The Book of Lost and Found

by Lucy Foley

  ‘I think you are like him,’ I said, instinctively, wondering as I said it if I truly believed it. But when Oliver thanked me, with real gratitude in his voice, I thought that perhaps it didn’t matter either way.

  Back in my room I sat on my bed for a while in the half-dark, thinking. I could not believe that I had talked to Oliver about Evie. I had shared one of my most shameful secrets with a man who was still, when all was said and done, barely more than a stranger to me. Much as I would have liked to dismiss it as the influence of the drink, I knew that it couldn’t be blamed on that. In fact, I did not feel even remotely drunk now. It was rather the opposite: I felt very sober indeed, peculiarly clear-headed.

  It had been some instinct in me, I realized, some feeling that he would not judge me too harshly for it, that he might even understand. And it seemed – to my relief – that he had. I chose not to reflect upon that other thing that had happened: that sudden, violent – for there was no other word for it – current of attraction. No good could come of thinking about that.

  21

  Corsica, August 1986

  ‘I forgot to ask,’ Stafford said, as we sat in his studio the next morning, ‘did you jump from the top of the waterfall?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid not. Oliver did, though. He told me that you taught him.’

  Stafford grinned. ‘I did.’ He seemed inordinately pleased by this. ‘Until quite recently I would have been up there doing it myself, but unfortunately as one gets older one has to recognize one’s limitations. Annoyingly it isn’t the jumping off that has become difficult but the boring part: the climbing up.’

  It made me uncomfortable, to hear him speak in this way. It was hard to imagine anything – even old age – slowing him down, and to hear Stafford himself remark on his increasing frailty was a painful dose of reality. I had grown to like him so much, and the suggestion that he might not be around for ever depressed me. I knew it was irrational, this feeling – it was hardly as though he was on his deathbed – but if the last couple of years had taught me anything it was how short a time you might have left with someone.

  ‘Kate,’ Stafford said, surprising me out of my thoughts, ‘I have to admit that I’m not looking forward to telling the next part. It isn’t a time I would choose to revisit – and I have been a coward in putting it off. You need to know … and perhaps it’s good for me to speak of it. A catharsis, if you like.’ The smile he gave me then, for once, was not a real smile – more of a grimace than anything else.

  ‘After that fourth letter, I had nothing from Alice for months. Complete silence. She’d told me she expected to return in December, and I’d even gone so far as to hope she would want to meet over the holidays, but my weeks back in London passed without any message or sign from her.’

  ‘Didn’t you think of going to see her instead?’

  ‘That wasn’t how it worked. I know it sounds feeble on my part, but our meetings had always been on her terms. There was the never-spoken understanding that I would not be a welcome caller at Lord and Lady Hexford’s house. I was embarrassed, too.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’d sent her three letters since that last from her with no reply. I told myself I had to accept the fact that she was tiring of our friendship. That final letter I’d had from her, being so brief and ill thought-out … it seemed the likeliest explanation. I was miserable. It didn’t help that it was January, with its bleak weather and short days, the distractions of Christmas gone by and only my final exams to look forward to.

  ‘My own misery coincided with a wider depression in spirits. All the news was bad. It had been since October, but by January it was clear that the economy wasn’t going to recover quickly, as many had hoped. It was as if we were all suffering from some great tiredness, a malaise.’

  22

  Oxford, March 1930

  Three months into the New Year, and four months since Alice returned to England, and still no word from her. Tom feels his hope dwindling. He thinks of that last afternoon – and of the night that followed. She had been uncharacteristically shy with him the next day, but that was understandable. It was, as she had told him, the first time she’d done ‘anything quite like that’. There had been no coolness in her manner afterwards, and yet here it is: the incontrovertible fact that she seems to have forgotten – or chosen to forget – that he exists.

  Maybe they did make a mistake that night – though he could never bring himself to see it as such. Or perhaps things could have been different had she not met that self-satisfied Frenchman she wrote about in her letters. Or if Tom had been able to make his way out to Venice, as she had suggested. He is tormented by the idea that his own lack of action may have cost him so much.

