The Things We Don’t Say

by Ella Carey

  Laura had managed to warn the teacher in charge of Emma’s presentation at the school to ask the sixth formers not to raise the subject of the Times article before Emma spoke. Emma, of course, talked with fierce loyalty to the tenets of modernism, explaining that the most important function of art was to move the viewer, while Laura’s eyes had darted to the classroom windows, half in expectation that a news team would start snapping photographs right there.

  All Laura could do was reiterate the facts in her own mind before she started the inevitable confrontations she was going to have. The Things We Don’t Say was out at Summerfield, hanging above Emma’s bed in the room that overlooked the walled garden, as it always had done. Emma and Patrick had lived at the country house together on and off from 1916 until his death five years ago, and Emma still spent time down there in Sussex when she could. Even though they didn’t own it, Summerfield had been at the heart of the Circle of artists and writers that had revolved around Emma and Patrick since they started leasing during the First World War. It had been a benevolent witness to countless love affairs and writerly and philosophical discussions, not to mention the creation of some of the twentieth century’s most forward-thinking art; Laura wished she could have sat at the dining room table and witnessed the conversations that must have flowed among the creatives and brilliant minds who treated the old house as home. Emma had always been its custodian.

  The reason Emma continued to pay rent to the aristocrat who owned the farmhouse and its surrounding gardens and fields was because then there was no possibility that she would have to give Summerfield up before her death. It was part of her, and she it. The owner had installed a caretaker to maintain the house while Emma was not there, preserving it for Emma when she decided to go down there to stay.

  Patrick’s portrait of her was not only a testament to his lifelong love for her but a realization of everything Emma was to the Circle, to Summerfield, and to the new way of living they had pioneered. But still, more than any of that, there was this: He’d never painted a portrait of anyone else whom he knew—none of his friends, none of his lovers. Only Emma throughout his entire career.

  While those who admired the Circle viewed Laura’s grandmother as a tough, silent monolith, this interpretation was about as far from Emma’s real character as a tiger from a dove. No one understood what went on underneath her stoic mask, but Laura knew that what her grandmother didn’t say was far more important than what came out when she spoke.

  Laura placed her hand on Emma’s.

  “There is something I need to say, Gran.”

  Emma’s focus remained straight ahead.

  “There was a silly article about The Things We Don’t Say in the Times this morning.” Why did vital things always sound trite?

  “A new critic having a go? You know I decided to ignore them years ago.” Emma did not turn away from enjoying the park.

  Humor was one of Gran’s masks. She was also in her own world. It was obvious that Emma’s eyes were taking in colors, dreaming up a painting . . .

  “Something like that.” Laura kept her tone light. “Patrick painted you in France in the 1920s, didn’t he? That’s what you always said.”

  Emma stirred on her bench. “Patrick started working on the actual canvas in 1923 in Provence. But he finished my portrait in Paris and London while he was traveling in the autumn . . . and he was traveling with his lover, Jerome, by then.”

  Laura wanted to reach out and hug Emma. Emma had accepted the presence of Patrick’s lovers all his life, because she’d had no choice.

  “Did you see Patrick paint the work while you were in France?”

  “I sat for him while he did early studies for the portrait. He had this idea that he wanted to make sketches for it when I was young, and then he would paint the canvas when I was in my prime.” Emma’s eyes crinkled in delight at the memory. “He made such a deal of it, Laura. Such a deal. And when we were in France, he secluded himself away in his studio and worked on his own. Jerome, presumably, saw him paint, but no one else did, and especially not me.”

  Children ran on the grass, the girls’ dresses flapping behind them, their young faces pink with excitement. Laura turned to her grandmother. Emma’s face still held a beautiful allure. There was a pride in her, a distinction that was unfathomable, an honest gentility that was timeless. It was dignity. It was the last thing Laura would see her grandmother lose. She would fight for Emma and for Patrick with everything she could, because she knew they were real, knew what Emma felt about Patrick was worth everything, knew that he in turn could never have lied to her about the fact he’d painted her and given her his most valuable piece. The expert was simply wrong. But how to prove something logically that you knew instinctively with all your heart?

  That was the thing Laura had to do.

  She felt a wave of protection for Emma. Her favorite photo of her grandmother was from the time she was a young woman in Paris, a black-and-white shot against a Parisian street that showed off Emma’s deep-set brown eyes and the way her hair fell around her face in loose tendrils. Her skin had been smooth and olive brown. Patrick had been equally breathtaking—dark, handsome, with a glint in his eyes. The old joke was that all of the Circle had been in love with him . . . well, Emma certainly had been. And his loyalty to her was not going to be proven false at the end of her long, hardworking life.

  “Let’s go home. I’d like to get some painting done this afternoon.” Emma placed her hands on the bench and began easing herself out of the seat.

  Laura nodded, suddenly sure about what she had to do. “Gran, I’m going to have to—”

  “I’m in the middle of working on a study of the square. Patrick would do a far better job. However, I must keep going. I couldn’t bear not being able to paint.” Emma stood up, leaning on her cane. She held out a hand, and Laura took it.

  Conversation done. Laura knew better than to push on.

