Sky Garden

by Jenny Schwartz

  Lanie accepted a cup of the same, and they got down to the serious business of eating—and talking.

  “I met Nick Tawes,” Lanie said. She knew her employer.

  For Mrs. Smith, every issue was personal. It began with the people involved.

  “The roof man.” Mrs. Smith looked up from her samboussek chicken, a spicy pastry parcel. “What is he like?”

  Lanie tore off a piece of flatbread and scooped up some hummus. “Single-minded.”

  “Tcha. I meant, what does he look like?”

  What did his appearance matter? But Lanie had learned that Mrs. Smith had a reason for everything she said and did. It meant that Lanie had to tread warily. Mrs. Smith’s concerns could appear random, but they were generally explicable in hindsight.

  Determined not to reveal her unwanted attraction to the man, Lanie kept her voice noncommittal and her observations detached. “He’s tall. Six one, he said. That was when we were in the elevator and he was feeling compressed. He’s not really good looking, but he’s attractive.” She paused, waiting for Mrs. Smith’s nod of comprehension at the distinction.

  “Attractive is much more important. Horry was like that. Short but powerful, and everyone loved him.”

  Everyone but his business competitors, and those had been legion. He’d had a finger in many pies. But Lanie nodded. Mrs. Smith’s devotion to her dead husband was strong and to be respected.

  “Go on.” Having finished the pastry parcel, Mrs. Smith waved a stuffed vine leaf in encouragement before transferring it to her plate and cutting into it.

  “Nick’s hair is long enough to curl. It’s black. Unstyled.” But incredibly photogenic. No wonder his friend had chosen him to front a television program. “His eyes are this incredible dark brown, like Guinness.” Lanie paused, dismayed to realize how much she’d noticed—and revealed. She served herself a generous mix of chargrilled vegetables and small lamb sausages as a distraction. “He moves like he’s strong. He can be still, but there’s an alertness to it.”

  “Like a pirate?” There was a collection of romance books on the shelves in the living room that explained where that question came from.

  “Nooo.” A drawn-out syllable as Lanie considered the notion and savored the smoky flavor of chargrilled eggplant. She liked romance novels, too. She liked their guarantee of a happy ending. “A pirate is a renegade, out to defy society or attack it. Whereas Nick has an air of confidence, as if society will naturally fall in with his wishes. I think he gets his own way too much.”

  “And you don’t want him to get the roof garden?” Mrs. Smith asked shrewdly.

  “It’s not really practical. There are problems of access.” She had her arguments ready to roll.

  Mrs. Smith interrupted. “The nice man who spoke to me about the project, Nelson Horatio, said all of those could be overcome. He said they’re the sort of challenges that make a project interesting and good television.” Her pale blue eyes shone. “He said he’d want to film my first view of the roof garden.”

  Abruptly, Lanie’s enjoyment of the hot paprika-spiced sausages vanished.

  Mrs. Smith watched a lot of television and in her eyes was the unmistakable gleam of someone offered entry into that world.

  Lanie ate a bite of flatbread mechanically. She’d miscalculated, again. She hadn’t anticipated Mrs. Smith becoming smitten with television fame, or with Nick’s producer being wily enough to tempt her with the chance to star. Lanie had thought this was about the museum. It was around protecting the museum, a tribute to Horry Smith, that Lanie had assembled her arguments. “To work on the roof they’re going to have to carry things through the museum. They can’t possibly get them up via the outside staircase. There’ll be possible damage to the hall.”

  “They’ll be careful. Nelson promised.”

  Lanie could have screamed. Instead, she forced herself to regroup. She wanted to pepper Mrs. Smith with every possible objection, but badgering someone never worked. It only ever confirmed a person in their resistance to an idea. If Mrs. Smith was to listen to Lanie and change her mind about the roof garden, then Lanie had to use the rhythm of discussion, as well as reasoned argument.

  She scooped up some cool mint, cucumber and yoghurt dip with another piece of flatbread, setting the scene for a would-be casual remark. “Nick doesn’t seem the careful, finicky sort, but he does seem controlling.”

