A Terrible Beauty Read online

  A Terrible

  Beauty

  Nancy Baker

  A ChiZine Publications eBook

  Dedication

  For my parents,

  who showed me the kingdom

  and gave me the keys

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Other CZP eBook titles by Nancy Baker

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  The letter lay among the others on the hall table for three days. Then the housekeeper moved it to his desk, where it sat for three more, awaiting his return from the sanatorium. When at last he shuffled into his study to sit at his desk, it ended up at the bottom of the pile, under the latest Journal of Archaic Languages and more promising missives from colleagues around the world.

  Simon Donovan read for a long time, submerging himself in the pleasure denied him by uncompromising doctors and anxious nurses. In the realm of letters and language, in the world of scholarship and theories, there was no room for weak hearts and labouring lungs. Reality only returned when he rose to fetch a text or reference from the bookcases that lined the walls of the study. Then he would hear his joints creak and the harsh inhalation of his breath, very loud in the quiet room. When he reached towards the upper shelves, something in his chest would twitch and throb. The sensation always surprised him. The various betrayals of his body had been a long, slow process that his mind could never seem to remember from one manifestation to the next.

  When he set aside the journal, it was to discover darkness waiting beyond the circle of light from his lamp. He leaned back in his chair for a moment, rubbing at his forehead with two fingers. Beyond the window, a thin strip of sky glowed red, caught between the peaks of the roofs across the street and the lowering dusk. He heard voices from the street and the distant toll of the cathedral bell. They will be here soon, he thought. Time to be dressing for dinner and rehearsing his litany of reassurances and platitudes or practising a paternal reprimand in case things got out of hand.

  He smiled slightly. Things did tend to get out of hand. They always had, which had no doubt contributed to the amount of time he had spent in his study over the years. Anna had been able to take it all in stride, of course. She could arbitrate disputes with the wisdom of Solomon and both the victor and the vanquished were won over with cookies and kisses. Though, of course, that had been many years ago now. More years than he cared to contemplate had passed since his family had discovered, to their sorrow, that not all things could be cured with cookies and kisses. The magic of such talismans had long been lost to them, lost even before the keeper of them had been.

  He thought of his sons, making their way across the city towards him. Peter would be driving. Wife safely absorbed in one of her seemingly endless rounds of social events, children put to bed by the nanny, his eldest would no doubt be here first. Gabriel would hire a cab, as usual. Matthew might as well, unless he had spent his meagre earnings on things far less practical than transportation. If it was one of what he referred to as his “poor periods,” he would likely cadge a ride from Gabriel or take the trolley to the nearest stop and walk the rest of the way.

  Simon looked back at his desk. From beneath the sober covers of the Journal of Archaic Languages, a thin oblong emerged. He reached for it idly, another excuse not to rise from the creaky comfort of his old chair.

  The envelope was of heavy ivory paper. There was no return address, only the postmark of a town of which he had never heard. He saw the handwriting on the face and turned the envelope over hastily, aware of a twinge somewhere deeper than his heart. A dollop of crimson wax sealed the envelope, an archaic gesture that did nothing to relieve his sudden anxiety. Pressed deep into the bloody blot was the letter “S” in curving script.

  Simon licked his lips, his mouth tasting as dry as dust. He turned the envelope in his hands again and forced himself to consider the handwriting. It had been more than twenty years. More than twenty years since he had expunged every trace of that hand from his files . . . and his heart. How could he be sure now that he knew it? Most likely, the letter was from some innocuous friend or acquaintance, newly enamoured of an old custom of correspondence.

  He looked out the window at the narrow line of red outlining the roofs. His fingers touched the seal. There was still time to be rid of it. If the jumble of torn envelopes in his wastebasket would not do, the fire burning low on the far side of the study would. Burning would be better, certainly. Then, though he might wonder what secret lay inside the envelope, he would never be able to know. Throwing it out, even tearing it up, would make it far too easy to change his mind and succumb to curiosity.

  The seal cracked beneath his fingers. The initial step taken, he had no choice but to go on. He lifted the flap of the envelope and drew the single sheet of folded paper out into the light. There was no writing on the outside, though he could see the faint outlines of the ink inside as it bled through the paper. Knowing that he was committing himself irrevocably, he unfolded the letter.

  Dear Simon . . .

  It took only a few moments to read it. She had always had an admirable economy about her sentences, he thought absurdly and read the words again. And then a third time, to be certain. Brief fancies flickered through the back of his mind. It was a hoax. She was not serious. But she had always been as serious as she was articulate.

  Dear Simon . . .

  Far away, the doorbell tolled. He heard the door open and the murmur of voices. Someone called his name.

  He looked up from the letter and saw that the sun had disappeared.

  There were footsteps on the stairs and a knock on the door. “Dr. Donovan?” Mrs. O’Brien’s voice came, muffled by the thick oak door of his sanctuary. “Dr. Donovan, Mr. Peter is here.”

