by Ella Carey
Emma, of course, would say nothing. Clover would button up, too, and hold it all in. Maybe they were more alike than Laura gave them credit for . . . even though their views were polar opposites on life. But Laura’s emotions turned and turned like the wheels on her bike. She glanced at the small row of shops opposite the station—two general stores, a post office, a taxi service—this was her place.
“Stick behind me,” she called to both the men. She took off, pedaling furiously, as she suspected Emma always did.
After a couple of wobbles, Ewan was beside her on the road that led through the quiet town, looking ludicrously handsome and at the same time oddly in place on the seat of Emma’s old bike. Laura focused on the road ahead. She knew every bend, because she’d often ridden to the village as a child. She wound her way out of Lewes, past the grand old manor house that sat behind a long stone fence, until they were out on the open roads that led to the isolated farmhouse that was Summerfield.
Once they turned left, up the old dirt lane that led to Summerfield, Laura had to draw on all her strength to fight the urge to scream at the impossibility of the task ahead. She allowed herself only a brief glance at the house closest to Summerfield, Ambrose’s house, where he and his ballerina wife had spent their weekends once he married. They had been Emma and Patrick’s closest neighbors for miles, and Laura used to go there as a child, enchanted by the tales of the Russian ballerina whom the famous economist had shared his life with after a brief affair with Patrick when he was young.
The sight of Ambrose’s house usually lit up her insides with anticipation whenever she came to Summerfield. But instead of being a beacon that meant they were drawing close to the place Laura loved most in the world, the neighboring house seemed like a grim reminder today that she was not here to see Emma’s artistic friends and that they were all gone now, for good. She was here to strike a match to their mounting funeral pyre.
As they approached Summerfield, Laura hardly looked at the dear pond—Emma’s lake—on the right, nor did she allow herself to be sidetracked by the beloved garden, where she knew flowers would float, their colorful spring faces shining above the green lawn as if everything were perfectly all right.
She felt ludicrously protective of Summerfield and of Emma and Patrick. Ewan and Jasper pulled their bikes to a standstill in front of the house. Laura moved away from them. This was a sanctuary. There should be rules about who could come here.
And Ewan was not a person who should be allowed to pass the front gate.
Laura could not help but realize that she was letting the whole Circle down, that she was going to be the one to lose everything they’d worked so hard to build up. What if she couldn’t save it? Because Summerfield seemed like a very dear casualty right now.
Determined not to allow her feelings to boil over, she parked her bike. Jasper and Ewan seemed to have given up altogether on talking to her, as if in some complicit understanding that she was not able to carry on any intelligent discussion at all. Laura fought the absurd thought that if she reached out a finger to touch the walls of the old house, the whole place would tumble in a pile of rocks at her feet.
“Everything is so clear out here,” Jasper said, stretching his arms high above his head. “The air. It’s as if it’s all imbued with new life somehow . . .”
Or certain death. Laura pulled the house key out of her pocket.
As she slid the old key in the lock, reveling in the way it didn’t quite fit, finding the way she had to fiddle around with it charming, until it unlocked with that final, satisfying click, she stood for a moment on the doorstep, breathing in the particular smell that she always associated with Emma’s house. It was a mixture of the scent of a library blended with oil paints and heady spring flowers drifting in from outside. If she closed her eyes, she could almost convince herself that it was Emma’s perfume that lent one final note to the air.
Summerfield was, in the end, not Laura’s legacy to lose. It was a place and a time that the world needed, art needed, and—goodness knew—people needed in this modern age.
The two men stopped to look at the paintings in the entrance hall. She waited while they wandered into the dining room on the left, Ewan having to bend his head as he passed through the low doorway that led into Patrick’s wildly decorated room.
Laura followed them, pulling open Patrick’s decorative curtains and flooding the room and its stunning black and silver bold geometric wallpaper with light. Patrick had chosen black for the wallpaper; he’d adorned the paper with tiny silver squares, which he’d applied to the black base by hand. The round table in the middle of the room sat as if waiting for them all to come back. Emma’s circles and flowers decorated it, the chalky paint showing charming signs of wear. An uneven stain splotched the spot at the table where Emma had always sat, and the door that ran to Lydia’s kitchen hovered slightly open, as if she were about to appear with a delicious farm-cooked meal. Or a plate of Em’s freshly baked afternoon scones.
Laura went out to the hallway.
Next, they moved into the sitting room. Laura remained mute, allowing Jasper and Ewan to wander and take it all in. The sight of Emma and Patrick’s absurd little electric heater from the 1940s still sitting in front of the fireplace moved Laura yet again. She had to turn away. Laura remembered how Emma had told her that it was freezing out here before they enjoyed such a luxury as a small electric heater. Patrick had developed muscles of steel chopping wood for the fireplaces during their first winter here in the First World War.
Ewan took in the art on the walls, fine examples of Emma’s work, along with several of Lawrence’s paintings. Ewan was shaking his head as he moved around the room.
Jasper saucily caught Laura’s eye, but Laura didn’t respond. She wanted to get this done.
