by Ella Carey
Emma would carve something positive out of this. Clover was, by all accounts, almost an adult, and if Emma were to in any way stop her from pursuing this affair, she would only be walking down the same path that Emma’s father had trodden.
Emma knocked on Patrick’s bedroom door, opening it an inch when he called her to come inside. He lay on his bed in the morning sun, his long legs stretched out in front of him, crossed at the ankles.
“Come and lie with me,” he said, his voice honey-soft.
And she did; she went over to him and settled herself next to him, resting her head on his shoulder as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
“You know what they say about us.” She smiled.
“Oh, God, yes. Degenerate, strange, weird, cut-off . . . Clover’s completely conservative in comparison, you know.”
“Good.” She ran her hand over his familiar chest.
He caught it and brought it up to his lips. “Things might seem like they’re ending sometimes, but you know that means they’re beginning as well.”
“Do you think she’s in love with Jerome?” she asked.
“God, no. She’s only doing it to annoy you. And me . . .”
Emma closed her tired eyes.
Once again, she would not create a mess.
Patrick went for a walk toward the South Downs with Jerome on the second morning after his arrival. Emma watched them wandering up the old lane toward the still, silent hills that had protected the farmlands around Summerfield for centuries, that had provided some protection from all the battles that had gone on over the channel during Emma’s life so far.
It was a familiar sight, those two going off together, and yet it was something, heaven knew, Emma thought she’d never have to witness again. If she closed her eyes, she could imagine that twenty years had not passed at all. Except that now her daughter sat on a deck chair next to her by the lake, staring at an upside-down book. Her legs were splayed out in front of her as if she were a child.
Emma came to a swift decision right then, right there. She had to do it sometime. If Jerome were to tell her the truth that had been too hard to share with her . . . then heaven help them all.
“Clover,” she said, “there is something you ought to know.”
Clover’s wide brown eyes were luminous with youth.
“Darling.”
Clover rolled her eyes.
Emma fought every voice inside her that told her that this was not a good idea. Banishing them, she went right on.
“You know that while I loved Oscar for a time, there has been another love in my life that I’m unable to switch off. It’s a love so strong that it’s bigger than me. I would like to be able to explain it, but, well, perhaps the best explanation I can give for its existence is sitting right here beside me by the lake. Our lake.”
Clover’s head darted up like a rocket.
“What are you saying, Mother?” she whispered.
Just then, everything flashed before Emma. Uncertainty bit at her. She should have done this with Patrick. What was she thinking?
“Oscar, darling, is not your father. It’s Patrick . . .” She’d thought about telling Clover so many times, and yet, so many times, fear of her daughter becoming some outcast had stopped her from saying what needed to be said.
Clover’s hands moved, flailing, independent of her body, finally resting rigid by her side. The hands Emma had held so many times . . . Oh, how she wanted to reach out to her child.
But instead, as if overcome with the saying, with the speaking of what she’d held secret, with everything that had happened in the past few years and, were she honest, over the past few days, Emma stood up and went into the house. She spent the rest of the evening alone in her studio. She painted with the vigor of a woman on the run. From what, she had no idea. Her years of silence had wrought things that were felt so intensely that she was not sure she could broach any understanding of why she hadn’t spoken out herself.
Had she, by not speaking, implied that Clover was not worthy of her trust? Was keeping the truth, veiled under the cloak of protectionism, a way of not giving those people we protected the benefit of the doubt? Of course it was. But all the time, she had held off telling Clover because Emma knew that, while she might have succeeded in getting away from a judgmental society, the fact was that society still existed beyond the walls of Summerfield. And if a girl was to venture into it, war or no war, she would be judged and shunned by other families, by those who still saw themselves as more respectable than Emma and Patrick, through no fault of Clover’s in the least.
Emma rested her head down in her hands on her painting stool, only to leap forward and rip the painting she’d started right off from her easel.
