That Summer: A Novel (12 page)

She despised herself for her own weakness, especially now that she knew Arthur for what he was, not the prince of her imaginings but a limited man of limited imagination and small ambition.

But that was churlish. Imogen watched Arthur’s back as he took his daughter’s arm, directing her attention to the high-piled paintings on the wall, stacked one on top of the other, hung so close their frames brushed. Whatever his flaws, Arthur had a genuine appreciation for beauty, even if his first impulse was to purchase it and then lock it away.

As he had Imogen.

She smiled to herself, a little wryly, and took a firmer grip on her exhibition catalog. Would she really have been better off otherwise? It was a game she played with herself from time to time, wondering what would have happened had she heeded her father’s advice and refused Arthur’s offer for her hand. She did not know that she would have been any happier as a pensioner in her uncle’s home than she was at Herne Hill. Would she have become the perpetual poor relation, like Jane Cooper, alert to any petty change in status, constantly jockeying for place and position?

Perhaps. Or perhaps Imogen might have formed a genuine attachment, an attachment to someone who would speak to her without that gentle edge of reproof in his voice, who would admire her for something other than her fine skin, who would treat her as a person and not as a figurine to be set in a glass case and shielded from the world and her own impulses. There were times when she wanted to rail at Arthur for stealing her away from all that, for stealing her youth, made all the worse by the fact that she knew that he believed he had not so much stolen as saved her and that she ought to be grateful—perpetually, grovelingly grateful—for all that he had so generously conferred upon her: collars of gold that clutched at her throat, rich dresses that pinched her waist, opulent meals that caught in her throat, a surfeit of luxury and no air to breathe.

It was hot and close in the exhibition rooms, the ladies’ skirts belling out across the floor, the people pressing in around her like the endless parade of seasons from the window of her room in Herne Hill.

Spring and summer and fall and winter, spring and summer and fall and winter …

Imogen pressed her lips tightly shut and resolutely took hold of her exhibition catalog. There were pictures to be viewed. Compressing her broad skirts, she managed to navigate a channel around a group of ladies who had taken refuge on the chairs provided in the center of the room. Between the ladies’ extravagant bonnets and the gentlemen’s high hats it was impossible to pick out Evie or Arthur, so Imogen wiggled her way closer to the wall instead, opening her exhibition catalog, the paper pages sewn together with string.

For now, for the next hour, she was free, entirely by herself amid the throng.

In the East Room, she was promised
The Real Scenery of the Bride of Lammermuir
, by J. Hall; a view of the Carnaervon Hills by another artist of whom Imogen hadn’t heard;
Henrietta Maria in Distress
, by the unfortunately named Mr. Egg; and a series of portraits of various worthy but largely unattractive souls.

Imogen decided to take her chances with the Middle Room.
The Return of the Prodigal
 … Oh, dear, not another one.
A Scene from the Lady of the Lake
. Not bad, but a little overdone. Imogen’s eye was caught briefly by a
Lorenzo and Isabella,
by a Mr. Millais. The bright colors and medieval raiment pleased Imogen, but why was Isabella’s brother sticking out his leg at that odd angle? It looked most uncomfortable.

She was about to attempt the Octagon Room when her attention was caught by the painting next to
Lorenzo and Isabella
. It had been hung on one of the coveted places on the line; as opposed to the paintings stuck up by the ceiling or down by one’s knees, it was right at eye level. Which meant that Imogen had an excellent view of her own sewing box.

It was quite definitely her sewing box. There was the corner of a book, sticking out of one side where she ought to have kept embroidery threads instead, and the chip on one corner, where she had accidentally knocked it over that time.

As Imogen examined the painting in growing indignation, she realized that it wasn’t just her sewing box that had been appropriated for display. There was Arthur’s chalice … his triptych … her father’s Book of Hours. All around her, the crowd eddied, gossiping, considering, judging, but Imogen stood stock still, transfixed at the indicia of her private life impaled on canvas like a butterfly on a naturalist’s screen, hung up at the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition for all to see.

The subject was a woman, a woman standing by a window—the stained-glass window from Arthur’s study, a detached part of Imogen’s mind noted—her body posed in such a way as to convey yearning and longing. One hand reached towards the glass, almost, but not quite, touching it.

