The Glass Ocean

by Beatriz Williams

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Um, the date? Carved into the stone? Nineteen nineteen?”

  “Good Lord.” He stopped so quickly, I had to sidestep the swoop of his shoulder. With one hand, he reached out to touch the numbers engraved in the stone balustrade. “You’re right. I never noticed.”

  “Sometimes it takes a fresh pair of eyes.”

  “We used to play here all the time as kids.” He shook his head. “I mean, of course I knew it was built later, after the war. Just not exactly when.”

  “So what happened to the first bridge?”

  “There was no bridge. Just a boat, moored at the water’s edge. To get to the island, you had to row. I reckon the admiral wanted to keep the lubbers away.”

  I looked at the date again. “So Robert must have had the bridge built, right? Because his father died in 1915. Right after the ship sank.”

  “Yes. Shot himself in his office in Whitehall when he heard the news. He never knew Robert survived it.” John rubbed his chin. His voice turned quiet. “I used to wonder if that was a punishment, of sorts.”

  “For what?”

  “Blaming Robert for his brother’s death. Being such a miserable father.”

  I started forward again, up the slight curve of the bridge. I loved the tranquility, the tender silence. Our footsteps crunched softly on the gravel. Atop the dome, a horse-shaped weather vane stared east. The water itself was absolutely still, green-blue and depthless. Not as murky as I expected. I peered over the edge of the bridge and said, “So I guess Robert didn’t want to have anything more to do with boats, after an experience like that.”

  “I don’t suppose I blame him. Though it’s a shame. Imagine the privacy. Once you rowed over, nobody could reach you without getting wet.” He bent and picked up a pebble, which he tossed over the side and into the water, almost without breaking stride. A gentle splash floated back. “There used to be swans, my grandmother told me. Back in the old days. A pair of them.”

  “How beautiful. They mate for life, you know. Swans.”

  “Grandmama said they were nasty brutes. They’d score you for a crust of sandwich.”

  “So what happened to them?”

  We reached the end of the bridge and stepped onto the island. John turned around to stare over the water and up the velvety lawn we’d just crossed—not to the Dower House on the left, but the pale, enormous building to the right at the crest of the rise, which I supposed must be Langford Hall itself, gilded by the aging sun. He crossed his arms and smiled grimly.

  “We ate them during the war.”

  * * *

  Though the grounds of the folly looked unkempt and overgrown, in the way of English gardens, I saw signs of cultivation. “I thought you said the place was abandoned,” I said, pointing to the well-pruned limb of an apple tree.

  “I didn’t say it was abandoned. I just said my great-grandmother locked the place up. The gardeners come around. And Mrs. Finch gives the place a dusting every few months, as I said. Runs the taps, flushes the toilet. Makes sure the ceiling’s not leaking and the bugs haven’t taken over.” John reached into his jacket pocket and produced a small bronze key. “Which means this should still work, God willing.”

  “So when you aristocrats say ‘Nobody’s been inside for years,’ you don’t count the hired help.”

  “Of course not. Where do you get these strange democratic ideas?” He eased the key into the lock, taking his time, and gave the mechanism a careful wiggle. The door was white and very plain, paint peeling at the edges, looking as if it had been cut into one redbrick side of the octagon as an afterthought.

  “You look like a safecracker,” I said. “Or a midwife.”

  “Locks are delicate, mysterious things, Miss Blake. Each one has its own quirks. Its own secrets. You’ve got to have patience. Slow and gentle. Feel your way in. Devote yourself wholly to the task at hand.”

  His face turned up as he said this, meeting mine halfway, one eyebrow slightly raised, and I felt the blood rush into the skin of my cheeks. I folded my arms and said, “And here I thought you gentlemen were no good with tools.”

  “Nonsense. We’re deeply fond of instruments of all sorts. Wield them with skill and dash. After all, and as my father himself once told me, when I was but a wee lad, anything worth doing”—now the lock clicked, the knob turned under his hand—“is worth doing well. After you, Sarah.” He stepped back.

