She told herself then that she’d never expected anything more than this, but she knew that wasn’t true. She understood clearly now that last night’s scene was supposed to have ushered in the final act of a comedy – Twelfth Night, perhaps – in which the revelation of mistaken identity and unsuspected parentage leads inevitably to joyful reconciliations and pairings off. Deep down – somewhere below the layers of justification and self-deception she had laid down over the years – she had believed that the old order would be thrown over and they would all begin anew. That other ending she had contemplated earlier, the spinning of skeins and the courtly dance: that was something from another story entirely; from the version in which her courage had failed and she had allowed the secret to sink back inside her. This – a calm inspection of the wall, an implicit message that nothing had changed between them – this wasn’t at all how things were meant to be now.
But perhaps it was just a matter of perseverance. Perhaps she had to make things clearer. She took a deep breath and tried again.
‘Please,’ she said, ‘stop talking about the wall for a moment. Please could we . . .’
Landon met her eyes, and she was sure then that he understood her, and that she understood him; and there was nothing, nothing at all, to give her encouragement.
‘My dear Flora,’ he said. ‘Don’t put me in an impossible position. I have never . . .’ He stopped: too much the gentleman to plead his own virtue, Flora thought, and another rockfall of desire and regret tumbled down inside her.
‘No,’ she said. ‘No. I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be sorry,’ he said. ‘Don’t ever be sorry. We don’t need to do that to each other.’
Flora attempted a smile, but her face wasn’t under her control. ‘No,’ she said again – a word that required almost no effort, just the tiniest eddy of breath.
‘Let me make you some coffee,’ Landon said. ‘It’s a little chilly to be outside.’
He didn’t meet her eyes again as he turned back towards the house.
PART VI
Greville Auctioneers, Friday 12th December 2014
Paintings and drawings by Nicholas Comyn, from the collection of the late Henry Jones
Lot no. 6: The Triumph of Flora, 1983
This painting falls within the long tradition of artistic representations of Flora, goddess of flowers and of fertility, whose festival, held every spring, celebrated the renewal of life. Comyn’s work clearly references other examples in the canon, including those by Botticelli, Titian and Rembrandt. Several of Rembrandt’s Floras represent his young wife, Saskia, who is heavily pregnant in at least one portrait. The same is true of the subject of this painting – Henry Jones’ wife, Flora Macintyre.
The picture was a gift for Flora, who was indeed pregnant at the time it was painted. She did not sit for the portrait, however: instead Comyn produced a celebration of an idealised Flora, drawing both on earlier representations of the goddess and on the real-life exemplar.
The radiant figure of Flora is positioned centrally in Comyn’s painting. As in the famous Botticelli portrait, her hair and flowing dress are scattered with blossom and spring flowers, reminiscent of Renaissance millefleurs tapestries. This Flora has none of the coyness of the 1634 Rembrandt, but she does share the serenity of both Rembrandt’s and Botticelli’s fecund images.
Comyn’s characteristically precise technique is well suited to this subject, yielding an image full of overflowing abundance and promise. The fact that it can be supposed to be a love offering adds to its potency.
51
Lou came downstairs, a few days after the storm, to find the kitchen empty. Landon had left the day before, and she imagined that Flora had resumed her habit of walking to the village to buy bread for breakfast. Lou filled the kettle and stood leaning against the work surface while it came to the boil.
Things felt different this morning: for the first time since they’d arrived, there was no hum of apprehension in the air. The last day or two had passed smoothly enough, but that had been the result of concerted effort. The Joneses were good at riding out crises, of course, and Landon, it turned out, had just the same skills of diplomacy and – Lou allowed herself a flash of emotion here – of dissimulation.
A sound from above prompted her to cast her eyes upwards briefly, but it was nothing, just the house breathing. Certainly not Kitty stirring yet: the emotional delicacy of recent days hadn’t affected Kitty’s capacity for sleep. Though Kitty might, Lou thought now, wake earlier today. Daniel was arriving this afternoon. The complexities of that situation seemed to have melted away with remarkable ease: in fact, Kitty’s view of her relationship with Daniel seemed altogether simpler now than it had been before the Martin-Henry-Landon drama had kicked off. Lou couldn’t help wondering about the legal minutiae – might Henry be named on Daniel’s birth certificate, for example? – but there would be an answer to that, if it came to it. That was what lawyers were for, finding a way through complications.
