by Ella Carey
Danger frightened them into behaving in ways they would never contemplate in peacetime. Emma forced herself to tolerate the way Rupert would hardly speak to her when they were alone, brushing past her as if his emotions controlled her, letting his fingers touch hers if she passed him the salt. He put on an act in front of Patrick. Emma willed that Patrick must never know how Rupert tormented her.
Emma kept silent except when she retreated to the place where she could not hide from anything: her studio. She threw out her frustrations on the canvas; her clouds were the color of gunpowder, and the humans she painted were faceless. The faceless victims of war. Were they all that, in the end?
She would neither fight with Rupert nor give in to his silences.
Emma simply pressed on.
“Perhaps,” she said to Patrick as they stood one evening by the lake when Rupert was in London in the late spring, “relationships mirror everything there is in this world. True relationships involve everything—love, peace, happiness, duty, terror, family, sadness, grief. I wonder if we expect too much of each other. As nations, individuals—is that the problem? Is that why we fight? Because we don’t understand that life involves the whole darned gamut of experience? We expect it to be all good.”
Patrick looked out at the water next to her. “I’m sure that we deny others the humanity that we allow in ourselves. But cruelty, bigotry, hatred of others—these things are not in any way part of your makeup, Em. You go to great lengths to get inside other people’s heads. For you, to know others is to understand them. You see their points of view. Some people, like Rupert, I’m afraid, struggle with your generosity of spirit.”
Emma startled a little. But she remained quiet. Because this was part of her relationship with Patrick. There would always be things that would remain unsaid.
As she stood in silence next to him, the sound of gunfire raged in the distance across the sea.
But no matter how Emma tried to instill peace into her homelife, by 1918 fighting spread its insidious wings directly into Summerfield. When Rupert told Patrick in rage and frustration and anger that he had fallen in love with the woman he’d been seeing in London and that he wanted to marry her, the two men’s fights became long, howling, yelling, screaming wrangles. Every night. Night after night.
Emma’s heart was locked in her throat. She stood in the middle of her bedroom. She’d been pacing for long enough. The short bursts of shouting rang through the house like bullets. Emma had no idea where each agonized roar was going to fall next, who was going to get hit, which voice was which, whether things would ricochet out further to hurt her, Calum?
She’d become nervous and gotten into the habit of checking on Calum like a mother who worried about her cub being attacked by some fox while he slept, determining that he was resting peacefully now that the house had taken on this mad, demon-like force. Summerfield pulsated with the two men’s own crazed civil war. But Calum, always, was oblivious when she went to him, his face flush with pink, his dark eyelashes splayed across his cheeks, sleeping soundly from days spent playing freely outside, drawing with Em, making cubbyhouses under the dining room table, and walking with his nanny or Em on the path that wound below the South Downs.
Now Emma stood alone, wringing her hands in her nightgown, her hair falling in loose waves around her shoulders. She felt like a madwoman, both helpless and locked out. She’d decided at the beginning of all this to keep well out of it. She knew she was sensitive to men’s tempers. How could she not be after living with her father, and now this, this was bringing it all back.
They were trying to keep their voices down now—having realized, Emma supposed, that they’d hit some dreadful crescendo, a peak that needed to be tempered before someone got seriously hurt. But the tight, deep growls that snaked across the landing, seeming to seep under her bedroom door like wisps of foul-scented smoke, felt far more ominous than any honest yelling ever could.
She ran a hand over her tired, sleep-deprived eyes and took a step toward the doorway, letting her fingers linger on the smooth wooden handle—it was a mantra, this hovering, that she had taken up in war. The wood was bare of decorations—a rare surface that had escaped her artistic touch. Sometimes she wondered why she persisted with trying to make everything here beautiful when all around her the world seemed a bloody mess.
Patrick’s bedroom door slammed. Emma jumped. She closed her eyes, distress spinning through her system, physical pain jerking at her insides. They’d hit a final note for the night.
Pounding footsteps resounded down the staircase. The front door slammed. And all Emma could think was that things had traveled in some dark, insidious full circle. Rupert had behaved in a way that was unacceptable toward her, and he, in turn, had been kicked out without Patrick even knowing that had happened. She had tried so hard not to let him ruffle, and now, this.
Emma closed her eyes at the sound of Rupert’s little car revving up. Her fingers stroked the door handle now; breath quickening, she opened the door. The landing was cold, alien, lost—she wanted it back the way it used to be. Wanted to return to that hope and potential and promise that she’d felt when she first came here. Summerfield had started to feel as if all the homeliness had deserted it these past weeks. It was as if the spirit and love had been sucked out of it by all the fighting that was going on.
Emma clenched and unclenched her own fists and hovered outside Patrick’s room.
It was open, just a chink. She took a step forward. Candlelight tapered, flickering through the tiny crack between door and frame. Emma reached out, pushing the door open, standing there in her nightgown, feeling the quiver of the candle on her face. She fixed on him. Her eyes wouldn’t budge once they rested there, as if at home.
