While William pulls his lecture notes out from under his book, we turn to Jane. Her face is impassive save for two red blooms on her cheeks. We know that she is wishing to be elsewhere even as she is relieved to be here; that she is trying, as she has always tried, to put the idea of William into an equation so that she can say “he is X” or “we owe each other Y” and leave it at that. Instead, the idea of him slips constantly out of every box she tries to put him in. We sense her anger welling too — because William has announced that he is going to be talking about Norvill. Norvill, whom Jane knows through her work on the Chester family archives. Norvill, who she irrationally thinks is hers.
“Norvill Farrington was born in London in 1843,” William begins. “By the time Norvill was twenty he’d become acquainted with Edmund Chester through a mutual friend, the collector Roger Cain who was also a member of the Royal Society …”
The details in the first part of the lecture are all facts that Jane knows, information gleaned during the months it took her to organize the Chester display upstairs, months spent going through the museum’s records and the trunks of material she found when Gareth sent her to Edmund’s great-granddaughter’s house on the coast, boxes of ledgers and letters pulled out of her attic along with Charlotte Chester’s diaries, writing desk, hair combs and scarab bracelet.
At first, listening to William speak, Jane feels strange. It’s uncanny, this doubling: Jane’s knowledge of the Chester family set against his, the confluence of their interests and thinking. Even the steady rhythm of his voice is unsettling, although there’s a wooing quality to it too, as if he’s reading a bedtime story, as if at the end something will be said, a moral tale delivered that will make the world more coherent, easier to live in.
Jane leans against the marble pillar and its coolness kisses the space between her shoulder blades. Listening to William, she can feel longing seep over her. She registers it as if from a distance, thinks how the feeling is like being overtired as a child — thinks of Claire eight months pregnant with Lewis and hauling a two-year-old Jane across the university quad, trying to find some secretary of undergraduate services or assistant to the assistant registrar who’d watch her just for a few hours. Jane had wanted that too — a large office chair in some out-of-the-way corner, a place she could curl up in.
William may be right about Norvill and Edmund’s friendship, and about the two occasions in the 1870s when the Farrington and Chester families met, but gradually Jane registers that he’s skipping over other key facts entirely, and as she follows the thread of his lecture she tries to guess if he’s overlooking them on purpose. What about the details in Charlotte Chester’s letters and diary, details that Jane had noted: brief remarks in a feminine hand that read “N.F. for dinner,” “N.F. for tea,” “discussed contemporary novels with Norvill”—Norvill’s name scrolled over the pages even as the names of other guests, ones noted in Edmund’s own daybook, were overlooked? William hasn’t mentioned Charlotte by name at all. He is focusing instead on how Edmund Chester helped secure funding for one of George Farrington’s Himalayan plant expeditions, how Edmund himself funded George’s last trip to Tibet — an agreement that was reached after a weekend shooting party at Inglewood. An event that Jane has seen referenced in the archive.
When he is finished and the applause subsides, William slips into the crowd and Gareth gently ushers him down the centre aisle to the book-signing table at the back of the hall. A dozen people are already holding books for William to sign. It is obvious that William is new at this; he is overly formal with the first few people who press their copies into his hands — Hamish Andrews, a senior member of the board who congratulates him heartily, and a botanist maybe five years older than William who inquires amiably about his research sources for the chapter on the Madras shipwreck. William glances up at his publicist, a woman in bright-red lipstick and a metallic dress who is monitoring the process, as if checking to see whether discussion is allowed.
Jane stands by the hummingbirds, not sure what she’s waiting for. Her black dress, reflected back at her in the cabinet’s glass, suddenly seems like something one would wear to a funeral. Her thoughts are muddy: she looks from bird to bird and can’t separate the impact of seeing William from the contents of his lecture or the fact of the Chester’s closure. One moment of clarity emerges: William, at least, is making use of the things he knows — things she knows.
To Jane’s left, reflected in the glass, a girl in a white gossamer blouse and long blue skirt appears. She is coming over to look at the hummingbirds, and the effect of these two images blended — the semblance of the girl and the nimble hover of birds — is so beautiful and unexpected that Jane can’t bring herself to turn around.
“Mina?” A blonde woman in a green strapless dress appears in the reflection behind the child. “Where are you going, darling?”
Mina turns around and says something too quiet for Jane to hear.
“Yes, they are. All right then, a quick look, hurry up.” She smiles at Jane in the reflected glass — two women of childbearing age catching each other’s gaze and therefore complicit, sharing what it is to have children, or what it must be like.
Mina walks toward the cabinet and the woman takes a mobile phone out of her beaded clutch purse. She checks its little rectangle of light and then turns away from the ruckus of the main hall, presses some keys and puts it against her ear.
Jane looks down at Mina and makes a silly face. The girl is eight, maybe nine; she has the kind of mousey-brown hair that gets blonder in the summer, a heart-shaped face, a chicken pox scar on her brow just above the bridge of her perky nose. Because she has manners and because her mum has let her come over, she mouths, Hi to Jane and then she turns and studies the hummingbirds, counting them under her breath.
“Mina?” It’s a man’s voice this time.
Mina glances over her shoulder at William, and Jane watches as he comes toward them, touching the blonde woman’s waist as he moves past her, the mobile phone still pressed against her ear.
“Sweetie, it’s time to go, it’s past your bedtime.” He reaches down for Mina’s hand and she threads her fingers through his. Then William stands there for a few seconds registering what she’s looking at — something Henri or Claire would never have done for Jane — taking it in as if it matters. “That one’s lovely,” he says, and he points a fraction of an inch off the glass at one of the birds on the middle branch, a broadbill with a blue throat and green chest. He doesn’t look at Jane.
“I like this one.” Mina identifies a grey bird with splayed wings and a ruff of purple feathers around its neck, her finger pressing against the glass so that for an instant after she moves her hand away, there’s a faint round print there.
William turns to Jane and his eyes flick up into hers. The small red centre of pressure that has been in her chest all night balloons and moves up to her throat.
“Sorry to interrupt.” He smiles at Jane and places his hands on Mina’s shoulders to steer the girl, who Jane can now see resembles Lily, toward the woman who is putting the phone back into her bag.
“Sorry—” Jane turns toward William and tries to steady her voice. “Have we met before?”
It’s obvious she’s speaking to William, but instead of replying he turns first to his wife so that she can register his confusion, see that despite what these sorts of things sometimes look like, there’s been a mistake. Then he turns and looks directly at Jane.