The Memory of Lost Senses (25 page)

She smiled. “He is well.”

He sat with Mrs. Hillier at lunch and, though as attentive as ever to
her
needs, Cora was aware from his gaze, his frequent glances, that something of the chemistry remained. Towards the end of lunch, when everyone decided to return to the hotel for a siesta, he leaned forward and invited her to take a walk with him, to Santa Croce. As they strolled through the streets arm in arm, he told her about the Italian sculptor with whom he was working, and Cora listened, slowly coming alive for the first time in four years.

Within the Gothic splendor of Santa Croce, and with her arm linked through his, they walked along the monumental walls, surveying the marble tombs of Dante, Galileo, Vasari and Michelangelo. They lit candles and sat down, side by side, in contemplative silence in a shaft of warm light.

“Not homesick for your beloved Rome, I hope?” he whispered.

“No, I needed to get away—you have no idea how much.”

“Oh, but I do. It’s why I asked Amy to invite you.”

She turned to him. “
You
? You asked Mrs. Hillier to invite me?”

He looked back at her, frowning. “I heard . . . that you’ve been unhappy.”

She glanced away. “A little,” she said.

“I don’t like to think of you unhappy. I always imagine you smiling, always smiling. And I wanted to see you . . . It’s been a long time.”

Even then, she had wanted to wrap her arms around him, to tell him about Freddie and explain her marriage to Jack. She wanted to tell him everything. But she simply smiled at him and said, “Yes, too long.”

Early the following morning the party set off in two carriages, traveling from Florence to Prato, then on via Montecatini to the house, three miles east of Lucca, arriving as night fell. But that evening, on a terrace ablaze with torches, candles and brightly colored paper lanterns, Cora felt awkward, in awe of the assembled company and, in particular, of their hostess, Mrs. Hillier. Dinner was served late in the large but simply furnished dining room, where four ostentatious silver candelabra lined the long table. Cora sat between George and an American, named Grant Duvall.

“Alicia and I just adore Florence, but Rome . . . Rome was a disappointment. I’m not sure what we expected but it’s a mess of a place. It needs tidying up; and it needs a different government! And you know, there’s no mention in any guidebook about the smell, the aroma di Roma! Anyway, we won’t be going back, not unless all those pretentious English expatriates and fugitives move out!”

When the conversation moved on to politics, Garibaldi and the supposed imminent reunification of the Italian states, Mrs. Hillier held everyone’s attention. She knew Giuseppe Garibaldi, knew everyone, and spoke with authority on the very latest political developments. And George, Cora noted, sat in spellbound silence as he listened to her speak. He respects her, she thought; he loves and respects her.

The following morning, afraid she had overslept, Cora hurriedly dressed and went downstairs, but the place was quiet, no one stirred. She walked out onto the terrace, where the hum of cicadas and sound of a nearby stream soothed her haste. Here and there, the mist of night lingered, clinging to the curves and sloping vineyards beneath her. A valley of pale umber and myrtle, the shapes of cypress and pine, and high up in the distance the walls of an ancient fortification glinted in the morning sun.

Somewhere beyond it all is Rome, she thought. And she imagined her son asleep in his bed, and wished she were there, at home in Rome.

Those first few days had been spent idly. There were walks and picnics. Mrs. Hillier was carried across the bumpy terrain in her
chaise à porteur
, while Cora and the others walked on ahead in search of the perfect location for lunch. Each evening there were
tableaux vivants
, readings, poetry recitals and charades on the terrace. Cora adopted the role of observer, and learned much from watching the dynamics at play. She was able to see how Amy Hillier orchestrated proceedings, commanding the attention of her guests with an obvious need to be center stage, and yet at no time appearing overbearing or insensitive to her friends. But Mrs. Hillier was a seasoned hostess, and a performer, Cora concluded.

She was able to see for herself the intimate bond between George and his patron. But she was no longer jealous. She realized that her friend John Clifford had been right all those years ago when he had told her that George’s relationship with the older woman was based upon mutual need. And it was obvious, obvious to her, that George respected and admired Mrs. Hillier. And he was undoubtedly grateful for her support. After all, it was she who had launched him on his path to success. His talent, good manners, his educated background and love of music had enthralled Mrs. Hillier from the start, even before he officially became her protégé. But now Cora realized that George and Amy Hillier had a great deal in common: they were both perfectionists, and egotists, absorbed in a private, mutual admiration.

