The Steady Running of the Hour: A Novel Read online

  —And what are we to one another?

  Imogen smiles, shaking her head and looking into her bowl.

  —Darling. You know there isn’t a word for it in any language.

  —I might say there is.

  Imogen looks up at Ashley. —Those are words other people give to other things. We’re here because of how we feel, not because we have to be here. Nor because there’s some name for this, strolling in Regent’s Park with a fellow, then running away to Wiltshire—

  —Berkshire.

  Imogen smiles. —Berkshire. My point is that it’s no good for two people to live together, never knowing whether they come home each night because they care for each other or because they’re bound to be there.

  —One has to sleep somewhere.

  Imogen kicks his foot under the table.

  —Be serious.

  —I am serious, Ashley says. One can’t do everything for the grandest reasons. I expect sometimes people do share a bed simply because they’re married. On other days they do it for all the right reasons. Besides, how could one share a life with someone if one never knew whether they’d be around the next moment?

  Imogen sets her spoon down on the table and shrugs.

  —We never know that anyway. Even if you and I were married, I might be struck dead by lightning. Or exploded by a bomb dropped from a zeppelin. Or you could come home one day and I’d be gone, in spite of all the promises I’d made to God and the law alike—

  —You’d do that?

  Imogen smiles. —Never. But neither would I marry.

  After lunch they go up to their hotel room. They are alone now for the first time and they kiss wildly. Ashley remembers at once the taste of her mouth and her neck, how she felt in Regent’s Park and how she feels now, the scent of her skin against his, her breath warming his cheek. They kiss on until their mouths are tired. Even then they still look at each other in plain wonder, lying clothed in their stocking feet on the bed, Ashley holding her in his arms. He feels mad with fatigue, and in this haze Imogen seems more impossible than ever, more beautiful and more loving than he can fathom. They wake and sleep and wake and sleep until it all seems nearly the same. At times Imogen kisses him as soon as she wakes, before her eyes have opened, as if it is the first instinct in her being, coming before breath even.

  Now it is time for Ashley to return home. They get out of bed and he pulls on his tunic, cinching his belt and reknotting his necktie before the mirror. Imogen pulls aside one of the curtains and looks out the window.

  —I can’t stay here all day. I need fresh air. Could one hire a bicycle here? I could see the villages—

  —There’s nothing to see.

  —I adore looking at nothing. You promise to return tonight?

  —Nine o’clock at the latest.

  —If you’re a minute late, she teases, it’ll be an hour to me.

  Ashley kisses her again at the door for a long time and has to pull himself away. He shuts the door behind him and follows the long hallway to the stairs, trying to straighten his shoulders and walk like a soldier. His steps fall softly on the carpet. Imogen Soames-Andersson, he thinks, who waits for me at nine o’clock. The name alone makes him feel crazy.

  Back at home Ashley half-dozes through supper with his mother and a wizened aunt. In the parlor afterward the aunt plays Elgar on the piano as Ashley falls dead asleep in an armchair, his glass of Madeira in hand. The glass tips and the dark Madeira soaks his jacket sleeve. Ashley wakes to his mother’s shrieks. Drowsily he removes his jacket and pats it with a napkin. He excuses himself to bed.

  In his bedroom Ashley changes into a suit of light flannel and steps out of the first-story window, on his shoulder an old climbing rucksack holding two bottles of champagne taken from the cellar. He feels ridiculous, but it only makes him smile. When he meets Imogen in the hotel lobby, he knows by her expression that she has some new secret to uncurtain.

  —I’ve a surprise for tonight, she says. It’s all planned out.

  —All I planned for was two bottles of Mumm’s.

  —That’s a start.

  It is a warm night. They take the motorcar to the fields outside the village where as a boy Ashley had taken long walks alone. It feels strange to be there with anyone else, let alone with Imogen. They park the car and Ashley leads her along the familiar dirt paths, rough lanes made for horse carts, overgrown with weeds through the years. They sit in a dormant field on the driest patch of grass they can find. From the rucksack Ashley takes the champagne and a pair of teacups wrapped in a tablecloth from the kitchen. He had chosen teacups because he supposed they would be less fragile than champagne glasses, but the handle on one of them had broken anyway.

