The Glass House

by Beatrice Colin

  “But the space,” Antonia said. “We don’t have the space.”

  “Why not hold it in the glass house?” Cicely suggested. “It’s certainly big enough.”

  Antonia turned and looked at her, her eyes wide.

  “Why didn’t I think of that?” she said. “We could have dancing in the orangery and drinks next to the roses. We could string colored-paper lanterns from pillar to pillar and have a band playing beneath the palms. It’s perfect!”

  Kitty ran past the window with a wooden sword in her hand. When it was dry outside she kept herself occupied for hours, playing long imaginary games and sometimes building dens out of sticks and fallen branches.

  “How about a masked ball?” Antonia went on. “With an Indian theme? We could eat kedgeree, and there would be cushions to sit on of instead of chairs. It would all be rather fun, I think. Unless—”

  “Unless?”

  “When are you thinking of leaving Balmarra?”

  Antonia had caught her off guard.

  “I received a letter from George,” she began, “asking me to take his specimens to the Regius Keeper in Edinburgh in person. When they arrive, that is. Also, Kitty doesn’t start school until the end of September.”

  “Well, then we have plenty of time. I’ll look at dates and come up with a few possibilities.”

  There was no letter from the solicitor that afternoon or the next, nothing but a card from Keir Lorimer suggesting a time he might pick her up the following day. Cicely pictured his face, the way he had looked at her at the foot of the stairs, and felt herself flush. She had had too much champagne at dinner. She couldn’t see him again. Before she could change her mind, she threw the card away without answering.

  If only she could find that letter from Edward Pick, then it could all be sorted out. In her bedroom she checked through her suitcase, her handbag, her bedside drawers once more. She was down on her knees looking under the bed when Kitty walked in.

  “Lost something?” she asked.

  “A letter,” she replied. “I’ve looked everywhere.”

  “You and Daddy are always losing things.”

  Cicely straightened and stared at Kitty.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It’s just that you don’t look after things very well,” she said.

  “We try,” she said. “It’s not always easy.”

  Kitty shrugged and tried to smile, but her mouth was turned down at the corners.

  “It’s not easy for me either,” she whispered.

  “I know,” Cicely replied.

  She held her hand out to Kitty, but Kitty did not take it. Instead she let herself out of the room and ran down the stairs, out of the house, and, as Cicely watched from her bedroom window, across the lawn to the woods.

  * * *

   Malcolm dealt with their finances; he didn’t even trust her with a checkbook. But Antonia had promised that he wouldn’t be involved. No, this was something she would sort out on her own. She had noticed as soon as she had come into the breakfast room that the honey of her sister-in-law’s skin had faded and she had a blue smudge beneath each eye. She looked pale, exhausted, crumpled. When she had brought up the subject of her marriage, Cicely’s eyes had filled with tears. It was not only the strain of being married to her brother that was causing her grief but the cost of the expedition. Well, she could help with that.

  The pony-and-trap went at quite a clip. Antonia sat on the bench and clung to her parcel as they flew along the coast road. After that conversation with Cicely, she had climbed once more to the attic and fumbled her way in the half-dark to the stack of paintings, choosing at random one of the more explicit works. Surely it was worth something? She wrapped it up in brown paper and string, covering up the full breasts and the naked flesh and hiding it at the back of her wardrobe. But how should she go about selling the painting, and to whom?

  She had hoped that it hadn’t been noticed, but the night before, when she had just come in from cutting some flowers for the dining table, Malcolm burst into her room.

  “Antonia!” His hair was slightly tousled, and his shoulders were covered in dust.

  “Whatever is the matter?” she said.

  “I’ve been calling!” he said. Shouting, more like, she thought.

  “Have you?”

  “I’ve just been in the attic to look out my winter galoshes,” he said. “You haven’t been up there recently, have you?”

  Antonia’s palms bloomed with sweat. She didn’t want him to know about the vase. Or the painting.

  “Me? No,” she said. “Why?”

  He stood in silence for a moment as if wondering whether to speak.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Never mind.”

  Surely he hadn’t noticed anything missing? It was highly unlikely. The attic was large and poorly lit. He could have spotted, however, that someone had shifted boxes and rooted through the tea chests, or that stacks of paintings had been straightened and, if he was keenly observant, he might have noticed that there were a couple of empty spaces in the mayhem. But what could he do about it? Maybe she should have told him. But she had promised Cicely. And there were some parts of her and her life that she didn’t want him to know about. Henry Morris, for example.

  A few days earlier she had sent Henry a postcard, asking if he could meet her on an urgent matter. As soon as the card had been sent, however, she had been filled with so much regret that she had half a mind to run after Bill, who had been dispatched to the post office, and take the card back. What would Henry think when he received it? How many years since they had last corresponded? Maybe he wasn’t even resident at his address anymore. She half hoped he wasn’t. She wished him away from Gourock, from Scotland—from Europe, even. She imagined him walking along the beach of a tropical island, beneath a sunset of brilliant reds and yellows, his feet bare, his skin golden brown. The next few hours were agony. Until, that is, she received his card, sent by return. Her eye ran over the familiar handwriting and the stamp stuck at a slight angle, the way he used to place it, a secret sign that his heart was constant. Now it was surely nothing more than a slip of the hand.

