Cora could smell the mustiness of an English winter. It was a smell she vaguely remembered: a mingling of damp plaster, rotting wood and vegetation, the smoke of coal fires, and coldness. Coldness. The house felt newly strange and suddenly much too large for one person. She had no need for so much space. Though she might have had, once, when the place was first built, when she still had a son, anticipated a daughter-in-law, envisaged grandchildren. When Georgie told her that he planned on having a large family, “to make up for the deficit.”
“Deficit indeed!” Fanny had repeated, laughing.
“That’s what he said. I suppose it’s because he’s grown up alone.”
“Well, he’ll have to find himself a wife first, and she’ll need to be a robust girl, my goodness yes,” Fanny went on, smiling. “But at least you have the place, the space for this enormous family he’s planning.”
Cora moved to the window, gazing out at the excavations for the new monument in honor of the King. Her aunt had told her that it would take over two decades to build and be so vast it would dominate the city’s skyline.
“No one knows who anyone is anymore,” Fanny was saying, “it’s all changed, anyone of quality seems to have gone, and instead, we have a constant stream of loud Americans to plague us. Tourists, they call themselves. They come for a week and fly about the place with lists and maps and itineraries—such frenzied haste.”
“It’s the same in Paris,” Cora replied. “The Americans are everywhere.”
Cora had traveled by train from Paris to Rome, as she did each and every Christmas. Edward remained in England, spending Christmas with his family, as he had done each year since their marriage. It was, as her aunt liked to remind her, an unusual domestic arrangement. Twice a year Edward visited her, and she had returned to England the previous summer, staying for two weeks under the roof of his fine stucco-fronted house in Kensington, only ten minutes’ walk from George’s London home.
As Cora turned away from the window, Fanny returned to the subject of Georgie. “And how is your darling boy?” she asked.
“Georgie,” Cora repeated, and immediately felt the warmth of maternal blood run through her veins. Georgie, she thought, and could not help but smile. “He’s hardly a boy, he’s a grown man now,” she said. “He is well, very well, and I believe he’s charming everyone in London.” She moved about the room, picking up ornaments, examining them, as if to check that they were the same ones that inhabited a place in her memory; running her fingers along polished marble and mahogany; the velvet pile of a sofa, a chair.
“And does he see much of . . . of his godfather?” Fanny asked.
“Oh yes, he sees him from time to time. But of course George is very busy at the Academy, and still travels a good deal.”
“And you? Do you still see him?”
“I saw him in Paris last . . .” She saw her aunt wince and stopped. “But why do you ask if you do not wish to hear? Why does it pain you to hear me speak about him?”
“Because it’s not right for you to see him, not now you’re married. He had his chance—so many chances—and you waited for him . . . waited for him for so long. You simply can’t allow him to walk in and out of your life, not now.”
“I have to see him; you know that. It’s impossible for me to banish him now.”
“But don’t see him alone, Cora, please. There’s enough gossip already about you and your marriage . . . and him.”
Cora shook her head. “I no longer care what the old expatriate wives of Rome are saying about me. And there’ll always be gossip about George. There always has been.” She turned away from Fanny. “But, seeing as you’ve mentioned it, tell me, what is the gossip?”
Fanny did not immediately reply. Cora turned to her. “Well?”
“That you and George continue to see each other in Paris, alone, that his breakdown was in no small part due to your marriage and . . .”
“And?”
“Georgie.”
Cora sighed. “George and I see each other when he is in Paris, of course—we’re friends, we’ll always be dear friends.”
“Friends? And does your husband know just how friendly you are with . . . the President of the Academy?”
“As for his breakdown,” Cora went on, “he was simply exhausted. Everyone at the wedding could see that. Everyone knew how hard he’d been working . . .”
Fanny shook her head. “No, it was a blow and it hit him hard. I saw. I was there, remember?”
Cora said nothing.
“But he leads such a queer life,” Fanny said, changing tone, shifting in her chair.
“Why do you say that?”
“No wife, or family, an older married lady his constant companion. It’s not normal. But he was always a little peculiar, I thought. Charming but a little peculiar.”
“George was ambitious, single-minded in his vocation, his art. He’s a very private person and requires solitude in which to work. He could not cope with a family, family life. And Mrs. Hillier is not his constant companion, not anymore. She no longer travels and has, I believe, been in poor health for some time.”
“It always seemed to me . . .” Fanny began, then hesitated, choosing her words carefully. “It always seemed to me as though he was fearful . . . hiding something.”
“Hiding something? Oh, perhaps his emotions. But now I understand that genius, real artistic genius, can take every ounce of passion from a man, so that . . . he’s left with little to give, to share with another,” Cora replied, staring at a framed miniature of her son.
“Hmm. Jack knew, didn’t he?”
Cora kept her gaze fixed on her son’s face. “Knew?”
“About you and George . . . later, he knew about you and George.”
