The Parasol Flower

by Quevillon, Karen;

  Eva is much quieter on the way home. No complaints about blisters, disease-carrying insects or the uneven terrain. The river—which, for Hannah, was a heavenly escape and refreshment—could have done nothing for Eva, who put no more than a toe in the lagoon. And then there was Charlotte’s adventure. The girl emerged from the falls no worse for wear, really. After she’d eaten and regained some of her strength, they couldn’t shut her up about it. Though Eva certainly tried. She seemed somehow embarrassed by her daughter; the poor genduk serenely bore the brunt of her mistress’s disapproval.

  “Does it have a string, your hat?” says Hannah.

  Eva stops and turns, breathing hard. “What?”

  “I only thought…if your hat had a string, you might take it off and let it fall behind you on your back. Easier to see.”

  Eva feels for the string that is coming up under the flesh on her chin, making it bulge unattractively. She looks around her, then at Hannah, who is hatless. “You’re not worried that insects will fly into your hair?”

  “Not really.”

  “Or that something might drop onto you?” Eva looks up.

  Hannah looks up too. “Drop onto me? No, I can’t say I am.”

  “Bird feces. A worm. A snake.”

  “You must do what’s most comfortable for you, Eva.”

  “You’re rather more courageous than I gave you credit for, darling. And I am entirely unfit for this sort of thing. To my great annoyance.” Eva heaves an exasperated breath.

  “Hardly! We’ve made wonderful progress today. I’ve simply had more practice than you stomping around the wilderness, haven’t I?”

  Looking deflated, Eva turns back to the makeshift path, her hat still in place. “We’ve fallen so far behind them!”

  “Don’t worry, he’ll stop and wait for us.” They strike out again and accomplish another few yards before Hannah says, “You know, I’m very grateful you’ve come at all.” Eva grunts in a congenial way. “I thought you might like to experience what I’ve been working from.”

  I thought you might love the forest as I do. I wanted you to feel how inspiring it all is. It’s become obvious that love and inspiration are not part of Eva’s experience that day.

  “Of course,” adds Hannah, “I’d also like to show you the paintings themselves.”

  “Yes.” Eva turns. The red of her face makes her green eyes glow even cooler. “Excellent idea. And that would have been easier, wouldn’t it?”

  “Well, yes,” is all she can think to reply.

  “I must admit I’ve been curious.”

  “Have you?”

  “About your art.”

  “Oh, yes. I haven’t forgotten that I will be doing something special for you and Charles.”

  Another boom of thunder, almost directly above this time. Ahead in the shivering green, Darshan halts with the two girls. He is looking at her expectantly while the children fidget in place. Hannah raises her hands as if to say, What else can I do? She doesn’t move any faster.

  “What does he want?” snaps Eva.

  Darshan bends toward Charlotte, telling her something. A rainstorm doesn’t pose them any real threat, here where they are well protected by the canopy of trees. It’s just not good for the nerves.

  “He’s telling them not to worry, they can’t be harmed by a sound.” Hannah circles back, saying, “I’m not sure if you’ve seen anything out here that you particularly like, Eva. Any subjects, I mean, which would make a desirable painting for you and Charles. The orchids we saw on the way out? Orchids can be quite amazing. Even the ubiquitous ferns are such expressive creatures.”

  Eva coughs and waves her arms, dismissing the idea that she would care about ferns over orchids or orchids over ferns. Is it all the same to her? Wild. Reproducing. Adapting. Does she imagine that the only refinements, the only points of interest, come from the ideas that are applied to life? If Hannah’s time out of doors has taught her anything, it’s that nature is full of peculiarities and personalities and singular stories. A moth-covered rock, a phrase of birdsong, a flying frog—at any moment, life forces you to change what you think is possible.