  The one thing equal to distracting himself from these thoughts is his art. The small exhibition that he wrote to tell Alice about was a success. Where most of those represented had just one piece in the show, Tom, much to his astonishment, had eight. There had been coverage, too: in a couple of local papers and the university journals. It was the first time since that trip to see Lady Margaret that he felt he might have a chance at it.

  Tom goes for an early morning stroll along Addison’s Walk to clear his mind. At this hour, a month ago, it would have been dark, but this morning the college and its grounds are washed in the thin grey light of dawn. Daffodils, trumpets still furled into tight knots, and primroses with preternaturally bright petals line the path. Spring usually brings thoughts of regeneration, of hope. This year, however, it serves only to remind Tom of how much time has passed without word from her. And of how much closer he is to having to make decisions about his future that he would rather postpone. A little more time, that is all he needs. Time to travel further down that path on which his recent work has taken him. But each month seems to pass more quickly than the one before it. Soon he will be out in the world with his new responsibilities and the weight of his parents’ expectations.

  Tom likes this route along the Walk because of the sense of his own smallness it inspires; the sense that he is following in the footsteps of men far greater than he could ever hope to be. Usually he would take his time, but the wind is getting up, driving the rain sideways, assaulting him through his thin jacket, so he turns back in the direction of the college building, preparing himself for the daily ritual of asking at the porter’s lodge if there are any telegrams. Afterwards, he will head to his cubbyhole to check for the letter that never comes. As he nears the lodge, he thinks, Perhaps I’ll wait. I’ll go after breakfast. Disappointment, even the sort that has become habitual, sits badly on an empty stomach.

  Yes, he decides, it can wait. Yet as he passes the lodge he hears his name called from within. ‘Mr Stafford – is that you?’

  He peers inside.

  ‘Thought it was. There’s a message for you. The one day you don’t come and ask.’

  Tom steps forward. He is careful to appear disinterested. It could, after all, be nothing. A message from his mother, perhaps: always welcome, but no cause for unnecessary excitement.

  The man hands him a slip of paper, and he stands in the doorway to read it.

  * * *

  Dear Thomas STOP Would appreciate your assistance in a matter close to both of our hearts STOP If you can spare the time please take train to London immediately and all expenses will be reimbursed STOP Yours M

  * * *

  M. It is from Lady Margaret: he is in no doubt.

  There is the meeting with his tutor this evening. There is the deadline for the paper at the end of the week. Nevertheless he goes to his room and packs a bag with the few things that present themselves to him as necessary for the trip: his sketchbook and leather pencil case. A couple of books, too, though more out of a sense of duty than any real belief that he will study on his journey down.

  On the train, as the waterlogged countryside slides unremarked past his window, he takes the telegram from his pocket and studies it again. It’s about Alice, he knows it is. He tries to extra
ct some further meaning. Is Alice in trouble? How, he thinks, could he have been so self-absorbed as to ignore the possibility that something might have happened to her?

  Lady Margaret answers the door herself. She is attired no less eccentrically than the last time Tom set eyes on her: a long housecoat in plum velvet with dragons and birds and exotic flora embroidered on the chest and sleeves, a scarf of fuchsia-pink silk about her head in aggressive contrast with her tangerine hair. She uses a different staff today, with a silver jackal’s head for a handle, the pointed face peering cheekily from beneath her grasp. He realizes, standing in front of her, that she is not as tall as he had imagined. It is rather the effect of her presence and the etiolated slenderness that lend the impression of height.

  ‘Thomas,’ she says, with no reference to the journey he has made, as though his arrival on her doorstep is a given thing. ‘Welcome. I need your help.’

  She beckons him through to the salon and he sits on an emerald ottoman with feet like the claws of a bird of prey. Beatrice enters immediately, bearing a tall silver flask of coffee, which she pours from an impressive height into two cups.

