The Girl In the Painting

by Téa Cooper

  ‘We’re closing for lunch now.’ Where had Mrs Busybody come from, sneaking up behind her like that?

  She slammed the atlas shut and rammed the piece of paper into her pocket, then lifted the atlas and dumped it into Mrs Busybody’s hands. ‘Thank you so much.’

  With her nose in the air and mimicking Elizabeth’s gliding walk, Jane swept from the library, not a bounce in sight.

  Elizabeth patted the last strand of hair into place and stepped back to check her appearance in the mirror. Black did nothing for her complexion, made her look sallow. There was little she could do about it. No matter what she thought, it was important to keep up appearances and she had no intention of being cooped up like some ailing grandmother, trapped in the past by a melancholy so strong she could barely lift her head from the pillow. Poppycock!

  At long last she’d managed a decent night’s sleep, possibly thanks to another of the draughts Lethbridge continued to recommend. Her mind was clear. No more of this doolally nonsense; it was time to try and make some sense of her jumbled thoughts.

  In a perfect world she’d sit down and talk things over with Michael, however that wasn’t an option, and, unless she had misunderstood him, he had nothing further to offer on the subject. She was going to have to call upon Jane. But first there were other matters to deal with. Messrs Brown and Brown had said they would be there for the reading of Michael’s will and Jane would need to be present.

  The house was ridiculously quiet and dark, and Elizabeth knew she’d have to put up with it for a little longer for the sake of propriety. The question was, where should the reading take place? The dining room was the obvious spot, sufficiently formal, not too intimate, and besides, she couldn’t face Michael’s study yet.

  A knock on the front door brought Lucy. Elizabeth glanced at the grandfather clock in the hallway, the hands still marking the time of Michael’s death. The Messrs Brown would be on time, no need to check, they were sticklers for punctuality.

  ‘Lucy, slow down. That’ll be Messrs Brown. Please show them into the dining room and then go and find Jane and ask her to join us.’

  She sat down at the head of the table, folded her hands in front of her, and took several steadying breaths as the two like-as-peas, black-clad men trooped into the dining room and took the chairs she indicated.

  ‘Lucy, see to Jane, please, and ask Bessie to come in as well.’

  ‘Yes, miss.’

  In deference to the occasion, Lucy managed to close the door quietly.

  ‘Our condolences, Miss Quinn.’ One of them, she had no idea whether it was the father or son, nodded his balding head. ‘We won’t take much of your time. Mr Quinn’s will is in order.’

  And there shouldn’t be any surprises, except perhaps for Jane, because she and Michael had updated both of their wills not three months earlier.

  ‘There you are, Jane.’ Elizabeth indicated the chair next to her. ‘Come and sit down.’

  Jane’s eyes widened. Her cheeks were flushed as though she’d been outside in the sun, and her hair was mussed.

  ‘I’m sorry I’m late. I got tied up at the auction house.’

  ‘Shall we proceed, gentlemen?’

  As Elizabeth anticipated, the entire process was over and done with in a matter of minutes. Bessie broke down when she discovered that her years of steak and kidney pies had earned her a tidy one hundred pounds. Then Jane, poor Jane. It was the first time Elizabeth had ever seen her speechless. So she should be. Michael had been more than generous, given her a substantial salary increase and full control of the auction house. No more than she deserved, after all she’d been doing the job for some time now. Once she turned twenty-one she’d also have a neat little nest egg which would see her through university and beyond.

  ‘Aunt Elizabeth, I want to thank you …’

  ‘Don’t thank me, it’s all Michael’s doing, and nothing more than you deserve.’ She dusted her hands together, more for her own benefit than anything else.

  While the Messrs Brown droned on she’d come to a decision. If Michael trusted Jane with his auction house then perhaps she should follow his implicit advice. There was no doubt of the girl’s capabilities and she had such a clear and precise mind.

  Once the Messrs Brown left, she called Jane aside. ‘I wonder if you could spare me a few moments.’

  A flash of something that may have been impatience flittered across Jane’s face. ‘Of course.’

