The Memory of Lost Senses (20 page)

“I see.”

They walked on in silence and when they reached the privet hedge bordering Cecily’s garden, Sylvia said, “I must tell you something, Cecily.”

She then explained how worried she was about Cora, about her friend’s recent outburst, the sitting alone in the temple. “I know that Jack, too, is concerned . . . very concerned,” she added, grimly. “Recently, she seems . . . she seems to be more confused than ever, almost delusional.”

“It’s the heat,” Cecily said, with a shrug of her shoulders, and quite dismissive to Sylvia’s mind.

“No, it is not the heat. She’s long used to that. No, there’s something else. I know it. And my worry is . . .” She turned her head away and sighed. “She’s become so muddled about everything, her past, the details of her birth, her childhood. I’m not sure what, exactly, she told you, Cecily . . .”

Cecily stared back at her but said not a word.

“But the chances are it was fantasy. Fantasy,” she repeated.

“I see, and yet she didn’t appear muddled to me, not about
that
, anyway. She remembered it all in great detail. But don’t worry. I shan’t break my promise. You have my word on that.”

At that moment Madeline appeared at the garden gate. Sylvia said hello, Cecily said goodbye, and Madeline said how much they were looking forward to dinner later.

Sylvia moved away, newly troubled.

It was not that she did not trust Cecily, not exactly. It was perfectly clear Cecily Chadwick could keep a secret. But her manner had been strange. She had been abrupt and decidedly reticent when Sylvia first caught up with her, almost as though she had been trying to get away from her. Is that why she had rushed from the hall? Had she in fact seen Sylvia before Sylvia had seen her? And why had Cora made no mention of Cecily’s visit?

As she continued up the track, a sensation of estrangement enveloped her, and she paused at the top of the hill and caught her breath in a loud gasp. She was being sidelined, excluded, left out and cut out of Cora’s story. And that Cora had spoken to Cecily—Cecily Chadwick, a nobody, a young slip of a thing she barely knew—about her life, her childhood, was incomprehensible. But the facts of the matter were simple enough: Cora had elected to confide in another the one thing she herself had been waiting a lifetime to hear, to have confirmed. “And after everything I’ve done for her, everything she’s promised me,” she whispered, walking on, her heart pounding. “Do my loyalty and love count for nothing?”

She stopped. Questions sprang up in profusion, like the nettles on the side of the path, stinging her mind.
What
had Cora told Cecily?
Why
had she told Cecily? Was it possible that Cecily Chadwick knew more about Cora than she? What on earth was Cora playing at? After all, Cora had invited her down here for that very reason, to tell
her
! To once and for all explain the truth of events before she arrived in Rome.

She walked on. One thing was clear, an alliance had been formed, memories annexed, and Cora was now a protectorate of Cecily’s.

“Cecily Chadwick!”

She stopped again. She needed to compose herself, needed to think things through. But the sense of betrayal was agony,
like a dagger plunged into my heart,
she thought. Oh, but it was not she who was adrift, she reasoned. It was Cora who was adrift, drifting away from reason and sanity, away from a lifelong and tested friendship. Had I known, she thought, I should never have come . . . never have come.

She moved off the track, through the long grass toward the rotting timber of an old gate, placed her arms along its length and allowed her head to fall forward. The world was spinning and she with it. “It’s not jealousy . . . not jealousy,” she whispered, eyeing a spider weaving a silvery web around a wasp twice its size. Then she raised her head, wiped her mildew-covered hands on the skirt of her gown, and as she crouched down to reach through the gate for her hat, she heard a voice. “Miss Dorland, is everything quite all right there?”

It was Mrs. Moody, walking her goat.

“Yes, fine. I was just admiring the foliage and lost my hat,” she replied, pulling the boater through a gap in the gate and rising to her feet.

“Beautiful day for it,” Mrs. Moody said, staring at the skirt of Sylvia’s dark gown.

“Indeed . . . yet another.”

“Bernard and I always have a little stop here. You’re standing on his grass,” she said, and laughed.

“And I must away. Cor— My friend will be waiting for me.”

“Oh, and how is her lay-ay-dyship?” Mrs. Moody asked, jerked forward, toward the grass, by Bernard. “The rector mentioned that she’s not been herself of late. Troubled by the heat, he said. Well, I said, that doesn’t make sense, not being that she lived abroad for so many years, but he said it takes a while to
climatize
and I suppose it’s true enough. It happened to me when I went to Brighton, you know, and it was enough to—”

“I really must get on,” Sylvia interrupted, and as she turned away, Mrs. Moody called after her.

“Do give her my regards . . . and tell her I know what it’s like.”

Sylvia closed her eyes:
Mrs. Moody sends you her best, and wishes you to know that she, too, has suffered climatization
.

No, of course it wasn’t the heat that was troubling Cora; it was laughable that anyone would think so. It was the situation she found herself in: having to come back to England and confront her past.

By the time Sylvia reached the laurel-lined driveway, she had made one decision. There was nothing else for it, she would have to speak to Jack.

Cora was in the garden. She sat upon a bench by an herbaceous border clutching the red leatherbound volume of Byron’s poems: the one George had given her, still with the dust of a pressed violet marking the page. She watched butterflies: tortoiseshells, peacocks, chalk-blues, and a single red admiral. It was safer to love these ephemeral things, she thought, than humans. Their lives were brief and fleeting but when they died there was no pain, no need for grief. They always came back, came back each year . . .

If only he could come back . . . if only I could go back.

She glanced about the garden. To think it had all been excavated and planted for her. And yet, how queer it was to be sitting in it, in England. That had never been her plan. Her plan had been to die in Rome, to be buried there, alongside George. But she had had to leave him, had had no choice, just as he had had no choice all those years before.

