The Lost and Found Necklace

by Louisa Leaman

  “A butterfly necklace. Jessy, you were going to get it for me—”

  “And I failed, Nancy. Once again, I’m massively sorry.”

  Nancy bows her head, then brightens again.

  “My mother once called it the True Love Necklace. She gave it to me when I was seventeen. Oh, I’d so like it back.”

  “I know,” says Jess regretfully.

  Then as the wind blows, Nancy’s focus recycles itself.

  “The Crystal Palace,” she repeats, “built for the Great Exhibition of 1851, first in Hyde Park, then moved here, where it still stands.”

  “Or at least its remains do,” Jess corrects.

  What a shame, she thinks, that something so magnificent, that transformed so many people’s view of the world, is now a mere concrete slab, the sparkle of its aisles gone to dust.

  “Ah, time,” says Nancy, staring down at her wizened hands. “It does have a habit of degrading things. Can we see it? Can we go?”

  “We’re here, Grandma,” says Jess affirmatively, realizing the conversation is going in circles.

  “So we are.”

  Jess turns Nancy’s chair toward where the palace entrance would have been. Nancy’s eyes widen, as though she is seeing the crystalline marvel as it was—the cast-iron structure towering above, the sheen of the glass, the trees, the towers, the fountains, the elegant Italianate gardens, people everywhere. The past in the present, the dead resurrected for just one transformative instant to delight an ailing imagination.

  “It was the world’s first theme park,” Tim reads from his phone, “known as ‘The Palace of the People.’ Apparently it housed sports matches, festivals, and concerts. Even had a roller coaster. And it featured the first public toilets, for which guests were charged a penny. And—oh, Jess, you’ll like this—exhibits included a single nugget of Chilean gold weighing fifty kilograms and the world’s rarest pale-pink diamond from India.”

  “How does he know?” says Nancy scathingly.

  “Wikipedia,” whispers Jess. “He likes looking up facts on his phone.”

  Nancy snorts.

  “Our Minnie,” she says, with an imperious air, “didn’t need the Wikipedia. She saw the Great Shalimar in all its glory. It was her playground.”

  “It was?”

  “In her teens she would go for walks, which would turn into three-hour meanders of wanderlust, often to here.”

  Jess’s curiosity accelerates. Behind her, Tim rambles on, quoting more dates and details, but she is distracted instead by Nancy’s remark—the impact the palace would have had on a local girl like Minnie, with its ever-changing program of events and entertainments. In the late 1800s, presumably Minnie’s most exotic experience of nature would have been the primroses in her front garden. Yet in the palace she could stand among great palms from the tropics, observe creatures from the sea, bird shows, water fountains and, according to Tim, a stuffed elephant dressed in a full rajah’s howdah and trappings.

  “Apparently Minnie loved to sit at the foot of the stone sphinx,” Nancy continues, “near the entrance, where she could admire the ladies. She liked to look at their finery—their bustles and shawls and brooches.”

  Jess smiles.

  “The whole place must have made such an impression on her,” she says.

  “Yes,” says Nancy, “but what really opened her eyes was Paris—”

  “Paris?” Jess blinks, intrigued to swim deeper into the heart of her history. “When did she go to Paris?”

  “Enough now,” says Nancy, suddenly prickly. “I’ve had enough. I want to go back.”

  “Sure,” says Jess, flustered, frustrated by Nancy’s half-dangled snippet. “We can do that. Of course.”

  ***

  Back at the care home, a quietness engulfs them. Tim sets to work on one of the puzzle books, periodically checking his watch, too considerate to make bolder overtures toward wanting to leave. Nancy remains agitated. She rocks in her chair, rubbing her arms.

  “Grandma, what’s the matter?” says Jess.

  Nancy scrunches her eyes shut.

  “I want to show you something,” she says.

  She nods to the top of the bureau, to a folder that looks like it hasn’t been touched since the seventies. Jess fetches it, remembering Nancy being particular about it coming with her when she left Wales. Jess had assumed it was full of bills and bank statements. With trembling hands, Nancy fumbles in the file, then pulls out a pair of photographs and presses them to her chest. She then straightens the first photograph and hands it over: a Victorian family portrait. Within the crumpled sepia, Jess sees a woman in a dark dress with mutton-chop sleeves standing beside a mustached man. On their laps are a young boy in a sailor suit and a baby in a lace gown and bonnet. Dark eyes, faces stern—the formal stiffness of the nineteenth century.

