That Summer: A Novel Read online

  Julia stood in the doorway, feeling decidedly superfluous. Was it really necessary for them to come all the way to her doorstep to have this conversation? Or to make her watch? Her coffee was getting cold and her greasy hair was making her head itch. She repressed the ignoble urge to slam the door on them and go in search of more coffee.

  “Would you like to come in?” she said ungraciously.

  Natalie flashed her a quick, apologetic smile. “This is our cousin Julia,” she said to the blond man.

  Julia held out a hand. “Current owner of the old family homestead,” she said. Just in case anyone was wondering.

  The man ignored her outstretched hand. “You’re American.”

  Julia let her hand drop. “My passport agrees with you,” she said pleasantly.

  “Julia grew up in the States,” said Natalie apologetically.

  “New York,” added Julia entirely unapologetically. Let him put that in his pipe and smoke it. The shade of Helen, the ever gracious, prompted Julia to add, “You’re welcome to stand on the doorstep if you like, but there is coffee in the kitchen.”

  “Did I hear someone offering a coffee?” Another man bounded up the stairs. He was more casually dressed than the others, in jeans, sneakers, and a striped rugby shirt. His hair was the color of an old penny. “Sorry I took so long. I’ve parked somewhere in the Outer Hebrides.” He turned to Julia. “You must be Cousin Julia. I’m Andrew, Natalie’s brother.”

  Did one say nice to meet you to someone one might have played with as a child?

  “Good to see you again,” she said instead, and Andrew smiled at her, a broad, open smile. She could see the resemblance to Natalie, now that she was looking for it, but on Andrew the features had been rounded out by the proper amount of poundage, not honed to razor thinness.

  Julia turned to the blond man, who hadn’t bothered to introduce himself. “And you are?”

  Natalie jumped in. “This is Nicholas. Nicholas Dorrington.” The last name did sound vaguely familiar, but Julia couldn’t tell whether that was because she’d actually heard it somewhere or because Natalie said it as though she was meant to know who he was. “He knows everything there is to know about antiques.”

  Nicholas the Wonder Man pooh-poohed Natalie’s praise. “Hardly.” Somehow, the supposedly modest comment sounded more arrogant than any amount of puffery. “I have a shop, that’s all.”

  “A gallery,” corrected Natalie, for Julia’s benefit. “In Notting Hill.”

  It just got better and better. “Are you a cousin, too?” Julia asked him.

  She seemed to have acquired a superfluity of them recently.

  “Oh, no,” said Natalie quickly.

  “We went to school together,” put in Andrew. “Shared a room for four long years.” The two men grimaced at each other in what Julia assumed was a male expression of affection.

  “The smell of your socks nearly drove me out,” said Nicholas.

  “My socks? Your rugby kit.” This was clearly an old argument. Andrew was grinning broadly. He slung an arm around the other man’s shoulders. “Don’t mind him, Cousin Julia. His pong is worse than his bite.”

  “I don’t pong,” protested Nicholas.

  “Not now you don’t,” said Natalie archly. “But wait until we have you sorting a few cubic meters of rubbish.”

  “We”? What “we”? This was Julia’s house, not anyone else’s. Not at the moment, anyway.

  “There’s no need for anyone to sort rubbish, cubic or otherwise,” Julia said with a stiff smile. “If you’d like some coffee…”

  “Don’t be silly,” said Natalie indulgently, brushing past her into the hallway. “We’re here to help.” To Nicholas, she said, “You can’t imagine what’s piled up. The family has been here since the dawn of time.”

  “Or about 1800,” murmured Andrew. Julia decided she liked Andrew. She liked him even more when he said, “What can we do?”

  “Yes, let’s get on with it,” said Nicholas, detaching himself from Natalie’s determined attempt to give him a tour of the highlights of the family estate. “I have a lunch to get to at one.”

  Julia didn’t miss the way Natalie’s face fell.

  She was tempted to consign both Nicholas and Natalie to the basement and the hard labor of carting out ancient electronics and unidentified pieces of rusty something-or-other. After all, weren’t old irons considered antiques and collectibles these days?

