She claims they’ll lead to toys / and babes with starry eyes
“This is it, Maggie. It says ‘and babes with starry eyes’! My copy of the poem reads ‘and rocking horses rides’!”
Maggie shook her head. “Yes, I noticed the difference too, but I didn’t think much of it, to tell you the truth. Of course, now I wonder what reasons you may have to be so mystified by it.”
“There’s something about the rocking horse, Maggie. I mean, your son’s company even has one on its title and logo! And out of the whole poem, only this verse is different; everything else is identical. It has to mean something, don’t you think? You don’t believe it’s just a coincidence, do you?”
“The rocking horse? You think it’s a sign from Laura? I hadn’t thought of that! Oh, Sofia, it makes sense now!”
“It does?”
“Yes. Look, I didn’t want to overwhelm you. There’s a lot to tell you, and there’s shocking and tragic details for you to hear. But let’s pace ourselves. It’s all too strange, even for me, who’s been praying for this miracle all my life!”
“Maggie, please! If you know something, just tell me. I’m okay, I can take it. What I can’t take any more is the uncertainty and the endless weirdness!”
“Okay, let’s take things one at a time then. Do you want to know who ‘babes with starry eyes’ points to?”
“Of course I do!”
“Her son.”
“Laura had a son?”
“Yes. A darling boy called Freddie. She often called him ‘starry eyes’. He had the most adorable twinkling eyes, you see.”
“Right. And what happened to him? Is he still alive?”
“One thing at a time, Sofia.”
“You don’t understand, Maggie . . . I’ve just been to a clairvoyant who said the rocking horse is the key to my happiness. If Laura’s sent me a sign pointing to this ‘babe with starry eyes’ that turns out to be her son, then I’ve got to meet him!”
Maggie gave a long sigh. “All right. Come tonight, seven o’ clock sharp. I’ll make sure Freddie’s here, then you can ask him anything you want.”
***
Sofia arrived at Maggie’s house for their appointment with time to spare. Normally, she’d wait to visit at the agreed time out of courtesy but not today. Unwilling to waste a single moment, she strode to the front door and rang the doorbell.
Ricky answered the door instead of his mother.
“Oh, hi Sofia! You’re early!”
“Yes, I’m sorry,” she said, embarrassed to find him there. She had hoped to be alone with Maggie and the mysterious Freddie, but her son was a nice man. Perhaps it wasn’t going to be too awkward.
“Nonsense! Do come in! My mother’s upstairs. I’ll tell her you’re here. You go ahead and make yourself comfortable in the living room and she’ll be right there.”
Five minutes later, Maggie walked into the room, a wide smile across her face. “Sofia, I’ve decided it’s cruel to keep Laura and Christian’s story from you any longer. You are right. I’ll tell you everything tonight and to hell with it. It’s your story, anyway. I’m merely the bearer of your past life’s memories. Do with them as you wish.”
Sofia was pleasantly surprised, albeit perplexed too. “I don’t understand. I thought I was meeting Laura’s son tonight. Is he coming a bit later?”
Maggie opened her mouth to speak, but then Ricky walked in with three mugs of tea on a tray, a plate of biscuits in its midst.
“No,” said Maggie, “Freddie is not coming later. He’s here now. Sofia, meet Freddie, Laura’s son, or should I say, your own son?” she said with an amused smirk, impossibly pointing at Ricky.
“What?” mumbled Sofia, jolting upright.
Ricky gave a titter. “That’s right. Maggie and her late husband, Ian Lennard, adopted me when Laura Mayfield, my biological mother, passed away.” Rickie’s brow creased with concern. “You may want to sit down, Sofia. You look like you’re about to pass out.”
“Please get her a glass of water, Ricky,” said Maggie and her son went out like a flash.
Sofia’s knees buckled and she fell back on the sofa like a dead weight. She ran a hand through her hair, then placed it on her forehead. She could hear her heartbeat thudding in her ears. It also beat madly in her chest, like a kicking horse gone wild, desperate to run.