  ‘Dr Lethbridge suggested, as did you, that Mr Freud’s work might have some bearing on my dilemma.’ She cleared her throat. She refused to use the word turn, it made her sound like some eighteenth-century namby-pamby who was constantly reaching for the smelling salts. ‘There is another piece of information which I would like to share with you.’

  ‘Ah!’ Jane leant forward, her face animated.

  ‘I believe my peculiar behaviour may have something to do with repressed memories triggered by the visit to the Tost and Rohu display at the technical college.’

  ‘I agree.’ Jane rummaged in the pockets of her skirt, crackling paper and sending pencil shavings to the floor. ‘I’ve made a few notes.’

  ‘Don’t interrupt. I haven’t finished. Before Michael died, he gave me some information that has changed my outlook and my priorities.’

  ‘I have made several deductions which I believe may be helpful.’

  What was the girl prattling on about? A rash of goose bumps flecked her arms as reality dawned. ‘You know?’

  Jane slammed her hand over her mouth. ‘I’m so sorry. Michael asked me to wait until you told me yourself. I think I may have some relevant information.’

  Michael had no right … first Lethbridge and now Jane. Had he broadcast the situation to all of Maitland?

  ‘Who else knows?’ she hissed. Bessie? Lucy? Mrs Witherspoon? The people at the auction house?

  ‘To the best of my knowledge, no one else. Michael asked me for my help. I have a file and some paperwork, and I have uncovered a few facts which I think may be pertinent.’

  Jane emptied the contents of her pockets all over the table and sorted through various scraps.

  The focus of Elizabeth’s eyes wavered as the table disappeared beneath the disgusting jumble. ‘I’ve never felt so confused before. So untethered, as though I’ve been cast loose in a swirling mist.’

  ‘Stay here a moment, I have to go upstairs and get something else.’

  Without waiting for her assent, Jane flew from the room, her boots pounding on every single one of the treads all the way to the attic.

  Elizabeth’s heart screamed, almost as though someone had ripped it out, creating a wound she’d never known she carried. Abandoned. With Michael’s death that wound had become a gaping great hole. She stifled a cry, shattering the brick wall she’d unwittingly built to protect herself.

  It wasn’t until Jane plonked a manila folder down on the dining-room table and turned the cover that she managed to compose herself.

  ‘Right, here they are.’ Jane opened the folder and spread out a series of papers.

  ‘These are Michael’s.’ Elizabeth would recognise his spidery scrawl from a hundred paces. ‘You have no right to take them from his study.’

  The girl at least had the grace to flush.

  ‘I know, he showed them to me. I had to get them safe.’

  What was she talking about? ‘Keep them safe?’

  ‘I didn’t want anyone else to see them.’

  ‘Bessie and Lucy wouldn’t dare to disturb anything in Michael’s study.’

  ‘No, no. I don’t know why I did it. Just a feeling.’

  Good heavens. Since when had Jane paid any attention to feelings?

  ‘There’s something about Langdon-Penter.’

  Penter? Wasn’t Penter the name of the artist? Ah! The son. ‘I thought you liked the young man.’

  If she’d flushed before, now Jane rivalled a beetroot. ‘No, that’s Timothy. I’m talking about his father.’

  El
izabeth had no recollection of meeting the artist or her husband, only the son at the preview, however she wasn’t going to labour the point. She hadn’t been at her best. ‘Why would this Langdon-Penter fellow be interested in anything in Michael’s study?’

  ‘We met him at the national gallery. He seemed to know Michael, but Michael didn’t recognise him. Then he helped himself to Michael’s whiskey at the wake. I’m certain he had been in there. Everyone else had tea.’

  ‘That’s outrageous!’ Suddenly Elizabeth was on her feet pacing the room, her sluggish blood coursing once more through her veins. ‘These English! They all think they have some God-given right to make themselves at home. We should have second thoughts about this exhibition.’ She swivelled around and caught an impish grin on Jane’s face. ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘It’s good to see you back, Aunt Elizabeth.’

  She couldn’t control the undignified humph that slipped between her lips so she folded her arms and sat tall. Jane was right, she did feel motivated, more herself than she’d been since … not since Michael’s death, since before that ridiculous event at the technical college.

