There was a silver-framed, very stylized photograph of Aunt Penelope’s younger self on the boudoir table. The photo looked as if it had been shot in a studio, for she was posed like a thirties glamour girl, in a slinky evening gown, wearing diamond earrings. She seemed to be looking straight at me.
“Pull yourself together, ducky,” I said aloud, in my best imitation of Aunt Penelope’s accent. I drew a deep breath. It was time to change my attitude, if not my life, and to stop tiptoeing around like Goldilocks playing in a house I’d broken into. Aunt Penelope had left this to us, to live in. My mother wanted it to be mine. I’d never had the lap of luxury before, but the least I could do was be grateful and make an effort. So the first change I was going to make in my own life was to stop being frantic and frazzled. I opened my suitcase and dressed.
And just in time, too. The doorbell rang, solemn and sonorous. For a wild moment I thought it might be Jeremy, come to apologize for dumping me in France so unceremoniously. But it was Rupert, who’d showed up dutifully with the papers Harold wanted me to sign. I showed him into the library. Because for once in my life I had a library to show somebody into, with a desk for me to write at, and nice chairs for a guest.
“It’s all got to do with the transfer of the property,” he explained. “From the estate to your mother, and from your mother to you. It won’t be official until we attach the tally you’re making. I’ve enclosed a preliminary assessment to start you off.”
“Great,” I said. “Want some coffee?” But he shook his head and sat down patiently to wait. He’d brought in the newspaper from my doorstep—it was still being delivered to Aunt Penelope—and he glanced at it casually, but I suspected that he was the kind of go-getter who’s already read all the world papers by seven in the morning.
I sat at the desk and read everything carefully. My parents had e-mailed me a note assuring me that their lawyers had reviewed the documents and they were okay, and that Mom indeed wanted to transfer the property into my name, so that when she died there wouldn’t be any problem inheriting it. I calculated that I could phone them later, at afternoon time in London, when it would be morning back home. I was dying to tell them personally about Jeremy.
Somebody—Rupert, no doubt—had placed tabs at all the places where I should sign, so, with Aunt Penelope’s pen, I did.“I’ll send you my estimate soon,” I promised Rupert as I handed back the signed papers.
“Terrific. Harold says don’t feel too rushed; it’s more important to be accurate than quick,” Rupert said, reaching into his briefcase. He handed me another envelope. “By the way, here’s a telephone list you may find useful. And there’s a cleaning woman who worked for your great-aunt. She comes tomorrow, unless you cancel her.”
I thought that airing out the place of its sad-dust was a good idea. Rupert’s telephone list included taxi, grocery market, hospital, police; and he’d enclosed a London street map and another of the Tube routes and train schedules. I thanked him, and he beamed with satisfaction.
“A pleasure,” he said.
I showed him to the door and watched him climb into his tiny but expensive-looking German car. Jeremy would know what kind it was, I thought morosely to myself.What a rat to disappear like that, even if his whole life had just tumbled to pieces.
The house was deathly quiet after Rupert left. There were only two other apartments, one on the ground floor and one above me. Rupert had informed me that each was inhabited by an elderly couple, and I assumed that they all rose and retired at earlier hours than I did. The house was so soundproof, with its thick walls, that I never heard them stirring. I could hear only my own footsteps echoing on the polished wood floors, and the faint ticking of the clock in the library. I went very solemnly back into the library and sat at the desk to read Rupert’s assessment of the contents of Aunt Penelope’s apartment.
It really was a beautiful room when filled with morning sun, and her small walnut desk had everything you’d need to write letters—pale pink linen stationery, modest but nice pens, leather-trimmed blotter and matching notepad, gold letter-opener in a maroon leather sheath, even some stamps in a little gold cup. The lamp was black and gold, and cast good light. The matching chair was comfortable and supportive, and had a soft cushion.Whenever I looked up from the papers that I was reading, at the view through the bay windows of old trees and a pretty street, I felt as if I were already fulfilling an old dream of mine, having wandered into a time warp of London between the two world wars.