The fact that Flora hadn’t yet been told about Daniel’s parentage caused Lou greater unease. She’d tried to persuade Kitty that introducing Daniel to Flora on false pretences was a bad idea, but Kitty had scowled and said that prejudicing Flora against Daniel before she’d even met him was a worse idea, and Lou hadn’t had the strength to argue. Meanwhile, Flora seemed pleased by the prospect of an addition to their party, and Lou had to admit that she welcomed the diversion too. The ache of Alice’s absence was sharper when she had nothing else on her mind, and although she felt that bearing the pain of it was a noble thing, a sacrifice she owed to Alice, some small part of her was mindful of the need for self-preservation.
Her longing to speak to Alice was still tempered by the apprehension that she had tried to express to Flora. She couldn’t risk the phone, she’d concluded. She must content herself with email, and use that as sparingly as she could endure. Yesterday morning she’d written to tell Alice about the storm and to enquire after her mother. She must wait for a reply before she wrote again – and the painful pleasure of checking her email she would store up for a little while longer. Meanwhile, she decided, perhaps she’d follow Flora to the shop. She could do with a walk.
Lou was almost out of the door when the phone rang. She hesitated. Her French wasn’t up to much, but perhaps it might be Daniel, confirming arrangements. She darted back to the kitchen.
‘Bonjour?’
‘Is that – Flora?’
Lou’s heart bumped. Unmistakably Alice’s voice, the Midwestern lilt accentuated by nervousness.
‘It’s Lou,’ she said.
A small silence. The things she’d wanted to say, all this time, crashed and buffeted in Lou’s head.
‘It’s –’
‘I know.’ Lou clutched the phone tight. ‘How’s your mother?’
‘Better. She’s coming home today.’
‘I’m very glad.’
Lou waited for Alice to say, I’m coming home too, but she didn’t. After another hesitation Alice said, ‘I’ve written you a letter. I need to – I don’t have the address.’
This was the last thing Lou had expected, but it struck her now, with a horrible plunge, that she should have guessed it was what Alice would do. She stood very still, wondering if she dared hope the letter contained anything other than the worst kind of news.
‘Please, Alice,’ she said. ‘That isn’t fair. Read me the letter now.’
There was a tiny pause, and then Alice said, ‘Don’t be angry.’
‘I’m not angry,’ Lou said – although if she hadn’t been, she knew she’d be crying by now, weeping and pleading down the phone. ‘What about email? Can’t you send it that way?’
‘No. Not email.’
Lou bit her lip. She’d always found Alice’s mistrust of email touching, her conviction that words typed into a keyboard and read on a screen were too much altered to be relied upon. She preferred pen and ink, for any serious purpose. A letter as artefact, passed from on
e hand to another. But surely she could see that she was drawing out the agony unnecessarily. Surely it wasn’t so much a scruple as a deliberate intention to . . .
‘Do you have the address?’ Alice asked. ‘I’ll send it express; it should only take a couple of days.’
‘I don’t know.’ What if the letter went astray, Lou thought desperately? It was a long way from Fort Dodge to St Rémy: she imagined a perilous journey in lorries and aeroplanes, the slipping of seams and carelessness of baggage handlers. But if there was no other way . . .
‘Hang on a minute,’ she said. There was a letter for Martin Carver lying on the table in the hall, she remembered, waiting for Flora to forward it. ‘I’ll get it for you.’
52
This was the first time for more than a week that Flora had walked to the village alone. Now that Landon had gone she felt easier: she’d been holding her breath these last couple of days, she thought, determined to husband her dignity. It was a relief to relinquish that effort, but this morning a pervasive sadness filled the empty space in her mind. More than sadness, perhaps, but the other words she tried out had a taint of melodrama or of crisis about them that felt wrong. This was a private and a fully comprehended sadness; the kind left behind when melodrama and crisis have passed.
