Now, as the afternoon traffic bore them out of the parts of London he knew and into genteel suburbs, Aaron couldn’t escape the feeling of being trapped, carried against his will away from a duty he desperately needed to fulfill. Or was it a sickbed he needed to attend to? There, back in the part of London they’d now left in their wake, was the hidden corner of the library he’d haunted nearly every waking moment for the past fourteen months. Shakespeare and the Marrano Jews: the research that yielded nothing coherent, just tantalizing bits of information that resisted his every effort to shape them into an argument . . . and that would, in the space of even this brief absence, be cooling into unmalleable rock.
Helen Watt’s car, a spare navy-blue Volkswagen, had an unprotected feel that derived somehow from the absence of either amenities or clutter. No food wrappers, no envelopes with directions scribbled on the back. No tape or CD player, just a simple radio. When he cranked his window, the flimsy passenger-side handle had the stiffness of disuse.
“The documents,” Aaron said. “Are they primarily in Portuguese or in Hebrew?”
She tooted her horn at a sluggish sedan and completed a broad right turn before answering. “Unknown.”
“And the house where the documents are,” Aaron said. “When did you say it was—”
“1661.”
He didn’t do himself the indignity of persisting. In fact his desire to ask questions, the thickening of his pulse that had accompanied her description of the documents in her staid book-lined office, had died on the slow walk from her office to her car. A substantial walk, at such a pace. She did not use a disabled parking space, nor did she have the license plates, though he was certain she’d qualify. She soldiered along in slacks and blouse and unbuttoned coat, satchel on one shoulder. Unadorned, save the thin gold chain securing the dark-rimmed bifocals that swayed at her prominent breastbone; apparently oblivious to the wind that gripped the exposed back of Aaron’s neck. One foot, in its ordinary brown oxford, dragging, as though reluctant to follow the course she had commanded.
He had only the vaguest idea where Richmond upon Thames was—upon the Thames, he presumed—but understood he’d further erode his position with Helen by asking. So he merely watched from the window as the stores thinned through Chiswick and gave way to homes. Those shops that still cropped up here and there had turned resoundingly upscale. This part of London seemed to be built entirely of brick, in colors ranging from deep red-brown to pale orange. A row of stately houses slid past Aaron’s window, each fronted by a brick wall topped with winter-dulled moss. Pebbled drives led through the walls, inside which Aaron glimpsed ivy and climbing tree-vines, and yards paved in patterns of more moss-speckled brick. Bordering the side streets were strict lines of those bizarre English trees, pruned so the ends of their naked limbs looked like balled fists ready to take a swing at the clouded sky, should it encroach.
Helen piloted up a long, curving street lined by boutiques and small restaurants and one arty-looking movie theater; then into a maze of narrow residential streets that hugged the slope of a hill. Somewhere below, Aaron noted, obscured by ivy and the occasional tree and more brick walls, was the river.
The street where Helen finally slowed was more modest than some they’d passed, and was lined with homes—some sizable, others small—all undeniably old and all with well-tended yards enclosed in brick and ironwork. There were no pedestrians—evidently those residents who were not at work or school had found livelier attractions elsewhere. On one side of the street, incongruously, two storefronts punctuated the line of houses. One was a narrow grocery that didn’t look up to par with what Aaron had glimpsed elsewhere in the town. The other was a pub named Prospero’s, a small establishment with a faded black-and-mauve fa?ade. It looked empty, despite the lights on inside—a business, Aaron thought, that could clearly use an infusion of hip.
And you would be able to tell them how to be hip? He imagined Marisa’s bracing laughter, and it warmed him, and at the same time tightened some ratchet inside him so that he grimaced.
The wrench of the parking brake cut the silence.
Helen reached behind him and drew her cane from the backseat.
The house she led him toward was far larger than the others on the street, a fact initially obscured by the tangle of trees in the garden and the stone wall’s heavy coating of moss, which felt not like a mark of distinction, but of neglect. As Helen Watt struggled with the gate’s heavy latch, Aaron turned to survey the scene: a lifeless neighborhood, a dead-end street where Aaron had been sent on a dead-end mission in support of someone else’s work. This whole enterprise was going to be a disaster, a distraction he ought to extract himself from at the earliest convenience. He let the wash of his mood carry him as far as it would.
Trailing Helen at length through the gate, he glanced back one final time at the pub across the way. Prospero’s. How fitting. The one play of Shakespeare’s he’d never understood.
He followed her up the path, her cane leaving small depressions in the withered grass.
The building was made of faded red brick—but now that Aaron looked closely, he could see what hadn’t been obvious from the street: the chipped bricks revealed startling variegations, yellows and pale oranges coming through, patches of green moss or dark brown staining. The fa?ade, three towering stories, was mottled with age. It was clear this building was older than the venerable houses to either side—and that it had once been grand. Side walls, topped here and there, with large round pieces of ornamental stonework that looked like nothing so much as upside-down pineapples, extended from either side of the house as though opening to embrace an abundant property; but the walls were truncated at the neighbors’ fences on either side, giving them a forlorn, unrequited look.
Beneath Aaron’s feet, a path had emerged: small unmatched stones of different shapes and shades, black and brown and gray, square and round, mortared together and so smooth with age they would have given away the building’s antiquity even if it weren’t for the windows that now loomed before Aaron. What was the word for that shape? Like the spade on a deck of cards, the tall narrow windows swooped in at the top and pointed sharply upward. They were tightly divided in that crisscross diamond pattern that so frustrated the view—Aaron had been inside such historic buildings, had tried peering out through such heavily sectioned glass, only to get the feeling he was trying to see out of a prison. It was something he could never get used to in England: here, sandwiched between other houses on a residential street, sat a building so obviously old he wanted to gawk. In the United States a building like this would have been preserved as a museum. He didn’t wonder that someone wanted to turn it into an art gallery—though he wouldn’t bet a penny on its success. The whole neighborhood seemed sunk in a hundred-year sleep.
Helen banged the knocker heavily on the arched door. It was answered a moment later by an attractive blond woman dressed in stylish charcoal gray, her smooth, shiny hair in a bun and her narrow hips accented by a mauve belt.
Perhaps the street wasn’t as lifeless as he’d thought.
She shook Helen’s hand with a polite nod. “Bridgette Easton,” she said when she saw Aaron, and he extended a hand with an appreciative smile.
The building was cooler than he’d expected, and smelled of old ash. A free-standing heater ticked quietly from across the entryway, whatever heat it generated vanishing into the gallery above. Aaron caught a dim impression of the third story—a carved balcony ringing the entryway, wide doorways hinting at spacious rooms beyond.
“I’m glad you’ve come,” Bridgette said. She led them swiftly across the entrance hall, past boxed artwork and a card table bearing an open laptop, deeper into the house. “I need to leave just now, but do make yourselves comfortable.” There was something about her manner—a hungry energy beneath the upper-crust polish. She turned and bestowed on Aaron an appraising smile. He watched the two thoughts cross her face: That he was good-looking. And that he was Jewish.
He smiled at her again, this time openly flirtatious. She blushed slightly, and he felt amused and then dulled, as though he’d scored a victory that did not interest him.