Chapter 16 Clara
CHAPTER 16? CLARA
London, England
“Yes, hello,” I said, and held out my free right hand while Wynnie clung to my left. The man held my gloved hand for a moment, our gazes locking. With his curly dark hair and thick eyebrows low over the deepest brown eyes, he appeared accessible and friendly, someone you’d trust. He was clean-shaven, with a slight furrow between his eyes as if perpetually curious.
So no, he did not look like Finneas Andrews, not one bit; he looked more like Clark Gable cast as a British library owner. “And you must be Mr. Jameson,” I said.
As if he had just remembered he still held my hand, he dropped it quickly. “Yes, yes, call me Charlie, and come in, then!” He opened the door wider.
Behind him gaped a foyer with a creamy marble floor and golden-oak paneled walls, a space larger than my entire kitchen and living room combined. In the center, an urn of flowers spilled pink and cream petals onto a circular mahogany table, and on the walls hung gilt frames around oil portraits of men and women I assumed were relations. So many portraits. A curved stairway wound upward against the wall with a gleaming wooden banister, a lion carved into its main balustrade. The only time I’d ever seen anything like this was in movies.
This was quiet grandeur.
Was it possible Mother left us for wealth and surety, for gilt frames and winding staircases and handsome men with titles like Lord ?
Wynnie and I entered and shed our coats, which Charlie took in his arms. “Come,” he said. “Let’s get you a cuppa. It’s a pea-souper out there.”
Wynnie’s eyes went wide, chandelier light glinting on the lens of her glasses. “I thought people weren’t allowed to live in museums.”
Charlie’s laughter boomed through the foyer. “It’s not a museum. This is a home.”
Wynnie set her shoulders back. “Your home?”
“My parents’. Yes.”
“Oh, wow.” Then she placed her hand over her mouth as if she’d already said or done the wrong thing.
“Come see the museum’s artifacts,” he said with a teasing lilt to his voice, making Wynnie giggle as we followed him through a curved entryway that led to a drawing room on the right of the hallway. Tall windows allowed light between the blue damask curtains, the fog beyond creating a sense of time and place unmoored. In a brick fireplace big enough for Wynnie to walk into, a fire crackled and spit sparks up the chimney. Flames charred the brick, and a pile of ash lay gray and high like dirty snow beneath the logs. The mantel was carved of oak, and above it hung a portrait of an older man sitting regal in a large chair.
A tripping feeling from my heart pressed against the pale-blue cashmere sweater I’d bought just for this trip. It would be like me to come this far and then pass out in front of the handsome British man with my mother’s papers.
“Make yourselves comfortable,” Charlie said. “I’ll hang your coats and have Moira bring tea.”
“Thank you so much,” I said. “We”—I touched Wynnie’s shoulder—“are so grateful.” I paused, for although I was itching to get my hands on the satchel, to see the object I’d been wondering about for twenty-five years, I also wanted to pause in this warm home. “What a respite this home feels like after the travel.”
“I’m glad that you could both come. You must need warming up, as I’m sure it’s been a long journey.”
He walked out, presumably for our tea, and Wynnie and I sat on the emerald-green velvet couch. She snuggled next to me. Outside, the bustling St. James’s Park was shrouded in fog, the bare trees soft-edged and the iron benches more like ideas than objects.
Wynnie and I looked at each other and raised our eyebrows in an unspoken Can you believe this? just as a woman bustled in carrying a silver tray with dainty porcelain teacups edged in gold, a teapot hidden beneath a quilted green cozy, and a plate of creamy scones. Little silver bowls with clotted cream and raspberry jam edged the tray. And then finally a pitcher with milk so frothy I wondered if she’d whipped it.
“Hallo!” she said with such eagerness I thought of a puppy romping around the room. She set the tray down and grinned. “How was your journey? Are you tired? Do you need anything else? Do you like cream and sugar with your tea or just plain? You are both so darling.”
She did not take a breath between questions. “Our journey was long and beautiful. We aren’t so tired… yet. And we both love cream,” I told her with a gentle smile.
“And sugar,” Wynnie said.
Moira moved to pour the tea and I held up my hand. “We can do it. Please don’t bother.”
She lifted her face to mine. Her cheeks ruddy and her eyes a dark brown, the same color as her hair, which was pulled back into a lace cap. A young woman, maybe in her late twenties. Her uniform was ironed so precisely that I imagined her each morning pressing it in her room, wanting to impress her employer. She smiled and hustled out.
I poured my tea, added cream and sugar, and handed Wynnie a scone on a fragile china plate. “Be careful,” I said.
