5
Cecilia
‘WHAT ON EARTH IS that girl playing at?’ Claudine would be pacing if she could; Cecilia can tell from the tense play of her fingers around the strap of her umbrella, how the cords of her neck stand out above her high collar.
The three of them – Claudine, Penelope and Cecilia – are pressed into the carriage as it rattles north up Regent Street.
Neither Penelope nor Claudine seem to notice her misery, and it is a blessing to be forgotten by them.
Odette left her there in the gallery, watched by so many curious, judging eyes.
Cecilia waited, hot-faced with shame and sorrow, for her to return, then went looking for her. But there was no trace.
‘I will speak to George about her behaviour. She is putting on a show intentionally. She cannot abide not to be the centre of attention for even a moment.’
For the first time, the traitorous thought comes: perhaps Claudine is right – at least in part. Odette’s misery has made her selfish, and they will all bear the cost of it.
And yet, she would go to her at once if she called.
God, she is crying.
Claudine focuses on Cecilia, takes her hand. ‘You did not deserve to be the target of such hurtful words. I am grateful that you entertained my little scheme, and I am sorry that it came at such a cost to you.’
Cecilia’s skin crawls where Claudine’s hand rests on hers, and it is only because they are both wearing gloves that she does not snatch hers back at once.
‘I am sorry I didn’t find out her secret for you,’ says Cecilia, taking the opportunity, as they jolt round a corner, to remove her hand and clasp one of the leather straps hanging from the ceiling. ‘I am not sure I can be of any help to you.’
‘I’ve always said she was a spoilt girl,’ adds Penelope. ‘Self-involved. Hardly surprising given her mother’s own weaknesses, but it is quite intolerable.’
This speech is clearly aimed at Claudine, but she pays little attention, instead leaning in to speak conspiratorially to Cecilia. ‘You know her better than either of us. You do believe she is keeping some secret?’
The tone in Claudine’s voice catches Cecilia in the midst of her thoughts. There is almost a sense of nervousness, an attentiveness that is unwarranted. Cecilia knows why she herself fears Odette keeping something from her – but why should Claudine fear it?
What a thought: Claudine is afraid.
Cecilia considers her words. ‘I cannot rightly say. Is there some specific matter you suspect she may be concealing?’
‘No.’ The reply comes too quickly.
‘Let her have her secrets then.’ Cecilia gives a hopeful smile. ‘It does none of us any harm, does it?’ She hopes she comes across naive, idealistic – unimportant.
For the first time, Claudine falters. ‘I suppose that may be true.’
They turn into Regent’s Park to take the Outer Circle north, then cross the canal by the Zoological Gardens. Penelope starts up some chatter, flattering Claudine’s choice of dishes at dinner, the elegant way she has adapted to running a household. Cecilia cannot listen to it.
She spends the rest of the day in silence.
Sewing in her room, watching Odette’s window for her return.
She is silent at dinner while Penelope and Leo chatter.
Is it as easy for them both to cast off Lydia and Odette as it seems?
How can they talk of the mutton and the new hat Leo thinks to buy, and the business of the journey to his office?
What of loyalty? What of love?
Perhaps Odette is right. No one grieves as she does. It is an inconvenience.
She sits silent, thinking.
The pieces lie before her, and she turns them about in her mind, considering how they might fit.
The weather has turned with a violence, a storm wind picking up and smacking the tree branches against her bedroom window. Cecilia sits on the end of her bed, shucking her shoes and stockings.
There are too many things she does not understand.
She does not understand Odette or what happened at the gallery. She does not understand why Claudine is so afraid of what Odette may be hiding.
Cecilia thinks of the bracelet she found with the initials scratched off.
The scraps of paper with her mother’s name, and that mysterious fragment – art.
She should have some theory about it, she thinks, but she can come up with nothing.
Her mother displays her past through a careful curation of scenes placed on show.
It is immaculate and perfectly done, and there is so little to gain some scrabbling foothold on.
