The Memory of Lost Senses (39 page)

Some weeks after the obituary, the same newspaper announced a sale at the house:

The trustees of the estate of the late Countess de Chevalier de Saint Léger Lawson announce a sale to be held at her home, Temple Hill, including the whole of the antique and modern appointments: Louis XIV and Empire escritoires, secretaires, commodes and tables. Two fine old English mahogany and oak long-case clocks. Beautiful Chinese silk embroidery and antique Italian tapestry. Rare old French trousseau chests, French, Italian and English oil paintings and watercolors, Italian carved cabinets, settees and chairs in old English, 890 volumes of books, plate, needlework, tapestries, French linen, clocks, bronzes, Italian marble sculpture, ornamental china and porcelain, Venetian air twist and other glass and crystal, English oak dining furniture, together with the usual indoor and outdoor effects . . .

So, Cecily was selling it all. Cora’s precious cargo, gathered over a lifetime and brought back to England, was to be sold off, flung back across the counties of England, the countries of Europe. And that announcement, the announcement of the sale at the house, inspired more tears than any obituary. Because all of those things, every item of furniture and glass and linen, each book and painting and each piece of china, were all that was left of her, all that Cora had left to the world of herself. And Sylvia could picture it all, picture it all so vividly, the dismantling of that life.

Chapter Twenty-two

When Cecily arrived she was not at all as Sylvia remembered her. A glamorous woman, festooned in fur, had replaced the gauche and awkward girl of Sylvia’s memory. And she was taller, much taller than Sylvia remembered. She moved across the room with an alarming confidence, leaned forward in a haze of perfume and pressed her lips to Sylvia’s cheek. Sylvia released a short, sharp gasp. She could not recall the last time anyone had done such a thing. She watched Cecily place a brown paper parcel on the low table and dispense with her fur,
draping it along the back of the armchair. “Golly,” she said, as she sat down, “what a day.”

It was stormy outside. Sylvia had noticed. She had watched the weather at the window for most of that day: the constant drizzle interrupted by intermittent downpours, the petrified limbs of the trees in the park opposite against the low sky. Later, she had heard the wind, coming in angry gusts, and then the bells: an ambulance or fire engine, perhaps. And she could only wonder at the drama unfolding somewhere.

“Yes, what a day,” Sylvia said, eyeing Cecily as she opened up her handbag and took out a familiar cigarette case. “I hope it hasn’t been too much trouble for you, coming up to town,” she said.

“No trouble, no trouble at all,” Cecily replied. She flicked a lighter, tilted her head and released a plume of smoke into the dimly lit room; then she placed the handbag on the table in front of them, next to the brown paper parcel. “Actually, we’re up for a few days.”

“Ah, I see,” Sylvia said and nodded.

It made sense. Yes, it made sense.
This
Cecily did not look like a schoolmistress from the country, not at all. This Cecily was undoubtedly used to trips up to town, to hailing and dashing about in taxicabs, in a flurry, in a rush. This Cecily was different to the one before. She wore the new shorter length skirt, her hair was cut fashionably short, too, and, Sylvia noted, she left an imprint of her painted lips at the end of her cigarette.

Sylvia leaned forward, pushing the glass ashtray across the polished wood, and said, “Oh, I must show you something.” She reached down to the shelf beneath the table and handed Cecily the photograph. “I’m afraid it got torn . . . caught in an album or some such thing, I can’t quite recall now.”

Cecily stared at the image. Yes, she too could remember that day. “Feels like a lifetime ago,” she said. “So much has happened since then.”

And it had for her, and for the world, but less so for Sylvia.

Right up until her move to the Windsor Hotel, four years ago, Sylvia had followed a daily routine unchanged and unaltered for over half a century. The move had been disruptive but inevitable. And the Windsor had undoubtedly been the right choice. It was situated round the corner from her former flat, and almost all of the residents were elderly ladies, like herself. Most were widows, who had had a husband, or two, and children, or not. Many of them were colonials who had returned from India and the Far East after the war had ended. It was one of the things Sylvia liked about the Windsor, the class of person. And it made the conversation all the more interesting to hear about places like Bangalore, Kashmir and Calcutta, and verandas and bungalow lifestyles. She had even toyed with the idea of writing a novel set in India, loosely based on her new friend Mrs. Evesleigh’s life. Oh yes, the Windsor had been the right choice. These women understood expatriate life, and Sylvia had been able to talk about her time in Rome, and about her dear friend, the Countess de Chevalier de Saint Léger Lawson. A few claimed to know or recognize the name, thought they had heard it—or part of it—before, and then usually asked, “Any relation to
Lord
Lawson?”

“Stepmother,” Sylvia replied, “and dear friend, as was I.”

Inevitably, there then ensued some discussion about George Lawson: his life and work, his affairs—and rumored illegitimate children.

“Well, I really wouldn’t know about
that
,” Sylvia responded, running free, but enjoying the debate and that tingle of attention.

Sylvia had had special cards printed to announce her move to the Windsor, and though she had only managed to send out a dozen or so of the fifty, later cutting up the unused ones to use as bookmarks, she
had
sent one to Cora, with a note on the reverse, saying, “My dear, I do hope that you are well, and that we might be able to catch up one day in the not too distant future. As ever, Sylvia.” She had hoped for a reply, a note to say “Good luck” or something along the lines of “Wishing you well in your new home,” but nothing came.

The war, Sylvia agreed with the other ladies, had changed everything and everyone. No, nothing would ever be the same. But they had their memories, memories of how things had once been, memories of lost places, lost faces. Even now, four years later, The War consumed a great deal of their time, and energy.