She took a bite and groaned in exaggerated style. “Oh, Mama, this is the best cookie I’ve ever eaten.”
“It’s called a scone,” I said. “And you’ll love it even more with that clotted cream on it.”
She scooped a large dollop onto the scone and then with a full mouth said, “Can’t I have tea?”
“I’m afraid the caffeine might make you feel funny. You’ve never had it.”
She was content with her snack and leaned against me before pointing up. “I think that’s the other Mr. Jameson, the one who died,” she whispered.
I looked to the portrait of a man who could be Charlie if he were older, sitting in an ornate wooden chair. A brown-and-white-speckled spaniel sat next to him, and the man’s hand rested on the dog’s head. A small smile played on his lips, and if I wanted, I could imagine the man saying “Hallo” in a booming voice.
“How many people do you think live here?” Wynnie asked me.
“Just one now,” Charlie said as he returned to the room. “My mum. And not very often at that.”
The satchel dangled from his right hand, and he set it on the coffee-colored lacquer table, shoving aside large books of maps and art.
Here was the thing with an object that had held a mythical quality for all your life: it was just an object when it all came down to it. A beat-up leather case with an eagle-shaped brass buckle. It didn’t shimmer, nor did a golden light rise from its center whispering, Here are all the answers you’ve been seeking.
Wynnie stood up and walked to the coffee table. She placed her hand on the satchel and then knelt before it. “It’s real,” she said.
“Yes,” Charlie said, breaking the reverie. “It’s very real.”
Wynnie looked at me over her shoulder. “Mama, may I open it?”
I nodded.
Wynnie undid the buckle and then took a breath and lifted the flap, let it drop back. There was the green silk lining and there was the pile of papers inside. No doubt—this was the satchel that Mother had carried out the back door of our home twenty-five years ago. The satchel she’d taken into the boat in the middle of the night. This was the case that literary enthusiasts were seeking.
“Mama,” she said, “I’m afraid to touch the papers.”
I patted the couch next to me. “Sit. I’ll get them.”
I lifted the satchel carefully, bringing it to my lap and peeking inside to see the sealed envelope Charlie had described to me on the phone. My breath caught just seeing my name in the cursive script I’d know anywhere.
I took the envelope and slid it into my purse, separating it from the rest of the papers. I mustered all my willpower not to rip it open, but I needed to read my mother’s letter in private.
I slipped out the papers and put the case aside to set the pile on my lap. It was three inches thick, with various sorts of paper, as if collected over time and with imagination. On the top sat a piece of paper with one sentence handwritten in cursive, a sentence that would need to be translated once I made my way through the makeshift dictionary.
My fingers tingled with the memory of my mother’s oak writing desk with the dark-green blotter, a black Remington typewriter, and scattered papers with words I could not read. Cigarette butts in a glass tray, a bird’s nest and assorted feathers, seashells, and cracked pods spilling their seedy contents.
I shivered.
“Are you cold?” Charlie asked.
“I’m fine,” I told him, shaking off the image of this language on a different desk in another room.
“She always says that,” Wynnie said, and then imitated my voice nearly perfectly: “?‘I’m fine.’?”
Charlie laughed and walked to the fireplace, dropped in another log, and stoked it with an iron poker. “Sounds like your mum might be British. We are always all right, thank you very much for asking.”
The tense atmosphere in the room broke, and I told Charlie: “Southerners and Brits aren’t so different in that way.” I placed the papers back inside the bag and snapped the buckle shut. “May I see where you found this? I have so many questions.”
“So do I,” he said. “And sadly, I don’t think I have very many answers. This is as mysterious to me as it is to you, I am quite sure.”
“You’ve never seen this?” I patted the satchel. “Before you called me?”
“No, never.”
We rose and followed Charlie down the oak-paneled hallway, the aroma of damp wool and lemon polish around us.
As soon as Charlie opened the thick wooden door with the egg-shaped brass knob, the library encircled us with books. The lights of a glowing wooden chandelier sent long shadows across the desk, the shelves, and the gold-framed maps hanging on the edges of the bookshelves. I’d assumed, wrongly, that libraries like this existed only in castles or universities.
“Wow,” Wynnie said, and ran into the middle of the room. “Look at this! I could live in here.”
“My father fairly well did,” Charlie told her.
I stood, silent, and tried to imagine my mother in here. Had she once stood in this library, handed over her papers to the man whose oil portrait hung above a fireplace in the drawing room?
“Where did you find it?” I asked.
Charlie walked to the left bank of shelves and then squatted down to rest his hand on top of a set of large wooden boxes. “Here, above the map storage.”
