by Ella Carey
Emma fought the feeling that right now, she was more and more like an ancient mother figure, while Jerome held on to his potency. His dark hair was thick and lustrous, while Patrick, who was, to be fair, a few years older, was starting to turn gray.
But why on this earth, other than for the one obvious reason, had Jerome fixed on Clover? She had no money and she would hardly be some repository of sexual experience. Above all things, she was hardly male.
Patrick rested his hand on her daughter’s small white fingers. “Clover, would you mind very much if Mama and I spoke with Jerome alone?”
Clover rolled her eyes to the ceiling. She threw her napkin down on the table and pushed back her chair with a loud clatter on the hardwood floor. “Oh for heaven’s sake, don’t try and do the harsh grown-up thing, Emma and Patrick. We all know that’s the last thing you are. If you’ve got something to say, then say it. Don’t be so darned polite. I’m sick of the way you skirt around things.”
Patrick stayed quiet. Clover flounced out the door. When the sound of her bedroom door slamming upstairs rang through the room, Patrick regarded his old lover.
“I don’t know where to start, Jem.”
Jerome remained still, his gaze not shifting from Patrick.
All Emma could hear was the sound of her own breath.
“What exactly are your intentions?” Patrick asked. His voice held that endless politeness, that old-school charm that Emma suspected was not long for this modern world, then winced at her own middle-aged use of that term.
There was a brief, awful silence. Until Jerome threw back his head and laughed. “You haven’t even told her, have you, you pair of saps?” He threw out his comeback as if it were the winning dice in a board game. “Screw you, Pat. The bloody skirt still thinks her father is damned Oscar.”
Patrick pulled back his chair until it crashed to the ground, lying on the floorboards with its legs straight up in the air. He glared at Jerome for one monstrous moment before he strode out of the room.
Emma excused herself immediately. She went to Patrick’s room, where he stood, silent, by the window. Emma moved over to him, delighting, oddly, in the way the moonlight threw a straight golden dart, dividing the lake into two glimmering halves.
He swiveled to face her, helplessness creasing his worn face. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “I could never have predicted this.”
“If Clover wants to take a lover, then that is her choice—” Emma started.
“He is the last person she needs.” Patrick shot out the words. “He’s unstable. Highly unstable, and he’s twice her age.”
Emma reached out. She laid her hand on his arm. “We will get through it,” she murmured. “We get through everything.”
But Patrick leaned against the windowsill, his beautiful features murderous in the dark.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
London, 1980
Emma ached with the fact that she had kept such a secret from Clover for years, but she’d never thought that Patrick would ever hold a secret, in turn, from her. She looked out the front window into Gordon Square, watching Laura trot up the front steps to the house. Emma was aware that in some way, her relationship with Laura had compensated for the breakdown in her relationship with Clover. And she’d learned the hard way that the loss of a child’s trust is one of the most heartbreaking pills to have to swallow in this life. There was no chance that Emma was going to risk losing Laura’s faith in her as well.
“Darling,” she said when Laura appeared, all long legs and opaque tights.
Laura set her violin down on the floor. Her face was flushed. Emma took in the way her granddaughter seemed agitated rather than pale and wan, as she had been these past couple of weeks.
“Gran?” Laura folded her arms around her slim frame.
Emma forced out her own words. She knew what had to be said. “I think you should open up to your mother. I don’t think we should leave Clover out of this.” The words hung silent in the quiet space.
Emma saw the way Laura’s chest rose up and down.
“I think—I am sure—Clover will understand. And maybe she can help.”
Laura rested her hand on the windowsill, her long fingers tapering over the painted edge.
Emma continued. “I think at this point, we need to have everyone, and I mean everyone, around us.”
Laura remained still, and Emma worried that her granddaughter regretted involving her to the extent she had.
“I worry that when I am gone, you will be alone.” Emma’s voice was a chipped version of itself. “I have been thinking about the one time in my life that I was alone, Laura. It was at Summerfield, just after we’d been in France, when I was pregnant with your mother. All the people I loved were gone and happy. I had Calum, my sweet boy, but you see, the thing is, I had my art. I had my painting. Without my work, at those lonely times in my life, I don’t know what I would have done. You have to fight for it. And your mother will help you.”
“She is the last person who will understand. How can you think that she would ever come around?” Laura’s voice was low and rich and rough. “She gave it up. Art. Gave everything that is passionate away. I love my father, you know that. But he is hardly a Patrick, and the way Mother views love? She has locked her true passions away. All of them. I try not to judge her, but I struggle to understand.”
“You should understand, darling. Believe me, you should try.”
Laura kept her gaze out the window. “Patrick stayed with you after your brief spell alone at Summerfield, and you and he raised my mother together. You worked together as companions.” Laura focused downward on the old coal grate, with its intricate inlaid curlicue of patterns. “Certain people are with us, others are not. Isn’t it simple?”
Emma’s voice sounded close. “Don’t leave any stone unturned to save your own life.”
Laura’s fingers slipped on the windowsill’s shiny white paint.
“Clover should be aware of this. We owe it to her, darling.”
