That Summer: A Novel (23 page)

“Biscuit?” said Caroline, holding out the plate. The chocolate-covered biscuits had been arranged in a fan pattern.

Julia took one; her hostess didn’t. Having a mouth full of chocolate and biscuit put one at a distinct disadvantage.

Finally swallowing the gummy mess, Julia offered, “Natalie and Andrew have both been a huge help.”

Caroline set the biscuit plate back down on the tray. “Naturally, they take an interest.”

Feeling like she was steering a sinking ship, Julia said, “They came over last Saturday to help me sort through everything. And their friend Nick.”

“Nick? Oh. You must mean
Nicholas
.” Caroline sat a little straighter in her chair. “Such a lovely boy. And so modest, considering.”

“Considering?” Considering that in a pair of wire-rimmed glasses he exuded a strange sexual magnetism? Somehow Julia didn’t think that was what Caroline meant.

Caroline took a small sip of her tea. “They don’t use the title anymore—such a silly technicality—but by rights it should be his.”

Julia tilted her head, feeling like she’d lost the plot somewhere. “Title?”

“Viscount Loring.” Cousin Caroline rolled the name lovingly on her tongue. “There was an estate in Hampshire, but the National Trust has that now. Still. It’s an old, old family.” She looked coy. “Nicholas and Natalie … well, enough about that. More tea?” She lifted the gilt-rimmed pot.

Julia put a hand out over her cup. “No. Thanks.”

Nicholas and Natalie what?

Caroline set the pot down again. “Andrew has always been like a brother to him, so, of course, it was only natural.… Well.” She smiled tightly at Julia, making sure her point had been driven home. “Is there anyone special in your life?”

A long-dead artist?

And an Indian food date that probably wasn’t. Funny, Nick hadn’t said anything about being betrothed to Cousin Natalie. Julia wondered if he knew or if Cousin Caroline was just planning on bashing him over the head and marching him to the altar.

On second thought, bashing wasn’t really her style. She’d probably just slip something into the tea.

Julia didn’t know whether to be flattered or pissed off that Caroline had felt the need to warn her off.

“Right now,” said Julia, matching Caroline smile for smile, “I’m just enjoying my house. Thank you so much for the tea, Cousin Caroline; it’s been really lovely. Can I help you clean up at all?”

Herne Hill, 1849

Imogen knew that something was wrong as soon as she spotted Mr. Thorne coming down the slope from the house.

He didn’t have his easel slung over his shoulder, nor the leather satchel in which he carried his palette and paints. Instead, he was carrying a large bundle in his arms, wrapped up in brown paper. He didn’t look up as he approached, didn’t hail her and wave as he usually did. Instead, his eyes were firmly planted on the ground, his head bowed against the sunlight.

Setting her book aside, Imogen stood, raising her own hand in greeting.

“Mr. Thorne,” she said as he climbed the three steps, those well-worn three steps to the summerhouse. When he returned her greeting with nothing more than a nod, she indicated the cakes beside her. “I had thought you would be in want of refreshment after your long walk from town.”

“Thank you.” His words were as brusque and abrupt as the first time they had met. He said heavily, “You are very kind.”

“Not kind.” Imogen looked at him quizzically. They hadn’t observed any of the polite commonplaces for weeks now, and certainly not in the matter of cakes, which were a regular part of their weekly ritual. “Is there something the matter? Are your pigments not behaving as they ought?”

“Quite the contrary.” Mr. Thorne set down his parcel, with a thump, on the bench, leaning one end against the wall. Quickly, with the air of someone getting done with a bad business, he said, “I have something for you. Your portrait. It’s done.”

“Done.”
The word was like a knell. Imogen supposed she had remembered, dimly, that the purpose of his visits was the production of her portrait, but they had not, since that first sitting, discussed it. It was just part of the backdrop of their visits, like the bees droning among the roses or the one branch that kept tap, tap, tapping against the roof of the summerhouse. She hadn’t stopped to contemplate what it would mean when the portrait was done.

Done, all their conversations, all their comfortable colloquy, all wrapped up in brown paper, reduced to nothing but oil on canvas and hung on the wall of the drawing room.

She felt suddenly cold in the sunshine, even in her heavy dress.

