Chapter 7
Memories are a safety. A shield against invasive forces—like perky artists with clouds of blond hair and pixie faces. Once, William might have settled for her foppish sort of pretty. But that was before he realized there are women like Helen in the world.
He’d been lost among the artwork at the cramped Newlyn art gallery for several moments before he felt this girl’s gaze on him.
She isn’t a girl, likely. She’s perhaps as much as thirty, a mere decade younger than himself, but he cannot think of her as anything but a girl.
Perhaps because he’s aged so much in the last two years, and he feels so much more than three and forty.
Even so, when he peeked between two oils, that brazen doll face did not look away.
Instead, her red lips curved up in a smile.
He ducks. Just ignore her, like a bad headache. Women regularly attach themselves like lichen to any man standing upright these days—even vagrants such as himself—because so few remain after the war.
He crouches in the U-shaped display, studying the names on canvas until he finds the one he’s looking for—Fisherman on the Wharf by Rupert Covington. He squints at the signature that’s unmistakably the same as the one on the painting in his cottage. The R and C have the same flourish.
He kneels to look closer, and he senses her before he sees her—that girl again. She’s straightening paintings directly in front of him, her legs stretching out from a gray pencil skirt. His heart hammers, and he pivots away on his knee. She smells of lilac blooms.
Lilacs.
Such as the ones growing around Helen’s garden swing for so many years.
He offered his Helen many things as he pieced their home together, praying he’d be able to afford whatever this lovely creature who’d somehow become his wife requested.
Her one demand was simple. “Lilacs. I want to sit in the garden with my tea and smell the blooms in the spring.”
So he planted the lilacs and built her a swinging bench in the midst of them.
She usually sat out there in the evening, and almost never alone.
She was so very tempting when she relaxed on that squeaky bench, draping her slender body over the crude wooden thing, legs propped up crossed at the ankle, that he was never able to resist slipping in beside her and sliding close.
She’d swivel and slip her legs over his, weave her arms around his neck, and anchor herself against him to kiss him.
Not a peck, but a sweetly lingering kiss that buzzed on his skin, even after she pulled back, smiling coyly at her effect on him.
He was scarcely able to breathe when she did that.
Finding her lips in the dark, kissing her until she giggled, was the best part of any day. No matter what occurred in the munitions plant, he knew he’d be pulling Helen with her big smile and lovely curves close to him that evening and kissing her with the scent of lilacs in the background.
The scent of lilacs grows stronger and he closes his eyes, inhaling.
A bump. He jolts forward in the tiny gallery, knocking over a stack of unframed canvases. He scrambles to pick them up, his hands shaking.
A tight giggle.
Right, the little chit. He edges away. Two clocks are ticking somewhere, and his brain fires up, instinctually prepared for an explosion. It’s too tight in here. Cramped.
“Daydreaming, are you?” Her bright voice is like the squeal of car brakes.
The aisles are narrow. He keeps his back to her to pretend she isn’t infringing upon his space. “Just thinking.”
“Penny for your thoughts.” She comes alongside him, an imaginary penny pinched between two fingers as her overly red lips flash a conspiratorial smile.
“N-n-not for sale.” He turns back to Covington’s painting, honing in on the sweep of brushstroke that is his signature.
“I think perhaps what you need,” she says, “is a bit of color in your life.” She elbows him playfully, and he jerks. He adjusts his coat to hide the twitching. What happens if he goes into full-blown—
“Oh, come now. It’ll cheer you.” She reaches for him.
“I doubt it.” He edges away, studying the Covington collection. Refocusing.
Yes. Paintings. The paintings.
He blinks, steadying his gaze upon them.
They tell the story of Newlyn the fishing village with an impressionist’s eye, the docks and gritty beaches, the wharfs and seascape.
The only human in any of his paintings is a hunched fisherman shown from the back.
Which aligns with what the shopkeeper said.
Perhaps the man is right and his painting isn’t a Covington after all.
In that case he has nothing to offer Helen. Nothing.
“Covington, of all things. Of all the artists in this gallery, no one’s as dull as Rupert Covington. He’s—”
William stiffens. “You know him?” He turns and forces himself to look at her directly, which pleases her.
“Rupert?” She purses her lips and then releases them in full bloom. “We’re practically neighbors. His work has hung across from mine for all five years I’ve been here.”
“Did he…that is, has he ever painted a woman? A lady?” He’s read half a dozen entries now in Merryn’s notebook. He skimmed for mentions of Covington, then backed up to savor an entry each night after his work.
Her eyebrows rise and she laughs. “You know nothing about art, do you? Rupert Covington never painted people.”
“Why not?”
She shrugs. “He’s always been a bit of a mystery, even around Newlyn. He’s notorious for refusing portrait commissions, you know. Some considered it selling out. And he wouldn’t have been caught dead selling out.”
William stares at the dark-blue back of the fisherman in Covington’s painting. “How might I call upon him? Has he a local address?”
Silence. William turns and she’s staring at him.
Amused. Looping pearls around one finger.
“No one contacts Rupert Covington. He and his wife keep to themselves, especially since he made a name for himself. But come, let me show you something.” She tugs him across the aisle.
“If you want to see the people of Newlyn, look here.”
He huffs but gives a polite, cursory glance at what are likely her creations. The modern style isn’t displeasing, but there is no comparison. Her brush strokes are broad and excitable with deep, varied colors. They are sudden and eager. Young.
If William closes his eyes, he can see the painting of Merryn, the highlights on her gown, the faint copper streaks in her dark hair. “His wife. Who is Covington’s wife?”
She rolls her eyes. “I’ve no idea, I’m not his keeper.”
Useless. The girl is useless. With her tick-tick heels and that too-tight voice and a tap-tap. Tap-tap. He clenches his teeth as her pen hits a desk. “Please stop.”
“Stop what?”
“That.”
She sashays closer, blocking him in. That scent. This tiny space, and she’s blocking him in.
Thwump, thwump.
Steady now.
Bang!
Something strikes his back. “Stop!” He spins, electrified. He thrusts her out of his way, her softness registering as he shoves past. She blinks up at him from the floor, beside the table of oil paints she knocked down. He hurt her. His blood pounds. Sweat cools his skin.
It was nothing. Nothing.
No, it’s something.
He’s made it something. Because he’s a fool. A broken fool.
Her red lips form an O.
“I-I-I…” William rakes a shaky hand through his hair. It’s greasy. A bit knotted. He can smell his own unwashed skin. “I-I’m sorry.” Hot and cold flashes spike through him, and the room isn’t cooperating. It’s tipping.
He bolts out the door, the sea air instantly cooling him. He stands a block away gasping for breath, hands on his knees. Everything tingles. Then he does what he always must when the darkness encroaches.
He runs.
Down the narrow, cobbled streets, out of town and through the hills, his ever-crooked gait shoots pain up his left side, and he leans into it. He pushes himself, punishing his body by sprinting the distance in a fraction of the usual time.
He’s not healed. Not even close. The battle has lodged in his soul, filling the cracks and swelling them. It goes around with him, even into small, rural art colonies. He’s left France, but France hasn’t left him, and like the shrapnel buried in his shoulder, it’s part of him.
He stumbles into the cottage and nearly throws the portrait into the fireplace, but Merryn’s gaze tunnels into him, imploring him to finish her story—to forget about his brokenness and attend to hers.
He lays his head on the table, panting. Memories are the bane of his existence. He doesn’t merely recall—he relives. William shoves the flashing images away with force, but they will not go. His brain clings to them. They are glass shards that cut his clenched fists.