  That hooked Mrs. Smith’s interest, enough that she paused in her destruction of a second pastry parcel, but her comment was unexpected. “I’ve met his stepma. Mrs. Chloe Tawes, granddaughter of an earl.”

  “An earl?” Lanie gave the obviously required exclamation of surprise and tried to look suitably impressed. Internally, though, she puzzled over Nick’s accent. Her observations of him hadn’t matched that background—although it did explain his evident disinterest in the luxury Edwardian museum. He was probably accustomed to inhabiting the real deal. But it didn’t explain his accent. A lot of upper class kids tried for a street accent in an attempt to be cool, but he was well past that age and his educated accent hadn’t been underlaid with Estuary English. It had been something else…

  Despite Lanie’s determination to argue Mrs. Smith out of the roof garden, she was distracted. How did Nick fit in with an aristocratic stepmother?

  Meantime, Mrs. Smith chatted on. “A lovely lady Chloe is, with the best kind of courage. She’s in a wheelchair.”

  Lanie stopped puzzling over Nick.

  “An accident in her twenties,” Mrs. Smith said. “She’s a brave and charming woman. I’ve seen her use her disability to guilt money out of miserly millionaires. She’s involved in any number of charities. That’s how we met.”

  Mrs. Smith was an obvious target for a fundraiser, and Lanie could well believe that she’d be generous but critical of where she gave her Horry’s money. So Chloe Tawes must be clever to have earned such praise.

  It prompted a question. “Did Chloe ask you to agree to the roof garden?”

  “No.” However, Mrs. Smith concentrated on her plate, suggesting that Nick’s relationship to the woman had influenced her approval. “The garden will show off Horry’s house in the best possible light. It’s the sort of publicity you can’t buy. You should be pleased. You’re always trying to promote the museum, and doing a marvelous job.”

  Lanie sighed. She pushed away her empty plate. “It will mean a lot of disruption.”

  “It’ll bring life and noise. Shake things up. It’ll be good for you.”

  Lanie looked up alertly. Realization dawned. Oh, no. It was worse than she’d thought. “You didn’t…Mrs. Smith, I know you gave me the job because your grand-nephew told you how worried my parents were about me. But you don’t need to worry about me.” Please, don’t. “I don’t need shaking up.”

  “You’ve been at the museum over half a year. You’ve hibernated all winter.”

  The disapproval was clear, but Lanie smiled at the phrasing. “Have you finished eating?” She’d visited the penthouse and its kitchen enough to be comfortable standing and collecting their plates, filling the dishwasher and putting the leftovers in the fridge.

  “Lanie.” Very stern. “Life can’t stand still.”

  “I know.” She closed the fridge and stood a moment in front of it. Idly she pressed a pink pig magnet. It oinked. “You’re determined on the roof garden, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” Mrs. Smith said briskly. “It’s for the best. Give Nick a chance. You may enjoy the project and the filming.”

  Lanie suppressed a shudder at the thought of television cameras. “I’ll pop the kettle on.”

  They took the tray of baklava and hot cups of tea through to the lounge room. Some treatment of the floor-length windows enabled her and Mrs. Smith to see through them despite the darkness outside and the lights on in the room. Then again, who would want to block out that incredible view?

  The River Thames stretched out, lit by lights and gleaming gunmetal gray. It was a reminder that this shi
ny new city was also ancient. Roman ruins lay buried in the mud beneath the foundations of modern skyscrapers. Lower still, fossils of long extinct animals waited to be found, or not. On a clear day, the view showed St Paul’s Cathedral, London Bridge and, around the bend in the river, Big Ben and Westminster, the Houses of Parliament.

  Lanie flinched away from the view, suddenly glad of how much the night hid. She hated every glimpse of Westminster; since each rewoke a hollow dread. She looked instead at Mrs. Smith, with her pink slippered feet propped up on a leather patchwork ottoman and a table with an array of sweets tidily at hand near her tea cup. “You look comfortable.” It was like looking at the essence of normality.

  “I am.” Mrs. Smith selected a Turkish delight and bit into it. Icing sugar drifted onto the cake plate she held to catch it. She chewed blissfully, swallowed. “The secret to life is to accept what we cannot change, and enjoy what we have.”

