The Book of Lost and Found

by Lucy Foley

  ‘I’m starved,’ she says, ‘shall we eat?’

  They open the hamper that has been put together for them in the kitchen of the great house and unpack a cornucopia of food: cold meats and pâté, pies, cheeses, a game terrine.

  ‘I think they must have swapped our lunches in the kitchen,’ Alice says gleefully, ‘we’ve got the spread meant for the hunting party, and they’ve ended up with cheese sandwiches and a couple of apples.’ With a delighted cry she unearths a bottle of fragrant white wine and pours them each a glass. Tom, preoccupied by what so nearly just took place, takes generous sips of his.

  ‘One of the sisters at the school liked her wine,’ says Alice. ‘She had an excellent supply of it. Once, I persuaded another girl to help me take a bottle, and we drank it one afternoon, sitting in the meadow above the school building, looking down over the valley. I was terribly badly behaved, I’m afraid. But then I was bored, so horribly bored. It’s ironic, considering Ma sent me there for my refinement.’

  Tom laughs. ‘Did it work?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Well, I’d say they’ve done a fairly good job. I hardly recognized you last summer, at the party.’

  She smiles wickedly. ‘I don’t believe it made a bit of difference. I managed to pretend a sufficient impression of polish, so that Ma and the Wicked Stepfather didn’t become suspicious. And I was good enough at my classes that the sisters decided against calling for my expulsion.’ She sits back against the trunk of the tree behind her and regards him. ‘I’m so envious of you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘All of it. Knowing what it is you want to do – having such talent only waiting for you to decide how you want to use it.’

  ‘You’re being generous. Besides, I’m meant to be concentrating on my studies for the next year at least: not messing around with paint.’

  Alice rolls on to her front. ‘When do you go back up?’

  ‘October.’

  ‘Are you looking forward to it?’

  ‘Not particularly.’ It will be good to see friends, to take possession once again of the austere little room of which he has become fond, and he enjoys the rhythms and rituals of the place, its peculiar strain of magic. But it will mean being away from Alice, being kept from his studio, being forced back into work that he feels has no real bearing upon what he actually wants to do with his life.

  Alice is staring at him. ‘Do you know,’ she says, almost fiercely, ‘I would give anything to be in your place? I can’t help feeling that …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That if I were allowed to go to university, if I were given a chance to use my brain, I might be able to make something of myself. Girls do, nowadays.’

  Alice tells Tom how, in her final year at school, several teachers recommended that she consider further study. The headmistress had gone so far as to suggest that she apply for an exhibition to one of the women’s colleges.

  ‘The Wicked Stepfather forbade it outright,’ she explains. ‘As for Ma, she was horrified by the idea: “So unfeminine … so beneath you.”’

  ‘I’m sorry, Alice.’

  She shakes her head. ‘Well, I’m going to have an education of another sort instead. I know Italy is hardly the world, but it’s a start.’

  ‘What do you mean, Italy?’

  ‘Aunt Margaret has invited me to stay with her in Venice. We leave in a couple of weeks.’

  ‘For how long?’

  ‘A few months. Aunt M. says that Venice is at its best in the autumn, when the summer tourists have gone. Ma has given it her blessing, which is a surprise. She’s usually terrified of letting me out of her sight for too long in case I disgrace myself.’ She smiles crookedly. ‘Though I’m sure the fact that Aunt Margaret is rich, and may one day wish to leave all of her wealth to someone, is not an insignificant consideration. That way they could wash their hands of me without it looking too bad of them.’

  Tom can’t explain what it is he feels now, hearing about Alice’s trip. It is akin to dread: a disproportionate reaction to such news. He cannot shake the sense that it will force change, disturb in some irrevocable way this happy equilibrium they have found.