If a secret is there, it will be no simple thing to find it.
And what of Odette’s secret?
Claudine’s own past is hazy. Cecilia has never given that fact much thought, but perhaps within it lies something Claudine does not want to come to light.
Is that what Odette is hiding?
No. Somehow, she does not think so. If it were, why would she not share that information with Cecilia?
She unbuttons her shirt and blouse, and hangs each item across the back of the chair by her nightstand. From her window, she can see Odette’s room more clearly now that winter has stripped the leaves from the trees. There is no light, no movement.
In her dressing gown, Cecilia goes to hover in her mother’s doorway. Penelope sits in front of her mirror, working cold cream into her skin.
‘What happened to Odette’s money?’ Cecilia asks.
Penelope gives no reaction, smoothing the cream into the skin of her neck with precise upward motions. ‘What money?’
‘The money from the sale of Lydia’s paintings.’ Cecilia shifts, biting the inside of her cheek against her rising frustration. ‘She was arranging an exhibition with Mr King. You must remember.’
‘Oh, yes. That.’
‘Did she not say anything about the money being for Odette? I thought it might come up in the will.’
Her mother pauses, in the act of removing an earring. ‘Don’t go snooping into that sort of thing. It is none of your business.’
‘It is Odette’s business.’
‘Then let Odette ask.’
‘I am only trying to help. She might not feel able to ask so freely now that—’
‘Not this again.’ Penelope shuts her jewellery box and rounds on her daughter.
‘Leave poor Claudine alone. No one likes to think of how she has suffered in all this, but she nursed her sister through her last weeks and was the only one of us present at the death itself. Let her enjoy this time as a new wife.’
‘But how does it affect Claudine for Odette to get the money she was promised?’
A cold wind snaps through Penelope, and in a flash, she grasps Cecilia by the ear, fingers pinching painfully tight.
‘Are you deaf? Do you not listen to a single word I say? You will not help Odette cause trouble. Without Claudine, we are ruined.’ She lets go of Cecilia’s ear and wraps her arms around her, as though drawing her in for a maternal embrace.
‘My sweet, silly, naive girl. I am doing all this for you, and you don’t even know it. ’
Cecilia’s mouth and nose are muffled against Penelope’s bosom, the tickly stuff of her nightdress irritating her nose.
‘I forgive you for your childish blunders. If you will only listen to me and do as you’re told, all will be well.’
‘Yes, Mother.’
Cecilia slinks back to her bedroom. The air is heavy. She feels the beginnings of a pressure headache descend like a weighty hand on the top of her head. In the distance, a rumble of thunder rolls across the city.
When she goes to open the window, she spots Leo standing beneath it, tucked into the lee of the building, smoking. She goes downstairs, slips on a coat and joins him beneath the mulberry tree that hangs over the front path.
‘Evening, Cessy,’ he says. ‘Come for some fresh air?’
The wind is strong enough that he has to hold his hand cupped around the cigarette to keep it lit.
‘Couldn’t stand to be indoors. It’s all so . . .’ She trails off.
‘Mother ploughing around like a stately barge, sending backwash through every room?’
She smiles. ‘Something like that.’
He smokes quietly, and she lets the companionable silence stretch out for a moment.
Leo has always moved more easily under their mother’s assessing gaze, but he is still an ally against her dramatics.
Cecilia is not sure he knows how different it is for her with Penelope than it is for him – why should he, after all?
It is not Leo who their mother will see herself in, not Leo who will face the world in a way their mother recognises.
Cecilia understands that she draws her mother’s ire because her mother fears for her in a way she does not fear for Leo.
Her fate matters in a way Leo’s does not.
But it is something, to have a brother. Something, not to be the only one. She has not considered before that it must be a different kind of difficulty to be Odette, and stand alone. There is no one who must suffer Lydia and George as she does – did.
Cecilia shoves her hands deep into her pockets.
