The Restoration Garden: A Novel - 23

Irene

Espionage did not turn out to be as exciting or dramatic as I had imagined. I spent most of my days tailing my husband across town and scouring our flat for any evidence against him that would satisfy Roger. On others, Catherine would insist on meeting for lunch, where she would regale me with the latest escapades in her love life. Sometimes we would shop along Oxford Street or Knightsbridge. It was jarring to indulge so ostentatiously when so many others were suffering, but any protest on my part would have aroused too much suspicion. Each day, London was fading into a shadowed version of the vibrant city I had come to know over the summer. Blackout curtains hung in every window. People walked with their heads down at clipped paces, a veil of fear hanging over them.

In the days since our meeting at the park, Roger had grown increasingly frustrated with my lack of progress. I had nothing to offer him. James never left a shred of incriminating evidence. If I hadn’t overheard him the night of Leslie’s party, I might not have believed Roger’s accusations against him.

One late-September afternoon, James arrived home with a small package he asked me to deliver to Leslie the following day. It was light and wrapped in paper, bearing no markings. James told me it was supplies for his photography.

I hadn’t been to Leslie’s flat since the night of his party. Less than a month had passed, but it felt like a lifetime.

I took my time walking to his place, taking in all the changes the Blitz had wrought in the neighborhood over the last few weeks. Fortunately, Leslie’s building had been spared from the bombings.

Leslie answered my knock with a wide grin. “Irene, darling. I was beginning to think you had forgotten about me.”

I greeted him with a kiss on the cheek. “I could never.”

He led me to the living room and poured himself a drink. He offered me one, but I shook my head. It was too easy to lose myself in the oblivion of alcohol. “To what do I owe the visit?”

I handed him the package. “James asked me to deliver this to you.”

“How exciting.” He sliced through the paper with a letter opener, revealing a dozen cylindrical canisters.

“What is it?”

“My sustenance. My raison d’être. My medium. Also known as film. It’s impossible to find lately.” He held up one of the canisters and inspected it. “Perhaps you would like to be my muse?”

“I’ll have to pass.”

“Then at least tell me you’ve brought some of your art to share.”

I glanced instinctively at my purse, knowing my sketchbook was with me. The slight movement was enough for him to notice. He raised an eyebrow expectantly.

“All right. I can show you some of my sketches, but you must promise to be kind.”

“I never make promises I can’t keep. Show me anyway.”

Leslie sat next to me and flipped open my sketchbook. “Mmm, very interesting,” he said as he flipped through the pages, landing on one I’d done of the irises at Havenworth in full bloom. “The composition in this drawing is quite lovely.”

Perhaps it was silly to care so much about something so trivial, but art had always been the thing that gave my life meaning and worth. Leslie’s praise and insight were invaluable. He nodded approvingly at first, commenting on color choices and details. But as he made his way through the book, his enthusiasm gave way to subtle tilts of the head and frowns.

“You don’t like it,” I said.

“It’s not that exactly. You’re incredibly talented, and your attention to detail is remarkable. But these are illustrations. Real art is about urgency. Communicating something that only you can.” He set the book down and took my hands. “My dear, there must be something burning deep inside of you that you desperately need to say.”

I opened my mouth, but no words came out. Until now, my art had been nothing but an escape. A place to hide. But the weight of the secrets I carried had stolen my ability to draw. Could Leslie be right? Could art be the way to tell the world everything I could not say?

“Would you show me some of your work?”

Leslie rose to his feet with an exaggerated sigh. “I suppose fair is fair.”

I followed him to his darkroom, where a dozen photographs hung on the drying line. The black-and-white images were an eclectic mix of scenery and objects and people, but each one was captivating in a different way.

“These are stunning,” I said.

“The ability to develop film is as much an art as taking a good photograph. Everything about the darkroom is set up with exacting perfection. Would you like to learn?”

He explained the process from how to load the film in the development tank to the final bath. The science of it all was lost on me, but I did my best to memorize each step. It was utterly fascinating. I’d never realized light and dark could create such incredible beauty. He answered my questions patiently, no matter how silly. If anything, he seemed to appreciate the opportunity to provide more in-depth insight.

“Would you like to try?” he asked when the lesson was finished.

“Really? You would let me do that?”

“Of course. It’s the only way to learn. I have some old negatives you can use.”

He handed me a loupe to explore an old set of negatives and choose one of the images to develop. I landed on one of a young man alone in a field wearing a soldier’s uniform. Something about the loneliness of the soldier spoke to me in a way I couldn’t explain.

