by Sophia Tobin
Ever your devoted architect.
HDC.
Livy stared at the letter. The energy between the words reminded her of the portrait. The words, like the image, shimmered with it: the potential for action. The moment before stepping forwards. How had Charlotte read them, interpreted them? With that strange half-smile? Had she even seen them?
‘What do you make of it?’ said Jonathan, his voice flat and emotionless. ‘They are strange letters. When he says “I will keep it safe”, does he mean the stone? Or does he mean her?’
‘I think they are concerned with the relationship rather than the stone,’ Livy said, realizing that she felt rather protective of Henry. Taceo, she thought. So you did not always keep silent. ‘Do you think Ashton ever saw them?’
‘Undoubtedly. Even in old age, not a single piece of post came into the house that he did not see. He was not always an easy man to know or deal with, as I told you. My grandmother spoke of him sometimes – always with admiration, but not really with warmth.’ He sighed. ‘There is no evidence that Charlotte wrote back to Dale-Collingwood. Perhaps, if Dale-Collingwood was an obsessive kind of person, then her husband kept the letters as a precaution.’
‘And at least he mentions the diamond in that last letter.’ Livy handed the letters to him. ‘Henry kept notebooks, dated by year. I’ll go and get the 1840 one. There may be clues on second reading.’
‘Do you think?’ The hope on his face was almost painful to see, and she put her hand on his arm.
‘I don’t think anything. But let me check.’
She hurried downstairs and extracted it from the vault. When she returned, Jonathan was still sitting in the chair. Sitting as though he waited to be sentenced for a crime, his foot tapping. ‘It’s here,’ he said. ‘If I could only understand where.’
She sat down on the floor and began to read. He sat watching her, smoking, until he could bear it no longer. ‘Anything?’
Livy looked up at him. ‘It’s about the design of the Club. Nothing about the diamond, at least not yet. I’m sorry. Although some of it is uncanny. Less measured than his earlier notes and letters.’ She showed him one page.
The coving of the Committee Room: the cherubs’ faces. High relief, as per my drawings. I have drawn the face, and the modelling must capture at least the ghost of its beauty, if only that. I do not expect verisimilitude. I have given up hope of that.
‘I’m going outside,’ he said. ‘I need some fresh air.’
She turned the page. A drawing of a chaise longue; a scrap of fabric, pinned to the page.
And the next, and the next.
More drawings: this time of cherubs’ faces. Several angles, the same face, again, and again. Then, she froze.
A small note, in Henry’s slanted, agitated hand. A note she had missed on first reading, but which she couldn’t imagine missing.
And what of the child, Charlotte?
Livy pushed her chair back. She felt hot and nauseous. Looked back at the page: had she imagined those words? No. She had not.
And what of the child, Charlotte?
It was a phrase, she thought, written by a man who was no longer keeping silent about anything.
She heard the bang of a distant door in the building. Remembered the rattle of the backstairs door. The violence of it. What had he hidden here, she thought? What part of him had he left here? Just as she had left part of herself in a distant street, in a flattened, bombed-out building?
It was suddenly unbearable. She found herself fighting the urge to throw up, her body burning with a surge of heat. After a moment she struggled to her feet, and ran to the window. Bill had not boarded up one of the glassless panes, and as her face met the cold winter air she felt the relief as her temperature began to fall.
As she stood there, she remembered Charlotte’s face in the portrait. She had looked at it so often now that it was as familiar as her own. But now the face seemed to shift in her mind, and she saw it in a different way, so that she knew she would have to go and look at it again. Could it be, it was mocking her? Amused, and withholding? Could it be that she had tormented Henry? Had tormented Ashton?
She thought of the diamond pinned to the black dress, and how painful it must be for Jonathan to see it; how he had gladly taken the painting down and covered it with wrappings. That diamond, worn not with pride, but as though it were just another trapping of a wealth too wide to be admitted. She thought of the landscape beyond Charlotte. The vast estate which was her home.