  Simon Donovan stared down at the letter in his hand. The words ceased to mean anything, the writing changing from the language he knew to the angular strokes of the ancient tongue with which he had struggled all those years ago. “Sidonie,” he said softly, for the first time in twenty years. “Sidonie.”

  Chapter 2

  There was someone knocking on the door.

  Matthew Donovan shook his head, emerging from the vision of red rain and dark figures huddling along narrow streets beneath the angular spires of half-seen buildings. He pushed his hair off his forehead and blinked. He heard a voice calling from a long way away.

  “Matthew . . . I know you’re in there. Open the damned door!”

  He crossed the room without thinking and r
eached for the doorknob. Once it had been black but now it was mottled with paint of a hundred hues. His fingers added a smear of crimson to the mixture.

  Gabriel stood on the narrow landing. “You’re not ready. Of course not. I should have known better than to agree to this.” He pushed past Matthew into the attic room. “Good God. I assume your tyrant landlord hasn’t turned on the heat yet.”

  “I haven’t paid the rent yet either,” Matthew replied with a sudden shiver as he shut the door. “Thank you for mentioning it . . . I had managed to avoid noticing up until now.”

  “Well, Father’s house will be warm and there will be hot food and good wine. So hurry up and change. The cab is downstairs.” Gabriel looked around. “I notice the cleaning lady hasn’t been in lately either.”

  Matthew laughed and went to the easel before the window, careful to avoid glancing at the painting propped there. If he looked at it, he would want to finish it now, despite his commitment to dinner with his father. He hurried through the rituals of cleaning his brushes, aware of Gabriel pacing across the room from him. When he was done, he went to the wardrobe on the far wall and opened it carefully. The floor of the room was uneven and the wardrobe tilted at a precarious angle, as if ever on the verge of falling forward and flattening him. For a time, he had contemplated surrendering to the inevitable and pushing it to the floor himself then chopping a hole in the back to allow him to reach his clothes. In the end, he had decided that he could live with the threat in return for more floor space. He had, however, moved his bed to the other side of the room.

  “Wash your hands first,” Gabriel said as Matthew reached for a clean shirt. “And your face too.” His brother had settled onto the bed and was contemplating the painting. Matthew stepped behind the wooden screen that separated the bathing area from the rest of the room and turned on the water. He tried both taps but, as usual, only the cold water worked. That never changed, even when he did pay the rent. He scrubbed at his skin, watching the crimson and black paint stains dissolve.

  He glanced up into the spotted mirror nailed above the sink. There was a streak of red across his forehead and smudges of black on one cheek. His hair was tangled and greasy. With a sigh, he bent his head into the chilly stream of water and completed the job. When he emerged, rubbing at his wet hair with a towel, Gabriel was standing in front of the wardrobe, holding up a clean white shirt and his best black jacket. “Put these on. Bring the towel. You can finish your toilette in the cab. And if you are going to forget to shave, you might at least grow a real beard.”

  Matthew laughed. Gabriel was impeccably dressed with his usual flair; red vest, shirt so white it glowed, jacket of the latest cut. The studs on his collar flashed ruby in the dying sunlight. His hair, the colour of pale, polished pine, was swept back and cut to the precise length that separated cultured sophisticates from bohemian rebels at one extreme and bourgeois businessmen on the other. “Father doesn’t care what I wear,” Matthew protested automatically as he pulled off his stained shirt, dropped it on the floor and took the new one from his brother.

  “Father does. He has simply stopped mentioning it. However, if you show up in your usual dishabille, I shall have to listen to Peter complain about it for ten minutes and I find that incredibly tedious. If I am paying for your ride—as I am at this exact moment, I might add—the least you can do is spare me that.”

  Matthew recovered the wet towel and followed Gabriel to the door. On the way down the creaking stairs, he saw his brother give him a quick backward glance. “I liked the red and black thing, by the way. Nice perspective. Just the sort of thing one of my friends likes, as well. I’ll mention it to him.”

  “Thanks. That assumes I can finish it, now that the creative process has been interrupted.”

  “Nonsense. You’d interrupt the next Venus Rising for a hot meal and you know it. Speaking of friends and paintings, are you sure you won’t sell that wooden screen you use to uphold whatever standards of decency you possess? I described it to someone and he was most intrigued.”

  “I need it,” Matthew said. This wasn’t the first time Gabriel had asked about buying the screen. His brother never seemed to understand that he could not sell it. It was, after all, the project that resulted in his expulsion from art school six years ago. The assignment had been to replicate the pastoral themes of a group of artists hundreds of years in their graves. While their techniques with soft colours and perspective had intrigued him, the subject matter had been so saccharine he could not resist the urge to embroider it somewhat. In the rush before the school’s major art show, no one had looked carefully at the work and it was mounted in a place of honour. Unfortunately, it had been the wife of the school’s patron who noticed that the shepherd and nymphs in the background were involved in activities rather less innocent than those favoured by the pastoralists. Matthew thought that he would have gotten away with the fornicating couple and the pissing contest. It was the shepherd and the sheep that had gotten him thrown out of the school.

