One newspaper proprietor had taken a liking to the young entrepreneur with the pleasing energy of youth and the equally pleasing acquisition of wealth. Harry was also a gentleman and so, in due course, the proprietor, William Van Guyen III, had introduced Harry to his daughter, Marina.
To Marina, born in America and shuttling between Fifth Avenue and Long Island, the juddering cogs of the city were invisible. She gravitated toward the parks, the squares, the flower stalls, anything that to her represented the place it had once been, before the coming of its European settlers: the sea, the river, the banks, the marsh and its islands. She believed she liked nature unspoiled, whereas, Harry thought, what she liked best was nature controlled, with all risk and ugliness removed. He, whose roots were so deep in the Old World, roots that still tried to draw him home even now, found passionate joy in industry and commerce and novelty, whereas she, the great-grandchild of immigrants who had mined the New World for all its treasures so that she might now enjoy them, was nostalgic for the pastoral and the unchanging.
She was a competent water-colorist—indeed, more than competent—and she painted wilderness, but on a small scale: domesticated, reduced, made manageable. Sometimes he accompanied her to the small galleries that showed her work. They were mostly patronized by her own circle, but that didn’t diminish the pride he felt in her careful draftsmanship and technical skill. Her pictures were popular, and those who bought them had mostly made fortunes in commodities or industry: steel, or rolling stock, hotels, brewing, in land development, shipping, or factories. It seemed ironic that her large family, whose origins lay in the flatlands of Europe, its infinite horizons vast above networks of polders and canals, went into raptures over her careful depiction of the towering Rockies.
He rarely thought of his own home. He almost smiled at the notion: he tried so hard not to call it that in conversation, but in his head it was always that. Abbotsgate. There he had been born, there he had grown up, there he was determined not to die. Letters from his stepmother, Isabelle, almost convinced him that not to return would be churlish and unnecessarily unkind, coming close to pulling him back, but it had now been far too long. Her very warmth made the distance between the two continents seem not only greater but even more desirable.
He had never seen his half-brother, Edward, although Isabelle had sent him a studio portrait. A solemn and sturdy little boy stood by a draped table, wearing a sailor suit and holding a small riding crop. He had a similarity to Harry in the way that all little boys in society photographs resembled each other.
Marina, who was very much attached to her remaining family, found his attitude curious when she had first asked him about his home.
“So your mother died when you were young, and you have a stepmother, Isabel?”
“Isabelle. She’s French.”
“Isabelle. And a brother, Teddy?”
He had nodded. “Half-brother. And he’s only ten or so.”
She made a face, which he read as sympathy for the little boy. “But you seldom go home?”
“This is my home.”
She had nodded solemnly as if she understood a terrible sorrow. Looking at her, he feared she was constructing some Gothic drama based on the novels she devoured.
“I’m so sorry,” she said.
“My stepmother is a kind and good woman. My stepbrother is a healthy and happy child. They live in a lovely part of England. I am very fond of them,” he’d added as an afterthought.
“I love your Englishness,” she’d said. “You could be very fond of a gin and vermouth. Or a day out sailing.”
He smiled.
“What business was your family in? I’m not annoying you, am I?”
“Not at all. On my mother’s side, brewing. On my father’s side, they have always farmed. A small agricultural and sporting estate.” This was a partial truth; the land his father owned, though large in England, would not be especially impressive in the American Midwest. “They were all very, very interested in horses.”
“Horses,” she said, her face contorting in mock despair. She had admitted to him weeks ago that horses were something she couldn’t paint. He had then admitted that he drew only as a hobby—a dilettante, he’d said—and when she insisted on seeing his drawing pad, she was silent and solemn as she went through charcoal sketches of men working, of machinery, of untidy areas of the city and gulls over a rubbish dump, then pronounced that he was better than she’d ever be and that, despite this, she loved him.
But he always thought he had begun to love Marina, and be freed of the past, on that late July day by the Aquarium.