Chapter 7

CAROLINE, LONGHURST, 1991

"Welcome to Longhurst," said Patrick as we turned in at the wrought iron front gate and rumbled up an oak-flanked driveway. So this was it. The house where Juliette had grown up. The house the photograph at the Witt suggested her painting had somehow found its way back to.

Patrick followed my gaze to a huddle of ripped yurts in a distant field. "That's Philip Willoughby's doing," he explained. "One of his many attempts to monetize the estate. Those are from the failed opera festival, I think. The truth is, Philip has had rather more misses than hits, entrepreneurially speaking."

That seemed an understatement. As we bounced the mile or so up to the house, Patrick pointed out a field striated with sorry-looking vines (a failed winery), the overgrown remains of a go-kart track, and a sign welcoming visitors to an A-Mazing Maize Maze, next to a bare field.

"He's nice, Philip, although he'll no doubt regale you with his latest money-making wheeze. His mother—the painter Austen Willoughby's widow—is still going strong in her nineties." Patrick made a whistling noise through his teeth, "And she is something else. She was there this one time when Freddie persuaded Harry and me to row over the lake—she must have been in her eighties then—and I have never heard a telling off like it. Even Freddie couldn't smirk his way through that one. Then there's Harry's mother, Georgina...."

He thought for a moment, as we swerved to avoid a particularly large pothole. "Definitely an acquired taste. You'll know very quickly if she likes you or not. She has always approved of me, for some unknown reason, which means we will probably be sitting near her tonight. Consider this advance warning."

"I'm sure I'll be fine," I said, as it dawned on me that, being Patrick's plus-one, I would spend the evening being appraised and assessed.

"Well, we'll find out soon enough," Patrick said with a laugh, waving at a dark-haired woman in an apron who was marching across the gravel. He wound down the window and shouted: "Georgina!"

She shaded her eyes to peer into the car at us.

"Patrick!" she cried, in apparent delight, at considerable volume. "Park up here, would you, and give the keys to the chap in the hall in case we need to shuffle the cars around to make space. I'm afraid you won't be staying in the Green Room tonight—we were all set up for you and then a bloody pipe burst."

She pulled a face and raised one hand melodramatically to her forehead.

"The Green Room?" I asked Patrick.

"That's the bedroom—top floor, green leaf-print wallpaper, view of the lawn and the lake—my dad and I always get put in, when he or I stay here. But not tonight, apparently. That's the thing with big old country piles like this—there's always something in need of fixing."

In illustration, he pointed at the scaffolding erected along one side of the house, partly wrapped in white plastic tarps. More tarps shrouded a section of the roof. Both things looked like they had been there for some time.

Despite these signs of encroaching decay, the house was still imposing. I had done my homework: originally a smaller Georgian manor, it had been purchased by the Willoughby family in the 1840s, then extended and embellished in golden Bath stone in Gothic Revival style, complete with rose windows, flying buttresses, and soaring turrets.

Staff in white shirts and waistcoats were swarming the lawn on one side of the building, some with meadows-full of floral arrangements in their arms, others trays of sparkling glassware. A tower of champagne coupes was being assembled by the entrance. Although Harry's invitation had requested white tie and promised dinner and dancing, fireworks at midnight and a hog roast at dawn, until that moment, the scale of the event hadn't really dawned on me. It was clear this would be unlike any birthday party I had ever attended.

"I thought you said the Willoughbys were tight with money," I whispered to Patrick.

"There are some things that a family like this will always pay for, and a milestone like this is one. It's no wonder they have my dad looking into selling more of Austen's paintings."

"Caroline!" I heard my name called from across the driveway, and turned to see Athena emerging from a Rolls-Royce, already dressed for dinner. I waved hello at her driver, Karl. We had met once before, when he collected Athena and me after a birthday party in London and dropped us at the Galanises' house in Holland Park. I remember being baffled at the time by how bare the place was. Only later did it dawn on me that this was probably just one of the family's London houses—and possibly just one of their drivers.

Athena tottered over to join us. I made some remark about turning up in style.

"You didn't offer me a lift, so what other option did I have?" she said, a little frostily.

