“Indeed! What stories,” he repeated. “But like any noble lady—all old nobility—she is in possession of discretion, Cecily. She is a very private person, without inclination to divulge her credentials or esteemed connections to all and sundry. Oh no, la comtesse chooses whom to confide in with great discernment, great care. After all, she has no need to impress the likes of us humble country folk.”
“She has confided in you then?”
The rector smiled, closing his eyes momentarily. “To an extent,” he replied, nodding his head slowly. “And thus it falls upon me to be prudent in my judgment of any disclosure. You see, Cecily, the dear lady has no desire to court fame or publicity, in fact quite the opposite. She has come to this parish in search of solitude, perhaps one could even say anonymity.”
“Anonymity? But why? Why would she wish for anonymity?”
“I imagine that if one has lived one’s entire life under the glare of public scrutiny, even adulation, one eventually craves the luxury of invisibility.”
A tiny moth fluttered above the oil lamp on the table next to the rector, dipping down toward the yellow light, then back up, round and round, up and down.
“Of course, many of those she was once on intimate terms with have passed away,” he continued, raising a hand to wave the moth from his face, stretching out his breeched legs. “At one time she knew everyone, in Rome, Paris, and in London: royalty, dignitaries, aristocracy; writers, sculptors, poets . . . and some very famous painters as well,” he added, turning to Cecily with a smile.
“Such as?”
“George Lawson, for one.”
“George Lawson? The George Lawson? Lord George Lawson?”
The rector shuffled along the settee toward Cecily. She noticed the silver hairs sprouting from the tips of his lobes, could smell his body odor, and his rancid breath—alcohol, rotting gums, and that evening’s dinner. “I believe they met in Rome, many years ago,” he said, turning to her, breathing full into her face. “He was there as a young man, before he became famous. It’s where he painted his Madonna, which of course the Queen herself later bought.”
“So they knew each other?”
He nodded. “I believe so. He was a regular visitor to Paris and often traveled to Vichy to take the cure. Yes, Vichy . . .” he said, drifting. “It’s a place Mrs. Fox and I have often contemplated visiting ourselves, but I fear we’ve left it too late.” He looked down at his empty glass, and Cecily quickly took it and rose to her feet.
Seconds later, handing the rector his replenished wine, Cecily sat down and said, “But you know I do wonder, Mr. Fox, why she didn’t return to this country before now. Particularly in view of the fact that she was on her own, and her family, her only family—Jack and his poor mother—here in England.”
The rector pondered, stroking his whiskers. “Let me say this: I believe the dear lady had good reason to stay away and, unprotected as she was, and is, no wish to rouse her enemies.” He turned to Cecily. “Jealousy and envy can poison the heart and inspire untruths and wickedness. It is down to all of us here in Bramley to protect her now. I’m afraid I am not at liberty to say any more, but I know you to be an intelligent young woman, Cecily, and I hope I can rely on your discretion.”
Bewildered, Cecily nodded. “Of course.”
Chapter Five
He slaps her face and says, “You little bitch, you told her . . . you told her, didn’t you?” She shakes her head. “No . . . no, I didn’t, I promise.” She places her palm to her cheek and she can feel the heat, the burning stain he has left on her.
It was another sultry evening, with no movement, no breath of wind. The hillside lay quiet in the warmth of the setting sun, and in its reflected glory appeared brighter than ever, the tops of the pine trees ablaze, illuminated by a light that spoke of the perfection of that day.
Inside the house, Cora had finally given in to exhaustion. Her head rested to one side, slowly rising and falling in time with her breathing, a stray curl across her brow. Her still brilliant blue eyes were shut, and her lips, the crinkled curve of a Cupid’s bow, occasionally twitched and moved without sound. Her hands lay upturned and open in her lap, in a simple pleading gesture, as if to say, here I am.