  “I haven’t painted it yet,” Hannah ventures, “but…there is one flower in particular…”

  She looks ahead to the sergeant’s bobbing turban. Surely Darshan won’t mind if Eva knows about their quest. After all, Eva is making the whole thing possible. “I believe this one would be interesting for you as a piece of art but also as a, well, a marvel of nature. This flower has never been recorded in The Almanac. Actually, that is the case for several of the botanical specimens we’ve encountered. But this one…. It’s called a parasol flower. Local legend says that parasol flowers grow in this area. Unfortunately, it’s proving quite difficult to find one in bloom.”

  Eva looks intrigued. “Local legend? My goodness, Hannah.”

  “The sergeant has told me all about it.”

  “So you haven’t actually seen one?”

  “They bloom only every seven years, for a fortnight or so. The blossom is meant to be extraordinary.” Hannah holds her hands out wide in front of her. “The size of a ladies’ parasol, you see—a wonderful whorl of petals the color of…of daybreak. And the flower smells of vanilla and fresh cream, with a hint of citrus. Wouldn’t that be glorious if we could find one? It would make an absolutely unique painting.”

  “The size of a parasol?” Eva stops and arches her back, letting her head loll and her eyes close for a moment or two. “Why, I’ve never heard of such a thing. Not even in Wallace’s jungle memoirs, and he traveled extensively on the peninsula.”

  Hannah’s tongue prickles. “I suppose I can’t promise we’ll find one. It’s just that I did want you have to something absolutely special.”

  “Oh, darling. I’m moved. Truly.” Eva looks exhausted. Her face is flushed, her skirts dirty. And yet she somehow maintains her preferred expression—something between neutral and mildly pleased, that tells you that you are under consideration. She says, “You are so entirely and beautifully sincere.”

  Twenty Nine

  Even before I knocked, I knew Barnaby had been stewing about something. I saw him in an upstairs window, pacing. His hair was in a state, whipped, as if he’d been tossing and turning all night. I myself had had a restless few hours at the hostel. I realized I’d been overlooking an important factor when it came to the letters Barnaby had procured. Namely: where were the enclosures? Whether or not the paintings matched up with any on the family’s “official” list, they had to have gone somewhere, and it wasn’t to Godot. Who had taken them?

  “Good morning, Professor Munk.” I greeted him with some caution. He was still in his pajamas. Nice ones, mind you. A silver chain with a blue evil eye charm lay around his tanned neck.

  “You’ve gone formal on me again,” he grumbled as he propped open the door.

  Nervously, I regaled him with my adventures with the photocopier at the Boots store near the hostel, though I could see he was too preoccupied to enter into my technological frustrations. I set down the bundle of letters, in its original plastic bag, on the kitchen table.

  “I’ve had a terrible night, Nancy. Terrible night.”

  I waited for him to elaborate. Instead, he offered to make us coffee. I confessed I was desperate for one. I’d had no chance to seek out a coffee shop that morning. To my surprise and delight, there was a European espresso machine in his kitchen. “Celia and I spoke,” Barnaby told me as he went about the preparations for our drinks. “Please, have a seat.”

  I sat. “And…Is that why you had a bad sleep?”

  “No. Celia and I spoke this morning. About an hour ago.” He knocked used grinds from the portafilter and turned toward me, his chest sagging visibly. “I’ve been keeping things from you, Nancy. Immorally. Absurdly. I detest deceit of any kind and what I told Celia is that I won’t be en
gaging in it any longer.” He turned back to his machine to fiddle with it some more.

  I chewed on this for a minute then said, “Was it Celia, then, who asked you not to tell me…whatever it is you’re not telling me?”

  “Cappuccino okay?”

  A cappuccino, I told him, would be amazing. When at last he’d finished, he came to the table with two frothy cups and a plate of cherry and custard pastries. I reckoned he didn’t eat like this every morning. Perhaps he’d nipped out to a bakery after he’d told off Celia.

  “Professor Munk,” I said, “I want you know that I don’t feel entitled to know what happened to Hannah Inglis’ paintings. If there’s some sort of private family matter that you or your sister-in-law don’t want me to know about, that’s fine. Totally okay.”

  “Really?” he replied, looking me over. He could sense that I’d overreached myself with my little speech. It was true, I was dying to hear what he’d been hiding.

