The Book of Illumination

by Mary Ann Winkowski

  “But first we have to find it,” Sylvia said glumly.

  “Yes,” said Julian.

  A gloomy silence descended over the table.

  “Who even knew that you had it?” Sam asked.

  “No one,” Sylvia said glumly.

  “Someone must have known,” Sam pressed.

  “Or else they just got lucky,” Julian offered. “What else did they take?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Hmmm,” Julian said, glancing at Sam. “That’s …odd.”

  “I’m such an idiot,” Sylvia said, to no one in particular. “I can’t believe I let this happen.”

  We all traded glances. Finally Sam spoke.

  “Now, now, dear. You made a promise to someone you loved. You were only trying to keep it.”

  I did not expect to spend Saturday evening with Julian Rowan. The phone rang at about five, just as I was about to sit down and face the sorry state of my financial empire, which I try to do as infrequently as possible. We always get by, and I know I could borrow money from Dad, or even Joe or Jay, if I had to, but so far I haven’t had to.

  Declan and I keep things simple. Henry’s covered on Dec’s health insurance, which is a godsend, and rather than my asking Dec to pay child support, we agreed at the beginning that he would start a college fund for Henry. He puts money into it every week, saving me eighteen years of that particular anxiety. So far, I’ve been able to handle everything else.

  I didn’t recognize the number that came up on my phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Anza? This is Julian.”

  When I didn’t respond immediately, he went on.

  “Julian Rowan. We met earlier.”

  “Oh, hi, Julian. Sure. How are you?”

  “Very well, thanks, and you?”

  “Great,” I said.

  Either he’d been gearing himself up for the past hour, or British art historians are among the more direct men on the planet.

  “I was wondering,” he said, “if you happen to be free this evening?”

  I used to be the kind of person who felt that if you didn’t have an actual conflict, you were obliged to say yes to anything anyone invited you to do. Nat cured me of that. She pointed out, like a wise and sophisticated aunt, that it was okay to have plans with yourself. To do nothing.

  Much to my surprise, though, I realized that, at least tonight, I would prefer Julian’s company to my own. I also liked the fact that he hadn’t prefaced his question with an awkward inquiry about my current romantic status.

  “Yes,” I answered, just as directly. “I am.”

  Which is how I came to be seated next to him at the Brattle Theatre, watching what turned out to be a painfully unfunny French movie about four friends who share a huge, gorgeous apartment in Paris that they could not possibly afford on their incomes. For example, one of the women was a beautician who did the hair and makeup of dead people for their funerals. There were a lot of bad jokes about making corpses look peaceful. I gave up on the plot, what there was of one, about a third of the way in, just as they all piled into a teeny Renault to go for Sunday dinner in the country with one of their families. Once movies get to Sunday in the country with a French family, they’re all the same, anyway.

  I tried not to be acutely conscious that Julian’s leg, which was far too long for the shallow space in front of our seats, had drifted to the left and was leaning against mine. I doubted he was aware of it, but if I pulled my leg away suddenly, not only would he realize he’d been leaning on me, but he might think I was annoyed about this, which I most certainly was not. But the warmth of his calf kept my mind on one of the other particulars of his nearness: a faint scent of shaving cream, mixed with warm, wet wool. It had been raining when he met me in front of the theater, and though he had an umbrella, his gray heather jacket must have gotten damp.

  Since I couldn’t stay focused on the movie and couldn’t stop focusing on our legs touching and Julian smelling, uh, nice, in kind of a farmy way, I tried to put my mind to work on the problem of the ghostly butler, John Grady. Why, I asked myself, did I keep not mentioning him to Sylvia? I could have told her about the lonely old ghost’s appearance right after we left the house on Commonwealth Avenue. I could have mentioned him at any point in the past few days. It would be far easier to gain access to the house with Sylvia’s help than to engineer a way of doing so on my own, but for some reason, I didn’t want her in on it. Even pulling this puzzle to the front of my mind and asking myself the question directly—Why don’t you want Sylvia to know about your encounter with the ghost of John Grady?—I was left with little more than, I don’t know. I just don’t.