  “Well, just so you know, that particular metaphor—locks and ladyparts, I mean—is considered . . . is considered . . . hopelessly . . .” I came to a stop in the middle of the room and whispered, “Sexist.”

  “Ladyparts? What the devil? I was talking about keys, Miss Blake. Keys and locks. What an exceptionally dirty mind you’ve got. Are all American women so fixated on—”

  “Wow. Wow. Oh my God. You weren’t kidding.”

  John stepped past my elbow. “About what?”

  “It really is untouched.” I turned around slowly, trying to absorb every detail, except there were too many. Shelves and shelves, lining six of the octagon’s walls, each one crammed with books at all angles, bent with books to its absolute maximum capacity. A big wooden desk strewn with stacks of paper. Papers stacked on the floor, papers stacked on more stacks, papers fallen from their stacks. Beneath the shelves, drawers overflowing with yet more papers. Objects crammed into the spaces where no book or paper would fit. I stepped to the desk and allowed my hand to hover over the green shade of a lamp without touching it. I whispered, “Like someone walked out one day, right in the middle of something, and never came back.”

  “As I understand, that’s exactly what happened. Heart attack. Poor bloke, he was only in his sixties.”

  “His wife must have been devastated.”

  “Yes. She died not long after, as I said. Oh, look there. That’s probably Himself.” He pointed to a portrait hanging on the wall above the door: one of the two facets of the octagon not occupied by bookshelves. “Look at the rascal. Painted when he was still fairly young, I believe.”

  I stepped closer and craned my neck to study the picture. “Not bad.”

  “Yes, it’s done with remarkable skill. My great-grandparents mingled with an arty set; I understood it was done by one of their friends.” He squinted closer. “I can’t make out the name. Can you?”

  “I actually meant he’s kind of hot. Look at those eyes. Like he’s keeping a dirty secret from the artist. And all that gorgeous hair.”

  John cleared his throat. “I’m told I resemble him.”

  I turned away from Robert’s handsome face to inspect the intent, strong-boned profile before me. The wave of hair falling on his temple. In the dusky indoor light, the gold had darkened to brown, and maybe the arc of that wave echoed the one on Robert’s forehead. Maybe. But Robert’s features were elegant, classically handsome, the proportions so clean and perfect. His eyes crinkled at a dashing angle, as if he was reaching through the ages to flirt with you, right there where you stood in the twenty-first century. Not at all like John’s eyes, sober and steady.

  “In your dreams,” I said.

  * * *

  The room itself wasn’t as big as I expected—maybe twenty feet in diameter, although the high, domed ceiling made it seem more spacious—and each octagon side contained a window, framed by bookshelves, except the wall with the door and the wall opposite, which presented an identical door.

  “Symmetry,” I said to John, as I reached for the knob of said door, expecting to find myself back in the great outdoors. Instead, the door opened to another, smaller octagon. “Oh, hey. Look at this. It’s a bedroom.”

  “Ah, I thought so.” John came in behind me and strolled to another door, smaller, on the right. He cracked it open and called back, over his shoulder, “And here’s the famous bathroom. So it seems the stories are true, after all.”

  “How so?”

  “According to family legend, he used to spend weeks on end here, when he was finishin
g up one of his books. My great-grandmother insisted on the lavatory being put in, at extraordinary expense, of course. The talk of the village. Being American, she made a great fuss about plumbing and hygiene. I expect Robert was too lovestruck to object.” He pushed back the wave of hair from his forehead. “They would bring him food on a tray and leave it outside. Nobody dared to disturb him.”

  “Not even his wife? If they were madly in love, like you said.”

  “Well, I imagine she was allowed conjugal visits, from time to time.”

  At the same instant, we turned our heads to stare at the bed pushed against the wall, covered by a striped wool blanket. Some kind of sheepskin throw lay draped across one end. “You did say Mrs. Finch comes in to clean, right?” I said.

  “Yes, of course,” he said quickly. “A few times a year, at least.”

  An awkward silence settled over us. I turned away and stepped to the window, which looked east, toward the cliffs and the river. The horizon had turned molten, reflecting the sunset to the west. I could see it shimmering on the water, like a piece of gold foil laid atop the glassy surface. “I don’t know where we’re going to begin,” I said. “There’s so much. All those papers and books and mess. It’s going to take weeks.”

