The Memory of Lost Senses

by Judith Kinghorn

  The men nodded at Jack.

  Mr. Fowler began. “The painting, Aphrodite, was, I believe, executed at Lucca some sixty years ago. Would that be correct?”

  Cecily heard Jack sigh. “I’m really not sure when, exactly, it was executed,” she answered. “Cor— My husband’s grandmother had it hanging in her hallway for a number of years, certainly since nineteen eleven, but I’m afraid I have no idea where it was before that, or any dates.”

  Mr. Fowler smiled and waved a hand, as though it was of little importance. “She was, we believe, his regular sitter during his time at Rome. And we are, I think it is safe to say”—he paused and turned to the other gentleman—“almost certain that she was his Madonna. The faces are identical, the treatment the same. Wouldn’t you agree, Mr. Davidson?”

  “Oh, without doubt.”

  Mr. Fowler cleared his throat and went on. “For my own part, there’s . . . a niggling. Yes, a niggling. Call it a dilemma, if you will.” He paused, lowered his head and glanced over his spectacles at Jack. “Your grandmama gave birth to a child some nine months after she had returned from her stay at Lucca with Lord Lawson and Mrs. Hillier. That child—your father, sir,” he said, nodding to Jack, “was given the name George, and George Lawson was duly conferred godfather.” He said this last word rather more loudly, and then paused, again, as though giving Cecily and Jack time to absorb these facts, an unfolding theory. “Lord Lawson wrote often of this child—your father, his godson—George, or Georgie, as he seemed to prefer to call him. And sums of money—considerable amounts and over many years—were sent to banks in Paris and Rome . . .”

  It was obvious to Cecily where the conversation was headed, what was being implied, and so she continued to hold on to Jack’s hand, gripping it tighter from time to time.

  Mr. Fowler sighed heavily. “Unfortunately, almost all of Lord Lawson’s personal correspondence was destroyed by his family after his death. He was secretive by nature, and his surviving journals and personal papers are . . . hard to decipher—written in code, perhaps. But there’s one name, a name that appears time and again in his early journals, and then again in later ones. It’s a name I have been unable to identify or locate. And so, what I would like to ask you is”—he paused, looked from Cecily to Jack and back to her—“what was the countess’s given name?”

  “Cora, her name was Cora,” Cecily replied.

  He looked away, shook his head.

  “That’s not the name?”

  He closed his eyes and sighed. Then he looked at her. “No. And it’s a shame,” he said and laughed. “I thought I had discovered the missing piece,” he said, wringing his hands. “Yes, the missing piece,” he said again.

  Mr. Davidson turned to him. “Hmm, not even remotely alike,” he said.

  “There were . . . no other names? Middle names?” Mr. Fowler asked, looking from one to the other once again.

  Cecily turned to Jack, shaking her head. “Not that I’m aware of,” she said. And Jack shrugged his shoulders. She looked back at Mr. Fowler: “But what is the name you’re looking for? Perhaps it will mean something if I hear it.”

  “Lily. The name is Lily.”

  Cecily managed not to say anything, or nod. But she did smile.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Cecily said she could not stay long. “Jack’s waiting at the hotel, and we have to get back to collect the children from my mother’s.”

  “Ah yes, of course,” said Sylvia. “How are they? I forgot to ask you last time.”

  Cecily opened her bag, pulled out her wallet and took something from it. “Here,” she said, extending her hand.

  Sylvia stared at the photograph: a dark-haired boy in a sailor suit, holding another child, his sister, on his lap. “Aha, so that’s little Jack.”

  “Actually we call him Jay. It was too confusing with two Jacks in the house . . . He’ll be five in a few weeks’ time. And that’s my baby, that’s Lily,” she said, moving over to Sylvia to look at the photograph with her. “She’s grown a lot since then—they both have. She’ll be three in October.”

  “Lily? And what made you choose that name?”

  “It’s what my father called me when I was young, before he passed away. He always called me Lily.”

  “I see,” said Sylvia, staring at the photograph.

