Love, Again

From Elizabeth came a letter and a package. The letter said that when his divorce came through, she was going to marry a neighbour, Joshua Broughton. Perhaps Stephen had mentioned him? She had known Joshua all her life. It would be nice to run the two farms together. She said that her commitment to the Queen's Gift Entertainments would continue, but perhaps not as much as when Stephen was there to help. She did not mention Norah.

The picture she enclosed had hung on the wall in Stephen's bedroom. There was also a photograph.

When Sarah saw what the picture was, she felt she had never known Stephen, even that their friendship had been an illusion. It was of a bold smiling young woman, dressed in a fashionable white dress with a pink sash. She held a straw hat on her knee and sat in a chair under a tree. The picture could have been by Gainsborough. It had been painted, at Stephen's request, by someone or other from the little photograph, now yellowing and faded, which was of Julie sitting on a rock in half-shade. She wore a white camisole and a white flounced petticoat. Her arms and neck were bare. Her feet were bare. Her dark hair was loose and blowing away from her face. She was offering herself to whoever had taken that photograph, in her posture, her smile, her passionate black eyes. The photograph had been tinted, and the crude boiled-sweet colours had faded. A tree behind the rock had hints of sickly green, and the rock had a rouged side. Around her neck — was that a necklace? Little blobs of red… no, a ribbon. Why had she tied on that ribbon? It was out of character, so much so it shocked. Perhaps the man who took the photograph — Paul? Rémy? — had said to her, 'Here is one of the new cameras. Yes, I know you were wondering what was in this great case, but no, it isn't a musical instrument, it's a camera.' She was sitting on the edge of her bed, in her camisole, about to slip it off, or having just slipped it on, saying, 'Oh no, you aren't going to take me naked.' Then he said, 'Come outside. I'll always think of you in your forest.' She tied that red ribbon off a chocolate box around her neck. The chocolate had been a present from a pupil or… could it have been the master printer? Boxes of chocolate were much more in his line than Rémy's, or Paul's. He probably sold them from his shop. What had she said, tying on that ribbon? Or Rémy had said, 'Wait, tie that ribbon around your neck. It makes you look… ' No, that was not in Rémy's character. Or the person who had tinted the picture of the seductress (the studio which developed the photograph could not have been in Belles Rivieres, more likely Marseilles or Avignon, for if anyone in Belles Rivieres had caught sight of it then…) — had that person painted in the ribbon? Now, when you examined the thing carefully, and even with a magnifying glass (Sarah did this, switching on a strong light), you could not see if the ribbon had been painted in afterwards, the photograph was so dulled, the tinting had been so clumsy. Had Julie painted in the ribbon after being given the photograph? It was easier to imagine it had been done afterwards, because it was hard to connect the young woman dissolved in love sitting half dressed on the rock with the red ribbon that was a statement of such a different kind. Or was she identifying with the doll she had buried in the forest in Martinique, which had a red ribbon around its neck, as a memento of the guillotine? If so, the only word for that was sick.

Sarah was examining the photograph as if it were a clue in a mystery story, but presumably Stephen had been staring at it for years. It was the picture that he had hung on his wall, though. Where had he found the photograph? It should be in the museum. Stephen had stolen it, and now Sarah stole it. She tacked it beside the Cezanne picture of the haughty young Harlequin and the serious youth who had put on the clown's costume to accompany his friend to Mardi Gras. She put the portrait of the fashionable beauty into a drawer.

Andrew wrote:

Sarah wrote to Cordoba, Argentina, intending a temperate correspondence, but by the time her letter reached Argentina he was in Peru. Her letter was forwarded there, but his letter in reply, a passionate love letter in which he several times called her Betty (his stepmother?), arrived when she was in Stockholm for the opening of Julie Vairon, and by the time she got round to answering, the problems seemed insuperable. Where was she to address the letter? Should she sign the letter, Much love, Betty?