As she passed the familiar landmarks she was sharply aware of their poignancy, as though they had been returned to her after a period of quarantine and in the knowledge that they wouldn’t be available to her forever: the row of cypresses, the field of sunflowers across the valley – and then the turning to the Abelards’ farm.
Flora hadn’t seen Francine since that morning when she’d appeared with the rhubarb. The story of their friendship was a strange thing, Flora thought. For a tale of such uncertain substance it contained more than its fair share of memorable images: the gift of the jam, the loan of the raincoat, the Swiss couple, the cognac, the concert. Francine had led her both to Martin and to Landon, this summer. What was she to make of that? Flora could hardly deny Francine’s kindness, but she was troubled by the suspicion that she’d been part of some plan of Francine’s all along. Was that entirely fanciful?
The shop was quiet this morning. Flora bought two sticks of bread, cheered by the smiled greeting and the familiar smell of the place. The sun was full in her face when she stepped outside again, and it took her a few moments to recognise the figure coming towards her.
‘Hello!’ she called. ‘Did you guess where I’d gone?’
‘I thought it was a reasonable punt,’ said Lou. ‘Can I carry anything?’
Flora handed her a baguette, and they fell into step along the pavement. Flora was glad to have Lou’s company, and glad, too, that the charms of St Rémy seemed very obvious this morning. She wanted to draw Lou’s attention to the light, the smell, the warmth: to say I walk this way every morning; you can see why I love it.
‘Beautiful day,’ she said.
‘Mmm. Pretty village.’
They passed the Hotel de Ville and the Café du Centre, with its customary clique of old men sitting outside. Some not so old, Flora thought, recognising Claude Abelard among them. Poor Francine, left to hold the fort again.
‘Alice rang this morning,’ Lou said, as they left the little square behind them.
Flora’s mind turned instantly towards her. ‘Ah. Good news?’
‘Her mother’s better,’ Lou said, ‘but – Alice isn’t coming home yet.’
Flora toyed with a few phrases – what did she say? how did she sound? – but set them aside.
‘She’s written me a letter,’ Lou said. ‘God knows what it’ll say, but I can’t believe it’s good news.’
‘Sweetheart,’ Flora said. Lou was close to tears, she realised. She put a hand through her arm.
‘It’s OK,’ Lou said. ‘At least, it’s not OK, but there’s nothing to say.’
‘No,’ said Flora.
Another silence, this one less comfortable. Flora knew she was clumsy as a provider of solace, but it seemed to her suddenly that there was in fact a great deal to say, and she wished she had the happy turn of phrase, and the courage, to say it. Some of it she too might benefit from hearing spoken aloud: streams of wisdom that coursed suddenly, unexpectedly, through her head. That love almost always comes with a catch, somewhere along the line. That it can be hard to differentiate from other, more complicated, feelings. That it certainly doesn’t guarantee a life of bliss. No, she couldn’t say any of that to Lou, just now.
They came round the corner to the church, its steeple rising gracefully above the village, and Flora gripped Lou’s arm with sudden zeal.
‘Come with me,’ she said. ‘There’s something we should see.’
She hadn’t been sure the door would be open, but it was. Inside, the church waited in the half-dark. How strange, Flora thought, that she had walked past so often and never been in.
‘What is it?’ Lou asked.
‘A famous painting,’ Flora said. ‘Thirteenth century. An Annunciation.’
Something for a mother and a daughter to share, she had thought.
But it wasn’t an Annunciation. There was Mary, wearing an expression of desperate piety, but she wasn’t receiving the news of her son’s conception: she was cradling his dead body in her arms. Flora felt the shock of the image thud through her, an emotional depth charge planted eight hundred years ago. The wounds on Christ’s hands and feet were neat and precise, unbloodied by Romantic sensibility, the pain of his mother undimmed by the centuries – no different, Flora thought, from a twenty-first-century news report from Syria or Afghanistan.
