Free Circus by Claire Battershill Page B

estranged once Mrs. Cunningham married the local doctor and had children. From Megan’s perspective, it was a gradual growing apart, but I have my suspicions. She is well known to be a dreadful correspondent.
    When Jemima was sixteen years old, her mother died unexpectedly. Rosalie Hendricks was discovered near the sea by a beachcomber, with a hermit crab clutched in her left hand. Though her father never explained the cause of death to Jemima, I read in the historical newspaper archive that it was a sudden cardiac event. She was still wearing her blue gingham apron when they found her, and she left freshly baked oatmeal cookies on a cooling rack in the kitchen. Mrs. Hendricks’s meticulous diaries stop abruptly at this point, obviously. Yet, the day after her death, Jemima wrote a single line in her distinctive pinched cursive: “The world is tired today.” You must make of that what you will. But I’m sure you can imagine howmoved I was in the archive when I turned the page and found Jemima’s own handwriting. It felt like a sudden cool rain after a dusty, parched summer. There was no sign of Jemima writing in the diaries before this moment, but after her mother’s death she began to write every day, and not just accounts but her own reflections. At first she wrote brief phrases, but then she began to record her life more fully as the years went on. In my view the early aphorisms are the best, because with fragments you can fill in the meaning yourself, can’t you?
    The other day I was on the local bus and everyone was yawning, even the driver. I read somewhere that yawns are contagious. Have you guys heard that? Must have been in the “Health” section of the paper. Anyway, I couldn’t help but think of poor Jemima and her tired world. I can’t get that line out of my head sometimes. Perhaps she meant something more than a bus full of sleepy commuters, but I’m not an authority on such matters.
    After the tragedy, by all accounts, Mr. Hendricks carried on carrying on, in the way that men did in those days. He kept the hermit crab shell on the mantelpiece.
    Directly beneath the attic, you’ll see an artist’s studio. Inside is a tiny nude, posing for a miniscule portrait. She sits in a semi-recumbent posture on a burgundy upholstered chaise-lounge and holds out her palm as if she’s offering invisible desserts on a non-existent platter. The artist is dressed in grey, paint-splattered clothes, and has what I’m sure you’ll agree can only be described as whimsical hair. He holds his brush aloft, justabove the painting. To the naked eye, what’s on the canvas just looks like random strokes of paint, but if you use the specialized magnifying goggles to the right of the display case, you’ll see that it is actually an abstract interpretation of the nude, who appears, half drawn, in bold shapes. I don’t know if I’d use the word “monstrous” myself, ma’am, but of course everyone sees modern art differently, don’t they? Jemima achieved the detail by painting the image using a brush with a single bristle. Maybe it’s a good thing that the sitter can’t see the painting. It isn’t what you would call flattering. No, her gaze is fixed on the back of the easel, and her wrist just floats there, like a starling that is about to strike a window. It’s a departure, as you’ll see, from the realism of the rest of the house. You’re quite right, sir, it does feel a bit out of place, whatever she’s trying to communicate with it. Thank you for saying so. I’ve often thought the same thing.
    In the years following her mother’s death, Jemima set about the task of finding Uncle Barnaby. Perhaps it was a way of dealing with her grief, or perhaps it was simply a quest to find the man who had unwittingly discovered Jemima’s great talent. Megan Cunningham seems to think that Jemima remained the same after her mother’s death, carrying on without mentioning the loss. However, the diaries show otherwise, and