In the view from the beach house kitchen window, a sailboat was sailing North, probably home to San Francisco Bay. It was Saturday, August 18, 1990. Observing how interior windows framed sea views, Caydance recollected a watercolor by English artist Eric Ravilious: a view to a harbor as seen from a Sussex pub window. The window frame itself was visible. A framed painting of a clipper ship hung on the pub wall. A moored sailboat was partially visible from another window. Called up as a war artist at the outbreak of World War II, in 1942, Captain Ravilious went missing in action when the plane he was on went down off the coast of Iceland.
The pub, she recalled, still existed.
Chronicling buildings on one English street in a 1938 artists book in the collection of the V&A Museum, Ravilious' images were accompanied by words from an architectural historian. A painting of that pub itself was in this book, if she remembered correctly. She did not recall if the harbor view from the pub window was included. The plates for High Street were destroyed during the London blitz. She did not herself own a copy.
From the living room radio issued the sound of the Raiders playing an exhibition game against the Cowboys. If the Raiders won, this would be a good time to tell her husband, Coach Griff McGuire, that she had accepted an invitation to work as an art consultant with her brother, Agent Jack O'Brien, and his colleague, Agent Nico St. Denis.