Page 70 of Meet Me Under the Mistletoe
“Is it a C-minus?” he asked.
“Isaac, these are...” She fumbled for her words. “They’re beautiful! I mean, really good. You’ve got a talent, Isaac. You could sell these, make prints, sell them framed or as cards, there’s a market for these...”
“They’re not for sale.” Isaac smiled grimly.
“Why not? You’re missing a trick here.”
“Because they’re mine.”
“It won’t stop being your work.” Nory laughed at his vehemence.
“Are you sure about that?”
She looked at him. His expression was clouded, guarded even. “I don’t understand,” she said.
For a moment, Isaac seemed to be weighing something in his mind, and then he said: “I want to show you something.”
“Okay.” Nory was confused by the sudden change in atmosphere.
They made their way upstairs. Isaac pushed open the door tothe study and Nory went in. He fished around in a vase on one of the shelves for a set of keys, then crossed the room and knelt in front of a large traveling trunk in the far corner. The maroon leather on the trunk was flaking with age, and the iron studs had tarnished to a dirty gold. It had clearly seen some mileage. Peeling customs stickers from various countries had been haphazardly slapped onto the leather.
The locks clicked one after another, after another, until finally, Isaac pushed his thumbs against two rectangular brass buttons, and the top gave a jump as though surprised. Isaac pushed up the heavy domed lid.
Nory, who had been gingerly stepping closer and closer throughout the opening process, could no longer suppress her curiosity. She leaned over the trunk.
She saw a couple of yellowing parchments folded and secured with a wax seal, and some newer envelopes that looked as though they held bank statements and solicitors’ letters. Isaac brushed them aside and carefully lifted out a set of A3 sketchbooks, which he placed gently down on the desk.
He turned to Nory, who was now practically hopping with curiosity, and gestured for her to take a look. At once she could see that they were very old. Most of the books had been hand-bound in cloth—calico, if she wasn’t mistaken. Faded ribbons sewn into the edges of the discolored fabric were tied in loose bows to keep the books closed. Her heart was racing. It felt like finding treasure; just the bindings alone were enough to set her fingers tingling. She cast an inquiring look up at Isaac, who smiled and said quietly in answer: “Go on, take a look.”
She picked up the first book and laid it flat on the desk, sitting herself on the chair in front of it. With utmost care and trembling fingers, she pulled one of the ribbon ties. The silkslipped out of its bow and spooled onto the desk. Nory opened the book to the first page.
It contained hand-painted botanical drawings, labeled in pen and ink in a spidery hand, as though the writer was unfamiliar with the words. The plants were unlike the common British varieties depicted in Isaac’s books downstairs. These were tropical flowers, little stars of jasmine, voluptuous pink lotus flowers, and red tattered hibiscus petals with stamens lolling out of their centers like giant tongues. Nory turned the pages reverently, careful not to let any natural grease from her fingertips mark the delicate parchment pages.
It was strange. She had never seen these drawings before. How could she have? And yet they were so familiar. No, more than familiar. She recognized the hand that had painted them, as though she had looked at them a thousand times. She frowned as she reached for the next book. And when she unfastened the ribbons and turned to the first page, she knew these pages too. Not the plants themselves, though some were familiar to British gardens, but the brushstrokes, the way the colors had been leaked into one another, the careful and oh-so-delicate ink lines that outlined stems and petals.
“These are original Serena De-Veers,” she almost yelped. “Oh my god! Some of these are from her time in India. I know these, Isaac. These are original sketchbooks. My god, do you have any idea how valuable these are? I mean. I can’t even... each one of these would fetch thousands at auctions. Hundreds of thousands, Isaac, sitting in an old trunk in your study.” She laughed then. A pure joyous laugh. Thiswastreasure. “These are original Serena De-Veers!” she almost shouted, jumping up from the desk and skipping around to Isaac, grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him. Isaac remained unmoved.
“Actually,” he said coldly, “they’re not.”
Nory looked into his dark brown eyes, and they burned back into hers. “What?” Her voice faltered. “They are, I’m sure of it. I’ve studied her work...”
“You are half-right. The hand that painted these is the same hand that painted the picture in my sitting room and the books in the glass cabinet in your shop. But none of them were painted by Serena De-Veer.”
Nory chuckled uncertainly, convinced that this must be some sort of joke that Isaac was playing on her. “But I don’t understand, the provenance...”
“The provenance is wrong. Serena De-Veer”—he said her name through gritted teeth—“didn’t paint anything; nothing that got published anyway. It was all my great-great-grandmother’s work.”
“W-what? But how?”
Isaac motioned for Nory to sit, and she settled herself down on the chaise longue. He remained standing and began to pace. He seemed both agitated and weary as he spoke.
“My great-great-grandparents worked for the De-Veer family when they lived in India. When they came back, my great-great-grandparents came with them. My great-great-grandmother Heba was a kind of lady’s maid to Serena De-Veer. The De-Veers were very impressed with Heba’s paintings and always very encouraging. Apparently, they had a friend who worked in publishing, and they offered to show him Heba’s work. The publisher was very keen to go ahead, but it was decided that the books would carry more gravitas with booksellers if they were under Serena’s name as opposed to that of an unknown Indian immigrant.”
Nory watched his fists open and close in frustration. She’d never had to suffer the injustice of being discriminated againstbecause of the color of her skin. She’d watched her best friend encounter a myriad of daily microaggressions during their friendship—many having nothingmicroabout them at all. She couldn’t imagine the bitterness that Heba must have felt, a bitterness that had been passed down through the generations and now hung on Isaac’s shoulders.
“They offered to pass the profits and any royalties on to Heba,” Isaac continued. “And they’d promised that if the books were successful, they would come clean down the line, show people up for their prejudices.”
“But they never did,” Nory said, picturing Serena De-Veer’s name on the covers of the books in her shop.
