The Lost and Found Necklace

by Louisa Leaman

  Remembering the route from her previous visits, years before, Jess makes her way down the hill, through the trees. The fresh, resinous scent of conifer catches in her nostrils, while at her feet, the ground is a crunchy brown blanket of last year’s needle drop. There ahead, in a shaft of sunlight, is Nancy’s cabin. Jess stops to absorb the full, albeit dilapidated, chocolate-box nostalgia of it—and pay her respects to the sheer feat of its existence. The logs in its walls came from the woods. The windows were retrieved from a nearby scrapyard. And although Nancy had help with the heavy work, the details had all been down to her and her handsaw.

  Building it, living in it, had given her peace and solitude, but since she took ill, it has been standing empty. Jess can immediately see evidence of its neglect. The overhanging roof is rotting, and the porch is threatening collapse. Possibly it isn’t structurally sound. Possibly it never was, not that Nancy would have cared.

  The door shudders open. There was never a lock, typical Nancy. Inside, the air is dank, but the single-celled interior still has its hobbit-hole charm—so different, thinks Jess, from the sheen of her and Tim’s future Stratford City new-build. She wanders inside, straightening chairs, wiping the dust off surfaces. Wood pigeons have built a nest on the shelf above the bed. There are feathers everywhere. The bed itself is strewn with a hand-knit patchwork throw, just as Nancy left it.

  With a sigh, realizing her grandmother will never sleep here again, Jess straightens the blanket and plumps the pillow. She then goes to the drawing desk beneath the window, still cluttered with paper, ink pots, pencil sharpenings, and sketches of oak leaves and acorns—the remnants of Nancy’s final artistic musing before being carted off to institutional perdition. She’d been an illustrator, specialized in natural forms.

  Curious to see what other artwork might be around, Jess sifts through the desk, opens the drawers. They are filled with piles of used cartridge paper, a menagerie of squirrel, flower, and beetle sketches. One of the drawers is locked. She spies a key on the window ledge and tries it. The lock releases. Inside, there is a calculator, a bag of loose change, a string of paper clips, and beneath all of this, a large yellowed envelope. She tugs the envelope free, intrigued to know why it merits a lock. She dips a hand in: thick glossy paper, like photographs. She empties them onto the desk and her mouth drops open.

  The photos, at least a dozen, are all images of young Nancy, a teenager perhaps, not much older than Steph, posing against a brick wall. At Nancy’s neck, the distinctive butterfly necklace dangles like a beacon. Jess is drawn to it immediately. Its sinuous, stylized fin-de-siècle form looks incongruous against Nancy’s sturdy circle dress; that full skirt and stiffened petticoats, hallmarks of fifties fashion. In some of the images Nancy is posing beside a street sign: Denmark Street. The name resonates, a known London landmark, the UK’s answer to Tin Pan Alley. It was the center of the music industry in the fifties and sixties, housing numerous song publishers and recording studios and La Giaconda, a café where the likes of David Bowie and Jimi Hendrix hung out.

  All of the photos are beautifully shot. Not the snaps of an amateur, but someone who knows what they’re doing. Jess turns one of them over and sees a small gold sticker in the corner: Paul Angel Photography, 1954.

  She searches her memory. Paul Angel? It doesn’t catch.

  “Oh, Nancy,” she whispers, “look at you!”

  Apart from the born-in-Hollywood brag, she knew that Nancy had traveled, that she’d spent a year in Berlin being “punk,” that she loved a protest, that she’d first trained as a furniture restorer, then an illustrator. But there was never any mention of her modeling. Jess laughs, delighted that even in her twilight, Nancy still has the capacity to surprise.

  ***

  Satisfied the cabin is at peace, Jess tucks the envelope of photos into her bag, then goes outside and looks up to the big house on the hill. Pel Tawr. Fueled by curiosity, she stamps her walking cane into the dusty ground and plows forward. With the sun still high in the sky, it wouldn’t hurt, surely, to have a discreet little peek? She picks her way through the woods, follows the remnants of a path, ever conscious of Nancy’s photographs in her bag.