“I don’t understand,” she managed feebly, “Your son’s name is Ricky, not Freddie like you said.”
“As a matter of fact, his name is Frederick . . .” said Maggie, coming to sit beside her with a tender arm around Sofia’s back. “He used to be called Freddie, but in college his friends called him Ricky and eventually it stuck, even with me.”
“So he’s the key? He’s the one who’s meant to help me?”
“Well, if you think that altered verse is a sign, then I guess it points to him. Although I have no idea how he’s supposed to help you. I believe he doesn’t have the faintest idea either.”
“Just tell me one thing. Why did he choose a rocking horse for his company logo?”
“Now, patience. That’s the latter part of the long story I’m going to tell you today.” Ricky returned with a glass of water, and Sofia had it all in one go. She felt better for it.
Maggie began to speak, starting from the beginning, from the first day she laid eyes on Laura. As she carried on relaying Laura’s tragic story of love, deceit and loss, inevitably she spoke of herself as a young girl too.
Old memories flooded Maggie’s head while a string of faces returned like ghosts to parade before her mind’s eye. That hateful Charles for one, and all the wonderful people she once knew and loved. Outside the window, the chill of night began to set in.
Ricky put another log in the hearth and sat with the two women to listen to the story of his long lost parents he knew only too well.
Chapter 44
Sofia thanked Ricky when he refilled her cup with tea, her fourth that evening. Sitting beside her, Maggie had been talking for three straight hours and looked exhausted. Maggie drank thirstily from her teacup and put it down on the saucer with a big sigh. She had just finished the story. Sofia’s face was animated with a mixture of mystification and upset.
“So, this is why you named your company Rocking Horse Publishing? Because of the musical toy your father gave you?”
“Yes, Sofia.” Ricky’s brow creased with dismay to relive the tragic night when his father died before his eyes. His rocking horse was splattered with his father’s blood, and the nightmares that ensued tortured him for years. “I’ve kept the toy, you know. It’s precious to me, since it’s all I have from my biological father. I still have it in my house and it’s my most precious possession.”
“I’m sure it is,” said Sofia, turning to Maggie to find her gazing at her and Ricky in a detached way, as if she were watching two other people from another time, and not her adopted son and a student girl from Greece. She had a strange smile on her face that suggested she was wickedly amused, but partly it was bitter too as if she scolded herself for her own amusement.
It was hard for Maggie to accept that that old world was gone, never to be redeemed, that Laura had to lose her long-awaited chance for happiness. Yet, what was unfolding before her eyes was a real miracle. In a way, her Laura had returned after a painfully long time.
“So, what happened to Charles?” asked Sofia, causing Maggie’s eyes to light up when her reverie was broken. She gave a long sigh and a little wave. “He was arrested, of course. Everyone attended the trial. Laura, my husband Ian and I, Charles’s parents . . . and the people who worked for him in his house and in that wretched dive he used to run.”
“He was convicted, no doubt?”
“Of course. Although there was this French girl who nearly swayed the court in the other direction.”
“What French girl?”
Maggie huffed. “She had an affair with him. She was one of the girls at The Black Cat. The staff testified he had recently fired her, bu
t she seemed anything but disgruntled. On the contrary, it was evident she loved him dearly.” Maggie shook her head. “She associated closely with Charles’s lawyer, trying to establish a strong motive for his actions, portraying him as the cheated, dishonoured husband who was overcome by anger and heartache enough to kill. When she told the court the child was Christian’s son and not Charles’s, the earl nearly had a heart attack in the courtroom.”
“He didn’t know?”
“Of course, he didn’t. No one did. The earl loved Ricky beyond words and had even made him the only beneficiary in his will as I said earlier. Imagine his shock when he found out he wasn’t even related to him.”
“Oh, yes of course!” Sofia winced. “How was he towards you after that, if I may ask?” she asked Ricky.