‘You really didn’t know that we had no money?’ she asks eventually.
She cannot imagine Leo being ignorant of something like that. He is her older brother, always quicker and smarter than her, always more of the world.
He grimaces. ‘Mother was a fool for keeping it from me. If I had known I could have looked at the arrangement, spoken to Uncle George and Aunt Lydia about formalising it – but now it’s a mess.
I’ve looked at the numbers; Mother is right that we are in trouble.
A good thing that she’s so cosy with Claudine, I suppose.
They were great friends back when they were young, so says Mother, but then Claudine went abroad the same year Father died, and that apparently was that. ’
Cecilia is struck again with the thought of how little she really knows of her family’s past. Lydia and George are old family friends, yes, and her father died before she was born, a riding accident, a mundane tragedy – these are the facts that add up to less than the sum of their parts.
What was it Leo just said?
Claudine went abroad the same year father died.
Odette told her, back in the summer, about the incident at the stationer’s, the woman who had mentioned banns being read before Claudine abruptly left the country.
It seems hard to read that as anything other than a broken engagement that meant Claudine felt she had no choice but to go.
And now they know that it was around that time that their mother became financially dependent on Lydia, after their father died.
Their mother, who had been Claudine’s friend first, then switched allegiances because of a secret that Lydia knew, the same one that Claudine now used to bring Penelope back to her side, and turn on Odette.
There is something that catches in Cecilia’s mind about the order of events. She cannot tell if there is a piece missing or if she is simply overlooking the obvious.
She wants badly to speak to Odette about it all, to share her burden. But she cannot.
She thinks again of Odette, standing before Lydia’s painting of Lancelot and Elaine.
The true, real grief on her face – and that strange, hunted look when she turned suddenly, as if searching the room for someone who had called her name.
Cecilia was surprised to see the painting hung unfinished – such a thing had never been Lydia’s way.
She would guard her work closely, spending days – weeks – agonising over the final touches of the brush until she declared the canvas must be taken away or she would cut it to ribbons in frustration.
Still, someone had got hold of it for display and—
Mr King.
There, anyone knows about the paintings it will be him.
She must return to the gallery as soon as possible. She must find Mr King and ask him directly.
The memory comes of his hands on her waist, his hot brandy breath on her face, but she pushes it away forcefully.
For once, she can play Lancelot. For once, she can save Odette. She will find the money and come to her with hope, with another path. Odette is lost, and she needs Cecilia to come into the dark to find her.
‘You fret too much, Mousy.’ Leo knocks her shoulder affectionately. ‘Don’t take everything to heart so.’
‘Don’t you feel uneasy about it all? Claudine and Uncle George?’
‘Why should I?’ He drops the cigarette butt and stubs it out with his toe.
Cecilia hesitates, warring with her frustration. Is it not obvious?
‘Aunt Lydia was good to us, in her way,’ she tries.
‘Of course she was. We all love her still, but people move on.’ Before Cecilia can protest he continues.
‘You can’t control what other people do, much as you may want to, or live forever on the hope that they will come round to thinking just as you do.
You must look out for yourself, secure a path of your own, and leave other people to their own mistakes. ’
‘That seems a little heartless. Don’t you think we all owe each other something?’
‘Perhaps we do, but if the other party isn’t interested in paying, what’s the use in wasting your life rattling an empty tin at them? Uncle George and Claudine are looking out for themselves. So am I; so is Mother. It’s simply how the world is.’
‘I don’t like it.’
‘I know you don’t, Mousy.’
He ruffles her hair in an exaggerated gesture of brotherly affection and she sticks out her tongue.
For a moment, they are so young again, arguing about stolen toys and bruised knees.
Family, she thinks, is loving people who cannot love you back in the way you need them to, and going on loving them all the same. She worries she is not very good at it.
A flash of lightning sends Cecilia and Leo skittering out from under the tree in shock and nervous laughter. Barely a breath later, thunder cracks through the air and the deluge comes.