  “Hunter’s Quay,” he had written. “11 am on Wednesday. Yours, H.”

  As she rode away from Balmarra, she realized that having an excuse to see Henry might be the tonic that she needed. Ever since Cicely’s arrival she had felt as if a mirror had been held up to reveal a reflection of herself that she had not recognized, one that she did not like. She saw herself and what she had become clearly for the first time in years. How had she become so middle-aged, so old, so stuck? But now she felt a familiar lightness inside. She told herself that it was a business matter, that there was nothing more to it than that: She was doing it for her sister-in-law. But as she had put on her favorite day dress, which she kept for high days and holidays, and had tied the red cashmere scarf that Cicely had given her around her shoulders, she noticed that she was shaking. The thought of seeing Henry again after all this time was exhilarating—and terrifying.

  The pony-and-trap slowed down as they approached Hunter’s Quay. She arrived at the pier at the same time as the ferry from Gourock, and there he was, disembarking, older now and slightly stooped from the weight of secret troubles: Henry Morris, the painter.

  “Miss Pick,” he said when he reached her, and she didn’t correct him. At that particular moment she had no wish to be Mrs. Malcolm McCulloch.

  “Henry,” she replied, for she had always addressed him by his first name. “Thank you for coming at such short notice.”

  “Anything for a friend.”

  It was his eyes that struck her first. She had forgotten how blue they were, a shade she would recall later as cerulean, the color of shallow water over white sand. The rest of his face, however, had grown craggy with age. And she saw now that his clothes were stiff on him and were his best, kept for weddings and funerals; eventually, she guessed, his own. On his left wrist his shirt was fastened with one go
ld cuff link; on his right, a twisted paper clip did the job. And she was suddenly sorry and wished she had not stolen that single cuff link from him all those years ago.

  They took coffee in the dining room of the Royal Marine Hotel. At eleven in the morning they were the only customers.

  “I was sorry to hear of your father’s passing,” Henry said once they were seated. “He was a generous man.”

  “Kind of you to say,” she replied, “although not strictly true.”

  The bartender brought a plate of shortbread and hovered next to the door to the bar. She wanted him to leave. She wished they were alone, on Karrasay again, Henry’s easel propped in front of them, the scene, like their future, still an unfinished sketch. A bell rang in a distant room. The bartender left to attend to it. Henry picked up a teaspoon and turned it over and over in his fingers. Like her, he was unsure what to do with his hands.

  “Such a pretty scarf,” he said softly. “Suits you.”

  “It’s the warmest thing I own,” she began, automatically defusing the compliment out of habit. “Anyway, it’s been too long…”

  She felt his eyes on her face, and so she took off her hat and smoothed down the felt. She had followed his career from a safe distance, spotting articles in the local paper that mentioned that his paintings had been accepted for group shows in the Royal Academy in London or the National Galleries in Edinburgh. He seemed to be doing well, or as well as could be expected for a man of his occupation. She had also kept an eye on the classified section, alert for any mention of a marriage. He had not, as far as she knew, been wed. She kept her left hand in her lap where he would not see her wedding ring.

  “It’s so nice to see you again, Miss Pick.”

  “Please. Call me Antonia.”

  “As you wish. So what can I help you with?” He smiled and waited expectantly.

  Antonia drained her coffee cup and poured another. She would have to speak soon or he would get the wrong impression.

  “I wanted to ask your advice. You see, I have one of my father’s paintings that I’d like to sell, and I thought you might know of someone who might like to buy it.”

  He studied her.

  “I am afraid I am not an art dealer,” he said. “But I know a few people who I could ask.”

  “The thing is, I need to sell it rather quickly.”

  “When, exactly?”

  “As soon as possible. Tomorrow?”

  He laughed, and when she didn’t, he stopped, then picked up his cup and set it down again without drinking.

  “How can I put this without causing offense?” he said softly. “Antonia, is there anything the matter?”

  “Oh no, it’s not for me!” she said. “It’s for my brother’s expedition.”

  She told him about Cicely Pick’s unexpected arrival from India, about the niece, and about her brother’s life collecting rare and precious plants that needed urgent finance. She did not mention Malcolm once.

  “It’s all been rather chaotic, as I’m sure you can imagine,” she said.

  “Yes indeed,” he said.

  The painter was silent for a moment, and she suddenly saw a change in him that she hadn’t noticed at first. All that ambition, that desire for success, the hubris that he had once radiated, was gone. If one was being unkind, one might say that he now seemed pickled in disappointment. And she remembered then that it had not been her who had cooled, who had stepped out of the ring, but him.

  “Have you been busy?” she asked. “With commissions?”

  He sighed and told her that he had not, that his style of painting seemed to be somewhat out of step with public taste.

  “But they will catch up, surely?”

  He nodded but she saw that he didn’t quite believe it.

  “I was thinking of going to France,” he said. “To Paris.”