“How did you even notice?” I swept my hand around the room. “There are thousands of books in here. Boxes and leather and—”
“Nothing was ever out of place in my father’s library, and this was.” He walked to the lectern. “Whatever is placed here is something he is studying or reading. Nothing haphazard, nothing without thought.”
Wynnie walked to join him and stood on her tiptoes to gaze at the map. “It’s of Cumbria.” She squinted through her glasses. “Year fourteen twenty-three.” Wynnie looked at me, and I read her mind as if she’d said it out loud—Finneas on the ship told us, There’s a play in Cumbria based on that book.
I shook my head no. The room now hummed with hints. This family was tied to my mother, that much was obvious, and if Charlie Jameson was hiding anything, I didn’t want to push him away. Careful, slow , I thought.
Wynnie made her way around the room. I could see that there was nothing out of sorts in this room. Yes, a satchel on a bottom shelf would be noticed.
Wynnie pointed at an oil painting over the fireplace. “Who is that beautiful lady?”
“My mum. Philippa.”
“She is beautiful,” I said.
“Yes. That’s her wedding portrait,” he told us.
I stepped closer. The portrait displayed a young woman standing in a garden surrounded by roses, an arbor of climbing jasmine arched over where she sat. Her blond hair was high in a chignon and a multistrand pearl necklace adorned her neck. The dress shimmered bright green, cinched at the waist with skirts that blended into the garden. “She likes gardens, I assume?”
He laughed. “Very good deduction. Yes, she is a garden in many ways. That’s where she is now—at our country house, where she spends her days in the gardens, or, now in December, in the greenhouse.”
“Country house?” Wynnie asked. “It sounds so fancy.”
“It is,” I said to her.
I swear Charlie blushed. “Not as fancy as you imagine. It’s been in her family for over a hundred years.”
I nodded. “Does she know about this? About my mother’s satchel?”
“No. The letter said to tell only you.”
“But maybe she’ll know something,” I said, feeling a surge of hope. “Maybe she knows where your father got this, where—”
“She won’t know.”
“Would you mind asking her?” Frustration bubbled, and I assumed he heard it in my voice.
“Listen,” Charlie said with a gentle tone, “she just lost her husband of many years. She’s in mourning. This library was my father’s. No one else came in here unless invited, so my mum would have no idea why the papers of a woman who disappeared twenty-five years ago would be here.”
Wynnie came to my side then, sensing the change in his tone. She took my hand.
“I understand,” I said.
“Anything I know about your mother is something I’ve learned in the last weeks by reading articles and her biography. I don’t know why her papers are here. I wish I could help; I really do.” He paused. “Where are you staying?”
“In Covent,” I said, and told him the address.
“But we’re going to the Victoria and Albert Museum today!” Wynnie told him. “Twelve and a half acres and forty-five galleries.” She paused dramatically. “And a library even bigger than this one. Over seven hundred thousand books. Can you believe it? Seven hundred thousand.”
Charlie laughed, his face again relaxing. “How do you know such things?”
Wynnie tilted her head. “I read.”
“Of course you do.”
I squeezed Wynnie’s hand and told Charlie: “She notices everything. Every. Thing. And then remembers it.”
“Oh, to have that skill.”
“I think we should be going. We don’t want to be a bother, and we have plans for the museum.”
He smiled and motioned for us to leave the library, and we walked out together. He retrieved our coats and hats from hooks in a small room to the right of the front door. We were buttoned and zipped when Charlie said, “You know how to find me if you need me.”
He opened the door, and we were met with a bank of fog, seeing only about ten feet in front of us. “Find you?” I asked. “How do you find anyone or anything in this?”
He held out his hand and wiped his fingers through the misty air. “It’s a thick one, but it will pass. Always does.”
Wynnie coughed and placed her hand on her throat. “Does it always burn?”
I bent down and buttoned her jacket to the top, bundled her scarf tighter. “It burns?”
“In my throat,” she said.
“It’s the sulfur,” he said. “Sometimes people are sensitive to it. It’s normal.”
“It’s not normal for Wynnie,” I said.
“It’s asthma,” Wynnie said. “I have asthma.”
“It’s probably best you stay inside as much as possible during the next day or so,” he said. He moved to close the front door and then paused. “Let me know what you think when you read everything? Will you?”
“I will. And please let me know if you learn anything else.”
“Yes. You know where I am if you need anything, anything at all.” His look seemed to convey an understanding that somehow our parents were connected and yet neither of us knew how.
He shut the door gently. He’d done all that my mother’s letter had requested—but I wanted more.