What was more, Emma herself had been raised in a world where certain things were accepted but not spoken of. In the Victorian era, it was the way one operated. No one would trust a child with information that might ruin their chances of acceptance in society! Neither of her parents had ever trusted Emma with confidences about their personal lives until Emma was a young woman, and her father had expected her to remain silent about their financial situation.
The sound of footsteps, hard and heavy, thundered up the hallway as she sat there in the glorious, light-filled studio. A voice resonated through the house. Jerome was back from the walk with Patrick. Clover’s voice was high, hysterical. Childish. And above all, angry.
Emma leaned her head on her empty easel.
Patrick appeared in the doorway. She stood up, helpless with grief.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
London, 1980
Laura sat with the dean in his office at the Royal College of Music. The room’s high ceiling and large windows seemed to hold the promise of beauty, of the beautiful music that was created between these lofty walls, while the everyday matters of finance and budgeting and running a university department were obvious in the piles of documents and letters that were scattered on his desk.
“As you know, my grandmother is the artist Emma Temple,” she said.
He pulled his glasses down onto his nose and regarded her over the frames.
“Of course,” he said. “I adore the Circle’s work, and it is a delightful honor for us to have any relation of hers studying here.”
Laura knotted her hands in her lap. “Well, you see, her dear friend Patrick Adams . . .”
“Yes.”
“Painted her to the best of our knowledge during the summer of 1923. In France, and, unfortunately . . .” Her words faded off again. She looked away.
“Laura, I read the Times.”
Laura took in a breath. “I took out a loan to fund my music tuition.”
“Many students do.”
“Yes, but my grandmother allowed me to use her portrait as collateral for the loan. Emma was—is—the guarantor. Now that the painting’s provenance is under question, the bank has rescinded the loan. There’s nothing I can do. And as far as I can see, the painting isn’t . . . what we thought after all. The bank is going to acquire all Gran’s assets.” Something stopped her from mentioning Ewan.
The dean, who had charmed her with his gentle approach on the day she’d auditioned for the college, took off his glasses and laid them on the table between them.
“I’m going to have to drop out of the Royal College.”
“We can’t have that.”
Laura had sat up all night.
A shadow passed across the dean’s face. He stood up, his back to her, leaning on the windowsill and staring out at the Royal Albert Hall opposite the college.
“I’m sorry,” Laura said. She stood up, too, hovering a moment in the quiet space. The dean’s sigh was heavy in the silence.
He lifted an arm as if in a distracted acknowledgment of her decision. Laura turned, feeling a tight grimace gripping her features. She made her way back out into the corridor, out through the building that had held so many promises and yet now seemed like an empty shell of itself.
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The phone rang by Laura’s bed in the very early hours of the next morning. Like some crazed train that arrived at the wrong station day in and day out, she’d woken up as usual in the pitch darkness, her thoughts diving to their most panic-stricken place. She’d thrown off her sheets in a hot sweat. Her arm seemed to move of its own accord picking up the handset.
“Laura.”
Laura sat up and ran her hand through her messed-up hair. “Gran?” she whispered. “Are you okay?”
“Of course.” Emma sounded matter-of-fact.
Laura lay back, hitting her pillow with a thud.
“Sleep becomes a useless activity as one gets older. When I close my eyes, I can’t help thinking that I won’t wake up.”
Laura drew her quilt around her body. “I was awake.”
“Yes. You’ve been looking dreadful lately. I can’t begin to imagine.”
“Gran, can I tell you something?”
“Of course.”
“I want you to listen to me. While I can’t pay the bank half their loan immediately, I’ll negotiate with them and convince them I’ll pay it off as fast as I can. I will move to cheaper housing, and I could even try to take out a personal loan from another bank to pay off this one, while I work full-time-plus. I’ll take on fifty violin students as well if I need to. It will be fine. I love you.”
“No.”
Laura ran a hand over her sweaty forehead. Her furniture took on unfamiliar shapes in the darkness.
“I think there is someone who can help,” Emma said. “It’s a long shot, I grant you.”
