Chapter 18

7th of May 1925

Martha's Vineyard

Four weeks...four weeks and he can walk with a stick. Four weeks and he'll be on that damn liner. The wait was killing him. Four weeks felt longer than ten years. He couldn't concentrate, not to even boil a three-minute egg. Eleonor had specifically barred him from the kitchen unless he wanted to drink water. He was a danger to himself and the others with that gas stove. Could not read. His eyes rested so long on the page, they could have drilled a hole in it. In the end, he was reduced to chain smoking while staring at the open ocean in front of him. Where his eyes could not reach. Alternating between day dreaming and nightmares. At the same time, he never felt more alive. Was constantly standing on a knife's edge balancing his emotions while his senses were on high alert and his heart pumped ever more strong to the passing of each day...four more weeks, he sighed.

15th of June 1925

Whitechapel Gallery

There was something about standing alone in big empty spaces that made her want to self-reflect. Everything felt enhanced. The sound of her steps on the wooden floor, the light draft of air cooling her skin, her relaxed breathing when everything else was still around her. The experience was almost meditating. If this big whitewashed room when entering the Whitechapel gallery was her life, and the paintings around her, her life's memories, would she be happy where she stood right now? Hand to heart, despite the pain and the heartaches, she could not dismiss the blessings she had also felt lucky to receive.

She turned around the room, the paintings of her lover surrounding her. On the walls of this nave-like room with its trabeated ceiling, between older paintings Christian had made and various other portraits, there were also paintings which Candy recognised. They were like a visual chronicle of their relationship. Stills of her memories of her life with him.

There were the Grantchester fields, looking serene and sublime, within the haze of a golden sun. And chimneys of London roofs in the sunset. With long drawn shadows, painted by his hand after they had made love one warm afternoon in early May. The bouquet of red camellias she has brought over to his apartment one April morning. She had surprised him with an unplanned visit, wanting to bring some order to his domestic chaos. Much to his amused surprise, she had marched in with the bouquet in her hands. She had instructed him to find her a vase, but they had ended up in one of those big glass jars he used to keep for his brushes. They looked beautiful. She had made coffee for the both of them. He laughed with her bossiness. She had pulled her tongue out, wrinkling her nose. But her plan to organise the main area of his apartment had fell short. Half way while washing his dishes, his arms had slid around her waist and her body glued onto his. His thighs rubbing on her glutes. The smell of him came to mind. Soap, tobacco, turpentine and spike lavender oil. She felt the fine hairs on her arms raising.

Then there she was. At the bottom end of the room. It wasn't a big painting in comparison. But it was enough for waves of excitement to lap inside her body, to reach its edges and turn her nervousness into a kaleidoscope of butterflies leaving her skin fluttering madly their wings across the room. But it was her suggestion. In response to a certain article she read in the Stage, as she happened to pick one of the newspaper issues late of May.

New York's Shakespeare's company was bringing Hamlet in London with John Barrymore on the leading role. London was buzzing with the expectation. Terrence Graham was also mentioned. Rumours had it, he had to drop from the London performances due to an accident he had. The accident per se was not anything too serious, although Candy felt a swell of worry instantly raising inside of her. But next to that worry, frustration followed. Ten years had passed damn it. And it took only a mention in an article to spent an entire evening and well into the night, till the dawn the next day to bring Terry's presence clear in her mind, undoing everything she had strived for the last three months. To draw the curtain to her past.

—

After reading about Susanna's death on the newspaper, it was hard to describe what she felt because it wasn't one feeling overshadowing everything else. It was a whole battle of them, conflicting ones, fighting inside her, relentlessly till every tear she could cry, she had cried and a big emptiness had replaced everything inside. From the whites of her eyes, the taste in her mouth, her very soul, everything was dry. The woman she had left Terry for, the one who had sworn to her she could not live without Terry was gone.

A year had passed since. Perhaps the slowest year in her life. The thought to contact him crept in her mind, like the first light of the day does through small cracks on those closed window shutters at the sunrise. More and more she thought about it. But she just couldn't do it. How selfish would she look if after ten years of silence, she would send a letter to him once his fiancé was out of the picture. Terry hadn't even released a statement. At least if he had, she would have some gauge of his feelings. Not only that, but at the same time, deep in her heart, a faint yearning had sprung. She knew the possibility was more than slim. Miniscule. Instead she only dreamt about it. Receiving a letter from him. Sometimes, she woke up feeling euphoric. Then deflated. Empty and depressed. In the end, after a year of emotional turmoil, Candy had enough. She ached for Albert's presence. What would he do? What would he advised her to do? Miss Pony and Sister Mary were there but she did not want to burden them with her worries. Especially those particular ones. They already had to worry for all those little souls who hoped to find families soon enough.

