The Heaven and Hell Picture

By Jean Bailey Glauser

When Joan Spenser’s twelve-year-old grandson asks her what birthday parties were like when she was his age, she has to admit that she did not go to many. Later, thinking about this conversation and how different things are today, Joan’s memory takes off on a journey it has travelled many times before, back through the years to Southeast London in 1956.

While visiting a local museum with her mother, young Joan comes across an unusual and fascinating painting which seems to depict some form of Heaven and Hell. It is in turn beautiful and yet darkly disturbing, and Joan is so mesmerized by it that it will influence her perception of events – some happy, some tragic – that are to occur in the coming months. With the specter of the ancient painting never far from her mind, Joan makes her way through a difficult and at times bewildering year in which she learns that life is not always fair, and people are often not what they appear to be.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Sep 8, 2014
• ISBN: 9781483410852

Book preview

Daniel

CHAPTER ONE

H EY, DON’T I EVEN GET a ‘Thanks, Nana,’ for picking you up?

Thanks, Nana.

As my grandson climbed into the passenger seat of the Subaru next to his mother, she looked up at me and rolled her eyes as much as to say, What am I going to do with this kid? The car pulled away and I smiled to myself as I walked back up the garden path into the house. Twelve years old is not an easy age, but he’d had fun at his friend’s birthday party this afternoon. He had actually become quite animated telling me all about it – a paintball party it was, and I needed clarification. He asked what sort of parties I had gone to when I was his age. There had only been a few, I told him. They were at friends’ houses and we played games like pass the parcel and musical chairs, which he thought was very lame. Back in the living room sitting on the sofa with my book and a cup of tea, I thought about my grandson. Twelve years old is not an easy time, I mused once again – all sorts of emotional roadblocks to negotiate. And then, not for the first time I began to recall the events that had occurred in 1956, the year I turned twelve. My book remained unopened and my tea got cold as the decades slipped away. It was a year not easily forgotten.

Twelve is an impressionable age I know, but the things that happened during that time would have left an impression on me at any age. How have I managed to remember everything so clearly some fifty odd years on? I would have to put it like this: I spent a lot of time at the cinema back then, and the events that occurred have imprinted themselves on my memory the way the scenes of a particularly spellbinding film often did. And, like the films my mother and I went to see each week, my experiences came in varying genres. There was tragedy, some comedy and also a fair bit of melodrama thrown in for good measure.

Another way to explain my feelings about this year, would be to return to my grandson’s party this afternoon and tell you that it was a time during which I found myself quite literally bombarded with new experiences coming at me from all directions, smacking me in the head (and the heart) like paintballs thrown by a demented octopus. Of course, I’ve never actually engaged in a paintball game myself, but from what I heard from Austin, this might be a fair analogy. Now, I don’t want to give the impression that all the events I experienced were unpleasant. On the contrary, some were rather enjoyable – so enjoyable in fact that for the time I was under their influence I would be lifted up, up and away, floating high on a soft and fuzzy cloud of youthful exuberance feeling all was right with the world. But, of course, what goes up must come down, and along with the ups of the good times came the downs of others that were so awful I would find myself wallowing around in a murky trough of despondency, like a piglet who has just become aware that his sole purpose in life is to one day be turned into bacon. Then – excuse me while I refer to a character in one of my favorite childhood songs – like the Grand Old Duke of York, I’d be neither up nor down, but somewhere in the middle grappling with what I considered to be more than my fair share of experiences that were just plain bewildering, leaving me to ponder the arbitrary unfairness of life and that question most frequently posed by the prepubescent set: Why me? Like any twelve year old, I couldn’t just leave it at that, of course, but would get myself even more entangled with further questioning that went along the lines of, Why does nothing in my life ever go the way I want it to, the way it ought to go? which would, in turn, be followed by that most unfathomable of all questions: Why does bad stuff happen? This little gem would inevitably rise up and just about suffocate me like a musty old blanket thrown over my head.

The time I wasted pondering these unanswerable conundrums must surely have been one of the reasons I spent much of that year confused, at times angry and not a little frustrated. Another reason was – and this is probably at the root of the matter – the approach of puberty, hormones beginning to run amok and all that. However, to me at the time, it seemed that any high point in my life was invariably cancelled out by a disaster of some sort following close on its heels. To help explain a little more clearly what I mean by this, I will return to my demented octopus analogy and say that it was rather like my gleefully congratulating myself for having avoided the paintball that just whizzed past my left ear only to turn around and be hit full in the face by another even nastier one the next second. A silly metaphor I know, but now that I’ve got myself all tangled up in it, I might as well go one step further to say that in the grand scheme of paintball pelting, I was sure that someone or something was out to splatter me. And they very nearly did.

