The Matisse Stories

Debbie goes home thoughtful. Mrs Brown has done her day’s work and left. Robin is fretful. He does not want spaghetti for supper, he is sick of pasta, he thinks they must have had pasta every night for a fortnight. Debbie considers him, as he sits twisting his fettucine with a fork, and thinks that on the whole it is probably safe to tell him nothing

about Mrs Brown and her Aladdin’s Cave, since he never takes an interest in A Woman’s Place, she can hide that from him, and she can probably keep other criticism from him too, he doesn’t read much, it depresses him.No sooner has she worked all this out than it is all ruined by Jamie, who rushes into the kitchen crying, come and see, come and see, Mrs Brown is on the telly. When neither of his parents moves he cries louder,‘She’s got an exhibition of things like Muppets with that gallery-lady who came here, do come and look, Daddy, they’re bizarre.’

So Robin goes and looks. Sheba Brown looks down her long nose at him out of the screen and says,‘Well, it all just comes to me in a kind of coloured rush, I just like putting things together, there’s so much in the world, isn’t there, and making things is a natural enough way of showing your excitementThe screen briefly displays the Hoover-dragon and the washing-bound lady.‘No, no, I don’t do it out of resentment,’ says Sheba Brown enthusiastically in voice-over, as the camera pursues the strangling twisted tights. ‘No, I find it all interesting

, I told you. Working as a cleaning-lady, OK, you learn a lot, it’s honest, you can see things anywhere at all to make things up from, that’s one thing I know. People are funny really, you can’t be a cleaning-lady for long without learning thatDebbie looks at Robin. Robin looks at Sheba Brown. Sheba Brown vanishes and is replaced by a jolly avuncular Tar surrounded by simpering infants, brandishing a plateful of steaming rectangular Fishy Morsels. Robin says,‘That, round that woman-sort-of-thing’s neck, that was that school tie I lost.’‘You didn’t lose it. You threw it out.’‘No, I didn’t. How would I have done that? I might go back to some school reunion, might I not, you never know, and it isn’t likely I shall go and waste any money on another

hideous purple tie, is it?’‘It was in the waste-paper basket. I said she could have it.’‘Mummy,’ says Jamie, ‘can we go and see Mrs Brown’s squashy sculptures?’‘We will all go,’ says Robin. ‘Courtesy requires that we all go. And see what else she has filched.’