It had been toward the end of that first week at Lucca that George asked Cora if she would sit for him. He wanted her to pose outside, on the loggia, and at first she was not sure. She had sat for him before, years before. But her shape had altered, become fuller, more curvaceous, and that confidence of youth and lack of inhibition had been replaced by the modesty of a mother, and a respectable married woman. She knew Jack would be furious, knew she should refuse.

“No. I don’t think so.”

“Please?”

“But I’m too old to sit for any painter now, especially you, George.”

“No. You’re perfect. Please?”

He wished to paint her in a Grecian-style robe, and it had been Lottie Davenport, the retired American actress, who had insisted that she should be the one to style Cora, taking her upstairs to see what they could find. And so, in a white muslin sheet with an ornate brooch pinned to her shoulder, and a belt of twisted silk tied around her still slender waist, Cora had returned to the loggia, where George, with Clifford’s help, had arranged the scene already set in his mind’s eye. Lottie then suggested to George that Cora’s hair be loose and flowing, something which embarrassed Cora more than the frayed sheet she had been bullied by Lottie into wearing.

“Really? Why does my hair need to be down?” Cora asked.

“Because no one in ancient Greece wore their hair in a modern updo!” Lottie replied.

“That’s not strictly true, Lottie. I’ve seen paintings of Grecian women—goddesses—with their hair taken up,” Amy Hillier interjected, before looking at Cora and adding, “But it would certainly be a more romantic vision if you were to have your hair down, Cora.”

George said nothing but smiled at Cora, appealingly. And so, with Lottie’s help once again, she disappeared upstairs to unpin her hair.

“I’m not sure my husband would be pleased,” she said, as Lottie unpinned her hair.

“Does he not like you to be admired?” Lottie asked, but Cora made no reply.

“You’re a beautiful woman,” Lottie went on, “and your husband need never know. Secrets are quite often beautiful in themselves, you know,” she said as she brushed Cora’s hair. “We should all keep a part of ourselves for only us to own. We must never share the essence of who we truly are, for then we are lost, well and truly lost.”

“But that means one can never give oneself completely . . . never truly love.”

“I suppose it does. But true love is a curse as much as a blessing, you must know that.”

“I’m not sure I’ve ever truly loved anyone, apart from my son.”

“Oh, I think you have; I think you know how to love deeply, profoundly, passionately, but you have not been loved back like that, yet.”

She felt Lottie’s hand upon her bare shoulder. “I think that’s George calling. We’d better go back down,” she said, moving away.

Downstairs, the tension evaporated when Lottie blew an imaginary trumpet and then called out, “My lords, ladies and gentlemen, her Serene Highness Queen Cora of Lucca!”

George smiled. Clifford, pipe in mouth, broke into riotous applause. And Amy Hillier looked from Cora to George but remained silent.

Over the next three hours George made what appeared to Cora to be dozens of sketches, some discarded in crumpled balls upon the floor, others placed on a marble table next to his easel. Eventually, and despite Cora’s complaints that her bare feet were cold and that her back ached, George at last began to put paint upon the canvas. Unlike Clifford, he worked silently, lost in the execution of his work, studying each fold of material, each shadow; perfecting the lines and shape of his model’s features; scraping off paint with a palette knife, adjusting his composition, perfecting the balance and harmony of his vision.

The others had long since left the makeshift studio and moved inside, and Cora could hear them, arguing and laughing over card games. Part of her longed to go inside so she could sit in a chair, be comfortable and warm. And yet she savored each moment alone with him, knowing his attention on her was so intense, so complete, his dark eyes moving from her to the canvas and back to her. From time to time, he spoke, asking her to straighten up, move a finger or raise her head, but there was no conversation, and the silence between them seemed only to heighten the atmosphere of intimacy.

He walked toward her, adjusted the sheet where it was knotted at her shoulder, his warm flesh brushing against her bare skin. He lifted the back of his hand to her jaw, gently raising her face, his eyes upon her mouth, her nose, and then her eyes. He touched her hair, arranging it down her back, the tips of his fingers grazing her spine. He stepped away, casting his eyes over her, her body, and smiled. “
Perfetto
,” he said, then returned to his easel and picked up his palette and brush. She could hear his breathing, each grunt and sigh, his tongue in his mouth as it opened and closed in varying degrees of concentration.

