The Pieces of Ourselves

by Maggie Harcourt

  The front door slams, followed by two hollow-sounding clonks as Felix kicks off his boots.

  “Hello? Anyone in?”

  “In the kitchen!” Charlie reaches into the fridge for a beer, knocking the cap off and slamming the door. He takes a swig, then holds it out for Felix, who strolls in and takes it gratefully.

  “Cheers. What’s this then?” he asks, pointing at the case.

  “We don’t know,” Charlie tells him, his voice hushed.

  Albie’s suitcase…Not in the big-house attic. In ours.

  Their initials. Their place. His case.

  It can’t be.

  It’s too much to hope for.

  My heart hammers on the inside of my ribs like it’s trying to crack them open, break the bars, smash its way free as I try the latches on the case.

  They stick at first, and for a horrible moment I’m sure the case is locked…but then they snap open, and all three of us breathe out again.

  “Well?” It’s Felix who asks first, before I’ve barely even got the lid open.

  “Hang on, would you?” I stop and glare at him. Charlie laughs and puts an arm around Felix’s shoulders, ruffling his hair in the process.

  The lid of the case catches, the hinges protesting loudly as I lift it. At one point, there’s a horrible cracking noise and I freeze.

  “There’s no point just stopping now, is there?” says Charlie. “Do you want me to do it?”

  “No!” It’s louder than I meant it to be. More protective, my hands instinctively splaying across Albie’s initials.

  “Okay then. Just…open the case.”

  I swing the lid all the way open, resting it back on the table, and the three of us peer in.

  “More papers. Of course.”

  There’s something different about these ones – as though instead of being piled into the crates and chests simply to get them out of the way, these were placed here on purpose. Deliberately, carefully.

  I take out the first pile, tied together with dusty brown string.

  “And? Is it to do with Ha— Uh, his project?” Charlie corrects himself. And then, unable to wait, he grabs the first papers, flipping the top sheets forward and peering at the ones behind.

  “Charlie!” I reach for them, but he twists away, back towards Felix.

  “Hang on a minute, I’m looking!” He studies them, his eyes skipping along the lines of typewritten text on each page, nodding and chewing on his bottom lip as he goes. “Mmm. Mmm-hmm. Oh…”

  “What? What does ‘oh’ mean? What?”

  He glances up at me and half-grins, slipping one sheet out from the middle of the bundle.

  “Here. This one. You’ll want to read this.”

  …Can confirm that we have released to our client the documents held for him in the event of his return…

  “Who’s the client?”

  “You tell me.” Charlie nods at the paper, and I skip forward a couple of lines.

  …No wish to contest or delay the sale of Holmwood House. As the sole remaining member of the family, all funds are to be…

  In the event of his return.

  My hands are shaking so hard that I almost tear the paper as I turn it over to look for a date.

  October 1919.

  It can’t be.

  It has to be.

  I look up at Charlie. He sighs.

  “All right, all right. Let’s get it out on the table.”

  I sit on the floor with my back against the sofa, my phone lying in front of me.

  Like I have been for the last hour.

  “You know they only work if you actually touch them, don’t you?”

  “Thanks, Charlie. I’ll remember that.”

  “Make the call. The longer you sit here…”

  “Just…give me a minute! Please?” I snap at him.

  “Fine, fine. Have it your way,” he mutters, holding up his hands and wandering off back into the kitchen.

  I stare at my phone some more.

  What if I call and he can’t answer?

  What if I call and he doesn’t?

  What if I call and he doesn’t care?

  What if I call and he doesn’t even remember who I am?

  Worse, what if I call and he doesn’t want to remember? What if he looks at his phone and sees my name and thinks to himself, it’s the crazy girl, and – like other people – he flicks me away and out into the darkness.

  What if…what if…

  What if I’m holding the last piece of the puzzle; the piece we never even knew was missing?

  What if I run towards, instead of away?

  I pick up my phone and dial.

  The number rings twice, then goes to voicemail. Instantly, I hang up.

  Okay. Let’s try that again.

  I hit redial.

  Ring-ring…voicemail.

  Redial.

  Ring-ring…voicemail.

  This time, I listen to the greeting. It sounds strange – like him, but not him, as though I’m listening to someone doing an impersonation of him. Like he’s doing an impersonation of himself. And then there’s a beep and I realize I’m now basically leaving a heavy-breathing message on his voicemail and that’s not good – so I blurt out the first thing that comes into my head.

  “Hal, it’s me. Flora. From the hotel. Hopwood Home. Obviously. Listen, there’s a case. A suitcase. And stuff. And it’s him, it’s really him, and you’re not here, and I need to tell you…Call me back, okay? Call me. It’s Flora. Obviously. Hi. Call me.”

  I hang up again to find both Charlie and Felix staring at me over their shared bottle of beer.

  “What?”

  “And he can actually understand all that, can he?” says Charlie pointedly.

  I give him what I hope is the sort of look that can turn a man to stone.

  And then my phone rings – too fast for him to have even listened to my message.

  “Flora?” The voice on the other end makes me ache for him. “You called.”