“I’m not sure what you mean, or what Jack thought . . . about anything. But do not, please, rewrite that particular chapter. Jack’s death had nothing whatsoever to do with me, or George, as you well know, and if he was concerned he never said. And I married him, didn’t I? I did as I was told.” She moved over to her aunt, sat down opposite her. “You know . . . you know that I loved George. I still do. I can’t change that. I can’t change what my heart feels.”
“No, you can’t say that, not now. You have a good husband, one who cares about you, who loves you.”
“Oh, I know that, of course I do, and I’m immensely fond of him, too. But let me ask you this: did you cease to love your husband, James, when he died?”
“No, of course not.”
“But you love another now?”
“Yes, but that’s quite different, he’s a different person and this is another stage of my life.”
“Exactly.”
“But James is dead, Cora; George lives and Edward—”
“Edward is my husband,” she interrupted, rising to her feet. “He understands that George and I were . . . are close, that we remain firm friends.” She walked over to the window. “And, yes, George lives, but so perhaps does another man . . . so perhaps does John Abel.”
And that was it. The name—the unmentionable name—had been uttered, silently shattering three decades of carefully arranged words, and everything between them.
She turned to her aunt. “I’m sorry, but I’m afraid it’s a little late in the day for you to lecture me on the morality and virtues of a faithful marriage.”
Fanny did not look at her, but Cora could hear her breathing as the name ricocheted about the room: impossible to grab hold of and take back. And what she had said was true enough: John Abel might yet be alive. And if so, where did that leave her aunt? There could be no moral high ground. Not then, not ever. They were both guilty.
When Cora asked Mrs. Davey to close up various rooms, the housekeeper reminded her that they had never in fact been opened up; that the morning room and a few of the bedrooms were still stacked with crates, yet to
be unpacked. Something to do over the winter, Cora thought: unpack and go through it all, sorting. Mr. Cordery would have to bring the crates down to the drawing room; she would open them up there, where it would be warm. She would be able to review it all, her life. Unravel the knot.
She had not heard from Sylvia and did not expect to. But she would write to her in time, eventually. She would send her a Christmas card, perhaps. And she could rest easy about the people at the farm. Cecily had been to call on them and they had told her that they had never heard of any other John Abel. The name was a coincidence, nothing more. They were perhaps related in some convoluted way to him, Cora thought, but it was a common enough name, or had been, once. And the letters had stopped, for now at least.
Yes, she would be able to address things now, without bother-ation and interruptions. She would have time and peace, space to think. She would be able to work through everything, put it in order, write it all down. Or perhaps Cecily could . . . After all, she was young, part of the modern world. What was once shocking and scandalous was . . . not so unusual now. People were more forgiving, more understanding, surely. And all families had secrets, hidden away somewhere.
She would unravel the knot and work backward. Go all the way back to the beginning, to that time before, before they had moved on, before new countries and new names, before the inventing and reinventing began. She would go back to where she first started. Because she needed to make sense of the start in order to make sense of this end. And there was an end, looming, she knew. It was why she needed to set things in order, why she needed to put things straight. There should be no mess for Jack to have to deal with. Death, she often thought, should be peaceful, any ripples for those left behind soothing. But at other times she was filled with panic, terrified of the dark void ahead, and of meeting those she had—in life—escaped.
I must not think of death, she told herself; otherwise it will surely hear me and come knocking . . .
So she tried to look forward to bleak winter, to the drawing in of days and long dark nights. She tried to settle herself in autumn, watching clouds and drizzle, and a pale English sun. And she waited for Cecily to call.
She had, she realized, been testing Cecily over the course of the summer, slipping in details here and there, but still not entirely the truth. She had been sounding her out, watching her reactions. And the girl had not once appeared shocked, had not flinched. She had been sympathetic, understanding. She had passed the test.
I shall tell Cecily the truth, she decided; ask her to write it all down. But there remained one problem: which version and for whom? Well, for Jack of course. There was only him. But would he want to know? Perhaps it would be better for her to omit certain details, to leave it to fate and the future to unravel. Yes, perhaps. She had no wish to cause him any unnecessary pain or distress, or to burden him further. No. Her desire was simply to put the record straight—for herself, in her own mind; to release her burden and be in possession of that state generally known as a clear conscience. She would ask Cecily, take her advice. After all, she cared about Jack, and who knew what might happen between them in the future.
Thankfully, Cecily was not going anywhere. They would no doubt spend some of the long winter evenings ahead together, for Cecily had already said, “Don’t worry, Cora, I’m still here.” Yes, so long as she had dear Cecily calling on her, with that sweet open mind and sunny disposition, she would not succumb to loneliness, not give way to the others. And she must stay warm, speak to Mrs. Davey about the fires; make sure there was enough coal and logs. Oh yes, she must stay warm.
The mere thought of an English winter made Cora shiver. That harsh chill which permeated one’s clothing and flesh and bones. She had told people that it would be her first in six decades, but this was not strictly true, because she had come back once, briefly, in the depths of winter.