  “These are my ancestors?” says Jess, wide-eyed.

  “Yes. This is Minnie with her parents.”

  “She’s the baby?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the boy…her brother?”

  “Died young,” says Nancy as though it’s no big deal. “Burst appendix.”

  “Oh.”

  Jess holds the photo close, awed by her connection with these long-dead figures, her forebears. Here is Minnie Philomene Taylor, serious-faced infant who, according to Nancy, grew up to be a trailblazer. A handwritten date on the back says 1882. Jess briefly offers the photo to Tim, but he doesn’t notice, eyes down, shoulders hunched over a sudoku.

  “How do you know all this?” asks Jess, turning back to Nancy, intrigued to understand how, after more than a century and with so little airing, these distant family details still live.

  Nancy looks thoughtful.

  “My mother told me stories,” she says.

  “You mean Anna?”

  Jess processes the name. Anna Taylor—a woman she never met, yet owes her life to. Suddenly it sinks in, that as well as being Nancy’s mother and her great grandmother, Anna Taylor was also Minnie’s daughter.

  “Yes,” says Nancy, smiling to herself. “Anna told me stories, about her life, about Minnie’s life. Stories kept her going. We lived in such squalor when we left Hollywood, but Anna’s sparkling stories elevated her. Everyone needs sparkle from time to time, Jessy.”

  “Yes,” says Jess. “They really do.”

  “She was highly prone to hyperbole, my mother. Some of what she said was pure exaggeration. But I did enjoy hearing about Minnie’s life.”

  “Tell me,” says Jess, leaning forward.

  “Her parents—your great-great-great-grandparents—were upright people from Sydenham,” Nancy explains, her voice slow and precise. “He did accounts, earned enough to afford a house on Hammond Road with two servants. She was an accomplished viola player, very musical.”

  “Musical?” says Jess, recalling her own appalling efforts with a clarinet. “I guess that genome skipped a few generations. Was Minnie musical too?”

  “I believe not. She had a governess and was given lessons in everything from pianoforte to watercolor painting, but showed a lack of application. Never badly behaved, just easily distracted. Rambunctious, one might say.”

  Jess smiles. “Now that I can relate to.”

  “Her instinct for jewelry began in childhood. She took an interest in the trades on the high street, wanted to understand how things were made, how craftsmen worked. On one occasion she went ‘missing’ for hours, until her uncle found her, filthy and sweaty, down at the local blacksmiths’, watching them firing up their furnaces. Her parents were horrified. Their hopes for their daughter had never included the ‘masculine’ chaos of ironmongery. Their antidote was to find a suitor. In 1899, after some stiff warnings about the tragedy that might befall her should she fail to secure her social status, our Minnie was persuaded to marry Robert Belsing, a junio
r accounts clerk at her father’s firm, whose parents had some standing among the London livery companies.”

  “You say ‘persuaded’?”

  “Well, it wasn’t for love—not on Minnie’s part—but in her parents’ view, it was a good match. That’s how marriages were in those days, Jessy. After the wedding, Robert Belsing applied for an overseas office. In 1900, he and Minnie relocated to Paris.”

  “Aha, Paris.”

  “Yes. They arrived just in time for the Exposition Universelle.”

  “1900! France’s world fair! I know of it,” says Jess, delightedly plumbing her knowledge of art and design history. “It’s where art nouveau came to prominence. Did Minnie go?”

  “I believe Robert agreed to take her after some coaxing. And a good job, too, because it was here that she found her purpose: all she wanted was to make jewelry. You see, out of all of the wonders at the Exposition, what enchanted Minnie most was the Palace of Decorative Arts and, in particular, the jewelry boutique of René Lalique.”

