Pale Joe was proud of his father: he was an important man in government and political circles, and a dedicated collector, too. Many a time when I was visiting the attic room and his family were out, Pale Joe would invite me to explore the grand house overlooking Lincoln’s Inn Fields. And what a place of wonders it was! His father had travelled the world and brought back all manner of antiquities: a tiger stood beside an Egyptian sarcophagus, which lay beneath a bronze mask rescued from Pompeii, which sneered beside an assortment of miniature Japanese sculptures. There were ancient Greek friezes and Italian Renaissance paintings, too, and a number of Turners and Hogarths – even a collection of medieval manuscripts including a copy of The Canterbury Tales thought to predate that in the Earl of Ellesmere’s library. Occasionally, when his father was hosting a great man of science or art, Pale Joe and I would sneak downstairs to listen at the door to the lecture being given.
The house had been remodelled to accommodate long corridors that Pale Joe called ‘the galleries’, supported by columns and arches between which the enormous walls were covered with framed artwork and shelves filled with treasures. Sometimes over the years, when Pale Joe and I were having too much fun to countenance my leaving to complete my day’s work, he would bid me to sneak quietly down into the house and find a small curiosity that I could pocket and present to Mrs Mack as my picking for the day. One might imagine that I felt some guilt over the thievery of such rare and precious artefacts, but as Pale Joe pointed out, many of them had been stolen already from their original possessors, long before I helped them on their way.
I ache to know what happened to Pale Joe. Did he marry the lady to whom he alluded that night in his attic when he spoke of unrequited love? Did he find a way to win her heart and make her see that she would find no kinder man than he? I would give anything to know. I would also like to learn what he became; into which avenue he funnelled his great energy, interest and care. For Pale Joe was proud of his father, but he worried about filling the big man’s shoes. Make no mistake: Pale Joe let me steal from his father’s collection in part because he wanted me to stay longer with him, and in part because he had a rather modern disdain for the accumulation of possessions and wealth; but there was another reason, too. Pale Joe allowed me to pinch small items from his father’s shelves for the same reason that he refused to use, when young, his father’s name: it pleased him to chip away a little at the statue’s feet.
Pale Joe, Ada, Juliet, Tip … Mrs Mack used to have a lot to say about one’s birds coming home to roost, and she was not talking of chickens or curses. There was a man who used to turn up regularly to buy pigeons from the bird and cage shop downstairs at Little White Lion Street. He ran a messenger service: his birds were sent afar and then dispatched, when necessary, with an urgent note, for a pigeon will always fly home. When Mrs Mack talked about birds returning to roost, she meant that if one sends enough opportunities out into the world, eventually they come back.
And so. My birds are coming home to roost, and I feel myself being drawn inexorably towards the nexus of my story. It all happens so quickly from here.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Summer, 2017
Elodie’s room at The Swan was on the first floor at the far end of the hallway. There was a leadlight window, with a box-seat for one that provided a glimpsed view of the Thames, and she was sitting with a pile of books and papers beside her, eating the sandwich she’d bought at lunchtime but had decided would do just as well for dinner. It did not pass beneath Elodie’s attention that it had been one week exactly since she’d sat in the window of her own flat in London, wearing her mother’s veil and watching the same river heave silently towards the sea.
A lot had happened since then. Ergo, she was ensconced in a room of her own in the tiny village of Birchwood, having been to the house itself not once but twice since she’d arrived in town yesterday afternoon. Today had presented something of a frustration: as she was being led around Penelope’s friend’s elaborate conversion in Southrop, admiring politely the boundless soft furnishings in every shade of tasteful grey, Elodie had been longing to get back to the house. She had extricated herself as soon as possible with a promise to return tomorrow at eleven, telephoned a local taxi, and then had to bite her hand to stop herself from crying tears of frustration as they travelled ten miles per hour behind the ambling piece of farm machinery.
She hadn’t made it back to Birchwood Manor before closing time, but she had at least been able to gain access to the garden. Thank God for Jack, who clearly didn’t work for the museum but apparently had some function there. She had met him yesterday when she’d arrived off the train from London and walked down to the house. He’d let her in and as soon as she stepped across the threshold, she’d been overcome with certainty that for the first time in a long time she was exactly where she was supposed to be. Elodie had felt a strange sense of being drawn further inside, as if the house itself had invited her; which was a ridiculous thing to think, let alone say, and no doubt an imagining created in order to justify an entry that was almost certainly not authorised.
As Elodie finished the sandwich, her phone rang and Alastair’s name appeared on the screen. She didn’t pick up, letting it ring out instead. He would only be calling to tell her again how upset Penelope was and to ask her to reconsider the wedding music. When Elodie had first told him, there’d been silence at the other end of the line so that she’d thought, at first, the connection had been lost. And then, ‘Are you joking?’ he’d said.
Joking? ‘No, I—’
‘Listen.’ He’d made a small choked noise of laughter, as if he were sure there’d been a simple misunderstanding that they would soon sort out. ‘I really don’t think you can back out now. It isn’t fair.’
‘Fair?’
‘On Mother. She’s very invested in playing the videos. She’s told all of her friends. It would crush her, and for what?’
‘I just … don’t feel comfortable with it.’
‘Well, we’re certainly not going to find a better performer.’ Noise had come from his end of the line, and Elodie had heard him say to someone else ‘Be there in a minute’ before he returned to the call. ‘Look, I’ve got to go. Let’s leave this for now and we’ll talk about it when I’m back in London, okay?’
And before Elodie could tell him that, no, actually, it wasn’t okay – she had made a decision and there was nothing further to talk about – he’d gone.
Now, alone in the quiet hotel room, Elodie was aware of a constricted feeling that had spread across her chest. Possibly she was simply tired and overwhelmed. She would have liked to talk to someone who’d agree that’s all it was and tell her everything was fine, but Pippa was the obvious choice, and Elodie had a strong suspicion that Pippa would not tell her what she wanted to hear. And where would that leave her? In a mess, an enormous mess, and Elodie did not like messes. Her entire life had been an exercise in avoiding, sorting and eradicating them completely.
So she put Alastair out of mind and took up the articles instead. Tip had turned up out of nowhere with them on Thursday. He’d been standing outside her flat beside his old blue bicycle when she arrived home from work. He’d had a canvas satchel over one shoulder, which he took off and handed to her. ‘My mother’s pieces,’ he’d said. ‘The ones she wrote when we were living at Birchwood.’
Inside the satchel was a tattered cardboard folder containing typewritten pages and a large collection of newspaper clippings. The by-line belonged to Juliet Wright, Elodie’s great-grandmother. ‘“Letters from the Laneway”,’ she’d read.
‘My mum wrote them during the war. They came to your Grandma Bea after Juliet died, and then to me. Seemed like it might be the right time to pass them on to you.’
Elodie had been overwhelmed by the gesture. She remembered her great-grandmother vaguely: there had been a visit to a very old woman in a nursing home when Elodie was around five. Her abiding memory was a head of paper white hair. She asked Tip what Juliet had been like.
‘Wonderful. She was smart and funny – acerbic at times, but never with us. She looked like Lauren Bacall, if Lauren Bacall had been a 1940s journalist in London and not a Hollywood star. She always wore trousers. She loved my dad. She loved Bea, Red and me.’
‘She never married again?’