She sat in a modern English wingback armchair, a token to English taste in a room boasting European style. In front of her, an ottoman, upholstered in deep red velvet, piled with books and magazines; adjacent to her, a Louis XV settee and matching chairs; and against the wall opposite, an Italian black walnut bookcase, bowing under the weight of volumes of English, French and Italian literature. Scattered about the long room were various chairs and side tables, another settee, a desk in front of a tall window overlooking the garden, and, hanging from picture rails, framed oil paintings, watercolors and drawings of all sizes. Within the recess of an arched alcove to one side of the fireplace stood an almost life-size marble sculpture of a naked woman, and at the other side, in another alcove and standing upon a plinth, the bronze head of a bearded man.
That evening, she, Sylvia and Jack had dined early once again. Though she preferred to take a light supper later in the evening, this was not the custom in England and had proved something of a problem with Mrs. Davey, her housekeeper, who was standing in as cook until a permanent one was appointed. Nine o’clock was much too late to be busying on in the kitchen, Mrs. Davey had told the countess; her day was long enough.
After dinner, Jack had disappeared upstairs to his room, to read, he said. She and Sylvia had remained seated at the dining table, lingering over their coffee. But Sylvia had annoyed Cora with her persistent questions. The memoirs, which Cora was quietly beginning to have second thoughts about, seemed to be coming between Sylvia and her wits. To Cora’s mind, Sylvia was becoming possessed with an unhealthy obsession about her life. And she had told her so.
Sylvia had abruptly risen to her feet, saying she wished to take a stroll about the garden, and Cora had retired to the drawing room. She sat by the window on the western side of the house, flicking through the dog-eared pages of one of Sylvia’s Lady’s Pictorial magazines, peering through her old lorgnette at murky images and out-of-date advertisements, keeping thoughts at bay. But as daylight dwindled her eyes had grown heavy, and as the sun slipped down behind the trees she put the magazine to one side, allowed herself to sit back in her chair and closed her eyes.
Now she was lost in her dreams. But her dreams, like her memories, had fused, muddling people and chronology, muddling everything. Nameless yet familiar faces spoke the wrong words, borrowing sentences; people were not what they seemed, not who they appeared to be, and places were unreliable, altering their shape and form to a different city, a different country, taking her back to where she had started . . .
She feels sick, the ship is listing, but she does as she is told, placing her hand upon soft leather and promising, “No one.” She repeats words over and over: this is what she must say. Yes, yes, she knows, she says, she will not forget.
When she walks down the plank and steps ashore, she stands amidst rubble and ruins and dust, and stone columns stretching all the way up to the heavens. The sky is brighter here . . . but she must not forget, she must remember the words . . . and the name.
Cora asked for dreams. She asked for them to refresh her memory. But chaos was her recurring nightmare. And in this chaos her overriding desire was to find George, to get back to him. And sometimes she did, and sometimes she did not. But when she did, in those rare dreams when she finally found him—waiting for her, beside the steps—he held out his arms to her, wrapped them around her so tightly she could feel the warmth of his breath upon her forehead, the softness of his velvet jacket against her cheek. And when she awoke, fresh from his embrace, she remembered, remembered it all: the heady sensation, the hunger for another’s touch, the rise and fall of each wave, and that feeling of complete abandonment, where only the senses were alive, and yet lost at the
same time.
Lately, she had begun to enjoy that blurred landscape which often bridges slumber and wakefulness, that place of semi-consciousness. She liked to linger there, in that glow, aware it would come to her with more substance if she remained within it. Hoping they would come to her if she remained within it. For it was then, in that place, she could hear them: cherished voices, whispering and murmuring from another century. Occasionally she heard music—a piano, someone singing—beyond the open window, drifting across the garden, in the next room or upstairs, faint and impossible to place. And once or twice of late she had known with absolute certainty that he was there, standing so close to her she could sense his presence with all of her being. Close enough for her to feel that frisson once more.
When Sylvia, Jack or one of the maids entered the room, she kept her eyes firmly shut, as though in defiance of her own physical decrepitude as much as her circumstances. And perhaps because when she finally opened them nothing ever looked quite as it should. Things were all wrong, she was all wrong, like a sole survivor washed up on a foreign land with the material contents of her life tipped out around her, sad mementos, conspicuous and out of place.