  This isn’t voicemail Hal. It’s real Hal. My Hal. And hearing him again, so near and far away, rips open the door I’ve tried to close, and I don’t care.

  “We were wrong.”

  “What? Sorry, I don’t—”

  “We were wrong! We never knew how the story ended. We only thought we did.”

  My phone pressed to my ear so tightly I’m half-afraid I’ll crack the screen, I duck back into the kitchen, shooing my brother and Felix out. I stand in front of the table and I take a deep breath of air that tastes of the past, of dust and secrets…and I tell him. I can hear him listening – I can practically see his eyes widening, see the flush in the hollows of his cheeks as the pieces we never imagined we’d find click into place, one after another in a final rush.

  When he speaks at last, it’s in a whisper; his voice hoarse with disbelief. “He survived?”

  “He survived and he came back. It’s all here, in his solicitor’s letters. They made him speak to doctors, everything. There’s a big file with all this stuff in.”

  “Three years? He stayed out there for three years?”

  “No, only one. The casualty station was hit by a shell – that’s why they thought he was dead, but he wasn’t! He says he was brought back to Britain in 1917, by…” I check the scrawled note I made earlier. “A doctor from Edinburgh who he says basically adopted him. He says, ‘He made me myself again’.”

  “But what about his family? They’d already had the telegram that said he’d been killed.”

  “Right, and – are you ready for this? – because of the shell shock and the trauma, he didn’t remember who he was. Not until the start of 1919. By then his father had died, and his mother had packed up the house and moved to a flat in London. She died a couple of months later. So when he got better, and he tried to write, there was nobody here and nowhere to send the messages on to. There’s a note – the solicitor thinks they must have got lost when there was a fire at the village post office. He’s fig
ured it all out for us. If only we’d found this case first…”

  “Where was it?

  “In the attic.”

  “How did we miss it? I thought we—”

  “Not the Hopwood attic. Our attic. Here. At my house. Charlie found it this afternoon.”

  “Oh my god. I mean…” There’s a long silence, and something like a chair creaking under sudden weight. “Wow.”

  “You want the rest?”

  “There’s more?”

  “There’s more.”

  “Should I come back? I should come back…”

  “But your dad…?”

  “I’ll handle my father. I need to come back. I want to.”

  “No! I mean…yes, but listen. I need to tell you this now, because if I don’t, I think my head’s going to explode.” My mind is racing…but it’s not the free-fall whirling I’m used to, the kind I dread more than anything, where everything is shining and cold and ready to consume me. It’s something else. “He wrote to his family – when he remembered who they were – and nothing. While that was happening, the house was put up for sale, it’s all going through…and he turns up at the gate one day out of the blue. Finds it all locked up, so he goes to the family solicitor, who basically thinks he’s seen a ghost. So they go through everything to prove he is who he says he is, and he is, and they offer to cancel the sale, help him reclaim the estate…”

  “There’s a ‘but’ coming, isn’t there?”

  “Kind of? He’s just not interested. All he cares about is Iris.”

  Hal doesn’t say anything. I know he’s just waiting for me to tell him the rest – but now I’m not sure if I can. My throat closes up and the words are going to choke me if I try and get them out. Because after all this time, after everything he’s been through, Albie is still thinking about Iris.

  “But she’s gone.” It takes everything I have to keep my voice steady.

  When I pieced this together, half an hour ago, it felt like someone had put a heavy rock on my chest and leaned on it. What must it have felt like for him, all those years ago? Finding his way back to her, only to realize he was chasing a memory.

  “What happened?”

  “She was offered another job, in Yorkshire.”

  “When the house was shut up?”

  “Yes. And she must have married, because there’s something here about Albie specifically telling Faraday – that’s the solicitor – not to let her know what’s happened or that he’s back. ‘After she waited four years and mourned the man she loved and let him go, how can he come back from the dead?’”

  Hal groans softly. I know exactly how he feels – my heart hurt when I turned over that note and read it, read between the lines and saw what it really meant.

  But there’s more. There’s more, and I have to tell him.

  “There’s another photo of him in the bundle – a proper one. It says France, 1916 on the back in his handwriting. It looks like it was taken at the same time as the one we found – the one of the group of them. But you can see his face better in this one.”

  Felix turns the picture over. He blinks at it, eyes wide, and hands it to Charlie without a word. Charlie takes it, blows out a long breath and shakes his head…and passes it straight over to me.

  “Hal…what was your great-great-grandfather’s name? The one who started the family business? Do you know it?”

  Something in the set of his jaw, the way he looks straight into the camera. Something familiar about the half-smile – even though he’s on the front line and in the middle of hell.

  How did we not guess it already? Coincidence on coincidence on coincidence…the house wanting us to know.

  “Of course I do – it’s on everything round here. The company logo is the founder’s signature. Why?”

  “Just tell me.”

  Say it.

  There’s nothing but silence on the line. Does he know what I’m asking him? Has he figured it out? Has he followed the story all the way to the end – and further?

  Eventually, he speaks. “Bertie. His name was Bertie Waverley.”