"Athena, where exactly do you think we could have put you?" I said, gesturing to the two-seater MG. It was obvious the person she was really annoyed at was Freddie, who had not only refused to drive her here but had also told her that under no circumstances was she to introduce herself to the family as his girlfriend. Clearly, this was neither the time nor the place for me to mention I'd seen him sneaking around earlier at the Osiris clubhouse.

"And here he is," said Patrick, swiftly changing the subject. "The birthday boy."

Harry was standing on the porch, greeting people as they arrived, shaking hands, accepting gifts.

"Patrick!" he said. "Welcome." He shook Patrick's hand vigorously. "And Caroline, so glad you could make it!"

For a moment I thought he was going to shake my hand too, but instead he gave me a stiff hug. He directed us through to the hallway, where a calligraphed list on a wooden easel detailed who was allocated which bedroom. Ours was the Rose Room, on the second floor, in between Athena's and the one assigned to a Francis Gore-Wykeham-Fiennes.

"I'm going to find Freddie," Athena declared, marching off. Patrick handed his car key to a man in a waistcoat, who placed it in a dresser drawer, and then gestured for me to follow him up the stairs.

"Wait here for a second," Patrick told me when we reached our floor. "I'll drop the bags in our room and give you a little tour of the house."

As I waited for him to return, I looked over the marble balustrade at the other guests arriving, the girls with their glossy hair, the boys with their suit bags folded over their arms. When he returned, we descended and poked our heads into a succession of rooms that were clearly designed for entertaining on a grand scale—impressive rather than welcoming. The dining room, with its gleaming candelabras, put me in mind of a ghost ship; one formal living room had sofas so upright and understuffed and uncomfortable-looking it would surely have been preferable to stand.

This was the life Juliette had run away from. I could not say I blamed her.

At the end of one corridor, Patrick pointed out an ornately carved wooden door.

"That leads through to the east wing, the oldest part of the house, where Cyril had his rooms."

Above the doorframe he pointed out a sequence of hand-painted hieroglyphic symbols in gold paint. I made out an eye, a set of scales, two feathers, a different kind of eye, a hawk.

"It's also where you'll find the library and Austen's old studio. If Juliette's painting is at Longhurst, then it is likely somewhere in here."

He had opened the door just a crack when Harry's mother came marching around the corner.

"Patrick!" she said crisply, and his hand recoiled as if the brass knob was electrified. "Out of bounds tonight, I'm afraid. I did tell Philip to put a sign up."

I had thought earlier she was speaking loudly because she was so pleased to see Patrick. It turned out this—around 30 percent louder than an average person—was her normal speaking voice. Perhaps that was necessary when your dining table was ten meters long and your living room was the size of a tennis court.

"Sorry, of course," Patrick said.

He took my hand and together we beat a swift retreat back along the hall and up the stairs to our bedroom. The whole way I was thinking through what this meant, whether there was any way we might persuade Georgina to make an exception in our case, whether we might ask Harry or Philip to show us around...

"Here we are," said Patrick. "Hope you like chintz."

It was not hard to see how the Rose Room had gotten its name. There were roses on the curtains. The dresser was decorated with hand-painted roses. Patrick threw himself down on the rose-covered bedspread and patted it for me to join him.

"You know," he said, "we do have a little bit of time before..."

I was still standing, on the other side of the room.

"Patrick," I said softly.

He propped himself up on one elbow. He gave me a smile. "Yes?"

"I'm sorry, but I think there's something we need to talk about. Something you need to know about me, if we're going to be together."

"Yeah?" he said, still smiling, a little puzzled, trying to read my expression.

Was I really going to do this? Was I really going to do this now? I glanced at myself in the mirror over the mantelpiece. I gathered my resolve.

"I don't really feel like this is the right moment—at someone else's house, just before a party—but I don't think there's ever going to be a right moment. It's a lot to lay on someone, and you're probably not going to know what to say, and that's okay."

Patrick sat up fully. "Is this about your parents?"

"It is, yes. I've never told anyone the whole story, but I want to tell you because I think this thing between us means something. But if I'm wrong, if it's just a fling for you, that's okay too, but you've got to let me know now."

Patrick shook his head slightly. We both smiled a little. I felt a rush of tenderness toward him.

"God," I said. "I really don't know why I didn't wait until I'd had a drink before trying to do this..."

