A Rather Lovely Inheritance (16 page)

She said it so matter-of-factly, without any solemnity, that the day went right back to its normal insignificance, as it can only in childhood, and I never really thought about it again.

But I was remembering it now, with a startled shiver. It was almost as if she’d spoken out loud to me, because I was sitting there so quiet and still, in her home.

“Thanks,Aunt Penelope,” I said aloud with real gratitude. My own voice echoed hollowly, sounding a little breathless.The thought came to me, strong as ever, that I’d been given an extraordinary new lease on life, literally. It seemed to me that the only proper way to be grateful was to appreciate every day of it. I recalled Harold’s words about not neglecting your real life. It reminded me that I had some work to do, and I could actually conduct my research more easily from London than from my tiny rat-trap apartment in New York.

For instance, I’d been trying to hunt down a particular portrait, attributed to a painter named Bartolomeo Veneto. It was once thought to be of Lucrezia Borgia, but later experts believed that its subject might be another woman entirely. Still, it was the lingering image of Lucrezia that everyone has. I’d tracked it down to a special exhibit in the National Gallery of London. I wanted to go and see it with my own eyes. A moment like that could be worth weeks of poring over photo slides, light tables, research material. And Rupert had made it so easy, with his maps and directions. I rose, feeling inspired, and collected my notebook, handbag and jacket.

I went outside, down the leafy, sunny street, and took the Tube train to the Charing Cross station, then walked straight to the National Gallery, studiously avoiding all the other tempting London landmarks and tourist sights. I marched over to the Renaissance Collection, forcing myself not to be sidelined by other fascinating wings, rooms, and galleries.

But of course I had to stop and stare at the Leonardo da Vinci section; after all, he’d been a military engineer for Lucrezia’s scary brother Cesare. I knew that this museum had Leonardo’s famous
Cartoon
, which actually was a big chalk sketch for his painting
The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and Saint John the Baptist
, commissioned around the time that Lucrezia’s portrait was painted, 1506. Leonardo’s chalk masterpiece had survived for centuries, only to be assaulted here, years ago, by somebody who came into the gallery and actually fired a gun at it. But the piece had been restored, and it was one of those works of art that critics like to argue about—was it really Saint Anne, the mother of Mary, when Anne looked barely older than Mary? Or could it be Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist? I stood there gaping awhile with all the other admirers, tourists and students.Then I dutifully located my image of Lucrezia.

There she was, wearing a cloak of black velvet with gold embroidery and a sparkling jeweled necklace of red and gold. On her forehead she wore a diadem of precious gems, and on her golden head were a turban and a wreath of leaves, evoking a goddess of spring from a mythological past. One little breast was provocatively exposed from its pale tunic; one hand daintily held up a delicate cluster of flowers. She stared at me. I stared back.

Maybe she was Lucrezia, maybe she wasn’t. But she had a sly side-long gaze, indicating that she knew a thing or two about how to survive in a treacherous world of secrets and lies. I was learning about Lucrezia in these small ways, and already she was like a girlfriend to me, one who could be admired for her courage, scolded for her errors; so I was glad to see her “alive” again, enigmatically watching over her admirers.

I stood there alone, quietly spellbound. I couldn’t know, of course, that the telephone on Great-Aunt Penelope’s boudoir table was ringing at that very moment.The caller waited three rings, four, even five, then gave up.

H
OURS LATER I STUMBLED HOME, DAZED AND BLEARY-EYED. OF course I’d overdone it. My first day on the loose in London—how could I help it? I should have left well enough alone after I exhausted myself wandering through the National Gallery. I contemplated darting into the nearby Portrait Gallery but wisely chose to have tea in a little shop nearby. The infusion cleared my head and brought me back to the present. I should have gone home after that. But no, all jazzed up on English-brewed tea, I had to greedily dash around, gazing up dizzily at every tourist sight I could find: Trafalgar Square, Nelson’s Column, the statue of Eros at Piccadilly Circus . . . on and on, with traffic honking in my ears, and all the noise and soot of centuries of London whirling about my dazzled eyes. Furthermore, I’d got it stuck in my head that I needed an answering machine, so I stubbornly wandered around until I found a store that sold one.Then, feeling hungry, I went to the food market and stocked up on fresh provisions.

