Summer in Mayfair

by Susannah Constantine

  Esme was sure her soul had already flown with the Earl’s and that they were finally united in heaven. Looking back, Esme realized that her mother’s heart, the only piece that had remained unaffected by her depression, had broken that horrible Christmas of 1969. Esme remembered overhearing her mother pleading with the Earl not to leave her, when they thought they were hidden from view in one of the many rooms at Culcairn Castle. Just like that, her mother disappeared into herself never to return. Esme never again felt her unconditional love and the abrupt shock of emotional abandonment had wreaked havoc on Esme over the years. She still had morning terrors but had come to accept them as a kind of haunting that would pass as soon as she got out of bed. Now that she was older, she was grateful to the Earl for giving her mother some happiness and the kind of love her father had never shown her, beyond an obsessive admiration of her beauty.

  She could have blamed the Earl and her mother for so much – not least the emotional bullying inflicted on her by the Contessa, when she had had to stay at Culcairn Castle. Maybe this was why the Earl had left her a painting. By way of apology. A guilty conscience placating itself before death. The Culcairns had three children, one boy, Rollo and two girls, Bella and Lexi, who was the same age as Esme and had been her best friend throughout her childhood. Often when her mother was sent away to a mental facility, sometimes for weeks at a time, Esme was sent to stay with Lexi. There she was a target for the Contessa’s bitterness, using Esme to vent her spleen. She did it subtly, bullying Esme with silence and instructing staff to ignore her, too. There was never a place laid for her at meals and the Contessa acted as if she was invisible during her incarceration at the castle. Frankly, she understood why the Earl had strayed from the Bitch, as Sophia referred to her. Who would want to be tied to a woman so filled with hatred and poison? But even when the Contessa had finally physically attacked Esme and the Earl promised his wife he was leaving her, he’d only got as far as moving out of their marital bed and into the adjoining dressing room. Esme wondered whether the Earl had been more afraid of his wife than he’d ever admitted.

  Esme was woken by a knock on the compartment door and realized that she must have fallen asleep.

  ‘Rise and shine. We’re coming into Euston,’ said the guard cheerfully, through the opaque glass.

  She looked at her watch: six thirty. The train hissed and spluttered to a halt and Esme tugged at the blind which snapped open to reveal a landscape of grey. Bin bags banked against metal girders and the weak rays from the rising sun trickled through the grubby roof of Euston station, illuminating the grime. It occurred to Esme that unlike rural dirt, which was a working layer of earth, suburban dirt was nothing to be respected. The farmers liked dirt whilst city dwellers got rid of it, or at least they did in residential areas. Here in a grand public gateway to the city decades of grease and soot coated the glass roof and clung to its beams. Sparrows and pigeons pecked at crumbs of bread and flies caught in abandoned spiders’ webs that wafted in high corners.

  Gathering her belongings, Esme wondered how the hell she was going to get the crate off the train. She looked down the platform to see if there was a porter but aside from her few fellow passengers and early male commuters with big hair and sideburns, Euston station was quiet. She had readied herself for the onslaught of mass human bedlam, pushing and shoving to begin their day but the city still slept. A homeless man with a shopping trolley was checking pieces of litter strewn across the platform. He picked up a beer can and drained what was left, wiping his mouth with a dirty sleeve. Sensing Esme’s gaze, he turned to look at her and she blinked, turning away and embarrassed by her luck of the draw in life. Mrs Bee never let her forget that life was a lottery and, despite her mother’s mental health, she was fortunate in so many ways.

  With no choice, she dragged and tugged the crate out of her compartment and pushed it onto the platform. It clattered to the ground causing the wood to split down one side. She felt her throat thicken signalling the onset of tears. Telling herself to get a grip, she grabbed an abandoned trolley and heaved the picture aboard, smiled at the homeless man and headed for the taxi rank.

  Compared to the nostalgic romance of Culcairn station, Euston appeared vast and hostile; even more so given its lack of people at this time in the morning. She felt tiny and insignificant and clutched at the bar of the trolley as a couple of early commuters charged past. A wave of longing for The Lodge made her want to get back on the train and she dragged her feet as she forced her way forward through the cloying urban air, pretending to feel confident and grown up. The last thing she wanted was to be pitied.

