That Summer: A Novel (40 page)

Julia traced rings with the spilled coffee on the table. “I kind of got that.”

“Yes.” Her father looked away, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down beneath the neat knot of his tie. “I know. Sometimes I wonder if I’ve done you a great disservice. Helen thinks—”

He stopped, looking guilty, and took a quick sip of his coffee.

Julia couldn’t blame him. Once upon a time she would have bitten off his head for discussing the inner workings of her psyche with Helen.

“What does Helen think?” Julia asked resignedly.

Her father pushed the stems of his glasses more firmly behind his ears. “She thinks I ought to have spoken about all of this with you years ago. She was concerned that by not addressing it, I”—he floundered for a moment, chosing between evils—“may have stunted your emotional growth, made it hard for you to develop, er, relationships of trust.”

“Relationships of trust?”

“She means”—Julia’s father was visibly discomfited—“that my refusal to address your mother’s loss might make it difficult for you to be intimate with others. Not in a sexual way,” he added hastily. “Emotionally.”

Julia opened her mouth to tell her father where Helen could put her opinion. And closed it again. It wasn’t just Helen. Lexie, her college roommate and closest friend, had said much the same thing. Julia had told her that she had no right to psychoanalyze her on the strength of one intro psych class.

Fine
, Lexie had said.
Then go see someone who does.

So Julia had gone, grudgingly, to the department euphemistically referred to as the mental health center. The shrink had told her, in somewhat more polished terms, pretty much what both Helen and Lexie had said.

Julia had made it a point not to return to that part of campus. She was perfectly functional as she was and she wanted to keep it that way, thank you very much.

Only, maybe she wasn’t.

Julia grimaced at the lipgloss–stained lid of her coffee. “I haven’t been particularly nice to Helen, have I?”

“You haven’t been not nice to Helen,” said her father helpfully. Somehow, that made it even worse. With a light sigh he sat back in his chair. “She didn’t want to force you into an intimacy that might make you uncomfortable. She was hoping you would come to her on your own time. That’s what she said,” he added hastily, just in case Julia might think any of this was his idea.

Julia thought of all the tentative overtures over the years, the invitations to go shopping or meet for coffee or see this or that exhibit at the Frick or the Met. It was all right for Helen to suggest such things, Julia had told herself self-righteously; Helen didn’t work anymore. She had time for all those frivolous ladies-who-lunch things. She, Julia, was too busy being a productive member of society.

Which was really all bull when she got down to it. She could easily have met her on a Saturday or gone up to the Hamptons on a weekend when invited. She’d deliberately held herself aloof.

When you cared about people, you got hurt.

“It wasn’t so much for her own sake,” her father said. Mumbled, really. He directed his attention to a scratch on the wooden table. “I believe it was more that Helen was concerned that my—er—baggage might be preventing you from developing a proper relationship. A proper romantic relationship.”

He didn’t exactly squirm as he uttered those last words—her father wasn’t a squirming man—but his expression was that of a man contemplating a do-it-yourself tooth extraction.

“I date,” said Julia defensively.

“Yes, yes,” her father said quickly. If this conversation was unpleasant for her, it was probably pure torture for him. “I’m sure you do.”

They sat in silence, Julia nursing her coffee, her father adjusting and readjusting his cuffs.

After a long moment, he said diffidently, “I do hope you won’t hold any of this against Helen.”

“No,” said Julia distantly. “She means well.”

What was more disturbing was that she might also be right.

When Lexie had voiced similar opinions, Julia had always indignantly retorted that it wasn’t as though she didn’t date. She did. She dated enough for multiple people.

It was true, though, that none of them had ever lasted long. Her longest relationship had lasted nine months, and that was probably only because it had been during her consulting days, when she had been rocketing about from project to project. She and Peter had seen each other only on alternate weekends, when she’d been back in New York. They’d never even reached the point of leaving toothbrushes in each other’s apartments.

Had there been anyone serious since? Not really. She tended to break up with them before things could go too far. The two-month rule, she called it. Lexie called it something else entirely.