  —Now you can’t take it back, Imogen says. They’ll deduce everything from the broken teacup.

  —Even you?

  —Especially me.

  Ashley shakes his head.

  —There isn’t a man alive who could deduce you.

  —Isn’t there? You came to the concert, didn’t you? You must have deduced something. Or felt something—

  Ashley looks away in embarrassment, but Imogen smiles, running her hand through his hair.

  —Darling. What color would you say your hair is?

  —Reddish brown? Auburn?

  —Nothing so prosaic. Let’s say a dark Venetian blond. Like a Renaissance courtesan, but more sinister. Too beautiful for a young man—

  She laughs. —My darling courtesan. Are you ready for the surprise?

  —Certainly.

  —Back to the motor, then. We’re going to church.

  A CLUE

  I sleep on the floor of the new house on a pile of blankets and pillows, Christian snoring beside me late into the morning. As soon as I get up I go to my backpack in the hallway and take out the green tin. I pull off the lid and feel the stiff paper of the envelopes, the thin hard twine binding the bundles together.

  In the dining room Karin is setting the table for breakfast, moving slowly as she sips from a cup of coffee.

  —We’re the only ones up, she says. And my head is killing me. How are you?

  —Not too bad. I drank a lot of water before I went to bed.

  —I should have done that. How late were you up? You never came to the lake—

  —I found something. Let me show you.

  I go to the hallway and come back with the tin of letters. Karin looks up at me, her eyes wide. She unties one of the bundles and leafs through the envelopes, shaking her head.

  —Where’d you find this?

  —Upstairs, in one of the boxes in the bedrooms.

  Karin removes a sheet from its envelope.

  —And in English, she murmurs. I had no idea there was stuff like this in there. I’ll have to tell my uncle—

  She studies the letter for a moment.

  —This is from one of your relatives?

  —I think so.

  She shakes her head. —I’m sorry, but you can’t take them, not now anyway. I have to show them to my family. My father will probably want to see them too.

  —Do you mind if I copy them?

  —Of course not. But there’s no copy machine here.

  —That’s OK. I’ll do it by hand.

  As the others bask in the sun along the lakeshore, I sit at the dining table in the new house, slowly transcribing letter after letter. It’s harder than I thought. Some of the letters are so difficult to read that I leave out whole lines. Others are so engrossing that I stop copying and set down my pen.

  I chose the shorter route, for it was dark now & I imagined we would be screened by a meager thicket to the east. We had gone 200 yards when the first shot came, then a second, amid cries of ‘Sniper!  ’ The men pulled Cpl. Locke to the shelter of a low hill. I found him spread out atop a dirty shallow puddle, his tunic pulled open as men worked feebly to stop the bleeding. He had been shot in the lungs.

  Locke tried to speak. He seemed desperate to tell us something, though we hushed
him & begged him to be still, for each time he opened his lips, all that came was blood. The men still wonder what he wished to say. It’s been days now & still they speculate endlessly, as though he’d been privy to some deep secret, if only because he could not share it.

  I put the letter down and go outside, watching the wind pass through the trees above. Christian walks by with a large cooler.

  —Are you all right?

  —Yeah.

  —You were staring all funny.

  —Just a little hungover.

  He grins. —Everybody is.

  It takes me another hour to finish copying. The text fills thirty pages. My wrist is aching. I lay the letters out on the table to photograph them, two sheets at a time. I meter the exposures carefully, but I still bracket them anyway, taking identical shots with different settings to make sure I’ll have clear pictures. On their own I don’t think the letters have any useful evidence, but I can’t be sure. Karin tells me to leave the tin on the kitchen table for her father.

