It had been later that evening, as she sat with her mother and sister, that she said, “I’ve invited Jack Staunton to call on us tomorrow.”
And Ethne had smirked but said nothing.
“For tea?” Madeline asked, a note of mild alarm in her voice.
“Yes, I suppose so. I think I said around four . . .”
“I see.” Madeline put down her sewing, cast her eyes about the room, as if reckoning it from another’s perspective. Then she said, “I think perhaps it impolite not to also invite the countess. You said she’s very nice . . .”
Nice: it was not the best-chosen or most accurate word to describe the countess, Cecily realized. Nice meant . . . unthreatening, well-intentioned, amiable. The countess was amiable, but as for well-intentioned, Cecily wasn’t altogether sure, and unthreatening? The lady was formidable. She smoked cigarettes, took sherry in the garden, possessed ardent opinions on almost everything, and used words like sex without even noticing. What on earth would her mother make of it all, of her? But it was decided that Rosetta would deliver a note to Temple Hill the following morning, formally inviting all three—the countess, Miss Dorland and Jack—to tea, but not that day. It would appear a little hasty and ill-conceived to send an invitation for the very same day, Madeline said.
“But I’ve already asked him, told him to call by tomorrow.”
“That’s fine, dear. I shall explain in my note.”
“You must admit, it would be rather strange if he came to call here alone,” Ethne began. “People would assume you were courting,” she added, glancing at Madeline.
By midafternoon a date had been set, but not for tea at the Chadwicks’.
Rosetta had begrudgingly taken the note, and returned with another—a counteroffer. “I can’t be doing with going back up that track, not again, not in this heat. It’s a hundred degrees out there, and there’s about to be an almightly storm,” she said, handing over the sealed envelope and falling into a chair. She fanned herself with her hat. “Just look at my feet,” she added, lifting her skirts.
Madeline opened the cream envelope, unfolded the paper. Cecily could see two elaborate gold letter Cs at the top of the page. Madeline read the note in silence, reflected, and then reread it, aloud: “‘My dear Mrs. Chadwick, thank you so very much for your kind invitation to tea. I was however on the very point of extending an invitation to you and your daughters to dine with me here on Saturday evening. I know from dear Cecily how busy you are, and I am quite sure dinner is perhaps less of an interruption to your day, and it will be such a treat for me to have you all here and to meet you at last.’” Madeline paused, reflective once more. “‘Shall we say seven p.m.? I do hope this isn’t too early but I know people here prefer to dine earlier in the evening.’”
She turned to Cecily, a furrow of wariness about her brow. “Well, would you like to go to dinner? Ethne, you won’t be able to come of course, you agreed to go with the Foxes to the concert at the Jubilee Hall,” she reminded her elder daughter. “So it would only be you and me,” she said, smiling at Cecily.
And thus Cecily found herself under an ominous sky, clutching another note from her mother to the countess. As she walked up the hill she recalled the time, years before, when she and Annie had ventured there together. “You do know that we’re trespassing,” Annie had said, making it all the more thrilling, all the more frightening.
The place was perched high on the hill and surrounded by woodland, so the only way to see it was to trespass. With their hands pressed up against dusty panes, they had peered in at empty rooms, and then wandered about the gardens, traipsing across overgrown lawns and down mossy pathways, through tangled woods and bracken, ducking branches. When they stumbled upon the temple—almost lost in holly, its pillars covered in ivy—they quickly concluded that it predated the house, had been built centuries before, an ancient relic. And the word “sacrifice” had been enough for them to run back up the hillside, out of the shadows and onto the track.
The house had struck Cecily then as the perfect place to hide away from the world, to be invisible. Mothballed and forgotten, it had felt to her like a sleeping place; a place waiting for someone to come and rescue it and bring it back to life.
