I nodded, wanting to avoid conversation.
‘Henry,’ she began, turning to the man who had accompanied her, ‘this is Santina, darling. Oh she’s a pip. You’re like a Mediterranean stroll in the sun – you know you’ve found a beauty, don’t you, boys?’
Mr Benn and Mr George smiled, one lip each.
‘Santina, it’s a pleasure,’ she continued, whilst I squirmed. ‘We’ve heard a great deal about you. How exquisite to have a slice of Positano right here in North West London. Henry, darling, it fills me with a great deal of hope. It’s like a ray of sun through the fog.’
‘That’ll be the morning sun actually doing what it’s compelled to do,’ he answered, ‘quite naturally.’
The woman rolled her eyes and jumped up from Mr Benn’s lap.
‘Quite right – I’m not thinking straight at all – thank God for that! Who’d live a life through logic’s narrow lens, for crying out loud?’
‘I’ll drink to that!’ cried Mr George, and the four of them stood and clinked.
‘Go easy with the wine, Adeline,’ replied Henry, who I assumed was her husband. Though in this house, when guests appeared, it wasn’t always clear who belonged to whom. The boundaries I had become accustomed to back home were the suffused haze after a spring shower.
The woman’s hand slipped down to her abdomen. ‘Good heavens, I almost forgot! Yes, we’ve got some marvellous news, haven’t we?’
‘Indeed,’ Henry replied, catching my eye as he did so.
‘I shall be creating more than paintings this year, gentlemen!’ she cried, flinging her arms up at such a speed that she almost lost half the contents of her glass onto the Persian rug under-foot. ‘I am now producing humans also!’
It was hard to follow the conversation with accuracy, especially since I hadn’t been allowed into or out of it. I could understand that the willowy figure before me was pregnant. As she stood up it became so obvious that I wondered how I hadn’t noticed before.
‘Congratulations, Mr and Mrs Crabtree!’ cried Mr George.
‘That’ll be all, Santina,’ Mr Benn said, with an unnecessary hand wave, adding to all the other spoken and unspoken gestures tracing my paper-cut scars.
I shut the door behind me and went upstairs to pack.
The next morning Mr Benn and Mr George called me to the back parlor. I found Mr Benn by his grand piano, looking out toward the glass doors that led to their garden. He was puffing on a thin cigar. The smoke reached me in sorrowful swirls.
‘Santina, my dear. It will come as somewhat of a surprise, to me more than anyone, that we can no longer offer you employment.’
I gave a mute nod, unsure whether to express regret or surprise. Neither surfaced as it happened.
‘However, there are others in our circle who are more than willing to welcome you into their home and have you offer the tireless support you have given us, up till now.’
I glanced over at Mr George, but he was looking off toward an invisible horizon behind me.
‘Mr and Mrs Crabtree are keen for you to start with them right away. The Major, for that is how you must address him from now on, has assured me that he will, like us, arrange your papers for America after your first year.’
He left a pause here, which I knew he expected me to fill with grateful acceptance. I was happy that we were parting company with relative grace. Or, if not grace, at the very least that smooth veneer of some such, which I had intuited was an impeccable British habit. That evening they walked me down the hill toward the heart of Hampstead village to my new home.
Adeline and the Major’s house snuck into a slice of land between larger old brick homes at the convergence of two narrow lanes. Its layout was more warren than house, with low-ceilinged rooms leading onto one another in a maze of unexpected connections. Tudor beams hung crooked with age. Persian rugs overlapped one another in most of the rooms. A huge hearth stood in the main living room flanked by two sofas of different shades of velveteen violet. There were masks upon the wall, Indian gods and goddesses forever mid-chase, flaunting their half-clothed bodies or leering at the spectator. I’m ashamed to admit that I avoided looking at the one which hung by my bedroom door, so full were its wooden carved eyes of malice. Its pupils were painted red and black, and hair hung in sad curls, almost touching the wooden floorboards below.
At the far end of the house, squeezed in along one length of the courtyard garden, was Adeline’s studio. Small glass panes lined the upper section along the entirety of one side, letting in shafts of light from over the garden wall, which backed onto Christchurch Hill. The roof was formed of skylights, bathing the anarchic space in a wash of light. Several easels flanked the space, with unfinished canvases upon them, bright with moments of intense inspiration or drying paint. The floor was speckled with memories of Adeline’s expressive explosions. Even in her condition, she would hide away for days at a time, refusing food and rest. It frustrated the Major a great deal, but I suspected that her artistic endeavors overtook both their lives with a ferocity neither could tame nor understand, both succumbing to its seduction with varying degrees of resistance.
Adeline acquiesced to her imagination with abandon. I caught her once, as I headed to the Major in his study with a laden tray, through the gap between the open door and the frame. She was barefoot, which was not surprising; her feet reacted to any covering as an affront to their liberty. Her white smock hung creased about her, the growing roundness of abdomen catching the light as she swayed, a plump moon. Her fingers were splattered and quick, letting the brush lead them in muscular strokes. But it was her face that captured my attention. Her eyes were bright, the auburn flecks crisscrossing the blue even more visible in this light; shards of intense concentration. Her head was cocked to the side. If I didn’t know better, I would have said she were listening to something, music perhaps, a voice even. I was spying on an intimate conversation. My eyes drifted to the canvas. I would have recognized that spiral anywhere. This was the artist whose work had captured my attention all those months ago in Mr Benn’s gallery. It was beautiful. Bristles of guilt iced up my arm. I headed on to the study.
The Major’s hideaway smelled like the rest of the house, a compost of dusty books, sandalwood incense and fresh flowers. He tamed the roses in their garden with intricate care and took cuttings most mornings when they were in full scent. A huge grandfather clock etched us toward the future in somber swings. His desk faced the large sash window, each framed pane offering a concise version of his beloved garden. Books lined the walls on heavy carved mahogany shelves. Stacks mushroomed in each corner, a literary metropolis. Upon the tired green leather top was a correspondence organizer which never seemed to empty, and beside this, his pot of ink, into which he dipped between sentences as his pen scratched along his fine paper. I had gleaned that his time in the army had come to an enforced end and his hours spent in his room related to investment work of some sort. Adeline had rambled through their brief history, but she skated details and my English didn’t equip me to understand all I needed to. She also painted her own background with broad brushstrokes, a snipe at the end of sentences about her estranged family whose aristocratic wealth and abundance stood in stark contrast to the contempt they held for the artistic life she had chosen, even if the Major was able to almost keep her in the manner they expected.
I stood for a moment before the clatter of the tray made him turn to me.
‘Sorry,
