The Portrait Gallery Has No Ancestors

How it begins

The oldest ancestor had Mara's mouth.

Not her adult mouth.

The uncertain line she had made in school photographs when an adult told her to smile properly.

She stood beneath the portrait with the restoration brief folded in her hand.

The brass plate dated the sitter to the seventeenth century.

"An admirable likeness," Elias Bell said.

"Of whom?"

"Lady Isobel."

"Was she painted from life?"

"Naturally."

Mara looked at the eyes.

They belonged to the woman who had served her coffee at the station.

She had noticed the left one turning slightly outward while the woman counted change.

In the portrait, the same eye looked toward a painted window.

"May I see the source records?"

Elias's smile remained in place.

"Most visitors prefer the stories."

"I'm working on the genealogy."

"Exactly."

Along the wall, a row of ancestors regarded the room with expressions Mara had seen that morning in a queue for the bus.

A boyish grin on an old general.

A shopkeeper's frown beneath a powdered wig.

The gallery smelled of varnish and cut flowers.

Mara took out her sketchbook.

Before leaving home, she had drawn her mother asleep in an armchair. It was a small private exercise, unfinished because the taxi arrived early.

Now she opened the page.

The mouth had changed.

Her mother's familiar uneven smile had become a thin, patient line.

The line from the portrait.

Mara looked up.

Lady Isobel seemed less uncertain.

Elias watched her close the book.

"People often feel a connection."

"Is that what you call it?"

"What would you call it?"

Mara placed the restoration brief on the nearest bench.

For the first time, she read the clause allowing the estate to retain all preliminary drawings.

Beside the bench, another empty frame waited under a cloth. Mara no longer assumed it was intended for a painting.

Then she put her sketchbook inside her coat and kept her hand over it.