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.’
XVII