The Muse (25 page)

 

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins
Publishers

....................................

XV

L
awrie lunged up the stairs, three at a time.

‘What's wrong with you?' I said. ‘He just misses her. He wants to talk about her.'

Lawrie stopped on the landing and whirled round at me. ‘Don't think he's some sort of saint,' he said.

‘I don't, Lawrie.'

Lawrie seemed to be battling with a particular thought. He looked half fearful, half furious. ‘When my dad died,' I went on, trying to sound soothing, ‘my mum used to hear his voice in the radio. Saw his face in every man she met. You've got to be patient.'

‘She was my mother.'

‘Of course.'

‘I was the one who found her. In that room down there.'

‘Oh, Lawrie. You didn't say.'

I turned to the darkness where he was pointing, and felt a preternatural repulsion, an overwhelming desire to walk in the opposite direction. But I didn't move; I didn't want him to see me scared. ‘Gerry's held together with whisky and sticking plasters,' I said. ‘You should be kind to him.'

‘And what about me?'

‘I'll be kind to you, Lawrie,' I replied, taking his hand.

WE LAY SIDE BY SIDE
on Lawrie's eiderdown, hearing Gerry shuffling beneath us, until a door closed and the house fell silent. ‘You shouldn't live here,' I said.

‘I know.' He turned on his side to face me, propping himself on his elbow. ‘But it's all I have. This place, Gerry and a painting.'

‘And me,' I said. ‘You've got me.'

Gently, he ran his hand down the side of my face. The window was still open, and I heard a blackbird, so musical and effortless, singing in a tree like it was dawn. ‘Come on, Writer. What's your favourite word?' he asked.

I could see he wanted to change the subject, so I obliged. ‘You're asking me to pick? All right.
Lodgings.
'

He laughed. ‘You had it ready – I knew you would. That's so stodgy, Odelle.'

‘Is not. It's cosy. “
My lodgings were clean and comfortable.
” You?'

‘
Cloud
.'

‘Such a cliché,' I said, inching towards him and giving him a squeeze.

We talked on – for now, mothers and step-­fathers and paintings forgotten, or pushed away at least, banishing them to the outer edges of our memories as much as we could. We talked about how beautiful the English language could be, in the right hands – how varied and nuanced and illogical.
Hamper
and
hamper
, and words like
turn
, that seemed boring at first but were deceptive in their depths. We discussed our favourite onomatopoeia:
frizz
and
sludge
and
glide
and
bumblebee
. I'd never been so happy alone with another person.

Because of the blackbird singing in the tree, we ended up drifting into a game of bird-­tennis, our intertwined hands the raised-­up net, and a kiss for each bird that we exchanged.
Plover
to
lapwing
,
honey-­creep
,
lark. Coquette
and
falcon
,
manakin
,
hawk
. His hands upon my skin,
curlew
,
oriole
, and mine upon his.
Jacamar
,
wren
. Then the birds flew away, their names turned to kisses and a silence that spelled a new world.

•

The next morning, I woke very early. Lawrie was in a deep sleep, his expression peaceful. I considered the astonishing moment he'd pushed inside me, how that was never going to happen for the first time again. I put on his shirt and woolly jumper, slid out of the bed and tiptoed along the corridor to the bathroom. Had Gerry known I'd stayed? How mortifying it would be to cross him now.

I went to the toilet and felt between my legs; a little dried blood, but the more obvious symptom was the stomach pain I could feel, slight, low-­seated, a dull ache, a sense of having been opened up and bruised. I had never even been naked with a man, had never been touched like that before; it was strange that one might feel pain over something that had been so pleasurable.

We had broken through a frontier, and I had told him, very quietly, that I loved him, and Lawrie had pressed his ear to my mouth, saying,
You might have to repeat that one, Odelle, because I'm getting on and these days I don't hear so well
. And so I said it again, slightly louder, and he kissed me in return.