  So how was I going to get into the house? I would have to lie, which, fortunately, I happen to be pretty good at. I’m not proud of this, but it’s a useful skill. I had been invited to have Sunday dinner tomorrow in the North End with Nat and her family, so I would be going into Boston. Maybe I could take the bus to Commonwealth at eleven or twelve and just stroll on down toward the Public Garden. See if it looked as though anyone were home at the Winslow manse, maybe have a ramble down the back alley that ran the length of the block, behind the houses.

  I could even ring the bell; if anyone was there on a Sunday morning, it would probably be Mrs. Martin. She’d certainly remember me, and I could tell her that I thought I had lost an earring when I was there with Sylvia. If an earring didn’t turn up after a few minutes of our retracing my footsteps, then we would both conclude that I’d lost the earring somewhere else.

  Before leaving, I could ask to use the upstairs bathroom, hoping that John Grady would appear to me as he had earlier in the week. And if it ever got back to Sylvia that I’d stopped by on my own, I’d just explain that I was on my way to a dinner (true) in the neighborhood (sort of true) and on the spur of the moment (not) I had decided to pop in.

  My attention was drawn to the image on the screen: an argument was breaking out in the backseat of the Renault, where the funeral-parlor beautician was lighting the next in a continuous chain of cigarettes, much to the annoyance of the roommate squeezed in beside her. From the way they were bickering, you just knew they were going to fall in love by the end of the movie. I was really hoping there wouldn’t be a lot of steamy sex at the country house. There’s nothing more embarrassing than watching sex in a movie with someone you barely know sitting beside you.

  Suddenly, Julian turned to me.

  “Are you enjoying this?” he whispered.

  I shrugged. He had picked the movie, so I didn’t want to make him feel bad.

  “It’s not very good, is it?” he whispered.

  I shook my head.

  He stood up. “Shall we?” he asked, with a refreshing lack of ambivalence.

  I scrambled to my feet.

  We decided to head over to Charlie’s Kitchen, just around the corner, for a burger and a beer. As usual, the place was packed, and it didn’t take us long to figure out that most of the customers were rowers in town for the Head Of The Charles Regatta, whole teams of strapping young men and women who would normally have been putting away beers with their burgers, but who were loyally forgoing the booze.

  We had to share an upstairs table with the coxswain and two members of the men’s eight from Northwestern. The other six rowers were at the table right beside us, and I do mean right beside us. When it came out that Julian had rowed at Cambridge, we were effectively anointed the tenth and eleventh members of the team. Great fun was made of Julian’s accent. We raved about the flavor of the microbrews only we were able to drink.

  And when Julian walked me to the T and ended our evening with an uncomplicated kiss on the cheek, I felt both relieved and happy. I’d actually had fun. With an eligible academic. Who was cute. And nice.

  How unbelievable was that?

  Chapter Nine

  THE RAT THAT had stopped dead in its tracks six feet in front of me, in the alley behind Finny’s house, was almost a foot long, not counting the tail, wh
ich was revoltingly, sickeningly hairless. The rat was fat. It was black. I mean, the thing looked like a beaver with a snake attached to its rear.

  I was afraid to turn and run, in case it chased me and ran up the back of my leg and into my hair. I was afraid to move toward it, in case it charged. So there we stood, staring at each other, the blood pounding audibly through my heart: pa-poom, pa-poom, pa-poom, pa-poom. And then, obviously concluding that I was a spineless, hapless coward, the rat sauntered lazily over to a nearby Dumpster and disappeared beneath it.

  That was when I started running, and I didn’t stop until I got to Dartmouth Street. I had so much adrenaline coursing through me that I could have set some kind of record for the hundred-yard dash. And the stupid thing was, I hadn’t taken the back way to the house for reasons having to do with John Grady. I had chosen the back-alley route because I wanted to scope out the trash behind the multimillion-dollar brownstones.