  It is past midnight. Though he is tired, and though the bed is the softest he’s ever known, Tom cannot sleep. It is too hot, and his head is too full of thoughts. The room is bathed in the blue light of the moon that also illuminates the grounds beyond the window, the silver shield of the lake. The sight of the lake conjures immediately for him that image of Alice, of her stepping from the water in her shift, the wet silk clinging lovingly to the naked skin beneath. Tom turns over and presses his face into the pillow but he sees her still. And he recalls finer details: the dark impressions of her nipples, the darker shadow between her legs.

  He decides that the best thing would be to get out his sketchbook and try to recreate the image in his head on paper, hoping it may prove some sort of catharsis. No sooner has he stepped out of bed than there is a knock on the door: soft, imperceptible. He stops, listening intently. It comes again: three quick taps.

  ‘Yes?’ he whispers, though it sounds like a shout in the absolute silence.

  The door swings ajar and it is her, standing there, a small smile on her face. She moves towards him, through the shadows of the room and her body is milk white in the moonlight.

  ‘I wasn’t sure – beside the lake today,’ she says, as she draws nearer. ‘I was worried about our making a mistake, ruining things.’

  He can hardly trust himself to speak. ‘And now?’

  ‘I think the mistake would be not to.’

  15

  Corsica, August 1986

  It goes without saying that I didn’t tell Kate everything about that weekend in the countryside. I did tell her that it was the last time we spent together before Alice left the country and I returned to my final year at Oxford. She realized, when I told her about the picnic by the lake that it was where that drawing was made … the one that had led her to me.

  As for the rest, well, it is one of those recollections that I only rarely allow myself. I have a theory, you see, that the most precious memories can be damaged with too much handling, as with all delicate objects. And there is something else, too. It is that, when I think about that night, it reopens a wound that even after all these years remains raw, hidden just beneath the thin layer of skin that covers it.

  To counter this I focused my attention more intently than ever on the drawing I was making of Kate. It was going well. In fact, something extraordinary had happened. I had recaptured the urgency, the fluidity. Was it having such a face – so reminiscent of another – as my subject? I had resigned myself to settling for tranquillity from here on, but by some miracle my work had flamed into new life.

  It made me nervous, this rediscovered thing, for two reasons. First, because it had arrived so suddenly, and with force; one must be suspicious of phenomena of this nature, the changes they may herald. You do not live on an island set dead in the path of the mistral wind and not learn that lesson. Second, because I feared I would wake up tomorrow, or the next day, and it would have fled from me as abruptly as it had come. Yet there it was, every morning as I set pen to the paper, guiding my hand.

  I knew she was curious, but I had an almost superstitious fear of her seeing it before it was done. It was as though in doing so she might sap me of my new-found power. The logic of a fairy tale, I know.

  It’s a funny thing, because in recent years my work had sold for greater sums than ever before. It seemed that no one but myself, and perhaps a handful of the greatest art critics, realized that the fire had begun to dwindle. But now it was as though some new fuel had been introduced, some stirring breath exhaled.

  It pleased me to see Oliver being more civil towards the girl. My original decision not to tell him about her background had not endured. In my defence, my hand was forced when he came to me one morning before breakfast, to say that she was not to be trusted.

  ‘She h
as to go,’ he said, furious. ‘You are too kind, Grand-père – you are too ready to believe in someone’s good character.’

  I looked at him and felt a great sadness. And you are too ready to believe the opposite, I thought. When did that happen to you? He had not always been that way, not even after all that awfulness when he was a small boy. This was a recent phenomenon.

  I asked him what her offence had been. ‘I found her … poking around,’ he told me. ‘Early, when she probably thought no one would be about.’

  Apparently he had discovered her looking at the photographs on the wall in the hallway. Hardly the great crime his tone implied, but it had clearly disturbed him in some fundamental way.

  ‘She’d actually taken one off the wall,’ he said. ‘She was … staring at it.’ I guessed immediately which one it was – none of the others would have elicited such a strong reaction in him. It was time for it to come down, I thought. Elodia had wanted it there – but I knew that it upset Oliver to see it every time he passed.