  Back in the old house I try to put everything the way it was, even the mess downstairs. It takes a long time to move the boxes and tools back to their old locations, and even then I’m only guessing. I leave a path to the staircase and go up one last time to check on everything.

  In the upstairs bedroom the notecard from Ashley is sitting on the nightstand. I’d forgotten to replace it in the magazine where I found it. I hold the card in my hand for a moment, looking around the room.

  —A bad idea, I whisper.

  I slip the card inside my notebook and flip it shut.

  We clean up the house and prepare to cross the lake, passing luggage and bags of leftover food into the boats. Christian and one of the girls are already drinking beer again. A garbage bag of empty cans falls into the water and I wade in to grab it, everyone laughing and calling. I go up to the house to get my backpack and change into dry pants.

  When I put on my other pair of pants I notice something in the pocket. I pull out a sheet of thin yellow paper. It’s the receipt from last night. In daylight the handwriting is easier to read.

  MOISSE

  TOILES & TABLEAUX ET COULEURS—ENCADREMENTS—28, RUE PIGALLE

  blanc d’argent

  jaune de Naples

  ocre jaune

  terre de Sienne naturelle

  vert cinabre

  terre de Sienne brûlée

  laque d’alizarine

  rouge de Venise

  bleu d’outremer

  bleu de Prusse

  noir d’ivoire

  siccatif de Courtrai

  There are two more colors I can’t make out, another kind of vert and another kind of bleu. The bill is marked Paris, le 11 décembre 1916 and made out to H. Broginart, 18 rue de Penthièvre. The name sounds familiar. I get my folder from my backpack and flip through the papers until I find the photocopy from the Tate Archive.

  23 Mar 19

  Dear Mr. Devereux,

  I received your letter of the 19th inst. and have disposed of the study as directed. M. Broginart was terribly disappointed and offered to double his price for the canvas, until at last he was made to understand the situation. He enquired about the larger picture and is keen enough to buy the painting sight unseen, though he would not tender a figure and I expressed my grave doubts. Has Mrs. Grafton advised whether that painting shall ever be put out?

  —What you know for sure, I whisper. That’s all that counts.

  I run my hands through my hair, rehearsing the details step by step. In the winter of 1916 Eleanor is living on this lake near Leksand. Imogen is almost certainly here too, because I found letters addressed to her in the old house. Around the same period, in December 1916, an art-supply dealer in Paris fills an order for paints made out to “M. Broginart” and the receipt ends up here. In May 1917 my grandmother Charlotte is born here. In March 1919, five months after the end of the war, at Eleanor’s request a gallery employee in London destroys a painted study recently shipped from Sweden, in spite of the fact that Broginart wants to buy the study and a related larger painting. The same month a painting by Eleanor titled Nude Study is entered in the Devereux Brothers ledger, only to be crossed out.

  She could have painted a million things here. She could have painted the trees or the sky, the red house or any damn thing that would be a waste of time for me to chase after. But why have it destroyed? What could be so bad that even after it had reached London it had to be destroyed at once?

  —That doesn’t make it Imogen.

  I look at the receipt again. Broginart had bought Eleanor materials in Paris in 1916, so they must have had some kind of relationship to each other. She may have been painting something for him, or he may have been a collector of her work, which would explain why he wanted the study two years later. Or Broginart may simply have been a friend who bought the paints as a favor, because they were better than anything Eleanor could get in wartime Sweden. But what happened to the larger oil painting? Did Broginart ever get it, and if he did, what did it look like?

  If Broginart was a serious collector his papers might have been saved. His collection could still be in Paris, or he might even have owned a gallery with surviving records of its own. His address is on the receipt and I know the exact dates I’m interested in, so I’d have a starting point. But Prichard would probably say it’s a waste of time, because even if I found the painting and it was Imogen, even if it showed her pregnant—

  A voice is calling from outside.

  —Tristan? You’d better come down now, unless you want to swim back.