For a few moments she and Lou stood together in silence. And then, quite unexpectedly, quite shockingly, Flora started to laugh. What had she hoped for, bringing Lou in here? Some subliminal communication about the inalienable bond between mother and child, or the joy and responsibility of love? Well, that was all here: the very same truth she had hoped to impart. How could the terrible sadness of it seem so funny to her? The sadness of the world; of hopes unfulfilled, years passing, life expiring.
‘What?’ said Lou. ‘What is it?’
‘It’s the wrong picture,’ Flora said. ‘A Pietà, not an Annunciation.’
‘It’s very beautiful.’
Lou looked bewildered – not so much by the error, Flora thought, as by her mother’s inexplicable mirth – and her bewilderment made Flora laugh all the more, convulsed now with sorrow and pity and hopelessness that only seemed able to find expression in the absurdity of the situation. She was reminded of something, but she couldn’t think what. Giving birth, perhaps. The wild dissociation of gas and air. She waited for Lou to join in, or for mirth to give way to tears, but there was just her laughter, echoing through the church, and the anguish of the Virgin Mary before her. Oh, thought Flora: oh, to be able to sweep away complication and misunderstanding. Lord, but life felt arduous sometimes. Would that she could sink down on one of these ancient pews and wait for peace of mind and heart to return. Would that she could sit out the summer here, among the smell of dust and incense, and let the world sail on outside. But that wasn’t how it was. There was no escaping from life.
‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. Let’s go home.’
Outside, the sunshine dazzled. They walked on quietly, and after a while Flora could almost believe that she’d imagined the visit to the church – except, she thought, that she felt a little stronger than she had. Perhaps that wasn’t so ignoble a response, if one didn’t investigate it too closely.
‘It’s nice to see Kitty more cheerful,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ said Lou.
‘Tell me about Daniel. Do you like him?’
‘I’ve only met him once.’
‘I thought she’d come here to get away from him,’ Flora said. ‘Was I wrong about that?’
‘No,’ said Lou. ‘Not exactly. But things have – moved on.’
‘She must be keen on him if she can’t bear to be separated from him any longer,�
� Flora persisted, ignoring the side turning there, the reference to one of the ways in which things had moved on. She must talk to Lou again about Landon, but not now. There was, she thought, already too much in play.
‘She is keen on him. He’s a wonderful musician, she says.’
Lou shot a glance at her, apparently registering some indelicacy in that observation. Acknowledging, perhaps, the drawbacks of wonderful musicians as potential life partners: a rather touching scruple, Flora thought. She tucked her hand through Lou’s arm again as they walked the last stretch along the narrow road.
53
Daniel’s travel arrangements – like so many things involving his generation – seemed to have been organised almost instantaneously. He was arriving by rail: a strange choice, Kitty kept saying, since flights were cheaper and faster, but it seemed to Flora, as the three of them stood on the platform at Châtellerault and watched the TGV sweep impressively into the station, a romantic sort of entrance to make.
‘There he is!’ Kitty called, as the doors opened. ‘Here! Daniel, I’m here!’
Any pretence at nonchalance had evaporated, Flora thought, observing her younger daughter with a mixture of amusement and fearfulness – but it was clear from their greeting that Daniel’s feelings matched hers. Stocky, curly-haired, open-faced, he held his arms wide for her to run into. Clasped together on the platform, with Kitty half-hidden in his bear hug, they looked like a couple who had been separated for years rather than days. Watching them, Flora felt a powerful tug of . . . what? Envy, she supposed. Nostalgia. Emptiness. She turned away, gathering about her a protective veil of maternal gratification. Kitty was happy: what more could she want, except equal happiness for Lou?
*
The mood in the car was different on the way home. Daniel’s scrupulous politeness to Flora made her feel a little forlorn, because it revealed an assumption that he and Kitty – and even Lou – shared a world she could never be part of. Flora couldn’t help wondering whether Kitty had told him about Landon; couldn’t help, then, seeing her actions through Daniel’s eyes and imagining his amused distaste at the thought of her night of passion – and it was only a short step from there to feeling ridiculous in her own eyes. This morning’s hysteria in the church had left its mark, too, in a slight wariness in Lou’s manner and a distracting buzz in Flora’s head.
The Things You Do for Love Page 33