He lay on his back, hands behind his handsome head. And yet, when he saw her, he sat up, his eyes dark and yet clear and so visible, only to her, in the dim light. She stood there, hovering like some lost bird; when he reached out to her, both arms drawn open, she went to him.
She stood beside him, her hands halting a moment before landing like some great full stop in his palms, touch to touch. She felt the beat of her chest, rising and falling as he held his palms up, face-to-face with hers, almost an alluring lover’s kiss.
He took her hands and grasped her fingers tight. The candle, burning bright on the bedside table, sat between them. The silence was so clear and perfect that Emma could have rolled a marble across the floor and it would have sounded like a thundercrack.
He held her gaze. His own dark gaze was locked, alive and honest and painful and loving and everything—oh, everything at once.
She reached out one hand and rested it on his cheek. He leaned into it, pulling her other hand toward him, bringing it up to his mouth, his lips, bow lips that she’d painted so very many times before.
She took one step closer, and he pulled her closer again, and slowly, and yet fast, she seemed to float down toward him, on top of him, her body lying in her thin nightgown against his. And he kissed her, tentatively at first, butterfly touches on her lips, dancing and touching and tender and warm all at once.
And she kissed him back. And she gave in to it, knowing that he would too. Knowing with dead certainty that if she didn’t do so, she’d regret it for the rest of her life.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
London, 1980
If anyone had asked what had caused the dramatic change that had swept Laura into some strange new state of being, she would have found it impossible to pinpoint any answer at all. All she knew was that she had morphed from being stuck in some dark, dreaded place, disconnected from her music, to wanting to play in a way she’d never, ever done before. Her job and her teaching—anything else was a mundane distraction from her need to express everything she felt with her music. It overwhelmed her now.
Perhaps it was fear that propelled her—fear of losing that which she loved causing her to want to cling to it in a way she’d never done before. And she wondered if that was one of the br
utal things about life, that we did not appreciate how much something meant to us until we were under serious threat of losing it for good, and only then did we panic, only then did we understand the full implications of what loss actually was.
Laura placed her foot on the top step that led to the stage in the Amaryllis Fleming Concert Hall to rehearse in front of her fellow students.
As soon as she lifted her bow, Laura felt it, that new strange force that gripped her now. While she had been swept into a panic at first by Ewan’s statement, all she wanted to do now was to cling to what she had, even while knowing it might all go away. The passion of the music took over as she forgot about rules and technicalities, the wide leaps, the multiple stops, the trills and the tremolos and just played from her heart. She swept into the opening movement, the Hungarian folk melodies coming out from inside her in a swirl. Laura closed her eyes.
As she progressed through each movement, the staccato, pulsating fugue, then the lyrical melody in the third through to the fast bumblebee-like fourth movement, all the time, throughout every mood, it was as if she was always accessing some ultimate truth embedded in the music. And somehow, right then, all she could think was that she had to work through everything deep inside herself and in her past and in Em’s, leaving nothing to rest in order to save herself, just as she had to reach into her deepest self if she were to play her music in the way it deserved to be played.
When, finally, she let her bow rest by her side, Laura felt a thin line of sweat blooming on her brow. A moment of stillness hung over the auditorium before her fellow students stamped their feet on the ground. As Laura stood there, her bow hanging in her hand, she spotted her teacher alone off to the side. When he looked up, caught Laura’s eye, and nodded, just a slight inclination, Laura felt her entire body sag with relief.
She made to leave the stage, exhausted, satiated, replete and still half panicking about what the future would hold. But as she moved to exit the stage, a man stood in the periphery of her vision.
Laura raised her hand to her eyes. As a hesitant smile slipped across Ewan Buchanan’s features, an almost imperceptible movement, she frowned, some new wave of feeling sweeping over her while her eyes remained locked on to his.
She made her way down the stage stairs to the auditorium, and he walked straight toward her up the aisle. The next soloist appeared from the wings, and people were waiting for Laura to take her seat. An acute silence lingered in the auditorium.
Laura felt every one of her peers’ eyes watching her while she placed one foot in front of the other until she finally stopped dead when she stood opposite Ewan in the aisle.
“That was wonderful,” he whispered.
She looked up at him, her eyes narrowing.
A cough sounded. Her teacher. Laura frowned.
Ewan stood there, waiting for her.
She ducked her head, moving past him toward the back of the concert hall. As she almost tiptoed on, the next student swept into Beethoven. Laura focused on the patterns on the carpet as she made her way to the swinging doors and the entrance foyer.
She marched toward the heavy double doors that led out to Prince Consort Road, pushing them open hard until they swung back and forth on their hinges. She wanted air. Now. Fresh air and normality and London. She’d spooked herself with her playing, and now the person who had infiltrated her world was standing right behind her and she did not know what to think.
But as she turned to face Ewan, she fought with the realization that he had also caused her to play like she had. He was the person who’d forced her to have to fight, to plumb the depths of everything she had inside her in order to save everything that was under threat. Because of this, her essence, her music, was speaking to her in some new way that it had never done before, and there was no turning back to the way she’d always played.