  Unlike the little boy, whose hair was straight, and parted at the side, the baby in the picture had a mop of dark unruly curls. And whilst the boy looked back at the camera with a serious face, the baby looked elsewhere, laughing.

  “So when was this taken?” Sylvia asked.

  “Oh, only a few months ago, at Christmas,” Cecily replied, smiling at the image. “But children grow so quickly.”

  “Jack must be very proud.”

  “He is . . . adores them both.”

  Sylvia handed back the photograph and Cecily returned to her chair.

  “It would’ve been nice to have seen Jack,” said Sylvia.

  “I know, I’m sorry, but he’s not always comfortable with strangers.”

  “Strangers?”

  “He doesn’t remember people, Sylvia. He has very few memor- ies of anyone really, from before the war.”

  “I see. And the children, little Jack—I mean, Jay—how was it for him when his papa returned?”

  “Daddy,” Cecily corrected her. “It’s been four years, Sylvia. Jay was little more than a baby when his daddy came back.” She shrugged. “Jack’s simply Daddy, like any other . . .”

  Sylvia nodded. “And Jack copes? Copes with the children?”

  Cecily laughed. “Oh yes, he copes very well. In fact, he rather prefers their company to anyone else’s. They don’t see his disability, his injuries, they see the man, their father. Jack as he is now is the only Jack they’ve known.”

  “And you? It must be quite . . . quite hard for you, dear.”

  She shook her head and laughed again. “No, it’s not hard for me, not hard for me at all. I feel immensely lucky—extraordinarily lucky. My husband came back, with four limbs and a face, scarred perhaps but recognizable—to me. God spared Jack, spared me. I have my husband, the father of my children. I have everything.”

  They moved on. Cecily told Sylvia that she and Jack had attended the private view of the exhibition of George’s work, adding, “We’ve loaned them the painting, the one from the hallway at Temple Hill.”

  Sylvia tried to remember.

  “The one of Cora? Painted by George in Italy?”

  No, she could not recall it. But it did not surprise her to hear that Cora had had such a painting, she said. “I’ve no doubt she had quite a few by him.”

  “No, that was the only one.”

  “And so it’s on loan to the Academy?”

  “Yes, indefinitely. It’s one of the few pieces we’re not inclined to sell. Jack says it’s our pension,” she added, smiling.

  “And I imagine it’ll provide a very generous pension, too.”

  “We have everything we need,” Cecily went on, “and anyhow, it would cost a fortune to insure and look quite out of place in our cottage.”

  They sat in silence for a moment or two. Sylvia deliberated on what to say about the manuscript, lying on the table in front of them. But she was still distracted by Cora’s letter, acutely conscious of its presence beneath her, under the cushion. It would be interesting to see if Cecily mentioned it, asked her about it, she thought.

  “About your novel,” Sylvia began, “it’s a reasonable enough story though I’m not sure one could say it is Cora’s story.”

  “It’s fiction, Sylvia,” Cecily said, a little defensively, Sylvia thought. “I should perhaps have explained that . . . it’s inspired by her life rather than based on her life.”

  “But you said loosely based; you did use those words, Cecily.”

  Cecily smiled,
nodded. “Yes, I did, and perhaps that was misleading,” she said. “But I must ask you, did you like the ending?”

  Sylvia glanced across the room, up to the cornicing. She could see a cobweb or two. She would have to speak to Mrs. Halliday about it later, get her to send someone up. Then Cecily spoke again. “Is the ending feasible?”

  She turned to Cecily. “Nothing is ever entirely unfeasible in fiction,” she said.

  “And in Cora’s life?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t say. You would have to ask Cora that question, I think.”

  “But she’s not here, and you are. Do you think it’s possible that Cora and George could have married, had circumstances been different?”

  Sylvia laughed. “Had circumstances been different, my dear, anything might have been possible. And as I said before—”

  “No, you didn’t say before,” Cecily cut in, exasperated, irritated. “Oh, and there’s something else: why did Cora think George was buried in Rome when his grave is here in London?”