“It’s wonderful,” Ewan whispered. “I’m even more astounded than when I came here last time. And I didn’t get to study these works. We were so focused on The Things We Don’t Say . . .” His voice trailed off.
Laura moved toward the painted panels on the living room door. Patrick’s circus men leaped and pranced on the wood.
But the little paintings that adorned the walls, charming as they were, were not gold mines. They were examples of decorative work from the Circle. Emma’s paintings only ever fetched around a hundred pounds at auction. The only painting of any real monetary value in here was The Things We Don’t Say.
Laura held her head up and led them farther into the house.
She paused at the closed door to Emma’s bedroom, her fingers resting on the door handle. Jasper laid a hand on Laura’s shoulder, and she closed her eyes.
“I’m going to leave you and Ewan to look at the painting together,” he murmured. “I’ll be out in the garden. Going to find a spot to practice.” He slid his viola case off his back.
She nodded, her eyes fixed on the door. But she waited until the sound of his footsteps retreated down the passage.
The silence that surrounded her and Ewan was loaded, impregnated with far more than the old stories from the past.
She opened Emma’s bedroom door.
Ewan’s shoulder brushed hers as he moved past her into the room. He made his way straight over to Emma’s bed. Laura stood poleaxed in the entrance to the room. Her hands felt cold. Everything seemed cold.
He took in the portrait in silence.
The sound of Jasper tuning up filtered in from the garden. As he flew into the viola part in Mozart’s lively Fifth Violin Concerto, Ewan faced her.
“Laura,” he said, “I’m so sorry. Nothing’s different from what it was before.”
Jasper went on with the Mozart—happy, content music. Laura heaved out a sigh.
“Sorry?” she asked.
He looked at her, his eyes genuinely, if she were not mistaken, sad. “Yes,” he whispered. “I can’t tell you what you want to hear. I wish I could, believe me. I just . . .”
Laura moved toward the French windows. “Why did you come here wit
h me today?”
His tread was solid on the wooden floor until he stood and looked out at the window next to her.
“I wanted to see it again. And to see it with you.”
Jasper moved on with the delicate, sweet Mozart. Laura couldn’t help herself taking it all in. Mozart moved in patterns. If only life would do the same thing.
“I can’t lie and tell you it’s Patrick’s work. And I honestly am sorry,” he said.
Laura found herself facing Emma’s writing desk. A portrait of Emma’s late mother still sat on its top, staring out, serene, beautiful, so like Emma . . . yet only in looks. Laura picked it up and turned it over in her hands, taking in the woman who had been her great-grandmother—part of her, Emma, and Clover—as if for the very first time. How did this work—four women with such different personalities, all cut from the same cloth, and yet trying to figure life out in a way that would work for them? Had her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother really succeeded in making sense of this world?
“We both know you owe me an explanation,” she said. “Surely you can tell me what you are talking about, because from where I’m standing, that portrait is clearly the work of the man who loved my grandmother for most of their lives. How can you possibly say it’s not?”
Laura placed the photograph back down, but her hands shook.
“Listen,” he said, his voice coming out low and solid and warm behind her.
Laura didn’t turn to face him.
“I can’t do what you want me to,” he said. “But believe me, I do want to.”
“You could talk if you wanted to. You could, at the very least, explain. You just choose not to. You choose to stay silent.” She leaned on Emma’s small desk.
He came and crouched down next to her. “I am offering to make amends, to put things right, so that you and Emma can both live in the way you deserve, so that you can have your career—surely you can see that. I’m trying to buy you time, to let you get your finances in order.”
“No. Not good enough, Ewan.” Laura jolted in surprise at the way she’d said that.
Jasper stopped playing.
Outside the window, the silence seemed to hover. Emma’s once well-tended plants were starting to turn wild—no one was going to love and care for this place like Emma had.
“I can’t—”
“What can’t you tell me?” she whispered. “How could telling me be more harmful than not talking to me? If you really love art, think of Emma, at least. And what about her loyal companion and housekeeper, Lydia? Don’t you realize that she’ll be unemployed and homeless after all this?”
Laura tried, but she could not fight the tears that brewed up in her.
He drew her into a rough embrace. In spite of herself, for some untold reason, she did not pull away, but she knew she should do so. This was dangerous, dangerous ground. And yet, some part of her told her that Jasper never held her like this . . .
“You’re not fixing it by handing out money,” she murmured. “That’s what you don’t understand.”
Jasper began the second movement, the viola singing a strange, lonesome, mournful song, as if it were a lost bird. The orchestra would only support it, Laura knew, with the odd quiet chord.
“You have no idea,” he murmured, leaning his chin on her head, “how much I understand.”
She sprang back. “Talk to me, then!”
He looked at her, his eyes holding such sadness that Laura fought the sudden instinct to move toward him again. She stood there while she swore she saw every emotion under the sun pass over his face.
Finally, he let out a loud sigh. “There is something I can tell you.” His voice sounded rough.
He moved toward the painting as if he was resigned. And he pointed at it with his finger. “See this?”
Laura craned forward. Emma looked as if she’d been painted yesterday. But Ewan pointed at a tiny red mark on the bottom of the painting, almost invisible.