  There was no hypocrisy to her statement. Lanie could believe that Mrs. Smith would have said the same from a one room council flat. It wasn’t money that made her content.

  Nonetheless, faint resentment stirred through Lanie as she detected the hint of good advice. There were few things as teeth-grittingly annoying as someone doing what they considered best for you; which was part of the reason she’d distanced herself from her family.

  She didn’t want to resume discussion of her need for stability or Nick’s plans for the roof. She felt defeated and raw. Things would change whether she willed them to or not. She would have to decide on her own strategy for coping, but later. For now, she had an excellent change of subject: Rupa.

  One of the unexpected things Lanie had learned since joining the Horry Museum was that as vital as visitors were, so were volunteers.

  She leaned forward and took a baklava from its tray before settling back into the comfort of the cloud-soft sofa.

  “On a different subject.” She paused, distracted. The baklava was heaven. The filo pastry crackled and shattered delectably, and the honey melted over her tongue with a hint of rosewater. “Yum. Delish.” She finished the sweet and only then returned to the secondary purpose of the evening—one she was far more confident of achieving. “Rupa has an idea.”

  “Oh good.” Mrs. Smith licked the remains of Turkish delight off her fingers. “That is encouraging. She’s a nice woman who needs to realize her worth.”

  “Rupa’s getting there. She wants to create a Raj Room in one of the spare bedrooms on the second floor.” Lanie described the idea. “She’d fund it herself. Her husband has offered two thousand pounds.”

  “Rubbish. I have the money. I’ll give her five thousand.” Mrs. Smith’s generosity was automatic.

  Lanie hesitated. “If you want to keep the museum entirely yours, but if you’re thinking of Rupa…I think she and her family need to do this, to give something back.”

  Mrs. Smith nodded once, decisively. “You’re right. Trevor, my solicitor, organized the museum’s charitable status. Contact him about it and he’ll advise Rupa.”

  “He’ll need to know…” Lanie broke off, then tried again, aware that she was venturing into a minefield. It had already been a tough evening, but this was the perfect opening to discuss a difficult issue that had been looming for a while. At least this issue wasn’t hers. “The museum is currently faithful to how your husband left the house. Going forward we’ll need to decide whether to preserve the collection as is, or to allow it to evolve. At the moment, the museum is very much one man’s idea of Edwardian living, a fantasy of it.”

  Mrs. Smith withdrew her hand, which had been hovering over the tray of baklava. Hands gnarled with arthritis curled protectively in on themselves. “You’ve guessed about Horry, haven’t you?”

  “About how he used his Edwardian collection?” Lanie knew that there were times when speaking the truth was the best, the only option, but the truth could be spoken tactfully. It could be alluded to, leaving the decision of how much was revealed to Mrs. Smith.

  Mrs. Smith stared out the window, but Lanie doubted she was seeing the view. There was a blind look to her eyes. She stared into the past.

  “It started after his wife died.” That Mrs. Smith had been his wife for decades didn’t seem to influence her choice of words. “His wife”, not his first wife.

  The complicated reality of people’s relationships tangled around Lanie. When you picked up on nuances, the harsh worlds people navigated, the compromises they made, and the stories they told themselves to make it all seem better, could become a miasma of heartache.

  But perhaps for Mrs. Smith the specific words didn’t matter. Perhaps what mattered was finally being able to admit the truth of her husband, her beloved Horry.

  Lanie sat back, cradling her cup of tea and nibbling at a piece of mint-flavored Turkish delight.

  “Horry married later in life. He was thirty one. That wasn’t uncommon for Cockney men back then. Their incomes helped raise their younger brothers and sisters, and in Horry’s case, he focused on building his empire, once he got out of the army. He took advantage of the opportunities of post-war London.” And suddenly fierce. “He was never a spiv. Legal, Horry, was. Always.”

  Lanie nodded.