Now, I know that the memory is a funny thing; two people can witness the same event and later relate the details in two totally different ways, each certain that what she witnessed was the way it really happened. This is probably true of my story, but as I’m the one telling it, you’ll just have to take my word that this is the way it was. The one fact I do know for certain, though, is the events of that year had quite an impact on me, coloring the way I looked at the world, my life and the people around me. As I said before, the cinema had quite an influence on me back then, and the events that I am about to relate remain in my mind like scenes from the films that so delighted me. And, like most of these films, my story has a climax and a conclusion. There also might be just a tad of fiction thrown in, but a bit of embellishment never hurt a story, did it? Anyway, the culmination of the events of that memorable year was the accident. I say this because none of my childhood memories after the accident seem so vivid or have returned to me to be viewed so often by my mind’s eye. Or then again, it could have been the whack on the head that messed up my memory cells. After all, it was a pretty nasty fall I took. In any case, looking back now I’d like to be able to say something philosophical like: During all my years of higher education, none of my studies has brought me nearer to understanding the complexities of human nature than did the summer of 1956. But that would be fiction. For one thing, I didn’t undertake any courses of higher learning after I left school, at least not until many years after. I was well into my thirties when I decided to go to college to get a teaching certificate. My motivation for this decision was not that I wanted to learn about life, however; I already knew a bit about the way of the world by then. No, I enrolled in teachers’ training college for purely pragmatic reasons. I had come to the conclusion that teaching a subject I enjoyed would be a good way to earn money and also be home during my children’s school holidays – remembering my own school holidays, this was important to me. As it turned out, I couldn’t have chosen a career for which I was better suited – I loved being an English teacher. That was in the seventies when my husband’s earnings while adequate, were not what one would call princely. Back in the late fifties, when I was still at school, money was also a major factor in the decisions made about my education. At that time, though, I had no say in the matter. The decision was made for me.

We Spensers were not a wealthy family. We lived in a working class neighborhood in Southeast London, in the same house in which Mum and I lived at the time my story takes place. Both my parents worked in the local factory and earned minimal wages, so my contribution to the housekeeping was needed and expected. Added to that, my parents had both left school at the age of fourteen, and my mother wouldn’t hear of my staying on two extra years at school to take A-levels. Eighteen years old and not out earning a living. Don’t be ridiculous, Joan! was the response I got from her when I tentatively broached the subject. So, feeling not a little resentful toward my mother, I left school at sixteen after my O-levels and went off to work in the head office of Lloyd’s Bank on Lombard Street in the section of London called The City. I could go on to describe the mind-numbing duties I was employed to perform in the soulless, fluorescent-light lit offices hidden from public view behind the regal splendor of the stately old bank itself, but this would doubtless be more boring than my job. In any case, I have already gone off at a tangent and said far more than I intended to about my first venture into the world of earning one’s daily bread. To continue along that path would be jumping way ahead of myself to another time and place and perhaps another story, when what I really want to talk about now happened in 1956, the year I turned twelve and started grammar school.

As I said before, this was a time when my mind was constantly grappling with a multitude of mixed emotions, and I still can’t quite put a finger on exactly what I learned from all that happened. If I had to try, I suppose I would say that I gained a bit more insight into what is referred to as the human condition. After all, all experiences, even the bad ones, are tools to aid us in learning to cope with life’s quirks and quagmires, so they say. And who am I to disagree?

When did it all begin? I could be wrong, but I think it was the Sunday afternoon I discovered the Heaven and Hell picture.

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Joan, I really would like to go home now, if you don’t mind. I never liked this place as a child, and I still don’t like it. It hasn’t changed at all in thirty years, except to get shabbier and gloomier. I don’t know why I let you talk me into coming.

I heard my mother’s words as from a great distance, but I was too far into the Heaven and Hell picture and couldn’t, didn’t want to, drag myself out. The soft colors of sky and foliage, the soothing sound of water gently cascading over moss-covered rocks into a glistening pool – yes, I was sure I could hear that sound – and the smiling faces of beautiful people basking in the warm glow of the sun’s rays. This was paradise, serene and blissful, and it was simply too fascinating, too beguiling for me to want to leave. I heard my mother’s voice again and swiftly, sadly, I was no longer part of the picture but outside gazing through a fingerprint-smeared pane of glass at a large Asian-looking painting. How strange that I had been to the museum several times before, yet never until today had I noticed this particular painting. Maybe it was a new acquisition, although the way it was positioned gave the impression that it had been there forever. And, stranger still was the sensation of being drawn into it, of actually becoming part of the picture, albeit an observer rather than a participant in the enjoyment.

Joan Spenser! Are you purposely ignoring me? my mother snapped.

No. Sorry, Mum, I’m coming. It’s just… this picture. Come and look at it. It’s really… well… I’m not quite sure what it is really, but it sort of won’t let me go. It’s like a magnet pulling me in. I’m told even now that I am prone to histrionics, and I knew back then this sounded way too dramatic the minute the words had left my mouth. But it was true.