  You wouldn’t believe what some people in this neighborhood throw away. Not people from the families who’ve been here forever, but condo-dwelling entrepreneurs running lucrative startups, and wealthy international students whose parents have leased them a luxurious apartment, and who are so anxious to get out of town after graduation that they throw things away rather than pack them up for shipping. I’ve seen rugs, antique chairs in need of a bit of repair, sets of dishes, framed posters and paintings.

  I hit the jackpot a couple of times, and I was now like one of those people who can’t resist buying scratch tickets, having won twenty-five dollars a decade or two ago. I suppose I was even a bit like my furry, opportunistic little friend. Though I do draw a distinction between scavenging leftover Thai take-out and rescuing from the trash two sterling silver candelabra from Firestone and Parsons. There had to be a story behind that particular find. Somebody must have been furious at someone else—their mother-in-law? a two-faced friend?—and in a grand, irrevocable gesture, had put a wedding gift or a family heirloom into the trash. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

  It turned out to be lucky, my taking the back alley, because I didn’t even have to make up a lie to get in the front door. I had no sooner crossed Dartmouth Street than I caught sight of the man himself, or rather, the ghost himself. He was halfway down the next block of the alley, probably right behind Finny’s house. I walked toward him, but he didn’t notice me approaching. To my right and left, where the household help might once have sat outside on the shady brick stoops, escaping the heat of the basement kitchens and greeting those who were not welcome to use the buildings’ front entrances, were massive Mercedeses and BMWs squeezed into tiny parking spaces.

  “Mr. Grady,” I said softly.

  He looked up, startled. “Oh, my,” he said.

  I smiled. “Do you remember me? My name is Anza. I was here the other day with Sylvia.”

  “I do,” he said, bowing slightly.

  He looked bewildered, but otherwise just as he had five days ago: benevolent, disheveled, lost. “I was hoping to find you,” I said.

  “And I hoped that you would,” he responded. His brogue was rich and dulcet.

  I glanced down at the box at his feet; it contained books that were obviously being discarded in preparation for the sale of the house.

  “You were looking for your document,” I guessed.

  He nodded.

  “Can I help?” He wouldn’t have been able to lift the books out of the box. He wouldn’t have had the strength. “I’d be most grateful,” he said.

  I slid the box toward the house and sat down on a low wall. A set of stairs led down into an enclosed rear courtyard, where a shed on the right ran the depth of the space. It was unusual to see one of these structures as it had always existed, from the time when horse-drawn wagons hauled coal through these alleyways and downstairs servants shoveled the weekly delivery into sheds off the kitchens. Few of the structures remained; most had been scrapped to make room for valuable off-street parking spaces or restored to add footage to ground-floor condos. Depending on who bought the Winslow house, this historical relic might be headed for a similar fate.

  “Please, sit down,” I said.

  He came over and sat down near me on the wall. I began taking books out of the box: mildewy old novels, disintegrating paperbacks offering tips for low-cost travel, a picture book about boats, a commemorative volume published on the 250th anniversary of Trinity Church. I had a hopeful moment when I glimpsed a couple of children’s books in the bottom of the box, but neither turned out to be The Butterfly’s Ball.

  He looked crestfallen.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Esther may have it. She always loved it.”

  “Esther?” I tried to remember which sister was Esther—the artist, or the one who was into yoga.

  “The youngest. She was our pet. Always underfoot. She knew every word of that poem, too, God bless her.”

  “Do you remember it?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes,” he said, and without further prompting began to recite.

  Come, take up your Hats and away let us haste

  To the Butterfly’s Ball, and the Grasshopper’s Feast!

  The Trumpeter, Gad-fly, has summon’d the crew,

  And the Revels are now only waiting for you.

  And on the smooth Grass, by the side of a Wood,

  Beneath a broad Oak that for Ages had stood,

  Saw the children of Earth, and the Tenants of air,

  For an evening’s Amusement together repair.

  He paused, beaming.

  “Is that the end?” I asked.