  There was no queue and a line of taxis sat idly waiting for custom. Esme double-checked the address of the gallery, scribbled on a piece of paper that she unfolded from deep within her pocket.

  ‘Jermyn Street in St James’s, please, sir.’

  The taxi driver was generous and didn’t turn his meter on until they had managed, after multiple attempts, to get the giant crate at the right angle to fit inside.

  She sat down on the leather seat, wedged between the crate and the door, and closed her eyes for a moment.

  ‘Oh gosh. Thank you so much.’

  ‘Happy to help, love. Don’t know how you managed this far.’

  The man’s kindness caught her heart and if there hadn’t been the glass screen dividing them, she would have leant over and hugged him.

  The traffic was slow but not yet nose to tail so it didn’t take long to get to Mayfair. Even so, the expensive fare left her with little remaining cash, which she knew she should use to tip the friendly driver.

  ‘Don’t worry, love. You can tip me next time.’

  ‘Thank you so much, sir. Are you sure? I will be able to because I’m starting a new job. Here. At this gallery. It’s my first day,’ she said.

  ‘I’m sure, sweets. Looks very fancy,’ said the cabby.

  Getting the painting out of the taxi was less difficult but left splinters of wood all over the interior. Esme went to sweep them out.

  ‘Oh don’t you worry about that. It’s the end of my shift, anyway.’

  ‘But it’s made so much mess,’ said Esme. ‘I don’t mind. Really.’

  ‘Not a problem. I’m ready to go home to a nice hot breakfast from the missus,’ he said. ‘I haven’t slept for eighteen hours.’

  ‘Oh, well if you’re sure then, thank you. I hope you get home soon,’ she said, then waved him off.

  The gallery hadn’t opened up yet. It was too early and she didn’t have enough money for a cup of tea, let alone breakfast. Mayfair and St James’s wasn’t an area she knew well, apart from the Ritz hotel. Her grandfather had moved into a suite there when he retired and only left in a coffin. She had joined him for tea once; an ostentatiously English cliché down to potted shrimps and a tea menu longer than the wine list. Nowhere else in this part of town would be open this early and anyway, she couldn’t exactly lug her bags and the blasted painting around town. She would have to wait for nearly two hours on the step.

  The pangs of nerves in her stomach had now been overthrown by a gnawing hunger. She felt uncomfortably empty as she parked herself on the gallery step using the pallet to protect her bum from the cold. Stretching her legs out, she leant back against the door. Thankfully it wasn’t raining and the street was still deserted apart from the dustbin men.

  All around her the shop windows were so clean, catching the light of the sun as it rose over the rooftops. St James’s was surely the most salubrious borough in London. Everything displayed in the gleaming windows was of the highest quality and had a price tag to match. By comparison she felt shoddy and out of place. As a teenager, Esme had immersed herself in the Regency world of Georgette Heyer and she felt the author’s vision come alive as she looked up and down the street. It was nearly 300 years since Jermyn Street had been built by the Earl of St Albans but it had not lost its quintessentially British character: wealth and extravagance.

  Many of the gentlemen’s shops
had been there for decades as had their private members’ clubs, most notably, White’s. She knew this section of St James’s had always been very much a male domain, where a woman’s reputation could be ruined in minutes if she so much as set foot on a flagstone of the street at the wrong hour or in the wrong company. Tucking herself further into the doorway, she hoped times had changed, on that front at least.

  The noise of emptying rubbish bins reverberated down the street. Esme heard the clash of glass and thud of paper being chewed by a truck. The bins at home were at the end of the drive and their gardener took the bags down on the tractor for collection. She was going to have to get used to city living. The sheer density of people, the sky reduced to a strip of blue above the street, still felt alien to her. People drank a hell of a lot of wine in this part of town, she thought, as she caught sight of a flash of green emptying out of the bins, followed by the crunch of breaking glass. Mind you, she knew selling art was all about networking and networking involved oiling prospective art buyers with alcohol. Despite the early hour, her mouth watered at the thought of a large glass of burgundy. Things were looking up.

