The Art of Inheriting Secrets(25)
I came upon Pavi’s restaurant before I knew it. The name, Coriander, was painted in gold on the plate glass window. Within, the lights were appealingly low, the tables with candles in cut-brass holders that cast geometric patterns over white tablecloths. Touches of turquoise picked up the peacock colors—napkins in turquoise wood holders, turquoise handkerchiefs in the vest pockets. Servers wore black trousers and vests over white shirts. Classic.
I wished, suddenly, that I didn’t have to wait for Tuesday. The aromas drifting from the restaurant were mouthwatering.
But I would wait for Pavi. Wait for the earl. Wait for my life to get moving again. Instead of Coriander, I chose a French-style bistro, quiet and easy, where the server talked me into the braised rabbit, which arrived exquisitely tender in a gravy of such textured depth that I took out my notebook and scribbled a few notes on what I thought the ingredients might be. Thyme, rosemary, carrots, and parsley. Mushrooms and mustard and shallots.
Sublime. The company of such perfection eased my loneliness, and I lingered with a second glass of wine and the small sketchbook I’d purchased in Letchworth. My table was tucked in a dark corner by the window, and I sketched my table setting, the glass, the ingredients in my food, then shifted my attention to the locals moving across the square and down the pavements, the stars rising above the round hills beyond. A pair of teenaged lovers wound tightly together beside the ancient stone butter cross in the middle of the square, their figures illuminated by a streetlamp, and from this distance, they could have been from any time—the Restoration, when Charles II had given the house and lands back to my ancestress; the Victorian era; or perhaps the war years of the forties, when bombs had practically annihilated this small island country.
People had lived and died in this little village for hundreds and hundreds of years. I felt them suddenly, long lines of them reaching back through time, and let my hand capture that emotion in an easy sketch, figures in all manner of dress moving through and around each other, their feet crisscrossing the same paths. The quiet square seemed busy with their ghosts, their stories, and it made me feel peaceful in some arcane way.
Life had washed me here on this strange errand. Maybe the best thing to do was to just let it show me what it had in mind.
Early Tuesday morning, I took the sketchbook and pens with me to the hill by the church. It was, at last, a dry, fine morning, the light a pregnant yellow that angled at a long slant from the east, shimmering over the open fields and glazing the grass on the rolling hills. Rosemere Priory was thrown into shadow, but I sketched it too. The lines were awkward and shaky, but the practice gave me the same sense of quiet that it always did. I’d never been able to get comfortable with sitting meditation, but cooking and sketching and walking gave me the same feeling I’d heard others describe. Wordlessness, focusing on the moment, letting go of the crazy voices all vying for attention.
An email had come from Nancy overnight that she’d had a dozen offers at the open house Sunday, and all we needed now was to pick one—which meant, Let’s go for that big number. It was staggering how much people were willing to pay for that small plot of land. We’d exceeded the $3.5 million she’d predicted by another $300,000, and even after taxes, that was a serious sum.
Sitting on a low, ancient wall, sketching the graveyard, I let the conflicted emotions over the pending sale move through me, one after the other. I would never sit in my mother’s kitchen again. I would have an amazingly fat bank account, which would help get things moving on Rosemere, if that was what I chose, or help me find a new place to live in San Francisco. Or . . . almost anything, really.
The one thing that did not appeal to me was to buy the San Francisco apartment with Grant. A year or two ago, that possibility would have been the best I could have asked from the universe. We were happy.
Except that it had turned out we were not.
On the way back to the hotel, I popped into Haver’s office. “Good morning, Lady Shaw,” the same secretary said. “I was just about to ring you and let you know this was ready.” She handed over a very thick envelope. “Everything you asked for should be there. Just give us a ring if you need clarification or anything at all.” She folded her hands on the desk beatifically, and I realized that she was older than Haver by far.
“Thank you,” I said, holding the packet close. “Were you also secretary to the previous Mr. Haver?”
“Yes, for nearly forty years.”
“So you were here when everyone disappeared or whatever, right?”
“A sad business, that.”
“Mmm. I just need to get the order of things straight in my head. My grandmother died, right?”
“Yes. That must have been 1973.” She paused, frowning. “Maybe ’74.”
I was born in 1978, in San Francisco, which gave my mother enough time to emigrate, find a husband, and give birth to me. “So who was the earl when Violet died?”
“Her son, of course. Roger Shaw was the fourteenth Earl of Rosemere.”
“That’s my mother’s brother. My uncle.”
“Yes.” Her phone rang—ring-ring! Ring-ring!—and she held up a finger to me while she answered it.
I waited while she explained something to a person on the other end, and when she set the handset back in the cradle, I asked, “Where did he go?”
“To India, as far as I know—that’s where we’ve always sent the money, but he’s disappeared now too.”