  Eventually, she reaches the tree boundary, and there ahead, overlooking a large sweeping lawn, is the house itself. It is huge, at least seven bedrooms, and unmistakably arts and crafts with its notional medieval beams, Gothic turrets, leaded windows of all shapes and sizes, multiple chimneys, and carved stone. It’s skirted by clusters of well-shaped topiary bushes, their neat appearance suggesting it is still a living home. Suddenly Jess is aware of a rustling in the undergrowth behind her. Before she can move, a knee-high mound of golden fur comes bowling into her, jumping at her legs, sniffing her pockets.

  “Oh! Who are you? Where did you come from?”

  The fur mound—a lively but genial golden retriever—is then overshadowed by its owner, a tall, elderly man in a wax jacket.

  “Are you lost?” he says with relieving kindness.

  “Um, not exactly,” she says. “I was just—”

  As the man steps into her sight line, he stares at her, a flash of white teeth brightening his face.

  “Well, I never! If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were a Taylor.”

  Jess blinks, nods.

  “You…you know me?”

  “I know that look. Those round cheeks, those huge green eyes. So you are a Taylor?”

  “I am. My name is Jess. I’m—”

  “Nancy’s granddaughter.”

  “Yes!”

  “She told me all about you. How’s she doing, old girl? We’ve missed her terribly, Rufus and I.” He ruffles the collar of the dog, which Jess assumes to be Rufus. “We used to trek down to her cabin every week, have a cup of tea with her, make sure she was okay. It was me that found her in that terrible state—”

  “Oh, of course.”

  “I spoke to someone…not you?”

  “That would have been my sister, Aggie. She’s everyone’s emergency contact, very solid in a crisis. But thank you for making that call. If you hadn’t checked, who knows how long she’d have been that way.”

  “Well, I never liked to interfere too much. Nancy liked her space. She made that clear when she approached us to buy the land.”

  “She approached you?”

  “Yes. All her idea. We hadn’t considered selling any of our land before, but when she inquired, well, we realized it would be an ideal way to raise funds for the upkeep of the house and grounds.”

  Jess nods, intrigued. She’d always been puzzled by Nancy’s random relocation to Snowdonia, but now she sees that it wasn’t random at all. Maybe it was because of Minnie.

  “How is she now?”

  “Not so well, I’m afraid. She’s being well looked after, but—” A prickle of emotion catches in Jess’s throat. “I don’t think she’ll ever be coming back to her cabin.”

  The man nods sadly. Then as the wind shushes the trees, Rufus whines and brushes between his legs.

  “Introductions,” he says, snapping up. “I’m Bevan. Bevan Floyd.”

  Floyd? Jess recalls Nancy’s description of how Minnie had “made the necklace there with Emery Floyd.” Her stomach flutters, but before she can say anything, Bevan starts ushering her across the lawn.

  “Grand old girl,” he says, gesticulating to the house, proud to show it off. “She’s been in the family for generations. Used as a communications base during World War II, then my sisters briefly ran her as a girl’s boarding school in the seventies. A year of neglect, then my wife and I took her over in the late eighties. But originally she was built as a country retreat at the turn of the century, overrun by deep thinkers and artists. Toward the end of the Victorian era, she was one of Wales’s most thriving creative hubs. We had furniture makers, weavers, potters, calligraphers, and all the dramatics of the socialists. It was the Arts and Craf
ts movement—”

  Jess laughs, delighted.

  “This interests you?”

  “So much.”

  “Then perhaps you’d care for a tour?”

  Jess grins. “I would love a tour.”

  ***

  The smell of oiled oak hangs in the air. It is the smell of age, thinks Jess, as she steps inside the semipaneled main vestibule, picturing all the artists and thinkers who have passed through this space, their laughter and conversation absorbed into the wood grain. The interior is immaculately kept. Even the wallpapers are original, their colored botanical designs swirling across the walls.