The pain in her face, the balked desire, took Imogen’s breath away.

How many times had she stood by the window, in just such a pose, waiting, yearning, for something, something, something to happen, something to change, watching the raindrops drip, watching the leaves blow, watching the seasons change around her? And there, there was her own sewing box by the woman’s feet, Imogen’s own Book of Hours open on the table in front of her. Imogen sucked in a deep, hard breath, fighting against the pressure of her stays, fighting for composure, trying to fight the conviction that someone had snuck into her most private places in the middle of the night and looted not just Arthur’s treasures but also her own soul, plastering it onto canvas for all to see.

No. That was ridiculous. It was a model in the painting, her dress a costume, a re-creation of a medieval gown, long and flowing, clinging to the contours of her form in a way that was causing several gentlemen to elbow one another appreciatively. The woman didn’t even look like Imogen. Any similarities were purely superficial. Her hair was several shades lighter than Imogen’s and unmistakably red, her features less pronounced, her mouth and nose smaller.

Mariana,
read the small plaque embedded in the frame.

The exhibition catalog dangled almost forgotten from Imogen’s hand. She opened it, hastily leafing through, her fingers clumsy in their gloves, the paper tearing at her touch.

Mariana in the Moated Grange,
read the full title. And there, beside it, the artist’s name.

Pale eyes, watching her across Arthur’s drawing room. Knowing eyes, seeing too much. Imogen felt herself tingling with a powerful wave of anger and indignation, that this man, this man Arthur had invited into his home, had made himself so bold—had dared—

She ought to have known who it was, even before she saw the name. But there it was, in black and white in the exhibition catalog:
Gavin Thorne.

Herne Hill, 2009

Julia left Andrew in one of the smaller back bedrooms, merrily tossing twenty-year-old bank statements and obsolete grocery bills into what he referred to as “the bonfire pile.”

“We’ll have a jolly one,” he said, with a pyromaniac gleam in his eye.

Julia left him to it and went to tackle the room next door. She would have killed for another cup of coffee, but Natalie and Nicholas were downstairs and she had no particular desire to encounter either of them. Of course, it was her own fault; she’d forgotten Natalie’s offer of housecleaning help. Or, if she’d remembered it, she’d assumed that it was one of those polite nothings, like
let’s get together soon!
when you run into an old acquaintance in the street, neither of you with the slightest intention of ever following up.

Julia hadn’t reckoned with the Nicholas factor. Because that was clearly what this was about. Not a sudden desire to rekindle cousinly ties. Natalie was trying to impress Nicholas—with what? A musty old house that had belonged to a great-aunt Natalie didn’t even like? Her dubiously ancient ancestry? Either way, it wasn’t working. Julia would have felt sorry for Natalie if it weren’t all so damned annoying.

Oh, well. On the plus side, Julia was getting free labor out of it.

That was what she wanted, wasn’t it? Julia told herself stridently as she let herself into the room next door. To clean up and get out?

Somehow, that didn’t sound as attractive a prospect as it had a week ago.

Julia set her coffee cup down on a dusty desk. She hadn’t been through here yet. Like the drawing room, this room had the musty smell of long disuse. The walls must once have been a pale blue—or maybe lilac?—but had faded over time to a gentle bluish gray, punctuated with woodwork that had been white a very long time ago, before the grime began to accumulate and the paint peel. There were two tall white bookshelves against one wall, one on either side of a narrow window looking out on to an alley, each crammed with a collection of tattered paperbacks and untidy piles of papers. There was a narrow bed, with a white metal bedstead, a chest of drawers, and, making up for the lack of a closet, a massive wardrobe, the heavy mahogany incongruous against the rest of the cheap, white-painted 1960s-era furniture. The wardrobe looked as though it had been there for a very long time; no one would want to try to navigate that monster out through the door.

It was a smallish room, but that was more than made up for by the view from the two windows on the far wall. The windows looked out over the garden, all the way down to the neglected orchard that bounded the fence on the far end of the property. Even now, unweeded, neglected, the garden looked like a scene out of a fairy tale: the peeling peaked roof of the summerhouse, surrounded by a tangle of wild roses, overgrown paths of yew hedges, dotted with rusted iron benches. Forty years ago, with the summerhouse freshly painted, with water in the birdbath and bright blossoms in the overgrown flower beds, it must have been glorious.

