The Memory of Lost Senses (36 page)

On their last day together, like so many days before, Cecily and Jack went out on his motorcycle. She had told her mother, had had to tell her—after roaring past Mrs. Moody in Linford—that yes, she sometimes rode pillion on Jack’s bike, “sort of sidesaddle and on a cushion,” she added, as though it would make a difference. But Madeline was aghast, furious that Cecily had lied to her, astonished that all the times she had presumed her daughter to be up at Temple Hill, perhaps taking tea in the garden, she had in fact been “speeding about the lanes with a young man. It’s not only dangerous, it’s improper!”

“There’s nothing improper about it, women are buying them as well.”

Madeline shuddered. “Next, you’ll be telling me you’re off to London to fight for votes!”

“Yes, I very well might.”

“Really, Cecily, I don’t know what’s come over you this summer. You’ve always been such a . . .”

“Good girl?”

“Yes,” said her mother, looking at her, mystified. “And of course everyone will assume that you’re courting now, you and he,” she went on, “and I’m not entirely sure what I’m supposed to do.”

“I don’t care what everyone assumes but I do care what you think, Mother.”

“What I think . . . what I think is that you’re both too young.”

“But you were little older than me when you married Father.”

Madeline shook her head. “That was different. Jack is about to leave for university, Cecily, he’s not going to stay here. He has a future mapped out for him, and I can’t help but feel . . .”

“Yes?”

“That he’ll leave you behind, dear.”

Perhaps he would leave her behind. The notion was one Cecily had certainly pondered, particularly after Cora’s words to her in the garden. And she had drawn conclusions: he would leave her behind; he had no choice. He had said to her himself, “It’s a tremendous opportunity.” And it was. A university education could not be passed over, no matter what. It would set him up for life. Oh, that she could have the same path and spend three whole years studying, reading, surrounded by erudite people—people she could learn from, people who spoke about poetry and literature and art, people who had traveled and seen places and been places; people who led interesting lives. Oh, that she could be
someone
.

But there was a chink of light, a hope, flickering at the back of her mind—or the front, depending on her mood. He would return, during holidays and when he was able, and then, at the end, he’d be free. Three years, she concluded. I shall have to wait three years.

Nothing had been said. No words about their future had passed between them, though they had spoken often enough about foreign places, places they had read about, heard about, would like to see. She imagined them strolling along the banks of the Seine, the Danube, the Tiber, arm in arm, a handsome couple. And sometimes she imagined them together at Temple Hill . . .

Three years. I shall wait three years, she told herself. Cora’s warning to her had, she thought, been about wasting an entire lifetime waiting, and she would certainly not be doing that. Three years was not a lifetime.

But as his departure date loomed, she became aware of the clock, of the minutes and hours, the slipping away of time and the inevitable goodbye, when he would leave Bramley and move on. And the flicker of hope died.

Jack’s life, she imagined, would be as glamorous as his grandmother’s. Faster, modern, and not yet abroad, but on a path to somewhere: somewhere far more sophisticated than Bramley. He would, perhaps, remember her—the village girl, that innocent country girl, the one he had been quite fond of at the time. The one he had taken up to London, and rode about with through the lanes. The one he had kissed on a hot day at the top of some hill he couldn’t quite remember. In years to come he would return there, to Bramley, at first to visit his grandmother, Cora, and then, after her death, to stay at the place himself from time to time, for he would surely inherit it. And Cecily, too, might be there, might be invited up to Temple Hill for tea. He would take her hand in his and say hello, politely, then step aside to introduce his wife . . .

Oh, the agony!

It would not happen, it could not happen. She could never allow it to.

But the thought, the image, kept coming back to her. She saw herself—rounded, matronly, a brood of noisy, ruddy-faced children and a quiet husband by her side. And him, Jack, lean and dapper, smiling on benignly, sympathetically. But sometimes there were no children or quiet husband, just her: thin and bespectacled and monosyllabic, a spinster of the parish, a schoolmistress, speaking about the weather, the last sermon, and Miss Combe’s new electricity.

He would say, “Cecily Chadwick, well I never. I hardly recognized you . . . still in Bramley, eh?” For she had never gone anywhere, other than that day excursion to the coast each summer. There had been no traveling, no countries visited or cities explored; there had been no great adventure, and no other loves. And she would smile, grateful for the acknowledgment, the remembrance, and then laugh—and make a joke of her lack of a life. “Oh, but I could never leave Bramley,” she would say. “After all, I’m settled here, and it is so wonderful to live in a place where everyone knows who you are.”

He would introduce her to his children, all lined up and quite as beautiful as he, and with exotic names and precocious but enchanting demeanors: Nathanial, Atalanta, Theodopholis and Hermione. And they would look at her with pity in their eyes, but not for her but for their father, that he could ever have loved someone so plain and parochial, that their successful and debonair father could have been so shortsighted. And they would not know what to say, or how to be, and so he would intervene and make small talk, until it was time for her to leave. Then they would all heave a sigh of relief, and tease him that he had once had a thing for poor Miss Chadwick.