Those white shoulders, and those watchful, amused eyes. Sardonic, she thought. Perhaps, even, cruel.
And what of the child, Charlotte?
Livy felt the heat rising up her face. And all at once, the world fell away, the firm ground sucked from beneath her feet. A dark night, and a light burning as bright as a diamond. And Miss Hardaker, screaming. The world ending. A familiar feeling. And for a moment, it were as though a page was about to turn backwards; could she go backwards in time? Could she remember herself? As she struggled for control, a movement caught her eye in her peripheral vision, and a hand closed around her arm. She turned with a cry.
It was Peggy. ‘Are you all right? Livy. Have you been crying?’
‘No, I’m quite all right. Just felt a little unwell.’
‘Mr Taylor’s here.’
‘Is he?’ She looked around her, blindly. It was as though the room was suddenly narrow and dark – too dark to make out faces.
‘Livy.’ It was Christian. He came to her and put his hand to her forehead. Peggy was saying something – she heard the words ‘shock’ and ‘unwell’. He took hold of her shoulders. ‘Livy?’
She came to with a jump. Christian’s face hovered before hers.
‘I’ve said your name a dozen times,’ he said. ‘Can you hear me?’
She nodded. He nodded in reflection of her gesture; even in her perplexed state, she found that endearing. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Do you remember something?’
‘I was on the roof, with Miss Hardaker. She was trying to put out a bomb. I didn’t get there in time.’
‘I know, my darling.’
She noticed the endearment, and did not protest. In some deep part of her, it comforted her.
‘Do you remember anything else?’
‘No.’
She saw the disappointment in his face: saw it even though he tried to hide it. But he smiled, and nodded, and it seemed to her in that moment that he was brave. She sensed it as one sensed things in people – happiness, sadness, solidity, flightiness. She sensed his courage.
‘Did something upset you, though? Something now?’
She nodded.
‘Did it?’ Peggy hovered behind. ‘Livy? Sweetheart? What’s happened? Has Mr Whitewood done something?’
She saw them glance at each other: they think he is dangerous, she thought. And she wanted to laugh out loud, and say: no, it is I who am dangerous to him. We could destroy everything together. My life, his life, and his marriage. He and I are loose cannons, set up for destruction, pointing at each other.
‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s silly. It’s just the archives. I was reading them, and there was mention of a child. Suddenly, out of nowhere. I can’t think why it shook me so much – perhaps because I thought of Charlotte. Because I thought she might have had a child – and it shocked me a little. It made me realize how little I know – how little we all know – behind the façades of people. And I thought of all that happened behind that face, and I thought of the bones then. That must be why. I keep thinking about the bones. About death.’
‘I see.’ Christian was speaking carefully. He was frowning, a deep frown that made a ridge in his normally smooth forehead. ‘Just sit down here. Take a breath.’ He guided her to the chair, and watched her as she sat down.
‘Mr Whitewood’s been pushing you too much,’ said Peggy quietly. ‘He’s so obsessed about that diamond.’
‘He’s not been pushing me,’ Livy sighed, and brushed her hair away fr
om her face. ‘I want to know too.’
Peggy glanced between Livy and Christian, then quietly excused herself to go and begin the dinner. ‘Bill’s been working in the Committee Room all day tidying things up, and he says he’s famished.’
Livy and Christian stayed together in silence.
‘Did you just come to say hello?’ she said eventually, when she was calmer.
‘Yes.’ There was more behind the words, she sensed it. ‘I was on a site visit yesterday when the siren went. I spent the night in the underground. Do you remember that? Having to take shelter in the Tube?’
‘No.’
He smiled, folded his arms. ‘It’s official now. Allowed. They have beds in Liverpool Street station. People buy tickets for a place. I don’t like going into the Tube, really. I’d rather be in the open air, even with bombs falling. At eight o’clock, the ground shook, and there was a hot rush of air, and I knew something had happened.’
‘What had?’ Livy spent her evenings reading – some of the mysteries Christian had brought her, or the archives – she didn’t like the news.
