The Memory of Lost Senses (9 page)

But Rosetta appeared not to hear her. She continued with her rolling pin, eyes cast downwards, and said, “And who knows where she’s come from . . . could be anyone at all . . . anyone at all . . . I’ve read about folk who go overseas and come back all la-di-da, oh yes . . . could be anyone at all. Makes you wonder what happened to all them husbands,” she added, glancing up at Cecily with wide eyes.

Cecily laughed. She said, “Oh Rosetta, only
you
would suspect the poor old lady of murder!”

Rosetta made no reply. She pursed her lips and stretched her short neck as though trying to swallow words. Then she said, “You should go and tidy yourself up, missy. The Foxes are due here at seven.”

Cecily Chadwick had been born toward the end of a century, and toward the end of a life. Her first proper word, whispered—as she’d been taught—was “Daddy”; her first sentence, with a finger to her lips, “Daddy not well.” She had taken her first steps the day of a great earthquake in Japan, but there had been no tremor of excitement in her small hushed world. And then, at the end, it had gone quieter still and all black and white as her ashen-faced mother, already in mourning, with the nurse and the rector by her side, explained, “Daddy has gone.”

Since that time there had been little physical alteration in Cecily’s life. She had stayed on at the village school teaching the infants, and continued to live with her mother and sister in the house her father had built. But lately she had begun to feel a suffocating tightness about the village, like a gown she had outgrown but was still forced to wear. The sameness of each and every day was inescapable, the prospect of change remote. A yearning for excitement, she had been told, was the ambition of a shallow and idle mind, the ambition of
pleasure-seekers
.

Then, early in the spring of that year, the Countess from Abroad had moved into the house on the hill, the place known as Temple Hill. For days before her arrival all manner of vehicles had come and gone, struggling up the steep track, knocking branches from trees, churning up rocks and sand and dried mud. One wagon had failed to make it up at all, had stopped right there in front of Cecily’s garden gate. The men had had to carry each piece of furniture up the track, resting halfway, upon tables and in chairs, for a smoke. She had watched them disappear over the brow of the hill, stepped out through the gate and peered inside the wagon at the ornate antiques, rolls of carpets, tapestries, paintings, cabinets, settees and chairs. Stacked high at the back were crates and tea chests, a marble sculpture of a naked woman and, immediately in front of her, uncovered and gazing out into the sunshine, the bronze head of a Roman-nosed bearded man.

In the weeks that followed, as news of the countess’s arrival gathered pace, Cecily heard many things: the lady had lived in exile for almost all of her life, the lady was of foreign blood; her manner was unusually forthright, her manner was curiously reticent; she was Catholic, she was Protestant; she was penniless, she was rich. There was, however, consensus on one thing: the countess’s style was universally acknowledged as
cosmopolitan
.

It was the rector, Mr. Fox, who first alluded to royal connections, and there was talk of lineage and ancestry, albeit unspecific and somewhat vague, linking her to Louis Philippe, the last King of France. To Cecily, Mr. Fox appeared to know more than anyone, and certainly more than he was prepared to divulge. But once, over tea and cake, he slipped up and offered Cecily another tantalizing scrap, a chink into that rare knowledge. Oh yes, she had indeed been
someone
in her day, he said. “But the dear lady has come here in search of privacy and peace . . . and we must grant her that.”

As time went on, a selected few had been invited to the house for tea, always at a quarter past four. These, the chosen ones, had seen for themselves the fine French and Italian antique furnishings, paintings, sculptures and souvenirs; the paraphernalia of a life spent in a far more sophisticated milieu than their village. They spoke of the countess’s knowledge of Italian and French art and architecture, her apparent fluency in both languages. And when they learned that she had grown up in Paris, well, it came as no surprise.

But there was also talk of lost children, and husbands long since deceased, and though some appeared to consider this careless, almost wanton behavior, Cecily began to sense something of unutterable tragedy lying at the heart of the story. She pictured marble tombstones scattered across the desolate hillsides of foreign countries, and she could not help but view the countess as the sole survivor of an epic adventure. That the lady’s Grand Tour—gone horribly wrong perhaps—had finally, albeit inexplicably, led her to Bramley seemed a curious fluke of fate. And meaningful? Perhaps.

That the countess had had a remarkable life Cecily was in no doubt, for already she knew that her neighbor had lived in a way others had not. But Cecily’s mother remained unconvinced. She appeared, to Cecily at least, somewhat piqued by the rector’s unquestioning predisposition toward their new neighbor; said he appeared “a little starstruck.” But yes, she had conceded, smiling, the lady had undoubtedly led a colorful life. “But then, what goes on abroad, what’s acceptable on the Continent, is different. Quite different.”

“You mean the husbands, the marriages?” Cecily had asked.

“I mean everything.”

For weeks Cecily had been desperate for a glimpse of the Countess from Abroad. And once, driven by that desperation, that need to know, to see for herself, she had ventured up the track, and then further still into the tangled hollow of rhododendrons bordering the driveway to Temple Hill. Like a spy on a mission, gathering intelligence, she had crouched there, waiting. But nothing happened. No one emerged from the house and no one arrived. And to Cecily there appeared to be no signs of life within it.

“But does she never go anywhere?” she had later asked her mother.

“I believe she’s quite old, dear. So no, I imagine she doesn’t go far. Not now.”

“It must be strange,” Cecily continued, “to have traveled so much, so far, and then come to a stop. A stop
here
.”