  “Take as long as you need.”

  “I wish I could. But I’m supposed to fly back to New York in ten days. My mom . . .”

  “Oh, right. Of course.” He rubbed his chin again. “Well, you’ve got me to help. Although some might say I’m more of a millstone than an angel of mercy.”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “But I insist. Haven’t anything else to do, after all.”

  “Really? Don’t you have—I don’t know—work or something?”

  He laughed. “Don’t you remember? I’m unemployed, at the moment. Unemployed and unemployable. No work, no family. Hiding from the world at large. In short, I’m at your service.”

  “But you can’t. I mean, I can’t ask you to just be some kind of unpaid research assistant.”

  John stepped closer, not that he needed to. His size alone overwhelmed me, even from a few feet away, because of course he didn’t step too close. That was not the English way. That was certainly not the Langford way. But I still found myself staring at the weave of his sweater instead of his face, until the clearing of his throat forced me upward. The dust motes flew between us. He spoke sternly. “You don’t have a choice, Sarah. I’m breaking the rules just by letting you in at all. You surely don’t think I’d allow you to ransack the Langford vault unsupervised, do you?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “Right, then.” He checked his watch. “It is now nine o’clock, the sun is setting at last, and I, for one, am famished. Let’s head back to the house for a spot of dinner, and we’ll get started first thing in the morning.”

  * * *

  Having spent most of my professional life—such as it was—studying the habits and traditions of the British Isles, I knew I shouldn’t expect much when opening the larder of an English country house.

  Still.

  “When you said ‘a spot of dinner,’” I said slowly, “did you actually mean ‘a spot of HP sauce’?”

  “Spoilt Americans. There’s a perfectly good tin of beans, right there in front of you. And may I direct your attention to the Spam on the shelf above? Fry it up with a knob of butter and I’d call that a fine meal.”

  “You would,” I said wearily. “No wonder you grew so tall. You will literally eat anything.”

  “Not true. I can’t abide HP sauce.”

  “And I’m starting to wonder why you don’t have any adult siblings.”

  But before I even finished the sentence, I knew the answer. I’d done my research, after all. The word “siblings” dropped like an anvil from my mouth, too late to take back. I started to apologize, but John answered first.

  “Because Mum did a runner when I was an infant, and my father drank himself to death within a decade. So I had all the fruits of Mrs. Finch’s kitchen to myself, lucky chap.”

  “I’m sorry. I knew that. I don’t know what I was—”

  “Don’t bother yourself. My grandmother shielded me from most of it. I grew up imagining I had a charmed childhood, in fact.” His long arm snaked around me for the Heinz baked beans. The lurid blue label seemed alarmingly faded to me. “I reckon there’s toast somewhere, if we look hard enough,” he said.

  “Beans on toast. You know how to spoil a girl, Langford.”

  “If you were hoping for a glass of chardonnay down the gastropub, Blake, you’ve come to the wrong bloke.”

  “You’re such a snob.” I took the can and trudged to the Aga, and ten minutes later we sat at a large mahogany table in the dining room, washing down beans on toast with a stupidly priceless Bordeaux John brought up from the cellar. And maybe I was hungry, or maybe my taste buds were knocked flat by the sheer gorgeousness of the wine, but I kind of enjoyed it.

  “It’s a classic dish.” John leaned back in his chair to squint at the dining room ceiling through the curve of his wineglass. The light bulbs in the wall sconces had failed to ignite when we flipped the switch, so John lit candles instead. Six of them, just enough to see dinner by, so I wasn’t quite sure what details he aimed to discover on the dim plasterwork twelve feet above us. “You should try Mrs. Finch’s recipe,” he said. “She tops it with proper cheddar and Worcestershire sauce, if you please. Sort of a beany Welsh rarebit.”

  “Oh, a gourmet.”