  “Yes!” Jess beams, eyes bright, immediately wondering if this explains the stylistic references she’d seen in the butterfly necklace—the auctioneer had even mentioned them—the use of semiprecious stones and plique-à-jour, the interpretation of the natural form. Lalique, famous for his art nouveau jewelry and, later, his glassware in the art deco style, was one of the most influential designers of the period. If Minnie had seen his boutique at the fair, she would have seen some of the finest creations imaginable.

  “So Lalique’s jewelry inspired Minnie to make our necklace?”

  “No, Jessy. Lalique’s designs gave her the visual language, but her inspiration—the true heart of her intent—was her discovery of true love.”

  “How sweet. With her husband, Robert?”

  Nancy stiffens.

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Oh.”

  “After the Exposition, Minnie began keeping a sketchbook of ideas,” Nancy explains. “In secret. She’d sit listening to gossip in Paris salons, quietly watching the women, studying their earrings and brooches, then she’d hurry home to draw and make notes. She dreamed that one day she might take her sketchbook to Lalique himself, to be praised and handed a set of metalwork tools. She begged Robert to let her inquire about training at Lalique’s workshop in Paris, but he wouldn’t allow it, couldn’t accept such a modern ambition for his wife. Back then, jewelry—both its craft and its business—was very much ‘man’s work.’”

  “So how did she manage to make the butterfly necklace?”

  “According to Anna, when Robert discovered the sketchbook, stuffed down the side of Minnie’s daybed, he flew into a rage. He locked her in their apartment, feeding her little more than bread and water. And when she tried to escape, the fool used his fist. Paris was spoiling her, he said. She needed to learn proper conduct.”

  Jess shudders, looks to Tim, nose buried in a puzzle book, whose twenty-first-century temperament poses no threat, no patriarchal clipping of her wings, and feels very grateful.

  “Quickly, Minnie realized that if she was to survive she would have to play along. As Robert’s ire faded and he allowed her some basic freedoms again, she squeezed herself into his vision: the modest, decorative, obedient wife. But then—”

  Nancy sighs, shuts her eyes, clearly starting to tire.

  “What?” begs Jess, wide-eyed and anxious, knowing Nancy’s focus will only hold for so long before confusion consumes it. “What then?”

  “She ran away,” whispers Nancy, resting before she continues. “With the little money she’d managed to sneak from Robert’s desk, the dress she was wearing, and a hunk of dry bread, she ran from him. She knew the consequences, that there was no going back, that if Robert ever found her, he’d destroy her, that her parents, as soon as they heard, would disown her. But still, Minnie ran.”

  “Where did she go?”

  “Be patient,” Nancy snaps. “I’ll show you.”

  With a shaky hand, she holds the second photograph toward Jess.

  It’s a portrait of Minnie as a young woman.

  “Oh my goodness!” Jess exclaims. “She’s wearing the necklace! There it is!”

  The butterfly shines like an emblem above Minnie’s chest, plique-à-jour wings ready to fly. Minnie, meanwhile, sits upon a garden wall, the natural light suggesting a summer afternoon. Jess can see the family likeness, her DNA—that same round face, bow lips, and the short, sturdy Taylor physique, made all the more elegant by the flattering cut of 1900s clothing. Bizarrely, Minnie holds a peacock on her lap, its distinctive patterned tail feathers draping down her leg.

  “She was on the trail of the suffragettes,” Nancy croaks. “Never take for granted your independence, Jessy.”

  “No,” says Jess. “I never will.”

  “She was a one,” says Nancy, tapping Minnie’s face with her fingernail.

  Jess smiles, having heard the same said of Nancy over and over again. She then notices the pronounced split in Minnie’s skirt; it is, in fact, a pair of wide-legged trousers.

  “She must have been bold to wear trousers back then. Is that in Paris?”

  “No,” says Nancy. “After. That photograph was taken at Pel Tawr.”

  “Pel Tawr?”

  The name resonates, the pine-forested estate in Snowdonia where Nancy’s log cabin stands. Jess sits back, scours her memory. She recalls the big, old arts-and-crafts house on the top of the hill above the cabin, the sign at the gateposts: Pel Tawr.

  “Grandma,” she presses, fearing Nancy’s return to those painfully circular conversations about the Great Shalimar and that Minnie’s story—the origins of her family’s necklace—will be forever silenced, locked away in Nancy’s dying mind. “Is that the same Pel Tawr where your cabin is? Why did Minnie go there?”

