The Blue Bath (7 page)

Leaving the wider street, she turned in to the quiet of Angel Court. While the layout of the streets here remained mostly true to their medieval origins, the Blitz had transformed the buildings into a patchwork of old and new. While one side of the curved street belonged undeniably to modern times, on the opposite side, with its low Georgian buildings, fronted by a row of neat black bollards emblazoned with the crest of the City of London, it could easily have been the early 1900s.

Jonathan’s idea for the company, a forum that allowed financial institutions to trade securities off the exchanges, was beautiful in its simplicity. She thought sometimes that ideas like that could occur only when people were somehow disconnected. That there must be some sort of alchemy, some sort of altered perspective, that came from intervals of forced stillness on airplanes, moving above the clouds at speeds approaching that of sound. These intervals also fed a fever to do more. To move. To make. Jonathan always walked very quickly after disembarking from airplanes.

It had been a big risk when he had left the bank to start the company. The principals had not been pleased and had declined to make the hoped-for investment in his new venture. Bridges were burned.

There had been many points, especially during the first year, when they had come close to losing it all. She remembered the early board meeting when the directors had advised them to shut the company down. She had listened in silence as the people whom they trusted the most, whom they respected the most, made the case, methodically, rationally, that they should cut their losses. And then she had listened as Jonathan refused, methodically, irrationally.

Although it had been difficult and risky, she had enough perspective to know that it had also been quick. A few years of undeniable struggle, of hard work and no sleep, of blood, sweat, and takeaway food, had resulted in a viable, international company that was now listed on the LSE. So much had changed in such a short time. What hadn’t changed was the time commitment. Jonathan still worked constantly.

She had left the company about a year before Will was born. The fertility specialist had suggested it as one of a litany of other measures. It wasn’t time to worry yet, he had assured them. They had been trying for less than a year and there was still a good chance that they would be able to conceive naturally. “Conceive” was not the word he had used. “Fall pregnant” was what he had said. As if it were a condition, a malady.

And fall pregnant she had, although it had taken another eight months. And while she had tried to maintain a presence within the company for a time after Will was born, she found that her identity had been compromised. The company had moved to a larger building and the security guard at the front desk insisted on providing her with a visitor badge. The small adhesive rectangle proved prophetic as former coworkers smiled polite, impatient smiles at her and inquired about the baby. She was no longer a colleague, an insider. She was Jonathan’s wife. She was a mother. She was a reflection of someone else.

Entering the newer building through its polished red marble facade, she took the small lift up to the twenty-first floor. After a brief journey in silence, the doors split apart like theater curtains, revealing the city, spread out in all directions. Her immediate impression was that there were no walls around her, such was the completeness of the view. It was only after a moment that she noticed the reception desk and the presence of the offices contained inside the view and judged it wise to step off the lift.

She was led through a maze of low partitions and glass walls that dissolved into an immaculate corner office. Protruding into the sky like the prow of a ship, it offered unobstructed views of the city below, punctuated on one side by the pale, cross-topped catenary dome of Saint Paul’s. In the distance she could see moments of the Thames as it slunk through the City. It was low tide and the tiny shapes of birds were just visible as they moved over its wide banks. Turning from the windows, she laid her handbag gingerly on the large glass conference table, watching to see if it would cause a ripple in the smooth surface. It floated there, a singular spot of color in the room. After a moment, she removed it and placed it in the lap of a chair.

She stood surveying the large monochromatic canvas that anchored the room. Hearing the door to the room click closed, she turned to find a man standing close behind her, small and tidy in his black polo neck and rimless glasses, arms folded and eyes fixed not on her, but on the artwork in front of her.

“Do you like it?” he asked.

“I do. What is it?”

“What do you think it is?”

“It’s a Rorschach, isn’t it?”

He nodded. “One of the ten original inkblots. Number seven, in fact. It reminds me that things are as we perceive them to be. That all meaning is subjective.”

He turned to her. “So what do you see?”