So many parallels . . .

“
So many parallels,” she said out loud and sighed. She liked to think of the path of their lives—crisscrossing and overlapping—as synchronistic, and the events within them mirroring. But the only parallel had been each of their liaisons with people old enough to be their parents, although Cora had trumped his sixteen years with her thirty, and then trumped him again in her choice of third husband. If it had been a contest, Cora had certainly won, and by much more than a mile.

She thought his name, heard his voice: “I have to go. It’s a tremendous opportunity for me.”

Yes, it
had
been a tremendous opportunity, history had proved it so. And yet . . . and yet . . . George’s opportunity had been the undoing of
them
, and the undoing of her. But fate had also conspired in the form of that wretched woman, Mrs. Hillier. Without her, who knows what might have happened.

She glanced up to the heavens, wondering briefly, fleetingly, if dear George and Mrs. H were reconciled there.
No, it was a . . . a business arrangement, a commercial partnership. There was nothing more to it. He told me so, told me so himself
.

And John Clifford had also told her, or had tried to, once, all those years ago. A pupil of Canova, Clifford had been considered Rome’s finest sculptor, and his studio the liveliest in the city, a Mecca for all visiting English artists. It was the place Cora had first been exposed to long philosophical discussions and passionate political debate, which had in turn educated and informed her thinking. The gentle and paternalistic Clifford had taught her how to draw and, in quieter months when the city’s many visitors returned home and only those who had no desire to be anywhere else remained within its walls, Cora had spent hours listening to his anecdotes and reminiscences of how Rome “used to be.”

Cora’s aunt had, initially, been concerned at the amount of time Cora spent in the company of artists. She had been agitated about the morality of a
mal entourée
whose sole occupation seemed to be the pursuit of pleasure. But Clifford had reassured her, told her not to worry, that he would keep an eye on young Cora.

In his self-deprecating way Clifford liked to allude to a vague and unrequited love in his life but it was commonly accepted that he had no great desire for requited love; he appeared ambivalent in matters of the heart, indifferent to the opposite sex. But for Cora, his position as unattached observer gave him an advantage others could not possibly have.

“My dear, George is not the man for you,” he said. “He is simply not a man for marrying, or for belonging to anyone. He is married to his art.”

“And what of Mrs. Hillier?” she asked.

“Mrs. Hillier? Mrs. Hillier is a married woman, and almost old enough to be his mother.”

“But George spends so much of his time with her.”

Even then, she was aware that she sounded like a lovestruck jealous child, but she did not care. Clifford was a dear and trusted friend, and she knew he would not repeat their conversation. She also knew that what he so enjoyed was the knowledge that he was trusted with such tender secrets.

“Yes, but she is his advocate and patron now. Thanks to Mrs. Hillier, dear George has made some fine connections, and will have some worthwhile commissions, of that I’m sure.” He looked from Cora to his easel. “He knows it’s perfectly safe to spend time with her. She is married, unavailable, but more importantly, perhaps, he knows there is no danger of falling in love with her.”

Cora stepped down from the upturned crate and, wrapping a sheet around her body, moved toward Clifford, looking over his shoulder at the sketches for his
Tinted Venus
.

He went on. “Mrs. Hillier’s a delightful lady, a sophisticate, and undoubtedly accomplished, but the relationship she and George share is platonic, I’m quite certain of that. They share passions but not for each other, and their . . . their friendship is mutually advantageous. George needs Mrs. Hillier to be his champion, and she needs him for . . . reflected glory. She has the contacts and the influence, not only in London but here in Rome and in Paris, too. Think about it. George is a very clever fellow. By Jupiter, he is!”

“But you’re inplying that George is using Mrs. Hillier to promote himself, to further his career.”

“He’s ambitious, Cora, very ambitious, and determined to prove himself, particularly to his father. And that means being successful and selling pictures! Dear George, perhaps more than any of us, feels a need—nay, a pressure—to be accepted and successful, to make money. And, sadly for you, my dear, his compass directs him to Mrs. Hillier.”

George had already spoken to her about his father, and at some length. Mr. Lawson Senior had wanted George to follow in his footsteps and study architecture. He had told his son that only a very tiny proportion of painters, only the most God-given talented ones, ever made any money at it. “All he cares about or seems to care about, is that I have a profession, a noble profession—oh, and that I marry well,” George told her.

“Marry well?”

“Yes, marry someone of standing, someone
known
, someone he approves of.” He glanced at Cora and added, “But if I really cared what
he
thought, would I be here in Rome, would I be painting?”

“He does not care what his father thinks,” Cora said to Clifford. “I know, he’s told me.”

Clifford smiled at her. “But what he says and what he does may differ. Particularly where you’re concerned.”

Despite her misgivings, despite Clifford’s words—was it a warning?—Cora held on to her fantasy. John Clifford was an old man and love had passed him by. She and George shared something—something different, something private, something no one else would understand. They were going to travel together, live like gypsies, and while he produced art, she would produce his sons and daughters. They might never be rich, but they would have enough, he said, and that
enough
was more than enough for Cora.

Cora winced. She did not wish to recall that time, nor what came immediately after. She preferred to remember those last few months together. How perfect it had been, despite the ticking of the clock. “How it could have been, how it should have been.”

He had said, “Tell me you love me, and kiss me . . . kiss me goodbye.”

Yes, that was what he said.

“I love you but I shall never ever say goodbye to you, George.”

“Not even after I am gone?”

“No, not even then . . . not ever.”

She had held on to his hand, listening to his breathing, watching his eyes flicker and close, and open and close.