Harriet Evans - Love Always

No one ever mentions Cecily. It’s like a bul et fired into the conversation.

Perhaps I would have pretended not to hear Louisa, but the Bowler Hat’s voice is loud. ‘I look like Cecily?’ I say, turning back with a bottle in my hand.

Louisa is facing her husband, plucking at a piece of fluff on his jacket. He meets her gaze, briefly, and then looks back into his drink again. I can’t decide if he’s uncomfortable, or simply tired. They ignore me, it’s as if they’re in a world of their own. ‘She gave you your name,’ Louisa says.

‘Don’t you remember?’

He nods, his chin sunk onto his chest, I can’t see his face. ‘Yes. She did, didn’t she?’

I close the gap between us, by reaching forward and fil ing the Bowler Hat’s glass, and they both look up at me. ‘I didn’t know that,’ I say. I’ve never real y thought about it, strange to say. That’s just how he’s always been referred to. ‘Real y, that’s how you got the name?’

He nods and switches his wine glass to his other hand. There are smeary finger marks on the glass. He pul s at his col ar.

‘Yes,’ he says, and he smiles. ‘You know my brother Guy?’ I nod. ‘He and I came here for the summer, that was the first time I met the rest of the family. 1962?’ He turns to his wife, and for a second he is younger, his craggy strong face unlined, his colourless hair blond again, a stil handsome, strapping young man.

‘’63,’ she says quickly. ‘’63.’

‘Of course. Profumo – the trial had just started when we arrived.’ He smiles. ‘Yes! We got the train from London. Read about it on the way down. And after we’d arrived, Cecily took one look at me and said I looked like I should be wearing a bowler hat, not shorts. She could be very funny.’ He shakes his head. ‘Tragic. So sad.’ He is silent, Louisa is looking down at the floor.

I never hear them talk about when they were younger, probably because of Cecily. Never heard anything about the summers down here when they were children. It’s hard, now, to believe they hung out together for weeks on end, had picnics, swam together, lay in the sun. Sure, there’s the odd photo, and the odd reference – ‘That was the year Archie broke his arm, wasn’t it?’ But that’s it. Louisa comes – came – for a week to Summercove every year with the children, that’s how I know them better, but the Bowler Hat never real y came, he’d stay up in London, working.

Mum and I would sometimes be down here for Christmas, but not often. Mostly it was at home, or with Archie and Sameena in Ealing. We didn’t make jol y family visits to Tunbridge Wel s, and I don’t recal Mum ever entertaining Louisa and the Bowler Hat to dinner in our tiny damp Hammersmith abode. They don’t socialise, when I think about it. They’re so different now and there’s no intimacy between them al . And apart from that photo of Cecily that Granny had and I saw only once I know nothing else about her. Cecily simply doesn’t come up. What happened doesn’t come up.

So the three of us stare at each other, unsure how to proceed: we’ve gone down a conversational dead end.

‘Natasha’s right, though,’ the Bowler Hat suddenly says, unbending. ‘It was like paradise, Summercove. So laid-back and free. That day we arrived, Guy and I, and you were lying out on the lawn in those great tight-fitting black trousers, remember?’ He smiles, wolfishly. ‘Yes, we were young then.’

‘Frank,’ Louisa says, through gritted teeth. ‘That wasn’t me. My shorts ripped, remember? That was bloody Miranda.’

‘Your memory, dear,’ Bowler Hat says. ‘Incredible. Hah.’ He looks around him airily. I will not be embarrassed by this mistake, don’t try me .

‘Is Guy here? I haven’t seen him yet,’ I say hastily. ‘Though it’s been so long, I don’t know if I’d recognise him.’

‘Oh, you would,’ says Louisa. ‘He was at Julius’s wedding. Guy!’ she cal s. ‘Guy!’