She turned back to the large symmetrical shape. Almost immediately, a figure emerged within the gray.

“It’s a woman.”

“Just one?”

“Yes. She is looking at her reflection in a mirror.”

Kat looked at the figures. They seemed at first to be identical. Two articulated halves of the same whole, fused at the base. She took in the slight white spot behind the heart where the ink had not adhered to the paper, noting that this small emptiness was echoed in the other figure. As she studied the image more closely, she began to notice small differences between the figures. Imperfections in the jagged edges and the subtle shadows where the ink had bled beyond the margins of each figure. There was something about the opaque clouds gathered just below the surface that seemed at once ominous and vaguely familiar.

She turned away from it. “I thought they were meant to be kept secret, so as not to compromise the general population.”

He looked at her sideways and smiled, his eyes bright. “Consider yourself compromised. Mrs. Bowen, I presume…”

“Lind,” Kat responded automatically. “But please call me Kat.”

“Kat. I am Charles.” He shook her hand firmly. “Shall we discuss your home?”

As she settled opposite him at the conference table, she tried to focus on him, and not on the view through the glass behind him. Sir Charles Eliasson was one of the most sought-after architects in London. She and Jonathan both loved his work—minimal and eclectic. A native of Sweden, he fused traditional with modern using practicality and beauty as glue. She had missed the first meeting with him. It had been in the diary for months. Before anything had happened. Jonathan had gone alone because she had been in New York.

The glass tabletop prevented her from slipping her feet out of her shoes, as was her habit.

He perched on the edge of his chair across from her and removed his glasses, placing them gently on the table, where they disappeared into the larger glass surface. His facial features immediately receded without their subtle definition.

“Your house presents an interesting challenge. As a Grade II listed building, there is much that we cannot change. But I suspect that is one of the aspects of it that appealed to you. And sometimes the hardest decision is what to keep, so perhaps this is lucky for you.”

As he spoke, Sir Charles slid a pile of thick, crisp white paper across the surface of the table until it came to rest between them. Kat glanced momentarily at the drawing on top, a massive, sprawling floor plan—precisely rendered and swaddled in detailed annotation. Replete with swatches of wood, marble, wallpaper, and paint arranged around the edges, it resembled a magpie’s nest.

“There’s been a mistake. This is not my house,” Kat said, pulling back slowly from the drawing in front of her.

Plunging his hand into the table to retrieve his glasses, Sir Charles leaned closer to the drawings, peering at them. After a moment he looked back up at her. “This is your house.”

She looked down again at the busy black-on-white drawing. Slowly, a familiar image emerged from the thicket of computer-drawn lines on the page. She hadn’t recognized her own house. Embarrassed, she looked up at him, not knowing what to say. He leveled a knowing glance at her and after a moment pushed the materials to the side, clearing the space between them.

“This is why I do not like the man and woman to be separate.” He sighed. “It cannot work. All this is based on the meeting with your husband.”

He leaned back in his chair. “We start at the beginning, then. Why don’t you tell me what you want.”

What did she want? What were they going to fill the house with? They didn’t need more things. She didn’t want the new textured wallpaper on the walls. She didn’t want to replace the old marble or, even worse, to carpet the timeworn wood floors. She didn’t want to paint it in the latest colors or to stuff it full of furniture—things that would fill up the beautiful space, curtains that would obscure the views. She wondered when they had started to need so much stuff.

Part of it was the money. They had made such a massive leap in the last few years that she was uncomfortable with the amounts of money that the project demanded. But it wasn’t the money alone. She loved the space, the smooth white walls topped with frothy moldings; the enormous windows looking out over the tree-lined street or onto the large, overgrown wisteria-and-rose-filled garden; the vast expanses of distressed wood and worn-smooth marble. The idea of covering it up was anathema to her. She liked it naked. She liked the possibilities.

The feeling was even stronger since she had gone through her mother’s possessions. It all ended and what were you left with?

