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abstract shapes floating within it, in white, darker black and a complex shade of blue that brought to
mind a sunlit Cornish coastline. ‘What is it?’ Ben had asked me, his hand nestled in mine. ‘It’s
whatever you want it to be,’ I’d said. ‘I like it,’ he replied. ‘It’s random.’ ‘Random’ was a new word
that Ben had learned at school and he used it whenever he could.
In the next gallery Ben had been drawn to a small canvas by Odilon Redon, and a copy of this was
revealed when I opened the book. In the museum, Ben had stood in front of it, just inches from it,
while Ruth and I stood behind him.
‘What is this one?’ he asked us. In the centre of the painting was a white figure, mounted on a
rearing white horse and holding aloft a long stick with a green flag at the top of it, which looked to be
fluttering in a hot breeze. Behind the figure were two boats, barely emerging from the thickly painted
background, with its suggestions of land, sea, clouds and sky in dusty shades of brown and blue.
‘It’s a bit messy,’ said Ben.
‘The artist has done that on purpose,’ Ruth told him. ‘He wants to suggest a dream to you, a world
where stories take place and where you can use your imagination.’
‘What is the story?’
‘Like your mummy said about the other painting, the story is anything you want it to be. It’s
everything or nothing.’
‘I would like to have a green flag,’ said Ben.
‘Then you could be an adventurer too, like the person in this painting. Would you like a white
horse?’
Ben nodded.
‘And what about a boat?’ Ruth asked him.
‘No thank you,’ he said, and I knew he would say that, because Ben had a fear of the sea.
‘Do you know what I see in this painting?’ Ruth asked him.
He looked up at her.
‘I see a brave person riding a magnificent horse and I wonder where that person is going and
where they’ve been,’ she told him. ‘And I also see music.’
‘Where is the music?’ he asked.
‘It’s in there. It’s in the paint, and the sea and the sky and in the story of the person and their horse
and the ships,’ said Ruth. ‘All those things give me the idea of music, and then I can hear it in my
head.’
‘And for me too,’ he said. He smiled at her, his face lit up. ‘It’s lots of fast notes, like an
adventure.’
‘And slow ones too,’ said Ruth. ‘Do you see here – that thick bit of paint, where you can see how
the painter smeared it on with his brush? That’s a slow note for me.’
Ben considered that. ‘Can you hear it, Mummy?’
‘Definitely,’ I told him, and in that moment just the sound of his voice, the innocence ringing in it,
the eagerness to listen, was music enough. On that day, my son was seven years old, and I suspected
already that he might not be the kind of child who could win a running race, or triumph on a rugby
pitch, so to see him respond in this way to the paintings was a joy. It gave me so much hope for his
future, that sensitivity he had, the way that he might be able to respond so positively to beauty and to
ideas. I felt it would enable him to create reserves that he could draw on when he needed to, and I
knew I could guide him through that, or at least set him off on his way.
What I hadn’t realised on that day, as Ruth and I took him downstairs to find tea and cake, was that
he might need to draw on his reserves so soon. Before he would be ready. Or that he might never get a