  Oliver needed to know about the girl, I decided. He was at heart a kind man, and I loved him beyond all measure, but recent events had left their mark on him. I had seen the hostility with which he had greeted her arrival – the disdain that he showed towards her at mealtimes. I had to act, to bring it to an end. And so I told him about the girl’s tragedy.

  ‘She is suffering too,’ I said, ‘as much as you are. She has lost the two people she loved – the two people who were her only family, as far as I can discover …’

  Oliver listened intently as I revealed her story. Though he knew nothing of ballet, he had heard of June Darling and had read about the tragedy. ‘I had no idea,’ he said, appalled. There was a long silence, and I could see him reconsidering his assumptions about the girl, exposing them to the light of this new knowledge.

  ‘So,’ I said, ‘a photograph of a mother and child will have interested her in a particular way. I don’t think she is a thief, or a snoop – merely lonely. Please,’ I entreated him, ‘treat her with kindness from now on. It will only be for a short while.’

  ‘I’ll talk to her,’ he said, clearly ashamed. ‘I’ll apologize.’

  His reaction filled me with pride. Relief, too, because here, suddenly, was the Oliver I remembered. The old Oliver would never have behaved as he had done these last few weeks; he would have welcomed her from the beginning, without needing the knowledge of a tragedy to inform his behaviour.

  Kate

  It was just Stafford and I at the house for the day. Soon after breakfast Oliver had driven up to Bastia in the north to look at the interior of a cathedral there – as inspiration for the foyer of a new hotel, apparently. This was something of a relief: when Stafford had his nap I knew for once that I had the run of the place, with no chance of an awkward encounter with Oliver. And for most of the afternoon I managed to ignore the looming prospect of the evening ahead.

  When I heard the distinctive rasp of the 2CV’s engine in the road below I went into the house to change into a linen dress, feeling not unlike a soldier dressing for battle. I studied the result in the mirror. My skin, having recovered from the sunburn, had picked up some colour and my hair appeared darker and glossier than usual against the pale fabric.

  I was about to leave the room when I wavered: was the dress, despite its simplicity, too much? This indecision was foreign to me – I had never been one to care particularly about what I wore. This was not the time to start, I decided. Resolutely, I closed the door.

  It was seven o’clock when Oliver and I set off for Bonifacio. We resorted to rather forced, formal small talk in the car – faultlessly polite with one another. Oliver felt as awkward as I did, I realized, and that knowledge made me more grateful for the effort he was making on my behalf. Still, it was a relief when we left the slightly oppressive atmosphere of the car for a few minutes, so that I could photograph the majestic Lion of Roccapina: a rock named for its resemblance to a giant version of the beast, gazing out to sea.

  Bonifacio was even more astounding at close range: a city from a fantasy. We parked near the marina, and stood among the boats gazing up at the Old Town, where the buildings clung precariously to the top-heavy cliff face. It was hard to imagine how they had maintained their hold throughout the centuries, resisting the urge to plummet into the waves beneath. As if to reinforce the impression of a gravity-defying stunt, many of them were strangely elevated – perhaps five or six stories high, yet only one or two rooms wide.

  I framed them with my camera, pleased with the shot. ‘They must be fairly impractical, from an architectural viewpoint.’

  ‘Actually, it’s the opposite,’ Oliver said. ‘They were once extremely practical. In a spot like this, your advantage is the view, you prioritize it – especially when your enemy might be lying in wait across the water.’ He pointed to the purple shadow on the horizon that was Sardinia. ‘There isn’t much room on this cliff, so they had no option but to cram tightly together, growing upwards rather than out.’

  ‘Like Manhattan,’ I suggested.

  ‘Exactly,’ he said, nodding.

  ‘Well, I suppose they’ve proved their endurance by not plunging off the edge.’

  ‘One did,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘In the sixties, one building slid off into the sea.’

