Episode 2.4

Welcome to The Phosphene Catalogue no. # 15024
We see light where others see only darkness.

Morwenna, I'm sorry I won't see you today, I have a consultation with the National Portrait Gallery about something their junior archivist (Nicole something-or-other) found while cataloguing their long backlog of items late last night.
(sounds a lot like our work here!)
Anyway, the poor girl is dead, and I have a meeting with director Hayes, who called us before calling the police, in the hopes of avoiding a scandal.
I'm not sure that The Catalogue has ever helped someone avoid a scandal, but the matter is urgent, and at least I can look forward to meeting the new director. Perhaps he will be more open-minded than his predecessor, Sir David Piper, who, I am sure, doesn't like me. Long story.
But before I go, I simply must tell you what happened yesterday, it'll make me feel better just to vent into this tape.

Side A: Happenings

Sarah actually came to Rossetti House yesterday, can you believe her? Barging into my home - my only refuge from her wild requests at the gallery!
Josephine Croft answered the door and brought Sarah through to the kitchen, where I was considering supper. Jo's not to blame here, she knows Sarah well enough by now.
Sarah was cross with me for not coming to the gallery after work to plan our next joint installation.
(To tell you the truth, Morwenna, I had deliberately gone home to avoid her!)
I played it off as a simple mistake and suggested we meet another time, perhaps at the weekend or next week.
But Sarah had entirely different plans:
She had told the taxi to wait outside, and we were to go back to the gallery directly, there and then, she told me, and sort it all out. That's what a PROFESSIONAL partner would do, according to her.
I confess I lost my temper at this point. I am not long recovered from my Edinburgh misadventure, and I was tired and looking forward to a quiet night OFF!
Our heated argument was only ended by the entrance of David from the lounge. Jo took the opportunity to escape, pushing David through, and then closed the door behind her, leaving Sarah and me in silence.
"I'll find my bloody coat." I told her, and got into the waiting taxi.

We sat in the back of the cab, bags between us, in silence. The cabbie was friendly enough, but neither of us would be drawn into conversation about the weather or the shocking price of meat, or what a shame it is that they haven't fixed Big Ben yet.
The silence between us deepened as the rain began.
I was pointedly looking out of my window at the buildings going by. There was certainly no way I was going to speak first, I thought, she should be the one to, and with an apology on her lips, to my mind.
But then, just like that, I forgot our argument:
Sarah's hand brushed against me by accident, I thought, at first, but then, carefully, one finger at a time, she slipped her hand into mine.
She had not turned to look at me, but when I glanced, I could see her face in the window reflection, eyes wide.
I turned away, still not wanting to speak, and looked out at the streets that were now shining with the reflected street lights in the early evening.
I have no memory of the world outside during the rest of that half-an-hour drive. I wasn't paying attention, really, and was surprised when the driver thanked us and asked for his fare.
Sarah met my gaze and smiled nervously as we left the cab at the gallery, unsaid words echoing in the space between us.

And then... the moment passed.
She paid the driver, and we went back to discussing floorpans and timings and wall space like nothing had happened.
But something had happened, hadn't it?
Morwenna?
Something HAD happened.

I'm still too early for my appointment at The Portrait Gallery, but maybe they won't mind if I'm a few minutes ahead of schedule.
Oh! Andrew Waring!, have you got a moment?

Next time you're downstairs, would you leave this tape on Morwenna's desk? She'll know who it's from. Thanks.
Right!

Intermission

Side B: Fey Tails

A rare example of Olive Yorke's work now hangs in The Bell Room here at The Catalogue. The artist's career was cut short by her disappearance, not long after this item was first exhibited, in 1958, making her work rare items for the discerning collector.

The painting itself is of an ancient juniper tree in a picturesque rural garden, with a cottage behind it, and rolling hills of grain behind that. The tree dwarfs the cottage, curling around it slightly, as though shielding the building from the weather. Trees like this can grow to many hundreds of years old.

The reader may be familiar with the subject of this painting: The oft-captured Juniper tree of The Brothers Grimm.

In the fairytale, a peasant woman sheds her blood on the roots of her juniper tree, wishing for a son. Miraculously, this is granted, but, alas, she dies in childbirth and her son is killed by a wicked stepmother.

Here in The Bell Room, the twisted, gnarled roots of the old tree in Yorke's painting are blackened, hardly visible in the shaded earth beneath the dark green leaves.
Yet, leaning closer, I spy in the artificial sunlight of our gallery, a rusted brown red stain.

In the final part of the tale, a bird or spirit, depicted here as a dove, flies out of the tree and tells the villagers of the wicked stepmother's crime. At the end of the tale, he turns back into the boy and lives, presumably, happily ever after.

That's my memory of the story, Reader, but ask 5 people to retell any of the Grimm fairytales, and you'll get 10 different interpretations.