I LOOKED AT MY WRISTWATCH;
five-­thirty. Below me, I could hear Gerry's snores. What a place to be, I thought; urinating in a clapped-­out Victorian toilet in deepest Surrey over a man called Gerry's head. I would not have predicted it; and I was glad of the lack of forewarning. Had I known such things were going to be promised me, I would have been too intimidated by their weirdness and they probably wouldn't have happened.

I finished, washed my hands and face and used a little soap on my upper thighs. I felt the sudden desire to tell Pamela that this had happened, to give her the gift of my gossip, to make her birthday present worth it after all.

I came out of the bathroom and was about to head back to Lawrie's room, when I hesitated. I turned to my right, looking down the long corridor to where, last night, Lawrie had pointed out the room in which he had found his mother. There would be no other time, I knew; with Lawrie awake it was unlikely he would lead an expedition down here. And for me, the curiosity was too great.

The door was slightly ajar. It was her bedroom, Sarah's bedroom; you could tell. There were still lipsticks on the dressing table, a silver powder compact in the shape of a shell; paperback novels and old magazines. Along the sill were china and glass ornaments, vases of flowers, now dried out. The curtains were open, but the sun was not yet up. The silhouettes of naked trees were crooked against a lavender sky.

I looked at the bed. Had it happened here? There was no sense of the scene, for which I was grateful. I felt deeply sorry for both these men, clearly lost without her – or confused, at least. Gerry was right – Lawrie had been so evasive about his mother. Gerry, far from being a heartless bastard, appeared to want to discuss her. It was Lawrie who wouldn't. Only now, being in the house with him and his step-­father together, could I see how deeply Lawrie had been affected by Sarah, by this second marriage, by the manner of her death.

In the corner of the room was a large wardrobe. I opened it, and a cloud of camphor hit the back of my throat. Hanging inside was a solitary pair of delicate red trousers, and I pulled them out and held them against my body. If these were Sarah's, and I assumed they were, she had been tiny. They barely cut the middle of my shins. They were made of scarlet wool, which in many places had been attacked by moth, most unfortunately at the groin. Yet you could tell that these trousers had been particularly stylish. They made me think of Quick. She'd have liked these, holey groin or not.

‘They won't fit, you know,' said a voice. ‘But I couldn't bear to throw them away.'

I jumped. At the door was Gerry; scant, sandy hair on end, large body wrapped in a deep blue dressing gown, his hairy legs and bare feet sticking out at the bottom. Embarrassed, I stammered something incomprehensible as I moved to put the trousers back. I felt terrible for thinking that Gerry had just cleared away his wife without a second thought. This place was like his little shrine. He probably visited it every morning, and I was an intruder. I was beyond mortified. I'd stayed over; I was just wearing a man's shirt and jumper. I'd had sex under his roof. Thank God Lawrie was much taller than me, in terms of my modesty, but I might as well have had the word SEX emblazoned on my forehead, I felt it was so obvious.

But Gerry seemed uninterested in the morals of his step-­son and girlfriend. Perhaps he was more modern than I gave him credit for. That, or he was too mired or hungover in his grief to care. He waved his hand as he padded in. ‘Don't worry,' he said, sitting heavily on the end of the bed. I was still holding the trousers. ‘You can have a look around. She was a mystery to me too, in many ways.'

With his glum expression and rotund stomach, Gerry reminded me of the morose Humpty Dumpty from Lewis Carroll's
Looking Glass
. And in this house, I felt like Alice – too small one minute, too large the next, being riddled and challenged in every direction I turned.

‘I'm sorry,' I said. ‘I shouldn't be in here.'

‘Don't be. Lawrie really doesn't talk about her, does he?'

‘Not much. Mr Scott, can I ask—­'

‘I'm not Scott,' said Gerry. ‘That was Sarah's maiden name.'

‘Oh.'

‘Lawrence chose to keep her name rather than mine,' Gerry said, shaking his head. ‘Still, he was sixteen by then, and you can't tell a sixteen year-­old what to do. Never really understood him.'

‘He didn't take his father's name?'