There was a small painting hanging between the two windows, a watercolor. It was the same view but in spring, the trees a mass of white blossoms, the sky a perfect, celestial blue. Julia didn’t need to look at the signature at the bottom to guess who must have painted it.

Her mother had been in art school when Julia’s father met her.

It was one of the few things Julia knew about them. It was why her father had looked so grimly pained when Julia had majored in art history, why she knew, without ever discussing it, that it would cut him to the bone if she followed through and went for her PhD.

Julia turned slowly in a circle, taking in the details of the room, the sketchbooks on the shelves, the slightly grimy Princess phone. There was no doubt about it; this must have been her mother’s room. Forty years ago, in another world, her mother might have sprawled on that bed, phone cord stretched across the room, speaking in hushed tones to Julia’s father, muffling her laughter so Aunt Regina wouldn’t hear.

At least, Julia assumed her mother and father must have laughed together. Once.

From far away, Julia seemed to hear her father’s voice, raised in anger; a female voice, answering back; the slamming of a door. She could feel the prickle of a carpet beneath her bare knees. She was crouched under something, a table, listening to her parents arguing.

Where in the hell had that come from?

Julia’s hand was on the knob of the door before she realized that she had retreated, step by step, ready to duck out and shut the door. She laughed shakily. Great. Metaphor made action. Her English professors in college would have loved that. Shut the door and shut the door. Just like she had been shutting the door all these years.

Julia’s knuckles were white against the old brass doorknob. This was insane. Insane. What was she so afraid of? What was she was so afraid of remembering?

Maybe she was just afraid she would miss her. Her mother.

The answer came unbidden. It was so much easier to pretend her mother had never been, that Julia had always lived in an apartment in New York with her father, easier not to remember anything warm or tender, because warm or tender would hurt and it was easier just to be angry, to be angry at her mother for leaving them. Somehow, despite the fact that it had been an accident—the word “accident” had been emphasized over and over again—Julia had never been able to shake the conviction that it had been a willful desertion. Her mother had left her, had left them.

Maybe it was her father’s refusal to talk about it that had cemented the idea, his tight-lipped pain when her mother’s name was mentioned. It wasn’t just grief; there was anger there, too. Small as she was, Julia had gotten the message. Mummy was to blame for leaving and the only way to deal with it was to shut her out entirely, to pretend she had never been.

Julia leaned back against the door, feeling the sweat prickling through her tank top. She’d done a pretty thorough job of it, hadn’t she? She’d blotted out every memory of their life in England. But for that one old picture, she wouldn’t even remember her mother’s face.

Maybe it was time to start remembering.

Maybe. Later. Julia took a slug of her cold coffee, trying to ignore the way her hands were trembling. One step at a time. Not running out of her mother’s room and slamming the door would be a good start. It wasn’t precisely heroic, but it was a beginning.

Julia yanked the elastic up on her ponytail and decided to tackle the wardrobe first. It was less personal than the bookshelves, the desk, the bureau. Baby steps, she reminded herself, and tugged open the door to the wardrobe. It took a fair bit of tugging. It wasn’t the catch; it was the wood itself, warped with damp and age. There were drawers all up and down one half, but the other half of the wardrobe was one big rectangle, with a bar across the top for hanging clothes, sweaters and pants piled on the bottom.

The clothes in the wardrobe were her mother’s, decades old, with the musty smell of old wool. Turtleneck sweaters, plaid skirts with high waists, minidresses and maxi-dresses. Slowly, Julia began transferring them from the wardrobe to the bed.

It seemed like an awful lot of clothes to leave behind at the premarital home, but Julia recognized that her own perceptions might be skewed. Just because she had cleared out entirely when she left for college, when Helen and Julia’s father bought the new apartment, didn’t mean that everyone did. She had friends who still had full closets at home, a good decade after college. And her mother had been fairly young when she married Julia’s father, a good decade younger than Julia was now. Twenty-one? Twenty-two? Something like that. Her father could tell her, but Julia didn’t want to ask.