Cecily’s own home, the brick house her father had built, though considerably smaller and less secluded, was—she had thought then—much prettier. It had a low-pitched roof with exposed rafters, a number of unusual stained-glass windows, and, inside, paneled walls, a parquet floor and built-in shelves, cabinets and window seats, all in the same honey-hued oak. It had been his idea of home, his and her mother’s vision, where they would grow old together. And Cecily knew this because her mother had told her, and told her when she was still in mourning. It was one of Cecily’s monochrome memories, a flashback to that other time, before her mother finally discarded her widow’s weeds and brought color back into their lives. And though that color had always been muted, for Madeline was not overly fond of brights, there was, Cecily knew, something intrinsically safe in those indefinite shades.
Like all bright things, money had never been a topic of discussion with Madeline. Its vice or virtue, surplus or lack were never addressed. It was a blessing, she had said, to have a roof over one’s head, food on the table, a bed to sleep in; and they must count themselves lucky. Growing up, Cecily had come to realize that their own situation veered more toward lack than surplus; that her mother’s frugality was not born of idiosyncrasy of character but of necessity. Gowns, blouses, skirts and coats were patched and mended, Ethne’s old dresses adapted and taken in to fit Cecily. Nothing was discarded or thrown away, every remnant—every hem from every shortened gown, every frayed cuff and sleeve and collar—was kept and stored, and used again, ingeniously. Then Madeline bought her Singer sewing machine and began to take in work: altering waistlines and hems, removing collars and stitching new ones, adapting fashions and tastes. She made quilts, cushions and curtains, loose covers and bedspreads. And spent each evening darning linen, embroidering table napkins and antimacassars. She worked hard, built a reputation, and became known as the best seamstress in the area, receiving commissions from local gentry, including the Brownlows, whose bespoke curtains and blinds she had laboriously finished by hand.
But to Cecily, there was something else, something born of loneliness—and perhaps denial—driving her mother’s industry. Why else would each and every single moment be spent cutting, stitching and sewing, as though her whole being depended upon it? As though to stop would allow her time to think, to remember. Rosetta had said, “When you’ve loved, truly loved, and then lost, you can never again give yourself to another.” And Cecily had immediately thought of her mother, and not of Rosetta. She thought of the love between her parents, the woman she lived with, who had given birth to her, and the man she had never known. How had their love been? She tried to imagine them together, the couple in the silver-framed wedding photograph. She imagined her mother bright and young in her father’s arms, imagined them looking into each other’s eyes, dancing toward the future, laughing. And she began to feel that sense of loss, that feeling of the world being not quite complete, not whole; that feeling of something—someone—missing, a future taken. No, there could be no brightness in Madeline’s world, not now, not ever. But would there be brightness in hers?
By the time Cecily arrived at Temple Hill, the sky had darkened further. The maid glanced upward at the heavens, then ushered Cecily inside, slamming the front door behind her, shutting out all dwindling light. She asked Cecily to “please wait there a moment” and disappeared into the shadows, then reemerged and led Cecily to a room. The countess was alone and sat by a window, rather formally attired, Cecily thought, in a stiff costume of pale lemon and white lace. Perhaps she was going out, or perhaps she had just returned. She did not rise from her chair but reached out and took hold of Cecily’s hand, saying, “I think you’re just in time . . . we’re hoping for a deluge
,” and then asked her to take a seat. Cecily handed over the note, at the same time informing her that although Ethne had a prior engagement, she and her mother would be delighted to come to dinner on Saturday evening.
“Perfetto!” said the countess. She glanced down at the small brown envelope in her hand, and Cecily saw her momentarily frown. Then, without opening it, she placed the envelope on the table next to her, beside a small red leatherbound book, and went on to explain that darling Jack and Miss Dorland had gone to Linford with Mr. Cotton. They were both catching the train to London, she said, Jack to visit a school friend, where he would be staying for a night or two, and Miss Dorland to meet with her publisher and sort out various matters at her flat. And Cecily felt the sting of disappointment, for she had hoped to see Jack, if only to explain the altered arrangements. The countess said, “Of course, he’ll be back by Saturday, when you come to dine,” and offered Cecily a smile.