‘They bombed Bank station,’ he said, turning to look out of the window. And she saw him clench one fist and rest it against the wall, as though he were marking the spot for a punch.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said.
He stood perfectly still. He was looking ahead of him, at something she could not see. ‘I prefer to be at St Paul’s,’ he said. ‘Not sitting somewhere, waiting. At least I’m doing something. I like to be so exhausted that I have to sleep – that there’s no choice. I was always a poor sleeper.’
Unbidden, she imagined him, working his way through the many corridors of St Paul’s – corridors he had described to her and Peggy over tea before – balancing on the beams during dome patrol, and she wondered if he looked different in the darkness and firelight, in his tin helmet and blue uniform.
It was then they heard Jonathan. Heard, rather than saw him. It was the sound of him dragging Bill’s ladder across the Committee Room that alerted them. From the Red Parlour, they saw across the small anteroom into the Committee Room, where he was haphazardly leaning the ladder against the panelling.
Livy and Christian stared at each other in astonishment, before Livy got to her feet and walked quickly if shakily towards the Committee Room.
‘Jonathan?’ she said. He had put one foot on the bottom of the ladder. The scent of brandy fumes sank through the air, diluting the clear winter air with its sweet, dangerous taint. When he looked at her, his gaze was hazy. She realized with a slight shock that he was drunk. Had he gone upstairs to the members’ rooms and knocked back a whole decanter?
She walked towards him, then stopped. He had a hammer in his hand.
‘What are you doing?’ she said faintly. Christian had approached and was standing behind her.
‘It’s in here,’ said Jonathan. ‘The diamond.’
Hope rose in her, then fell; a slight sense of being cheated, as though he had finished a cryptic crossword puzzle she had set out to do. ‘How do you know?’
‘The thing you showed me earlier. The cherub in the Committee Room. That it had to capture the ghost of its beauty – don’t you see? The ghost of it? It must be the diamond. I’ve been thinking about it. Ghost diamond. It must be the diamond.’
‘I don’t know about that,’ she said doubtfully. ‘Really, I don’t.’
He laughed and took a few steps up; on the third rung, he wavered, as though his balance might be lost; his weight sank into his heels and for a moment it seemed as though he might fall backwards. Christian went to the ladder and put his hands on it to keep it steady. ‘Mr Whitewood,’ he said. ‘I think you should come down. We can look into this later.’
Jonathan looked down at Christian. Despite his befogged gaze Livy could see the fury in him. Silently, he turned back and began to climb upwards.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Please don’t. Please don’t destroy anything. Mr Whitewood. Jonathan!’
Her cry of distress was too late. He was within reach of the coving. He reached out and hit the cherub’s face with a hammer. Once, twice, three times. Livy stood back as lumps of plaster and gilding fell. Christian dropped his head forwards; in a moment his head was white with the dust. He did not let go of the ladder.
Jonathan hit it again, and again, and once more.
He hit it until he knew there was no diamond there. That he had simply destroyed a face of carved plaster. A face carved according to Henry’s drawing, to capture the beauty he had seen in a child’s face. It had been safe for a hundred years, thought Livy, as she stared at the smashed coving, and at the back of Jonathan’s head as he looked at what he had done. She turned away and covered her face. Henry had recorded something for posterity, so that a reminder, an echo of what had been would remain when he was long gone.
‘Livy,’ said Jonathan.
‘What have you done?’ she said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
1839
In the quiet hours of early evening, Henry stood in the salon de printemps and watched Charlotte walk slowly in the garden on the arm of her sister-in-law. He had spent the past hour drawing her son, as per Ashton’s direction, capturing the light on the babe’s chubby face. It should have soothed him, but he had found his agitation increasing. He was to go on the morrow, and he felt only the desire to speak to Charlotte before he left this gilded, fantastical house, its gardens and hills and copses, and her. He sat down and drew, watched by a single servant, a maid. No one could be alone in this house, he had discovered.