  “Think about it,” Gabriel said. “I wouldn’t even expect a family discount.”

  “Considering you are the only member of the family who has ever bought one of my paintings, I think it could more safely be called the ‘Gabriel discount,’” Matthew pointed out. The truth was that Gabriel paid far more than Matthew could ever have received from one of the few galleries that took his work. He also doubled the regular prices whenever he sold a piece to one of his friends. The only thing that made it bearable was the knowledge that his brother genuinely liked the paintings he purchased. The one time he had tried to protest, Gabriel had waved his words away. “It is an investment, not an act of charity,” he had said, “though if you do not manage to become famous soon, dear brother, I might have to kill you to hasten the process along.”

  “Have you talked to Father?” Matthew asked, rubbing at his damp hair as they sat in the back of the cab.

  “Only for a few moments. He swears that everything is fine but then, he always does. We will have to corner Mrs. O’Brien and insist on a full accounting. I told the doctors that I would do my best to keep him from situations that might ‘stress his constitution,’ I believe the phrase was.” Gabriel frowned. “I should have cancelled this dinner. Or at least managed to make sure Peter was unable to attend.”

  “Has he been after Father about retiring again?”

  “Of course. The idiot has even contacted the Chancellor. As if forcing Father to give up the thing he loves most could possibly make him better. I suppose we should be thankful that the university knows that as well as we do. And that they have a tradition of keeping professors in their chairs until they die there.” Gabriel’s voice was light but, when Matthew looked at him, he was staring out the window at the passing street, his hand clenched hard over his gloves. They spoke of other things until the cab arrived outside the townhouse.

  Mrs. O’Brien answered the door. “Good evening, dear lady,” Gabriel said, managing a bow as he removed his coat. Matthew did not try to duplicate the trick, settling for watching the pink surge beneath the woman’s lined cheeks as she bantered with his brother.

  “Is Peter here?” he asked at last, knowing the answer before she nodded.

  “He is. But your father is not down from changing yet, so dinner will be a few minutes,” she assured him.

  “Best get the lecture over with then,” Gabriel said and preceded him into the drawing room. Their older brother was sitting by the fireplace, a glass of whiskey in his hand. “Peter, how are you? How is Catherine? And the children?” Peter stood up on the tide of Gabriel’s questions and held out his hand.

  “Everyone is well enough. And you, Gabriel?”

  “Wonderful. The new play is packing them in, as they say. We’re making outrageous heaps of money, you’ll be happy to hear.” Gabriel’s business involved investing in theatre productions. That was as much as Matthew had ever been able to determine, though he was constantly s
urprised that it afforded Gabriel as rich a living as appearances suggested. All the theatre people—actors, musicians and stagehands—that Matthew knew were even poorer than he was.

  “Matthew. How are you?” Peter asked, his hand extended. Matthew took it and shrugged.

  “Fine.”

  “Good.”

  As the silence lingered on for a moment more than was comfortable, Matthew looked at his brother. Of all of them, he most resembled Father. Thick dark hair beginning to go grey, heavy brows, blunt jaw, nose surprisingly aquiline in all that broad solidity. The most like Father on the outside, the least on the inside, Matthew amended the thought. Though perhaps not. Perhaps it was only that the language that sang to Peter was that of money and mathematics, while to Simon Donovan it was the song of dead empires and dusty documents. Perhaps we all have our puzzles that possess us, he thought. Father has his ancient civilizations, Peter has the mystery of success and respectability, Gabriel has the lure of pleasure and performance. For himself, he supposed it was the secret of the line and the pigment and the hidden connections between brain and brush that could make those things more real than reality.

  They all seemed to hear the step on the stair at the same time and turned to face the doorway to the hall.

  For a moment, all Matthew saw was the smile, the hands extended to them in welcome. Then he noticed the pallor of his father’s face, the lines that had added themselves to the fan around his eyes, and the tremor in the outstretched arms. He looked ten years older than his sixty-five years. He’s dying, Matthew thought, and dread churned inside him, as it had when Gabriel had first told him that Father was at the sanatorium. Peter had arranged it, promising the best care, the finest physicians. It was necessary, it was safe. He knew that but he also knew that for all the soothing words, the confident promises, the path to the sanatorium often ran only one way. He saw the great iron gates in his mind, closing like heavy, hungry jaws.

  Then Peter was shaking Simon’s hand and Gabriel was enfolding his father in an extravagant embrace. Released, Simon turned to Matthew. Their greeting was awkward, Matthew suddenly afraid the weight of his arms might break the old man’s frail shoulders. “You look well, son. Though I’m not sure what your mother would say if she could see your hair.”