  “Celia was concerned you were some sort of American journalist. ‘Citizen journalist.’”

  “What?”

  He bit into a pastry, chewed, and swallowed. “Hear me out for a minute. She was concerned you were rooting around at Fulgham House, investigating the scandal of the Peterboroughs, and were going to publish some sort of something that would discredit our family. It’s not even her family, technically. She married into it. But,” Barnaby sighed, “she’s a strong defender of family heritage, Celia is. Family values. And she’s an even bigger believer in prestige.”

  Bizarre, I thought. “I’m not a journalist,” I told him. “I’m doing my PhD.”

  “Ah. But not on Hannah Inglis and pioneering women artists.” Barnaby arched his eyebrows. “Just because I’m seventy-six doesn’t mean I don’t Google. You can find out anything online these days.”

  “Not anything,” I snapped. “Believe me, I’m not interested in Eva or Charles Peterborough, however much you and your sister may think otherwise.”

  He hung his head. “Yes, I know this now.”

  “I really couldn’t care less about anything your ancestors did or didn’t do!”

  “Which is why I told Celia that I’d met you and I believed you were genuinely interested in Hannah Inglis’ art.”

  “Yes!”

  He looked at me over his raised cup. “You really don’t have a clue, do you?”

  “About what?”

  “Some years ago there was a fellow who approached Celia and Teddy. Well, through Fulgham House. This was before Miranda’s time. Somebody, some tabloid press, had given the young man a mandate to come up with dirt on any of the old families in the county. He’d got hold of the notebooks and the writing of Charles Peterborough and various materials that were part of the Fulgham archives at the time. Who knows, he might even have spotted them on a visit to the estate. As far as the racial science part of it, that was published scholarship of the day. Public knowledge. But, as you know, nobody reads journal articles from 1880. Anyway, there were also family photographs, letters, notes, that this fellow dug up. Charlotte was rather a messed-up woman, and she’d kept diaries full of bizarre stories.

  “Ultimately, this hack journalist published a series of articles. David Maikin, his name was. He insinuated that Charles was a pedophile and a sex offender. That Eva was a frustrated lesbian. She had ‘covered’ for him.” Barnaby laughed shortly. “As if they were some sort of dynamic evil duo.”

  “You’re kidding,” I said. This was all getting to be a bit much to take.

  “I don’t think pedophilia even existed in 1900,” said Barnaby.

  “Well, I mean…the ancient Greeks, weren’t they known for…” I fumbled, irritated. I was trying to work out how any of this concerned Hannah, if it did at all. I asked, “Did this guy’s story involve Hannah Inglis?”

  Barnaby gave me a meaningful look. “Obliquely.”

  “Oh. Eva’s lover?” I guessed.

  He exhaled heavily. “Something like that. I can’t remember if he claimed it was requited.”

  “But there is no existing correspondence between the women. Is there, Barnaby?” I leaned forward.

  “No! No. Just Hannah’s letters to Godot. Eva wrote letters home to her brother, her publisher, colleagues. Ordinary letters, all of them, and none of them mentioning Hannah. Of course, Eva kept notes for research and chapters drafts and such. There was Charlotte’s diary at the time, full of childish speculations. I suppose Maikin waded through all of this. Probably felt that he’d earned himself a bit of intrigue. You see, he’d argue,” went on Barnaby, “Hannah and Eva had no need to send each other letters if they were in each other’s pockets. If they saw each other every second day.”

  I scoured my memory bank to think of anything in Hannah’s letters that suggested a romantic or sexual relationship with Eva, or then again some sort of child sex ring in operation in Kuala Kangsa. I would just have to read these Maikin articles. As soon as possible.

  As if hearing my thoughts, Barnaby said, “It was interesting, reading over Hannah’s letters again. I can see some of the elements Maikin was drawing from. None of his conclusions, mind.”

  “So you think he’s just wrong?”

