Black Roses by Jane Thynne

the window.

Chapter Five
    Until then, Clara had not unpacked her case. She was superstitious that way. She still didn’t know if she was going to find any acting work, though Albert had promised to ‘put her up for something’, but that afternoon she began taking out the few things she had brought and stowing them away. She was used to travelling light. The years in rep had taught her the futility of carrying around a single thing more than you needed. All she had were three blouses, two spare skirts, a nightdress and underwear. The basic cosmetics, a couple of lipsticks, Helena Rubenstein face cream, Vaseline, a Max Factor powder compact, eye-liner. A blue glass bottle of Bourjois’s Evening in Paris. For evenings she had her red buckled shoes, a fur wrap and a backless scarlet dress, which she had purloined at the last moment from her sister’s wardrobe, just in case she needed to attend something formal. Angela would kill her when she found out. In fact, Clara reflected, she had almost certainly found out already. She pictured her sister’s perfectly proportioned face grimacing in annoyance. Yet another person who would need a proper explanation once everything was sorted out.
    She had a few books, a
Palgrave’s Golden Treasury
and some novels, which she positioned in front of the crimson-jacketed copy of
Mein Kampf
with gold lettering which had been left on the shelf, right next to the poems of Heinrich Heine, whom Frau Lehmann had plainly not heard was now a despised author of a degenerate race. Beside them Clara propped a letter, addressed and ready for posting.
    As she stowed the clothes away in a cavernous Biedermeier wardrobe that could have housed an entire family, a small silver locket fell out of her rolled-up underwear. She picked it up and held it snug in her palm, absorbing the heat of her hand. Apart from a string of pearls and a pair of earrings, this locket was the only real jewellery she possessed. It had an intricate design of entwined leaves and a filigree clasp. She opened it.
    When her mother knew she was dying, she had prepared special presents for their father to give to her daughters in the years to come. The silver locket containing a minute photograph of her mother and herself had been a gift for her sixteenth birthday. Their heads were bent together, with the same dark hair, long and gently waved on her mother, cut short to the nape of the neck on Clara, with a clip holding it off her brow. They had the same slightly angular features and pointed chin which, when lifted, expressed the same look of resolute defiance. Whenever she looked at it, all Clara could remember was the day her mother died. Being brought in to say goodbye in the front bedroom, which was flooded with a mellow afternoon sun and stuffy with medicine and disinfectant. Her mother lying immobile on the bed, her hands listless on top of the faded chintz eiderdown. Clara had taken her hand gently. It was the first time she had held her mother’s hand since she was small – the Vine family was not given to overtly physical demonstrations of any kind, except to dogs. She felt the heavy sapphire ring loose on the twig of her finger and looked at the papery skin of her face, creased and dusted with powder like some ancient parchment fading into insignificance. She had great brown bruises under her eyes and her black hair, no longer glossy, was wired with grey.
    Clara was the only one of the children who took after their mother. Her brother and Angela were Vines to the tips of their long, sporty limbs. Clara was dark and fine-boned, whereas the others were tall, with tawny hair and the stamina of shire horses. The family of Clara’s mother were bankers in Hamburg, but the Vines could trace their ancestry back to the Norman invasion. They loved the outdoors, long walks and animals, especially shooting them. Perhaps it was this resemblance to her mother that made their father more reserved with Clara than with his other children.