Laura swung around to face Emma.
“Go to her. Talk to her. I want you to have support.”
“From my mother?”
“Perhaps,” Emma said, her voice gentle, “you might be able to find some sympathy for her. You’ve told me that Ewan hides who he truly is from the world. I think it’s time to understand that your mother is doing exactly the same thing. Clearly they both have their reasons.”
Both of them had caused Laura such consternation. But even after trying to see Ewan’s point of view, even after the tiny foray he’d allowed her to take inside the pages of what was clearly his own closed book, even after that, Laura was having a hard time understanding him. Because he had shut her out. He could have told her at the beginning that his father painted Emma’s portrait, but instead, he’d sat by while she was at risk of losing everything, and Clover, well, she could have been here for Laura and for Emma during these past tumultuous weeks. After all, Clover read the papers. She might have closeted herself away, but she was still, after all, part of this world . . .
In a quiet voice, Laura told her grandmother that Ewan’s father had painted the portrait that was hanging above her bed.
Emma held up a hand. “But, Laura, all this is getting somewhere!”
“He wouldn’t tell me any more. I pressed him—”
“If Ewan is starting to open up to you, you need to get him to come right out with it and tell you what he’s hiding. Keep going, Laura—he needs to talk to you, and clearly, he wants to. Once people start a thing, most times they want to reach the end.”
“But your portrait?” Laura choked on the words.
Emma glanced out over the still square. “Get him to talk. I know that’s ironic coming from me.”
Laura let out a sigh at Emma’s grace in the face of her revelation from Ewan.
“This weekend I have to go to Bath to play with the string quartet. I cannot let them down. Ewan wouldn’t budge any further; believe me, I tried.
And I cannot deal with the fact that he kept it from me, while pretending, in some false way, that he cared.”
“No. Don’t think like that.”
Laura looked at Emma incredulously.
“Laura, you must keep going.” Emma’s old eyes remained firm and resolute. “Rise above all that. Never, ever give up. Get to the heart of a thing.”
But Laura simply had to focus on the string quartet all weekend. Her playing required total concentration. She had to push everything else out of her head all day on Saturday while they rehearsed, knowing that on Sunday, if she allowed any of this disaster to affect her during the performance, she’d let down every other member of the quartet.
Laura rested her bow on her lap and took in the church in Bath that Marguerite had secured for this, their first proper performance. Little did everyone else know it was also going to be Laura’s last time with them.
“Laura?” Jasper said, his voice coming as if from some distant place.
The others were packing up their instruments in one of the pews a little farther down the church.
Laura felt bad, so bad, that she hadn’t supported him during his breakup with Mark in the way she’d wanted to. She had become a terrible friend on top of everything else.
“I agree with Em,” he said.
Laura ran a hand over her gritty, tired eyes. She’d told him of Emma’s advice on the drive out here. And now, she looked down at her violin and fought the sinking feeling that she was spending the last few days she had left with her Guadagnini before the inevitable happened. And she had no doubt that it would.
“Not every story in this world has a happy ending, Jasper,” she whispered.
But Jasper looked at his watch. “Clover lives nearby. We should definitely go there tomorrow. After the concert. Then, you go back to London and push on with Ewan.”
Laura shook her head at the music on her stand. Dots, dancing around on a page. It was only when you knew how to read, to play them with all your heart, that they meant anything. Then, they produced something so beautiful that it hurt. Why was everything that was beautiful also laced with pain? She closed the old music book that Marguerite had lent her. Laura traced her fingers over the gold filigree on the title. She looked across at Jasper, her dear, dear friend. She held her hand out. And he took it. They sat in silence in the timeless old church.
On Sunday, Laura stood in her mother’s kitchen. Clover poured tea into four delicate teacups made of porcelain. Tiny rosebuds decorated them. There was one cup for Laura, one for Laura’s father, one for Jasper, and one for Clover. It was all precise and measured as usual, about as far away from Emma’s blowsy afternoon teas in the warm kitchen at Summerfield, with her misshapen scones and thick, mismatched mugs, as anyone could get. Laura gazed at the shining Formica benches, the sterile familiarity of the stainless steel sink, the drab gray cleaning cloth that hung over the hot tap to dry.
“I worried from the start about you using the painting as collateral for the loan,” Clover said. She held out biscuits arranged in a fan shape on a pink plate. Her voice held a slight catch, which Laura, for some reason, found irritating.
Laura declined the neat little biscuits.
Her father spoke quietly. “How did your concert go, dear?”
“Fine. Thank you, Dad. I just . . . It will be the last time I get to play with the quartet.”
Her father reached out and placed his hand on top of hers. Laura took in his squared-off fingernails, the way his shirtsleeves were rolled back so that each sat symmetrical to the other. She fought back a laugh at the thought that perhaps her mother was right. Maybe perfection, neatness, and the hiding away of any dangerous passions was the only way to survive in this harsh world, and all that lay underneath in us was best avoided after all.