  Still, she paused one more time before she opened the tall wrought iron gates that led back to the street.

  “It’s getting chilly,” Emma said, her voice firm. “I’m going to have some time to myself.”

  The gate closed behind them with a click.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Provence, France, 1913

  Imagine: Three handsome young men, fresh out of Cambridge, lounging around a breakfast table in the South of France. Sunshine splashed onto their faces, their low-collared white shirts dazzling in the sun. Conversation flew from politics to art to economics, questioning the very fabric of society and the ethics of what made a worthwhile life, but the men were not immune to the odd innuendo and ribald joke; their chatter was peppered every now and then with a laugh. Discussions were underpinned by a silent agreement that tolerance was the thing. They were to become famous, or infamous, but they did not know that. Not yet.

  Bright blooms cascaded over terraces outside the ancient Provençal mas they’d rented for the summer, where the circle of friends focused on being young and brilliant and erudite. Secret shaded paths in the local village were the perfect settings for lovers’ trysts—and there had been plenty of those here in France, for love came into the Circle in a series of patterns that none of them really understood. Everything was intermingled: their beauty, Provence, their ideas.

  When Emma wandered into the room, her bohemian green dress floating around her, she stopped to observe the men, her artist’s gaze taking in every detail, lingering on her husband, Oscar, and the different tones his red hair displayed in the light. She would use bright, contrasting colors, not gradations of the same tones, to paint Oscar right now were she to pick up a brush. She was entranced with the Post-impressionists and their glorious use of any color under the sun. The avant-garde seemed more relevant, more possible and plausible than ever in the bright light out here in Provence, far more so than in London, where muteness was still expected in art, in decoration, and, even more so, in life.

  Emma took in the other men at the table. She studied the
contrast between Ambrose’s neat black hair and his clear, milklike skin. From Ambrose she moved her focus to Lawrence—his sensitive beauty, the way he looked at her as if holding a long, languishing sadness that still hung between them.

  Emma unlaced her fingers, already stained from an early morning session at her easel. She moved over to the windows to see the colors outside in the garden. Emma was overwhelmed by France. It was as if she were running a race with herself to capture it all on canvas before it was time to return to London.

  “Em.” Lawrence’s voice cut into her reverie.

  She sensed Lawrence’s gaze still on her and closed her own eyes for a moment rather than turn around. Guilt tore at her, but she did not want to admit that she was feeling a bourgeois emotion over the end of her love affair with him. After all, the whole group agreed that the true modern person should be able to love and appreciate others and then move on when their feelings began to change . . .

  “You need to eat. You’re getting more and more birdlike every day.”

  What she and Lawrence had enjoyed had been brief and wonderful. And it was over. She knew she’d devastated him. But Lawrence remained devoted to her in spite of the fact that it was hopeless. His friendship with Oscar had survived his affair with Emma. Emma comforted herself with this and with the knowledge that her rejection of Lawrence had at least spurred him into determined action in his career. His recent, sudden energy had propelled him into the headiest of realms in the art world as a young art critic and exhibition curator in London.

  Emma moved away from the window and helped herself to coffee. She reveled in the velvety drink here in France.

  Oscar remained deep in conversation with Ambrose, who had come down to find the time and space to focus on his research fellowship in economics at Cambridge.

  Just as Emma turned around with her coffee, Patrick Adams wandered into the room. Emma reached up a hand to stroke away a tendril of dark hair that had fallen across her cheek. She’d heard about Patrick Adams’s legendary poet’s beauty, of his olive skin, of the sensuousness of his mouth and his deep-set eyes that seemed to take one in as if he knew more about you than you did yourself. She was aware of the height of his presence and how half of London swooned over him, but no words could prepare her for the reality of a face-to-face encounter.

  She watched, transfixed, trying to discern what it was—the warm tone of his voice, how his arrival seemed to imbue the room with something new, a different energy. It was instant and charged and changed, and Emma knew she’d never experienced anything like it in her life.

  Her relationship with Oscar had been glorious for a time—of course it had—sensuous, wonderful during their honeymoon in Italy and in London during the early days of their marriage, until he’d resumed his affair with Mrs. Townsend after Emma had given birth to Calum two years ago. Emma remained determined not to react as her Victorian parents would have to her husband’s affair. To be tolerant and modern was the way to live in the new century, their whole group believed, and by taking such an approach, she and Oscar had remained friends. While Lawrence’s companionship had been comforting for a while, she had found that she also preferred his friendship in the end.

  But was it possible she’d fallen in love with Patrick Adams the moment he’d walked into this room? She stood staring at him, stunned. Was she so full of vagaries that she could be so struck by someone all at once?

  The men stood up. Arms patted broad backs, and shirts crinkled over shoulders, the fabric of their white shirts dissolving into yet another dazzling palette.

  Emma moved toward the table, taking it all in. She reached for the basket of baguettes, noticing—how could she not?—the way Patrick kept glancing at her. She was drawn to him and felt instinctively that she wanted him close. She helped herself to the local bread, breaking it into pieces and bringing it up to her lips, its crust crisp, its ends pointed and sharp. The tips of the crust pierced the tips of her thumbs.