  I gather my things and run down the hill, catching up with Karin. Everyone else is already in the boat. Christian hitches the dinghy onto the aluminum boat with a length of nylon rope. He pulls the starting cord on the outboard motor and the engine belches to life, sputtering black smoke. The boats glide forward.

  The Swedes pass around cans of beer. Karin sits down beside me.

  —Do you want a ride down to Stockholm?

  —That’d be great.

  Karin smiles. —It beats rowing. Did you copy all those letters?

  —Yeah.

  —What was in them?

  I drag my hand in the cold lake. I shake my head.

  —You’ll have to read them. There’s a lot of stuff in there, it’s hard to explain.

  —Are they good letters?

  —Yeah. They’re good letters.

  Christian cuts the motor as we near the muddy lakefront. It’s only noon, but it’s a long drive back to Stockholm. I hope I can get a flight to Paris tonight.

  20 August 1916

  All Saints’ Church

  Sutton Courtenay, Berkshire

  Beneath the night sky the churchyard is a mass of shadows. Imogen strides two paces before him though the ragged grass. Ashley’s shoe clips something hard and he nearly falls. Imogen stifles a laugh.

  —Haven’t you been here before?

  —We never came here, Ashley whispers. My mother had some aversion to the priest. I was baptized at Abingdon.

  —Well, we’ve entered the graveyard. There’s no fence on this side. Mind the tombstones—some of them are quite short.

  Ashley takes a final swig from the champagne bottle and pitches it into a clump of bushes. He does not need any more. He has no idea how much Imogen has drunk; for her it makes no difference. He quickens his step to catch up and they walk single file through the maze of lichen-covered headstones. Imogen is unafraid and speaking louder now.

  —I had a lovely tour of the villages. Did you know there are German prisoners working the fields on the other side of the river, past the abbey? I tried talking to them—

  —Not in German, I hope.

  —Naturally in German. They were from Saxony, awfully nice fellows. They told me they’d prefer a month of harvesting to an hour back in the trenches. Said they hadn’t heard a women speak German in months. Of course, the guards overheard me and I spent a quarter of an hour convincing them I wasn’t a foreign
agent. Gave them the name of every monarch since the Conqueror, I expect. Then I walked down to the church. The old sexton was cutting the grass here and he told me all kinds of bosh about the church’s history. He showed me something inside and I knew I had to show it to you.

  As they approach the church Ashley sees the black mass of the nave, a square tower looming above.

  —Are we meant to break in? I doubt they leave the door unlocked. And I don’t fancy being cashiered before I reach France.

  —The door will be open, she calls back.

  —It will not.

  They follow the perimeter of the church toward the front entrance. As she walks Imogen runs her fingers along the rough walls, feeling for the gaps between each stone. They reach the front portal, an arched wooden door set at the tower’s base. Imogen puts her hand on the door’s iron ring. She smiles at Ashley.

  —Do you trust in me?

  —In nothing else.

  Imogen turns the ring and pushes the door. It swings open with a creak.

  —After you, Lieutenant.

  It is dark in the nave. Only a faint shimmer of starlight passes through the stained glass above. They walk abreast of each other toward the altar, but they do not touch. By accident Ashley’s hand grazes hers and he reaches for her palm. She dashes away.

  —I shan’t kiss you in a church. I may not believe in God, but I still fear him.

  —And what are we here for?

  Imogen reaches the altar, taking the steps in one stride. She plucks a ceremonial candle and tosses it underhand toward him.

  —Catch.

  Ashley puts up his hands to receive the candle, but her aim is wildly off and it bounces on the floor. He retrieves the candle and Imogen walks back down the center aisle toward the entrance. On her way she lifts a chair and carries it with her.

  —This way.

  Ashley follows dutifully behind her, the candle in his hand. Imogen sets the chair before the front portal and steps onto it.

  —Light the candle, please.

  Ashley strikes a match and at once the darkness recedes before the yellow flame. He lights the candle and passes it to Imogen. She holds the flame close against the beam that frames the top of the portal, running her hand over the dark wood.