  ‘Did anyone die?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, without conviction – leaving me immediately certain that he did know but preferred not to say. ‘It was a long time ago.’

  I tried not to imagine what it would have been like to witness such a thing – the disastrous inevitability of gravity enacted on such a scale. Then, with another sort of inevitability, I thought of Mum’s plane. The dark earth below: beckoning, irresistible. I felt that familiar bleakness threaten, and willed it to retreat.

  ‘It hasn’t happened since,’ said Oliver, firmly. I glanced across and found him watching me, and I wondered what he had seen in my expression.

  We made the steep, sweaty climb to the Old Town. My feet slipped in my impractical flip-flops and my breath was tight in my throat. We passed a prostrate family of scrawny tabby cats, almost camouflaged against the stone, who regarded us indolently. As I climbed I continued to force away the old dark thoughts that drifted inexorably towards me.

  A couple of metres from the top I stepped clumsily, and the toes of my right foot shot forward, breaking the thin rubber thong that held the shoe on.

  ‘Shit,’ I muttered, pulling it off my foot and inspecting it. ‘It’s broken.’

  ‘Here –’ Oliver made his way back down the steps and took it from me. ‘It’s not; it’s only come through the base. See?’ He held it up. ‘I’ll fix it for you.’

  He repaired it in seconds, and I thanked him. For the first time that I could recall, he smiled. It was surely a reflexive thing, so quick that I almost missed it, but not before I noticed that one of his canine teeth was crooked, overlapping its neighbour ever so slightly. Whenever I had looked at him before I had seen an impenetrable mask, a symmetrical arrangement of bone and shadow; I was strangely pleased by my new-found knowledge of this imperfection.

  Wiping the sweat from my eyes I looked towards the sea. Beneath the lip of the promontory was a vast squat rock like an overgrown mossy boulder, washed on all sides by the green sea and dwarfing the grandest of the yachts that sailed beside it.

  ‘It’s called the Grain de Sable,’ Oliver said. ‘The best way to see it is by boat. You can’t get a sense of its true size from up here.’

  ‘That’s an odd choice of name. It looks more like … oh, a giant’s footstool, I suppose.’

  ‘That’s quite good,’ he said. ‘The domestic and epic together. I prefer “grain of sand’ though; I think it must have been someone’s idea of a joke. The coastline is dramatic here. There are sea caves, too, that can only be accessed from the water.’

  ‘Perhaps you could take me to them,’ I said, suddenly carried away, ‘in the fishing boat?’
/>
  ‘Yes,’ Oliver said, ‘if you’d like.’ But he did not seem enthused by the idea. No doubt he viewed this evening as apology enough – a one-off concession that he did not intend to repeat. And why should he? After all, I had told him I did not need babysitting.

  Clearly I was not the only one who had been dreading this excursion. I looked quickly away, back out to sea, so that he could not see my embarrassment.

  As evening fell, a festival atmosphere began to prevail. A boat in the marina below us was lit, suddenly, with a garland of white lights, and a cheer went up from the people drinking along the waterside. Laughter and talk from the bars and restaurants swam through the streets and somewhere a band began to play – a tinny, tuneless sound from where we stood, but spirited, nonetheless.

  ‘We should go and eat,’ Oliver said. ‘If we leave it too long there won’t be a free seat left in the place.’

  The restaurant was in the medieval heart of the Old Town, and the streets we walked through to reach it were serpentine walkways, sunk in shadow. Everywhere one looked there was some detail that caught the eye: a plaque commemorating a famous inhabitant or historical event; buttresses above our heads that created an arbour of stone; shrines to various local saints. It was perhaps a good thing that it was too dark to take any photographs, because I would have lingered there for some time.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Oliver said, when we got to the restaurant, ‘it’s only pizza – but the best I’ve ever eaten.’

  ‘Pizza’s fine.’

  The place was certainly charming: an outdoor eating area overhung with espaliered vines, with a view straight down the cobbled street and on to the sea.