1
Odette
ODETTE LETS HERSELF INTO the studio.
A long cane chair is positioned so that Lydia can look out across the grounds.
It is piled with cushions and rugs, despite the sultry summer heat that lingers.
Lydia is leaning back, book open in her hands, but she looks over the top of the pages to the Elaine canvas that still dominates the room.
Odette and Cecilia have sat several more times, but the painting is not yet finished.
‘Mama?’ Odette comes slowly into the room, waiting for her mother to register her presence.
Lydia comes back to herself, vacant face slowly warming. ‘Darling.’
Illness has stripped the flesh from her bones; her cheeks are hollowed, the lines of her collarbones clear where her house dress falls loose at the throat.
Of all the changes, it is this one that has upset Odette the most: her mother’s body, almost as familiar as her own, is suddenly that of a stranger.
Odette pours fresh water into the glass at Lydia’s side, gathers the untouched lunch things onto the tray and leaves it by the door for the maid to collect.
Lydia has always been temperamental – the kind of thing called nerves or hysteria, women’s trouble, easily dismissed. But now she is truly, dangerously ill.
She is so used to her mother being fragile, unreliable, she thought she was inured to it.
She finds she was wrong.
There is always something left to lose.
She comes to sit on the floor at Lydia’s feet, her customary place once she became too big to sit on her lap, and she rests her back against Lydia’s leg. Her dress smells of cedar from the mothballs in her clothespress, and the sharp note of turpentine.
It has been a month since her mother fell so gravely ill, a month since Claudine arrived.
The summer has been given over to doctor’s visits, the airing of sickrooms, tinctures and delicate broths, the sound of vomiting, the smell of blood.
Cecilia and Penelope stay on at Herne House, though Leo comes back and forth when work can spare him.
Claudine has martialled it all. At some unseen point Odette cannot identify, Herne House became Claudine’s domain.
Directing Lydia’s care, the running of the house – she has become necessary.
It almost seems too neat, her place solidified with such readiness.
It is as disorienting as the change in her mother.
The year is rushing by too quickly, the turn of the seasons, the day of her departure to Cambridge drawing closer – though how can she even think of leaving for university with her mother so gravely ill?
– and she cannot find a firm grasp on anything.
At times, Lydia rallies, at others, slumps again; across it all there is a slow, sloping descent towards – towards something that no one wants to name.
It is a constant push and pull. Every moment with Lydia is unbearable, as though Odette is being swallowed up, but each one apart feels like a betrayal.
She cannot know how much more time she will have with her mother, whether this illness will pass like a storm or drown them all, and the fear of it drives her back to her mother’s side time and time again.
Lydia runs her fingers through Odette’s hair, which Odette has left loose intentionally, then begins to pull it into a French plait.
‘Do you mind awfully having a mother who is ill?’ she asks.
‘Of course not. You do not want to be ill.’
Lydia does not reply for a while. There is only the soft carding of her fingers through Odette’s hair.
‘I have always been weaker than others, even at your age. No one ever made any allowance for it. They couldn’t understand that I had a fragile constitution, and they forced me to keep up with them all, when it was quite beyond me.
I suppose it is no surprise I would find myself enduring an even greater suffering. ’
‘Is the medicine helping?’ asks Odette.
‘A little.’
There has been a course of treatment prescribed; the doctor is due back in a few days to assess its efficacy.
‘You will write to me about Cambridge, if you have time?’ asks Lydia.
‘I will. And you’ll visit me,’ says Odette.
She must paint the fantasy of it: the future when Lydia is well again.
Lydia smiles faintly but does not reply.
‘I suppose I ought to begin packing before long, though I do not like to go.’
‘You must go. It is such a balm to me to see you excited.’
They do not talk of the money and the exhibition anymore. Odette cannot bring herself to ask. She wants the money, but she wants her mother restored to health more, so she must leave it alone. Of course it was never going to happen.
Lydia is fading again, so Odette takes up the copy of Emma on the table and reads to her, as she has done all summer. Lydia plaits, and Odette reads, and like this, perhaps it is possible, pleasant even, to be together.