“What?”
“Jerome Douglas.” Emma pronounced the name as if it were a triumph.
All Laura knew was that when Em mentioned that name, she usually accompanied it with a derisive sniff.
“I admit that I resisted the idea of involving him in this from the start,” Emma went on. “But I’m afraid I’m desperate, and . . . you see, dear, if there was one person who was privy to what went on, it was Jerome. He was there the entire summer that Patrick painted me in France. He was close to Patrick, and, I hate to admit it, he was closer than I was at that time, and then, well, he was also important to Clover later on.”
“To Mum?”
Emma was quiet a moment. “Jerome appeared twice in my life. Twice, I admit, dear, he got under my skin. He’s the last person I want back, believe me. But, ironically, he is the person we need. How strange life is sometimes, but in some ways, I . . . Never mind,” she said.
Laura frowned. “But is he still—”
“Alive?” Emma sounded as quick as a whip now. “He’s not only alive, I’ve found him. I thought he was probably dead or in New York. But it turns out he stayed in London after he met Clover in 1942. He should, with any luck, be able to prove that Patrick painted me. He’s our only chance.”
Laura couldn’t help thinking that this was only going to be too little, too late.
“I have his phone number, dear.”
Laura sat up and flicked on her bedside light. She reached for the pen and paper that she always kept by her bed.
“I suggest you ring him first thing in the morning.”
“Won’t you call him?”
There was a silence.
“I think it’s best you do that, not me.” Emma could be such a curious mix of throw-it-all-away confidence and deep sensitivity all at once.
“You should go to sleep, Gran.”
“Bollocks to that,” Emma said. “I’ll be having a very long sleep soon.”
The street outside was silent. Laura shivered now in the stark light from her lamp that flooded her bed in the otherwise darkened room. “Please, Gran.”
Emma’s voice cracked when she spoke. “I don’t want to look down on you and see that you are not playing the violin. It was what you were born to do, and I won’t stand for you giving it up.”
The breath that Laura took in was ragged. “Gran—”
“You will not give it up.”
“I’m going back to sleep now, Gran,” Laura murmured. “Thank you, but . . .”
“Call him. Don’t let him fob you off. And get back to Ewan as well.”
Laura opened and shut her mouth.
Emma hung up the phone.
Laura lay awake until dawn crept through the curtains. She reached for the phone the moment the clock hand moved around to eight.
When she introduced herself, he came straight to the point.
“Emma’s granddaughter?” he said without preamble. “Pinch me now!”
“Is there any way we could meet somewhere and talk?” Laura asked.
“Don’t suppose you guys still haunt Bloomsbury by any chance?”
“How could you possibly think not?”
The sound of a chuckle came down the phone. “Why don’t we meet at the fountain in Russell Square at eleven o’clock?” he said. “And, Laura, this sure is a bit grummy for you.”
Laura hung up and shook her head.
At ten to eleven, she stood by the fountain in Russell Square. Fine sprays of water floated into the spring air. When an upright old man walked toward her, she scanned his features first: eyebrows that remained defined, dark eyes. He looked around ten years younger than Em, so eighty or so perhaps, but then Laura found her gaze drawn down to his shoes. The soft lace-ups he wore seemed to speak to her more than anything else about him. They were the sort of shoes that only the elderly wore. For some odd reason, Laura felt herself softening a little toward this man whom Em seemed to dismiss until now.
He’d seen her and was making his way straight over.
“Laura?” he said.
She held out her hand.
Some long-ago expression passed across his face. “You have to be Clover’s daughter, and yet you have so many of Em’s features too. God, that woman drove me insane. Can’t help feeling this is a moment of reckoning,” he said.
Laura took in the deep furrows around his chocolate-colored eyes, the way he gripped and relaxed his hands at his sides.
“Shall we sit down?” she asked.
Jerome Douglas eased himself down on the nearest bench.
