The Shades Page 11

  When Michael tried to analyze why he felt so bereft after receiving the letter, he realized that he wasn’t grieving for the loss of his son—clearly Rowan was alive and would continue to exist in the world—but for the loss of all his hopes for him, dashed on a piece of ruled A4 paper.

  The weekend at Hamdean had been too quiet and the silence was beginning to weigh on Catherine. As much as she tried to keep herself occupied with revisions and edits on the catalogue for the new show, there were still too many minutes in the day that she couldn’t fill productively. Her old routine of having hours to herself for working, walking, and introspection was no longer desirable or even tenable. Michael had been coming to the house less frequently. Since he had started showing properties on weekends, he would drive to Hamdean late on Saturday night and leave again the next morning. The weekend before he had stayed in London.

  He had broached the subject of selling Hamdean over breakfast on Sunday. “Can you imagine wanting to stay here long-term?”

  “I don’t know. I can hardly think one day forward.”

  “I could see us finding somewhere else—a cottage in Rye or St. Leonards. Could be a project for us, and investment.”

  The prospect of leaving was welcome and terrible to Catherine.

  “Fewer bedrooms,” she’d said flatly, but the statement was pointed. She watched his face fall, and she hated herself for making him feel that way, although part of her still thought that he deserved it, for being fickle in wanting to be rid of the home they had tried to make together.

  “Yes . . . maybe thirteen months is a day too soon to make any decisions, I understand. I’m just wondering whether it’s something we should consider in the near future.”

  Catherine didn’t disagree.

  Strictly speaking, she was never totally alone, as Judith was always near, with her potions, gifts, and notes. But Catherine was in no mood for friendship and scurried in and out of the house, aware that she had become a parody of herself, a character in a farce, ducking and weaving to avoid being seen. She was glad when Sunday was over, knowing that it was only a matter of time before she would be able to busy herself at the gallery and the week would start again.

  On Monday, she announced to Lewis that they would finally get to grips with the press packets for the group show. Although Lewis seemed to have his own agenda that day, she’d asked him to print out mailers of all the artists’ bios and reviews for the exhibition.

  Lewis was a creature of habit. If he wasn’t always punctual about returning on time, he was always prompt about leaving for lunch. Usually at 12:50 p.m. he would ready himself for a 12:55 departure, but her request had made him late. At 1:30 p.m. he finished the task and wound a tribal scarf around his neck (he was stylish—she had to hand him that). He transferred his wallet from his cardigan to his waistcoat while making a telephone call on his mobile. As the common area by the computers was small, it was impossible for Catherine not to overhear.

  “Sorry, I got stuck here,” he said, voice low with conspiracy. “Will be there in ten. Looking forward to hearing stories about roomie from hell. Don’t worry, we’ll have a bitch-fest and you can get it all out,” he said, shutting his flip phone with a snap.

  He startled when he turned and saw Catherine standing behind him.

  “Excuse my French,” he said, embarrassed.

  “I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation. May I ask, whom were you talking about?”

  He hesitated, trying to gauge the nature of her request. “Oh, I was just gobbing with Melissa Goddard. You may know her dad, Bruce Goddard, who sells horses? She let a friend of a friend stay with her at her flat, God bless her soul. She was nice enough to give her a job in her boutique and the ingrate stole money and stunk up all the clothes by wearing them at night. Lissy only discovered when a customer complained.”

  Catherine’s heart pounded. “Repeat the part about the clothes.”

  “She borrowed inventory from the shop. Wore the clothes. Soiled them.”

  “Tell me her name again.”

  Lewis was blank. “She didn’t say.”

  “I need you to find out her name. Would you do that for me? It’s important.”

  “Yes, for sure.” He seemed alarmed at the urgency of her request. “I’m going to hear all the details right now.” He took this as a cue to hurry away.

