A beguiling painting holds the secrets of a woman's past and calls into question everything she thought she knew about the man she loved…
Nearly sixty years ago, renowned London artist Patrick Adams painted his most famous work: a portrait of his beloved Emma Temple, a fellow bohemian with whom he shared his life. Years after Patrick's death, ninety-year-old Emma still has the painting hanging over her bed at their country home as a testament to their love.
To Emma's granddaughter, Laura, the portrait is also a symbol of so much to come. The masterpiece is serving as collateral to pay Laura's tuition at a prestigious music school. Then the impossible happens when an appraiser claims the painting is a fraud. For Laura, the accusation jeopardizes her future. For Emma, it casts doubt on everything she believed about her relationship with Patrick. Laura is determined to prove that Patrick did indeed paint the portrait. Both her grandmother's and Patrick's legacies are worth fighting for.
As the stories of two women entwine, it's time for Emma to summon up the past—even at the risk of revealing its unspoken secrets.
Release date:
January 25, 2021
Publisher:
Bookouture
Print pages:
350
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Lydia placed The Times under the kitchen tap and soaked it. Water scurried down the paper until wet black ink rendered the newsprint into a stream, and the foul words were only a soggy, unreadable mess. Soon, the paper flopped uselessly in Lydia’s hands. Satisfied, Emma Temple’s most loyal friend and housekeeper marched past the remnants of her breakfast, which she always ate well before Emma awoke, toward the rubbish bin in the corner of the kitchen in Gordon Square, tutting as the paper dripped black-stained water onto the kitchen floor. Lydia placed the wet wreckage on top of everything else in the rubbish bin. Should Emma want to see evidence of the accident that had ruined The Times, Lydia would simply lift the smooth steel lid of the bin and show her employer its sodden remains.
The best thing now was to carry on. She would not upset Emma’s normal routine. Lydia prepared her employer’s breakfast in the same way she had done every morning for decades. She would behave as if nothing were amiss, even though everything was about to explode.
Lydia’s touch remained sure as she placed Emma’s boiled egg on the plate with her morning toast, cutting precise soldiers and placing a glass of bright orange juice on the decorated tray that either Patrick Adams or Emma had painted. Instinctively, after years of service, Lydia smiled at the thought of her employer’s delighted reaction to the vivid golden egg yolk and the bright orange of the juice. Lydia loved the fact that Emma still adored color, her face lighting up at the sheer joy of it, even now when she was more than ninety years old.
But unless the article on page five of The Times was proven to be wrong, Lydia knew, as she made her way along the narrow hallway to Emma’s bedroom that overlooked what she regarded as London’s most intriguing square, the life Emma had struggled to build since Patrick’s death was about to go belly-up.
Lydia’s footsteps sounded like thuds on the hard wooden floorboards.
The paper could have been more considerate! Why publish something damning when one of the players was dead and the other was practically a grieving widow?
Lydia paused outside Emma’s closed bedroom door, her rough housekeeper’s hand pressing into the handle, her fingers feeling as if they imprinted it as it turned. She would not let her surroundings distract her or upset her. The walls around her abounded with Emma’s work and her collection of black-and-white photographs of summers in the country at the old farmhouse that Emma had rented for decades in Sussex and where the Circle felt most at home—Summerfield. The remaining space was peppered with snaps from those summers spent in the South of France…
There couldn’t be any truth to the article. It was preposterous. Abhorrent. A disgrace.
Lydia took in a deep breath and opened Emma’s bedroom door.
The thing about growing older was that all of one’s possessions became imbued with a sense of the past. Emma ran her gnarled fingers over her old jewelry boxes; touching the pieces was as satisfying as wearing the jewelry sometimes. Nothing was particularly precious—not in monetary terms—but to her the string of avant-garde wooden beads that Patrick had painted for her in France after buying them as blank canvases at a village market stall or the striking, modern silver ring that her late husband, Oscar, had bought for her in Italy in the twenties held as much value to Emma as all the diamonds in the world.
Emma glanced down at her outfit and frowned. Would it work for a talk to a group of schoolgirls today? She never used to worry about such things, but now, a sense of unfamiliar panic rose in her system. Emma regarded her reflection in the mirror and forced herself to smile, but that familiar rebellious expression only looked a little ghoulish on her tired old face now. She’d chosen a vintage shirt for the talk, one she’d painted in while working in the studio that Ambrose had designed for her and Patrick out at Summerfield. Her shoes were brown lace-ups, the sort worn by schoolgirls who trotted around the streets of Paris.
