“Half past three. We’ve got to leave now, Violet. I’ve got your things.”
Violet is too sleepy to do anything except obey. He helps her with her petticoat, her stays, her blouse and skirt. Her vague fingers can’t seem to manage the buttons; he does them for her. She needs to use the lavatory. Through the door, she hears him moving about impatiently, checking the drawers and wardrobes. She washes her hands, gives her teeth a quick brush, pins her hair, gathers her few toiletries into the case.
When she emerges a moment later, her head is clear. “What’s going on?”
The lights are off. Lionel stands in shadow by the window, looking down at the street through the crack in the massive curtains.
“I’ll explain later.” He turns to her. It’s too dark to see his face.
“Is something the matter?”
He hesitates. “Yes. Come along. I have your valise. Is there anything else you need?”
“Just you.”
Through the window, a siren shrills faintly.
“Violet,” he whispers. Somehow, he finds her mouth in the darkness, and then he leads her through the bedroom, the sitting room, the hall, where he closes the silent door behind them.
PART THREE
When my love swears that she is made of truth I do believe her, though I know she lies, That she might think me some untutor’d youth, Unlearned in the world’s false subtleties.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young, Although she knows my days are past the best, Simply I credit her false speaking tongue: On both sides thus is simple truth suppress’d.
But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
O, love’s best habit is in seeming trust, And age in love loves not to have years told: Therefore I lie with her and she with me, And in our faults by lies we flatter’d be.
—Sonnet 138, William Shakespeare
Vivian
By the time my BOAC 707 touched down at London Airport at eight o’clock the next morning, rattling my sleepless teeth, I had it all planned out. I’d go to the British National Archives and track down Captain Lionel Richardson’s war record, if he had one. I’d locate his family—again, if he had one—and see if they’d be willing to share any information. I’d scour every dispatch, read every antique newspaper if I had to. I’d stay at the Ritz. Because one should always stay at the Ritz.
Oh, the wet-nosed innocence of me.
Everything was hunky-dory, right up until I prepared to waltz my way through customs with a flirtatious wink and a salacious smile. You see, I’d had this idea, this crazy sickness, this rare outbreak of sentimentality, to bring Violet’s suitcase with me. It seemed airworthy enough, after all. It had a certain vintage charm amid the standard-issue Samsonite. I liked the way the handle felt in my palm, solid and classy. We were making a pilgrimage, that suitcase and I, filled with the relics of Violet’s old life.
But the customs official cast one beady eye on the beaded leather and pounced with all fours.
“Is this your suitcase?” he demanded, and I was so surprised and flustered—I know, me, flustered, but you know how it is with customs officials—I said the most irredeemably stupid thing I’ve ever said in my life, before or since. The one thing you should never, ever say to a customs official.
I told him the truth.
I said: “No, not mine, it belongs to a friend.”
Like red meat to a bull.
“If you’ll step aside with me, miss,” he said, in a way that brooked no sass, and you know those scary little rooms like in the movies, with metal chairs and a metal table and probably one-way glass on one side, though of course you don’t know for certain unless you’re on the right side of it?
I was on the wrong side of it.
The customs official stood on one side of the table, on which my aunt Violet’s belongings were arranged in careful piles. He was a slight fellow, with pale orange hair and a nose bent creatively to one side. He held Dr. Walter Grant’s 1912 diary open in his hands. I sat and stared at Violet’s gold watch. Why, then the world’s mine oyster, which I with sword will open.
“This is pornographic material,” said the official; we’ll call him Little Roger. I looked up. His face was flushed at the corners.
“I know. Good stuff, huh? Try August thirteenth, it’s a doozy. Would you believe he was in his late forties?” Low whistle.
“According to United Kingdom law—”
“This is a private journal. Written fifty years ago for personal use. By a countryman of yours, I might add. Honestly, I’d heard British men were filthy perverts beneath all that cheerio and tally-ho, but I never quite believed it until . . . Now, hold on. That’s fragile.”
Little Roger was picking up Lionel’s note, scattering rose petals to the wind, had there been any wind in that airless compartment of suffocation.
“You are responsible for every damned one of those petals,” I said. “They’re antiques.”
He stared down his crooked nose. “Who’s Lionel?”