Clovis and Willa sit in the front room pouring over the newspapers when they hear the hum of the motor taxi idling in front of the house. Clovis nearly upsets the tea tray in a nervous jump from her seat. A flush of deep pink crawls up Willa’s neck and face and she is unable to calm it. Jonesy bounds down the stairs.
When the door opens and the bags are set on the floor, Finn lifts his eyes to Clovis, anxious to face her wrath and be done with it.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘There was no time to send a telegram. Germany was …’
Clovis places her hand over her husband’s mouth and there, in front of them all confesses, ‘I thought I would never see you again, Finn Fowler.’
Later that night when they are fed, and when only a few swallows of wine make them woozy, Clovis climbs on top of Finn and drapes her naked body over him, like a snug, silk wrap. She takes him in her mouth until he shudders and takes him again and again during the night in a variety of ways and positions until he lays motionless, his legs spread, his manhood limp with exhaustion.
Finn awakens the following morning to the sound of boots on pavement that echo all the way from Tooley Street, the vibrations of which will be a constant for the next four years. Clovis stirs. Although he was surprised by her generosity last night, for weeks he’d noticed small indications that she was softening. Nothing monumental, but like a stiff shot of liquor, the slightest conversion took the edge off. No better time than the present to test her genuineness.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ he begins. ‘Rafe needs a studio … outside the house. Somewhere in the neighbourhood.’
‘I agree. We might buy cheaply now with all the chaos. Iceland may help.’
Finn’s back straightens. She makes no argument? There’s no dismissal or bargaining?
‘Good. I’ll see to it.’ He waits for her to change her mind; he expects it, as if their agreement were nothing but a hateful joke. Instead, she hums a tune he doesn’t recognize.
‘What’s that?’ He nods to the wooden figure of a man resting against the mirror over the fireplace in their bedroom.
‘Jonesy. He’s carving puppets. I’m encouraging him.’
Finn won’t mention the phials today. One step at a time.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
1916
It began two years ago, on the third day after war was declared, when the sisters Fitzgerald, along with thousands of Londoners, traipsed to Victoria Station to view the spectacle. It was an event, and they must see it, for they were drawn to it just as forcibly as others were. None remained unmoved. It grabbed Constance first, a sense that she and Verity were no longer alone in their grief; that they stood with a whole nation of women who were forced to say farewell to those they love and may never see again. That this act was repeated in train stations all over the country sent a tremble through her limbs.
Now, two years later, on a rather cold, dull and wet June morning at Charing Cross Station, the worst but inevitable fears are realized as a constant flow of men return disabled, wounded, their faces ghostly and harrowed. People search in silence from shock and out of respect for the disfigured – a scene so tragically different from the cheers of excitement during the brave beginning. The news of a terrible battle at sea brings increasing numbers who besiege the stations.
Constance lets her gaze roam the whole of Charing Cross Station, and she acknowledges that another predominant colour joins the khaki uniforms – the black of mourning.
‘Verity.’ She turns to her sister.
‘Why, Constance, you’re as pale as death. What is it?’
‘We must let him go.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Rafe. We mustn’t search for him any more. It’s time to rejoin the world as best we can. It’s time to work.’
‘What foreign thoughts. I don’t know if I can do that.’
Constance grips her sister by her shoulders.
‘Look around you, Verity. We’ve avoided this for two years. It’s wrong and selfish.’
‘What will we do?’
‘I don’t know yet. Come. Rafe is not here. Let’s go home.’
Outside the station an additional crowd of people stand by the kerbs to watch the ambulances carry the wounded to Charing Cross Hospital. A long, white banner across the road flies a request: ‘Quiet For The Wounded’.
A young, dark-skinned man walks briskly past the sisters with his head down, his cap sits low over his eyes. Verity stops short.
‘How odd.’ She removes her dark glasses.
‘What is it?’
‘That young man …’ Verity gestures back towards the station entrance with the stem of her glasses. ‘No, he’s disappeared.’
‘Was it Benedikt?’
‘No … I had the strangest sense of … Never mind. I am shaken by this awful scene.’
That night, behind heavily-screened windows, Constance and Verity sit on the floor of the Tower Room packing Rafe’s toys and books. All but the moon-faced man automaton and the mechanical bird will be donated to children who have lost their fathers. Yes, the toys may be old-fashioned, Constance surmises, but she hopes children in pain and fear will not mind. The sisters exchange few words, each lost in their memories of the boy. Finally, they come to his clothes; they stroke the little velveteen skeleton suits left behind after his hasty departure, and there lie his painting smocks and a pair of boots. How long ago.
‘We’ll keep and treasure his paintings, of course.’ Constance says.
‘Of course.’
‘And we shall continue our visits to St Martin’s every 17th of December, in his honour.’
‘I agree.’
‘Good.’
The next morning the sisters launch out before breakfast for a mind-clearing walk. They have become accustomed to the striking military landscape of The Regent’s Park. They stroll on a muddied road past the Home Depot, a large wooden building where the post vans are being loaded with an astounding number of mail bags and Fortnum’s hampers. Continuing on the edge of the military camp, they observe