  “Because she needed to . . . and because I gave it to her.”

  “You gave it to her?”

  Sylvia nodded. “I wrote it that way, in A Roman Affair.”

  For seven days after George’s death, his body lay in the Octagon Room at the Academy. Crowds of mourners queued to pay their respects, to file past the coffin festooned with flowers and wreaths, and draped in patriotic colors, like a war hero who had died for his country. The newspapers proclaimed his death a “tragedy”; the nation was bereft.

  Weeks earlier, George had been diagnosed with angina. His doctors had informed him that he needed to cut down on his workload, needed to take a rest. He had written to Cora in Rome, telling her that he planned to take a sabbatical, and that he would like to spend it in Italy, with her. And she had quickly replied, full of plans: they could take a house outside Rome, somewhere quiet, she suggested; and they could perhaps travel north, if he felt up to it, to Bagni di Lucca, where the waters and hot springs would surely do him a power of good. Yes, she would look into it, she told him.

  When Cora learned of her son’s accident, she immediately dispatched a telegram to George informing him of the situation, telling him that she was about to set off for England. Two days later she sent another—to inform him of Georgie’s death. Stunned by disbelief, by the sudden and abrupt end to her son’s life, she failed to notice George’s silence, his absence at their son’s funeral. She had no idea that hours after George received her second telegram he had had a stroke; no idea, as she stood in a snow-covered churchyard with one George that the other had just taken his last breath.

  Cora insisted on going to the Academy. She told Sylvia she could not return to Rome before paying her final respects. And so, stiffly upholstered in mourning, she held on to Sylvia’s arm as they climbed the steps of the entrance to the Academy. She seemed able, Sylvia thought then, to divorce her shattered spirit from that swell of public hysteria. For no one in that murmuring line of somber-faced strangers would ever have guessed. No one shuffling across that marble floor could know that she had just buried her son; or that the man whose coffin they queued to see was in fact the father and the man she had loved for almost half a century.

  And yet, it seemed to Sylvia that, in death, George Lawson, late President of the Academy, England’s greatest painter, unmarried, with no apparent heir, and owned by everyone, belonged only to one: the woman gripping her arm.

  When a man, some sort of official in uniform, asked, “Did you know him?” Sylvia quickly replied, “Yes, we both knew him . . . long before he became famous.”

  “Thought so. Saw you’d both dressed proper. Not everyone has the decency to do that these days,” he said, and moved on.

  When it came to their turn, Sylvia stepped to one side and Cora walked forward alone. She placed her hand upon the coffin, closed her eyes for a moment, and Sylvia saw her mouth a few words. Then she turned to Sylvia and nodded. They walked back through rooms softly humming with desultory conversation, following the snaking line out into the lobby and past Clifford’s Tinted Venus without a second glance.

  “Yes,” Sylvia said again, “it was my gift to her, dedicated to her . . .” She paused and smiled. “But I’m afraid you’ll have to wait for my new book for your answers,” she added in a new bold voice.

  “You’ve written a book about her, about Cora?”

  “Well, they’ve all been about her, one way or another, I suppose. But this one is different. It’s the story of her life,” Sylvia said, “the true story.”

  “Oh, and according to whom?”

  “Well, according to me, of course. As you know, I was there for a great deal of it, and, as Cora’s confidante, was for most of her life privy to her innermost thoughts and secrets. That is why she wished me to record her memories, but alas it was not to be.”

  “How wonderful,” said Cecily, rising to her feet. “Well, I shall look forward to reading it. What’s it to be called? Have you a title yet?”

  “The Memory of Lost Senses.”

  “The Memory of Lost Senses,” Cecily repeated. “Mm, I like it.”

  She pulled on her coat and picked up her manuscript.

  Sylvia watched her and said, “I thought you had something to tell me, something about Cora?”

  “Did I? Oh no, I simply wondered about the letter—her letter to you, that was all. Was it . . . was it as you imagined . . . what you expected?” she asked, fastening buttons.