  Catherine didn’t need any further confirmation from Lewis. She was already convinced that the person he had been describing was Keira. During Keira’s last visit to the house, she remembered seeing something poking out of her collar and having an urge to tuck it in, but the instinct had been almost subliminal, a detail that she had absorbed without realizing its significance. She also recalled seeing tags on the inside lapel of Keira’s jacket when it was lying on the guest room chair. Hearing that someone in Lewis’s extended friend group was walking around in borrowed clothes—as she visualized, price labels still on—was enough to make her connect the two women and believe that Keira and Lissy’s former flatmate were one and the same.

  It had to be her.

  The thought that Keira was a shallow opportunist made her nauseous.

  The one hundred minutes that it took Lewis to come back from lunch seemed like one thousand. Catherine sat at his desk, dialing and re-dialing variations on the number she had been given by the girl. She searched more images of Keira’s family on the computer. All that came up were some images of Keira’s father on film sets, peering into viewfinders and monitors, the group photograph that Michael had already found, plus some leggy glamour shots of Keira’s mother, Marine Deveaux. She could only find one mention of Marine’s participation in a cabaret in Nimes, making her wonder what kind of dancer Ms. Deveaux had actually been.

  While she was waiting, she opened the recent documents on Lewis’s computer. She didn’t mistrust Lewis exactly. If he hadn’t innocently flagged the situation with Keira by discussing her within earshot on the phone, she might have thought it questionable that he knew two of the girl’s targets, Lissy and herself. She was just biding her time, checking to see what he had been up to that morning. Second in the files, after the gallery’s press release, was his résumé, listing his education and employment history to the present day. Evidently, Lewis was planning to leave the gallery and was interviewing elsewhere. Coming on the heels of the discovery that Keira was likely a liar and thief, this was another unwelcome piece of news. With the new show in the works, Catherine relied on Lewis and depended on him for help. Given the training and responsibility she had given him over the course of two years, she would have expected him to give notice if he was intending to leave.

  She was still processing the nature of Lewis’s disloyalty when he returned from lunch. He seemed surprised to find her sitting in his chair and stared at her as if she were an interloper with no right to be there. Catherine registered his expression with annoyance. It was her bloody chair. She didn’t pay him to job search during office hours or give her attitude.

  “Did you get her name?” she asked without getting up.

  “Christine,” Lewis replied, still eyeing his chair.

  “Christine?” Catherine queried. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m giving you the information exactly as it was given me.” He was peevish now, offended at being second-guessed.

  Catherine stood, allowing him to reclaim his chair. He sidled into his seat and turned to face his computer. He made a show of checking emails.

  The fact that she was calling herself Christine didn’t convince Catherine that she wasn’t Keira. If Keira was a user, or worse, a professional scam artist, it was likely that she would be using multiple names. She said nothing further to Lewis on the subject. If he was leaving, she couldn’t count on him anymore. Nor did she mention that she had found his résumé: to confront him about his intentions might force the issue and push him to resign. She didn’t want to do that until she had lined up his replacement.

  Lewis couldn’t stay silent for long. He swivel
ed around to face her. “When she moved out she left the taps on and blocked the toilet with”—he grimaced—“you don’t want to know. Can you imagine that someone would repay human kindness that way? Unbelievable!”

  Michael’s initial impression of Canterbury Downs had not been positive. When he had toured the school with Rowan, he couldn’t help comparing it unfavorably with the perfectly good one that Rowan wanted to leave in London. With an arts-laden curriculum, he didn’t think that Canterbury Downs gave sufficient weight to the core academic subjects. He wondered about the standard there and worried what impact its deficiencies and imbalances would have on his son. Having seen some grungy potheads lurking around campus, he had serious misgivings about the potential influence of the peer group. However, beggars couldn’t be choosers: Rowan wanted to transfer at a time when most places wouldn’t consider entry midterm in the year. They had to make a decision quickly so that Rowan would have somewhere to go. Canterbury Downs—CD as it was known by the students—seemed like a better option for him than having no school at all.

