CHAPTER 51
Joanna
London
Joanna walked towards Waterloo Bridge. She was on her way to meet Lucy and a couple of other friends for drinks.
She had spent the morning revising the copy of the Prague bridge walk in a nearby café and working on another article about the city for a monthly women’s magazine travel feature.
She had thought about Emmy and she had considered Toby’s suggestion.
Should she write a travel book? It was very different from writing a novel, but it might be fun.
Nicholas Tresillion had written her a short email telling her that he wouldn’t be back in London for a few days, by which time Joanna would be gone.
She wasn’t sure whether to be glad or sorry.
But perhaps it was for the best. He’d write properly in a day or two, he’d said, he had more to tell her.
She was intrigued. What could have happened now?
She’d read the other email too – the one from the woman who had started dating her boyfriend after meeting him on the Lisbon bridge walk.
It was a nice story. Emmy, she thought, was beginning to have a lot to answer for.
It was a strange feeling, being in London and working in coffee bars and hotel rooms as if she were still on location.
But tomorrow, she had her appointment with Sotheby’s.
Hopefully, if Harriet had kept her promise, Emmy’s painting would have been delivered and Joanna could hear what they had to say about the woman who wasn’t her ancestor but who nevertheless had become very important in her life.
And then she could travel back to Dorset.
It would be worth the cost of the courier, she’d persuaded herself.
At the very least, the Sotheby’s expert would be able to provide her with some information about the painting, if not the artist. And at the very best, he might be able to identify her by name.
And with a name . . . Joanna took a deep breath.
With a name, she could find out so much more.
In the meantime, she was quite enjoying wandering around some of her old haunts, this Thames riverbank walk being one of them.
She loved the architecture that lined the South Bank, the galleries and, of course, the bridges .
. . It was a cool and crisp day, her breath was clouding in the air as she walked, her boots snapping on the wide paving stones.
She felt an energy in the air that she was feeding off, a strong sense of purpose.
Had Emmy ever visited London? she wondered.
And if so, had she painted any of its bridges?
She looked out across the Thames. The river was thick and winter-green and Joanna’s fingers were cold inside her leather gloves.
A pleasure boat was travelling along the water and she stopped to watch it.
A moment ago, the air had been clear, and yet now a fine mist seemed to be descending onto the water, like a fret, one of those sea mists in Dorset that appeared from nowhere.
She wrapped her scarf closer around her neck, did up the top button of her jacket.
She could taste the vapour in the air; it had settled now over the riverbank too, shrouding the buildings on the Embankment, wrapping moist fingers around the bridges as if it might pluck them from sight.
The scene in front of her reminded Joanna of an Impressionist painting: blurs of blue, green and grey, mist and smog and night-time.
She walked on, heading for Westminster. In her head some notes rang out – the Westminster chime that had accompanied her childhood, which were, she’d read, based on a phrase from Handel’s aria, ‘I know that my Redeemer Liveth’, and which still rang out from the grandfather clock in the hall of Mulberry Farm Cottage.
Every time Joanna heard that chime she thought of Harriet, of playing one, two, three, alive, and how she’d felt when she could never, ever find her.
She thought of how her sister had sounded on the phone last night – irritated and more than a little uptight.
She’d thought they were getting closer, but . . . Perhaps some things never changed.
Westminster, the oldest bridge over the River Thames, was now the link between the Houses of Parliament and the London Eye.
Joanna moved closer to the water. Was it her imagination or was it suddenly not as busy as it had been minutes before?
It was hard to see through the mist. But surely the buildings had changed too?
They appeared simpler, older and dirtier and some of them were belching smoke from chimneys into the already smoggy atmosphere.
My God. It was hard to breathe. Joanna felt the smog drawing down into her lungs, as if it intended to drain her of all that energy she had felt so recently.
There was a long silence. Broken by a motor and the sound of surging water . . .
Slowly, the fog parted over the Thames to reveal the green sludge of the river.
And a boat. She blinked. A small paddle steamer, narrow and long, with tall red, white and black funnels, was forging a path through the water, making headway against the current, the water swirling and swishing around the paddle wheel.
It drew closer. Joanna watched. She held her breath.
She had seen paddle steamers before, but this one seemed different somehow.
And oddly, it was the only craft she could see on the river – the other boats had all disappeared.
Closer still, and now the bridge was revealed too.
Joanna looked down into the water. At the front of the paddle steamer, a little apart from the others, stood a young woman.
Her dress was white and high-waisted and her hands were clasped.
Joanna had seen her before. Before, she had been happy.
Now, though, she was crying. She was looking up at Waterloo Bridge and weeping as if her very heart would break.
Emmy . . . There was so much pain that it seemed to Joanna that she could feel it too.
When thou sigh’st
Thou sigh’st not wind
But sigh’st my soul away
When thou weep’st, unkindly kind,
My life’s blood doth decay.
Emmy had quoted those words to Rufus in the letter she’d written in Prague, and Joanna had recognised the poem. ‘Song’ by John Donne. She thought of it now. She couldn’t help thinking of it now.
Sweetest love, I do not go,
For weariness of thee,
Nor in hope the world can show
A fitter love for me;
Joanna stood and watched until the boat disappeared from view. Slowly, as if a veil was being raised, the smog lifted, evaporated; the sun came out from behind a cloud and once more the milky winter landscape stretched out into the distance. The distance of now.