And looking back at him over her shoulder, she watched him as he watched her. She studied his face once more: the hooded eyes, the Roman nose, that so familiar high forehead and tousled hair, now graying at the temples. The lips, a mouth she knew so well, and a beard, from time to time tugged and pulled at. The crumpled collar of his velvet jacket, the ruffled silk of his necktie. The concentration in his eyes: the perfectionist at work.

Finally, as the afternoon light began to fade and the air grew noticeably cooler, he looked up at her and said, “Shall we continue tomorrow?”

“You said an hour or two, George, not a day or two!” she replied, stretching her arms out in front of her, and then up over her head.

“But you’re a vision, my perfect vision . . .”

The following morning, as everyone was about to depart on an expedition to the town, Mrs. Hillier asked Cora if she would mind staying there with her to keep her company. She had had a headache the previous evening, retiring to her bed early and requesting supper on a tray, which George had taken up to her. But she still felt “under the weather,” she said.

“George enjoys your company very much, Cora. I’m so pleased that you decided to join us here. As you know, I’m sure, he gets bored so easily, can never be in one place for too long,” she said, as the two of them walked slowly down the hillside. “It’s good for him, I think, to see old friends, people his own age . . .” She stopped. “Though age itself is no barrier to friendship, of course, and really means nothing at all.” She smiled at Cora. “One person may take a lifetime, fifty, sixty, seventy years to reach the wisdom another attains in thirty. We are all different in our ability to acquire knowledge, to mature and learn; it is not dependent upon a number. The ability and rate at which one learns from experiences is in itself fascinating. There are those who take a lifetime and learn very little, and others whose hunger to learn the lessons of life enables them to gain wisdom from a tender age. I have met idiotic and immature old men, no more than little boys, devoid of any wisdom or clarity, and I have known exceptionally wise young men, custodians of great knowledge. Dear George falls into the latter category of course.” She paused and smiled. “And happily, he does not see my age, only my wisdom. We are kindred spirits, you see, and have probably shared many lifetimes together before this one.”

“Do you truly believe that?” Cora asked, remembering her aunt’s word for people who held such views: “pagans,” she called them.

“Yes I do. There are people we meet who are so familiar to us, not in their physical appearance perhaps, but in their aura. Instinctively we recognize them and feel an inexplicable but deeply powerful connection. It is the recognition of a kindred soul. You see, Cora, the soul is immortal. Have you never felt that rush of familiarity upon a first meeting?”

“Yes, indeed I have, but I’ve never been able to understand it, and I’m not sure I’m able to believe in reincarnation. It would be nice to think we are reborn, but where does that put heaven and God?” she asked, looking up at the cloudless sky.

“Does one have to be exclusive of the other?” Mrs. Hillier asked.

“No, perhaps not, but if we keep on returning to a physical body, at what stage do we ascend to heaven?”

“When we have acquired wisdom; when we have learned all there is to know about ourselves. What did Socrates say? ‘Know thyself’? I think we have to know ourselves, and that is the most difficult thing. The most difficult thing!”

When the women reached the bench by the stream, they simultaneously closed their parasols and sat down. Cora could hear the older woman breathing in deeply, as though savoring each sensation, and she felt mildly irritated by her own inability to clear her mind. It seemed a cluttered untidy mess over which she had no control. And yet she knew that beyond that mess of unanswered questions lay vast pools of wisdom.

“I think you know how very dear and precious George is to me,” Mrs. Hillier began again after some minutes. “It is my mission to nurture his talent, to support him in any way I’m able. His well-being is of the utmost importance to me . . . indeed, to the world.”

“Of course.”

Mrs. Hillier sighed. “His art is God-given, a gift from the Almighty. He is not like ordinary men. He cannot allow himself to be encumbered by attachments that will burden him and stifle his creativity. He must have peace—peace of mind, space, freedom from the ordinary and mundane activities which the rest of us are unfortunately so taken up with. No, he cannot be burdened. And it is why he will never marry, why he prefers celibacy.”