Patrick held out a hand to me. I took it. He sat me down next to him on the bed. I took a deep breath and began.

PATRICK, LONGHURST, 1991

As we walked across the lawn, Caroline held on to my arm as if her ankles depended on it, stilettos sinking into the ground with each step.

"Fuck it," she declared halfway to the tent, slipping off the offending heels and handing them to me. She scooped up the hem of her pale gold dress and walked barefoot the rest of the way.

I had never in my life seen anyone look as beautiful as Caroline did in that moment, her hair tumbling almost to her waist in the golden early evening light. Nor had I ever met anyone who had lived through so much, so young, or with the inner strength to channel all that anger and pain into trying to live the life her mother would have dreamed of for her.

I was a little awed by how much trust Caroline had placed in me, sharing her story. I understood it was a great and precious responsibility I had been given.

I was also a bit mortified, when I thought how much time I had spent moaning on to her about my father.

If anyone in the world deserved to find that painting, it was Caroline Cooper. If there really was a secret of some kind encoded in it, I could not imagine anyone more likely to unravel it.

She discreetly wriggled her feet back into her shoes as we hit harder ground. Inside, guests loitered around the tables, and we all looked for our names on the little handwritten cards at each seat, while waiters circulated with champagne and a jazz band parped and noodled away at one end of the tent. At the other end was a formal table arrangement, as at a wedding.

"My God," she whispered to me. "I feel like we've walked onto the set of some costume drama."

The funny thing was, as a child I had never found it strange, Harry living in a house like this and having his own library and lake with an island in his back garden. It was just a great place for running around. Only as a teenager did I start to reflect seriously on the peculiar dynamic between Harry's father and my father, an old friendship that was very much not a relationship of equals, that was also one of the defining relationships of Dad's professional life. Only later had I begun to wonder what it might feel like for Harry, knowing that whatever else he did with his life first, one day sooner or later he would inherit Longhurst and have to try to keep it all going.

The seating was arranged along fairly obvious lines. There were a few tables of Harry's fellow classics students plus Giles Pemberton, and four or five tables of school friends. Freddie and the Osiris boys were near the back, their long-suffering girlfriends interspersed among them, being talked over. Arno von Westernhagen, still not drinking, was holding forth on the reasons for this at top volume—he seemed to have been out cold on that rugby pitch slightly longer each time I heard the story. It was a predictable crowd, all apart from one group that seemed utterly out of place: a cluster of mathematics and computer science students from our college, none of them friends of Harry's as far as I knew, all looking as surprised to be there as I was to see them.

"What's that about, then?" I asked Harry as we filed over to the top table.

"Dad made me invite them," he explained, with mild embarrassment. "His idea being, they'll end up making all the money, so might be useful to know."

It made sense, I supposed.

To be honest, even if they spent all night daring each other to recite pi to a hundred decimal places, they were going to have more fun than anyone on our table.

Harry was in the middle with Caroline on one side and his grandmother—Granny Violet—on the other. Next to Caroline was Harry's father—I could already hear him explaining some idea he'd had about setting up an ostrich farm, detailing at length how many omelets you could make with a single egg. Georgina was next to me, and I was at the end.

At every place on every table, a little disposable camera had been set. Freddie had immediately gone around stockpiling them and was already making a nuisance of himself: earlier I had seen him step outside with one and return a moment later looking very pleased with himself and zipping back up his fly.

The third time my wine glass was topped up, I became conscious of how quickly I was drinking and resolved to pace myself. As we were all seated in a row, the only person I could comfortably have talked to was Georgina, but every time I did ask her a question, some urgent task would occur to her, and she'd scurry off to find a waiter.

On the far side of Georgina, I could hear that Caroline had finally gotten Philip off the topic of ostriches and was asking him about Juliette, trying to interest him in Self-Portrait as Sphinx, asking if he could think of any way that the painting might have made its way from Paris to Longhurst, if anyone had ever mentioned it.

Even from where I was sitting, I could tell she was getting nowhere.

"Good Lord, my dear," I could hear Philip saying. "I'm sure if it ever was here, someone would have thrown it away years ago. Now if it's paintings you are interested in, we have some wonderful canine portraits by Harry's grandfather Austen..."