Don’t talk nonsense, my mother hissed. Let’s go. Now!

Actually, Mum was right. There was a kind of gloom beginning to settle over the old museum. Now that I had stepped back and taken a better look at the picture as a whole, an oddly unsettling feeling started to wend its way into my mind. The ancient painting in front of me certainly had a strange fascination about it. The more I gazed into its depth the more aware I became that it was at once both appealing and a little frightening. How uncanny that for a few moments I had imagined myself there, inside it. Creepy! As I studied the intricate shapes and forms, I guessed the painting could be Indian or perhaps Chinese. Or maybe it was neither. I really had no idea as I had never seen anything quite like it before and could not see any little tag with information about it. I would have to ask the attendant or Mr. Etheridge at school tomorrow.

I stepped back a little further trying to capture a mental picture of the whole thing, so that I could give a good description to whoever might be able to shed light on its origin. In doing so, I quickly realized that all the activity depicted in it was not as idyllic as I had at first thought. The picture was without a frame and was large, almost as tall I was and perhaps three feet wide. Covering much of it were tiny figures all engaged in different pursuits. Having taken another step back, I could now see that the colors changed quite dramatically from top to bottom, separating the picture into two distinct halves, one pleasant and the other decidedly unpleasant. I had been so taken with the top half – I thought of it as Heaven – that I had neglected to observe what was going on in the lower part. Now I saw things more clearly, I realized that the nether section was unmistakably some form of Hell. I was contemplating the concept that the picture actually depicted Heaven and Hell, when to my horror I was engulfed with the overwhelming feeling of being drawn inside it once again. This time, though, it was not at all pleasurable. I was in the bottom half. I stood transfixed as I watched hideous, dog-faced demons throw the naked bodies of people I took to be sinners into flaming pits, while others gleefully inflicted gruesome torments on those not yet subjected to the flames. I shuddered at the sight but could not drag my eyes away from the twisted limbs, the terror-stricken faces. I heard piteous moans and the roar of flames but could not block my ears to stop the sounds. Again I felt that I was stuck inside the picture, witness to the hellish scene as it unfolded before my eyes.

Terrifying as this vision was, I somehow knew that it was exactly that: a vision, a waking dream. It was not reality. Comprehending this, my brain madly formulated questions that rose up and collided in my head with all sorts of wild ideas about the nature of sin. Could there truly be a Hell where you ended up if you were a sinner? How bad of a sinner did you have to be? I vowed then and there never to sin, not even to tell a lie or contemplate revenge on those who did me wrong. The Seven Deadly Sins. I’d heard of them, but what were they exactly? I tried to remember but could only think of gluttony – a very fat sinner had just been flung into the pit – which really wasn’t much of a sin to my mind. Murder must surely be top of the list, although I wasn’t sure about that either; maybe that came under the Ten Commandments instead. The thought flashed into my mind that someone like the awful Clothesline Killer, the strangler who had struck twice in the past few months, deserved to be thrown into a pit of flames. Or did he? Did anyone deserve such a fate? Maybe he was mentally sick, had been abused as a child and could not help himself. Was this an excuse for what he had done to other children? While these thoughts careened crazily about inside my head, I heard my mother’s voice and with great relief found myself once again standing in the museum, staring through a smeary pane of glass at an ancient, Asian-looking painting. This was all way too spooky. I had to clap my hand over my mouth to stifle the cry that was about to escape. Now I was just as ready to leave as Mum was.

Which is the way out, Joan? she demanded, looking one way and then the other. You could get lost in here and not be found for weeks, wandering amongst all these stuffed animals and glass cases. It’s like a maze of mirrors at the amusement park, but not one bit amusing as far as I’m concerned.

Her surprising use of simile did at least serve to drag my focus away from the picture. She usually only resorted to hyperbole. (These two literary terms, by the way, I had recently learned in writing class at school and was using them whenever the opportunity arose.) Now that I was out from under the spell of the Heaven and Hell picture, I desperately tried to erase that last encounter from my mind, convince myself that I must, of course, have been daydreaming. Something else people told me I was prone to.

I led the way through the maze to the exit, knew it by heart. Even though it really was a gloomy old place, and despite the nightmarish daydream I had just experienced, I did love this museum, not only for itself but also for the happy memories it evoked of outings I’d enjoyed in the past. Once outside its doors, descending the wide stone steps to the pavement, we were confronted by a world that appeared no less gloomy. The sky was iron grey and the cold evening air smelled of petrol fumes from the two old buses that rumbled past each other in front of us as we waited on the curb to cross the street.

There, we’ve just missed a bus! Now we’ll have to wait forever for another one, my mother grumbled. She certainly was in a bad mood.

Once the buses had passed, we walked across the road and stood at the bus stop. With no more traffic in sight, everything became very quiet, including Mum and me. As we stood in silence, it occurred to me that behind us was the open field where