She’d been famous for her complete disinterestedness in fashion all her life—for throwing together odd ensembles that never matched and appearing at soirees in London looking like the bohemian she always wanted to be.
Now, her outfit reminded her how she used to place burnt orange and deep green together on the canvas during the winter, bright fleshy citrus against a vivid green tablecloth, with a sparkling crystal vase of white flowers to cheer things up. The memory satisfied her. Emma liked to be pleased first thing in the morning.
But today, she could not go straight to her studio. It was one of those frustrating days where life was going to intervene and when she would have to wait until the afternoon to work.
Her face, lined and framed with wispy strands of gray hair, peered back at her in the mirror. Her eyelids were veiled with puffs of soft olive skin, but they still held a glint of that something she hoped would never go away. Spirit—perhaps that was what it was.
Emma smiled at the sight of Lydia appearing behind her in the mirror’s simple wooden frame. Lydia hovered in the doorway, holding Emma’s breakfast tray. Around her was the comforting palette that Emma would never be able to part with as long as she breathed: the walls she had painted with murals of sea mermaids and angels and trompe l’oeil when she first rented this flat with such anticipation and enthusiasm—it seemed hard to imagine that she had been so very young. Now it was almost an effort to simply turn around on her velvet-topped stool.
Lydia blushed, a rush of pink blotches spreading over her once-smooth skin.
Emma looked intently at her most loyal and enduring housekeeper. Lydia did not do blushing. Emma placed a hand on her faded dressing table stool.
“It’s the newspaper,” Lydia said, her voice holding the hint of a shake, while she placed the breakfast tray on the table in the window. “Wet. Soaked through.”
Emma eased herself off the stool and made her way across the room. She leaned heavily on her stick with every step. There had been no rain during the night.
“Don’t know what did it,” Lydia went on, moving brusquely now, sounding more like herself. “The neighbors watering their potted plants, perhaps?”
“Can you warm the paper in the oven?” Emma fought agitation. She had viewed the goings-on in the world as a crutch since all her friends had gone… the thought of not being able to read and distract herself was annoying, an irritation.
“The newsprint has all run. It’s unreadable. I’m sorry.”
Emma eased herself into the solitary chair by the small round table at the window where she took breakfast these days. And frowned. This was all wrong. Lydia had placed three red poppies in one of Emma’s narrow vases. They sat there, their faces shining out as if nothing were amiss, but the sight of them hit Emma with a jolt. She hadn’t thought about poppies for decades… and three poppies? She reminded herself that it was inadvertent on Lydia’s part.
They’d said her poppy painting was her finest work, but every time Emma looked at that piece, it caused her pain because she’d been working on it that summer in France. She would not go down that path, not now; there was no point in it. Instead, she tapped her boiled egg with her teaspoon and took a few bites, her breakfast seeming to sit harder in her stomach with every bite.
She placed her napkin back on the table.
“I suppose you could pop out and buy a replacement copy for me, Lydia,” she said. How dependent on her routine she had become since Patrick’s death.
Lydia bustled about, tidying the room, her gray eyes switching back and forth as if she were a fox. “I don’t think we’ll have time for that, I mean, for me to buy the paper and for you to read it,” she said, her voice high-pitched with nerves. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to go out to the square for a little stroll instead? The blossom is out and has spread a lovely carpet on the lawns.” Lydia’s words tumbled about too fast. “We could sit on one of the benches for a while.”
Emma tapped her walking stick on the floor. “You’ve been like a cat on a hot roof since you came in.”
Lydia remained tight-lipped.
Emma made a wry face and dipped her spoon back into her boiled egg.
After breakfast, Emma made her way downstairs with Lydia right behind her. Emma settled into her favorite old armchair in the living room. White swirls were stenciled across a pale pink fabric and tulips were shaded in light tones of camel and pale blue. One of Patrick’s designs.
“I’d best get back to the kitchen.” Lydia bustled out of the room and made her way down to the basement.
Emma reached for a book. She had an hour to kill before this talk at the school. She tried to focus on the novel.
Lydia leaned against the kitchen door, her chest rising and pulsing as if it had taken on its own life. She should have known better than to try to trick Emma with washed-out newspapers. Of course Emma would go quiet. It was what she always did when faced with confrontation. But Emma’s silence was far more resonant than anyone else’s words.