Laura pushed back her chair, sending a raucous clatter through the otherwise quiet space. She’d always felt like a gawky intrusion when it came to Clover’s pristine life. Laura moved toward the kitchen window, her forehead creasing into a frown as she took in the frilled lace curtains.
“You can work with me in the butcher’s shop, love.” Her father’s gentle voice cut in. “It’ll take you a while to pay off your loan, but we’ll get you there—”
The path of least resistance. Laura clenched her fists into two tight knots.
“We can’t afford to employ anyone in the shop.” Clover’s itchy tone rang through the kitchen. “No man would want to marry a woman who wields a cleaver for a living. Your father is near retirement age. We can’t be taking on new employees; much as we’d like to help, Laura, it would be impractical. You’re going to have to be realistic about this, dear.”
Laura leaned on the window ledge. How could Emma have borne such an antifeminist daughter? It was a mistake to come here. For once, Em was wrong.
“I think we should go,” Laura said, her words coming out as tight, mean little things. She hated herself for saying them, but self-preservation had to kick in sometimes, and when family were shutting you down, self-preservation seemed like the only thing you had left. She moved across the room, dropping a kiss on her father’s head. He pushed back his chair while Clover stayed rigid, holding her cup of tea in both hands.
When Jasper spoke, Laura reeled around.
“Clover,” he said, “can you think of any evidence that might point toward Ewan Buchanan being wrong?”
Clover sniffed. “My childhood and youth were a time in my life that I prefer to forget.”
Clover’s neat bob swung as she folded her thin arms.
“Jasper, let’s go.” It was too hard. The past was a complicated web that none of them was going to be able to unravel now. Apportioning blame would not help, but trying to forge answers out of a time that no longer existed and from people who had changed so much that their past selves had all but disappeared was going to be impossible. Anyone could see that. Laura held her head up and waited while Jasper shook her father’s hand.
As they stood at the gate that led from the immaculate front garden to the street, Laura took one last look at the semidetached house where she’d grown up. She pushed the little gate open and stopped at the cusp of the narrow street she’d walked down every single day for years. How well did she know every bump on this neat sidewalk? How little, if ever, did she want to return?
She started moving up the street.
“First, I need to go to the bank,” she said while Jasper kept pace beside her. “I’m going to commit to paying off the loan and try to reach an agreement with them about a more reasonable time frame. I’ll get a full-time job, drop out of the Royal College, and over my dead body will Emma have to move out of her home to cheaper accommodations. I don’t want her selling any one of her paintings. The bank will not be touching any of her things. I’ll move out of Bloomsbury and find somewhere less expensive to live. It’s the way it is.”
“You’re giving up.”
“There are some brick walls that no amount of bashing can knock down. Maybe one day I’ll save enough to be able to pay my own way through the Royal College of Music. I will not rely on anyone else.”
Jasper pulled her to a stop.
“No, Jasper. I’m capable of taking care of my own life. If Ewan knew his father did that painting and didn’t trust me enough to tell me the truth, then how can I trust any offer of his to help in a way that only makes me beholden to him? And if Mother is happy to stand by and let me lose my music, then let her go right on. I’m going to take my life into my own hands here. I’ll fix this. I got myself into the Royal College. I’ll get myself out of it. I’m done.”
She marched down the familiar route to the local train station.
Jasper walked beside her, the feel of his arm around her shoulder blades giving her poor relief.
Summerfield, 1942
Emma lay awake through the entire night, her darkest thoughts tumbling like impenetrable shadows over and over themselves, round and round again. She thought she’d gotten away from the past and from
everything Jerome represented in her life—jealousy . . . There, she admitted her fear that everything could fall apart.
She thought she’d escaped. Goodness knew, she couldn’t have delved much deeper into the countryside than this. She’d surrounded herself with her closest friends, thought she had created something complete. A circle? Now, she saw that it was only a thin safety net. She and Patrick were strong, but were they strong enough to stop the world from pulling everything they’d built up in the last decades away from under their feet?
The fear of losing another child was worse than any fear she’d ever confronted in her life. Mothers and fathers were losing children left, right, and center during the two foul wars she’d seen in her lifetime. Goodness knew, it had been impossible losing her sweet son. And yet, it seemed ironic that all that was going to do her in this time was one man’s jealousy. Whatever the causes of all this, one thing was clear: she had never hoped to hurt Jerome so deliberately as he had set out to hurt her.
It was only when the sun shone through her bedroom windows that she gained a strange new sense of clarity; a sense of knowing what to do crept over her in that old, familiar way. She would not let her feelings override her tolerance for Clover or for Jerome. While Clover’s coldness toward her not only hurt Emma, it frightened her—she would do everything she could to treat her daughter with respect.
Emma stopped at the top of the stairs. As the sounds of Clover’s girlish laughter tempered with Jerome’s deeper chuckles rang across the landing from her daughter’s bedroom—the bedroom that held two single beds, one for Clover and one for the girlfriends she used to have stay—Emma fought back bile in her stomach.
Change had come too fast this time. But she had become used to the fact that nothing was permanent in this life. She’d learned that if one did not accept change or if you fought it when it came, then it had the capacity to fight right back and destroy everything in its path.