  That would be petty. And, besides, it looked like Nicholas was just as much a victim of Natalie’s good intentions as Julia was. He wanted to be here about as much as she wanted him here. Julia swallowed her pride and summoned up her better self.

  “There are a number of sideboards and cupboards in the dining room I haven’t gone through yet,” she said briskly. She turned to Nicholas. “Would you mind going through and sorting out the good stuff from the mediocre stuff? I can tell Sèvres from Woolworth, but that’s about it.”

  “I live to serve,” murmured Nicholas Dorrington.

  Yep, and she was Richard III. Julia ignored him and turned to her cousin. “Nat—”

  “I can help Nicholas,” Natalie volunteered. Julia felt an unwilling pang of sympathy for her. That kind of crush was so painful. Both to experience and to observe.

  “No need,” said Nicholas, and Natalie’s happy mask dropped for a moment. Julia couldn’t tell whether Nicholas was being brutally oblivious or just brutal. “It shouldn’t take me long.”

  Implication being that there was nothing there worth spending time on. Charming.

  Julia turned her back on Nicholas and concentrated on being extra-nice to Natalie. She didn’t believe in kicking the wounded. “Would you mind taking the desk in the conservatory? There are some family papers and photos in there.”

  “What about me?” asked Andrew, presenting himself gamely for duty.

  For the first time, Julia’s stiff social smile relaxed into something genuine. “I’ve been trying to go through the bedrooms upstairs. Want to tackle one of those for me?”

  “Happily,” said Andrew gallantly.

  “I’m off to the conservatory, then!” Natalie said loudly. Just in case Nicholas wanted to know where to find her, Julia surmised. Natalie looked archly over her shoulder at Nicholas. “I’ll call you if I find anything interesting.”

  Nicholas made an uncouth snorting sound. “I wouldn’t expect to find any treasures.”

  Ouch. Julia might have said the same herself, but it was quite another thing to have this Nicholas person do it.

  “You never know,” Julia said tartly. She dredged up Natalie’s phrase from the weekend before. “There might be a Rubens hidden away in here.”

  And with that Julia marched away upstairs, the remains of her coffee grimly clutched in one hand. Screw him. It would serve him right if they did find a Rubens.

  Hell, she’d settle for a Rembrandt.

  SEVEN

  London, 1849

  “You mustn’t expect to find any treasures,” Arthur told her as their hired hack pulled up as near to the National Gallery as it could manage. “Sir Martin says it’s a sorry lot this year.”

  Imogen pulled her gloves up on her wrists. “I know,” she said, with a forced smile. “He says that every year.”

  Arthur was terribly proud of his acquaintance with Sir Martin Shee, the president of the Royal Academy, although the acquaintance was little more than an exchange of nods and a vague recollection of their names.

  It was through the good offices of Sir Martin that Arthur had acquired his tickets to the Private Viewing of the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition. Arthur and, it seemed, half of London. The area around Trafalgar Square was mobbed with the carriages of the fashionable, the already-soot-stained stone of the National Gallery half-eclipsed by the tall hats of the gentlemen and the wide skirts of the ladies as they made their way up the stairs to the East Gallery, pausing to hail acquaintances, speaking of this week’s on dits and last week’s scandal.

&
nbsp; Arthur stepped out first, handing out first Imogen, then Evie, wide-eyed and thrilled at being included in this opulent scene, peopled by so many of society’s favorites whose names appeared in the illustrated papers.

  The Granthams weren’t part of that world, but it tickled Arthur to pretend to be, for this one day a year. There was something rather pitiable about his gratification at the connection.

  But, then, what did that make her? If Arthur was a hanger-on to Sir Martin, she was little more than an extension of Arthur. It was a distinctly lowering thought.

  There was no one in the crowd whom Imogen recognized, except for the familiar, rail-thin figure of John Ruskin in his blue coat, engaged in conversation with two men whom Imogen imagined to be critics from the cuts of their coats and the rather dilapidated quality of their hats. The Ruskins had once lived rather near the Granthams at Herne Hill, and Arthur had made John free of his collections. They still dined together, once or twice a year.

