Page 40 of The Last Night in London
Her hand went to her chest, her fingers digging beneath the feather boa. She pulled out a pair of glasses dangling from a rhinestone chain and pretended to be surprised to find them there. Then she looked at the photograph and was silent for a long moment.
“Yes,” she said at last. “That’s David and Sophia on their weddingday. It was a beautiful sunny day. Funny the things a person remembers.”
“It was July nineteen thirty-nine,” Colin offered. “And you were a bridesmaid?”
She studied the photo again, then slowly nodded. “Yes, I was.” She put a gentle finger over her image. “I remember that we were all in high spirits. Britain wasn’t in the war yet, you see, and there were a lot of us who liked to pretend it would avoid us entirely, that life would always be like it was.” She frowned. “I keep it on my wall to remember that day. So I can pretend we are all still young and happy. It’s like we’re all frozen in time.”
Her gaze lifted, and I released the shutter. Her gaze moved to me, and she said, “That’s the point of photographs, isn’t it, Maddie? To choose which parts of our lives we want to remember?”
“Sometimes,” I conceded. I pointed at the photograph. “There’s a woman standing on the other side of you, but that part of the picture’s been torn off. I remember you saying that you and Eva were like sisters and that Eva knew Sophia. We discovered that Eva’s last name was Harlow—we found it in a letter addressed to Sophia—so we know they were at least acquaintances. But I was curious if she was in the wedding party, too, and what happened to the rest of the photograph.”
Again, Precious’s gaze met mine, her eyes a deep blue behind her glasses. Where there should have been a reflection, I saw only the gritty depth of despair, the debris left behind like coffee grounds at the bottom of a lifetime of sorrowful moments. I’d seen it many times in photographs of people following a calamity or natural disaster. Those people wore their suffering on their faces. But Precious was an actress wearing a mask of normalcy. I recognized it; it was the same mask I saw each time I looked at my own reflection. It was how I could recognize her regret and her emptiness. And why I wanted to snatch the photograph away, to forget I’d ever shown it to her. To beg her forgiveness.
“Yes,” she said, her voice thready. “I remember both of us being bridesmaids. There was a third, too. Violet. David’s sister. She wentto Africa as a nurse during the war, I think.” She cleared her throat. Her lips wobbled into a semblance of a smile. “Our dresses were pink silk shantung, and we wore beehive-netted veils that matched the bride’s. Sophia’s was white, of course. It was a small wedding, held at her parents’ parish church. And then a party afterward at Hovenden Hall.”
Her smile fell. Breath raced through her voice, deadening it. I handed her the glass of iced tea, and she swallowed a deep gulp.
When I leaned over to replace it, the small heart-shaped charm that I wore on a gold chain around my neck slipped out from the collar of my shirt. With surprising quickness, Precious grabbed my hand as I reached to tuck it back inside.
“What’s that?” she asked, her eyes shuttering, the depths no longer accessible.
I could have said anything, because I was sure her only interest was in changing the topic of conversation, but I chose the truth. “My stepmother gave it to me when I graduated from high school.” My hand clasped the heart-shaped charm made to resemble the chain full of heart-shaped charms that had once belonged to my mother, now worn by Aunt Cassie, the designated “keeper of the hearts” in our family.
“Is there something engraved on it?” Her glasses were once again hidden beneath the feather boa, a nod to vanity.
I nodded. “‘A life without rain is like the sun without shade.’”
Her eyes met mine, and I was reminded of the first time we’d met, when she had told me that grief was like a ghost. And how I’d been sure she knew exactly what that meant.
Colin’s phone began to vibrate. “Excuse me,” he said, standing. “It’s my mother. I’ll be right back.”
I nodded as he exited, leaving Precious and me alone; then I snapped a few more pictures of the room and of Precious holding the photograph. I sat down again and picked up the discarded wedding photo from the table. “I was hoping to find a picture of Eva. If we can’t find her, I can at least use it with the article since so many of your stories include her.”
Precious shook her head slowly. “I don’t have any. This flat was severely damaged during the Blitz, you know. Thankfully it was mostly just two rooms, but one of them was mine, and all of my photographs were lost. The ones in the hallway are copies I received from Sophia so I’d have something to frame and hang on the wall when I returned to London.”
“So you don’t have any from when you were a little girl? My sister Knoxie would love to add some photos to the family tree.”
“No, Maddie. My people were poor. We could barely rub two cents together. I can’t remember a photograph of me taken before I moved to London.” Her fingers grasped at the boa around her neck. “It’s almost as if I didn’t exist before the age of nineteen.”
I tried to imagine not having a record of the first nineteen years of my life. Of my family and childhood. Of all the people and places I’d known that had brought me to this point. “Does that make you feel sad?”
She turned toward the bay window, looking out at the leaden sky. “Most people would love the chance to start all over again. They never consider the price, though. Of all you lose.” Her head dipped, her chin tucked into the boa. “You can’t reinvent yourself by dragging along anything from your old life. You have to get rid of it all—even the good parts. And you can’t look back. Not ever. Living with regret is like having a permanent stone inside your shoe.” She managed a half smile. “I think you’re walking around with your own stone.”
Her words stung. “Does it make you sad?” I asked again.
“Aren’t all emotions relative? My sadness might be unrelatable to yours.” Precious sat back, her slender fingers stroking the feathers of her boa, her eyes soft as she regarded me. “You tell me, Maddie. Does it?”
My eyes prickled. It had been years since I’d been confronted with my choices and forced to examine them.
“Sweetheart.” Her voice was soft, her accent reminding me again of home and making my throat thicken. “One of the things I’ve learned in my ninety-nine years is that sometimes you get theanswers you need by doing a little simple observation. People will just think you’re shy and underestimate you.” She leaned forward a little, her feather boa dangling. “And that will make you the smartest person in the room.”
I looked down at my notes, in part to search for my next question, but also to hide my face from her scrutiny. I swallowed, then tried again. “I’d like to talk about your time in France during the war. I’m fascinated, because at the time France was occupied by the Germans, yet you left your life here and ended up modeling and living at the Ritz. I’m going to dig through the archives and try to find photographs of you from then, but I’d really like to know the details about that period in your life—about Paris’s German-run fashion industry, about the clothes. About life in a city full of Nazis.” I smiled, realizing I’d asked too many questions at once. “For starters, could you tell me why you went?”
She studied me for a long moment, and it was almost as if we were in a challenge to see who would speak first. “Oh, Maddie,” she said, sighing. “For the same reason you left Georgia, I expect.”
I sat up straight. “Excuse me?”
“Don’t you know? To escape our ghosts.”