Lydia almost gasped with relief when she saw a bicycle through the basement windows. A pair of familiar feet hauled the paint-chipped old thing up the front steps of the house.
Laura. Lydia bustled back up the stairs to the entrance hall, shooting a sidelong glance at Emma’s sitting room door. Emma’s granddaughter almost fell in the front door, tumbling over her bike, her copper hair in disarray around her heart-shaped face.
“Does she know?” Laura gasped, her gray eyes wide.
Lydia closed the door as silently as she could.
“The Times? I flooded it.” Lydia whispered the words. “Drowned it with the kitchen tap.”
“Did she fall for it?”
“Not a bit.” Lydia indicated with a turn of her head that they should retreat back downstairs to the kitchen.
Laura tugged off her old green coat as they moved down the stairway. The coat had belonged to Emma once.
“Tea?” Lydia moved toward the kettle.
Laura reached up to clasp at the tie that sat on the low neck of her floaty blouse.
She slumped down at the old wooden table. “It makes no sense.”
“Oh, dear goodness…” Lydia hated the shake in her voice.
“The portrait has been hanging at Summerfield since… what? The 1920s?”
“Of course it has. Any other notion is nonsense. I have no idea what the article is talking about.” Lydia measured out tea leaves and spooned them into the ceramic teapot that Emma had made herself.
“Of course Patrick painted Emma’s portrait. He adored her from the moment he met her until he drew his last breath. It’s brutal to suggest that it’s the work of one of his students or of a copyist. The painting means the world to Gran. She’s going to be devastated at any suggestion that Patrick didn’t paint her but let someone else paint The Things We Don’t Say.”
“I know.”
“It gets worse,” Laura said.
Lydia picked up a tea towel and tucked it into the belt of her apron. She poured tea, finding no comfort in the morning ritual she’d carried out every day since she’d worked for Emma… and Patrick.
“The Royal College of Music,” Laura whispered. “My course.”
Lydia looked up.
“I had to take on a student loan to be able to afford the tuition fees when I started there two years ago.”
Lydia was silent.
“That loan is guaranteed by Patrick’s portrait of Gran. Gran helped me, not just with tuition but with my rent as well. I try to pay the interest back on the loan with the hours that I work at the supermarket. Gran, more than anyone, understood my need to play the violin. You know that.”
Laura recognized the tact behind Lydia’s silence.
Laura went on. “Because The Things We Don’t Say is the collateral for my loan, if the painting isn’t a Patrick Adams, then I’m finished. I’m going to lose my music, my career, everything I’ve worked so hard toward. But what’s that, when Gran’s going to lose, to be frank, her life?” Laura turned away. And yet she knew she was going to have to get things out rather than hold them in. Not like Emma would do.
Lydia placed Laura’s mug of tea in front of her, but the thump of it settling on Emma’s familiar kitchen table brought no sense of relief.
Laura stared at the milky brown tea. “Who would make such a claim?” She fought to still the break in her voice.
Lydia drew a hand over her gray bun. She’d not changed her style in years. The gaze in her gray eyes was direct. “He owns one of London’s most respected galleries in Piccadilly. Didn’t it say he was sent to appraise the portrait on behalf of the Tate before it goes into their exhibition of gay twentieth-century artists? So the Tate has now pulled the painting out of the exhibition. As soon as I read it, my thoughts fell to pieces, Laura. All I knew was that I had to protect Emma. Nothing else.”
“Lydia, that’s what you do. It is why we feel untold gratitude toward you.”
Laura glared out at the small courtyard outside the basement, panicked nausea sending her insides into a swirl. “The bank can claim all Gran’s assets to recoup the loan if she can’t pay the full amount back and if there is any question the value of the painting has decreased. But Gran doesn’t have the assets to cover my loan. She’s rented all her life, and her own paintings aren’t worth a tenth of The Things We Don’t Say.”
Lydia blanched.
Laura’s voice sounded hollow in the old basement kitchen. “Lydia, I know this could have repercussions for you. But you’re part of our family. Emma would find a place for you, even if we end up in a walk-up in Brixton.”
“Oh, Laura…” Lydia’s voice trailed off.
“I thought that painting was as solid as Gran and Patrick were all their lives; otherwise I never would have agreed to accept Gran’s offer to use it as collateral for my loan. I should never have done so. It was just that the costs of studying music are so vast, and Gran was certain it was the thing to do.”
“Patrick couldn’t have lied to her about his portrait of her. I don’t believe for a moment he would have passed off a student’s work as his own. Not to Emma. That’s the end of it. I’m just certain.” Lydia sounded more like herself.