Gerry looked at me shrewdly. ‘Not a very good idea to call yourself Schloss in the school playground in the forties.'

I stood, frozen to the spot, the red trousers hanging limply in my grasp. I shook my head, unable to believe what Gerry was saying. ‘Schloss?' I repeated. ‘Lawrie's father was Schloss?'

Gerry looked up at me, interested by the energy in my voice. ‘Well, strictly speaking, yes. Sarah gave him the surname Scott from the moment he was born, but in terms of his father, it's Schloss. Her first husband was an Austrian of all things, just before the Great War.'

‘Austrian?'

Gerry looked amused. ‘You seem a little perturbed by all this. Is everything all right?'

‘Oh, I'm fine,' I said, trying to look as casual as I could, in Lawrie's oversized woollen jumper, clutching his dead mother's trousers, as if this news about Lawrie's father meant nothing to me at all.

‘When she came back to England and had Lawrie, she thought it prudent to give him her own name. Nobody trusted a German name in those days.'

‘What was her husband's first name?'

‘Harold. Poor bastard. God, when I think what happened. Sarah never talked about it, but I think perhaps she should have, now I look at Lawrence. The man is so pathological when it comes to his parents.'

I tried to recall how Lawrie had behaved, on the occasions that Reede had mentioned the name Harold Schloss. I didn't remember any particular show of emotion, or moment of recognition. But he had asked if Reede knew what had happened to him – I did remember that.

‘What happened to his father?' I asked.

Gerry bared his teeth in a grim smile, revealing long incisors. ‘He doesn't tell you much, does he? Well, it's a sensitive subject.'

‘Clearly.'

‘Perhaps you two don't have time spare for talking. I was the same, once.'

I tried to turn my blush into a weak smile, half wanting to flee, half wanting to find out from this man more than Lawrie would ever tell me. ‘He has a point, not talking about it,' Gerry said. ‘It's useless for a man to rake over things he can't even remember. Lawrie never even met the fellow.' He ran his hand over his head and fixed me with a look. ‘Hitler happened to Harold Schloss, that's what, Miss Baschin. Like he happened to us all.'

I went to speak, but Gerry rose to his feet, yellow-­nailed against the dark wood floorboards. ‘It's very early to be talking about all this,' he said. ‘I'm going for a walk to clear my head. I suggest that you go back to bed.'

 

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins
Publishers

....................................

XVI

I
returned to Lawrie's room. He stirred and opened his eyes with a smile, throwing his arms up to let me into the warm, crumpled sheets. I stood at the side of the bed. ‘What is it?' he said, the smile fading. ‘What's wrong?'

‘You're Lawrie Schloss,' I said. ‘Your father sold
Rufina and the Lion
. That's how you have the painting.'

I admit, there might have been a better way to approach the situation –
your father
this and
your father
that – talking of a dead man Lawrie had never met, at six fifteen in the morning. I think it was because I had always thought of Lawrie as fundamentally honest; had even defended him to Quick when she was raising her doubts. And I realized now, that time and again, Lawrie had evaded the question not just of his mother, but of how she might have come into possessing such an artwork.

Lawrie lowered his arms and surveyed me. ‘I'm Lawrie
Scott
,' he said. He closed his eyes. ‘You've been talking to Gerry.'

‘You lied,' I said.

He opened his eyes again, and propped himself on an elbow. ‘I didn't bloody lie. I just never told you the whole truth.'

‘But why? What does it matter who your father was?' He said nothing. ‘Lawrie, have you really sold your car?'

He rubbed his eyes, frowning as if trying to slot his thoughts into place. ‘Yes, I have really sold my car. Gerry's definitely planning to sell this house. And then what will I do?'

‘He'll never sell it. There's a room along this corridor devoted to your mother. It's even got her clothes and make-­up still inside.'

There was confusion in his eyes. ‘How d'you know about that?'

I sat down slowly on the side of the bed. ‘It's where I just bumped into Gerry.'

‘You were snooping?'