“How is the old fire extinguisher Em?” he asked, taking a sidelong glance toward Laura.
It was hard to know whether to be consternated or amused by his odd expressions. Fire extinguisher? That was one way to describe Em. Laura focused on the children who ran in and out of the sparkling mist near the fountain.
“She’s well. Fine. Amazing.”
“Of course she is,” he said.
“What was it like?” Laura asked suddenly. “If you don’t mind my asking, being an outsider of sorts but knowing them all?”
Jerome was quiet for a moment. “I can’t tell you how wild it made me feel being on the outer edge of their group! Only a week after my arrival in France that first summer, Ambrose, Lawrence, and Oscar all left the place, along with their dolled-up partners. It made me pretty balled up. I know I took my beef out on Em. Blamed her. But you see, she was such a hard-boiled egg—a toughie, Laura. You couldn’t break her shell no matter how hard you bashed at it. And I bashed as hard as I could.” He was silent a moment.
“She saw straight through me from the moment we met. Sensed that I was only dabbling in art. Saw me as full of hooey. And the fact was, I wasn’t serious about art like she was. But I thought she looked down on me for that. For my part, I wanted to thumb my nose at my family back home, not go into the finance industry. I was having none of that. As for Em, I decided she could be the one left holding the bag, not me. I put on the live-wire act to foil her and set my cap to get Patrick and a career in art. Tried everything I could to be a bohemian, but I ended up training as an accountant instead.” He chuckled and crossed his legs. “My family cut me loose in the end, too, you see.”
“Oh.”
He sat back on the bench.
Laura shook her head. She grimaced as she pushed on with her next question. “What about my mother?” Clover had never spoken
about Jerome in her life. Sometimes it seemed as if Laura held only a little kaleidoscope of disjointed patterns when it came to her family’s past. If she tried to turn the handle in order to dig in deeper, the few pictures she could see never became a pattern that made sense.
Jerome crossed his legs back. “I met your mother in a nightclub in London during the war. To be honest, after my family became killjoys, I’d come back here in the thirties with some pathetic hopes to get back with Patty again. When I met Clover later on, well . . . the old flame of resentment was still not dead. Need I say more? I’d heard on the grapevine that Pat had ended up shacked up with Em for decades. And that riled me.”
“But my mother would have been, what, seventeen?” She knew she had to get to the point, but somehow, she had to put small pieces back together before she could tackle the central thing.
Something akin to a smile passed across his face. “Clover was eighteen, by goodness! And, well, my dear, I thought that if I appeared at their wretched Summerfield, then Patrick would lay off stalling, realize he’d messed up by dumping me, and all that jazz. But he told me to mooch off and to lay off his daughter. Emma just thought I was even more of a sap. Hardly talked to me, as usual.”
Laura tried to absorb it all.
“So you want me to verify the portrait,” he said. “It’s such a crazy thing.”
“I don’t know if you can.”
It was his turn to listen while she told him a potted version of Ewan’s story and her disaster with the loan.
“Did you see Patrick paint Emma in France? You apparently were the one who had access to the studio.”
He was quiet a moment. “I can confirm that he painted every last damned stroke, my dear.”
Laura resisted the urge to leap off the bench. Jerome might be Em’s nemesis, but at this point, he was Laura’s dearest friend.
“Not only was I in France, not only did I wake up every damned morning to see him standing at that bloody easel looking at her in a way he never looked at me, but I was with him in Paris and London afterward. That was when he was finishing the work. Even though, I admit, I’d safely gotten rid of Emma and I thought I had Patrick to myself, the wretched portrait hung between us like some spooky reminder of her in every hotel where we laid our heads. What was worse, it became clear to me that she was the one Patrick was really stuck on. I wasn’t swell enough by a mile. No matter how many great people I tried to introduce him to, no matter how many parties I took him to, no matter how stuck on him I was, he was never going to treat me with the tenderness he showed her. So, like an unwanted dog, I went back to New York. And got short shrift from my family as well.”