I soon became totally absorbed reading Rupert’s assessment of the estate’s value. He’d listed most of the possessions Aunt Penelope had left in the apartment. He was very thorough, right down to the comb-brush-mirror set on the bedroom dresser. In addition to the furniture, china, and kitchen stuff, he’d listed “assorted clothing” and “an album of pictures and personal memorabilia.” He left the clothing, furniture and memorabilia value blank for me to fill in, but he’d put a stick-on note telling me that he estimated the total of her possessions, including that stuff, to be about 150,000 pounds. Jeremy and I had roughly calculated the furnishings in the villa to be worth about 350,000 pounds. The garage and its contents—a car and gardening tools—were “at a value to be determined.” And then there was the villa itself, which, despite its need of repair and “mod-cons” (modern conveniences), because of its location was estimated to be worth 2,090,000 pounds—nearly four million dollars. No wonder Rollo had contested the French will.
I sat back in the chair and gazed around the quiet apartment. There was something a bit chilling about summing up a life with a grocery-style list of possessions. Strangers coldly assessing their value, looking at your favorite things when you weren’t there to object. And although Jeremy had warned me not to romanticize the whole thing, I couldn’t help feeling that there was some deeper meaning in Aunt Penelope’s quixotic gesture of giving me her old car and, via my mother, this beautiful London apartment. She hardly knew me, really ; yet I could imagine that if I were a woman of the world with no children of my own, I might wish to impart wisdom to a dopey little great-niece of a namesake.What was she trying to tell me?
I glanced at the window-seat. It reminded me of a window-seat at Grandmother Beryl’s house in Cornwall. I’d been curled up there one rainy afternoon that summer we visited; for some reason, I was the only one in the house that day. I’d pulled down a book of rather dark fairy tales, and landed on a truly sad one about a poor girl who got all excited because she received an invitation to the prince’s ball. So she made a beautiful dress and prepared to go. But her family was jealous and said that she probably got invited by mistake, and they wouldn’t let her take the horse and carriage, so she set out on foot and walked the whole long way to the city where the castle was. She got her pretty dress all dusty and her shoes ruined in the puddles, but that wasn’t the worst of it.The journey took so long that by the time she arrived, she was no longer a girl but an old lady. It had taken her all her life to get there, and the prince had married and was throwing a ball for his son now.The old woman, still clutching her tattered invitation, which the guards laughed at, collapsed on the steps of the castle; and when she heard the music from inside, while staring up at the night sky with its twinkling stars and moon, she thought she was being invited by the prince to dance, when, clearly, she was probably being summoned by death out in the ether, whilst the ballroom music filled her ears.
I was at an age when you’re easily given to dramatic stabs of melancholy because you’ve just figured out that life indeed has its forlorn, darker side. Maybe it was the rainy day, or a jolt of loneliness in a strange windswept house in a foreign country, but that day I was moved to tears at the thought that life could play such a cruel joke on an innocent person.
And that was where Aunt Penelope had found me, at the window-seat, sniffling. At first she looked amused, curious, and I didn’t want to discuss it. But I was in such a state that she easily pried it out of me. And unlike most adults, she didn’t tell me that it
was only a story. She listened thoughtfully, then said quietly, “I hate when they do that in fairy tales, don’t you? Grant a heartfelt wish and then punish you for wanting it? Don’t worry, Penny, dear.Yours is a very different fate, I’m sure.” I looked at her doubtfully, and she said lightly but firmly, “Darling, I am never wrong about these things. You won’t have to walk to the ball.”
She said it so matter-of-factly, without any solemnity, that the day went right back to its normal insignificance, as it can only in childhood, and I never really thought about it again.
But I was remembering it now, with a startled shiver. It was almost as if she’d spoken out loud to me, because I was sitting there so quiet and still, in her home.