Julia had always prided herself on staying friends with her exes. No hurt feelings, no drunk dials. It had never occurred to her, until now, that that might not exactly be a point of pride. It had always been easy to end amiably because she’d never invested much in any of them in the first place.

She’d opened up more to Nick Dorrington in that one evening in the attic than she had to Peter in nine months.

Which was probably why she had been so quick to believe the worst of Nick.

The realization hit her like a triple shot of espresso. She tried to come up with other reasons, with excuses, but there it was, staring her in the face. Natalie had offered her an easy out. She’d wanted him to have a flaw—no, more than a flaw. She’d wanted him to be something irredeemably awful. Because then she wouldn’t run any risk of growing attached to him.

Her latte tasted like ash.

She’d been an idiot. And she didn’t know how to fix it. Although apologizing might be a start.

Her father checked his watch. “I have a panel in five minutes. But if you want me to stay…”

Julia rose, brushing the crumbs of someone else’s scone from her skirt. She hoisted her bag up from the banquette beside her.

“No, that’s okay.” She brushed her cheek against her father’s, in what passed between them for a hug. “There’s someone I need to go see.”

London, 1850

When a week had gone by without word, Imogen sought out Gavin’s studio.

She had kept vigil all that night, waiting for a sign that never came. A soft snow began to fall by morning, blurring the outlines of the summerhouse and the ground around it. If Gavin had come for her, there was no sign of it; the paths were all shrouded in snow, converted to a horrible, uniform sameness by that smooth, white blanket.

Arthur had found her outside, her hair starred with snowflakes, and insisted that she come inside and be warmed with a hot toddy, instructing Anna to see to it. True to his avowal of the other night, he kept close to Imogen for the next few days, reading aloud to her from the paper, insisting she go upstairs to rest, sending Anna on useless errands for extraneous shawls and undesired pots of tea.

She mustn’t be moped over Evie’s departure, Arthur told her; he was there to make sure of it.

And Imogen smiled and said thank you and secretly wondered whether Arthur’s mission of mercy was quite so merciful or something else entirely. In her frustration she wondered whether it was a deliberate attempt to keep her from Gavin: Arthur’s appearance in her room at the critical moment the other night, his constant presence by her side for the next three days. With Arthur, it was always so hard to tell. His countenance was as bland and genial as ever it was; he thanked her courteously for alleviating his pain at the loss of his only child and trusted that they would be a comfort to each other.

It would have made Imogen feel guilty if she hadn’t been so madly worried.

Did Gavin think she had abandoned him? Surely he must know better than that. She had been by the window again by fifteen minutes after the appointed hour. Clocks varied; watches slowed. If he had been there, at all, surely she would have known, have seen.

If he hadn’t been there …

That was the demon that haunted her nights and nipped at the edges of her consciousness by day. The age of highwaymen was over, but there were still footpads who lurked on the fringes of London’s poorer areas. Every day, there were men clubbed or stabbed, dredged from the river or found sprawled in an alley, denuded of valuables. Gavin would have been carrying a substantial sum in coin, more than most laborers saw in a year, or even two.

It needn’t even have been a footpad. The roads had been slick and icy. What if Gavin hadn’t been able to find a hackney? What if he had decided to walk the long way to her? All it would have taken would be one false step on a patch of ice to send him plunging into the unforgiving currents of the Thames.

His continued silence filled her with fear. If he were alive, if he were well, he would have come to her.

Perhaps he was ill. So many fell ill at this time of year. He might be lying alone in his studio, in the grip of fever, too ill to even think to pen a note. Imogen clung to that faint hope: a fever, a broken leg, a note that had gone astray.

It wasn’t until the fourth day that Arthur finally went away to town, on business that, he said apologetically, could not be avoided. Looking at him, remembering what Gavin had told her, Imogen couldn’t help wondering what the business might be.

But that was beside the point. Arthur was gone; she was free, at least for a few hours. She slipped out of the house and walked down to Half Moon Street, where she was able to hire a hack. Out of the habit of caution, she had him drop her several streets away from Gavin’s studio, although mingled anticipation and apprehension mounted higher in her breast the closer they came, until she thought she might choke with it.

