The Memory of Lost Senses (49 page)

Wendy was quick to respond to the bell, and even quicker to return with the bucket of coal. “Having a clear-out, are we?” she said to Sylvia, crouching down by the hearth, eyeing the paper and envelopes, the tattered shoeboxes piled up on the table.

“Sorting through . . .”

“Don’t forget, it’s Mrs. Evesleigh’s birthday. There’s tea and cake in the lounge at four.”

“Ah yes, of course,” Sylvia replied, watching the flickering.

“Do you want me to take any of this?” Wendy asked, nodding her head toward the table. “I can dispose of it, you know. You don’t want to be having a bonfire in your room, now do you?”

Sylvia feigned a little laugh. “Thank you, Wendy, but I shan’t be having any bonfire, at least, not today. Just burning a few old letters, that’s all.”

There was plenty of time, Sylvia thought, hours until Mrs. Evesleigh puffed out her cheeks to extinguish a few tiny pink candles. In the meantime, Sylvia could have her own burning ceremony. And it gave her something to do: a task for the afternoon. I am the only one who knows, she thought, placing the first envelope upon the fire, watching the cream-colored paper slowly ignite and burn . . .
the only one who will ever know
.

Cecily stared out of the train carriage window to row upon row of soot-blackened houses, back-to-back gardens, washing lines and fences and paths, huddled and dismal under the lowering smog. She caught glimpses of crossings and platforms and faces, and high streets foreign to her; shops she would never enter, trams and buses she would never take. She forgot for a while that she was about to see her children; forgot Jack, sitting opposite her.

She had known about Lily for years, known since that stormy summer’s afternoon when they sat waiting for a deluge that never came; when she told Cora that her father had called her Lily, not Cecily, and Cora had said, “Mine too.” But what could be gained by revealing the name? What could be gained now? Everything was in place and where it ought to be; and she had left it so.

Jack had said, “A coincidence, eh? The name being Lily.”

“Hmm, it’s a common enough name, I suppose.”

They had been in another taxicab, heading back to their hotel, exhausted from standing about the crowded picture galleries of the Academy surveying George Lawson’s life’s work; and, at the same time, elated from seeing their painting hanging there. But Cecily’s private joy had been the
Madonna
, Lawson’s most famous work, the one which had catapulted him to success and, for years, had been enjoyed only by royal eyes. The painting was vast. It took up an entire wall of one room—easily the most crowded room. And there, right at the center of the enormous canvas, a vaguely familiar face: eyes downcast, almost closed, and lips slightly parted as though in midsigh. And for Cecily it spoke of the pain of love, and of a life of loss.

“Do you think they were actually implying that my father was Lawson’s lovechild? That he and Cora had had an affair?” Jack had asked, staring out at the wet lamplit street.

“It did sound like that, didn’t it?”

“Scurrilous . . . Perhaps I should sue them,” he had added, turning to her, smiling.

She could not tell him. She had promised Cora. And that promise—like Jack’s to her—had been kept.

But that morning, when she had called on Sylvia to collect her manuscript, and had teasingly said, “Oh, I have something to tell you, something about Cora,” she had thought of telling Sylvia; or rather, of leading Sylvia to a place where she might tell
her
more. But it was clear to her that Sylvia was not going to divulge anything, whatever she knew. And she had been in an odd mood, odder than ever. There had been little point in asking about Cora’s letter, though she had, simply for politeness’ sake.

“She just seems so . . . so bitter,” Cecily said now, continuing to stare out of the carriage window, musing aloud.

She was rankled by Sylvia’s attitude, and wondered why she had been so unkind, for she had said nothing at all constructive, offered Cecily no words of encouragement or praise.
A reasonable enough effort . . .

Then Jack said, “Perhaps it was unrequited love.”

Cecily turned to him. “The only person she’s ever loved is Cora.”

“That’s what I meant. There’s your answer,” he said, raising his eyebrows, smiling at her.

When they arrived back at Bramley, Jay was waiting at the bottom of the track, perched on the wall of the bridge where the ford had once been. He looked smaller than she remembered—even from a few days ago. And as she stepped down from Mr. Cotton’s motorcar, he was there, helping his father climb down at the other side, wrapping his arms around him as though he’d been gone for years and not days. He barely drew breath as he walked back with them, regaling them with what had happened in their absence: Lily had refused to eat Rosetta’s dumplings, had thrown one across the kitchen floor; she had behaved atrociously at bathtime, “screaming the whole place down,
and
,” he added, with emphasis and pausing for dramatic effect, before what Cecily knew to be the
pièce de résistance
, “she took a wee in the garden, on Granny’s lettuces.”