Imogen drew in a deep breath, gathering her composure around her like a shawl. “Well, then,” she said. “May I see it?”

Mr. Thorne nodded tersely. There were lines on his face she hadn’t seen before and marks of sleeplessness beneath his eyes. His fingers fumbled on the string holding the wrappings together, and Imogen was reminded, with a pang, of the last time she had seen him so clumsy, at their first sitting, before they had known each other.

“Let me,” Imogen said, striving for normalcy, for the easiness that had, until so recently, existed between them.

Her ungloved fingers brushed Mr. Thorne’s as she reached for the string. He snatched his hand away, as though burnt. Imogen took a step back, winding her hand in the folds of her skirt, unsure of what to say or do.

“Are you—unwell?”

“No,” he said, and turned back with a will to yanking at the string. The knot on the parcel appeared to confound him; he struggled with it, his profile to Imogen, so familiar and yet suddenly so foreign, closed to her now, like a book set out of reach.

Perhaps he really was ill, ill from overwork or the heat of the long walk from town. She had never seen him moody before; abstracted, yes, but not like this, not reserved to the point of rudeness, treating her like a stranger, as though they hadn’t shared two months of conversations and confidences.

Everyone had their testy days.

“It is very warm today,” she ventured, to see if she might get some response, any response, something to break through the wall around him to the man she knew, or thought she knew.

“Yes.” Thorne fished in his pocket, abstracting a penknife, and slashed through the bindings holding the wrappings together. Imogen winced at the controlled savagery of the motion.

Mr. Thorne brushed the cut bits of string aside, pulling away the brown paper. Imogen knew better than to try to help. She stood a little bit away, watching as the wrappings fell away from her portrait.

“There,” he said, and stepped aside.

Imogen glanced uneasily at his face, but it told her nothing. He was looking, fixedly, at her portrait. Or, rather, the portrait that was meant to be her.

There was no denying that it was a beautifully executed piece of work, the colors deep and strong. Every leaf had definition; every floorboard was just as it was, down to the small knots and burls. He had caught the subdued opulence of her gown, expense and restraint all in one, the fabric rich but not too shiny, the full sleeves, the modest neck, the discreet expense of pearl earbobs and cameo broach.

The woman in front of her was buttoned and boned and stayed, her hair coiled sleekly on either side of her head, her skin smooth and pale. The world around her was bursting with life, the sunlight limning the leaves on the trees, the redbird on its branch, but where was the color in her? She had worn the dark blue dress Arthur had commanded, with its white collar and cuffs, but she had never expected to find herself as colorless as the fabric.

Was this what she had become? All around her was summer, but she was shades of winter, bark and frost.

Her chest ached with a strange pain, a fear she couldn’t quite name. What had happened to that girl in Cornwall, the one who had run barefoot along the cliffs? She was there somewhere, immured inside a porcelain shell.

“Is this really how you see me?” she said in a small voice.

This was worse than Mariana. Mariana, at least, had leaned yearningly towards the window, her body supple, her hair tumbling down over her shoulders, fierce in her longing, while this woman, this woman with Imogen’s face, was caught in a brittle stillness that was less yielding than any tower.

Perhaps that was the face she showed to the world, but Mr. Thorne? After all these weeks, she had thought he knew her better.

“I painted what I was told to paint,” he said gruffly, and Imogen felt something inside herself wither, like an autumn leaf.

“It is a very accomplished composition,” Imogen said carefully.

What was there to say? Mr. Thorne had said it all. He had painted the picture he had been paid to paint. She felt as though the slightest movement would make her crack, shattering into a thousand sharp-edged shards.

She took a deep breath. “Mr. Grantham will be very pleased.”

Mr. Thorne made a quick, instinctive movement of negation. “It’s all wrong.”

The words were deep and hoarse, wrenched from the depths of his chest.

“If I were to paint you properly,” he said, his eyes never leaving hers, “it wouldn’t be like this. I would paint you with the sea behind you and the waves crashing on the sand. I would paint you in a gown that doesn’t crackle when you move. I would paint you with your hair flowing free, not bunched and bundled. This”—he indicated his own painting with scorn—“this isn’t you at all. It doesn’t even touch the surface.”