Standing by an open grave, her face too cold to move, her heart numb, Cora had watched her son’s coffin as it was lowered into the frozen earth. But even then, as he was delivered into that cold hard ground, he had become a memory, nothing more than a memory. He was a name, another name, soon to be added to a churchyard of chiseled names. And the realization that his presence—his face, his voice, all of him—was already dimming and being forgotten, struck her . . .
Those who had known him would remember his laugh, his smile, his humor, and his bravery. They would speak of him for a while, clinging to those remnants, but slowly, with time, they would forget. In years to come his name might crop up in conversation, someone might say, “Ah yes, George Staunton, I vaguely remember him. Whatever happened to him?” But the name would fade, the tombstone fall, and, eventually, inevitably, disappear into the undergrowth of that quiet corner of the churchyard.
Perhaps one day someone would notice that leaning tombstone covered in lichen and ivy. They might bend down, pull away the weeds, and then—moving their hands over the stone—say the name out loud once more. And for a moment, just a moment, they might wonder who he had been, George Staunton; whose child, whose husband, whose father. They might try to imagine what someone of that name looked like, how he spoke, what made him laugh or cry. But they would never be able imagine the baby born in Rome, nor the circumstances surrounding his birth. They would never be able to picture the boy who had grown up in France, or envisage the young man who had returned—so dazzlingly handsome and suntanned—from two years in India. His lifetime, the thirty-three years he had walked upon the earth, had ended, abruptly, one Saturday morning in January.
In the years that followed, after her son’s death and before her final return to England, visits to old friends—and to acquaintances she had made on her incessant journeys—kept Cora busy. There was little else for her to do at that time, and she was in fact of no fixed abode. Her circle of friends had slowly diminished. Many of them had passed away; others had returned home, to England or America. In Rome, there was a new crowd, a younger crowd, a mix of English, American and European artists, travelers, and new business people, as well as the usual fugitives and misfits.
But Rome was not the same place. The city had changed shape. The antiquated ruins and monuments remained, weathered further by the passing of years, crumbling through ignorance and neglect, and now like gargantuan tombstones strewn haphazardly about the place, randomly interrupting the new order and tidiness of modern Rome. But the small medieval city, the Rome of Cora’s youth, had been all but swept away.
On her last visit to the city, she sat each morning outside the Café Santa Maria in the Piazza d’Ara Coeli, and from under the shade of her parasol watched the exotic human traffic pass by like contestants in a fancy dress parade: young Romans strutting like peacocks, elderly peasants cocooned in grubby cloth, and wealthy English tourists in their distinctive upper-class garb for hotter climes. The English tourists, known for their good manners, always smiled and nodded, “Buon giorno.” They assumed her to be Italian, Roman, and she never let on. Never said, “But I am also English.” Instead, she surreptitiously studied them as they studied their maps and guidebooks and discussed their itinerary for that day.
The invisibility of old age allowed her to observe and listen. It enabled her to bestow these unknown friends with detailed identities, so that by the time they moved on she knew them all the better for not having spoken with them. Later, as she walked through the shadowed streets off the Corso she often fancied she could hear the revelry of a party from an upstairs window. And sometimes she would stop, stand and listen to sounds that were there but not there: the French military band playing on in the Piazza Colonna, the cheers and thunderous echo of a carnival. But there were times when her loneliness was acute, the sense of singularity suffocating, the absence of familiar voices deafening.
Each afternoon she visited the Protestant Cemetery, arranging flowers or tidying the potted plants within the box-hedged graves. And here, as she sat on the old iron bench under the shade of cypresses,
silent conversations flowed.
Rome reinvigorated her, body and soul. Paris was simply exhausting. And London, on those rare occasions she had flitted in and out, was jarring and judgmental, too big and brash. And the lack of light, that interminable smog, rendering its streets dank and inhospitable, depressed her spirits. In the cacophony of the English capital she had always felt like an alien, an outsider, for it was the place from which she had fled, and then returned too late in life to be fashionable.
Traveling from city to city, country to country, had for so long been the ebb and flow of her life. And though no one was waiting for her in Rome or Paris, or anywhere now, continuing this movement allowed her to luxuriate in the sensation of busyness. She was able to talk of train times, schedules and itineraries, departure and arrival dates, arrangements and contingencies, as though they mattered; as though her time was valuable, as though others depended upon her punctuality and were waiting.
She knew her way to the Eternal City the way anyone knows the path that leads them home. From a train carriage window she checked off the sequence of familiar vistas, counting down landmarks, towns and cities. And later, traveling back over that same landscape, they were checked off again, in reverse order.
On her final journey, returning to England for good, she had been unusually reticent, had had no interest in making any new friends. Standing upon the deck of a steamer, taking in England’s ragged hemline—quiet, contemplative, inconspicuous, she hoped—she offered little conversation and made no mention of any connections. On that last journey she simply played the part of an elderly lady returning from an indefinite period abroad. And when those standing alongside her turned to her and said, “Ah, so good to be home,” she simply smiled. “Yes indeed, so good to be home.”
The Memory of Lost Senses Page 26