  He didn’t answer, so I returned my attention to the beans, while the clock ticked away on the mantel and the candles wavered bravely in the enormous silver candelabrum. (Purloined from Langford House in the dead of night, October of 1996, John told me as he lit the wicks from a box of old matches.) John’s plate was already scraped clean, and the wine was half-gone. I swallowed another bite and finished the wine in my glass and tried to think of something to say, some comment on the glorious mess awaiting us tomorrow in the folly, but John rose suddenly from his seat and made to refill my wine. I put my hand over the glass. “No, please! I mean, it’s amazing. But I’ve already had one hangover today.”

  He shrugged, filled his own glass, and sat back down. “I expect you think we’re all mad.”

  “Actually, I was thinking about something else. I was thinking about when you were talking about the swans, and you said, ‘We ate them during the war.’”

  “Don’t judge. The wartime allowance for meat was about nineteen ounces a week. Nineteen ounces. I daresay a brace of your McDonald’s hamburgers contains more than that.”

  “I’m not judging. But you, John Langford, did not personally eat those swans. So you tell me I have an unnecessary allegiance to my Irish ancestors, but you’re just the same. You’re loyal to your family.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Just yes?”

  “Yes, I am loyal to my family, Sarah. In fact, I’ve been sitting here wondering what the devil I’m doing, bringing in some woman I’ve only known a few hours straight into the beating heart of what remains of the Langfords, after the disastrous twentieth century. The inner sanctum, forbidden to pestering scholars and journalists from the moment old Great-Granddad shucked off his mortal coil. So perhaps I’m the mad one.”

  “For what it’s worth, you can trust me. Honest.”

  “Well, in the inimitable words of Christine Keeler, you would say that, wouldn’t you? Never mind. It’s done. There’s no turning back.”

  “Yes, there is. You could drive me back to London tomorrow morning. Let your sleeping dogs lie. Never find out what Robert Langford was really up to, the day the Lusitania went down.”

  “But that’s the coward’s way out, isn’t it? Anyway, I didn’t say I don’t trust you.” He finished his wine and stood. “Come along. I’ll take you upstairs. Mrs. Finch should have your room ready by now.”

  “My room?”

  “Well, my room, to be precise. I’m afraid the other options aren’t e
specially habitable, on short notice.”

  “Your room?”

  He tilted his chin upward and laughed. “My God, the look on your face! Relax, Sarah. I’m not going to be sleeping there myself.”

  “Oh.” I swallowed back something that certainly, certainly could not have been disappointment. “Then where are you sleeping?”

  John picked up his plate. Reached out to take my plate and stacked the knives and forks on top. “There’s an old Russian saying your chap Reagan used to bandy about, back in the Cold War. ‘Trust, but verify.’”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning that while you lay your head on my childhood pillow in the Dower House, Sarah, I shall be sleeping—trying to sleep, at any rate—in Robert Langford’s folly.” John reached for the wine bottle, worked the cork inside, and tucked it under his arm. “Surrounded, you might say, by all his secrets.”

  Chapter 11

  Caroline

  At Sea

  Monday, May 3, 1915

  With a flourish, Jones held up the pale pink silk tulle and linen tape lace afternoon dress, her expression like one who’d just exposed a secret. “I pressed this last night, thinking you might like to wear it for your concert rehearsal. These sleeves are perfect for adding a little bit of drama while playing the piano.”

  Caroline had fallen in love with the long soft tulle sleeves with deep shaped buttoned cuffs and had ordered it at Bergdorf’s without asking for the price. Her mother would have been proud. After being raised to be acutely aware of what everything cost while trying to pretend she wasn’t, it was quite the accomplishment. The funny thing about it was that it wasn’t the poverty that had bothered Caroline’s mother so much as the fear the neighbors would find out how desperate the Telfairs really were. That it wasn’t her mother’s delicate constitution that held them back from traveling abroad or hosting lavish parties as they’d done while Caroline’s father was still alive.

  “It’s perfect,” Caroline said, barely glancing at the dress. She’d slept poorly, so distracted by the memory of kissing Robert Langford. Had she really kissed him? Or had he kissed her? Did it matter? She was a married woman. A married woman who loved her husband. What could she have been thinking?