker pen. Not long after Emma moved in the garage, large frames stood around the room. Inkpots and tubes of something or other lay in heaps on the workbench.

  ‘I do wish you would tidy up, it’s not right to work in such mess, what would your father say if he saw it like this’ I said as I followed she into her space, hoping this wouldn’t take long.

  On the wall of the garage, posters and pages cut from magazines were blue-tacked up at various heights, in no order or sequence. The only picture I recognised was a coloured poster of Andy Warhol, even I knew who he was. I think even Kenneth would have been able to put a name to the face if prompted. It was the self-portrait of Warhol wearing a silver wig printed on a dark background. I immediately started to tidy up, putting tops on tubes and collecting up brushes.

  ‘Look at this mess Emma, just look at it!’ I snapped. I scorned at her, but something in her gaze made me stop, the old Emma was back. She looked venerable and childlike. A look, that always disconcerted us, making us, perhaps because of our backgrounds, feel that we should not molly-coddle her, that we should help her to stand on her own two feet. Of course it didn’t though, it just made her quiet, introspective, shy and frightened to make choices in case they were wrong. We thought that we could toughening her up by telling her ‘not to be so silly’ when meeting new people, or doing new things. But this just gave her a hard but brittle un-penetrating shell.

  Looking back at those days when she was so enclosed at school, her self-esteem and confidence was very low. Now she was at Art College and doing very well and she had gained some confidence from the work she had produced, she was changing. Now she would bring her CD player into the garage and play music while she worked, supposed, we never went in there.

  ‘What is it dear’? I asked, cold and irritated.

  ‘I need help, I just needed you to hold something for me’, I put down the dirty paintbrushes. She looked sad, a sort of sad that seems to say; ‘what’s the use?’ But she told me what she wanted to do, so I responded the best I could,

  ‘Can I just put the overalls on dear’? I was aware that Kenneth kept a pair of overalls in the garage, and knew they would be spotless. Once I was all covered up, Emma gave instructions.

  She told me that she needed to print the screens for her final art degree show. Twenty or so would be used in the show but she would print up the other pictures as a contextual practice. I just went along with all this hoping she would not ask questions later on. She put large sheets of paper on some blankets that she had placed on the ground then covered with a clean square of canvas. My job was to hold down the frame flat on the canvas to prevent slipping. She showed me some discarded images that she had tried to print but had slipped as she could not hold and print at the same time. The frame I was holding down and those dotted around the room had thin silk gauze stretched over them with a faint opaque image printed on them. Once the frame was held down safe and secure, Emma pored a thick ink along the top of the screen. She took a long flat piece of wood with a plastic edge and asked if I was ready, I nodded, so she pulled the ink evenly down the screen from top to bottom. This allowed the ink to seep through the unprinted part of the gauze. Emma did this twice very quickly and I must say expertly. Still holding it down, Emma, with a hint of a smile said ‘it’s OK mum it’s done’ She lifted the frame and there was the image of little French girl now greatly enlarged, pointing far into the distance.

  When Emma had returned to college to write up the history project to France, one of the lecturers displayed the photos outside the history staff-room. The photos caught the eye of Mr Stephens an art lecturer who loved the images and asked if they could be used in the college brochure and later were shown on the college Internet web site. He e-mailed Emma and asked to see her. He wanted to know what she did, and did she know that there was a art/graphics course at the college? He rang us at home, Kenneth was most rude to him, ‘up-setting our daughter with silly ideas’ etc, but somehow he ended up coming round to see us. He told us that Emma had an ‘eye’ and that she had a future. This was more our style, so we listened. He told us that Emma could transfer her first year units from History to Art. He said her art was unique yet commercial and would go far. He had friends in America who had seen the photos and one had wanted to buy them. A the evening wore on ending with Emma and us agreeing she would study art the next term and history would be –well history!

  That first night in the garage, I was shocked by the beauty of the screen-print-it was wonderful. It was all so quick and simple. I wanted to do another and another, but all I could say was ‘anything else Emma’?

  ‘Well one more would be good Mum’

  I smiled and got down to it. The overalls were restricting so they came off. This time I knew what I should do; put one knee on the bottom left corner and then the other knee stretched over to the right corner. I would lean over with all my weight and hold the frame mid way down so Emma could get a harder-and therefore ‘cleaner’ print. What I must have looked like, legs wide apart bending over the frame in my elasticised waist catalogue trousers, I dare not imagine. We did another six like this and I was smitten, it was such fun and so productive. When we had finished the prints we stood them by the far wall, they did look super. Full of confidence Emma asked me if I would like a cold drink from her mini fridge she kept in the garage. I would buy cartons of orange juice and Coke a Cola for her to keep there. But I just said

  ‘Not tonight dear it’s getting late’ I walked back into the sitting room where Kenneth say asleep in the armchair. I realise that Emma had never asked me to sit and have a drink with her before, so turned back. By the time I got back to the garage she had gone, no doubt unsurprised by my brush off. It would be a missed opportunity I would bitterly regret. It was four weeks to Emma’s degree show and only eight weeks before the accident.