  Up at the Piccadilly end of the road, she saw a man walking with purpose. A fellow early riser? But as he approached, his attire came into view. Black tie suit, sans bow tie. He looked bleary and dishevelled. Bit old to have partied all night, she thought. As he passed, he dropped a fistful of coins at her feet without even looking at her. The gesture was deliberate and unquestionable. Shame flamed into her reddening face.

  ‘No… I’m not…’ Esme called but the man had already turned the corner. He clearly thought she was homeless and taking refuge in a posh doorway. Did she really look so incongruous against the opulent surroundings? she wondered, looking down at her jeans and a Fair Isle sweater. She stood up and leant against the doorframe to avoid any further confusion but still slightly guiltily pocketed the four pounds the man had tossed at her feet.

  ‘Hello? You must be Esme,’ said a crisp voice out of nowhere.

  ‘Er, yes. Hello?’ said Esme, turning around and quickly taking in the young woman standing in front of her.

  Navy court shoes, matching fifteen-denier tights, navy pinstripe skirt, pale-pink frilled shirt and minimal make-up on an incredibly pretty face that looked at her with a huge grin.

  ‘I’m Serena but everyone calls me Suki. Come on, let’s get you in. Looks like you could do with a cup of coffee.’

  ‘I’m dying for one.’

  Suki bent down. ‘Help me move this wood thing. We can put it by the bins for collection.’

  ‘Oh no! That’s mine.’

  ‘Really? You came all the way from Scotty with that? What is it?’

  ‘A painting. I think. It was left to me by someone who died and Mrs Bee insisted I bring it.’

  ‘What do you mean, you think it’s a painting?’

  ‘I haven’t opened it yet.’

  Suki looked surprised.

  ‘Well, you’re at the best place to get it looked at if it is a painting. Bill will be excited. He loves an unexpected treasure turning up.’ Suki unlocked the door and rushed inside to a loud beeping noise. ‘Just turning the alarm off,’ she shouted over her shoulder.

  ‘There we go,’ she said, coming back and bending down by the crate. ‘Here, you take the other side.’

  They lifted the crate into the gallery and leant it up against a wall. Esme looked around the room. It was small and decorated like a Napoleonic salon. Ormolu wall sconces, ice blue silk covered the walls and a three-piece set of Empire sofa and chairs. A fine pair of neo-classic candelabra embraced the fire surround. Suki switched the lights on and four paintings sprang to life, the bright colours revitalized from their slumber.

  ‘Oh, wow,’ sighed Esme. ‘Who are these by? They are beautiful.’

  ‘Someone French, I think,’ replied Suki, without bothering to look.

  ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘No idea. To be frank, I know nothing about art but I can type sixty words a minute. And cook a super avocado mousse. Learnt both at finishing school in Switzerland. Both equally useful, I’d say.’

  ‘So why did you choose to work in an art gallery?’

  ‘I’m here because Daddy knows Bill and begged him to give me a job. Old boy network and all that jazz. I’m just passing time until I get married and have a stately home full of children. A duke would be ideal but a lord will do. As long as he’s tall, rich and handsome I don’t mind if he’s one of those fake European aristos. I have a boyfriend who’s stinking but its new money. At least he’s got a posh name. Johnny. And he’s in the army.’ She blew a strand of hair from her face. ‘Must get my hair cut. I want a Heather Locklear flick. I’d love to get it done by Leonard but Mummy says it’s common.’

  Esme knew nothing of Leonard or Heather what’s-her-face or a flicky hairdo. She felt dowdy and provincial. Suki pushed her hair back with a velvet headband and twizzled one of her pearl earrings.

  ‘Have you got your ears pierced?’ she asked, lifting Esme’s long hair from her ear. ‘No. That’s something we can do one lunch hour. But first, coffee.’

  Esme followed her into a kitchenette at the back of the showroom. Dirty mugs piled up in the sink. Suki rinsed two, leaving a brown ring in both.

  ‘Sugar? Oh yes. Three, I think. We want to fatten you up. Like the Christmas turkey.’ Suki laughed, a deep gurgle coming from her core.