I was about to pick up the paper with the tongs when Leslie placed his hand on mine. “You need to use the ones over here; otherwise you will contaminate the liquid. The liquids must stay separate. That is the only way to maintain the integrity of the chemicals.”

“Right,” I said, chastising myself for the near error.

Leslie guided me the rest of the way. The result wasn’t perfect. The bottom right corner of the image was blurry, but it was nevertheless a photograph that I had developed. Pride surged inside of me. Despite the poor quality, there was something familiar about the person. “That’s you,” I said with a gasp.

“In my younger years.”

“Did you fight in the Great War?”

“I was a medic in the army. They sent me to treat the injured in Passchendaele.”

It was so strange to think of Leslie on the front lines. He never spoke much about the current war. Like everyone else in James’s circle, Leslie acted as though it weren’t even happening. “Does it ever bother you that so many people you know have used their wealth and connections to live like kings while others are sent to fight?”

He was silent for so long, I feared I had upset him. When he did finally speak, he turned away from me. “There is no good that comes from war, though I have accepted it is at times a necessary evil. I cannot judge a man for wanting to avoid the horrors that I was forced to bear. Without men like your husband, I would not be able to do things that make life worth living.”

“And what is that?”

One elegant shoulder rose. “Art. Liquor. Sex.”

I let out a small laugh.

“I never said I was a sophisticated man. Deep down, I have the same wanton desires as anyone else. We all like to believe there are lines we will not cross, but there are always ways for those lines to bend.”

I took my time returning to the flat. Leslie’s guidance had filled me with an urge to pay attention to everything about the city I had missed these last few months. The Blitz had caused so much destruction, but there was something else rising out of it. The long grocery queues and blackout curtains and young women driving ambulances through the street. I used to perceive it all as sacrifice and burden. Now, I saw the courage in all those tiny actions. The small acts of defiance against the German effort to break the country’s spirit.

It made me think of my father, too. I had resented his dedication to his work for so long. But he had known the war was coming. He had predicted the destruction the German air force would wreak and had devoted himself to finding a way to stop it. I didn’t know if I would ever truly forgive the way he neglected me after Mother’s death, but at least I now understood why he had.

Perhaps, if I found a way to appease Roger, my father would find a way to understand me, too.

The fact I had not produced any evidence in nearly a month of watching and spying on James weighed on me. My husband had stopped sharing even the smallest details of his days with me. But if he was suspicious, why did he keep me around? I was no longer naive enough to believe he truly loved me. He had only ever pursued me to gain access to my father’s work, which I had handed over like a fool. So what use was I to him now?

There was something I wasn’t seeing. Something that kept my nerves on permanent alert.

To my relief, James wasn’t home. I pulled out my sketchbook, hoping the meditative act of drawing would allow my brain the freedom to find the missing thread that would pull everything together.

I didn’t know where to start. I had never sketched from memory before. All my drawings were representations of what I saw in front of me. But I recalled Leslie’s advice to me earlier in the day. What was it that I desperately needed to say?

The answer came to me in a rush.

I filled the page with elegant begonias, lush lavender shrubs, and a tall spire of foxglove. It was a combination of flowers I had never seen in any gardens, but the meanings behind them were the reason for it all.

Warning. Distrust. Secrecy.

This was what I needed to express. The message I needed my family to hear.

The tip of my dark-green pencil had worn down to a nub as I filled in the foxglove’s broad leaves. As I searched my purse for the sharpener I kept with me, my fingers grazed something unexpected. A small envelope, bent and crinkled from too much time spent at the bottom of my purse. It was the note Catherine had given me weeks ago to pass on to James when we’d gone shopping during my first week in London. I’d forgotten all about it.

I tore it open.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree.

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to a man

Down to a sunless sea.

My excitement gave way to utter confusion. I recognized the poem from my school days. Why on earth would Catherine need to give such a thing to James? I had folded the paper back out to inspect the envelope when I did notice something strange. It was such a subtle thing that I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. The dot above the first “i” had indeed fallen clean off the paper. It was caught in the crease of the page. The dot, unlike the rest of the letter, hadn’t been made from the nib of a pen.

I stared intently at the dot, trying to make sense of it. Ink didn’t simply fall off the page. The dot had to have been glued to the paper to look like a regular marking. But why?

Taking great care not to jostle the paper lest I lose the tiny dot, I set it down on the table and retrieved from my purse the loupe Leslie had given me as a parting gift this afternoon. I held the glass device to my eye as I leaned over the small dot.

I gasped in disbelief. This wasn’t ink. It was a photograph of another message shrunk down to a microscopic size. Even with the loupe, I could barely make it out.

It was a series of coordinates, I realized. Each one carefully inscribed in black ink.