The Tuesday Visitor

The museum in our town is small. Two rooms, a desk at the entrance, and me behind the desk. On a good day we get ten visitors. On a wet day we get the weather.

Every Tuesday at two o'clock, an old man came in. He paid, said good afternoon, and walked straight past the gold coins and the famous dead men on the walls. He stopped in front of one small picture at the back, and he stood there for an hour. Then he thanked me and left.

The picture is nobody's favourite. It shows a kitchen: a woman at a table by a window, morning light, a cup of tea in front of her. In one corner there are two letters instead of a name. The card under it says Artist unknown.

People love a mystery, but nobody ever asked about that picture. Nobody except me, and only because of the man.

In June a letter arrived from the council. The museum would close at the end of the summer. Not enough visitors, not enough money. The important things would go to the city, and the rest of the collection would be sold.

I told the old man on a Tuesday, because there was never any other day to tell him. He was quiet for a long time. Then he said thank you, in a voice as steady as ever, and left an hour early.

The next Tuesday he did not come. The Tuesday after that, he did not come either. The museum felt different without him, and I had not expected that.

On the last day I packed the pictures myself. When I took the picture of the kitchen down from the wall, I turned it over. On the back, someone had written: For M. The light was always yours.

I was still holding it when I heard the door.

The old man looked smaller away from his corner. He asked, in his quiet way, what would happen to the picture of the kitchen.

"The city does not want it," I said. "The artist is unknown."

"No," he said. "He is not."

He told me the story at my desk, in the empty museum. He had been young once, and poor, and married to a woman called Margaret, who sat every morning at their kitchen table with her tea, in the light from the window. He painted her there, in that light. Then the rent was due, and a man from the museum offered him more money for the picture than he could earn in a month. Margaret told him not to be a fool about it. So he signed it with two letters, because he did not want his name on a thing he was selling, and he let it go.

"Margaret died in the spring," he said. "Coming here was the only way left to visit her."

The council had sent a price list for the things the city did not want. The picture of the kitchen, artist unknown, was worth five pounds.

He reached for his wallet. His hands shook, so it took a while, and I pretended not to notice.

I carried the picture to his car myself and put it on the back seat, the right way up.

In the winter I passed his house on my way to my sister's. There was a light on in the kitchen, and through the window I could see the picture on the wall: Margaret at her table, home at last, with all those mornings still in front of her.

The museum is a coffee shop now. They kept my desk. I have never once been in.