Ricky gave a wry smile. “The old man wasn’t as heartless as people seemed to think. As he was so fond of me, it took him a while to manage to sever all ties. In a way, he did feel detached from me once the truth came out, enough to not mind when my biological mother decided to move here with me, to be with her friends, Maggie and Ian, leaving behind the house I’ve been brought up in. The earl didn’t have any objections either when, after my mother’s death, Maggie and Ian decided to adopt me.”
“Did you continue to see your grandparents after you were adopted?”
“No. We lost touch with the Fenshaws quickly after that,” said Maggie. “And we thought that, naturally, the earl had changed his will but he hadn’t. When he passed away, a few years after Lady Fenshaw did, we were notified that Ricky had inherited Lakeview. The whole estate.”
Sofia’s eyes turned huge. “You mean you are now the owner of Lakeview?” she asked Ricky.
Ricky gave a chuckle. “You look so shocked! Yes, that’s where I live now, and you’re welcome to visit me anytime. It often hits me, you know, how ironic it is, that I should live happily in a house that my biological mother once hated . . . a place where Charles Willard once trapped her, destroying her happiness forever.” Ricky’s face was animated with a mix of wonder and compassion.
“Yes, very ironic . . .” Sofia gave a laboured sigh. This was too much information to process for one night. But she had so many questions still. She couldn’t bring herself to leave before knowing everything. She turned to Maggie again. “So, you were saying about this French girl. You said Charles was convicted. So, obviously, her disclosing the big secret about the child wasn’t enough to help Charles’s case?”
“Indeed, it was not. You see, he shot Christian in the back. It was regarded an act of cowardice. Such an act in post-war Britain, coming from a man who hadn’t even bothered to fight for King and Country was deemed simply unforgivable. It’s no surprise they gave him the highest penalty.”
“I can imagine. They gave him life then?”
“Of course not. He was sentenced to hang for Christian’s murder.”
“To hang? Really?”
“Oh yes! Back then, if you murdered someone, it was a one way road to the noose, no question about it.”
“So, Charles died by hanging?”
“He did,” Maggie gave a wry smile, “but not in the intended way.”
“What do you mean?”
“After the trial, Charles had a change of heart, having witnessed the struggle of the French girl, who tried to save him, and realised he made a big mistake. Instead of choosing to accept her love and be happy with her, he let his sick obsession with Laura get hold of him, enough to kill Christian. He sent a few letters to Laura, explaining all that and begging her to visit him in jail. He said he wanted to see her one last time before his execution and apologise, but Laura refused to go. She didn’t reply to his letters. He became distraught by her refusal and, one morning, they found him hanging in his cell, just three days before the planned execution.”
“What a sad, sad story . . .” said Sofia, shaking her head. “And what happened to Laura? How did she handle losing Christian, and then, the trial and Charles’s death?”
“Sofia, Laura died the day Christian did. What she was since that day, did not constitute a normal, living, and breathing creature. It’s like she turned off a switch inside her head the night he passed away and decided that from then on, her own life was to wither away.”
“Oh, poor Laura . . .”
“My mother had no life without my father, Sofia,” piped up Ricky. “For one, she never spoke again.”
Sofia’s eyes widened. “What?”
“Indeed,” said Maggie. When Christian died she suffered a severe shock that left her mute for the rest of her days. All she wanted to do after that is write poems and visit the Pier. She hardly ate and soon became that silent, black-clothed, gaunt creature that the locals slowly turned into a legend, well before she passed away.”
“They called her The Lady of the Pier, you mean?”
“Yes. It’s no surprise they called her that. She’d go there every day, with her bag of breadcrumbs, feeding the birds, scaring the children with her grim expression, her long, unkempt, unruly hair. She cared nought for rain, snow, or wind. Nor did she care for the locals who discussed her, laughed at her, scolded her, or pointed at her with sharp fingers.”
“That’s so cruel! But why?”
Maggie gave a laboured sigh. “Because she’d fallen from grace, for one. Have you ever seen the one weak chicken that all the rest peck at in a chicken shed? The one that’s been pecked till there are hardly any feathers left? The one bleeding, having its life sucked out of it with every waking moment, by all the others?”