In conscious moments, she revisited her most favorite times, working through them slowly and in detail, backward and forward, forward and backward, savoring each second of a moment again and again. And there was Lucca. No longer a place, but a memory, a time. Sacrosanct. Fortified.
She was careful never to approach unhappy memories, or venture back too far. Once, it had been easy, or easier, to steer clear of those dark places and difficult times. But now, like coming to the end of a road, a place where there is no further way forward, she had no choice, she had to turn and look back upon her path. She saw herself at different stages as different people: the young woman of almost twenty in Rome; the woman of thirty, mistress of a castle in France; the woman of forty, part of the beau monde of Paris; mother of two sons, wife of three men, lover of one: all different people with different lives. And that time before Rome, the place her journey started, obscured from view by those people she had become, had once been.
Numbness had come with old age, but to her bones, not to her heart. And though in public she was careful to keep her emotions in check, to maintain—or try to maintain—a ready smile, a relaxed countenance, in quiet, solitary moments, moments of reflection, and often when least expecting it, she was sometimes plunged under, submerged, left gasping for breath; drowning in a great swell of sorrow and joy and pain and rapture. And it was this, the memory of senses and sensations, that made her weep. She wept for lost children, she wept for lost love; she wept for a life slowly ebbing, and for things still inexplicable to her.
And now, at this great age, she wept for her mother too. Not simply in sorrow at her distant passing, or the loss of her, but in need of her. The child within the aged body and creaking bones, the little girl who had not been allowed to say goodbye, finally wanted to be heard. Mother. The word itself had piercing resonance. For she, too, had been robbed of that particular title.
“Mother . . . mother? Grandmother?”
She opened her eyes.
“You’re in darkness,” he said, lighting the lamp on the table beside her.
“I must have drifted off.”
“You were talking about your mother.”
She blinked, staring at the shape of him, allowing her eyes to adjust to the new light. “I was dreaming,” she said.
He sat down on the chair opposite her. “And what were you dreaming of? Your mother, obviously.”
“I’m not sure. This and that. It was all a muddle, it always is.” She glanced about the room. “Is Sylvia back indoors?”
“Yes, and retired for the night. She said she didn’t wish to disturb you. Actually, she was rather upset.”
“She gets upset too easily, far too easily. Always has. It’s part and parcel of having had so little in her life.”
He smiled. “Perhaps we need to remember that,” he suggested. “That she has had so little.”
“You’re right, of course you’re right. I was sharp with her. I shall apologize in the morning.”
“I know we’ve had very little time together,” he began, staring down at the floor. “Growing up . . . well, you were overseas, I couldn’t see you, but now we have the opportunity . . . I’d like to know more about everyone: Father, Grandfather, Fanny, and you, your family, your parents. You see, it strikes me I know nothing about my own family. Mother”—and he paused after he said the word—“Mother was unable, or perhaps not inclined, to tell me anything about the Staunton side of my family. She always claimed she knew little about you.”
Cora smiled, looked at the clock on the mantelshelf. “Good gracious, half past ten. I’ve been asleep for two whole hours. I rather think it’s time that I, too, went to my bed.” She struggled forward in her chair. He rose up, took hold of her hand and helped her to her feet. He looks so like him, she thought, observing his features in the lamplight; so like him.
“Will you tell me sometime? Will you tell me about the family, your family? I’d like to hear about them all,” he said, holding her hand in his.
“Yes, yes, of course I shall, but not tonight, my darling,” she said, trying to smile, placing her hand upon his cheek.
As she moved away from him, toward the door, he said, “Oh, and I was thinking of inviting Cecily Chadwick to tea on Tuesday . . . You said you’d like to meet her.”
She turned to him. “Yes, I would, and that’s a splendid idea. Good night, dear.”