“If only the bank dealt in matters of the heart, Lydia.” Slowly, Laura moved across the room. “The press,” she said, her voice almost sad now. She pulled the phone free from its socket, where it hung on the kitchen wall. “You mustn’t let her answer the phone.”
Lydia nodded.
Laura moved toward the staircase. “I’ll go and see if Gran is ready for her talk today. I need to think, Lydia.”
Lydia nodded. “Oh, you poor dear,” she said.
But Laura shook her head. “Don’t,” she whispered. Sympathy, she sensed, might just break her right now. She placed a hand on Emma’s banister and a foot on the first stair.
After the school talk, Laura took Emma to sit in the gardens in Gordon Square. They shared Emma’s favorite bench in the corner of the park, where Emma could feast her eyes on the lawns and the trees, which hung like gracious old umbrellas, shading the paths, their new green buds ready for the promise of summer in London. The entire surroundings of this area had been a shelter for Emma all her life; the tall brown houses that surrounded the square were benign reminders that Bloomsbury was a suburb rich with tolerance. It held a special sort of wealth. The University of London, the British Library, and the British Museum were all within a stone’s throw of Emma’s house. Piccadilly and the commercial art scene where this so-called expert worked seemed a world apart.
Laura had managed to warn the teacher in charge of Emma’s presentation at the school to ask the sixth formers not to raise the subject of The Times article before Emma spoke. Emma, of course, talked with fierce loyalty to the tenets of modernism, explaining that the most important function of art was to move the viewer, while Laura’s eyes had darted to the classroom windows, half in expectation that a news team would start snapping photographs right there.
All Laura could do was reiterate the facts in her own mind before she started the inevitable confrontations she was going to have. The Things We Don’t Say was out at Summerfield, hanging above Emma’s bed in the room that overlooked the walled garden, as it always had done. Emma and Patrick had lived at the country house together on and off from 1916 until his death five years ago, and Emma still spent time down there in Sussex when she could. Even though they didn’t own it, Summerfield had been at the heart of the Circle of artists and writers that had revolved around Emma and Patrick since they started leasing during the First World War. It had been a benevolent witness to countless love affairs and writerly and philosophical discussions, not to mention the creation of some of the twentieth century’s most forward-thinking art; Laura wished she could have sat at the dining room table and witnessed the conversations that must have flowed among the creatives and brilliant minds who treated the old house as home. Emma had always been its custodian.
The reason Emma continued to pay rent to the aristocrat who owned the farmhouse and its surrounding gardens and fields was because then there was no possibility that she would have to give Summerfield up before her death. It was part of her, and she it. The owner had installed a caretaker to maintain the house while Emma was not there, preserving it for Emma when she decided to go down there to stay.
Patrick’s portrait of her was not only a testament to his lifelong love for her but a realization of everything Emma was to the Circle, to Summerfield, and to the new way of living they had pioneered. But still, more than any of that, there was this: He’d never painted a portrait of anyone else whom he knew—none of his friends, none of his lovers. Only Emma throughout his entire career.
While those who admired the Circle viewed Laura’s grandmother as a tough, silent monolith, this interpretation was about as far from Emma’s real character as a tiger from a dove. No one understood what went on underneath her stoic mask, but Laura knew that what her grandmother didn’t say was far more important than what came out when she spoke.
Laura placed her hand on Emma’s.
“There is something I need to say, Gran.”
Emma’s focus remained straight ahead.
“There was a silly article about The Things We Don’t Say in The Times this morning.” Why did vital things always sound trite?
“A new critic having a go? You know I decided to ignore them years ago.” Emma did not turn away from enjoying the park.
Humor was one of Gran’s masks. She was also in her own world. It was obvious that Emma’s eyes were taking in colors, dreaming up a painting…
“Something like that.” Laura kept her tone light. “Patrick painted you in France in the 1920s, didn’t he? That’s what you always said.”
Emma stirred on her bench. “Patrick started working on the actual canvas in 1923 in Provence. But he finished my portrait in Paris and London while he was traveling in the autumn… and he was traveling with his lover, Jerome, by then.”
Laura wanted to reach out and hug Emma. Emma had accepted the presence of Patrick’s lovers all his life, because she’d had no choice.
“Did you see Patrick paint the work while you were in France?”