  Mrs. Smith nodded, too. She steadied herself with a sip of tea before putting the cup aside. “The thing was, where others saw problems and depression, Horry saw opportunities. The man was electric with purpose. He lit up a room. I remember the first day I joined his firm. He wanted a secretary. Someone to type his letters and correct his grammar and keep things organized. I needed a job. It was the best of times. Horry rebuilt houses destroyed in the Blitz. He built shops, too, and filled them with whatever the rationing allowed, whatever he could get his hands on. It didn’t matter what he stocked. Horry could sell coal to Newcastle. He brought his whole family and everyone who worked for him out of poverty. Then he fell in love with a pretty girl with big blue eyes and gold hair from a middle class family. Little Margaret looked at him as if he were a god.”

  Mrs. Smith’s smile was wry. “I never did. Secretaries don’t. We see the man in the bad times as well as the good. Bosses don’t put on a performance for their staff. I saw Horry whole, and I loved him.”

  She focused on Lanie and her blue eyes were lively and passionate, as she would have been decades ago. “Can you understand that? I knew Horry. I even knew why he loved Margaret so devotedly. She was everything he’d achieved. Not a trophy wife. She was a nice girl. Horry called her his angel. He loved her because she’d never known what it was to struggle. Horry protected her and kept her as carefully as I keep my fine china cups. And I stayed on as his secretary and loved him. I had other offers, but…”

  “They weren’t Horry.”

  Despite the modern comforts of the penthouse and the twenty first century skyline outside, the past was alive and close in the room, conjured by the power of Mrs. Smith’s memory and emotion. “I couldn’t marry a man who was second best. That’s no way to start a marriage. And then, when Horry was thirty three, he and Margaret had sweet Mary-Ann. Two years later, Margaret and Mary-Ann died in a train crash.”

  The old tragedy was still stark and real decades later, evoking an echoing silence.

  The clink of Lanie’s tea cup was loud as she put it down. “I’m sorry.”

  Maybe Mrs. Smith didn’t hear her. She’d become swept up in her own story. “Horry changed. He’d been so bright and daring, believing the world was his to conquer. It had all been a grand adventure. His was the generation that had fought in the war, had seen their pals die, had survived and gone on. But losing his wife and daughter broke him. The world didn’t see it, but I did. He didn’t cry at their funerals and he was back at work within the week.”

  Her ginger cat uncurled from his place on the green sofa and jumped down to the floor, prowling across the room to leap up and sit on Mrs. Smith’s lap.

  She rubbed his ears, restored to the here and now. “Horry began to work as if the devil were after him. He clos
ed deal after deal. He’d been comfortable before. Within five years, he was one of the wealthiest men in the city. There was no scheme too big that he wouldn’t risk it. He had ulcers and headaches and he was locked on a path to terrible success. And then one day, he bought that house in Bloomsbury and he began to fill it with things. For the first time in years, his days weren’t only about business. He would shop for furniture or things for a kitchen. He went back to the markets and bargained with old friends for the junk they were peddling.”

  “And you were relieved.”

  “Yes. Even when I realized how he was using the house, I was glad.” She said it defiantly.

  But Lanie didn’t find anything to condemn in Horry’s coping mechanism. “It was kind of like playing with a giant doll’s house.”

  “Except that he dressed up.” Mrs. Smith stared at her proudly, defying her to criticize. Saying the words.

  Lanie had guessed the truth from the way all the costumes in the museum were, from boot boy or maid through to the master or mistress of the house, the same size—designed to fit a short but broad man. She kept the tone of her response conversational, without pity for the secrets of Mrs. Smith’s marriage and the pressure that had created them. “Playing a role can be relaxing. There’s a magic in which you forget yourself.”

  Reassured, Mrs. Smith resumed stroking the purring cat. Her voice was lighter, each word less effort. “It worked for Horry. He laughed again. Joked. I thought he might marry again. Women were interested. We were working late one night and he said to me, to come and see his house. He drove me to Bloomsbury and unlocked the front door. It wasn’t quite as the museum is now, but it was an Edwardian house. A posh one—that neither Horry nor my family would ever have entered unless they were the servants. We walked in and Horry told me to sit in the drawing room. Then he walked up the stairs, and when he walked down, he was wearing a fancy gown in a deep red color with gold trim. He looked ridiculous and scared and resolutely unashamed. He said, this is me, Lily. Now you know all my secrets, will you marry me?”