Jessie Burton - The Muse

The door was slightly ajar. It was her bedroom, Sarah’s bedroom; you could tell. There were still lipsticks on the dressing table, a silver powder compact in the shape of a shell; paperback novels and old magazines. Along the sill were china and glass ornaments, vases of flowers, now dried out. The curtains were open, but the sun was not yet up. The silhouettes of naked trees were crooked against a lavender sky.

I looked at the bed. Had it happened here? There was no sense of the scene, for which I was grateful. I felt deeply sorry for both these men, clearly lost without her — or confused, at least. Gerry was right — Lawrie had been so evasive about his mother. Gerry, far from being a heartless bastard, appeared to want to discuss her. It was Lawrie who wouldn’t. Only now, being in the house with him and his step-father together, could I see how deeply Lawrie had been affected by Sarah, by this second marriage, by the manner of her death.

In the corner of the room was a large wardrobe. I opened it, and a cloud of camphor hit the back of my throat. Hanging inside was a solitary pair of delicate red trousers, and I pulled them out and held them against my body. If these were Sarah’s, and I assumed they were, she had been tiny. They barely cut the middle of my shins. They were made of scarlet wool, which in many places had been attacked by moth, most unfortunately at the groin. Yet you could tell that these trousers had been particularly stylish. They made me think of Quick. She’d have liked these, holey groin or not.

‘They won’t fit, you know,’ said a voice. ‘But I couldn’t bear to throw them away.’

I jumped. At the door was Gerry; scant, sandy hair on end, large body wrapped in a deep blue dressing gown, his hairy legs and bare feet sticking out at the bottom. Embarrassed, I stammered something incomprehensible as I moved to put the trousers back. I felt terrible for thinking that Gerry had just cleared away his wife without a second thought. This place was like his little shrine. He probably visited it every morning, and I was an intruder. I was beyond mortified. I’d stayed over; I was just wearing a man’s shirt and jumper. I’d had sex under his roof. Thank God Lawrie was much taller than me, in terms of my modesty, but I might as well have had the word SEX emblazoned on my forehead, I felt it was so obvious.

But Gerry seemed uninterested in the morals of his step-son and girlfriend. Perhaps he was more modern than I gave him credit for. That, or he was too mired or hungover in his grief to care. He waved his hand as he padded in. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, sitting heavily on the end of the bed. I was still holding the trousers. ‘You can have a look around. She was a mystery to me too, in many ways.’

With his glum expression and rotund stomach, Gerry reminded me of the morose Humpty Dumpty from Lewis Carroll’s Looking-Glass . And I felt like Alice, being riddled and challenged in every direction I turned.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I shouldn’t be in here.’

‘Don’t be. Lawrie really doesn’t talk about her, does he?’

‘Not much. Mr Scott, can I ask—’

‘I’m not Scott,’ said Gerry. ‘That was Sarah’s maiden name.’

‘Oh.’

‘Lawrence chose to keep her name rather than mine,’ Gerry said, shaking his head. ‘Still, he was sixteen by then, and you can’t tell a sixteen-year-old what to do. Never really understood him.’

‘He didn’t take his father’s name?’

Gerry looked at me shrewdly. ‘Not a very good idea to call yourself Schloss in the school playground in the forties.’

I stood, frozen to the spot, the red trousers hanging limply in my grasp. ‘Schloss?’ I repeated. ‘Lawrie’s father was Schloss?’

Gerry looked up at me, interested by the energy in my voice. ‘Well, strictly speaking, yes. Sarah gave him the surname Scott from the moment he was born, but in terms of his father, it’s Schloss. Her first husband was an Austrian of all things, just before the Great War.’

‘Austrian?’

Gerry looked amused. ‘You seem a little perturbed by all this. Is everything all right?’

‘Oh, I’m fine,’ I said, trying to look as casual as I could, in Lawrie’s oversized woollen jumper, clutching his dead mother’s trousers, as if this news about Lawrie’s father meant nothing to me at all.

‘When she came back to England and had Lawrie, she thought it prudent to give him her own name. Nobody trusted a German name in those days.’

‘What was her husband’s first name?’

‘Harold. Poor bastard. God, when I think what happened. Sarah never talked about it, but I think perhaps she should have, now I look at Lawrence. The man is so pathological when it comes to his parents.’

I tried to recall how Lawrie had behaved, on the occasions that Reede had mentioned the name Harold Schloss. I didn’t remember any particular show of emotion, or moment of recognition. But he had asked if Reede knew what had happened to him — I did remember that.

‘What happened to his father?’ I asked.

Gerry bared his teeth in a grim smile, revealing long incisors. ‘He doesn’t tell you much, does he? Well, it’s a sensitive subject.’

‘Clearly.’

‘Perhaps you two don’t have time spare for talking. I was the same, once.’

I tried to turn my blush into a weak smile, half wanting to flee, half wanting to find out from this man more than Lawrie would ever tell me. ‘He has a point, not talking about it,’ Gerry said. ‘It’s useless for a man to rake over things he can’t even remember. Lawrie never even met the fellow.’ He ran his hand over his head and fixed me with a look. ‘Hitler happened to Harold Schloss, that’s what. Like he happened to us all.’

I went to speak, but Gerry rose to his feet, yellow-nailed against the dark wood floorboards. ‘It’s very early to be talking about all this,’ he said. ‘I’m going for a walk to clear my head. I suggest that you go back to bed.’

I returned to Lawrie’s room. He stirred and opened his eyes with a smile, throwing his arms up to let me into the warm, crumpled sheets. I stood at the side of the bed. ‘What is it?’ he said, the smile fading. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘You’re Lawrie Schloss,’ I said. ‘Your father sold Rufina and the Lion . That’s how you have the painting.’

I admit, there might have been a better way to approach the situation — your father this and your father that — talking of a dead man Lawrie had never met, at six fifteen in the morning. I think it was because I had always thought of Lawrie as fundamentally honest; had even defended him to Quick when she was raising her doubts. And I realized now, that time and again, Lawrie had evaded the question not just of his mother, but of how she might have come into possessing such an artwork.

Lawrie lowered his arms and surveyed me. ‘I’m Lawrie Scott ,’ he said. He closed his eyes. ‘You’ve been talking to Gerry.’

‘You lied,’ I said.

He opened his eyes again, and propped himself on an elbow. ‘I didn’t bloody lie. I just never told you the whole truth.’

‘But why? What does it matter who your father was?’ He said nothing. ‘Lawrie, have you really sold your car?’

He rubbed his eyes, frowning as if trying to slot his thoughts into place. ‘Yes, I have really sold my car. Gerry’s definitely planning to sell this house. And then what will I do?’

‘He’ll never sell it. There’s a room along this corridor devoted to your mother. It’s even got her clothes and makeup still inside.’

There was confusion in his eyes. ‘How d’you know about that?’

I sat down slowly on the side of the bed. ‘It’s where I just bumped into Gerry.’