  Antonia suddenly found herself overcome with melancholy. For what? For a lack of opportunity. For the absence of choice. She would like to go to Paris, too, to paint. Or to go together with Henry Morris, although not the one who sat across from her smelling of cedar wardrobes and coal smoke; instead another, younger version, the one she had first known. But he had not wanted her. She swallowed, then stared at her hands in her lap. Her life seemed to telescope to the point where she realized that the moment when she could have run away with a painter, with Henry Morris, had probably long since passed. Even if he had wished it—and he hadn’t—she never had the courage, the wherewithal, the nerve, and now it was too late.

  “I have a friend who is a friend of a painter called Matisse,” he said. “Have you heard of him?”

  Antonia was pulled back to the moment and shook her head no. She drained her coffee cup once more and tried to pour another, but there was nothing left but a few bitter black drops. He watched, taking her in, reminded once again, she was certain, of her limitations, her failings, her naïveté, as clear as the willow pattern on the china cups.

  “Let’s see that painting, then,” he said softly.

  Antonia placed her parcel on the table and untied it. Henry Morris pulled back the brown paper, and his face froze for an instant.

  “Not quite what I expected,” he said.

  “It seems my father had rather unorthodox taste.”

  His eye ran over the painting, taking in the details, looking for something to say other than the obvious.

  “It could be a scene from Greek mythology,” he finally said. “Venus or the Sirens.”

  She didn’t voice what they were both thinking: Was this really art, or something else?

  The bartender came in again to ask if they required lunch. Henry swiftly covered up the painting with the brown paper.

  “We won’t, thank you,” he told the waiter.

  Henry looked at his watch. The next ferry left in quarter of an hour.

  “What do you think?” she asked.

  “I can’t promise anything,” he said. “But I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Good man,” she said.

  “I try to be,” he replied. “Don’t always succeed, mind.”

  He rose to his feet and pulled on his coat. While his back was turned, quick as you like, she pocketed a teaspoon.

  11

  Once Antonia had set off, Cicely put a bridle on the pony and rode him up into the hills behind the house again. From there she could look down at the finger of open water below, still as glass, and beyond, the clutter and sprawl of the sugar towns, Greenock, Gourock, and Port Glasgow. A tiny black train moved along the far bank heading east, trailing a veil of white steam and gray smoke. Closer, in the forests below, autumn was approaching, and clusters of leaves were already yellow or orange or blood red. Every time she rode through the estate, she discovered a part she had never seen before—a stream, a thicket of trees, or a bank of wildflowers untouched, or so it seemed, by anyone for years. She saw a movement, and her eye was drawn to a figure moving slowly but purposefully through the trees. It was old Mr. Baillie. What was he doing so far from the house? Perhaps she should mention it to Jacob.

  It was late afternoon by the time she returned to the house. Malcolm’s car was parked outside. The door to Kitty’s room was ajar, but there was a change in the air, a thinning, an absence. Even without looking inside, Cicely knew she wasn’t there. She looked in her own bedroom next door and in the nursery. She searched the house, then asked Dora and Cook, but they hadn’t seen her. Be calm, she told herself. Kitty can’t have gone far. She was aware that over the last few days she hadn’t seen that much of her. She was always out in the garden, exploring the estate, playing games. But she always told her she was going; she never went without saying good-bye. And she always took the dog.

  Outside it looked like rain.

  “Kitty?” she called in the hallway. But there was no answer.

  Malcolm was sitting in the drawing room with the paper in his lap.

  “Can I have a word?” said Cicely.

  “Now?” he said. “I was just about to d
o the crossword.”

  He looked up, saw her face, and closed his newspaper.

  “Thank you, Malcolm.”

  It was the first time she had used his Christian name, and it felt foreign in her mouth, flat as a piece of slate.

  “Well?” he said. “How may I be of service?”

  “I’ve lost Kitty,” she said. “Have you seen her?”

  “In fact, I have. The little scamp was in the attic,” he said, smiling as if it were all a joke. “Some rather precious items have gone missing. I don’t know where they are or what she’s done with them, but we’d rather like them back.”

  “Kitty?”

  “Yes, Kitty. A precious vase and a painting. Of a rather pornographic nature. I’m sorry to tell you, but there it is.”

  He opened his newspaper again and started to read the puzzle clues.

  “Kitty is only eight years old,” she said.

  “Mrs. Pick. Did you go up to the attic?”

  “No.”

  “Well then,” Malcolm said he as filled in a word.

  “When exactly was this?”

  “An hour or so ago. I asked her about the attic, and she denied it. And so I threatened to give her a good tanning if she didn’t give them back.”

  “A what?”

  “A pasting,” he replied. “Of course I didn’t actually do it.”

  She sought out his gaze, making him meet hers.

  “Why would you want to do a thing like that to a little girl?”

  “She’ll have to get used to it once she starts school,” Malcolm said.

  “I won’t allow that,” she said. “Not here or at school.”

  “Won’t you, indeed?”

  He sighed theatrically.

  “We should never have come here,” she said.

  The door was suddenly blown open. A rush of cold air filled the hallway. Malcolm was still writing out letters at the top of the page.