  ‘Tell me about these papers.’ At long last something was happening. Thank God for Jane.

  Jane picked up the first. ‘These are the immigration papers from when you and Michael left Liverpool.’

  There it was in black and white—Michael Ó’Cuinn and his sister Elizabeth. Elizabeth existed, except she wasn’t Elizabeth. It was a most peculiar feeling. It showed the destination as Sydney, and the names of Mam and Da, except they weren’t, were they? Not her mam and da. Her whole life built on a lie.

  She pushed them aside and took the next sheet of paper Jane produced, covered in scrawl, with crossings out and dobs of ink and the general thinking-on-his-feet sort of attempt to compose a letter that Michael always went through.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘The draft of a letter Michael wrote to a woman called Gertrude Finbright.’ Jane tipped her head to one side and raised an eyebrow in question.

  Elizabeth had no idea. ‘Who is she?’ A shaft of jealousy licked through her. Ridiculous. If Michael had a lady friend who was she to complain?

  ‘She worked at Brownlow Hill, the workhouse in Liverpool. He contacted her after he received this telegram from the authorities. They refused to release any information about inmates, so he wrote to her, asking if she knew how you came to be in the workhouse.’

  The dreadful buzzing noise came back, and she was walking that path, her feet skimming and twisting as someone bundled her along. A boy, not a man, reeking of the farmyard. She shook the image away. She’d confront it later after Jane had her say.

  ‘What else?’

  ‘Not much. Michael made some tentative plans to take you to England to further his enquiries, visit the area, and take you to Bath.’

  ‘I have always wanted to go there.’

  Jane Austen, her guilty secret. How she loved those books. Michael was the only person who’d known about her chosen reading material; every time he returned from Sydney he’d have another novel tucked in his pocket. The rest of the town presumed she spent her life buried in accounts ledgers and Michael’s political treatises. It seemed there was a lot the good folk of Maitland didn’t know about her. A lot she didn’t know about herself.

  Concentrate, she must concentrate. ‘You said you had some thoughts.’

  ‘I’m not sure how much you remember of either the exhibition at the technical college or the preview. I feel there is a link.’

  ‘Surely you’re mistaken. No birds at the preview, only paintings.’

  ‘Correct, however there was one of Marigold’s paintings at the technical college, and it was also on display at the preview.’

  ‘And? Come along, Jane, stop toying with me.’

  ‘I was hoping you might remember seeing it?’

  Try as she might, Elizabeth couldn’t place one specific picture. There had been so many different paintings at the preview, and then, well, truth to tell, things got a little confused—her dilemma again. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘The painting of the village church.’

  Something hovered in the back of Elizabeth’s mind, something she couldn’t place, and her heart picked up a pace or two. She slammed her hands deep into her lap and clasped them tight, hoping Jane wouldn’t notice her sudden shaking spasm. Darkness, overwhelming, inky black. Birds wheeling and diving in a vast cloud, their feathered wings beating against her cheeks. Her hands came up over her head.

  ‘Do you remember?’

  Jane’s words snapped Elizabeth back to the present. ‘I fail to see how this moves us forward. The whole world knows I have an irrational fear of birds, how is a church relevant?’ She shook the vision away and struggled upright. ‘I’ve had enough. Ask Lucy to bring me some tea upstairs.’

  ‘There is one more thing, Aunt Elizabeth.’

  She stalled, hand on the doorknob, her temper spiking. ‘What is it?’

  ‘G’woam.’

  Her lips echoed the word, against the thrumming of her heartbeat. ‘What about it?’

  ‘You were crying the word. I didn’t know what it meant.’

  Neither did she. ‘Do you know now?’

  ‘It’s the way people from the West Country, in England, pronounce go home. I think perhaps you came from there originally. Michael said you didn’t have an Irish accent.’

  ‘That seems a stretch.’

  Jane shook her head. ‘I intend to find out. It’s what Michael asked me to do. From what I can piece together, Michael’s sister Lizzie …’

  Lizzie Ó’Cuinn!