Last year, Julius married a Russian girl, a trader he’d met through work. He was thirty-seven, she was twenty-three. It was a smart hotel in central London, in a huge room with gold panel ing on the wal s, and red-faced, huge-handed Julius and a stick-thin beautiful young woman in acres of tul e posing for endless photos. They had a huge row – at the reception – and she stormed off. Jay says he heard she ended up at the Rock Garden in Covent Garden with one of her bridesmaids, snogging a Russian guy. I don’t believe him, though I’d love it to be true.

Al I real y remember about that night is that Oli and my mother got real y drunk; they’re a bad combination, those two. Oli managed to offend one of Julius’s ghastly City friends: unintentional y, he can be a bit ful on when he’s had too much to drink. I had to take him home. Julius’s wife isn’t here today. Neither’s my husband, though.

‘Ah,’ Louisa says. I turn around. ‘Hi, Guy,’ I say, holding out my hand. Again I hear Julius’s words on the train. ‘Bloody good thing Guy’s already there.’ I grip his hand, suddenly angry, and pump my arm up and down a little too hard. Guy is nothing like his brother, he is mild-looking and rather thin, wearing a tatty checked shirt with a corduroy jacket. He smiles at me.

‘It’s nice to see you again, Natasha. It’s been a very long time.’ He nods, his grey eyes kind.

‘Hi,’ I say. I haven’t seen him for ages. ‘I was in a shop where they were sel ing your bracelets the other day,’ he says. ‘Nearly bought one for my daughter.’

‘I wish you had,’ I say. He stares at me. ‘Guy’s an antiques dealer,’ Louisa says behind me. She crumples a tea towel up in her hand. ‘We thought it’d be useful for him to come to the funeral, you know? Get started on the work ahead. Because of course, there’s some interesting things in the house too.’

Interesting. ‘Has anyone been into her studio yet?’ I say. ‘It’s locked, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ Louisa says, her face tight. ‘Your mother found the key and went in, a couple of days ago. She started taking things out, but I managed to stop her. Someone should be making sure it’s al properly done.’

‘Arvind wanted to go in,’ the Bowler Hat says. ‘In fairness to Miranda.’

‘Wel , fine,’ Louisa says crossly, but she doesn’t seem convinced. ‘Anyway, it’s al in there.’

‘Like what?’

Louisa is brisk. ‘A few paintings, which is wonderful. That’s it though. And her old sketchbooks and paints. Why, what were you expecting them to find?’

I shake my head, feeling stupid. ‘It’s time we sorted everything out.’ Louisa narrows her eyes. ‘Is that Florian leaving? Yes.’ She turns to me. ‘I mean, they weren’t wealthy in other ways, not for years now. But there are a lot of valuable paintings, letters, books, that sort of thing. And we need to decide what’s best for them al . For al her work, and everything else they’ve got here.’

I know about the signed first editions by Stephen Spender, Kingsley Amis, T. S. Eliot, which line the shelves rising from the floor to the ceiling either side of the fireplace. About the Ben Nicholson print in the hal , the Macready sketch with its white frame in the dining room: ‘Frances at the Chelsea Arts Club, 1953’. They lent that one for his retrospective at the Tate, a couple of years ago. It was the cover of the catalogue. I hadn’t thought about al of that. To me, they’re a part of the house, as much a part as the doors and the taps and the floors.

It makes sense that there’s some kind of trust to look after Granny’s paintings, but I can’t help feeling uncomfortable. I barely know Guy and I don’t think Mum and Archie do, either. Sure, they al spent a summer together years ago but that doesn’t real y count. Does it? And I wish I didn’t, but I object to the idea of him eyeing up these things in the house at the funeral. Poking around in Granny’s studio. Picking up the pair of Juno vases on the mantelpiece, the Clarice Cliff teapot, and clicking his tongue with pleasure. I glare at Louisa, but she is oblivious, and so I glare at Guy instead. He smiles at me in a friendly way, and I want to hit him. Now is not the time to be picking over the house for the juiciest bits, like the carcass of a chicken.