  ‘Is Alice all right?’ Tom asks, unable to bear not knowing any longer.

  Lady Margaret reaches behind her, takes a small wooden box from the top of the cabinet and withdraws two slender cigars, proffering one, which Tom declines. She lights the other for herself and draws upon it thoughtfully before she speaks. ‘You see, that’s the thing. I haven’t heard from her since she left Venice. I was rather hoping she might have been in contact with you.’ He shakes his head, and she sighs forth a cloud of peat-scented smoke.

  ‘I assumed that she was too … well, busy,’ he says. ‘The last letter I had from her was sent from Venice in late October.’

  ‘Ah, I was hoping you wouldn’t say that. So she’s had no contact with either of us. I’m afraid there’s something strange going on and I feel certain it’s Georgina’s doing. I have never trusted that woman.’

  She draws on the cigar, the tip flaming dangerously, and exhales again. ‘My brother was the impulsive sort. Most of his impulses were true, but he cannot have made a worse decision in his life than to marry Georgina. She is a bourgeois, a philistine – and, worst of all, she cannot bear the fact that she has failed to make a daughter in her own dismal image.’ She squints at him through the smoke. ‘I wonder if anything got back to her.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Venice. There was …’ and here she looks at Tom apologetically, ‘someone who took an interest in Alice. He was older, had been around the world a little. I thought it would be good for her to see some of the city with him – an education of sorts.’

  ‘I know,’ Tom says, his ears ringing with the concentrated effort of remaining impassive. ‘She mentioned him in a letter.’

  Lady Margaret nods. ‘Once,’ she says, ‘when Alice had just turned sixteen, I told Georgina that I would arrange to meet her from school at the end of term. Instead of taking her home, I whisked her off to Paris and we spent a long weekend there. Her mother retaliated by sending her to that place in Switzerland for three years.’

  ‘And you think that if she has found out about Venice she might do something similar?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I don’t like it. I had Jacob drive me to the house the other day, and it all seemed too quiet. I knocked on the door and the butler was very abrupt. No, the family weren’t there. Where had they gone? He wouldn’t say.’ She thinks for a moment. ‘Though it might not have been true. Have you seen that house?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It is like a fortress. If they didn’t want anyone coming in or going out they could pull up the drawbridge easily enough. I’m on the blacklist. On ne passe pas.’ Lady Margaret regards Tom thoughtfully. ‘But they don’t know you, do they?’

  Alice’s house is exactly as Lady Margaret described it: the modern equivalent of a fortress. The stucco façade is a natural partner for the pewter of the sky, and to Tom it resembles a great plaster cast concealing possible deformities beneath. He stares up at the secret squares of the dark windows, and is reminded irresistibly of the photographs he has seen of Alice’s stepfather, with his large square head and the small eyes set slightly too close together in the broad expanse of his skull. For all this, he and the house are handsome: in an order in which handsomeness is equated with a projection of power, authority and utter conviction.

  The lofty door, painted dark grey, makes Tom think of drawbridges. He knocks. After several long moments it swings open to reveal an elderly butler. The man insinuates himself into the space between door and frame so as to block the view to within, and peers down at the visitor.

  ‘Can I help you, sir?’ he says, but his tone suggests that no assistance will be forthcoming.

  ‘I hope so. I’m a friend of Alice’s.’

  The butler blinks at him impassively. ‘Lady Alice isn’t at home, sir.’

  ‘Oh? Where is she, if you don’t mind me asking?’

  ‘It isn’t my place to say, sir.’ But something in Tom’s expression goes some way to softening the old man. As though he feels it is against his better judgement, the butler leans forward and murmurs, ‘Lady Alice has been unwell. My mistress, Lady Hexford, thought it best that she be removed to the country to recuperate.’

  ‘The country?’

  ‘Indeed, sir.’

  ‘May I ask the nature of Lady Alice’s illness?’