The artist has highlighted the dove sitting in the delicate top branches of the painting very carefully: A white beam from an unseen source haloes the bird in celestial starlight.
The faces of the family look out: Father, daughter, and wicked stepmother.

In most depictions of The Juniper Tree, the bird spirit guards the family: protecting them from the wicked stepmother, killing her with a dropped millstone.
(Look in the bottom-right corner of the frame for that portentous rock, reader)

But stepping back from the work, I think a different interpretation is depicted here.
Can you see it?

The vaulted passageway under Mary Kings Close seemed to go on for miles under Edinburgh's old town. The contact I had made, a quiet man called James Stoneweaver, walked ahead of me, holding a dim, yellow electric torch.
We had met at the Midnight Hall exhibit earlier that month, an unassuming man that I planned to brush off politely, until he mentioned that he knew Nelson Cartwright, and we got talking.
As we walked on, I wondered (for the usual mundane reasons) how wise agreeing to go alone with him was, but after, I realised I should have widened the scope of my apprehension.

We finally arrived at The Kings Coven, a group of a few dozen robed people assembled in a large stone room.
At the far end was a stone altar with thick candles sputtering in the frigid damp air. There was a little dry bread and bitter wine available at an ugly metal table at the back of the room, and James half-heartedly introduced me to those he knew. My memory is hazy, but I am sure these people all looked the same.
The whole thing felt like a dreary local council session, not a meet of guise magicians! Though that impression didn't last long.
A man set up a skeletal metal lectern in front of the altar and read a few passages from a black-covered grimoire to start the evening's proceedings.
I forget the exact details of what he said, something about powerful magic, caused by powerful emotions, caused by powerful art? I would soon learn what he meant by that.
He welcomed me, gesturing to James and me at the back, meeting my gaze without smiling, and a few of the people laughed as he did so.
Some deep unconscious part of me knew, then, that I should flee. I know now that my feet would likely not have taken me very far.
I became horribly aware that I was the only person holding a glass of wine, and the rest had not been touched on the table.
"Their food is never freely given." is an insult you often use, Morwenna, and I should have remembered it here. There's always a price with some people, isn't there?
I've only heard our colleagues in The Catalogue use that saying, "Their food is never freely given", do they get it from you? Where did you first hear it?
Anyway, you know the rest, I dimly recall rope, the altar, and a curved knife. I'd rather forget that part, actually, but what happened next I wish I remembered better:
Suddenly, the room was filled with a bright light, like the sun had somehow found a window down underground all this way.
I turned my head to the side, away from the robed would-be murderers of the Coven, and saw a doorway in the wall behind the altar that wasn't there before. The light pouring out of it was cold, white, and dazzling.
Nothing came through that door, but I was suddenly pulled into it - no hand grabbed me, it was more like gravity had shifted sideways, just for me. My hair fell in front of my face and I hit the ground.
On the stone floor.
Of your bedroom, here at The Catalogue.
There was no train, was there Morwenna, from Edinburgh to London.
I assumed I had, in my drugged state, been unconscious the whole day, taxi to train to taxi or something.
But you whisked me through that gate made of light directly back to safety.
I don't know how you did it, but thank you Morwenna.
I owe you my life.

I thought I knew the scope of the Guise society. Of course there are myriad things I didn't understand; is it the art that causes these supernatural effects, or is it something in the viewer, or in the artist, or something else entirely.
Even if the painting of my knowledge almost blank, being filled in very slowly, I thought I knew where the frame was.
Known unknowns.
But what you did was entirely outside the frame, Morwenna. You didn't pour your essence and being into a work of art to create magic, you just DID it. Not only did you reach across time and space to rescue me, you knew you had to, right at that moment, you looked through time and space, too.

The fairytale's English title, "The Juniper Tree", is merely the most common translation. It is called "Von dem Machandelboom" in the original Low German. This means "FROM the juniper tree".
Most scholars identify the boy-turned-bird as the guardian spirit, revealing the stepmother's crimes and meting out punishment, but this painting shows a different interpretation, I believe.

The branches of Olive Yorke's Juniper Tree move delicately in the wind, the starlight sparkles faintly not just on the white dove, but the branch it is sitting on, the whole tree is glowing.
The guardian can't be the dove because it was created, reborn, by the tree. The tree itself is the family's guardian, silent, watchful.
It was there when the first stones of the house were laid, and it will be there long after the occupants are gone.

In this painting, Yorke shows us that nature is both saviour and soldier; judge, jury, and executioner all in one. An amoral force that is neither on our side nor against us. Nature just IS.
As in the rest of the Brothers Grimm's stories, some magic heals, but some magic harms.

Please bring sunglasses to your appointment, reader, you will be unable to stare at "The Juniper Tree" for long.

CREDITS