He drew the things he had seen that day: horses and trees. A frieze, he thought. A frieze in one of the rooms at the Mirrormakers’ Club. Why not place things there, from life?
The door opened and Charlotte entered. She untied her bonnet – that tangled pink ribbon, which at this very moment Henry was sketching – and handed it to the maid.
‘Will you take this, please?’ she said. ‘And once you have delivered it to Miss Besson, please go and check on Madam Barbara. She has gone to lie down, and may need refreshment. And, Janet – there is no need to come back here.’ She looked at the maid with an air of command, as though she were trying to imprint the words on her mind. The woman left without so much as a word.
Charlotte turned and looked at Henry.
‘Are you well now?’ he said. ‘Madam Barbara said you were close to fainting.’
She smiled scornfully. The expression did not suit her. ‘I am perfectly well. I was not ill. But I could not say what was wrong, and illness meant I was excused from speaking overmuch when I preferred to be left alone.’ She sent a fiery glance his way. ‘Yes, sir, the claim of illness serves me, sometimes. And it works well for others too.’ She touched the back of a chair absentmindedly. ‘Where is my husband?’
‘He is showing Peregrine his gun cabinet at my insistence.’
‘Consider yourself released, then,’ she said, turning away, her back to him as she surveyed the garden she had just left. ‘I would take the opportunity to rest now, before my husband returns and thinks of another occupation for you. Our next appointment will be at supper; you are at liberty until then.’
‘Have I offended you?’ he said. ‘We have been on good terms, until now.’
‘On far too intimate terms,’ she said. ‘Forgive me. I have been reckless in the way that I have spoken to you. I do not speak to other gentlemen as I speak to you – I fear the compliment is not returned.’ For all her wretchedness, saying it was a release.
‘Do you think I spoke to my dinner companion in the way I spoke to you?’ He frowned, sought her gaze, and won it. ‘Tell me. We do not have the time for politeness.’
‘Yes.’
He came over to her in two hasty steps, pushing the sketchbook and pencil into his pocket. ‘Then you mistake me. I did not.’ He laughed rather desperately. ‘Do you think me some kind of Lothario?’
Close to, he saw the turmoil in her eyes. That face, which was usually so con
trolled, with its mask of beauty and elegance: now he saw the breaches in it, the slight movement in her expression, which betrayed her.
‘Why do you doubt me?’ he said. ‘Do not doubt me. I have thought of nothing but you these last few days – these last few months, if I am truthful.’ The words tumbled out: he felt shaken.
‘I doubt you because I can hardly believe what happened,’ she said. ‘That day, the carriage accident. The world seemed changed, after that. Was it the violence of it? You seemed imbued with it – some special magic,’ she laughed. ‘Like something a girl asks for in her prayers, when she is young and foolish. But then, the world continued, and I thought I had dreamt it all, with my jolted mind – but it really had changed. The world had changed.’
She had been thinking as she walked in the garden, with Barbara talking on and on about the new baby. And she had realized, and hoped that Henry knew, all those months ago, that as he had leaned over her, taken her hands, and pulled her to her feet in the middle of the road, she loved him. From that moment. She had known it then in some inner place, though she had hidden the knowledge from herself.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Things changed for me also. Which is why I have stayed away.’
She nodded. ‘It was the right thing. I am sorry he brought you here. I am sorry he has put us through it.’
‘Does he know?’
‘Ashton?’ Her face was the picture of amazement. ‘No. He is preoccupied with you, but that is because he admires you. He would not suspect anything of me.’
‘And you have given him no reason to suspect you. Your behaviour has been entirely proper.’
She laughed bitterly. ‘Until last night, when I walked through the corridors just to catch a glimpse of you. I could not help myself. I must see you. I am myself again when I am with you, the self I was years ago. I feel that I am that person again – a person I thought lost. I thought myself unfinished then, but it is who I was. I have been a wife, a true wife, and yet, I feel no loyalty to my husband, to my role as his wife. Yet, I feel loyalty to you. Why is that? Why do I feel loyalty to you? When you are a stranger to me?’