We passed along a long, dark gallery, papered in striped Victorian burgundy and shrouded by portraits of murky ancestors. A thick film of dust coated the windowpanes, adding an unnecessary layer of gloom. “Do you see what I mean?” Simon said. “If all this were cleaned up and brightened. See that plasterwork, ruined by damp. It’s a disgrace, really. And it was once the most magnificent house for miles. Look at this portrait, here.”
He stopped before a painting, larger than the others, framed in gilt. The dusky air nearly swallowed the subject, so that I could make out only a crimson dress and a sumptuous abundance of creamy skin.
“Who is she?”
“Augusta Fitzwilliam. Married my great-whatever-it-is grandfather when she was just fifteen. She made the family’s fortune, three or so centuries ago. Mostly on her back, so the legend goes. She was an ardent Royalist. Look how beautiful she is.”
I peered forward and saw a pair of large eyes—color indeterminate—and a firm, well-crafted chin. Hair the color of honey, hidden behind a gold headpiece. For an instant, her face reminded me of Simon’s.
“She was the mistress of Charles II, for a time. He quite adored her, or so I was told, and not just because she was such a beauty. She was a terribly brave woman. Kept the house as a refuge for the Royalists during the war, despite several attempts by Parliament to arrest her. Hid him for the night, so the story goes, on his way to exile in France, when he was only about sixteen. Naturally she fell into bed with him once he returned. Most women did, if he wanted them, especially the pretty ones. But I believe she fucked him on principle. Doing her bit for the monarchy.”
“Didn’t her husband object?”
“I imagine he had little to say about it. After all, they were both rewarded handsomely when the king was restored to the throne. The house was left crumbling to bits after the war—much as it is now, what irony—and Charles chucked a grateful pile of gold their way, so who was Mr. Fitzwilliam to complain? This was his king, after all. He did refuse a title for his wife’s services, however. He had his pride.”
“It all sounds so venal.”
“Well, of course it was venal. Most human acts are venal, to some degree. But it did the trick, didn’t it? Saved the house and the fortune for generations to come, when the Roundheads nearly destroyed them.” He paused. “Besides, it wasn’t as if she didn’t care for him. They carried on for years. She had at least three children by him. In fact, the eldest of them ended up inheriting after his half-brother went to London and died of the plague, so we’re really not Fitzwilliams at all. Properly speaking, I suppose, we’re Fitzcharleses.”
“What?”
“Yes. I’m a prince, of sorts. At your service.” He made a little bow.
“I don’t believe it. King Charles was your grandfather?”
“Well, most likely. Several greats ago, of course. You look so astonished.”
“I am astonished! It’s—it’s amazing. You’re—his blood runs in your veins! Why didn’t you say something before? Doesn’t it amaze you?”
“I don’t know. It’s just a fact to me. Something I’ve known all my life. I suppose it is rather extraordinary, to an outsider.” Simon returned to the portrait. “Though I daresay there are thousands of us, scattered around the country. He was a damned promiscuous bloke, and a generous one. Let that be a lesson to everyone. It pays to tip well.”
“You sound as if you approve.”
“Not exactly. But it was a different age, you know. I don’t see the harm in it, if everyone got what they wanted out of it. Husbands, wives, and king.”
I blurted out: “But if it were me? Would you care then?”
He was still holding my hand. I thought I felt his fingers move around mine, in a slight spasm. “What a strange thing to ask.”
“You know what I mean.”
Simon’s hand released mine, just long enough to tuck my arm inside the nook of his elbow. “You must know the answer to that,” he said quietly, and he turned us both away from the portrait, down the remainder of the gallery. The shabby carpet muffled our steps, until we came to a large, rectangular drawing room, flanked at both ends by tall, mullioned window seats. The furniture was covered in yellowing sheets.
“Oh, how beautiful!” I said.
Simon released my arm and went to one of the windows. He shoved his hands into his pockets and stared at the drizzling garden outside. “It will be. It will be, by God.”
I joined him and rested my head on his shoulder. I loved his old tweed jacket, the absence of his army tunic. The material smelled of wool and cigarettes and camphor—it had spent most of the war in a wardrobe, locked in battle against moths—and I remember thinking how comfortable a combination that was, how perfectly evocative of Simon. I remember thinking how that scent would always belong to him. Always belong to our life together.
“We’ll make it beautiful again,” I said. “We’ll do whatever we must.”
He put his arm around me. “Yes. Whatever we must.”
I don’t recall how long we stood there, gazing out the grubby windows at the gardens beyond, overgrown and weedy and coated in mist. The damp crept through the cracks in the windows and filled the air. I pressed my cheek against the dry warmth of Simon’s tweed shoulder—I recall that detail clearly, because it was the last sensation of comfort I was to receive for a terribly long time.
Whatever the period of time we stood—a minute, ten minutes—the interruption inevitably came. Simon heard it first. I felt his arm stiffen, and an instant later I heard the signal, too: the clatter of footsteps down a flight of wooden stairs.
“Samuel! Is that you?” called the voice of a young woman.
We turned together, Simon and I, and I was about to ask him whose voice this was—who this young woman could possibly be—when its owner flew around a corner and into view before us, light and miniature as a fairy, wearing a gray dress and a stained white pinafore apron. She stopped at once and put one hand to her mouth, and I saw that a white surgical mask dangled from the side of her face, while her hair was bound in a white scarf.
“Clara,” said Simon. His voice seemed a little cold. “How good to see you.”
“Simon! What are you doing here? Is that—?”
“My wife. We were married the day before yesterday. Virginia, darling, this is my sister. Clara.”
“Hello,” I said.
Clara looked at me and at Simon. I remember thinking how plain she looked, how lank her hair and how large her mouth, but I now believe that was only because she was so pale and wan, because the skin beneath her eyes was bruised with fatigue.
“Oh, my!” she gasped.
Simon’s hand gripped mine. “Yes. Where are Mummy and Father? I should like to present their new daughter-in-law.”
“But you can’t!”
“Why not? Have we been forbidden?”
Clara wrung her tiny hands, like a nurse in a play, and perhaps it was that—the image of Clara as nurse—that made everything fit together: the empty, yearning house and the cold and the damp and the familiar expectancy of disaster. Made understanding creep over me like twilight, even before she opened her pink mouth and told us the truth.
“No. Because they’re ill. They’re both terribly ill. I think it’s the ’flu.”
February 12, 1922