  “Are they William Morris?” asks Jess, awed.

  “They are. A little faded in parts, but we won’t be replacing them. They’re the character of the house.”

  The vestibule opens into a large double-height space, surrounded by nooks and fireplaces, doors leading into other rooms, corridors into rooms, corridors into corridors. Like a burrow, so much more exciting than the average three-bed semi. What a place to grow up!

  “The maintenance is getting a little much for my wife and me,” says Bevan solemnly. “So we’re working on plans to pass the old girl to the community. We have no children, you see. And one fears selling outside the family, only to have her knocked down and turned into an all-seasons spa and holiday village. We feel she should be a museum. This is history as much as it’s a home.”

  “Absolutely,” says Jess.

  “And we rather like the idea of converting the barns back into art studios. Restore some of the creative glory. After all, it was what she was first known for.”

  Jess nods.

  “So I’m dying to ask,” she ventures, “but are you any relation to Emery Floyd?”

  “Why yes, he was my great-uncle. He had the run of the place in the early 1900s. Quite a well-known cabinetmaker in his day—very inspired by the happenings of William Morris and his crowd. I never met him, sadly. He was a generation ahead of me, but…how do you know of him?”

  “Nancy mentioned him. Briefly.”

  “So she told you about Minnie?”

  “My great-great-grandmother—”

  Bevan smiles warmly. “Indeed.”

  “She told me a little, but not enough. I guess it’s why I’m here. I know snippets, but not the full story. I gather Minnie and Emery were close. Nancy referred to Emery as Minnie’s soul mate.”

  “Yes, I believe they were happy together.”

  “In that case, do you know anything about a butterfly necklace that might have been made here?”

  Bevan muses, puffs out his cheeks.

  “With a drop moonstone? Glassy wings?”

  “Yes—”

  “Come with me.”

  Jess’s heart quickens. She follows Bevan through a maze of corridors, some adorned with tapestry panels, some with wallpaper and flock, into an elegant sun-filled white room that looks out across the lawn. Bevan points to a collection of barns at the bottom of the hill.

  “Down there, Emery’s workshops. Some fine things were made in those buildings. But now…this is what I want to show you.”

  He plucks a framed photo from a nearby cabinet and hands it to her.

  “This is the necklace you described, I think.”

  Jess gazes at the image. There is Minnie, in those same wide-legged trousers, the butterfly at her neck, standing next to a tanned and ruggedly handsome mustached man, whose white shirt is only half-buttoned, sleeves pushed up so that his sinewy forearms are on show, ready for work.

  “Oh yes!” she says with a surge of excitement. “This is Minnie! And this is the necklace! This is it!”

  “How remarkable,” says Bevan. “How did you know about it?”

  “Nancy asked me to find it for her, the real necklace I mean. She told me Minnie had made it here. It was then passed down through the generations. I guess you could call it an heirloom. I remember my mother kept it in her jewelry box. I used to love getting it out, but…that was years ago. At some point it went missing. To be honest, I’d forgotten it even existed until Nancy started asking for it. She called it the True Love Necklace.”

  Jess stares at its image, hanging graciously from its creator’s neck, and riles at the thought of it being boasted about in “who’s who” magazine features, courtesy of a fame vacuum like Stella Weston. Jess draws the photograph of Minnie closer, absorbing its details, her hotline to the past. The allure of Emery Floyd is not hard to see—his brawny physique and smiling eyes suggest an appetite for life. She can almost feel his vitality around her. The True Love Necklace chose well!

  “So they were a couple, right?”

  “Yes, although they never married. I gather Minnie had a difficult ex-husband who refused to grant a divorce. Such things being a rarity in those days.”

  Robert Belsing, thinks Jess. Whatever became of him?

  “She never used her husband’s name,” Bevan explains. “She was always known to our family as Taylor. I should also show you these—”

  He opens a drawer, and in it, there is a selection of metal tools: files, pliers, a small hammer, and a chisel.