  “How grand,” breathed Evie, her eyes on the gowns, the hats, the carriages with crests.

  “Wait until you see the art, my dear,” said Arthur, shooing his daughter towards the wide stairs. If there was just a hint of reproof, Evie didn’t seem to notice.

  As he handed Imogen a copy of the exhibition booklet he leaned a little forward to murmur in her ear, “You were right, my dear.”

  Imogen looked at him in surprise, the ribbon of her fashionable new bonnet teasing the corner of her eye.

  “About Evie.” Imogen’s husband sighed a sigh that went deep down past the buttons of his waistcoat. “I have been selfish in keeping her so much at home.”

  He showed their tickets to the man at the door.

  “Perhaps not so much selfish,” said Imogen guardedly, “as protective. Who would not be so?”

  Arthur pressed her hand gently and then released it. “I must attend to your counsel more often.”

  Imogen looked quizzically at her husband. “It was only what anyone so close to her would see.”

  They were through the doors now, surging along with the tide of humanity into the first of the exhibition rooms.

  “Perhaps,” said Arthur, smiling whimsically. “But not her old father. Ah, Evie! What have you found there?”

  Using his walking stick to part the crowd, he stepped forward to take Evie’s arm before she could disappear entirely into the maelstrom of humanity. Imogen followed along more slowly, hating herself for the small pleasure Arthur’s words brought her. Again and again, they had played this same farce. She had told herself, years ago, that she had given up seeking Arthur’s good opinion, that she had given up on any hope of true companionship. And then, out of nowhere, he would make some small overture, and for the space of those few minutes she would be sixteen again, sixteen and desperately yearning for his affection and his approval.

  She despised herself for her own weakness, especially now that she knew Arthur for what he was, not the prince of her imaginings but a limited man of limited imagination and small ambition.

  But that was churlish. Imogen watched Arthur’s back as he took his daughter’s arm, directing her attention to the high-piled paintings on the wall, stacked one on top of the other, hung so close their frames brushed. Whatever his flaws, Arthur had a genuine appreciation for beauty, even if his first impulse was to purchase it and then lock it away.

  As he had Imogen.

  She smiled to herself, a little wryly, and took a firmer grip on her exhibition catalog. Would she really have been better off otherwise? It was a game she played with herself from time to time, wondering what would have happened had she heeded her father’s advice and refused Arthur’s offer for her hand. She did not know that she would have been any happier as a pensioner in her uncle’s home than she was at Herne Hill. Would she have become the perpetual poor relation, like Jane Cooper, alert to any petty change in status, constantly jockeying for place and position?

  Perhaps. Or perhaps Imogen might have formed a genuine attachment, an attachment to someone who would speak to her without that gentle edge of reproof in his voice, who would admire her for something other than her fine skin, who would treat her as a person and not as a figurine to be set in a glass case and shielded from the world and her own impulses. There were times when she wanted to rail at Arthur for stealing her away from all that, for stealing her youth, made all the worse by the fact that she knew that he believed he had not so much stolen as saved her and that she ought to be grateful—perpetually, grovelingly grateful—for all that he had so generously conferred upon her: collars of gold that clutched at her throat, rich dresses that pinched her waist, opulent meals that caught in her throat, a surfeit of luxury and no air to breathe.

  It was hot and close in the exhibition rooms, the ladies’ skirts belling out across the floor, the people pressing in around her like the endless parade of seasons from the window of her room in Herne Hill.

  Spring and summer and fall and winter, spring and summer and fall and winter …

  Imogen pressed her lips tightly shut and resolutely took hold of her exhibition catalog. There were pictures to be viewed. Compressing her broad skirts, she managed to navigate a channel around a group of ladies who had taken refuge on the chairs provided in the center of the room. Between the ladies’ extravagant bonnets and the gentlemen’s high hats it was impossible to pick out Evie or Arthur, so Imogen wiggled her way closer to the wall instead, opening her exhibition catalog, the paper pages sewn together with string.

  For now, for the next hour, she was free, entirely by herself amid the throng.