“It is a very elegant picture,” said Imogen in a voice she didn’t recognize as her own.

Mr. Thorne shook off her praise, saying passionately, “It’s a lie, that’s what it is. If I were to paint you properly, it would be as a wood nymph or a warrior maiden or a—” He broke off. In a voice so low, she could hardly hear him, he said, “I can’t do this.”

“Paint me?” Imogen grasped at the pretense, at the possibility of extending their time together. “If you are unhappy with the painting, we can start again, try another pose, another place.…”

“No.”

That was all,
no,
as though the thought of another day with her was too much for him to bear.

“Have these past months been such a hardship?” Imogen tried to stop the hurt from leaking out, tried to keep her voice steady, but it came out anyway, corrosive and painful. “I am sorry you have been forced to endure my company for as long as you have.”

More fool she for forgetting that they were painter and subject, not, as she had allowed herself so carelessly to believe, friends. He had been passing the time with her because he had been paid to do so.

Mr. Thorne stared at her as though she had grown a second head. “How can you think— Christ.” He scrubbed his fingers through his hair, shaking his head helplessly. “I had never intended—I meant only to spare you—”

“Spare me?” His mouth was moving, forming words, but the words had no sense in them, no meaning. She straightened her back, slowly and painfully. “I do not need anyone to spare me anything.”

“To spare myself, then,” he said, and there was something in his voice that made her look at him, really look at him.

His eyes were rimmed with deep circles, bloodshot from lack of sleep. He’d missed a patch while shaving; there was a swathe of dark stubble on his chin. His eyes were wild, like a painting she had seen once, of John the Baptist in the wilderness, the eyes of a man driven past endurance.

Rapidly he said, “This portrait ought to have been finished three weeks ago. But I have let myself drag it out, week after week, stroke by stroke and leaf by leaf, all for the indulgence of being able to sit here across from you for a few hours each Monday.”

Imogen stared at him dumbly, her mind failing to grasp just what he was saying, even as a tingling began to spread across her palms, a strange sense of anticipation and elation that had nothing to do with sense.

“I can’t sleep at night for thinking of you,” Mr. Thorne said harshly. She could see his fingers digging into fists at his sides, his whole body tense. “You’ve become a fire in my blood and I can think of no way to put it out but to run as far and as fast as I can before I burn us both.”

His words ought to have evoked pity or horror, but they didn’t. Instead, Imogen was filled with a burning joy, a mad, triumphant joy that had no name and no explanation.

It was beautiful and wonderful and horrible all at once, and she didn’t want him to stop; she wanted him to keep speaking, to keep saying these things, to say them again and again until she could be sure she had heard him, that it was true.

“I can’t sit here, across from you, week by week, and pretend it’s nothing more than another sitting, just so many hands, eyes, lips conveyed from brush to canvas. It’s—I—” His shoulders sagged, like a man dealt a mortal blow. “It’s done. That’s all. It’s done and I’ll go back to town and you’ll stay here and maybe our paths will cross at the RA show and you’ll be kind enough to praise my next work and I—I—”

Imogen leaned forward, her stays constricting her breath. “Yes?”

“And maybe,” he said bitterly, “by then, I will be able to smile and nod and bow over your hand without dishonoring myself or you.”

Taking his hat, Mr. Thorne jammed it down on his head. It was a dilapidated thing, battered and shapeless, the brim sagging. The sight of it filled Imogen with an almost unbearable feeling of tenderness. She wanted to commit him to memory as he had committed her to canvas, every crease of his cheek, every wrinkle of his jacket, every gesture of his hands.

“Mr. Thorne—” she began, but he was already retreating, his hand on the rail.

“There. That’s all. I’ve said more than I intended—more than I ought. I’ll be off now before I can embarrass you further.” Mr. Thorne’s voice was bleak. “I trust you will forget I said any of this and remember me—remember me kindly.”

He was turning, leaving, his hands jammed in his pockets, his head bowed.

Beside Imogen, the plate of cakes still sat untouched on the bench. It felt like hours, days, but it had only been minutes, minutes for the world to turn upside down and everything to change. It seemed obscene that the birds should go on chirping, the sun shining, when they all ought to be frozen in their course, as frozen, as confused, as she.