“Poor little Alice, she feels she has to be. You see, having so much given to her, she has to take advantage of it.”
Roma agreed with Essie that I should go back to Paris and carry on with my music. “I can see,” she said, “that it’s the right thing for you to finish your studies. Though I’m not entirely sure of Paris. After all it was there…” She fingered her turquoises almost impatiently and decided not to mention my marriage. “If you feel it’s impossible…we could work out something else.”
“Oh Roma,” I cried, “you are so good. I don’t know how to tell you what a help you’ve been.”
“Nonsense!” she retorted gruffly.
“I’m realizing how good it is to have a sister.”
“But naturally we stick together in times like these. You must come here more often.”
I smiled and kissed her. Then I went back to Paris. It was a foolish thing to have done. I should have known that I could not endure to be in a place which was so full of memories of Pietro. It only showed how different Paris was without him, and that it was stupid of me to think that I could start all over again. Nothing could be the same again because the foundations on which I must build my future would be the past.
How right Pietro was when he had said that one did not beckon the Muse and expect her to return after one had deserted her.
I had been in Paris some three months when news came that Roma had disappeared.
It was extraordinary. The dig was finished. They were preparing to pack up and leave within a few days. Roma had been superintending the departure in the morning, and it was evening before she was missed. There was no sign of her. It was as though she had just walked out into nowhere.
It was a great mystery. She had left no note but had simply disappeared. I came back to England feeling bewildered, melancholy and deeply depressed. I kept remembering how good she had been to me, how she had tried to help me over my grief. I had been telling myself during those difficult weeks in Paris that I would always have Roma and that, through my sorrow, I had discovered a new relationship with my sister.
I was interviewed by the police. It was thought that Roma had lost her memory and might be wandering about the country; then it was suggested that she might have taken a swim and been drowned, for the coast was dangerous at that point. I clung to the first suggestion because it was more comforting, though I could not imagine Roma in a state of amnesia. Each day I waited for news. None came.
Some of her friends volunteered the suggestion that she might have had sudden news of a secret project and gone off to Egypt or somewhere like that. I tried to force myself to accept this comforting theory, but I knew it was not like precise and practical Roma. Something had prevented her from letting me know what had happened. Something? What could have prevented her but death?
I told myself that I was obsessed by death because I had lost my parents and Pietro in such a short time. I could not lose Roma too.
I was wretchedly unhappy and after a while I went back to Paris to settle up there because I knew I couldn’t stay any longer. I returned to London, took rooms in a house in Kensington and advertised that I was a teacher of the pianoforte.
Perhaps I was not a good teacher; perhaps I was impatient with the mediocre. After all I had had dreams for myself, and had been Pietro Verlaine’s wife. I was not earning my keep. My money was dwindling in an alarming way. Each day I hoped for news of Roma. I felt helpless because I did not know how to set about finding my sister. And then came my opportunity.
Essie wrote that she was coming to London and would like to see me.
I saw that she was excited as soon as she arrived; she was a born schemer for other people; I never remembered her scheming very much for herself.
“I’m leaving Lovat Mill,” she said. “I haven’t been so well lately and I think it’s time I went to my sister in Scotland.”
“That’s a long way,” I replied.
“Oh aye, a long way; but what I’ve come to tell you is this. How would you like to go down there?”
“To go…” I stammered.
“To Lovat Stacy. To teach the girls. Now listen. I’ve had a talk with Sir William. He was a wee bit put out when I told him of my plans. You see he wants Edith to continue with her lessons…and the others too. And then they used to have musical evenings years ago, by all accounts, and he would like to revive them now that there’s a young bride in the house. It was his idea that he should have a resident teacher who would play for his benefit and that of his guests, as well as teach the girls now and then. He broached this subject with me when I told him I was going and I thought at once of you and said that I knew the widow of Pietro Verlaine who was a clever musician herself. Now if you’re agreeable he would like you to write to him and some arrangement could be made.”
I felt breathless. “Wait a moment!” I said.
“Now you’re going to be a coy young lady and say ‘This is too sudden.’ Some of the best things in life are; and you have to make up your mind suddenly or lose them. If you say no, Sir William will be advertising for a resident teacher for the girls, because once I’d put the idea to him that you might come he was eager.”
I was seeing it so clearly: the dig; the little cottage; the big house and those two coming down the aisle together. And Roma of course…Roma urging me not to forget her.
I said abruptly: “Do you believe that Roma is alive?”
Her face puckered. She turned her head away and said: “I…I don’t believe she would have gone away without telling someone she was going.”
“Then she was spirited away…or she’s somewhere where she can’t let us know. I want to find out…I must.”
Miss Elgin nodded.
“I didn’t tell Sir William that you are her sister. He’s annoyed about the whole affair. There was too much publicity. I’ve heard it said that he declares he should never have allowed them to excavate there. That brought enough limelight and when your sister disappeared…” She shrugged her shoulders. “So I didn’t say you were the sister of Roma Brandon, I merely told him you were Caroline Verlaine, widow of the great pianist.”
“So I should go there…incognito as far as my connection with Roma is concerned?”
“I honestly don’t believe he’d want you if he knew. He’d think you might have some reason for going there other than teaching.”
“If I went,” I said, “he’d be right.”
I wanted to think about it and Essie and I walked together in Kensington Gardens where Roma and I used to sail our boats when we were children. That night I dreamed of Roma; she was standing in the Round Pond holding out her hands to me and the water kept rising higher and higher. She called, “Do something, Caro.”
It may have been this dream which made me definitely decide that I would go to Lovat Stacy.
I sold the few pieces of furniture I possessed to the landlady in whose house I rented my two rooms. I put my piano in store and packed my bags.
I had at last found a purpose in life. Pietro was lost to me forever; but I would try to find Roma.
2
The train had stopped at Dover Priory and quite a number of people had alighted. There was a halt of five minutes here while the mail was put on and as the last of those who had left the train passed through the barrier I was aware of a woman hurrying along the platform, a young girl of about twelve or thirteen beside her. She saw me for my head was out of the window as she passed; then, halting, she turned and came back, opened the door, and the two came into the carriage.
She glanced at me covertly, and so did the girl, as they seated themselves opposite me. The woman sighed and said: “Oh, dear, shopping always makes me so tired.”