My mother came for lunch on Sunday. She arrived eleven minutes early, as is her custom, carrying a Victoria sponge in a tin she will be wanting back, and within a quarter of an hour had gone upstairs "to inspect the landing," which is Margaret's term for having a look at everything I own.
She came down again holding her reading glasses and an opinion. "I like your swan," she said. "Is it from that gallery in Petworth?"
It is not from the gallery in Petworth.
I said it was a present to myself, which is true, and she said "very Scandinavian," which is, in its way, also true, and we moved on to the sponge, and whether Gerald's new fence is six inches over the boundary (it is; he knows; we are all pretending otherwise until August).
But I have been thinking since about the taxonomy of a house. Every home runs on an unspoken filing system: things that are allowed to be seen, and things that live in drawers. The candlesticks are seen. The bank statements are drawers. And for most of my adult life, anything belonging to the category we politely call personal was filed so deep in the drawer system it practically had its own postcode — under the winter jumpers, behind the spare duvet cover, wrapped in a modesty it had done nothing to earn.
Then an object arrives that is simply too well made to bury. It stands on its own — actually stands, no leaning, no propping — with the neck of something Barbara Hepworth might have roughed out on a quiet Tuesday. Putting it in a drawer started to feel less like discretion and more like an insult. So it lives on the windowsill now. My mother has admired it. Tilda has attempted to assassinate it once and failed; it survived the fall better than the coaster it took down with it.
(For the record, I did not correct Margaret, and I am at peace with that. She is seventy-four. She has earned the right to believe in the gallery in Petworth, and frankly so have I.)
Nobody hides the things they are proud of. That has always been the whole test.
The swan is called Leda, which somebody at huxi found funnier than they should have. Two motors rather than one, a gentle warmth to it, quiet enough that the house keeps your counsel. £111, which is not nothing — but it comes with the arrangement I hold huxi to on your behalf: sixty days. Use it properly, for two whole months, and if it has not earned the windowsill, they return your money without a form, a phone call, or a single searching question. That is the entire deal, in writing, where anyone can read it.
Mine is staying on the sill. My mother thinks it's Scandinavian. Everyone is happy.
Sign-off. Yours, from the windowsill, Charlie