“Thanks,Aunt Penelope,” I said aloud with real gratitude. My own voice echoed hollowly, sounding a little breathless.The thought came to me, strong as ever, that I’d been given an extraordinary new lease on life, literally. It seemed to me that the only proper way to be grateful was to appreciate every day of it. I recalled Harold’s words about not neglecting your real life. It reminded me that I had some work to do, and I could actually conduct my research more easily from London than from my tiny rat-trap apartment in New York.
For instance, I’d been trying to hunt down a particular portrait, attributed to a painter named Bartolomeo Veneto. It was once thought to be of Lucrezia Borgia, but later experts believed that its subject might be another woman entirely. Still, it was the lingering image of Lucrezia that everyone has. I’d tracked it down to a special exhibit in the National Gallery of London. I wanted to go and see it with my own eyes. A moment like that could be worth weeks of poring over photo slides, light tables, research material. And Rupert had made it so easy, with his maps and directions. I rose, feeling inspired, and collected my notebook, handbag and jacket.
I went outside, down the leafy, sunny street, and took the Tube train to the Charing Cross station, then walked straight to the National Gallery, studiously avoiding all the other tempting London landmarks and tourist sights. I marched over to the Renaissance Collection, forcing myself not to be sidelined by other fascinating wings, rooms, and galleries.
But of course I had to stop and stare at the Leonardo da Vinci section; after all, he’d been a military engineer for Lucrezia’s scary brother Cesare. I knew that this museum had Leonardo’s famous Cartoon , which actually was a big chalk sketch for his painting The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and Saint John the Baptist, commissioned around the time that Lucrezia’s portrait was painted, 1506. Leonardo’s chalk masterpiece had survived for centuries, only to be assaulted here, years ago, by somebody who came into the gallery and actually fired a gun at it. But the piece had been restored, and it was one of those works of art that critics like to argue about—was it really Saint Anne, the mother of Mary, when Anne looked barely older than Mary? Or could it be Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist? I stood there gaping awhile with all the other admirers, tourists and students.Then I dutifully located my image of Lucrezia.
There she was, wearing a cloak of black velvet with gold embroidery and a sparkling jeweled necklace of red and gold. On her forehead she wore a diadem of precious gems, and on her golden head were a turban and a wreath of leaves, evoking a goddess of spring from a mythological past. One little breast was provocatively exposed from its pale tunic; one hand daintily held up a delicate cluster of flowers. She stared at me. I stared back.
Maybe she was Lucrezia, maybe she wasn’t. But she had a sly side-long gaze, indicating that she knew a thing or two about how to survive in a treacherous world of secrets and lies. I was learning about Lucrezia in these small ways, and already she was like a girlfriend to me, one who could be admired for her courage, scolded for her errors; so I was glad to see her “alive” again, enigmatically watching over her admirers.
I stood there alone, quietly spellbound. I couldn’t know, of course, that the telephone on Great-Aunt Penelope’s boudoir table was ringing at that very moment.The caller waited three rings, four, even five, then gave up.
Part Six
Chapter Sixteen
HOURS LATER I STUMBLED HOME, DAZED AND BLEARY-EYED. OF course I’d overdone it. My first day on the loose in London—how could I help it? I should have left well enough alone after I exhausted myself wandering through the National Gallery. I contemplated darting into the nearby Portrait Gallery but wisely chose to have tea in a little shop nearby. The infusion cleared my head and brought me back to the present. I should have gone home after that. But no, all jazzed up on English-brewed tea, I had to greedily dash around, gazing up dizzily at every tourist sight I could find: Trafalgar Square, Nelson’s Column, the statue of Eros at Piccadilly Circus . . . on and on, with traffic honking in my ears, and all the noise and soot of centuries of London whirling about my dazzled eyes. Furthermore, I’d got it stuck in my head that I needed an answering machine, so I stubbornly wandered around until I found a store that sold one.Then, feeling hungry, I went to the food market and stocked up on fresh provisions.