  “You know Em, don’t you?” Oscar said. He reveled, as he always did, in the opportunity to be the perfect host. He was such a curious blend of country gentleman and Cambridge elite. The mix had intrigued Emma three years ago when she’d married him. But now, his bonhomie seemed forced. It was as if he were playing a role, and it was one that didn’t ring true anymore.

  Patrick Adams held out a hand.

  “The famous Emma Temple,” he said, his voice holding a lilt.

  She sensed everything—the other men’s reactions, Ambrose’s chuckle, Lawrence’s sharp intake of breath, as if a fatal sword had struck him. Her friends were all too whip-smart not to be tuned to what was going on here.

  Emma put her baguette down on the bare table as if she were placing a priceless diamond ring down with delicate care. She extended her own hand until it flickered and hovered just within a hairbreadth of Patrick’s.

  Patrick Adams’s eyes danced, while his lips played in a smile.

  “How’s it going, living down here with your aunt, Patrick?” Lawrence’s voice cut into the air between them. Breaking the spell, whatever it was.

  “I’ve been so bored that I’ve been going to lectures on Marxism.” Patrick held Emma’s hand for a moment before letting it go, his eyes lingering on hers . . . in hers.

  She hinted at a smile back.

  “Have you brought down your canvases?” Lawrence’s voice seemed to come from some other place. “I want to take your work back with me to London tomorrow. The Art Society needs them by the beginning of next week.”

  “I came in my aunt’s car,” Patrick said. “I stole it from her. The canvases are in the back seat.” He widened that smile into a grin.

  Emma mirrored him, sharing the joke.

  “Let’s get them out of the sun then. For heaven’s sake, Patrick.” Lawrence clattered his chair backward on the hard parquet floor.

  Emma picked up the baguette again. She took a bite. The softness inside melted in her mouth, but the crust cut deeper at her lip than it had with her thumb, and the sweetness of her own blood melted on her tongue.

  “I still swoon whenever I see him,” Ambrose whispered toward Patrick’s departing back.

  Patrick raised his hand to touch the top of the doorframe as he followed Lawrence out the door.

  Emma felt the baguette stick in her throat.

  Oscar tapped his freckled hand on the table. “It’s becoming widely accepted that Patrick Adams goes beyond talent into genius. While he was studying in Paris for the last two years, he spent his afternoons at the Louvre, alone. Copying the old masters. Extraordinary. He hasn’t adopted Post-impressionism at all. He’s going to break all the rules.”

  Emma shot Oscar a look.

  “Doesn’t like Cézanne,” Oscar went on. “He has a distinct style of his own already. Lawrence told us they’re going to show Patrick’s work in a separate part of the exhibition, Em. Putting him with Picasso.”

  Emma sipped her coffee, wincing slightly as the hot liquid touched her cut lip.

  “Are they?” she asked.

  Oscar regarded her and raised a brow.

  She stood up. “I’m going back to work.”

  “You don’t mind that he’s getting that special treatment? His paintings will be separate and distinct. I wish they could highlight your work like that,” Oscar persisted.

  “Not at all.” She spoke the words with the flicker of a feather. But as she left the room, she grasped the folds of her dress, bunching the fabric into a tight little circle until it was fashioned into a knot.

  Emma ran her hand up the banister of the wide staircase in the old farmhouse, reveling in the feel of the cold, shining wood underneath her fingers. Light laced patterns into the stairwell, sending yellow shimmers onto the prints that lined the walls, playing around the otherwise invisible dust motes in the air as she made her way back up to her own bedroom and studio after breakfast . . . and meeting Patrick for the first time. Why did incomparable things happen when you least expected them to?

&n
bsp; She wandered into the bathroom to freshen up, splashing her face with cool water. Once Emma was done cleaning up, she couldn’t help pulling the curtains aside to glance down at the driveway, where Patrick and Lawrence were unpacking the paintings.

  Patrick Adams raised his head, looking straight back up at her the moment she peered out the window. His grin—the excitement of him—was intoxicating. What was it about him that had such an allure? He held a large canvas, wrapped in brown paper. Several other paintings sat in his aunt’s little car.

  Lawrence burrowed in the back seat, his glasses resting on the top of his head.

  With only a whisper of movement, Patrick raised a hand to his lips, and he looked up at her.

  Emma swept away from the window and turned around swiftly, leaning against the wall and grinning like a fool. Her friends had told her he’d had several affairs with young men. Even Ambrose had been drawn into Patrick’s stellar orbit for a while; they’d lived together for a time before Patrick went to Paris, apparently. Ambrose still pined . . . and yet she had to trust that Ambrose and Lawrence, being modern, wouldn’t blame their broken hearts on others. The sense that she, too, was far out of her depth did nothing to distract her from the irresistible urge to dive in as deep as she could.

  Emma moved across to her easel. She’d begun working on a view of the terrace, a composition of two empty chairs with the sun beaming down on them, flickering patterns in different colors on the wicker and shining onto the fabric of the pale cushions while the blue Mediterranean glittered with possibilities below.