After I finally got myself back into Aunt Penelope’s apartment, I just flopped onto the bed, drowsily wondering what day it was, what time it was, what year it was, what century I was in. When I woke, it was eight o’clock at night. I felt wide awake, and I was hungry again. I ate a take-away roasted chicken and string bean salad, and I even opened that bottle of white wine in Aunt Penelope’s cupboard—it was just sitting there reminding me to seize the day, and all that. The wine soothed away that slightly unnerved feeling you get when you are alone and far from home. Aunt Penelope’s television set was in the kitchen, so I watched the news while I ate.Then I set up the answering machine and telephoned my parents, but they had gone out.

I decided to start my little job of going over the contents of the apartment, which was my excuse for hanging out here. Then I could give my mother a more personal report. So I went to the bedroom and bravely hauled open the closet to really look at the stuff on the list this time.

Great-Aunt Penelope had the good taste of an older European woman who isn’t trying to look younger than she is but has a sharp eye for fine fabric and detail.There were winter suits in a size I hoped I’d never become, but of cloth quite pleasing to the eye and the touch—wintry blue and black wool, tweedy autumnal shades of olive green, brown, and gold, and soft, demure cashmeres of gray and black. Ahh—a spectacular mink shawl (not a stole but a shawl, which was sweepier, more luxurious) in a dark gold-and-brown honey color. It was the only item in the closet that wasn’t old lady-ish.

On the top shelf, I found a few hatboxes and the aforementioned “album of pictures and personal memorabilia.” But when, in a fit of sentimentality, I pulled down the album, it dumped dust motes on my head. Just what I get for being such a curious cat, I thought. I left the album on the dressing table and went through the bureau drawers. I’m doing this for Mom, I told myself, although my mother is so slim and delicate that these matronly clothes would not fit her, either. Pajamas and silk underwear. Socks and stockings. Old-fashioned starched handkerchiefs with Aunt Penelope’s initials embroidered on them.

The bottom two drawers of the bureau were wide and deep. And there I hit the jackpot. Now, I am not an expert in couture, but I do know a thing or two about period costumes, and I’d just found, layered amid lavender sachets and blue tissue paper, vintage clothing worth writing home about. Great-Aunt Penelope had carefully preserved the most beautiful dresses of her youth, which meant silver and gold and violet and pale pink short sheath dresses from the twenties made of the softest, most gossamer silk and chiffon, painstakingly sewn with beading, glass “bugles,” fringe, and all those beautiful shimmery things that made flappers seem as if they were always in motion.

Astonishing as they were, what really took my breath away was what lay in the last drawer—gowns from the thirties, in lovely silk-satin fabric with that fabulous bias cut. Unlike today’s underslip-sausage-skins that cling rudely where they shouldn’t—these vintage beauties just skimmed over the body closely but freely, like a whisper.

“Oh my God,” I kept saying as I reverently unfolded one after the other. Some were invariably faded, but she had taken great care to preserve them and I found myself actually thinking, “I could wear this” or “Mom will freak over that.” House of Paquin,Worth, Chanel. “Ohmigosh,” I said aloud. Erik and Timothy would die just to see them, touch them, identify them.

Finally, after I’d overdosed like a glutton on glamour, I reverently folded them all back and put them exactly where they’d been. Great-Aunt Penelope had attached more value to these years. Nothing remained from the forties through the nineties. The closet held only the last years of her life, pared down to spare, simple, well-made but functional pieces.

Now I couldn’t resist that photo album. I dusted it off, hauled it to the bed, and sat there turning the pages and squealing with delight. Because there was Great-Aunt Penelope in her splendid youth, modeling all the clothes I’d just seen, looking fabulous, so I could see how they were supposed to be worn.And she wore them with gusto.There she was in what looked like a Molyneux gown, in her big drawing room at the French villa, having what appeared to be a riproarious time at a cocktail party, with a dapper young man playing that cute grand piano, and other glamorous guests milling around holding cocktail glasses that were small and manageable, not like today’s where one oversized cocktail can knock out a horse. The men in their evening clothes looked so spiffy and virile, and the women so slinky and spirited, laughing with mischievous, conspiratorial expressions.

