A Scattering of Light

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

"Are you a Londoner?" I asked Clare.

"Born and bred. But my father works for the government so we've lived all over. Half my childhood was spent in Cyprus."

Mr. Sykes, who had quite obviously been following our exchange, piped in again. "Why don't you show Mr. Gardner around?" he said, undoubtedly hoping to get rid of us. "Miss Scott could be ages, as you know. I'll find you when she's ready."

Clare turned to me. "How about a quick walkabout? I've made it my business to learn a bit about this place."

"Sure," I said, delighted at the prospect of spending more time with this brash, amusing, slightly gauche girl.

"I'll just park my shopping with Mr. Sykes," she said, depositing her bags beside his desk, ignoring his expression of dismay. She led the way into the main hall, where we paused at the foot of the grand staircase. I gazed up through the great, dizzying oval space--embellished with classical sculptures and gilt-framed grisaille paintings--to the skylight four stories up. "As you'll see," Clare began, clicking into full tour-guide mode now, "it's not a particularly large house, at least not by the standards of the day. But the Countess who built it wanted to make a major statement." She paused here for effect. "The truth is, she was a bit of a parvenu—born in the West Indies and all that—and she wanted to dazzle London society with the piles of money she inherited from her husband when he obligingly died soon after their marriage."

I rested my hand on the edge of one of the beautifully chamfered stone steps; it felt pleasantly cool to the touch. "Did she succeed?"

Clare chuckled knowingly. "She certainly made a name for herself. A few months after the house was finished she was dubbed the Queen of Hell."

"Wow, that's some nickname," I said with a skittish laugh. "She must've been quite a party girl."

 "Apparently with a taste for younger men," Clare added, warming to her tale as she led the way into a stately drawing room. I swept my eyes over the towering columns and coffered ceiling and tried to imagine the Countess chasing perfumed dandies in and out of these huge, drafty chambers.

"It's a little overwhelming," I said.

"Don't worry, darling, I felt intimidated when I first came here too," she confided, "but now I barely notice.”

We moved into a sort of lecture hall towards the back of the house, decorated with gilded Louis Seize boiseries. "The Institute's lectures are held in here. It was originally the dining room. A bit small, but I understand the Countess liked her entertainments relatively intimate, including her orgies," Clare said, trotting out another line she had surely used, or heard used, scores of times.

"In my experience those are the best kind," I remarked in the spirit of the thing.

Ignoring my attempt at humor, Clare plopped down in one of the utilitarian wooden chairs near the back of the room and gestured for me to take a seat beside her. "So what else don't I know about you?" she said, appearing to give serious consideration to this somewhat metaphysical question. "Ah, well, the obvious: what's your field?" 

"Oh, you know...neoclassicism mostly," I shrugged. "Palladio, Inigo Jones, that kind of thing."

"Yummy. Have you been to the Queen's House in Greenwich? It's my favorite building on the planet."

"Not yet," I admitted rather sheepishly. "What about you? What are you studying?"

"I'm doing French art, but since I'm an undergraduate I'm allowed to dabble in pretty much everything. In fact, I'm taking the tutorial on Inigo Jones this term. I assume you're signed up too?"

I felt a rush of pleasure at the notion of spending time with Clare on a regular basis. At the very least her presence would ensure that my tutorials were lively. "Absolutely," I said. "Or at least I will be when Miss Scott's ready for me." I glanced back towards the foyer, beginning to wonder if I'd been completely forgotten.

Clare bolted up with an impatient gesture. "Oh, that ridiculous woman," she said with some heat. "I'll take you up to Scotty's office myself. We'll flush her out soon enough."

Picking up her handbag, she led the way towards the hallway door; but as we walked past the deep bay of floor-to-ceiling windows on the north side of the room there was a great hollow fluttering from behind one of the damask draperies. Clare pulled the curtain aside to reveal a smallish bird, a starling I thought, trembling on the floor in the casement hollow. "Well hello, how did you get in here?" she said, kneeling down to pick up the bird, which flapped frantically across the floor to escape her grasp, listing rather wildly to the left as it scuttled across the expanse of dull parquet. "Oh, the poor darling, I think he's broken his wing." With a practiced pounce Clare descended on the bird, picked him up with a single motion, and pulled him to her chest. "Take a look," she said.

I glanced at the bird's dull yet hectic eye and quivering beak and feared the worst. I had seen that expression before; in my experience creatures somehow knew when they were done for. Very carefully I probed the wing, which hung at an unnatural angle from the bird's side, causing the creature to wriggle frantically in Clare's embrace. "It's broken," I said. "Poor guy."

Without a word Clare released the creature from her cupped arm and held it with one hand in front of her. With her other hand she twisted its neck in a single, neat movement. The bird went limp almost instantly. I was both awed and horrified by her decisiveness, by the utter absence of doubt with which she snuffed out life.

"It was the only thing to do, " she said forcefully. "He was suffering."

I nodded in agreement, though I couldn't help feeling a sense of loss and a small flicker of indignation. Couldn't we at least have made an effort to save it? I didn't doubt that Clare had acted humanely, and yet I was put off by her unflinching certitude.

She opened the glass door and stepped out into the overgrown garden, where she laid the bird on a crusty mound of twigs. Returning inside she extracted an enormous handkerchief from her jacket pocket and wiped off her hands. "Now let's go find that dreadful old Scotty," she said resolutely.

Taking up her handbag again, she led the way into the hall towards the grand staircase. "Lowly students are strongly discouraged from using these steps," she said as we began our ascent. "I suppose they're afraid the whole pretentious mess will fall down. But today is a special day, and I want to give you the full effect." We trailed up three flights to Miss Scott's door, and Clare knocked loudly. Voices could be heard inside. We waited, and then Clare beat on the door again.

A short, round-faced woman in an ill-fitting gray suit opened the door, looking very put out. "I'm on the phone," she snapped.

"Oh, I am sorry," Clare said, with absolutely no trace of contrition in her voice. "Mr. Gardner had an appointment with you a half-hour ago, and he's rather busy too."

"Oh Clare" the woman said, regarding my new friend with an exasperated half-smile. "You're such a pain in the derrière."

"Why, thank you very much," Clare said with a cheeky smile, dropping a shallow curtsey. "You must come for a drink sometime," she threw my way as she turned to leave. "We can't have you mooning around London feeling lonely, can we?"