Outside, daylight shriveled. The room shrank into dimness. And as the first crack of thunder took hold of the house, shaking chimneys and timber and glass, the countess gazed out through the window and said, “So desperate . . . desperate for relief.”
But the storm rumbled on without any relief. There was no deluge.
They spoke about the village, the school in particular. And the countess told Cecily that she herself had once, when young, taught at a Sunday school in Rome, a place called the Granary Chapel which had for a while improvised as a church for the English expatriates there. And Cecily immediately wondered if she had lost her faith; if something had happened in her life which had caused her to question and then denounce God. The countess had not been to any service at Saint Luke’s, the village church.
“Children,” the countess said, dreamily, as though thinking aloud, “are not simply the future, they’re the light in all our lives.”
She looked away, shook her head and raised a hand dismissively. At first, it was as though a new thought—contradictory or conflicting—had come to her at that very same moment. But as she continued to stare across the room, seemingly at something fixed, Cecily turned, half-expecting to see someone, a figure, even a ghost. But there was no one there. Seconds after this, the countess glanced at the clock on the mantelshelf and pulled on the bell by her side. “I find a small glass of wine at this time of day reinvigorates the senses, opens one’s heart, prepares one for . . . for evening.”
So Cecily took a glass of sherry with the countess. And when the countess opened the small mother-of-pearl cigarette case and held it out to her, Cecily took a cigarette. It burned her throat and she coughed. The countess told her they were “Best Venetians.” A count—with a strange-sounding unpronounceable name—sent them to her, she said; she’d never smoke English cigarettes, “but these are actually very good for one.”
When the clock chimed six, Cecily said she really should be going soon. But she didn’t want to. And the countess, turning her head away, glancing out through the window, said, “Had we but world enough, and time . . .” She looked at Cecily. “Time’s winged chariot . . . to his coy mistress? Andrew Marvell?”
“The metaphysical poets.”
The countess smiled, nodded. “You remind me a great deal of myself when I was young. Seems but a moment ago.” She lifted her glass to her lips, and Cecily noticed her hands: bejeweled fingers, still slender. She watched her sip from the glass, place it down upon the table next to her, and then glance about the room, her hooded eyes moving swiftly from one object to another, as though checking it was all there, in place. Each surface, every table and shelf, was littered with memorabilia: china and glass and photographs and, Cecily noticed, on the table immediately next to her, two framed black silhouette cameos of cherubic infants with tousled hair.
The countess said, “Freddie and Georgie. My babies, my boys . . . gone now.”
“Freddie?”
“My firstborn, my eldest, taken from me when he was barely six years old. He is in Rome . . . left there now.”
Sadness slipped down her face. She reached to the locket about her neck, mouthing silent, inexpressible words, struggling perhaps with the need to remember, something, someone, all of them. Wishing perhaps to say their names again, Cecily thought, watching her. Then sunlight broke into the room, under the sash, under the blind, bouncing off china and glass and mirror, and Cecily heard a thin mournful sigh, like the tail-end vibration of a sad song. The clock on the mantelpiece chimed the quarter hour and the countess dissolved into the light, spectral with her white hair and pale gown.
“They’re all there,” she said. “Freddie, my aunt, Jack and—”
“Jack?”
“My first husband. He passed away when . . . before Georgie was born.” She raised a hand to her eyes. “Do draw down the blind a little, will you, my dear.”
Cecily rose to her feet, moved over to the window and lowered the blind. She wanted to ask questions: were there only two children, two sons, or had others, too, been lost along the way? What about the daughter Mr. Fox had mentioned? And how many husbands had there actually been? And which children were born to which husbands? And how had the first husband died?