I looked away, embarrassed. ‘He told me about your mother giving you her maiden name when the war was on. When Reede mentioned Harold Schloss – why didn't you just say something?'

He fell back against his pillow. ‘It would have made things too complicated.'

‘It would have simplified them. That's how you have the painting in your possession. Provenance and all that.'

‘It might simplify things for Reede, but not for me.' He clasped his hands together into one fist. ‘Look, we never, ever talked about him, Odelle. My family doesn't
talk
about things. And if you've spent your whole life never talking about something, do you think you're suddenly going to be able to discuss it – just like that – to some stranger who's after your painting?'

‘But why—­'

‘I don't have the words for it, Odelle. I don't have the words for something that happened when I wasn't even there.'

‘But surely your mother talked about him? He was your
father
.'

‘I knew his name, that's it. I knew my mother changed hers when she came back to England. It was her and me for sixteen years, and then Gerry came along. I wasn't going to claim a dead man just to satisfy Edmund Reede's little genealogy.'

‘All right. I'm sorry.'

‘There's nothing to be sorry for.'

‘I just . . .' I thought of Quick. ‘I'm just trying to make sense of the painting, that's all.'

He sat up. ‘My mother never told me how she got that painting, Odelle. I wasn't lying. My only guess is, my father never managed to get it to this Peggy Guggenheim – and then in the chaos that followed leaving Spain, my mother took it with her and brought it to England.'

‘What happened to their marriage, if he was in Paris and she was in England?'

Lawrie sighed. ‘I don't know. She came to London; he stayed there. And then the Germans occupied Paris. My mother never even wore a wedding ring before Gerry.'

‘And you never asked her about it?'

‘I may have asked,' he said, his voice tight. ‘She didn't like it, but she told me he died in the war being brave, and that now it was just the two of us. I heard that line at three years old, at ten, at thirteen – and you hear something like that over and over again, it just becomes the way things are.'

‘Perhaps she wanted to spare you the grief of it,' I said.

Lawrie looked grim. ‘I don't think my mother ever really thought about sparing me anything. My guess is, either he walked out and chose not to have contact with her, or she was the one who severed ties. It was a nice idea, her and me, against the world, but it got a little claustrophobic. She was very over-­protective. Said I was her second chance.'

‘And that's all she said?'

‘You don't know what she was like. It just wasn't something you talked about to her. And lots of ­people had missing dads, you know. It was after the war, lots of widows. You don't pick at someone else's grief.'

‘No, of course.' I knew it was time for me to stop. I wanted to ask if Sarah had ever talked to him about Olive; how she might fit into all this. As I'd discussed with Cynth, a young woman with that surname could easily be Harold Schloss's daughter – but Lawrie had never mentioned a sister, however much older than him she would have been. And if Lawrie knew as little about Harold as he was claiming to, this hardly came as a surprise. I looked at him, trying to see echoes in his face of Quick's. I couldn't imagine how I'd ever broach the subject that he and Marjorie Quick were possibly related. I wanted Quick to do it for me.

Lawrie sighed. ‘I should have told you about it. But things were up and down between you and me, and it wasn't on my mind. I'm sorry you had to bump into Gerry. I hope he was wearing his dressing gown, at least.'

‘Yes.'

‘Small mercies.'

‘Can I get in?'

He lifted up the blankets and I snuggled under. We lay in silence for a while, and I wondered if Lawrie would ever have told me about his father, if I hadn't pushed it. When it came to our blossoming relationship, I had to consider whether it mattered, either way. Lawrie was still Lawrie to me, surely, regardless of who his father was. But it did sting a little, the amount I didn't know about him, what he'd chosen to hold back. I suppose I was holding things back, too. ‘We sat looking at Harold's writing on the train,' I murmured into his shoulder.

‘I know.'

‘Did you feel anything, looking at it?'

‘Not in the way you probably want me to. I was a little sad, I suppose. The way life works out.'

‘Yes,' I said, and thought again of Marjorie Quick. ‘You never quite know how it's going to end.'