  I take a deep breath. “The last letter from Albie – or the last one in this case, anyway – is about the money from the sale of the house. His parents were both dead, and Faraday somehow managed to get the sale through – I don’t know, there’s loads of stuff about it, and I don’t understand any of it. But Albie’s writing to say he’s received the money, and he says he’s met a girl and thinks he might settle down and get married. Leave the past behind, make a clean break. But there’s something in the letter you need to hear.”

  “What?”

  I know he’s figured it out. He’s just waiting for me to fill in the gap.

  “First up, he says he’s changed his name, asks Faraday to only ever use his new one now. And he says, ‘You asked what I might do with the remaining proceeds from the sale. I have it in mind to open…to open an hotel.’”

  Silence.

  Something in the eyes; the way they hold the camera’s gaze. The freckles across his face, clear even under the age-spotting on the photograph. A family resemblance that has somehow travelled down through time.

  “He changed his name, Hal. Albie Holmwood came home in 1919 and sold the house and changed his name and got married and opened a hotel. Albert Holmwood died. And Bertie Waverley was born – Waverley after the station in Edinburgh. Because of the doctor. That’s why he disappears, not because he died. He actually lived! Albie was your grandfather’s grandfather – I’m sure he was. Albie – this Albie, our Albie – he was your great-great-grandfather.”

  Bareheaded, holding his uniform cap in the hand resting on his knee. And if the photograph was in colour, his hair would be the colour of copper in the sunlight.

  “Hal…I think you’re a Holmwood. This isn’t just his story. It’s yours.”

  The first of the autumn leaves are starting to fall as I straighten the sign on the library door for what feels like the fifteenth time.

  Closed for private function.

  “What time did he say they’d be arriving?” Barney sticks his head out from behind the door, checking his watch.

  “About two o’clock.” I straighten the sign yet again. Why won’t it hang properly? Barney nods and disappears back into the library to put the finishing touches to the set-up in there. Ever since I walked into his office and told him he wasn’t going to believe what that research project had turned up, he’s been counting down the hours until Hal comes back almost as impatiently as I have.

  Almost.

  With Charlie’s help – and Mira’s and Felix’s – I’ve sorted through the little suitcase and pulled some of the other letters and papers back down from the Hopwood attic. Predictably, Hal left them all in such perfect order that even I could figure it out. I wonder whether he’s ever thought about a career in housekeeping?

  There is the first letter – the warning from Jane that she won’t help Iris ruin her life or her reputation. There are their secret notes, passed between them with the help of GH, George Harbutt, the gardener who lived in my house and gave them a safe place to meet. There is Albie’s letter of goodbye, the photo of him with the other soldiers awkwardly arranged in the garden of a French farmhouse. There is Dougie’s letter, the nurse’s letter, the telegram. There are all the solicitor’s papers, the newspaper clippings…the solution to the riddle. The final piece. And there, at the very end of the table, tucked into a silver frame borrowed from the suite upstairs and propped up so he can survey it all, is Albie’s portrait.

  There is a whole life – two whole lives – laid out before us. Both the person that Albie was and the person he became.

  The sound of shoes squeaking on the wooden floor of the lobby makes me look up to see Mira moving at the special walking-very-quickly-but-definitely-not-running speed every hotel staff member develops here. There’s a huge grin on her face as she hurries over to the library door.

  “They’re here!” She grabs my arm and tows
me away from the library towards the wide lobby windows overlooking the drive.

  A sleek silver car – an old convertible – sweeps into the drive and crunches across the gravel, and even at this distance the sunlight flashes on red hair and my heart skips.

  Hal is driving, and next to him in the passenger seat is his grandfather.

  The car swings around, and pulls up to the exact spot where the squashed-frog car parked that very first day.

  It takes a lot not to throw myself through the open door and out onto the drive – but instead I wait and I watch.

  I watch Hal jumping out of the car, his sunglasses catching the light, then darting around to open the other door. I watch him holding his arm out to his grandfather to help him – and his grandfather teasingly pushing it away, then taking it after all. He gets out of the car slowly, and then the two of them stand there, side by side, looking up at the front of the house, hands raised to shield their eyes from the low autumn sun.

  The Holmwoods – because that’s who they are underneath – have finally come home.

  What does that feel like, knowing that in another life, this could have been theirs? That it would have been theirs? They’re not just looking at a building – at the stone and the shining windows and the slate roof – they’re looking at a chapter in their history. One neither of them knew they would ever read.

  Hal lowers his hand and, even without being able to see his eyes, I know he’s looking at me. I can feel his gaze on me. And to me that feels like coming home, after a long time away.

  Together, they walk slowly across the gravel – Pa in a dark blue suit and pale pink shirt, Hal in black, his hair swept back from his face and his eyes still on me behind the glass pane of the window. He leans his head closer to his grandfather, says something to him, and they both smile, and now that I know what I’m looking for I can see Albie in both of them. They’re bringing him home with them.

  By the time they reach the entrance, everyone has run to the lobby – confusing nearby guests, who all crane to look out of the window, expecting somebody famous. Why else would the manager of the hotel be holding the door open for these two men? Why else would so many of the staff be waiting?