Page 15 of The Final Act of Juliette Willoughby
Had Freddie put her up to this? Was it a joke, and if I said yes was there going to be some sort of punch line? Since my Osiris investiture, I had been dreading word somehow getting out about that cat business—one of the reasons I had not yet worn my pinkie ring in public. Athena asked what my plans were. I told her I was having dinner with Harry Willoughby.
“Harry! I know Harry. I love Harry. Bring Harry!”
“I can certainly ask him,” I said.
“Tell him I insist,” she said. “Tell him Freddie will be there. My place—you know where I live, don’t you?—tonight, seven o’clock.”
I did know where she lived, as it happened. It was something of a joke in our year that Athena’s father had bought her a house three doors down from the Art History Department building and yet she still managed to be late to every lecture she attended.
When I went to his room to tell him, Harry seemed as bemused by our invitation as I was. “I’ve only met her once for about ten minutes,” he said. “She and Freddie had a blazing row at the bar, and she stormed off.”
“Well, she was very keen on us coming,” I told him. “She also said to tell you Freddie will be there.”
He made a face. Despite their being cousins, and both members of Osiris, I was never quite sure how much Harry actually liked Freddie. They were certainly very different characters—even as a child, Harry had been the serious cousin, the straightlaced one, conscious always that he was the one who would inherit the big house and the responsibility that came with it. Nor was there much physical resemblance between them. Freddie was confident, attractive, with razor cheekbones and a carefully maintained six-pack. Harry had a round, shiny face with pink cheeks, eyelashes so blond they were almost white, and hair that at twenty was already starting to thin in places.
“So what do you think?” I asked.
Harry—a classics student—rested on his chest the Loeb edition of Horace he had been reading on his bed and looked at me. “Do you want to go?”
“I wouldn’t mind seeing what her place is like,” I said with a shrug.
“Ghastly, I expect,” he said. They could be very snobbish, he and Freddie, especially about people they suspected of having more money than they did. “But I suppose anything is better than college food.”
AS IT TURNED OUT, the house was exquisite—the color scheme elegantly understated, the lighting soft, the carpets so deep your feet sank in them almost to the ankle. It was also even bigger than it looked from the street. Athena led us through a vast shiny kitchen to the dining room—an enormous glass box sticking out of the back of the house. There were two people already sitting at the table. One of them was Giles Pemberton, another art historian: blond, gay, a little tweedy, a self-conscious connoisseur of things. He was wearing a bow tie and swirling the glass of red wine he was holding up to a candle—the first person our age I had ever seen do this not as a joke. The other person at the table was Caroline. She looked just as surprised to see me as I was to see her.
Two other places had been set, presumably for Freddie and Athena, but there was no sign of Freddie yet. I remarked on the lovely smells coming from the kitchen as Athena made sure everybody who did not know each other was introduced—placing rather a lot of emphasis on Harry’s surname. This made little impression on Giles but gave Caroline a little start.
“Oh!” she said. “I’m writing a dissertation chapter on the painter Juliette Willoughby.”
Harry smiled politely.
“Not just that,” said Athena. “Tell them, Caroline.”
Caroline gave her a look. She gave Caroline a look back.
“She’s found a journal,” said Athena. “Juliette’s diary, with sketches. From her time in Paris.”
“In the Willoughby Bequest?” I said.
Caroline nodded. A timer went off in the kitchen. Athena excused herself and hurried off.
Harry looked confused. “I thought that was all Egyptological papers. There is some research student—Sam something—working on it, trying to get it all into order. Every so often he writes to my father with some question about Uncle Cyril or the collection that none of us have the first clue how to answer.”
“Mostly it is Egyptological material. That’s what makes this so strange,” said Caroline.
“What kind of journal is it?” I asked, leaning in across the table, intrigued.
“I’m still in the process of transcribing it, but it’s very personal. I’m not sure she ever intended for anyone else to read it.” She turned to Harry. “For instance, I hope you don’t mind me asking, but do you know anything about her having been in a mental institution?”
Harry thought about this. “No, but perhaps that’s why we don’t really talk about her much in the family. I can imagine some of my relatives being a bit funny about something like that. My grandfather Austen, on the other hand...”
“You’re related to Austen Willoughby?” said Giles, evidently both amused and excited by this information.
Harry confirmed this. Giles clapped his hands.
Caroline asked somewhat apologetically who Austen Willoughby was.
“Austen Willoughby was the most successful canine portraitist of his era,” said Giles, half turning in his chair to face her. “A Fellow of the Royal Academy of Arts. A genius, really. When it came to painting rich people’s dogs, anyway.”
