Jenni Keer - The Unlikely Life of Maisie Meadows

‘Um …’

‘Can you feel something?’ She bent over the little girl, her voice breathy and excited. ‘Gamma used to go all peculiar and tingly whenever she brought out this tea set. She was so insistent it was like a family and should be kept as a whole. “Split the set; split the family,” she used to say. It had been in our family several generations, so she was very attached to it. But then it isn’t a set any more …’ The old lady looked sad, Maisie noticed. ‘And my darling teapot so misses her companions.’

Maisie shook her head but kept her lips firmly pressed together, not wanting to be associated with a mad, old and long-dead relative of Meredith’s. There was something funny about the teapot, but at seven, she couldn’t even begin to articulate what it might be. And with two grown-ups both staring at her, she wasn’t inclined to try.

Maisie uncrossed her arms and stared down at her blue T-Bar canvas shoes.

‘I think we’ve all got rather more on our minds than a silly old teapot – no offence,’ her mum sniffed.

‘Of course. I suppose I always wanted to believe there was something unworldly about the teapot or even that I might feel it too …’ Meredith’s voice tailed off and she placed it back on the tray.

Maisie’s mum lifted the delicate bone china cup to her trembling lips, eyes red-rimmed and posture defeated, and half-sipped, half-choked on the scalding tea.

And a silent seven-year-old Maisie tried to ignore the continued prickling sensation, as she watched the pain drain from her mother’s face and her hunched-up shoulders relax.

‘Wow,’ said her mum. ‘You’re not wrong, Meredith. That tea is remarkable.’

The saleroom find unnerved Maisie for the remainder of the day. It opened a chapter of memories she’d not allowed herself to dwell on for many years. The divorce had been difficult and drawn-out but the children were shielded to a degree. Ultimately, the Meadows siblings knew they were loved by both parents; Mum’s love a daily dose of kisses to heal grazed knees, broken teenage hearts and academic disappointments. Dad’s love demonstrated by the fun activities he did with them every weekend, facilitated by his bulging wallet. His magnetic personality made him a delight to be around. But then everyone who came across David Meadows fell under his spell. His monumental charm was used to great advantage at work – hence the healthy finances – but more destructively with the female population of the planet – hence the divorce.

Despite a busy afternoon setting up social media accounts for the company, Maisie felt called back to look at the teapot before she left for home – the blissful ten-minute commute still a novelty. As she wandered towards the centre of the barn, Johnny bumbled in. The pricklings had started as soon as she walked up the middle aisle.

‘How are you doing, most magnificent of marketing executives?’ he asked, rubbing his hands together and blowing over them, trying to summon a warming flow of circulation from somewhere. ‘Found something interesting?’ He wandered over to where she was prodding about in the box.

‘Yes and no,’ she said. ‘It’s this teapot …’ She lifted it out and held it aloft.

Johnny peered over the steel rims of his spectacles. ‘Part of a household clearance from last week. These boxes of odds and sods don’t fetch much. Five to ten, at best.’

‘But it’s so unusual …’

‘Not really. Hip-hop design, probably mid-Eighties – not at all my cup of Darjeeling.’ A frisson of distaste rippled through him. ‘At home, I’m classic Wedgwood all the way.’

Not wanting to correct her boss, who clearly knew his vintage ceramic onions, Maisie frowned. She thought the teapot was significantly older than that. Meredith had told her it belonged to her mother, and her grandmother before that. It had stuck in her mind at the time because she couldn’t imagine Meredith ever being young enough to have a mother, and certainly not that mother having a mother.

‘I like it,’ said Maisie, more to herself than to Johnny. ‘My kitchen has a monochrome theme. It would look lovely on the corner display shelf near the window. Everything is black, white or a cheery bright red.’

‘Ah, a girl who co-ordinates. Perhaps you won’t get on with our Theodore as much as I hoped.’ A little sigh escaped from his full lips. ‘I’ve never before met a man who embraced such a mismatch of colours and styles. Sometimes I think he does it on purpose, just to wind me up. As for the teapot – nothing to stop you placing a written bid, dah-ling. Your money is as good as the next man’s.’

‘I might,’ Maisie said, but she knew in her heart she would because it was destined to belong to her.

‘Whilst you’re about it, put a bid on these ridiculous and vulgar garden ornaments.’ He pointed his highly polished toe at a box of six-inch-high garden gnomes. As she studied them more carefully she noticed they weren’t undertaking the usual gnomish activities such as fishing and wheelbarrow-pushing. These gnomes were engaged in more dodgy pastimes; pole-dancing, naturist sunbathing (with alarming anatomical detail) and a variety of other unpalatable, largely naked, pursuits.

‘Who on earth will want these monstrosities, I simply cannot imagine.’

Maisie thought it was funny – not only the thought of someone displaying them in their garden but also Johnny’s obvious discomfort and abject horror at their very existence.

‘Oh, I don’t know. You could make a feature of them,’ she joked, her face deadpan. ‘Or give them as Christmas presents to the people you don’t like. In fact, I can picture them dotted along my flower border.’

One of Johnny’s haystack eyebrows came out to play. It bobbed above his spectacles and stayed there. ‘Really?’ he huffed in disbelief. ‘Well, it takes all sorts, I suppose.’

Placing her soft leather house shoes neatly outside the door to her tiny spare room, Maisie stepped inside and onto the plastic sheeting. Everyone had a hobby and most people happily talked to others about the activities they engaged in during their free time. Maisie didn’t talk about her pastime much. She didn’t want to be judged for indulging in something so … unregulated, but she got far more satisfaction from this than she ever did from alphabetizing a bookcase or ironing the bed linen.

Pulling her long hair back into a ponytail and placing a one-and-a-half-metre-square board in the centre of the room, she grabbed a tube of vivid violet acrylic paint, took a deep breath, focused, and with a ferocious sweep of the arm sprayed a satisfying run of paint across both board and floor.

It felt amazing.

As she added to her creation, grabbing more tubes and squirting them just as wildly, a glorious array of colours emerged on the floor before her. The greens and purples seeped into one another, wild and untamed, and her heartbeat began to accelerate.

She flicked on her iPod and the docking station speakers pumped loud rock music into the room. A further frenetic burst of activity followed; dripping and smudging, flicking and scraping. A damp rag in her left hand was used to wipe clean the brushes and spatulas and, as she reached the crescendo with a forceful thumbprint on the bottom right-hand corner, her hands.

If the resulting mess hadn’t been such a rainbow of colours, the room would have resembled a horrific and brutal murder scene. Daubs of true ochre were on her cheek and spatters of black plum had caught the skirting board. (She’d promised the landlord this room would be totally redecorated should she leave, but then he was so delighted with what she’d done to neaten up the tiny garden that he hadn’t made a fuss about her messy pastime.)