“I sat for him while he did early studies for the portrait. He had this idea that he wanted to make sketches for it when I was young, and then he would paint the canvas when I was in my prime.” Emma’s eyes crinkled in delight at the memory. “He made such a deal of it, Laura. Such a deal. And when we were in France, he secluded himself away in his studio and worked on his own. Jerome, presumably, saw him paint, but no one else did, and especially not me.”
Children ran on the grass, the girls’ dresses flapping behind them, their young faces pink with excitement. Laura turned to her grandmother. Emma’s face still held a beautiful allure. There was a pride in her, a distinction that was unfathomable, an honest gentility that was timeless. It was dignity. It was the last thing Laura would see her grandmother lose. She would fight for Emma and for Patrick with everything she could, because she knew they were real, knew what Emma felt about Patrick was worth everything, knew that he in turn could never have lied to her about the fact he’d painted her and given her his most valuable piece. The expert was simply wrong. But how to prove something logically that you knew instinctively with all your heart?
That was the thing Laura had to do.
She felt a wave of protection for Emma. Her favorite photo of her grandmother was from the time she was a young woman in Paris, a black-and-white shot against a Parisian street that showed off Emma’s deep-set brown eyes and the way her hair fell around her face in loose tendrils. Her skin had been smooth and olive brown. Patrick had been equally breathtaking—dark, handsome, with a glint in his eyes. The old joke was that all of the Circle had been in love with him… well, Emma certainly had been. And his loyalty to her was not going to be proven false at the end of her long, hardworking life.
“Let’s go home. I’d like to get some painting done this afternoon.” Emma placed her hands on the bench and began easing herself out of the seat.
Laura nodded, suddenly sure about what she had to do. “Gran, I’m going to have to—”
“I’m in the middle of working on a study of the square. Patrick would do a far better job. However, I must keep going. I couldn’t bear not being able to paint.” Emma stood up, leaning on her cane. She held out a hand, and Laura took it.
Conversation done. Laura knew better than to push on.
Still, she paused one more time before she opened the tall wrought iron gates that led back to the street.
“It’s getting chilly,” Emma said, her voice firm. “I’m going to have some time to myself.”
The gate closed behind them with a click.
Imagine: Three handsome young men, fresh out of Cambridge, lounging around a breakfast table in the South of France. Sunshine splashed onto their faces, their low-collared white shirts dazzling in the sun. Conversation flew from politics to art to economics, questioning the very fabric of society and the ethics of what made a worthwhile life, but the men were not immune to the odd innuendo and ribald joke; their chatter was peppered every now and then with a laugh. Discussions were underpinned by a silent agreement that tolerance was the thing. They were to become famous, or infamous, but they did not know that. Not yet.
Bright blooms cascaded over terraces outside the ancient Provençal mas they’d rented for the summer, where the circle of friends focused on being young and brilliant and erudite. Secret shaded paths in the local village were the perfect settings for lovers’ trysts—and there had been plenty of those here in France, for love came into the Circle in a series of patterns that none of them really understood. Everything was intermingled: their beauty, Provence, their ideas.
When Emma wandered into the room, her bohemian green dress floating around her, she stopped to observe the men, her artist’s gaze taking in every detail, lingering on her husband, Oscar, and the different tones his red hair displayed in the light. She would use bright, contrasting colors, not gradations of the same tones, to paint Oscar right now were she to pick up a brush. She was entranced with the post-impressionists and their glorious use of any color under the sun. The avant-garde seemed more relevant, more possible and plausible than ever in the bright light out here in Provence, far more so than in London, where muteness was still expected in art, in decoration, and, even more so, in life.
Emma took in the other men at the table. She studied the contrast between Ambrose’s neat black hair and his clear, milk-like skin. From Ambrose she moved her focus to Lawrence—his sensitive beauty, the way he looked at her as if holding a long, languishing sadness that still hung between them.
Emma unlaced her fingers, already stained from an early morning session at her easel. She moved over to the windows to see the colors outside in the garden. Emma was overwhelmed by France. It was as if she were running a race with herself to capture it all on canvas before it was time to return to London.
“Em.” Lawrence’s voice cut into her reverie.
She sensed Lawrence’s gaze still on her and closed her own eyes for a moment rather than turn around.
“You need to eat. You’re getting more and more birdlike every day.”
Emma moved away from the window and helped herself to coffee. She reveled in the velvety drink here in France.
Oscar remained deep in conversation with Ambrose, who had come down to find the time and space to focus on his research fellowship in economics at. . .
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