When he released her hand he said, “You never know, I might get back at Christmas . . . come and say boo!”

She smiled.

“Otherwise it’ll be Easter.”

“Yes, Easter,” she repeated.

“It’s not that long.”

“No.”

“We’ve our whole lives ahead of us, you know.”

“Of course, I know that.”

“Don’t be sad . . . please, don’t be sad.”

They stood in the fading twilight by the gate and all she could think was that by morning he would be gone. And all she could hear were the whispers of the coming days and weeks:
the poor thing went about with him all summer . . . bound to happen . . . he was hardly going to settle down here—with her.
And she would have to brave it, have to smile through it all as though it had been nothing, a brief flirtation, a passing fancy.

“But we’ve had a fine old time to ourselves,” he said.

“Yes, we have.”

He looked away. “I can’t promise you anything . . . I can’t—”

“It’s perfectly fine, Jack. You don’t need to say any more. I understand.”

She smiled and turned away. She heard the latch on the gate drop, clickety-click, his feet upon the track, and a door quietly close.

Chapter Twenty

The movement of cold air stirs her. The cover has been pulled back. She can hear the rasping sound in the blackness, smell him as he moves closer. “Come here my little lovely, come to Uncle John now . . .” She tries to wriggle free, but he has hold of her, is pulling at her nightgown, and as she struggles, as she struggles to reach down beneath the bed, the soft cotton tears, releasing her like a baby from the womb and her hand to the floorboards, the brick
 . . .

Cora could smell the mustiness of an English winter. It was a smell she vaguely remembered: a mingling of damp plaster, rotting wood and vegetation, the smoke of coal fires, and coldness. Coldness. The house felt newly strange and suddenly much too large for one person. She had no need for so much space. Though she might have had, once, when the place was first built, when she still had a son, anticipated a daughter-in-law, envisaged grandchildren. When Georgie told her that he planned on having a large family, “to make up for the deficit.”

“Deficit indeed!” Fanny had repeated, laughing.

“That’s what he said. I suppose it’s because he’s grown up alone.”

“Well, he’ll have to find himself a wife first, and she’ll need to be a robust girl, my goodness yes,” Fanny went on, smiling. “But at least you have the place, the space for this enormous family he’s planning.”

Cora moved to the window, gazing out at the excavations for the new monument in honor of the King. Her aunt had told her that it would take over two decades to build and be so vast it would dominate the city’s skyline.

“No one knows who anyone is anymore,” Fanny was saying, “it’s all changed, anyone of quality seems to have gone, and instead, we have a constant stream of loud Americans to plague us. Tourists, they call themselves. They come for a week and fly about the place with lists and maps and itineraries—such frenzied haste.”

“It’s the same in Paris,” Cora replied. “The Americans are
everywhere
.”

Cora had traveled by train from Paris to Rome, as she did each and every Christmas. Edward remained in England, spending Christmas with his family, as he had done each year since their marriage. It was, as her aunt liked to remind her, an unusual domestic arrangement. Twice a year Edward visited her, and she had returned to England the previous summer, staying for two weeks under the roof of his fine stucco-fronted house in Kensington, only ten minutes’ walk from George’s London home.

As Cora turned away from the window, Fanny returned to the subject of Georgie. “And how is your darling boy?” she asked.

“Georgie,” Cora repeated, and immediately felt the warmth of maternal blood run through her veins. Georgie, she thought, and could not help but smile. “He’s hardly a boy, he’s a grown man now,” she said. “He is well, very well, and I believe he’s charming everyone in London.” She moved about the room, picking up ornaments, examining them, as if to check that they were the same ones that inhabited a place in her memory; running her fingers along polished marble and mahogany; the velvet pile of a sofa, a chair.

“And does he see much of . . . of his godfather?” Fanny asked.

“Oh yes, he sees him from time to time. But of course George is very busy at the Academy, and still travels a good deal.”

“And you? Do you still see him?”

“I saw him in Paris last . . .” She saw her aunt wince and stopped. “But why do you ask if you do not wish to hear? Why does it pain you to hear me speak about him?”

“Because it’s not right for you to see him, not now you’re married. He had his chance—so many chances—and you waited for him . . . waited for him for so long. You simply can’t allow him to walk in and out of your life, not now.”

“I have to see him; you know that. It’s impossible for me to banish him now.”

“But don’t see him alone, Cora, please. There’s enough gossip already about you and your marriage . . . and him.”

Cora shook her head. “I no longer care what the old expatriate wives of Rome are saying about me. And there’ll always be gossip about George. There always has been.” She turned away from Fanny. “But, seeing as you’ve mentioned it, tell me, what is the gossip?”