“Laura.” Ewan reached out and touched her arm before drawing it away as she flicked her elbow from him, an involuntary, fast jerk of a movement. “Your violin,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“I just thought you might like to go back inside and get your violin case. That was amazing. Incredible. I’ve been feeling so guilty, Laura.”
She let out a wry laugh.
“Can we go somewhere and talk?”
Laura took a fast step back.
“I know how angry you are, and understandably so. I want to talk to you. That was astonishing—”
“Have you any idea what music means to me?”
“You have no idea how much I understand it.”
She lifted her hand up to her eyes to shield them from the bright sun. The sky was blue and radiant. “Art and beauty and truth and music? Your actions tell me the extreme opposite of what you’ve just said. Do not come in here and pretend to be something you’re not. Because, frankly, if this is some stupid attempt at making amends, then please, just go away.”
“Laura.” He took her shoulders and held them, his dark eyes intense on her face. “I ask that you let me show you something. I want to show you something. If you will let me.”
“You need to retract your stupid statement, Ewan. There’s nothing else to say.”
“There is a lot to say. I wish I could help you understand.” He looked straight at her. “If we are going to sort this out—”
“What are you trying to say?” She didn’t even attempt to hide the fire in her voice. It was a flickering, dangerous storm.
“One hour. I want one hour of your time.” He beat each word out as if with a metronome.
“And I want you to retract your statement.”
“Can you go back in and get your violin case before someone knocks that beautiful instrument out of your hands? I’ll wait right here. I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”
People marched past them, stopping to admire the grand Royal College of Music.
Laura watched them, and all she felt was sadness that she was going to lose it all.
“Against my better judgment, I’ll come with you and hear what it is you have to say. But if you’re trying to convince me that your theory about my grandmother’s portrait is correct, then I don’t want—”
“Please go and get your violin case. I’ll be right here.”
Laura made her way back into the college and picked up the leather case from her practice room. She laid her treasured instrument down inside the dark-blue nest of silk with the reverence she would give to a rare piece of jewelry. Laura clipped the case shut and stood up, wiping a shaking hand over her face.
Once she was back outside, she walked in silence alongside him toward Kensington Road, making her way along the very route that Emma took when she was a young woman, trapped.
They skirted Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park in silence, Laura sadly taking in everyone they passed as if their very presence validated her complex feelings for the whole neighborhood. Nannies pushing ridiculously expensive prams; wealthy, well-dressed women; businesspeople who made livings out of exploitation. Did any of them understand the first thing about the emotive quality of music or art? Or were they just collectors of experience, saying they had heard such and such a musician, as if it were just another thing they could own?
The desire to put all her hard work to good use, now, in 1980, might be different from the battle Emma faced when trying to be herself in 1912, but by goodness, Laura’s feelings about the way she wanted to live her life and the career she wanted to have were just as honest and real.
Ewan reverted away from the park once they were in Knightsbridge, taking her up a narrow street lined with tall, classy buildings, their pillars a testament to wealth, until they crossed Brompton Road toward Harrods, while Laura wondered idly if this was where he did his grocery shopping, spending ten pounds on a banana or a pear—perhaps twenty on a razor for his chin? But he led her on toward a lane of mews cottages just behind Harrods. He stopped outside one whose front door was painted red.
“Shouldn’t it be black?”
His face tw
isted into a grimace.
She shrugged. “Sorry. It’s a joke. Doors in this part of London always seem to be black.”
“Please,” he murmured, turning the key in the lock. “Could you give me a chance?”
“Why?” she asked. “Tell me why.” She softened her voice.
He leaned his blond head on the doorframe and loosened his tie. “Look.”
Laura folded her arms.
“Please, Laura.”
“I should be taking legal action. But you know I can’t afford that. I’m sorry, but I can’t help seeing all this as a game for you. Sales, money—a lovely little circle that only the privileged can enter. As for the rest of us, it doesn’t matter. We don’t matter.”
“Stop.” He growled the word.
Laura gazed at the renovated mews houses, all gorgeously tasteful. Even the cobblestones on the road looked freshly swept. And somewhere, a treacherous voice inside her said that she couldn’t help half envying the people who lived here . . . only, of course, because of their proximity to the park.
He opened the door and stepped aside for her to enter. A small entrance hall, with polished floorboards that gleamed, led to a set of open doors and then into a large living room.
Striking, stunning twentieth-century artworks hung on the walls. Ewan flicked on the lights. The effect was breathtaking.
So he had taste—that didn’t mean anything at all.
Laura’s eyes swept past the pair of deep-navy velvet sofas laden with bright modern cushions to the opposite wall. A cobalt blue square sat against a white background with a black frame. Simple, perfect. Underneath the painting were bookshelves filled with books on art.
Ewan moved toward the back of the house. All-glass walls led to a small courtyard, and he opened the rectangular doors wide, flooding the room with warmth from the sun. He moved into his kitchen. Laura couldn’t help but think that if the white kitchen were any more up to the minute, it would still be on the delivery truck.