  In the East Room, she was promised The Real Scenery of the Bride of Lammermuir, by J. Hall; a view of the Carnaervon Hills by another artist of whom Imogen hadn’t heard; Henrietta Maria in Distress, by the unfortunately named Mr. Egg; and a series of portraits of various worthy but largely unattractive souls.

  Imogen decided to take her chances with the Middle Room. The Return of the Prodigal … Oh, dear, not another one. A Scene from the Lady of the Lake. Not bad, but a little overdone. Imogen’s eye was caught briefly by a Lorenzo and Isabella, by a Mr. Millais. The bright colors and medieval raiment pleased Imogen, but why was Isabella’s brother sticking out his leg at that odd angle? It looked most uncomfortable.

  She was about to attempt the Octagon Room when her attention was caught by the painting next to Lorenzo and Isabella. It had been hung on one of the coveted places on the line; as opposed to the paintings stuck up by the ceiling or down by one’s knees, it was right at eye level. Which meant that Imogen had an excellent view of her own sewing box.

  It was quite definitely her sewing box. There was the corner of a book, sticking out of one side where she ought to have kept embroidery threads instead, and the chip on one corner, where she had accidentally knocked it over that time.

  As Imogen examined the painting in growing indignation, she realized that it wasn’t just her sewing box that had been appropriated for display. There was Arthur’s chalice … his triptych … her father’s Book of Hours. All around her, the crowd eddied, gossiping, considering, judging, but Imogen stood stock still, transfixed at the indicia of her private life impaled on canvas like a butterfly on a naturalist’s screen, hung up at the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition for all to see.

  The subject was a woman, a woman standing by a window—the stained-glass window from Arthur’s study, a detached part of Imogen’s mind noted—her body posed in such a way as to convey yearning and longing. One hand reached towards the glass, almost, but not quite, touching it.

  The pain in her face, the balked desire, took Imogen’s breath away.

  How many times had she stood by the window, in just such a pose, waiting, yearning, for something, something, something to happen, something to change, watching the raindrops drip, watching the leaves blow, watching the seasons change around her? And there, there was her own sewing box by the woman’s feet, Imogen’s own Book of Hours open on the table in front of her. Imogen sucked in a deep, hard br
eath, fighting against the pressure of her stays, fighting for composure, trying to fight the conviction that someone had snuck into her most private places in the middle of the night and looted not just Arthur’s treasures but also her own soul, plastering it onto canvas for all to see.

  No. That was ridiculous. It was a model in the painting, her dress a costume, a re-creation of a medieval gown, long and flowing, clinging to the contours of her form in a way that was causing several gentlemen to elbow one another appreciatively. The woman didn’t even look like Imogen. Any similarities were purely superficial. Her hair was several shades lighter than Imogen’s and unmistakably red, her features less pronounced, her mouth and nose smaller.

  Mariana, read the small plaque embedded in the frame.

  The exhibition catalog dangled almost forgotten from Imogen’s hand. She opened it, hastily leafing through, her fingers clumsy in their gloves, the paper tearing at her touch.

  Mariana in the Moated Grange, read the full title. And there, beside it, the artist’s name.

  Pale eyes, watching her across Arthur’s drawing room. Knowing eyes, seeing too much. Imogen felt herself tingling with a powerful wave of anger and indignation, that this man, this man Arthur had invited into his home, had made himself so bold—had dared—

  She ought to have known who it was, even before she saw the name. But there it was, in black and white in the exhibition catalog: Gavin Thorne.

  Herne Hill, 2009

  Julia left Andrew in one of the smaller back bedrooms, merrily tossing twenty-year-old bank statements and obsolete grocery bills into what he referred to as “the bonfire pile.”

  “We’ll have a jolly one,” he said, with a pyromaniac gleam in his eye.

  Julia left him to it and went to tackle the room next door. She would have killed for another cup of coffee, but Natalie and Nicholas were downstairs and she had no particular desire to encounter either of them. Of course, it was her own fault; she’d forgotten Natalie’s offer of housecleaning help. Or, if she’d remembered it, she’d assumed that it was one of those polite nothings, like let’s get together soon! when you run into an old acquaintance in the street, neither of you with the slightest intention of ever following up.