It was close to Christmas when they welcomed George to Pony's home. When Albert was alive, they used to visit together but since he had passed away, George kept the tradition of bringing Christmas presents for all the kids in the orphanage. Of course, it was all kept secret from the children so every time it was planned with military precision and attention. Candy still remembered the moment, the decision of hers to leave Pony's home lit like a spark in the mind.

By the time, they had stashed the presents followed by a long laid back breakfast where news were exchanged about everything and everyone, the chores of Pony's home beckoned. Candy had walked George out to his car. "You should stay for lunch", she said to him.

"Candy, with dear Pony's insistence, I have already eaten like a horse", George said with his eyes smiling to her. A light laugh left her lips. "Ah! I hoped to see that laugh before I left!"

The smile still hovered on her lips but in her eyes he could see the grey clouds of that winter sky above them. He took her hands in his. Their warmth soothed her soul.

"I was reading Albert's letters last night..." Her voice was coloured with muted nostalgia. She felt the squeeze of his hands. "It still feels as if he is away on some crazy trip, George"

"He never sought to escape his duty, but he knew life had to be more than that...", she heard his voice soft and tender as if he shared something only he and Candy knew. "He wanted you to find your life too, you know...and he would feel he had failed you if he knew you lived in the past." George's eyes sparkled when they faced the pale sun. "Remember when he had sent you to London?"

"I do", she replied, and cleared her throat from the heaviness she felt had stuck there.

George was the father figure she sought when the mysterious uncle William had adopted her. A man of few words but then again, he always chose his words well, letting his eyes reveal the feelings he carried. And those were only shown for a glimpse of a moment. But she knew. After Albert had passed away, George without hesitation or any signs of emotional break down, stepped up to the helm of the Ardley businesses. With patience and wise mentoring, he guided Archie till the young man had felt confident in his own feet, taking his own decisions, without ever though not considering George's opinion. This man had carried so much loyalty and affection for the Ardley family, so many feelings, hidden or not. He had never forgotten the good fortune he had received from Albert's father when he plucked him off poverty and crime a long time ago when he was just a young boy, barely a teenager in Paris. His heart burned for Rosemary, Albert's sister but he never dared say a thing, not wanting his feeling to cause any upheaval or distress to Rosemary and her family. And then he was next to Albert in everything he did, all his adventures when under a changed name, he wanted to taste life for himself before taking the place of his father who had left this world too early. In the end, it was George, an outsider by blood, whose life however like a silver thread had held the Ardley family together.

To this thought, a swell of warm and overwhelming affection rose in her chest for George, and pushed her to dive in his embrace. His arms hesitant at first, closed around her. Tears of suppressed sadness pooled in her eyes when she took a deep breath in the shelter of his embrace. "Thank you", she said with a gratitude coming straight from her heart.

"All we have in this life Candy is this moment...now...the present", she heard him say, sounding as if his heart was also travelling. "Don't waste that blessing"

He squeezed her once more in his embrace, before she took a step back. It was time for him to go. She smiled a beaming smile with her eyes sparkling like emeralds.

"There! Never lose your smile" he exclaimed and smiled back at her. She chuckled.

"I'll see you in a few days Candy"

—

Never in her life did she feel so elated as she had that same night that followed George's visit to Pony's home. Perhaps all that she felt, lay underneath the surface, in hibernation, waiting for the right moment, the right words, the right person. It was George but behind him, it was Albert. That night Candy spoke to him as if he was alive. Thanked her fate for letting him into her life. She had loved Albert like the family she never had the chance to know.

—

In front of Christian's painting of her, his Scarlet Rose as he called it, the woman who lay naked on the velvet sofa, you could tell, she had finally reached peace with her life. That peacefulness, Candy could see in her face as she slept inside the painting had made her mind travel through this silver trajectory to her past, when the decision had dawned to move to London. Just like Albert had done before her. To let go of old Candy, her fears, her weaknesses, the grey melancholy which was never far away.

Until a few days ago, when she read about Terry on the Stage...just a tiny article with his name in and was enough to unsettle her completely. She reacted compulsively, as if wanting to exorcise her feelings for Terry right there and then. Made Christian to ask her to repeat herself, wanting to confirm what she had said to him. Because Candy was ready for the whole London to find out she was his lover. And wanted Scarlet Rose on centre stage in Whitechapel gallery...

—