The only subdued-looking photos, actually, were of Grandmother’s wedding. Aunt Penelope was standing outside the front door of this very apartment, posing in a pale organdy gown, carrying a spray of roses and wearing the kind of hat that English girls wear to weddings. Only in these shots did she look a little dowdier and somewhat glum. Especially at the church, when she was glancing off-camera, looking as if her thoughts were miles away, even when she was posed next to Grandmother Beryl, who looked very solemn in a lovely white crocheted gown with a halo of white flowers and a spray of veil.Weddings weren’t so much fun for single people back then, either, I supposed.

I flipped the page. It was fun to identify young Aunt Penelope in the familiar rooms in either this apartment or the villa.There were lots of landscape pictures of the seaside, too. I especially liked one with her in a white bathing suit, standing ankle-deep in the surf, smiling back at whoever was taking the picture. She looked happier in that setting, more relaxed.

Then came a snapshot of her in a fancy-dress costume and positively loaded down with spectacular jewelry—an elaborate necklace that looked like diamonds and other precious stones, with matching drop earrings. Her costume was a Venetian masquerade ball gown of patterned brocade, with a golden firebird eye-mask on a stick that she held just away from her face. The dress was an off-the-shoulders affair with puffy sleeves, and she was sitting in a chair in the library, the one against the wall with a window on one side and a painting of a Madonna and Child on the other. Light coming in from the windows made her jewels sparkle.

And lo and behold, in the very next photo, there she was in the car! The old Dragonetta currently rusting in the garage. Only here, it wasn’t old and rusty at all, it was new and shiny, and she was wearing a jaunty cloche and touring coat and gloves, but she wasn’t driving the car. She was sitting in the passenger seat, parked in that circular driveway at the villa.A dark-haired, uniformed chauffeur with a dashing little moustache and a lean, elegant physique was standing just outside the driver’s side, with his foot up on the running board, as if he were about to climb in the car and drive her off. There were lots of pictures of other men, especially an older guy with gray-black hair and a matching handlebar moustache. He showed up again and again, very well-dressed in dinner jackets, morning coats, silk top hat. He seemed older than the others in Great-Aunt Penelope’s crowd—a bit severe-looking, often holding in his well-manicured hands a plump, expensive-looking cigar, whose plume of smoke rose visibly alongside him, making him look sophisticated and mysterious.

As I turned the pages I also found many photos of the elegant piano-player, who clowned a lot for the camera; he was slim, wiry, and a fastidious dresser. He was photographed in lots of exotic settings, wearing a wide-brimmed Asian hat in one, wearing a solar topee while sitting atop an elephant in another, and taking a touristy rickshaw ride in another.

Then there seemed to be a gap in time, and
voilà!
Color photos appeared. Snapshots of my parents, looking young and newly wed. A few kiddie shots of me. And Jeremy with Uncle Peter and Aunt Sheila. The ladies had been exchanging photos for years and years. Then, later, a picture of Great-Aunt Penelope sitting in her library again, looking older, gray-haired and sadder, gazing back at the camera almost as if challenging it.

Eventually the album ran out of pictures. But there were yellowed newspaper clippings that were truly astonishing—for apparently Great-Aunt Penelope had done a fair bit of acting in her time, in small theatres, and received some good, respectable notices on her performances, mostly singing and comedy bits. The newspaper had black-and-white reproductions of the framed picture on her boudoir table, so it must have been her publicity photo. The whole thing got me so excited that I felt a momentary pang of regret when the phone shrilled to interrupt me, even though it was the call I’d been waiting for from my mother.

Harold had already beaten me to the punch about Jeremy’s real father, by e-mailing Dad’s lawyer. Mom told me that my father would join us in a minute, so I should wait for him to discuss the will. I was only too happy to quiz her about Aunt Penelope’s life, under the guise of trying to shed light on what I’d been sorting out here. I bubbled over with excited questions that she answered obligingly.

“Why didn’t you ever
tell
me Aunt Penelope had this great life and did all these things?” I rhapsodized.