At the end of the chapter, Odette closes the book. ‘We can cancel my birthday party tomorrow,’ she says. ‘I do not want to be with anyone but family.’
Lydia ties off the plait, lets it run down her back. Odette turns around so Lydia can admire her work.
‘You must not let me ruin things,’ says Lydia.
Before Odette can reply, there is a knock at the door.
When she opens it, she is surprised to see Mr King on the threshold.
‘My apologies, I did not realise I was interrupting.’ He smiles, and it seems entirely genuine and open. ‘Miss Hutton invited me up for the party, and I thought I would pay my respects – but I see perhaps you were not told.’
Odette schools herself into pleasantries. ‘It is our pleasure, Mr King.’
‘I hoped I might be bold enough to ask for a private viewing of your work, Mrs Fairfax-Waugh, as an ardent admirer – but I can come back later.’
Lydia rises from the long cane chair, fingers worrying at the trailing edge of her shawl. ‘Mr King. It is good to see you again.’
‘Please, call me Charles.’ His eyes alight on the Elaine canvas. He gives it his careful attention, with true admiration as much as dealer’s eyes. ‘Most magnificent. Eddie says you have not done a show for a number of years?’
‘No, I have been working in private.’
‘I am sure the public would be greatly interested to see what marvels you have been conjuring. Miss Hutton mentioned you had been considering it, before your recent illness.’ Mr King pauses, looks around at the other works, assessing. ‘I hear you are interested in selling as well as showing?’
Lydia’s eyes dart towards Odette, a certain trembling of her top lip.
In this precise moment, Odette feels attuned to her, like a delicately calibrated scientific instrument.
Lydia is balanced like a spinning coin, poised just so on a fine edge: now it slows, lurching to each side; now it begins to fall.
It is selfish of her. Odette looks away.
‘Yes, why not?’ Lydia’s tone is artificially breezy, and Odette wonders if Mr King can tell. ‘There are so many canvases cluttering the place up that I would far rather they go to better homes.’
It is childish and simple, but all Odette can think is: her mother does love her.
‘The Jermyn Street Gallery would be delighted to accommodate you – if I don’t presume too much?’
There is no knock this time when the door opens; Claudine enters with the medication the doctor has prescribed to dose Lydia.
There is a downturn to her mouth, a brusqueness to her movements that reveals her irritation with her task.
She wears an expensive lavender house dress and silk slippers, her hair pinned up with careless elegance.
It is still strange to see her in the house, so much her sister’s overexposed copy, too tall, too prepossessed, too healthy.
Odette has always been taller, stronger than her mother, and she wonders, with a jolt, if she more resembles Claudine than Lydia.
‘Oh, Mr King. I see you have found our patient.’
Odette tries to slide into the background.
It is a delicate moment, and she does not wish to unbalance things – or to draw Claudine’s attention.
Odette finds herself cringing away each time her aunt rounds a corner, a spike of panic catching her in the throat.
She is ashamed of herself – and confused.
She must try harder to anticipate Claudine’s moods.
Odette has had enough practice moulding herself around her own mother; it should not be beyond her to distil whatever it is Claudine wants of her and provide it.
‘Odette, have some tea sent in for our guest.’
She does as she is told, and Claudine follows her out.
‘You are overtiring your mother,’ she says. ‘It is selfish of you to demand so much of her time.’
At once, Odette’s cheeks flush. ‘I’m not – that is to say, I only wanted to keep her company.’
‘She is always tired after lunch – something you would know if you tried a little harder to be a member of this household.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she says, because she does not know what else to say. She does not know if what Claudine says is true. Is her mother more tired after lunch? Does Claudine know more about Lydia than she does?
‘We would all appreciate it if you gave others a little more consideration. You may gad about with Cecilia, or you may take your mother’s care seriously – you cannot expect to do both.’
Claudine goes back into the studio, leaving Odette hot with outrage. How has her aunt so swiftly touched upon something so utterly untrue? What does Claudine know of duty to Lydia? How dare she accuse her of abandoning her mother?
Odette cannot bear to stay trapped with Lydia – but if she goes, she does not know what will become of her.