  He dipped a finger in the froth remaining at the bottom of his cup. “The whole thing was something of a witch hunt. It was a strange time, Nancy.” He paused to reflect. “Six years ago now or so. The Peterboroughs were not the only old guard to be hacked to pieces. Left, right, and center there were upstanding people—telly presenters, politicians, childrens’ authors, venerable cultural icons—all of these men quickly became monsters, accused of various forms of depravity. The Peterborough scandal was minor by comparison, and it came at the tail end of this public shaming. The mob, squeezing the pus from one last blemish. The family had already fallen so much financially, and the crimes, if they were even committed, happened so long ago and so far away.”

  He’d spoken of the Peterboroughs as “the” family rather than “our” family, I noted. “Is this what you meant in your email? The ‘nasty business’?”

  He nodded.

  “Honestly, I had no idea.”

  “Yes, well, I realized this in retrospect. As I told Celia this morning, I said, ‘You have to remember, the Americans have no idea what’s happening in the rest of the world.’”

  “I’m not—”

  “‘They have a different kind of royalty,’ I said. ‘Hollywood. It’s not as if they have venerable old dynasties or intelligentsia to topple.’ The Peterboroughs were not as influential as Darwin or Wallace, but the name is not insignificant here in the relevant circles. They were a powerful family who had made a large contribution to scholarship, all of which was called into question by what was unearthed. A century later, mind you. And it’s not even clear what was unearthed.”

  I’d taken out my pen and notebook. “David Maikin?”

  “M-a-i-k-i-n. The articles came out in the Daily Mail, I believe. Could have been The Sun. Celia feels responsible for Maikin’s articles. She gave him two interviews before she realized quite how he was going to twist her words. And then Celia, being of Asian descent—the whole thing didn’t play out well for her and Teddy. I was spared most of the kerfuffle; I was in South America at the time, doing fieldwork.”

  Ironic, I thought, for this Celia to worry I was an American journalist, come to stir up trouble. I couldn’t get a scholarly article published if I tried. As Barnaby reminisced about his South American research, I doodled cubes with holes in them.

  “Wait a minute,” I said, interrupting him. “If all this scandal was already brought to light by this Maikin guy, I mean I can understand why you’d be cautious about speaking to me. But the two of you thought I knew about it. So, like, what are you actually keeping from me? You said you had a terrible night. Because you were keeping something from me.”

  “Mmm,” said Barnaby, looking paine
d. “I was getting to that.”

  He squirmed in his chair before he came out with it: “We have her paintings.”

  I may have actually snorted. I peppered him with questions. Which paintings exactly? Who does he mean by “we”? Where are the paintings located? Might I be able to see them? When might I be able to see them? You’ll appreciate I was much too excited by this news to make any issue of the fact Barnaby had lied to me.

  Celia was in possession of the enclosed studies and sketches mentioned in the twenty-five letters he’d shown me. Which made sense. Would she be inclined to let me see them? I tried to put Celia’s prickliness to the back of my mind for the time being. Of the works on the official catalogue, Barnaby insisted four of them were housed at Fulgham House: Murdo and Jane, of course, as well as The Cabin and Tropical Still Life. The two works called Nude House Girl and The Parasol Flower—the two I was most interested in—were indeed with Tommy.

  “Thomas Munk,” said Barnaby. “Celia’s son.”

  “Celia’s son!” I exclaimed, remembering how the professor had shamelessly proffered guesses about second cousins and art dealers. “And do you think Thomas would let me look at them?”

  “Yes, of course. If Celia or I vouched for you.”

  My appreciation was gushing. “And your nephew lives in…?”

  “Brighton.”

  “Brighton! Excellent.” Mentally, I scanned the list of known works.

  Barnaby beat me to it. “The other one, of the Sikh servant, I have that. When Mummy’s estate was being divvied up no one else wanted the thing. I don’t know, I have always thought it a striking portrait, myself. Unusual.”

  “It’s here?” I looked around me. Had I understood him correctly?

  Indeed, the painting was upstairs, hanging on a wall of the guest bedroom. To think that I had spent so much time at the professor’s home and might never have seen it! Barnaby led me to it, puttering nervously around the room as I took it in.