  “To be,” Nancy whispers. “You see, just before she ran away from Robert, she found an article in an English newspaper, left by one of Robert’s cousins, about an artistic community in the Welsh mountains. The owners, the Floyd family, had made their wealth in copper and were avid followers of the late William Morris and his Kelmscott Press. They were liberals, full of grand ideas about how to make the world a better place. They’d thrown open the doors of their arts-and-crafts house to all who shared their values of design and community—amateur, experienced, young, old, male, female. When she read about this, Minnie realized her time in Paris had ignited her artistic ambition, but Robert had trapped her soul. Pel Tawr could save her. She had to find her strength. She had to find her strength, Jessy, and go—”

  “To live her best life,” Jess concurs, suddenly tearful, caught by the fleeting thought that her own “best life” might be behind her, body broken, unable to do what it used to do. Stealing herself, she blinks away the self-pity, cups Nancy’s hand with her own.

  “So did Minnie make the necklace there at Pel Tawr?” she asks.

  “Yes,” says Nancy. “With Emery—”

  “Emery?”

  “Emery Floyd.”

  Nancy then squeezes Jess’s hand, pulls it tight to her chest.

  “We called it the True Love Necklace,” she strains, barely audible. “Because everyone who wore it found their soul mate. First Minnie. Then Anna. Then me. Then your mother.”

  “So who’ll be next?” says Jess, half-joking, before realizing the significance of the answer. “Oh, Grandma,” she says, scorched with emotion, “I’m so sorry I didn’t get your necklace.”

  She goes to stroke Nancy’s face, but Nancy pulls away. Maybe sleepy from exhaustion, or just pretending—her way to shut out the world she’s grown tired of—she closes her papery lids over her gray eyes. After minutes of silent stillness, Jess pulls away.

  “Well,” she says quietly, to herself more than anyone, “I may not have the necklace, but I certainly have my soul mate.”

  She glances
at Tim. He looks up and smiles, eyes full of warmth.

  “You okay?” he says.

  “Yes,” she says.

  Jess kisses Nancy goodbye, then picks up her bag and goes to him: her savior, who makes her feel loved, who says he’s there for her and means it, who’ll never hurt her, or tell her she can’t enjoy jewelry, or make her feel like his property. She thinks of the day they move into their Stratford flat, their first sleep in their new bed—the sweet relief of waking up each morning with a kind, trustable human. She reaches into her bag, finds her painkillers, pops one into her mouth, then as Tim rises from his chair, it’s the least she can do to kiss his cheek and tell him how lucky she feels.

  Chapter Six

  In their local restaurant that evening, Jess feels closer to Tim than ever and is distracted by the pleasure of his broad shoulders and neat jaw as they eat sticky ribs and sweet potato fries. She smiles to herself, sips her gin and tonic, then surveys her fellow diners: sets of couples in their thirties and forties, chatting about work, whether or not to tip the babysitter, whether to drunk cycle home or call an Uber. It’s a decent life: some pleasure, some security, some purpose. Perhaps not seat-of-your-pants stuff, but decent nonetheless.

  She could be like them. She is like them.

  “The glass weight was minimal,” says Tim, still recounting facts about the Crystal Palace, between mouthfuls of charred corn, “so it needed no heavy masonry or foundations. You know, she wasn’t as scary as I thought, your grandmother—”

  “Ah, she’s mellowed with age, but she used to be a spitfire. She enrages my sister. And my dad can’t be in the same room as her. She just…had her own way of doing things, single-minded. Always lived alone, managed for herself. It’s strange to see her dependent on nurses and carers. Sometimes I wonder if she’d have been happier if we’d left her to it—”

  Jess shuts her eyes, recalls Nancy’s cabin in Wales—the smoky smell of the wood burner, the rough-cut beams, the dust on the floor, and the extraordinarily loud birdcall at dawn. Then her mind wanders to the house on the hill, to Pel Tawr, to Minnie Taylor and her necklace, the “OUI” engraved on the back. Why is it there? What does it mean? She knows it translates as “yes,” but yes to what? To life? To love?