  As Michael had promised by return of post, he drove up to see Rowan at the first opportunity. He’d made an executive decision not to mention anything to Catherine, hoping that a quick intervention would render that conversation unnecessary. Fortunately, Catherine was at Hamdean and he was in London, enabling him to avoid being asked where he might be going so early on a Saturday morning.

  Once he was on the motorway and copse replaced asphalt, and cows in pasture seemed to outnumber the worries projected ahead, he began to feel more optimistic about the meeting. To the triumphal chords of the Emperor Concerto he rehearsed the advice he was intending to pass on to his son. By time he heard the Rondo, he had reached Kent. Stimulated by the exultant rapport between piano and orchestra, he had almost convinced himself of Rowan’s success and could practically visualize him in his robes, hood, and hat, receiving a first-class honors degree on graduation day.

  The final approach to the school was scenic through fields of barley. He saw that the heads were curled, still green and pliant, and as springy as caterpillars on a stalk. Within a matter of months, the stems would dry a golden brown before being razed—then the area would look as though it had been stampeded by a herd of giants. In the duration between the taking of the slain husk and the new cycle of plowing and planting, there would be a hush much like the observance of the fallen, but it would be a deceptive stillness, a fallow cunning. For all human toil and machination, the earth was the true master of the harvest (here, his imagination was pagan): the regeneration of the soil would have already begun.

  Soon a proscenium gate marked the end of arable land and the beginning of the playing fields. As the stark white modernist geometry of the school came into view, he was delighted to see there was a football match in progress out in front. As soccer had always been a passion, watching Footytube on his computer an essential part of his nightly routine, he pulled over to the side of the road and rolled down the window to watch.

  A motley group of players jogged in opposing directions across the pitch. They wore no uniform to distinguish sides; Michael rightly assumed they were CD kids playing one another. The teams were equally matched. Both had aggressively agile forwards who seemed to take defeat and triumph with equal good humor, even allowing for some outbursts of colorful language. Some female students lolled on the grass nearby. When a midfielder kicked the ball wide toward the road, one of the young women jumped up to retrieve it. Seeing Michael inside his car, the young woman smiled before grabbing the ball, with a lift of her chin that made him think of Rachel, and a familiar sensation tightened in his chest.

  On the way to the dorm, he passed through Main Hall. There was an exhibition of students’ crafts, paintings, and metalwork displayed in glass cases. Michael stopped for a few minutes to look around. He saw some sensitive pencil drawings, graphics, and filigree bracelets that could easily have been for sale in a shop on Bond Street. One enamel cuff stood out, as it had swirling lunar patterns against a firmament of blue that reminded him of Van Gogh’s The Starry Night. On a second look, he was amazed to see Rowan named as the maker. He had no idea that he possessed such skill, doubtless inherited from Catherine’s side of the family, as it hadn’t come from his.

  Now that Rowan wanted to go out into the dangerous world, he realized what a safe haven this progressive, liberal-arts institution had been. He saw that the kids he’d perceived as wacky were the normal ones for doing teenagery things such as having bad clothes and hair. They were not undisciplined, merely unpretentious and comfortable in their skin. If anything, Rowan was the strange one for choosing to do something so precipitous as wanting to leave this refuge of creativity and peace.

  Michael navigated a warren of passages and doorways to find Rowan in his room, a basic box with a bed and sink, but it had been hung with newspaper cuttings, photographs of oceans and trees, environmental action slogans, lists of events, statistics, and programs. He noticed that there were no personal photographs anywhere: nothing that would have indicated that Rowan was part of a family.

  After an awkward embrace, he sat on Rowan’s bed while his son took a seat opposite him on a chair. He didn’t waste time. He launched straight into a pep talk about the importance of higher education. It wasn’t a bad speech. He might have gone so far as to call it a rousing one. He explained that education wasn’t just a diploma to ensure future employment and a larger salary, but an essential part of a young adult’s moral and spiritual development. Higher learning wasn’t just an intellectual journey but one of enlightenment, discovery, and hope.

