The glaze was so pretty, it launched itself at me visually; despite the shoddy repairs, 75 years of curing, yellowing the faults, highlighting a moment of catastrophe.
'It was my mothers' An American accent declared, initiating the 'hook' quick as, picking up on my interest in this faded object. Purveyors, or Dealers, the reading of a potential customer, and the swift engagement is an intrinsic part of securing a sale. 'She loved that Bowl, but I have to sell it, Having a clearout' He had reeled me in, It had to come home with me, I had fallen for it, for the tantalising snippets of a life long gone, the space, connection and journey this inanimate object had shared with a mortal being. The duchess appears in my head, in photographic detail-from a well to do family, Huge clapperboard house in the Hamptons, Her dining room contains a dresser housing the most glorious set of Dinnerware. It was her grandmothers mothers, she was entusted with its guardianship now. I can visualise no adult male presence, but there is a young boy child, the dealer as a child, her son. It is early 1942, Her husband, patriotic to the core is somewhere in the Pacific. She knows not where.
The Compote bowl sits centrally on the dresser, holding a variety of colourful Bon Bons. Boy Child eyes them up and although he knows they are reserved for after dinner treats, his powers of self restraint are not yet fully developed. He drags a small library stool over the wooden floor, positions it at the base of the dresser and reaches for a treat.....
She didn't berate him, in fact she is impressed with his problem solving efforts,(he reminded her of his father) but she did shoo him into the garden whilst she picked up the pieces.
That evening as she sat at the table and gazed at the 7 pieces, her eyes welled with tears. This pot had survived 200 years, she felt she had let it, and the ghosts of her family down. She also felt the timing was somehow a metaphor for the turbulance and change that was reverberating across the warring world....
It had been hard, when he announced he was returning to the land of his ancestors. She had missed him, but knew that studying at Oxford would be the making of him. Her husband would have been so proud.
He realised he was all she had, and despite the miles between them, he knew that he was the only option, a home would crush her, and besides since the divorce, the Vicarage was way too large for 1 person. He arranged the relocation.
She never got round to uwrapping the bubblewrap, it was his task, one he put off for many years. As the Vicarage crumbled around him and gentrification raised the real estate prices to crazy levels, he knew he wanted respite. Peace and quiet, with very few neighbours. He purchased a traditional longhouse, more modest in size.
He watched her pick up the bowl, and turn it over, revealing the handwritten label his mother had attached to the base after she had stuck it together. He recalled the 'incident' and the sobs he had heard from the room below his bedroom that evening. 'It was my mothers' he offered.....
