The new grass was manicured, the re-graveled path leading visitors past a small tasteful plaque on one of the stone gateposts: Prospect House, the Eastons had named it. He’d missed that in the dusk on his last visit here. He had to admit, the Eastons were doing well by the place. He paused to take in the de-grimed windows, the newly cleaned stonework.
The front door was propped open. Inside, a pretty but painfully thin girl sat behind a small table, beyond which a few visitors drifted between the entryway’s brightly colored canvases.
“They’ll be back shortly,” the girl was saying to Helen when Aaron entered.
“Do you know when?” pressed Helen, leaning on her cane.
The girl’s smooth brow furrowed, the clash between her natural politeness and the need for discretion clearly painful for her. “Do you have an appointment?” she said.
“No,” said Helen, “but we’ve worked together before.”
“I see,” said the girl, looking from Helen to Aaron, and back to Helen’s cane. “Would you like to see the gallery while you wait? I can set up a chair for you wherever you like.”
“We’ll wait outside, thank you.”
He trailed Helen out of the vestibule, resisting the urge to suggest to her that they go upstairs to begin exploration without the Eastons’ permission.
Outside, by the pebbled path, there was a low stone bench beneath a tidily pruned tree. He waited for Helen to sit first, her cane wobbling as she lowered her weight.
They watched the street, where a single car was parked. Nothing moved. After several minutes, a second car trundled by. The street returned to silence.
“What?” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, what’s this?” she waved her hand, a gesture encompassing his slouched posture.
Nearby, a pigeon promenaded slowly across the lawn. It reached the edge of the grass, then flapped away abruptly.
“So no,” he said, “I don’t have a girlfriend. But I do have a problem.” He rubbed his hand hard at the top of his head, as if doing so might judder something loose. “Or maybe it’s not a problem. It depends what you think of babies.” He puffed his cheeks, then blew out air. “Impending babies.”
“Where?” she said.
He smirked at the dark pub barely visible across the street. “The usual place where they grow.”
She waited.
“Israel,” he said.
She let out a sound like some inner strut collapsing.
They watched the empty lawn.
“Go. You can’t sort this out from here.”
“She doesn’t want me.”
“Do you want her?”
“I don’t know. I mean—maybe I do, but I’ve never spent even a full day with her. And honestly, I’m not sure a kid would want”—he gave a short laugh—“this.” His gesture, following the same path as Helen’s, traced his posture head to toe.
The pub across the street was opening. The proprietor unlocked the door, flipped the sign.
“Don’t”—she bit her lip and held it. “Don’t turn your back just because it terrifies you.”
A long string of dim yellow lights flickered on behind the pub’s windows. The windows to one side blossomed suddenly with steam, as though some unseen kitchen door had swung briefly open.
“I don’t think I’m strong enough,” Aaron said.
Slowly the steam faded from the pub’s windows.
Helen was staring across the street as well. She said, “How do you think people get strong?”
A small silver car pulled up. Ian and Bridgette Easton got out—Ian first, with his blond hair and lightly lined, cheerful face, then Bridgette. A picture out of a magazine. Helen had risen and was making her way up the path when Ian saw her. His surprise turned quickly to an expression of dutiful solemnity—an overgrown schoolboy still endeavoring to prove himself worthy of a passing grade. At the sight of Helen, Bridgette’s posture tightened. She turned instinctively to find Aaron, registered his presence, then let her gaze pass him over as though he were part of the bench he sat on.
The car door snapped shut and Bridgette strode over to Ian, who had bent to hear Helen’s request. Hesitantly, Aaron joined them.
“Of course,” Ian was saying. “But Bridgette will have to be the one to answer your questions, as I’m only stopping home for a moment. I’m eager to hear what you find, of course.” He paused before continuing, apologetic. “The gallery is open to visitors. I know you’ll understand about respecting the atmosphere of the place. Should any moving of furnishings be required, I’d ask that you wait.”
“Naturally,” Helen said. With a grateful nod, Ian gestured them through the door.
Bridgette passed Aaron with a quick step. She said something inaudible to the girl at the front table, who sat up straighter in her seat—then disappeared into a doorway. Indicating with a wave that Helen and Aaron were to make themselves at home, Ian followed.
Inside the large entryway, two women were making a slow circuit of the paintings lining the walls. Glancing at the nearest canvas—an abstraction in shades of red—Helen made a small, disapproving noise, then led Aaron to the staircase, which she began laboriously to climb.
He didn’t think he could force himself to take the staircase at Helen’s pace. Hanging back to allow her to proceed unrushed, he trained his gaze on the artwork, pretending to take it in.
From a room to the left of the stairs, voices.
“All they need is access to the junk rooms and possibly one or two others,” Ian was saying.
“Yes, and to make a wreck of the day for me, and—”
Ian’s voice rose. “I can’t discuss this further now. I have to be to my meeting in fifteen minutes.” There was the briefest of pauses, as though Ian’s own words were a surprise to him. “But given how persuasively you argued for putting our resources into hosting the public, rather than prioritizing any real private space in this house, I trust you can manage to be hospitable to my former professor.”
Bridgette let out a huff of indignation. Then, without warning, she strode out the doorway, stopping short at the sight of Aaron. He forced his expression blank, but there was no denying he’d heard. For an instant, Bridgette teetered before him, as though unsure what role she wanted him to play in her drama. A startling melancholy flitted on her face. Then she swept past Aaron and disappeared through a doorway on the far side of the entry.
Helen had reached the upper gallery. Aaron followed, climbing the shallow steps as though into a thinner atmosphere, his heart accelerating. A guard of carved angels lined his ascent; he reached here and there to touch their faces.
The air on the third floor felt cool and sharp. On the balcony to Aaron’s left stood an old man staring at a painting of an enormous tilted apple, and a white-haired woman nodding her head in front of a small brown landscape. Choosing the balcony on the right, Aaron joined Helen near the end of the gallery. “Those will have been her rooms,” she whispered, pointing to a closed door bearing another discreet sign: Private Area. “The other suite is even bigger, and would have belonged to the man of the house.”
“Wait—you’ve been upstairs?”
A look of dark amusement crossed her face; but she dismissed the question with a shrug. She led him to the door, opened it, and entered. Glancing back, Aaron saw that the gallery visitors looked unperturbed, as if they assumed Helen and Aaron were part of the staff.
He followed her and shut the door behind him. Picking their way between boxes to cross the large, bright room, Helen’s cane thudding unevenly, they made their way to a second door and into the bedchamber. Across that room, then, and through a third door into the closet.
A small, wood-paneled space with a single bright mullioned window in the far wall. Aaron joined Helen there. A tangle of vines shaded the window, but through them he could see, over neighboring rooftops, the slow gray shimmer of the Thames.