On the other side of them, Harry seemed to have spent the whole meal explaining to Granny Violet who people were, repeatedly. I could just hear their conversation over the hubbub of the tent, if I strained. "Yes, it is a bit loud," I heard him agree, not for the first time.

When Philip excused himself from the table, Caroline leaned over to introduce herself to Violet. I caught her saying something in a loud clear voice about Juliette, and as she did so, she reached into her handbag and took out her photocopy of the photo of Self-Portrait as Sphinx. Violet, bobbing her head, took it and looked at it. Then she looked at it again, more closely.

And screamed.

Still screaming, halfway out of her chair now, she began trying to grab the photocopy, to snatch it from Caroline's hand, as if with the intention of ripping the thing up.

Philip came rushing back to the table and took charge, shooting Caroline a furious look, steering his mother out of the tent by her shoulders. Caroline looked mortified.

I gently took the photocopy from her, tucked it under my arm, and made my way outside after Philip and Violet. Harry's grandmother was still clearly very upset.

"Please let me explain," I kept saying, although I am not sure, even if I had been allowed to speak, I was really sober enough to do so. I did try to convey the importance of what Caroline and I had stumbled across, the historical significance of the painting's possible survival. "There must be some sort of misunderstanding," I repeated. Every time I tried to bring the photocopy out from under my arm, Violet would begin screeching again and Philip would start furiously flapping his hands at me.

Eventually, Philip, obviously very angry indeed, grasped me quite firmly by the arm and walked me across the grass to a quieter spot. We stopped in a corner of the lawn illuminated only by festoon lights in the trees. His face was close to mine in the semidarkness. His voice when he spoke was trembling with rage.

"How dare you, Patrick?" he barked, and I felt a finger jab me in the chest. "How dare you and this girl we've never met before come here and start lecturing us about Juliette? What do you know about her? What do you know about anything? Nothing, that's what."

I did try to explain why Caroline and I were so interested in Juliette, why she was so important. He cut me short.

"She was mad, did you know that? Paranoid. Delusional. They had to lock her up as a teenager, in a psychiatric hospital. For the terrible, awful things she was saying. The unhinged accusations she was making. Her father made sure she had the most expensive treatments at the best private hospital in London. And how did she thank him? By pulling a vanishing act, by running off with some married, middle-aged painter. How did she repay her family, for all their kindness and concern? She repaid them with that."

He gestured with genuine disgust at the piece of paper I was holding.

"I don't understand," I said. Never in all the years I had known Philip—even that day Harry and Freddie and I rowed over to the island—had he lost his temper like this.

"I know you don't understand," Philip said. "Well, let me explain it to you. Give me that thing."

I hesitated. He snapped his fingers. I handed it over. He held the paper up between us, turning it toward the light, and pointed at the figure in the bottom left corner of the painting, the pale, ghostly girl with the dark hair. "Do you know who that is?"

I shook my head.

"It's Lucy, Juliette's sister. Are you starting to get it now? Your girlfriend just ambushed my ninety-two-year-old mother with a painting of her dead niece."

"I'm sorry," I said. "We didn't know. I never knew..."

"Of course you didn't know. Because it's not something we talk about, as a family, even now. Lucy died, Patrick, when she was ten years old. She drowned in the lake, right here at Longhurst, in 1924. They were rowing to the island one summer afternoon, Lucy and her younger sister, Juliette, for a picnic, and the boat capsized. Juliette managed to swim back to shore. Lucy didn't. That beautiful girl. Everyone's darling. It was the great tragedy of the family, a sadness that engulfed everything for years. And she painted it. Juliette painted her sister, her beloved, much-missed, endlessly mourned sister. Without dignity. With mottled skin and blue lips. With floating hair. And then she put her on public display, for an audience of tittering gawkers. As if Juliette were the only person who remembered her. As if she alone spent the rest of her life trying to come to terms with her loss. As if the family had not had to deal with enough bloody scandals..."

He thrust the now-crumpled piece of paper back at me with a sneer of contempt. I could hear Harry's grandmother being comforted by Georgina somewhere nearby. Harry's father, shaking his head, made his way over to join them.

When I got back to the tent to find Caroline, to explain what a horrible mess we had made of everything, her chair was empty.