Back at Mr. Marks’s office, she spent the afternoon in a trance at her desk, copying more numbers onto more lists, thinking about that maybe. Not quite believing that she had meant it, knowing that in fact she had.
Mr. Marks left in a huff around three. Soon afterward, Rose turned to Eva and said, “I’m not feeling well. I think I need to leave.”
“Oh, you poor thing. Is it your stomach? Edgar had a touch of upset earlier in the week. Go home and I’ll cover for you.”
Rose complied. And she felt as if she were still complying, still following someone else’s explicit instructions as she went down into the Tube station, got on the train, and held on to the strap and swayed.
She managed to exit at Piccadilly, make her way to Old Bond Street. The pharmacist’s sign pulsated like a beacon. Stepping through the antique shop’s peeling doorway, she felt soaked with its familiarity, a distinctive relief.
“Hello, you!” said Julie, for of course she was there. “It’s not even the weekend!”
“I want to tell you about the picture I’m looking for,” Rose said. Julie’s eyes widened as Rose spoke of the Bellhop’s crimson uniform, tarnished gold buttons, the declarative shape of his thin hands planted firmly on his hips. “It isn’t a pretty picture,” she added. She tried to describe the thick strokes of paint—the swirls of red and gold and blue, so many colors! She knew she was talking too quickly. She looked down at the glassed-in jewelry counter, the same counter where Thomas had been standing—incredibly, a stranger to her, just a month ago.
As she spoke, as The Bellhop took shape by her words, she realized that her fear of talking about the painting had been wrong. She had been afraid that describing it, coming clean, would remind her of its painful absence, dilute her memories. But instead it burnished them. She saw the painting in her parents’ room in the flat on Liechtensteinstrasse, its heavy gold frame; she saw her mother playing Chopin on the piano while her father kept trying to persuade her that perhaps they should go somewhere besides Bad Ischl this summer, Gerhard arguing that he was absolutely old enough to go to the UFA by himself for a matinee. Bette rang the bell for dinner, and Rose saw her mother pass by The Bellhop, swiping a speck of dust off the frame with her pinkie. All this did not just exist in the hazy firmament of Rose’s memory. It had been real. It was.
“It sounds just like a picture Mr. Bradshaw was telling me about,” Julie said. “I swear, a hotel worker or a waiter of some kind. He most definitely said expressionistic. And valuable. It’s not here yet, but he said he’d bring it in tomorrow.” As her own words sank in, Julie’s tone grew elated. “It does sound like that painting; I knew it! It does!”
Rose looked into the girl’s eyes. Could it be? It seemed impossible that The Bellhop would be here, in a small shop that she had chosen for reasons she did not understand. And yet. Maybe.
Rose thought of her lunch with Thomas by the river: she saw movement; she felt possibility. She wanted Julie to be right. Every fiber in her body leaped at the possibility. But she also wanted to remain here: no one telling her yes, no one telling her no.
The following afternoon, she returned to the shop. Julie ushered her into the back. A skinny stooped gentleman in an ill-fitting suit stood waiting beside a small drafting table, canvas in hand.
“Mr. Bradshaw, this is Miss Rose Zimmer.”
He looked nothing like the debonair antiques dealer she had imagined. She tried not to be disappointed, told herself that it had no bearing on the possibility of The Bellhop’s presence. “It’s very nice to meet you,” she said with renewed vigor. “I adore your shop.”
“Why, thank you,” he said. “I hear that you’re quite excited about a certain portrait that I have here.”
“That’s right,” Rose said as he began to unroll it, her stomach taking root in her throat.
The canvas was only half-visible when she knew. It was thickly painted, like The Bellhop, but the coat that the man in this portrait wore was of a darker red, wine-colored. There were no buttons in sight. The background shimmered, a swirl of oceanic blues and greens. The man’s face was painstakingly detailed, his pink lips even held the the beginnings of a remote smile.
“Thank you,” she managed to say. “But that’s not my painting.”
“Oh,” Julie said, her face falling. “I’m so sorry.”
“I’m sorry,” Rose said, ludicrously.
“You’re certain?” Mr. Bradshaw said.
“Very certain,” Rose said. “Quite.” She felt unsteady. She wanted to weep. “So sorry,” she said as she fled the shop. She would never find The Bellhop. It was nowhere to be found.
She began walking, she had no idea where, and her despondency curdled into anger. This was her fault. Why had she pinned her hopes on finding it? Why did she ever think that recovering that stupid, ugly painting would make a difference? She hated that her mother had loved it. She hated that it ever mattered. She passed a deep hole of rubble sandwiched between two standing houses, a burst water pipe still trickling. Past a “Get Your Own Back” war savings banner plastered against a wall, faintly visible in the meager light. She kept moving. Darkness descended. The night was damp. There were few streetlamps. A lorry rattled past. She thought of that night five years ago, when she had stood at the railing of the Waterloo Bridge, unable to envision a future. Five years had gone by and what had changed? She neared Bethnal Green and she felt so despondent, so unbelievably useless. It was too late for her to be out here at night by herself. She was nowhere where proper girls went by themselves. But she wasn’t proper—she had done everything wrong. If she truly had been good, she wouldn’t have gotten on that train. She would have done more to get her parents out. They would be here today. It felt like an articulation of everything she had long feared and yet tried to avoid. She bore responsibility. Why did she pretend otherwise?
Harry was a dictator: ruthless, vicious, unrepentant, two years old. Rose was supposed to be keeping an eye on him and his baby brother, in the room that her nephews shared. The boys’ nanny was ill. The cook had her day off. Isobel was in the kitchen. Harry kept tossing items into the playpen, dangerously close to his little brother’s head—a comb, a rattle, a tin cup. Rose was doing nothing to stop him.
She should, of course. But she didn’t have the energy. Or, in truth, the volition. Rose was in a foul mood. She thought: Harry is a terror but he is a terror that Peter must live with. If I step in then Peter won’t fend for himself. If I interfere, how will Peter ever learn?
Rose had offered to handle supper, but Isobel refused. “I would so much rather be in front of a stove than mind those two horrors,” she said with a laugh, though they both knew she wasn’t entirely joking.