“Jack!” said Cecily, in an attempt to silence her husband’s laughter.

Then, as though remembering something called manners, Jay looked at his mother and asked, “Have you had a nice time, Mummy? What have you been doing?”

“Well, I went to call on an old lady, a friend of your great-grandmother’s.”

“Golly,” he said, “she must be
ancient
!”

“Yes, she is quite old. She’s a writer, a novelist, like me.”

“What does she write about?” he asked, moving on up the track, clutching his father’s hand.

“Mm, romantic things . . . men and women falling in love, that sort of thing,” she replied.

“Ugh!”

“But she’s been writing a book about your great-grandma, a book about her life.”

“Why doesn’t she write a book about Daddy?” he asked, releasing his father’s hand, rummaging in his pocket and pulling out a piece of folded paper. “That’d be far more interesting than a book about some old lady, specially a
dead
old lady.”

Cecily smiled. “Jay, she wasn’t just some old lady; she was Daddy’s grandmother, your great-grandmother. And she wasn’t always dead, or old. She was once a little girl and lived in a castle, and she lived in a castle in France as well. Imagine that.”

But they had reached the gate and her son had turned away from her, stretching out his hand to present his father with the paper airplane he had made for him earlier that afternoon. And Cecily, home again and feeling complete, paused for a moment to savor it, savor it
all
: the familiar scent of pine and woodsmoke, the soft twilight air; that sense of wholesomeness she knew money could not buy. Then, feeling the pull, she turned her eyes to the ever-narrowing track, beyond the silhouetted limbs of arching branches to the circle of light at the top. And she watched her, Cora—Lily—turn and walk away, vanishing into the dusk, into her world, another place in time.

One day Cecily would tell her children of their great-grandmother, that she had been Lord Lawson’s stepmother, been his Madonna and his Aphrodite, too. And that she had been quite a character.

But for now it was enough to be home, with Jack, with her children. And as she watched her husband walk up the pathway holding on to their son’s hand, and saw Rosetta appear in the doorway, their daughter on her hip, she knew everything that mattered was there in front of her.

She heard the latch on the gate drop, clickety-click, her feet upon the path, and a door quietly close.

It is evening and the sun is still high, shining in through the wisteria tumbling across the small open window. The room is hot, the black paint on the window frame bubbling and peeling in soft curls. She sits barefoot on her aunt’s lap and it feels good to be held, secured. She can hear her sister in the field outside, her cousins and little Johnny, too. “Your mother has had to go away for a while, just for a while,” her aunt says, answering her questions, stroking her hair. “She needs a little rest.”

“And Father?” she asks, swinging her legs up, glancing to her toes, her feet.

“Well now, your father is . . .” but she doesn’t finish the sentence. She says, “And you’re to come and stay with me and Uncle John in London. Now isn’t that nice?”

Samuel has already gone—to relations in Framlingham, someone said.

“And Jemima and Johnny, are they coming as well?” she asks.

“No, dear, they are to stay here with your uncle Daniel,” her aunt says.

She nods. She knows she must be brave, must not cry. Then she turns to her aunt, looks up at her and says, “But when will she be back? Do you know? Did she say?”

“Oh, soon,” her aunt replies, kissing her forehead. “Very soon.”

“And will she know where I am, will she know where to find me?”

“Well, of course she will, Lily. She knows you’re with me . . . knows you’re safe with me.”

Judith Kinghorn
was born in Northumberland, educated in the Lake District, and is a graduate in English and History of Art. She lives in Hampshire with her husband and two children.

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A CONVERSATION WITH JUDITH KINGHORN

Q. This is your second novel about the Edwardian period—what it is that inspires you about this era?

A. I think it’s a fascinating time in history. The world was on the cusp—one could say precipice—of change, tumultuous change, particularly for women. Those days before the outbreak of the First World War are drenched in romanticism and a curious nostalgia, even now. It’s an era known as the Belle Époque, the Indian Summer, and the last days of Empire. And it was, literally, another world.

In terms of history, it’s not that long ago, and in terms of imagery, it’s a visual feast, because it’s when history suddenly comes to life in old newsreels and photographs. In a way, my writing about that time is a reaction to all those sepia-tinged images. I find them highly evocative and compelling. And within each one is a story, or ten.