As she closed the door and moved across the hallway, she felt a constriction about her chest. She grasped the handrail, began to climb the stairs, and the rustle of her petticoats momentarily distracted her: that swish-swish-swishing sound that had accompanied her every movement, all of her life. A fleeting image of her younger self dashing up steps two at a time flashed through her mind’s eye, and she caught that sensation once more: the weightlessness of youth. Whalebone, she thought, can’t really be good for one’s breathing. But lodged deep in her breast was an ever-tightening dilemma, and one name playing on a loop inside her head: John Abel . . . John Abel . . . John Abel.
After Cora retired to her bed, Jack sat alone for a while, cogitating. He reflected on the conversation he had had with Sylvia, earlier, in the garden, and it concerned and perplexed him in equal measure.
“Of course, it could be the heat,” Sylvia had said. And he knew she was being polite, as any good friend would be.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I can only apologize.”
She had recounted Cora’s harsh words, had been tearful, and understandably so.
“That she thinks I’m possessed . . . with an obsession about her . . . her life, and after she invited me here, asked me to record her memories . . .” She shook her head, removed her spectacles and dabbed at her eyes. “I don’t know what I’ve done, Jack, to make her turn on me like that.” She raised her head, staring straight ahead. “I fear for her,” she continued, “that she can turn on me, her oldest, most devoted friend, and with such . . . such venom, such passion. Hatred, that’s what it was. Pure hatred.”
“No, no, she doesn’t hate you. You mustn’t for one moment think that. She’s very fond of you, I know.”
But he was at a loss. Why had Cora turned on Sylvia? Sylvia, who wouldn’t say boo to a goose. Sylvia, whom Cora herself had claimed was such a dear friend. After a while he said, “You may be right. It may be the heat. I know she was used to it once, but we must bear in mind she’s a good deal older now.”
Sylvia sniffed, tucked her handkerchief inside her sleeve, and for a while they sat in silence, side by side, looking out over the garden.
“I only hope she comes back to us soon,” she said. “That we haven’t lost her.”
“Lost her?”
“It happened in Rome . . . in the summer. July and Augus
t. The heat brought it on, the delusions, the fever . . . paranoia . . . madness,” she said, so quietly that he had had to lean forward to catch the last two words.
Now, he thought Sylvia had overreacted. His grandmother was right: she had had so little in her life, was as unused to drama as Cora was used to it. Poor Sylvia. But as he rose to his feet and moved toward the lamp, something surfaced. At first, a mere sensation, a glimpse and flash of yellow. Then, slowly, more: his mother, another lady, unrecognizable, faceless; a yellow-walled room, long forgotten, unidentifiable; and a small dog—sweet little thing, gray—rolling about on the rug in front of him. His mother and the other lady are behind him, talking. They don’t say the name but he knows that the “she” they speak of refers to his grandmother.
His mother says, “She’ll never come back here to live, not permanently. She’s too afraid.”
“But afraid of what?” the faceless woman asks.
“Being discovered . . . being found out. Oh, she’ll come back for a drawing room at the palace . . . spend a week or so gadding about. But she’s terrified of any of them finding her. She thinks I don’t know, but I do.”
The faceless woman says, “Did he know?”
“No,” his mother replies, and she almost laughs as she says, “My husband adored her.”
Upstairs, Sylvia lay awake in her bed. Too hot to sleep, too distressed to write.
It had all started with the blessed letter, another letter. It had arrived in the afternoon post, and it had been she, Sylvia, who had taken it in to Cora. Sylvia had noted the pale yellow paper, the name and address typed in red ink . . . but perhaps only because of the somewhat clashing colors. Never could she have foreseen that she would later be attacked as the messenger.
Cora took the envelope from her, and as Sylvia spoke of something else—she couldn’t now recall what—Cora glanced at it and then simply placed it to one side, upon her desk. She was dealing with bills, settling accounts. There was no reason for Sylvia to suppose the yellow envelope contained anything more than another invoice. But even then, Cora had been dismissive, sharp with her.
The Memory of Lost Senses Page 8