  “You’ll see they’ve been engraved with an “M. T.,” which we took to stand for Minnie Taylor.”

  Jess gasps. They are perfect, aged but perfect; the very tools her great-great-grandmother used to scrape and craft. Her personal set. Jess smiles to herself, glad that Minnie, having been denied the chance to follow her passion for so many years, was finally able to believe in herself as a jewelry designer and own her own tools.

  “May I touch them?”

  “Of course.”

  She lifts out the chisel, turns it in her hand, trying to imagine the way Minnie would have worked it in tiny movements, refining, smoothing, beautifying.

  “Do you have much of her stuff here?”

  “Just these, I’m afraid. We found them in the workshops when we were clearing out. Rats had got in, destroyed a lot of the fittings, but we saved what we could. Although there is, of course, the sketchbook—”

  Jess’s eyes light up.

  “Minnie’s?”

  Bevan shrugs. “It’s just a few drawings, some memoirs. Been left on the bookshelf for years, gathering dust. Useful to you?”

  “Hugely.”

  “Then I’ll fetch it.”

  He shuffles to the corner, to a library nook with rows of books and thick, green curtains. After a minute’s search, he pulls a battered leather-bound tome from the top and presents it to Jess.

  “The spine’s a little sad, so watch you don’t lose all the pages, but here, you might as well have it.”

  “Really?”

  “Maybe it will tell you what you want to know,” he says, smiling.

  “Oh, thank you,” says Jess, hugging the sketchbook to her chest, thrilled at the thought of this firsthand insight into Minnie’s world, her eye’s view, her personal thoughts made concrete.

  “So did Minnie stay here a long time?” she asks, curiosity spiraling.

  “Well, yes. Pel Tawr was considered her home. She and Emery had a daughter, the famously audacious Anna, but of course you probably know all about Anna—”

  “I know the name,” says Jess, regretful. “Nancy was always sparing with the Taylor family history. She never liked to dwell on the past.”

  “Yes, of course,” says Bevan. “We talked about lots of things, her and me, but there were certainly a few topics that were off-limits. For instance, she’d never let me ask about her daughter, Carmen—”

  “My late mum.”

  “Yes. I gather she died young?”

  “She did. She had a stroke.”

  “You poor dear.”

  Jess shrugs. “It’s okay,” she says breezily. “All a long time ago.”

  She hugs the sketchbook tighter.
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  “Tell me more about Anna, will you? From the little I know, she lived quite a life.”

  “Well, yes, she was known for her vivacity. She moved to Hollywood in the thirties. Like many young women of the time, she was seduced by the glamour of the silver screen, but Anna actually made it her reality.”

  “So the story about Nancy being born in Hollywood is true!”

  “Indeed.”

  “Was Anna an actress?”

  “No. Like her mother, Minnie, she had a passion for jewelry. She became a film-set jewelry designer, worked in various studio costume departments, worked on some big movies.”

  Jess gasps, delighted. She’d largely assumed the Hollywood claim to be something of a fantasy, but the truth is more extraordinary.

  “I guess it’s in the blood,” she says, “the jewelry thing. I love jewelry too. Always have. But what a change, the Welsh mountains to the Hollywood Hills?”

  “I don’t think it bothered our Anna. Her mother may have loved the countryside, but the mountains proved zestless for her. In adolescence, all she did was peruse buy-at-home dress catalogs, listen to jazz records on the house gramophone, and daydream about transatlantic travel. Adventure was in her sights.”

  “How old was she when she left?”

  “Nineteen, maybe twenty. It was a bittersweet occasion I believe, for it was just after her mother—after Minnie—died. Typhoid. It swept through the area. I suppose this loss left Anna with a certain sense that she should now go forth and follow her dreams. Cinema was booming, so there were fast-growing opportunities in all the big studios. A month later, using the money her mother had left her and a little extra from the Floyds, she took passage on Cunard-White Star’s newest liner, the Queen Mary. Four days from Southampton to New York, then a train right across the states. Quite a journey for a young solitary woman.”