  “It was indeed, and it will help me with the final part of my book,” Sylvia said, moving forward in her chair.

  “Please, don’t get up, I can see myself out.”

  There was no kiss.

  Wendy was quick to respond to the bell, and even quicker to return with the bucket of coal. “Having a clear-out, are we?” she said to Sylvia, crouching down by the hearth, eyeing the paper and envelopes, the tattered shoeboxes piled up on the table.

  “Sorting through . . .”

  “Don’t forget, it’s Mrs. Evesleigh’s birthday. There’s tea and cake in the lounge at four.”

  “Ah yes, of course,” Sylvia replied, watching the flickering.

  “Do you want me to take any of this?” Wendy asked, nodding her head toward the table. “I can dispose of it, you know. You don’t want to be having a bonfire in your room, now do you?”

  Sylvia feigned a little laugh. “Thank you, Wendy, but I shan’t be having any bonfire, at least, not today. Just burning a few old letters, that’s all.”

  There was plenty of time, Sylvia thought, hours until Mrs. Evesleigh puffed out her cheeks to extinguish a few tiny pink candles. In the meantime, Sylvia could have her own burning ceremony. And it gave her something to do: a task for the afternoon. I am the only one who knows, she thought, placing the first envelope upon the fire, watching the cream-colored paper slowly ignite and burn . . . the only one who will ever know.

  Cecily stared out of the train carriage window to row upon row of soot-blackened houses, back-to-back gardens, washing lines and fences and paths, huddled and dismal under the lowering smog. She caught glimpses of crossings and platforms and faces, and high streets foreign to her; shops she would never enter, trams and buses she would never take. She forgot for a while that she was about to see her children; forgot Jack, sitting opposite her.

  She had known about Lily for years, known since that stormy summer’s afternoon when they sat waiting for a deluge that never came; when she told Cora that her father had called her Lily, not Cecily, and Cora had said, “Mine too.” But what could be gained by revealing the name? What could be gained now? Everything was in place and where it ought to be; and she had left it so.

  Jack had said, “A coincidence, eh? The name being Lily.”

  “Hmm, it’s a common enough name, I suppose.”

  They had been in another taxicab, heading back to their hotel, exhausted f
rom standing about the crowded picture galleries of the Academy surveying George Lawson’s life’s work; and, at the same time, elated from seeing their painting hanging there. But Cecily’s private joy had been the Madonna, Lawson’s most famous work, the one which had catapulted him to success and, for years, had been enjoyed only by royal eyes. The painting was vast. It took up an entire wall of one room—easily the most crowded room. And there, right at the center of the enormous canvas, a vaguely familiar face: eyes downcast, almost closed, and lips slightly parted as though in midsigh. And for Cecily it spoke of the pain of love, and of a life of loss.

  “Do you think they were actually implying that my father was Lawson’s lovechild? That he and Cora had had an affair?” Jack had asked, staring out at the wet lamplit street.

  “It did sound like that, didn’t it?”

  “Scurrilous . . . Perhaps I should sue them,” he had added, turning to her, smiling.

  She could not tell him. She had promised Cora. And that promise—like Jack’s to her—had been kept.

  But that morning, when she had called on Sylvia to collect her manuscript, and had teasingly said, “Oh, I have something to tell you, something about Cora,” she had thought of telling Sylvia; or rather, of leading Sylvia to a place where she might tell her more. But it was clear to her that Sylvia was not going to divulge anything, whatever she knew. And she had been in an odd mood, odder than ever. There had been little point in asking about Cora’s letter, though she had, simply for politeness’ sake.

  “She just seems so . . . so bitter,” Cecily said now, continuing to stare out of the carriage window, musing aloud.

  She was rankled by Sylvia’s attitude, and wondered why she had been so unkind, for she had said nothing at all constructive, offered Cecily no words of encouragement or praise. A reasonable enough effort . . .

  Then Jack said, “Perhaps it was unrequited love.”

  Cecily turned to him. “The only person she’s ever loved is Cora.”