But Sylvia had had no children or grandchildren to lose, and though she had lived through and witnessed the seemingly never-ending horror, and had imagined—or had tried to imagine—circumstances not her own, she had for the most part been buried in the execution of the book she and Cora had begun years before, the book they had worked on during the summer of 1911. It would not be Cora’s memoirs, could not be Cora’s memoirs, but it could be the story of her life, Sylvia had decided. The story of her life as it could have been. And it was to be Sylvia’s peace offering. For she had planned to write to Cora, enclosing the first draft, once it was finished. She would not and could not, she had decided, do anything with it without her friend’s blessing.

But time had run out and now the manuscript lay in a drawer, and Sylvia was unsure what to do with it. Unsure, that is, until Cecily’s second telephone call. And as soon as Sylvia heard Cecily say the word “manuscript,” her heart leapt. Cora knew, had obviously remembered, and it seemed as though from beyond the grave she was giving it her blessing, sanctioning it.

And it was understandable, commendable, Sylvia reasoned, that Cora wished Cecily to see it first, particularly in view of the circumstances. But she must not be
too
eager. There was an etiquette to be observed, a way of handling these things, just as there was with everything else. She would wait, wait until later, once they had crossed bridges, so to speak. Then she would offer Cecily a sherry and produce the manuscript. She had imagined Cecily’s face—though it had been different, younger, and altogether more open—the look of astonishment, surprise, then the tears and smiles; and she had heard her say, “Oh Sylvia, she would have been so happy, so grateful . . .” And Sylvia would say, “It’s the book I have been writing for over fifty years, my final work.” And they would raise their glasses to—

“. . . Sylvia?”

Cecily was still holding the photograph in her hand and Sylvia thought she had perhaps missed a question. “Mr. Fox died . . . passed away last year,” she said, presumably for a second time, and quite as though Sylvia and he had been close.

“Oh dear, how sad.”

She went on, and Sylvia realized that she was working her way through those in the photograph, and beyond it, to a village, bustling and busy, going about its business. That summer’s day—that moment, that second—when they had all smiled at the camera and Mr. Trigg had hit a switch, they had been frozen in time, together, forever.

Sonia Brownlow married Jack’s friend, Noel, Cecily was saying now. But he had been killed in action only weeks after their wedding. She had married again, another army man, and was living out in India, Cecily thought. “And did you see Marjorie, Sonia’s sister, in the newspapers?” she asked.

Sylvia shook her head. “No, was she married?”

Cecily laughed. “No! She was arrested, at a suffragette parade. But I believe she’s been released.”

“Arrested,” Sylvia repeated. “Gracious.”

It baffled Sylvia why these women did such things, why they wanted to vote. Some things were better left to men, she thought: politics, fighting, voting; making decisions.

“Whatever happened to Miss Combe?” Sylvia asked. “I rather liked her.”

“Poor Miss Combe,” Cecily said. “You know, she never got her electricity. She passed away quite suddenly, unexpectedly, during the very first days of the war.”

“And your friend, the one from the shop, the post office, where is she now?”

The farmer—or farmworker, as it turned out—that Annie had been waiting for finally arrived and married her the year before war broke out. They produced three children before he was killed in action in 1917. And though Annie remained a widow, there was someone in her life, Cecily said.

“And your mother . . . your sister?”

Cecily’s sister, Ethne, was married to the new rector, a Mr. Meredith Ballantyne, and Madeline continued to live at the same house, the one her husband had built. Rosetta had moved in, Cecily said, after Ethne moved out. But Bramley had changed, people had gone, businesses had disappeared. “It is all different,” she said, “not at all as you’ll remember . . .”

They spoke about various other people in the village. Cecily mentioned a few names Sylvia could not recall, and, bizarrely, Sylvia mentioned names Cecily could not recall.

“I imagine you saw the details of the sale?” Cecily said.

“Yes, I did. But it strikes me as a great shame,” Sylvia replied, noting the “CC” ring on Cecily’s finger. “I’m not sure she would have wanted it
all
going under the hammer.”

“But we can’t keep it”—she shrugged her shoulders—“we just can’t. We don’t have the space.”

“But surely if you lived there, at Temple Hill . . .”

Cecily smiled, shook her head. “No, it has to be sold, I’m afraid. You see, there was little to no money, and we certainly can’t afford to run a big house like that, not on the money I earn. I don’t think Cora had any idea quite how impoverished she was . . . and probably just as well.”

“She was never very good with money,” said Sylvia.

“It’s so sad that the two of you never saw each other again after that . . . that little upset you had.”

“
Upset?
Oh, but we never fell out, not really. I loved her, loved her dearly, and I think, I hope, she knew that . . . but yes, I wish I had seen her again. Just once, once more.”

Cecily looked away. She said, “I’m afraid she was very confused at the end, had absolutely no idea who anyone was. It was a blessing, really.”

“When did it start, the confusion?”

Cecily shook her head. “Oh, years ago, during the war. She simply couldn’t accept what happened, what was happening around her. It was very hard for her.”

“Yes, of course.”

“But she had become forgetful, a little confused, even before that time.”

“Yes,” Sylvia said, remembering.

“She thought she was back in Rome, thought she was young again . . .” Cecily leaned forward, stubbed out her cigarette. “It was sad,” she added, closing her eyes for a moment, shaking her head again. “Because she was so . . . so vulnerable, so . . .” She glanced up at the ceiling and then laughed. “You know, she began to wear her hair down,” she said, looking directly at Sylvia and wiping away a tear.

“Down?” Sylvia repeated.

“Yes,
down
. And sometimes with a moth-eaten plume or an ancient paste clip in it, but she looked so pretty, quite beautiful with that long white-white hair,” she went on dreamily. “Yes, very pretty.”

“It’s how she wore it when she was young.”

“And right up until the end she was always dressed, always in one of her costumes, as though about to go somewhere, or receive someone.”