She looked back at him mutely for a moment. “That’s rather a broad question.”

“It’s often helpful to start with something you love,” he suggested. “Something beautiful that gives you joy. Something that reminds you of things you don’t want to forget. Something of value to you. A piece of art, perhaps?”

Kat thought of her bare walls and smiled.

After a moment, he continued. “I think I may have something you would be interested in seeing. As we have only just found it, I didn’t have it to show your husband when he was in previously.”

He rose and made his way to an oversize credenza at one end of the room. The more time she spent in the office, the more aware she became of its contents. Things that had been invisible at first. It was as if her eyes were becoming accustomed to the view. Adjusting themselves to its brilliance. The room, which had first appeared spare, gradually became populated. She noticed a collection of African masks that hung on one wall, their smooth, mute faces watching her impassively. On his desk were framed photos of two blond children. In front of the sea. Behind birthday cakes. In public-school uniforms.

“Your children?”

He glanced back at her. “As they used to be. They are older now. Klaus is at university. Liff is engaged to be married.” He hesitated. “It is what it is to be a parent. Always looking backwards. You have children, yes? Your husband said.”

“One child, yes.” She smiled.

Opening a drawer, he carefully lifted out a sheet of oversize yellowed paper and carried it gingerly to the table. As he spread it out in front of her its age was immediately obvious. The delicate parchment was nearly translucent under the bright light.

“The original drawing of your house. Courtesy of the National Archives.”

The hand-drawn diagram glowed softly. Its age and imperfections clouded just below the surface. She took in the simplicity and clarity of the lines. With the exception of scale and orientation, there were no annotations on the page. Here was the form, unadorned. This she recognized. She leaned closer, reading the graceful curling lettering within each of the rooms. Drawing room. Dining room. Principal staircase. Servants’ hall.

“Drawings from this period contain much less detail,” Sir Charles explained. “There was a common knowledge of standards and techniques at the time, so less instruction was necessary.”

Kat pointed decisively to the gleaming drawing in between them. “This is what I want.”

She thought he smiled, but it was gone before she could be sure. “It is impossible to raise the dead. Your house will never be exactly as it once was, but it can be beautiful again. Nothing lasts forever, Kat. And you wouldn’t want it to.”

“Then why spend so much time on it?” It came out before she could stop herself. “So much money? Choosing the perfect marble and wallpaper and paint colors. The best furniture and appliances, the most exquisite art … if none of it lasts?”

He frowned. “I think because it’s in our nature to do so. And because perfection is possible—but only for a time. And if you know that one secret…” He held up a pale forefinger, its slender shape hovering among the skyscrapers of the city beyond it. “… that nothing lasts forever. Then it is even sweeter.”

He hesitated for a moment. “It’s interesting that we often think of a home as being a part of our story, when in fact we are a part of its story.”

Leaving the building, Kat crossed back from the present to the past.

Kat had grown up in a New York apartment, its walls covered with artwork. A color-soaked Derain looked down on her from above her bed, its garish hues crowded under the low ceiling. The rest of the collection was tightly arranged in an eclectic mosaic in the drawing room.

The paintings had been lovingly collected by her father’s paternal grandmother. Initially viewed as an indulgence, they had proven to be a shrewd investment over the years. Upon her death, she had bequeathed them to him, her favorite grandchild, a choice that had not sat well with other family members.

Kat had grown up alongside the paintings. She thought sometimes that she could recall them all. Certainly the shimmering Fauvist seascape over her bed, its bright boats floating in a small harbor. The sea and sky separated into vivid particles of pure color. The scene was viewed from above, so that, even as a small child lying below it, she had felt as if she was looking down on it. Suspended somewhere in the dappled sky.

Then there was the sad-eyed woman, placed at the top corner in the drawing room so that she could look upon the other paintings with her downcast eyes, her empty hands clasped together tightly in her lap. And the young soldier, his expression far too grave for his age. Kat had wondered what he knew.