Madeline Chadwick looked at her daughter: “But she might not be stopping, dear. I heard talk that she’s only here for the summer, is returning to the Continent for the winter.”

“Only here for the summer?” Cecily repeated. “But all that . . . stuff—surely she can’t be thinking of moving again?”

And then her sister, Ethne, said, “I don’t know why you’re so fascinated. Is it the title, dear? Because you know they’re two a penny on the Continent.”

Encouraged by Cecily, Annie Gamben had made it her business to try and learn more. As village postmaster, Annie’s father was privy to almost everything that took place within the scattered parish: births, deaths, engagements, marriages, and scandals (though there were few); who was writing to whom, who dispatched and who was the recipient of a telegram; and, crucially, what those telegrams spoke of.

It had been Annie’s mother who had first mentioned the
young man
: a relation, she presumed, and from what she had heard—judging by his looks—foreign, possibly Italian. Then Mrs. Gamben mentioned the
companion
: a lady only recently arrived by train from London. The companion had been into the post office twice, once to buy a packet of birdseed and some buttons, and once to dispatch a large brown paper package to a gentleman in north London.

On the first occasion Mrs. Gamben had not taken much notice of the bespectacled lady. It had been a Wednesday and the post office had been busy, as it always was on half-day closing. Realizing the lady to be a visitor to the village, and assuming her to be staying with one or other of her customers, Mrs. Gamben had been courteous but not overly so. But after the lady had thanked Mrs. Gamben and left the shop, Mrs. Moody, standing to one side beside the brooms and trugs and baskets, emerged from the shadows and told Mrs. G exactly whose guest her previous customer had been. On the second occasion, when the lady arrived with the brown paper parcel, Mrs. Gamben had been prepared. She had noted the absence of a wedding band on the lady’s left hand, a distinct lack of eye contact, and what she described as a “rather shifty manner.” Mrs. Gamben had politely inquired after the countess, been reassured to hear she was in very good health, and that Miss Appleby—who came to the post office each Tuesday to cut and dress hair—was expected up at the house that very afternoon. The countess, Mrs. Gamben surmised, was still very particular about her hair.

Rosetta had been the first to use the word “orphan.” She had bumped into the gardener, Mr. Cordery, “had it from the horse’s mouth,” she said, that the boy was quite without parents
and
that there were “suspicious circumstances.”

Everyone was curious. Everyone wanted to know more.

It was Cecily’s mother, Madeline, who raised the subject later that evening at dinner, saying, “Do tell me, Mr. Fox, how is our new neighbor, the countess, settling in?” And Cecily looked up and sat forward.

True to form, Mr. Fox appeared delighted to be offered the opportunity to speak about
the dear lady
. Oh yes, he began, she was settling in well, and delighted with the modernizations made to her new home. “Of course, she’s used to continental ways, and finds English sanitation a trifle primitive, to say the least,” he added. And Cecily saw Rosetta—standing behind Mrs. Fox, waiting to remove plates—roll her eyes.

That evening, Rosetta had changed into the dark gown, long white apron and cap Madeline had made for her and liked her to wear on the rare occasions they had visitors to dine with them. But the dress had become a tad too tight around her waist, causing her to tug and pull at it, and the cap, secured with elastic about her head, too loose. It slipped this way and that, and at one point, as she leaned forward to serve the rector, it slowly slid down her forehead until it entirely covered one eye before she managed to free a hand and push it back in place. Cecily knew these evenings to be enough of an ordeal for her, standing about, waiting at table and managing the kitchen on her own, without the added encumbrance of a faulty cap. Also, despite every window in the house standing open, the place was uncomfortably hot. And permeating the smell of meat and pastry and stewed vegetables, like the top note of a cheap perfume that catches the back of one’s throat, was the malodorous reek of Mr. Fox.

“And do remind me of her full name,” Madeline continued. “I’ve been told, of course, but it’s somewhat unusual. French, I think, isn’t it?”

Cecily turned to the rector.

He smiled, nodded. “You are correct, Mrs. Chadwick. It is the name of one of the most ancient and noble families in all of France, de Chevalier de Saint Léger. Thus the dear lady is la Comtesse de Chevalier de Saint Léger.”

“The Countess de Chevalier . . . de Saint Léger . . .” Madeline repeated hesitantly, as Cecily said it silently.

“And there were how many husbands?” Madeline asked.

“Someone told me there had been five,” Cecily broke in, without thinking, and she heard her mother and Mrs. Fox both gasp.

The rector cleared his throat. He picked up his glass of wine, studied the liquid for a moment. “It is unfortunate but perhaps understandable,” he said, glancing at Madeline, “for there to be conjecture of that nature. I can tell you only the
facts
. Facts I am certain the countess would be happy enough for me to share with the assembled company.” He paused again, took a sip of wine. “The first marriage was to a gentleman by the name of Staunton, in Rome, many years ago . . . perhaps as many as fifty years ago.”

“Fifty,” Cecily repeated.

“I would estimate so . . . yes, I would estimate so. But that union, that
first
marriage, was cut tragically short when Mr. Staunton was killed.”

There was a loud clank from the sideboard. Madeline jumped. “Killed?” she repeated.

“An accident, I believe,” said Mr. Fox, without elaborating further. Cecily caught Rosetta’s eye and quickly looked away as he continued. “And thus, the countess—little more than a girl at that time—was left to raise her sons alone.”