She had never been to this part of London without Gavin before, and even then only twice before. It seemed different without him, the buildings in worse repair, the streets dirtier, the calls of the street criers louder. Blundering her way to what she thought was the right street, she passed a woman leaning by a streetlamp, her bosom half-bared, the exposed skin tinged a faint blue with cold.

Imogen clutched her own pelisse closer around her and hurried on, trying to remember the number of the house on Cleveland Street, trying to not to slip on the frozen bits of refuse and offal that littered the street.

She discovered it at last, a narrow building with peeling paint that might once have been better than it was. The door downstairs was unlocked. Imogen let herself in and began to climb the stairs, those same narrow stairs she had climbed with Gavin, clinging to the rail, going faster and faster, as fast as her skirts and her corsets would permit.

She knocked, quietly at first, and then louder. The sound echoed through the narrow landing, as hollow as the grave.

The door was locked; she rattled and shook the knob in vain.

“Hey there!” A face peered up at her from the next landing down, a woman, gap-toothed and slatternly. “Who are you and what do you want?”

With heavy, huffing steps, the woman made her way towards Imogen, peering at her with narrowed eyes, as though Imogen were a wormy cabbage in a market stall. Keys clanked at the woman’s waist and she brought with her a distinct reek of gin.

Imogen clutched her reticule with both hands. “I was looking for Gavin Thorne. About—about a commission for a painting.”

The woman paused halfway up the stairs, leaning on the rail. “You’re too late, then. Thorne’s cleared out.”

The words rang hollowly in Imogen’s ears. “Cleared out?”

“Cleared out, run out.” The woman’s wrinkled face was a picture of disgust. “Left me two weeks’ rent on the table and not so much as a by-your-leave.”

“Did he—did he leave any mention of where he might have gone?”

The woman set her arms akimbo. “Didn’t I just say ’e didn’t? If I’d a known that, I could have sent his things on.”

Necessity won out over pride. “Might I—might I take a look?” Imogen asked tentatively. Hastily she fished in her reticule for a coin. “I will compensate you for your trouble.”

The sight of gold decided it.

“Come along,” said the woman ungraciously.

Huffing at the effort, she made her way up the rest of the stairs, pushing past Imogen on the narrow landing. The paint on the walls was peeling in long strips and the floorboards creaked ominously beneath her feet.

Unlocking the door with one of the keys at her waist, she shoved it open. “Go on,” she said. “Look your fill.”

Imogen glanced at her, but she showed no sign of going away. Her solid bulk filled the doorway, arms crossed and feet planted firmly in the door.

“You are very kind,” Imogen said, and walked into the room, feeling like a person in a dream, everything familiar and unfamiliar all at the same time.

The blue gown still hung over the makeshift screen at the side of the room; the pile of pasteboard crowns and dusty velvet doublets occupied their usual place, but the sketches were gone from the table and the easel where
Tristan and Iseult
had rested stood lonely in the middle of the room, its supports empty.

The side of the room that Augustus Fotheringay-Vaughn had occupied was cleared out down to the last speck of dust, but that, Imogen knew, was to be expected; Gavin had told her that he, Fotheringay-Vaughn, had cleared out in a huff.

Imogen took inventory of Gavin’s things, as well as she remembered them. His paints and palette were gone, only a few dried remnants left behind. The traveling easel was gone as well. It looked, in fact, as though he had packed as he had said he would, to leave with her.

Behind her, the landlady took a surreptitious bite of the coin Imogen had handed her. Finding it satisfactory, she said expansively, “The room where the gentleman slept was through that door. You might want a look in there as well.”

In that same trance-like state, Imogen opened the door. She had never been in this room before; some strange relic of delicacy had kept Gavin from bringing her into his bedroom. They had made love in the meadows, on the floor of his studio, but never in his bed.

The room hardly justified the term. It was a tiny closet of a space, with little more than a camp bed, a chamber pot beneath it, a washstand to one side, and hooks on the wall for his clothes. There wasn’t much left, just a forlorn nightshirt hanging from a hook and a forgotten piece of shaving soap on the washstand.