  Over a weak brew, Esme gave Suki a potted history of her life – leaving out some of the parts she felt she barely understood herself, or which hurt her too much to admit. There was an odd liberation in telling her version of her story to someone new – someone who didn’t already know her family or was just keen to get juicy gossip on the notorious Munroes. Yet it made her realize that while she could talk about where she came from, she didn’t yet really know where she wanted to go or who she wanted to become.

  ‘Well, now you have given me your life story, I feel we are already friends.’ Suki smiled.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Esme, feeling flustered. She found it hard meeting new people and shyness brought on verbal diarrhoea.

  ‘Don’t be silly. It’s good to get to know you. But you’ll find I like to cut to the chase,’ said Suki, laughing. ‘Are you looking for a husband? Is that why you have come to London? Apart from having nowhere else to go.’

  ‘I haven’t given that much thought, really,’ said Esme. ‘One day, maybe. But certainly not in the imminent future. I’m happy being single. And it’s not that I have nowhere…’

  ‘Well, you’ll meet someone soon enough. Our kind of London is a small place. Once you’ve met one person, you’ll meet everyone. And you now know me. So, there we go.’

  But Esme wasn’t sure she wanted to meet Suki’s kind of everyone. She’d had enough of privilege and the lies stitching high society together at the seams. She wanted to meet people who had worked hard to get somewhere, not just been born with the right surname. One thing she was sure of, for her this job at Cartwright Fine Art wasn’t just to pass the time – or simply because Sophia was Bill’s goddaughter. She loved art – and while everyone always told her she shared her father’s eye, art meant more than just the Munroe family business to her. Growing up in a world where everyone seemed to speak in double meanings, paintings seemed to speak a language she felt she could understand. And now she hoped it would give her a career. She knew she wanted to make her own money, not just marry it. Ever since she could remember she was coming up with ideas and schemes, but in her father’s eyes she’d always been labelled as the ‘pretty one’ and Sophia the ‘clever one’. Both sisters had been furious. But Esme was determined to prove him wrong even if she had no idea how to do so yet. But swimming purely in the sea of silver spoons was going to get her nowhere.

  ‘Thanks, Suki,’ said Esme, draining her coffee and going to wash her mug.

  ‘Oh, don’t do that. We have a cleaner for that. The bloody woman didn’t come in yesterday. Fake flu.’

  Esme ig
nored her, rinsed out the mug and put it back in the cupboard.

  ‘Right. I had better show you the ropes. Bill will be in soon.’ Taking Esme by the arm, she led her to a fine mahogany table with turned legs and gilt finish.

  ‘This is your desk. Pride of place in the window. Lucky you’re pretty as here you basically double up as the shop mannequin. Passersby might be lured in by your looks. Not stupid, our Bill. He knows how to attract the big fish.’

  Suki picked up the telephone receiver.

  ‘You press nine for an outside line and push whichever of these buttons are flashing when the phone rings.’ She picked up a notepad – ‘This is for messages’ – as her eyes swept the table. ‘Yikes. No pen! God, I’m thick. I’ll get you one.’

  ‘What do you do here, Suki?’

  ‘Oh, you know, typical secretarial stuff: paying invoices, typing letters, arranging meetings,’ she said. ‘Then the slave jobs like taking Bill’s dry cleaning and parking his car. He’s always telling me I’m useless but I know he wouldn’t survive without me,’ she laughed.

  ‘Do you have your own office?’

  ‘In the room at the back. Held prisoner by filing cabinets and a typewriter. And of course, stacks of paintings. The less valuable ones, anyway. The priceless ones are in a strong room along with the treasure.’

  ‘Treasure?’

  ‘Yes, you know. Booty. Bundles of cash, small sculptures and jewels of every description and carat. There’s probably literally millions worth of stuff in there. Perhaps your painting will join it.’

  Esme had forgotten all about the picture. She wasn’t sure she was ready to open it just yet, for fear of what lay inside. All the notable paintings at Culcairn were catalogued and had mostly hung on the castle walls for centuries. She knew that hers must have been one gathering dust in a distant tower, and despite her curiosity opening it would still symbolize a kind of farewell to the Earl. She swallowed as she remembered her other fear – the thought that the Contessa might have found out and switched the painting for something terrible.