‘Does anyone know where they’ve gone? What about your mother, does she know?’
Lettie shook her head. She was gazing at the baby. ‘What’s it called?’
‘Matilda.’
‘I never knew you had a baby. Is that why you went away?’
Winnie nodded.
‘Can I hold it?’
Winnie carefully passed the bundle over. Lettie looked into the baby’s face. ‘Its eyebrows are the same as his.’
‘Whose?’
‘Its daddy’s.’
Winnie paused. ‘Who’s he, then?’
‘Mr Flyte, of course.’
A coal lorry rumbled past. Winnie said: ‘You knew?’
‘Of course.’ Lettie shrugged. ‘I was going to ask for sixpence a week, not to tell.’ She looked at Winnie. ‘From both of you. But then you went away.’
Winnie paused for a moment, digesting this. ‘And where’s Mr Flyte gone?’
‘The police took him.’
Winnie stared. ‘The police? Why?’
‘When they found out he wasn’t blind,’ said Lettie.
‘Why would they do that?’
Lettie shrugged again.
‘How did they find out?’ asked Winnie.
‘He told them.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know,’ Lettie said, suddenly bored. ‘I don’t know everything.’
Epilogue
1919
Emily Bild was alone in the house when the doorbell rang. For this she was grateful. Her mother had taken the tram-car into Manhattan, to go window-shopping; her father was at work, and it was Grace’s day off.
Emily sat on the piano stool, revolving round and round. It was a breezy spring day; the nets billowed at the window. Outside, the cherry tree was in blossom. She pushed herself round with her foot. Sooner or later she should be tackling the Scarlatti. How lucky, then, that she prevaricated, for if she had been playing she wouldn’t have heard the bell.
Emily went downstairs and opened the door. A woman stood there, accompanied by a young man. The woman stared at her.
‘Goodness,’ she said. ‘We’ve found you.’
She was English – a tall, alluring woman, fashionably dressed in lilac.
The boy nudged her. ‘Mother,’ he murmured.
‘I beg your pardon.’ She put out her hand. ‘I’m Mrs Turk, this is my son Ralph. We’ve been looking for you for weeks now.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said her son. ‘Not all the time.’
‘I knew we’d find you in the end.’
Emily led them into the parlour.
‘Would you like some tea?’ she asked.
Mrs Turk shook her head and sat down. ‘I’m sorry to barge in like this,’ she said. ‘All I knew was that your name was Emily and you lived in Brooklyn Heights and your father was a furrier. So I showed the photograph to people in the shops and in the end it was the grocer who recognised you. The grocer in Atlantic Avenue.’
‘What photograph?’ asked Emily.
Mrs Turk opened her handbag and took out an envelope. ‘It’s of you and Clarence,’ she said.
There was a silence. Outside, the bells of the Episcopalian church chimed the hour.
Mrs Turk cleared her throat. ‘May I ask – did he come back?’
Emily shook her head.
Mrs Turk gave her the envelope. Emily took out the photograph and looked at it.
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Mrs Turk.
Emily gazed at the faded image: herself and Clarence, standing outside the Astoria Hotel. Nobody spoke for a while.
‘I thought you might want it,’ said Mrs Turk.
‘Yes,’ said Emily. ‘I do.’
‘Seeing as it’s got the two of you in it.’
Emily said: ‘This is the only copy. I thought I’d never see it again.’
‘I met Clarence in Brighton. He was ever such a nice young man. He told me wonderful things about New York, it made me want to see it. But mostly he talked about you. He loved you a great deal.’
Ralph turned to his mother. ‘I think we should go.’
‘No, wait.’ Emily pulled out a handkerchief. ‘I’ll be all right in a minute.’
Ralph sat down.
Emily blew her nose. ‘You came all this way to give me back my photograph?’
Ralph shook his head. ‘We’ve come to live here.’
‘My husband died, you see,’ said Mrs Turk.
‘I’m real sorry,’ said Emily. ‘What regiment was he in? I’ve been reading the papers, I’ve been learning them all. I knew so little, you see.’
‘No regiment,’ said Mrs Turk. ‘He didn’t serve in the war.’ She stood up. ‘Well, we mustn’t be keeping you.’
She put out her hand, to shake Emily’s. Then, on impulse, she put her arms around her and kissed her on the cheek.
Ralph smiled at Emily – a quick, shy smile – and then they were gone. Emily heard their footsteps crossing the parquet, and the click of the door. She couldn’t even gather her wits to show them out.
The sun shone; upstairs, the canary sang in its cage. Emily sat there, her hands clasped together, looking at the photograph of her dead fiancé.
Acknowledgements
I’d like to thank Max Arthur, military historian, for his extraordinarily helpful reading of the manuscript which went beyond the bounds of friendship. Amongst the many books I read for research, his Forgotten Voices of the Great War: A New History of WWI in the Words of the Men and Women Who Were There (Ebury Press, 2003) was particularly inspirational, too, as was Richard Holmes’s Tommy: The British Soldier on the Western Front (HarperPerennial, 2005), from which I’ve quoted for epigraphs to a couple of chapters and for which many thanks. Verses from ‘From a Full Heart’, from The Sunny Side by A. A. Milne © A. A. Milne 1921 reproduced with permission of Curtis Brown Group Ltd, London. Lines from ‘To His love’ from Collected Poems by Ivor Gurney, are reproduced with kind permission of Carcanet Press Limited. Lines from ‘The Last Laugh’ and from ‘The Send-Off’ by Wilfred Owen are reproduced by kind permission of the Random House Group. Others who have helped with their comments or by giving me information include The Imperial War Museum, Genista McIntosh, Tom and Lottie Moggach, Patricia Brent, Ruth Cowen, Alexandra Hough, Judy Taylor Hough, Geraldine Willson-Fraser, Sarah Garland, Simon Booker, Christopher Hampton and Sathnam Sanghera. Thanks also to my editor Alison Samuel, and my agents Rochelle Stevens and Jonathan Lloyd for their useful comments. Special thanks, too, to Matt Whitticase who bought Emily Bild her cameo role in the novel on behalf of Free Tibet. And finally, thanks to Nina Jaglom for the strange and wonderful conversation that started the whole thing off.
www.deborahmoggach.com
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English PEN upholds writers’ freedoms in Britain and around the world, challenging political and cultural limits to free expression. To find out more, visit www.englishpen.org
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DEBORAH MOGGACH is the author of many successful novels, including Heartbreak Hotel, available from Overlook. Her novel Tulip Fever has been adapted for film and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel was made into two very popular movies starring Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, and Bill Nighy. Her screenplays include the film of Pride and Prejudice, which was nominated for a BAFTA.
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