“My family is rather a muddle,” she said, as if able to hear Cecily’s thoughts. “Perhaps all families are . . . my first husband was also my aunt’s stepson.” She paused as Cecily sat back down, and then continued. “My aunt married a man named James Staunton. He lived in Rome with his son, Jack, whom I later married.”
James Staunton had been contracted by the papal government to set up the Anglo Romano Gas Company and begin the long process of installing gas in the city, she told Cecily. “When I first arrived, the new gasworks were still in the process of being built—on the banks of the Tiber. They were ugly, something of a deformity, particularly there, surrounded by such antiquated beauty. But Mr. Staunton was an industrialist,” she said with emphasis. “He and my aunt fell in love so very quickly. It was rather a whirlwind courtship. She was an intelligent woman, calm and measured, a remarkable woman . . .” She petered out, and remained silent for a moment or two. “She and I had been living in Paris,” she began again, remembering, “and it was there, in the room of Roman antiquities at the Louvre, that I first became acquainted with Rome, fascinated by its relics . . . And then, lo and behold, my aunt married Mr. Staunton, and there I was, living in Rome!” she said, smiling at Cecily.
But the story was too fast; there were gaps. How had they come to be in Paris? Why had they gone there? And how, exactly, had her aunt met Mr. Staunton? And what about Jack? What happened to him?
Her early days in Rome were spent just as any other tourist, the countess said, moving on again swiftly, “visiting and revisting the ancient sites, piazzas, picture galleries and churches, so that within a very short time, I needed no map or guidebook. And I did not care what anyone said, to me it was heaven, heaven!”
“What anyone said?”
“Oh well, in comparison to other European cities, Rome was still considered by many to be backward and shabby, third rate; a place to visit, to stay for a while, but not to live, not perman-ently,” she replied. “And it had something of a reputation”—she glanced at Cecily—“for fugitives, all sorts of shady characters.”
“Not unlike here then.”
She laughed. “No, possibly not,” she replied. “And yet, for those of us who chose to live there, it offered a kind of freedom, and the chance to be whoever one wished to be,” she added wistfully.
“Yes,” said Cecily, imagining.
“And behind every doorway, no matter how humble, were masterpieces, friezes depicting ancient stories, magnificent frescoes, statues, intricate mosaics and richly marbled floors. Every window and balcony overlooked the antiquities, like one’s own museum, one’s very own art gallery. It felt to me like the center of the world. And of course it had been, once. Everywhere one looked were relics, history and art, stupendous art. How could on
e fail to be inspired in such a place? All of it shaped me, who I am, and like those I have loved, it remains here,” she said, placing her palm flat upon her chest. “It lives within me . . . that place.”
And how could it not? Cecily thought. To have spent one’s formative years in such a place was indeed an extraordinary privilege.
The countess gazed out of the window. “I would like to go back there,” she said, “just once more.” And she began to describe a vista in such extraordinary detail that Cecily too could see it: a view across jumbled terra-cotta rooftops, across a sea of steeples and domes, across scattered ruins and pillars to crumbling walls, and beyond those walls to wide empty pastures and distant hills.
This was what had awakened the countess to beauty, Cecily thought, what fed her senses and continued to nourish her soul.
“And your first husband, Jack . . . he died there?” Cecily ventured at last.
“Yes, that is where he rests, where they all rest.”
“But not George?”
She flinched. “George? Why, George is in Rome . . .”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I was sure Jack said his father had fallen from his horse somewhere near here.”
“Ah yes,” the countess said, closing her eyes, nodding. “Forgive me. I sometimes get a little confused with names. You are correct. Georgie,” she said, with emphasis on the “ie” sound, “did fall from his horse, and not far from this place. He was so dashingly handsome,” she said, smiling, remembering, “invincible to his fellow officers and to everyone else . . . and much too brave to suffer the ignominy of an accidental death. He always thought he’d die a heroic death on the battlefield—if any at all. And he made me think that too. But”—she paused, shook her head—“he was mortal. Mortal like his father.”
The Memory of Lost Senses Page 13