Laura’s breathing seemed to ring in her ears.
The Mozart was a quiet, untold whisper filtering in from the garden.
Ewan took her hands and looked her straight in the eyes. “I am so sorry, but that mark tells me the work is not Patrick Adams’s.”
“What?” Laura whispered, the word hardly sounding more than a breath in the quiet room.
Jasper played a descending run of notes.
“What are you saying?”
He moved across to the French doors and stood looking out.
Laura stayed where she was.
Slowly, he swiveled around. “I have the most . . .” He leaned forward then and ran a hand across her face.
“What is going on?” she murmured, but her eyes were widening, and she knew with certainty that her senses were on full alert.
“Don’t you feel this?” he growled. “I’m struggling here.”
She took in a shaking breath. “I can’t . . .”
He rested his forehead against hers. “I can’t talk about it. But I can tell you the painting’s a fake. I cannot stand here and lie about it. I just can’t.”
Laura, in spite of herself, in spite of everything, reached out and took his hand.
“I am right; that’s the problem,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry, Laura.”
Laura reached up. She took his face in her hands. “You have to tell me why. You can’t hold that back from me.”
“I know,” he said. “Do you think I don’t understand what’s at stake?” Gently, he took her shoulders and held her at arm’s length again. “Don’t think, Laura, that I don’t understand. Don’t think that I don’t understand Bloomsbury and the Circle. Everything that they fought for is so very real to me. And I know exactly how you feel about your music. I promise you that I do.”
Laura fought the cynical smile that appeared on her face. But then, there was his mews house, the easel, his collection of beautiful books. She’d tried to dismiss them all, fought so hard not to see what she knew was staring her in the face when she was there . . . but the fact was, being in his surroundings had made her feel both entranced and somehow at home.
“You have to talk to me,” she whispered.
“I don’t want you to lose your music.”
“Ewan,” she said, “Emma needs to get to the heart of what lay between her and Patrick. Was it truth and honesty or deception? Paying for my music tuition is putting a tiny bandage on a gashing war wound. It doesn’t get to the heart of anything that matters. Surely you can see. You need to talk to us.”
He was silent, his chest rising up and down. “There are things that I cannot say.”
“You must tell me.”
He was silent.
“Nothing you can say could be worse than anything she’s experiencing right now.”
His chest rose visibly, then fell again.
Laura knew he was so close—on the cusp of something. And by goodness, she would get it out of him if it killed her.
“Why don’t you work as an artist?” she blurted out. “Why are you hiding your art away from the world?”
He let go of her.
Laura fought the slump that overcame her as he moved away from her. He stood, his back to her, staring out at the garden.
Jasper was quiet out there, too, now.
“You have the talent,” Laura said, her words whisper quiet. “You can afford to support yourself. So why not do what you love?”
“After the Slade, I couldn’t face being an artist.”
Emma’s neat, blank writing pad lay as if waiting on her little desk. Laura waited too, but Ewan seemed to have clammed up again. The sound of bees flirted around Em’s hollyhocks outside the French doors.
“My mother, Clover,” Laura said, “is talented. And yet she denied herself the one thing she loved because she did not want the lack of security that goes with it. So she gave it up. Hid it. I think she did so because it was too hard, too real. Something that she thinks turned Emma into an outcast who never made any money from h
er art. So my mother, Clover, hid her passion in neatness and conformity, following the rules that Emma never followed. My mother works in a library cataloging books. I think she was scared of that artistic side of herself. Scared of opening herself up like Emma had done or, sort of, didn’t do.”
Ewan twisted away from her.
“Patrick, on the other hand,” Laura went on, “was famous for the fact that he didn’t care about money at all. He was always penniless. He would put a price on the back of his paintings, and then when a collector wanted to buy one, he was ridiculously generous, reducing the cost until he got almost nothing.”
“He had Emma.” Ewan’s voice cut into the silence. “She supported him.”
“Yes. Emma was his home.”
Ewan’s voice was low. “For heaven’s sake, let me help you, Laura.”
“Not doing what you are born to do . . . it’s not good for you, Ewan.”
She watched him.
“What is it like, working at the gallery, constantly surrounded by other people’s art, when you could be exhibiting your own work? You have the talent. I can see that,” she whispered.
Ewan looked at the floor.
“I saw passion in your work.”
Jasper started the slow movement up again. The long, tender notes wound their way through the air, lilting like mysteries.
“Emma’s art was her expression, but in life, she kept things locked inside her. She didn’t talk about things so much of the time, but that was because she had no choice with Patrick. You, Ewan, have a choice.” She stopped. Jasper was soaring right now. “And life is short. Em’s life is nearly over. But if you won’t talk to me, if you won’t trust Em and me with why you think that portrait is not Patrick’s work, then what next? Because I’m getting to the point here that I don’t want to report to anyone what you’ve just told me, not to an expert or to the media or even my grandmother. I want you to tell me, and me first, and that is probably—”
“Bad and wonderful at the same time?” he whispered, turning toward her.
Laura frowned up at him, but what she was feeling right now was too much to express in words.