After I finally got myself back into Aunt Penelope’s apartment, I just flopped onto the bed, drowsily wondering what day it was, what time it was, what year it was, what century I was in. When I woke, it was eight o’clock at night. I felt wide awake, and I was hungry again. I ate a take-away roasted chicken and string bean salad, and I even opened that bottle of white wine in Aunt Penelope’s cupboard—it was just sitting there reminding me to seize the day, and all that. The wine soothed away that slightly unnerved feeling you get when you are alone and far from home. Aunt Penelope’s television set was in the kitchen, so I watched the news while I ate.Then I set up the answering machine and telephoned my parents, but they had gone out.
I decided to start my little job of going over the contents of the apartment, which was my excuse for hanging out here. Then I could give my mother a more personal report. So I went to the bedroom and bravely hauled open the closet to really look at the stuff on the list this time.
Great-Aunt Penelope had the good taste of an older European woman who isn’t trying to look younger than she is but has a sharp eye for fine fabric and detail.There were winter suits in a size I hoped I’d never become, but of cloth quite pleasing to the eye and the touch—wintry blue and black wool, tweedy autumnal shades of olive green, brown, and gold, and soft, demure cashmeres of gray and black. Ahh—a spectacular mink shawl (not a stole but a shawl, which was sweepier, more luxurious) in a dark gold-and-brown honey color. It was the only item in the closet that wasn’t old lady-ish.
On the top shelf, I found a few hatboxes and the aforementioned “album of pictures and personal memorabilia.” But when, in a fit of sentimentality, I pulled down the album, it dumped dust motes on my head. Just what I get for being such a curious cat, I thought. I left the album on the dressing table and went through the bureau drawers. I’m doing this for Mom, I told myself, although my mother is so slim and delicate that these matronly clothes would not fit her, either. Pajamas and silk underwear. Socks and stockings. Old-fashioned starched handkerchiefs with Aunt Penelope’s initials embroidered on them.
The bottom two drawers of the bureau were wide and deep. And there I hit the jackpot. Now, I am not an expert in couture, but I do know a thing or two about period costumes, and I’d just found, layered amid lavender sachets and blue tissue paper, vintage clothing worth writing home about. Great-Aunt Penelope had carefully preserved the most beautiful dresses of her youth, which meant silver and gold and violet and pale pink short sheath dresses from the twenties made of the softest, most gossamer silk and chiffon, painstakingly sewn with beading, glass “bugles,” fringe, and all those beautiful shimmery things that made flappers seem as if they were always in motion.
Astonishing as they were, what really took my breath away was what lay in the last drawer—gowns from the thirties, in lovely silk-satin fabric with that fabulous bias cut. Unlike today’s underslip-sausage-skins that cling rudely where they shouldn’t—these vintage beauties just skimmed over
the body closely but freely, like a whisper.
“Oh my God,” I kept saying as I reverently unfolded one after the other. Some were invariably faded, but she had taken great care to preserve them and I found myself actually thinking, “I could wear this” or “Mom will freak over that.” House of Paquin,Worth, Chanel. “Ohmigosh,” I said aloud. Erik and Timothy would die just to see them, touch them, identify them.
Finally, after I’d overdosed like a glutton on glamour, I reverently folded them all back and put them exactly where they’d been. Great-Aunt Penelope had attached more value to these years. Nothing remained from the forties through the nineties. The closet held only the last years of her life, pared down to spare, simple, well-made but functional pieces.
Now I couldn’t resist that photo album. I dusted it off, hauled it to the bed, and sat there turning the pages and squealing with delight. Because there was Great-Aunt Penelope in her splendid youth, modeling all the clothes I’d just seen, looking fabulous, so I could see how they were supposed to be worn.And she wore them with gusto.There she was in what looked like a Molyneux gown, in her big drawing room at the French villa, having what appeared to be a riproarious time at a cocktail party, with a dapper young man playing that cute grand piano, and other glamorous guests milling around holding cocktail glasses that were small and manageable, not like today’s where one oversized cocktail can knock out a horse. The men in their evening clothes looked so spiffy and virile, and the women so slinky and spirited, laughing with mischievous, conspiratorial expressions.
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