  “Oh, dear, no. It goes on for a couple of pages. Esther knew every word of it by heart.”

  “Where did it come from? The book itself?”

  “It belonged to Gwennie. Our daughter. We lost her, when she was five. She and Miss Edlyn were like sisters.”

  I must have looked puzzled, because he went on to clarify the facts.

  “His Lordship and Her Ladyship had just the one daughter, Edlyn. She was born two months after Mairead and I had our little Gwendolyn. My wife was Miss Edlyn’s nursemaid, and the two little girls were inseparable. Rupert and Percy, Edlyn’s older brothers, were already boarding at St. Clement’s by the time she was born, so if not for our Gwennie, there wouldn’t have been a playmate in the household. It was Percy who introduced Miss Edlyn to Mr. Winslow. They were at Harvard together, though Percy was older than Phineas. Percy brought him to the house in Brighton, the summer Miss Edlyn was nineteen. By the next Christmas, they were married.”

  “And you and your wife came here, to live with her, after she married Mr. Winslow.”

  He smiled. “You have a fine memory.”

  “How did you come to be working for the family?” I asked.

  He gazed at me for several moments, then took a deep breath.

  “I’m from Galway, but I was living in London. I’d gotten a job as a houseman for the Shand-Thompsons. Mairead’s aunt Una was a cook for the family. She’d been with them for forty years. She brought Mairead down from Salthill when I had been working in the household for, oh, just about a year. We were married a year later. Gwennie was born in 1937, and two months after that, Her Ladyship gave birth to Miss Edlyn.”

  I saw him struggle to contain his emotions, remembering so much more than the bare facts he was relating to me.

  “You see, it wasn’t the usual situation: this was wartime. The government expected the Germans to bomb London at any time, so they drew up a plan to round up all the children and the pregnant women and get them to safety in the countryside before the bombs fell. Whole schools of children went together. I remember it like it was yesterday, the mothers and the kiddoes walking along streets toward the train station, everybody crying, the children wearing name tags pinned to their jackets, toting their little gas masks and not much more than a change of clothes and a sandwich or two.

  “I’d been sent out on an errand, and when I got back to the house, I was as
ked to come into the parlor, which tells you right there how upside down everything was. You wouldn’t be invited into the parlor, unless you were being dismissed. His Lordship and Her Ladyship were there, and Mairead had Gwennie on her lap. Miss Edlyn was crawling around on the floor. Mairead and I were told to pack our things as quickly as we were able and take the babies up to Brighton, to the summer home the family had there, by the sea. There was a car waiting to take us.”

  “You and your wife? Take your own daughter and Edlyn out of London?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Her Ladyship intended to come along after us, but she was on the frail side, just getting her strength back after a bout with pleurisy. His Lordship wouldn’t let her make the journey. Miss Edlyn was with my wife all day long, as it was, so she was well used to her. It was no hardship on the children, really, them being so young, so off we went to Brighton in the car.”

  “Just the four of you?”

  “And Edmund, the driver. But he turned right around and went back to London. We stayed in Brighton through the holidays and into the spring. Then in May, when Hitler invaded France, it wasn’t safe to stay right there on the coast any longer. If the wind was on your side, you could practically fling a stone across the channel and hit a lad standing on the beach in France. We were able to get a train out of Brighton headed to South Wales, a place called Swansea. His Lordship sent us money and the train tickets and arranged for the use of a wee cottage right in from the water.”

  “Just the four of you? You and your wife and your daughter and your employer’s daughter, who later became Mrs. Winslow?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And then, when the war was over, you all came back to London?”

  He paused before speaking. “Not all of us,” he said quietly. “Not Gwennie.”

  I didn’t have the heart to ask what had happened to his daughter.

  “No wonder they sent you to live with Edlyn,” I said, anxious to change the subject. “You practically raised her.”

  “In the early years, I suppose you could say. His Lordship was involved in the war effort and couldn’t leave London, and Her Ladyship was never strong enough to travel.”