  ‘I’m afraid I am not at liberty to say, sir.’

  ‘But … is it serious?’ Tom thinks of the flu that killed his mother’s sister and several cousins in 1918.

  ‘I must insist, sir, on you asking me no more about it. I have told you everything that I—’

  A voice comes from within. ‘Is this fellow bothering you, Simpson?’ The speaker appears: a youngish man, in his thirties perhaps, shorter than Tom but powerfully built, with a large handsome face and a pugnacious set to his jaw. This must be Matthew, the stepbrother.

  ‘Not exactly, sir, he was—’

  ‘You know, old chap,’ Matthew says to Tom, ‘I think I have something of yours, here.’

  ‘Oh?’

  He pulls them from his pocket. It is a moment before Tom recognizes them for what they are, his last letters to Alice.

  ‘As my sister is … indisposed, I decided it would best if I attended to her correspondence,’ Matthew says, as though it is explanation enough.

  ‘Those were private.’

  ‘Ah, I thought you might say that. I assure you, my sister would understand entirely – no, she’d positively want me to have opened them. We’re extremely close, you see.’

  Tom turns to go. There is nothing to be done here – and he refuses to waste time on this foul character. The letters have given him new cause for alarm.

  ‘By the way, old chap …’

  ‘Yes?’ Tom manages to keep his tone civil.

  ‘You know, if I’ve got one piece of wisdom, it’s this.’ Matthew glances at the letters, and then up at Tom, a smile playing about his lips. ‘I really would advise against all this … sentiment. It’s not going to work with my sister. If you want to get between her legs, try being less subtle about it. She’s a woman of the world, my sister. She’ll understand plain speaking far better.’

  Tom doesn’t stop to think. He turns and lunges for the man, not caring where he is or who he is – not someone brought up to brawl in the streets. All he wants is to inflict the maximum degree of pain possible, preferably a direct hit to that smirking face, but his fist collides with wood instead of flesh, and his knuckles smart with the impact. It takes him a good few seconds to work out that the door has been slammed in his face.

  The car is a different vehicle from the one Alice drove on those autumn afternoons in Oxfordshire. It is dark grey and huge – if possible, even larger than the other. It holds, comfortably: the driver, Liverwhaite; a hamper of food ‘just in case’; Lady Margaret; Tom, and Lady Margaret’s Burmese cat, William, who si
ts imperiously upon his own cushion between them.

  Chebworth is hardly more than a hamlet: a scattering of cottages and an inn, and Chebworth Manor lies a couple of miles from the village. It does not reveal itself until they are directly before it, for the grounds are shrouded with a dark thicket of elm and oak, so that it is impossible to see beyond them to the house. They draw to a halt in front of the ironwork gates that mark the entrance to the drive, and through the opening a vast building can be glimpsed. The car idles. Lady Margaret looks across at Tom.

  ‘You should go in alone.’

  Tom is astonished that this fearless woman appears to be showing something like cowardice. As if reading his thoughts, Lady Margaret gives a bark of laughter. ‘Oh, I’m not afraid of her, if that’s what you think. I’m only concerned that my presence might complicate matters. I seem … unable to behave myself, you see, when I’m in her presence. I think it might be safer if it were just you.’

  The gates are secured with a padlock and chain, but Tom has been adept since childhood in the scaling of difficult ascents: various species of tree, the low cliffs around Winnard Cove, the drop beneath the dormitory window at school. Lady Margaret, Liverwhaite and William look on as he scrambles his way up and over the wall to drop down into the damp, dark thicket below.

  Wet vegetation, branches and leaves claw at him as he fights his way through the undergrowth to the expanse of lawn. The grass is short and soft as green velvet; as immaculate as if it had been clipped with a pair of nail scissors. The gravelled drive stretches away on his right towards the house. The building in the distance looks less like a home than a state building. It is squat and white; for all its pretensions to grandeur it looks like the giant white plinth of some missing statue. The many windows glitter uniformly in the weak sun.