Taking Tea With Lilias
One artist to another
Hello everyone
While I was going through my notes for Where the Sea Lavender Grows, I came across some letters, written by Elise shortly after she arrived at Marsh House.
I think she was starting to find out about Lilias. That sometimes it felt as if the house was speaking to her, and she wanted to speak back.
What do you think?
Dear Lilias,
I don’t know if I should even call you that. It was your name, I know. But perhaps in your day people who didn’t know you well called you Miss Carter-Brown. And we’ve never actually met, have we? Not in the way people meet over tea and polite conversation.
How would you take your tea, I wonder? I like mine strong, with only a dash of milk. I drink it from a mug, but I think it would have been teacups in your day. I like to think you’d be like me though, that you’d get painty fingerprints on your cup the way I do on my mug.
When I’m restoring your murals, I imagine you, completely absorbed in what you’re doing, taking a sip from your cup, not noticing the green fingerprints you’re transferring to the porcelain.
How wonderful it would be if we could drink tea together. We’d sit outside in the flower garden, and I’d ask you about the salt marsh murals; whether you went out sketching first, or whether you dived straight in with your paintbrushes. I’d ask you what you do when a painting isn’t quite working. Which artists you admire. Whose work inspires you most.
When I’m inside Marsh House, surrounded by your paintings, it’s almost like being out there - the birds, the grasses, the huge expanse of the sky. Your passion for the landscape is obvious.
I wasn’t sure about the marshes myself at first, though. All that space. It made me feel lonely.
But then, I always feel lonely these days.
Maybe that’s why I’m sitting here, writing to you when you can never answer. Robbie would frown if he knew about it. He’d pat my shoulder and suggest I try a different grief counsellor.
But I think you’d understand, Lilias. Because I think you lost somone too. I can sense it in your paintings. And in the way you come to me in my dreams. (I don’t mind that, by the way. Please don’t stop.)
Elise
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