  Towering flames lit the night sky and a smell, such a strange smell, meaty and sweet. Bile rose in her throat. She gagged.

  Lizzie. She’d answered so Lizzie wouldn’t get a hiding.

  ‘That’s how he refers to her in the letter to Gertrude Finbright. He also asks if she has any memory of the little girl Lizzie befriended.’

  The hairs at the base of Elizabeth’s skull rose, and a sensation akin to pins and needles stretched her skin. She couldn’t think about that for the moment. Later, in the quiet of her bedroom … perhaps it was one of Dr Freud’s repressed memories.

  ‘How is that going to help?’ She felt even more alone now. Not Ireland, not Liverpool. Every connection she’d had with Michael whisked away.

  Jane shrugged her shoulders, and if Michael had known any more he’d taken it to his grave. Her head felt as though it was stuffed with old newspaper.

  ‘Isn’t there anything you remember? Your earliest memory?’

  Apart from a towering inferno, answering to someone else’s name and wheeling birds? ‘I remember arriving in Sydney on the ship, the sky was as blue as a robin’s egg. I remember the Camerons.’

  ‘The Camerons?’ Jane jotted down the name.

  ‘Cameron Victuallers. I lived with them until Michael took me to Hill End. It was the best day of my life when they kicked me out.’

  There was nothing the matter with her memory. That part of the past was crystal clear, including some things she’d like to forget, like whiskery Bill Cameron and his vile words about the Irish.

  ‘Why would they do that?’

  ‘Prejudice. Everyone was up in arms about O’Farrell, an Irish Catholic who tried to shoot Prince Alfred. Anyone with the slightest tinge of green was labelled a Fenian.’

  ‘Do you remember anything before Sydney?’

  Nothing she was ready to admit until she understood what these strange delusions signified. ‘Nothing.’ The pounding in her head increased.

  ‘What has happened to these Camerons?’

  ‘Jane, Jane. Stop! I can’t put up with this anymore. All these unanswered questions are crowding my mind. I need to lie down. I’ll let you know when I want to discuss this further.’

  She had to calm down. Her blood was galloping around her system like the Sydney milk train and her hands wouldn’t stop shaking. Perhaps a dose of Lethbridge’s laudanum mi
ght help.

  Thirty

  Elizabeth didn’t reappear for the rest of the day. Jane hid in her room out of Bessie and Lucy’s reach, poring over Michael’s notes and gaining no insight into anything of any consequence. The only remaining hope was a letter from Gertrude Finbright, and she knew that a response in less than eight weeks was nigh impossible, presuming the woman was still alive and Michael’s letter had reached her.

  The town hall clock struck five as Jane reached the auction house. She wanted to see Timothy; she owed him an apology for the way she’d rushed out on him. Perhaps they could sit and talk, maybe take a walk along the river. She’d like to find out a little more about Somerset. Timothy would have some local knowledge and, short of a trip to England as Michael had planned, hearsay was the next best thing.

  Blazing light greeted her as she walked through the back door. John sat tucked in his cubby hole, his feet propped on the desk and the form guide spread on his lap.

  ‘I thought you would have gone by now.’

  ‘They’re still in there, arguing about this, that and the other. Offered my help, but it seems there’s more to it than that. That fellow’s a pain, pushing his weight around, laying down the law.’

  ‘Timothy seems easygoing to me.’ A silly giggle escaped her lips and her cheeks heated.

  John threw her a quizzical look. ‘Nah. Not the lad, his father. Anyone would think he was God’s gift to the world the way he carries on.’

  ‘I expect it’s all a teacup storm. I’ll see what I can do.’

  ‘Wouldn’t waste your time if I were you. Family argy-bargy. Sound like they might be a bit strapped for cash. What do think about Piastre in the two o’clock tomorrow?’

  ‘I haven’t had a moment to look.’ Jane held out her hand for the form guide. Why would the Penters be short of money? Timothy talked of the family estate, his mother’s time in Paris, and the trip to Australia for three of them would have cost more than the price of a couple of paintings.

  A blood-curdling yell echoed, followed by a string of curses that would make a bullocky blush, and did make John blush.