  Rowan listened with his head bowed. Michael hoped that his posture was an indication of respect and a sign that his son was taking his words to heart. Yet, as soon as Michael had finished, Rowan looked up and asked, “If I leave school, what do you think is going to happen?” Rowan’s question left Michael speechless. His immediate reaction was: You will die at the hands of police thugs or end up living toothless and destitute under a bridge, but unlike the lawyers who executed Rowan’s grandfather’s settlement, he didn’t want to articulate his fears: that would have been to empower them, maybe even bring bad luck—the latter was irrational, he understood. He was taken aback because when Rowan had looked at him, there was an expression on his face that he’d never seen: a fervid combination of passion and sorrow.

  Seeing his father unable to answer, Rowan continued, “Whatever you think, it will be worse if I don’t go.”

  Now that Rowan had raised the subject, Michael could more comfortably say, “You will stay safe, won’t you? I mean, it’s all peaceful, isn’t it?” He knew that by asking he was conceding defeat.

  For a moment, Rowan looked incredulous.

  “I’m not even going to answer that question,” he said, ending the conversation.

  Rowan checked his watch. He told his father that he was due in the library for a group project but insisted on walking him to the car. Although Michael didn’t want to make him late, he didn’t object, knowing his son’s good-natured company would go a long way to sweeten the bitterness of having to leave.

  On the way, Rowan asked about the lodger. “How’s she working out?”

  “Who?” Michael was confused.

  “The woman.”

  They looked at each other, puzzled.

  “Did I miss . . . ?” Michael wondered whether he was having a senior moment.

  “Mum said you were taking in a lodger. ‘Someone in need.’ She wanted us to meet but never mentioned it again.”

  Michael realized that the ostensible boarder was Keira. Catherine must have thought about taking her in but never mentioned it, as the relationship was a nonstarter. But how precipitous and odd for her to talk to Rowan without consulting him first, but then nothing about Catherine surprised him anymore.

  “Is Mum okay?” Rowan asked.

  That he still cared about his mother made Michael hope that he and Catherine might not have lost their son entirely. “She’s busy
at the gallery. Back on track. Much better now.” He didn’t know if this was true, but he had to believe it.

  When Michael reached the car, he sank into the driver’s seat. It occurred to him that this was the last time that he would visit his child at school. As this reality hit him, he was overcome with wistfulness. He realized how much he was going to miss all the open days, plays, concerts, and conferences that had been the happy substance and framework for so many years. Without them, he wasn’t sure whether life could ever seem so grounded or constructive. With a startle, he remembered Rowan’s cuff. He’d been so preoccupied with own his agenda that he had failed to mention it. “I saw your bracelet in the exhibition. It’s excellent quality. Really very well done. Perhaps, if you stayed on, this is something you could pursue?” He could hear how improbable this was and how unconvincing this must sound.

  Rowan smiled indulgently as if to say, Oh that. He leaned down, squeezed his father’s shoulder, and produced a folded piece of paper from his pocket. “You can read this later if you want.” For Michael, “later” was within five minutes, parked between a fuel truck and a camper van, sitting at a petrol station a couple of miles away. He couldn’t wait to see what his son had written.

  Sixteen Years

  I have glinted

  and darted

  in a swollen sea

  through blooms of algae

  diverting me

  (Does being a bottom feeder come naturally?)

  But I rise

  in the wake of an expiring day

  I want to add more

  a better way

  Michael read the poem and was affected by his son’s words. It moved him deeply that Rowan had chosen to express himself in this form; the verse traced an evolution from the embryonic piece that he had read at his sister’s funeral to the personal direction he seemed to have found. With simple imagery and rhyme, he had managed to evoke the challenges of navigating a changing world. Writing in a language that Michael could understand, it was as if Rowan were trying to help him by letting him read his poem, saying, See, Dad, it isn’t that complicated. This is who I am.