Sofia gave a mute nod.
“That was Laura among the Pier crowd after Christian’s death. She was the viscountess who had a child out of wedlock, and whose husband had killed her lover when she tried to run away with him. Back in those days, the world could brand you as a worthless woman for a lot less. Think about it for a minute.”
“Oh, Maggie! Why did she keep going to the Pier then? Couldn’t you stop her?”
“No, I couldn’t stop her. She wouldn’t see reason. Every time I tried to, she’d get all upset and write on her notepad that I didn’t understand. It broke my heart. She’d write that going to the Pier was her only way to find Christian again. She said feeding the birds helped her relive the happy times when Christian was there beside her. Would you have found the heart to stop her?”
“No. Of course not.” Sofia shook her head forlornly. “This is so upsetting.”
Maggie gave a faint smile. “Yes, but you do realise that all is not lost. Sofia, you are Laura’s long-awaited chance for happiness! If you embody her spirit, and Danny, in the same way, is Christian, then we shouldn’t be upset but rejoicing. Laura has finally found what she wanted,” Maggie raised an arthritic hand and pointed a finger at Sofia, “through you.”
Sofia gazed back at Maggie, lost for words, her eyes sparkling. “When did she pass away? How? I want to know.”
Maggie looked up and pinned her misted over eyes on the opposite wall, a deep frown on her face. “It was a horrible, stormy day. Terrible gales were blowing across the seafront. I begged her not to leave but she didn’t even write a response that day. She shook her head and tilted her chin, that defiant chin I can never forget . . .” Maggie’s voice trailed off. She wiped a tear away with two fingertips, then took a deep breath. “She left the house that day determined not to come back. I should have known. She gave me a hug at the door, which she never did normally, then left without looking back once.”
“What happened?” Sofia’s voice came out as a whisper.
“She went to the Pier . . . and threw herself into the sea.”
Sofia’s eyes widened. “What?”
Maggie sighed. “A thunderstorm raged at the time. Two men standing at the bus stop saw her falling in the water.”
“Oh my God . . . How long was that after Christian’s death?”
“Two years later to the day. It’s no coincidence. She just didn’t want to live any more, although she was only thirty-one years old.
She believed in what he told her, that he’d look for her in another lifetime. I guess she couldn’t wait any longer.”
“Poor, poor soul . . .”
“You want to see her suicide note?”
“What? Yes, of course.”
“Come with me upstairs and I’ll show you. It’s another poem. Are you surprised?”
Sofia stared back at Maggie aghast, then somehow found the inclination to peel herself off the sofa and follow Maggie to the hall. Ricky stayed behind, deep in his own thoughts of loss.
Maggie climbed the stairs slowly, Sofia following closely behind her. They went into Laura’s room and Maggie took out a single piece of paper from an old book, handing it to Sofia. “After visiting the police station on the evening of Laura’s death, I found this poem on her bed.” The old woman’s voice came out laboured, her expression grim. “It was her explanation, and her goodbye to her son and me. Read it. It’ll tell you all about her eagerness to leave this world, to find another one, a faraway one, where her pain could no longer reach her.”
BLESS THE SEA
This is a story about a drop, a buoyant, fragile drop
Wafted by a summer breeze, over a splendid sea.
The sun was burning strongly, the wind caressing fondly,
Bewitched it heard the singing that lured it far from home.
That summer song kept calling
The crystal drop came falling
Huge waves rose up and beckoned; the sun began to sink.
It fell onto the foam, benevolent and light
But menacing and grey, She rose above too soon
It heard the sound She roared, it looked and lost its sight,
It said this little prayer and sank into its tomb:
Curse the sun that burned my eyes
Curse the wind that carried me that far
Curse the magic in that song
Bless the Sea that bears the scar
Bless Your depths that hide my pain
Bless the skies that uphold the morning star
The Storm Page 23