by Mary Stewart
‘I’m sorry.’
She set her cup down and turned to face me, dry-eyed now, but with some kind of strain showing in her normally cheerful, plump face.
‘Well, I dare say that’s why the good Lord gave us the gift of memory. But it comes hard. It was bad enough all those years ago when your mum left, poor lass, and she the nearest thing I’ve ever had to a real friend, but I never would have thought your Gran would go. I’ve been telling myself all this time that she’d be home, maybe, at the back-end, but dear knows there’s nothing for her to come back for.’ A pause, but before I could speak she said, so abruptly that it sounded like an accusation, ‘And now you.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes, you. Clearing the place out and then leaving.’
‘But I’m not leaving.’
‘Not for a day or two, you said. But that’s not what I was meaning.’
I smiled right into the troubled eyes, and pointed to the letter which lay on the table. ‘I’ve just written to Lady Brandon to ask if I may rent Rose Cottage, or better still, buy it. I hope she’ll agree.’
‘Well! Well I never! That’s good news, and I’m sure she’ll jump at it. I know she didn’t want your Gran to leave. You mean you’re going to live here again, and maybe persuade your Gran to come back?’
‘I don’t know. It’s just that I feel the way you do about the cottage. It’s my home, and I don’t want it to change or disappear. But there’s something else.’
‘Oh? What’s that?’
I set my cup down. The little click it made in the saucer seemed to finalise a decision already half made while Mrs Pascoe had been talking. If, as I had surmised, Lilias and her husband were to come back to Todhall and go to see the Pascoes again, Mrs Pascoe ought to be prepared for it. Even if our guesses were to be proved wrong, it was a mistake for Davey and me to keep our discovery a secret.
‘There’s something I have to tell you.’ I spoke slowly, wondering quite how to put it. ‘It’s the reason why I’m staying on, at any rate for a time. Davey and I agreed not to tell anyone, but I think you and Uncle Jim should know. I’ll have to wait and see how to break it to Gran.’ I pushed my cup and saucer aside and turned to face her. ‘Something happened yesterday that’s changed everything.’
She had been waiting with what looked like eagerness. The sad look had gone, so that I wondered if, after all, Davey had let out some hint. Her face lit to a delighted smile, and her cup went down into its saucer with a rap that could almost have cracked it.
‘Kathy, dearie! I’ve been hoping! If you knew how I’d hoped! And when you came back, and things happened the way they did, I was sure. It’s lovely news, lovely! But when did you – I mean, he’s said no word to me?’
‘We – well, we agreed not to.’ I hesitated, confused. ‘You were hoping? Do you mean you suspected something? But – for heaven’s sake, how on earth did you guess?’
‘Oh, I’ve known for long enough. He didn’t need to say ought, but I’m his mother, and I’ve known all these years, and never a look at anyone else, let alone walking out with them, and I’ll not soon forget what he was like when we heard you were married. He was on leave then, and that was the only time – it was Polly Walker from Fishburn, but it didn’t last even till the end of his leave, though he might have done worse, she’s a nice girl. Maybe I oughtn’t to have told you, but I know you’ll understand, and it’s just between ourselves.’
‘Of course, but look, you’ve—’
‘And then when we heard you were coming back here he – all of us – were afraid you’d have changed, and wanting different things and different ways—’
‘Aunty Annie, please, it isn’t—’
‘And when I laid eyes on you I thought, no, he can forget it, but then you were just the same, for all you’ve been away so long, and I’ve been hoping, aye, and praying, too. I’ve missed your mother something sore, but now, maybe, with him and you settled here in Rose Cottage—’
‘You’ve got it wrong,’ I said desperately. ‘Listen, please! No, listen! It’s nothing to do with – with what you think. I’m sorry. It’s something quite different, not about me, or Davey, at all. It’s something we found when we were packing Gran’s things up yesterday. It’s about my mother.’
‘About Lilias?’ The colour had rushed up into her face as I spoke, but the last word brought her up sharply, her embarrassment forgotten.
‘Yes. Davey found some letters upstairs in Aunt Betsy’s room. They were hidden away. She may have meant to destroy them, but obviously she forgot, or didn’t have the chance. I understand she was taken bad very suddenly at the end.’
‘That’s so. But, letters? What letters?’
‘Letters my mother wrote, and Aunt Betsy intercepted. And’ – I swallowed – ‘this will be a shock, but not a bad one. I promise you, not a bad one. They were written, all of them, after the date when she was supposed to have died.’
A staring silence. A hand up to her mouth.
‘Supposed to?’
‘Yes.’ I reached a hand across the table to cover one of hers. ‘She’s still alive, Aunty Annie. We’re sure of it. And we think she and her husband have been here in Todhall recently, just this last week. I know’ – as she started to say something – ‘I’m sure they’d have come to you, but it was last weekend, when you were away somewhere at a wedding.’
‘Wedding?’ She was looking dazed. ‘Last weekend?’
‘Yes. It’s pretty certain that they came here, too; they would, of course, but they found the cottage empty, so they’ve gone, I’ve no idea where, but I think they’re bound to come back to find some trace of me, and you’d be the person they’d go to, I’m sure. So you see why I had to tell you, and why I have to stay here myself till she comes, or till we’re proved wrong?’
The flush had died from her face and she was very pale. She shook her head, not looking at me. ‘I can’t get it. I can’t see … Why? What happened? You say you’re sure, but now you say you might be wrong? Kathy, love, you wouldn’t say all this without you were certain, would you?’
‘No. It’s quite certain that she didn’t die in that accident, and that’s the main thing. The rest is a guess, but it honestly looks like a good guess. She’s been here, and if that’s so, she’ll be back.’ I got to my feet. ‘Look, just sit quiet for a minute while I make a fresh pot of tea, and then I’ll tell you the whole thing.’
The story was told, the questions, speculations, and exclamations over. We lapsed at length into an emotionally exhausted silence while the sun, wheeling lower, sent the shadows of the big trees stealing across the edge of the cottage garden, and my grandmother’s ‘evening thrush’ began his song from the top of the nearest elm.
Mrs Pascoe got to her feet. I must have looked as she did, tired but lightened, and moving as one does in a dream.
‘I’ve got to go. They’ll be finishing soon. I’ll see you tomorrow, then. Whatever happens.’
‘Yes. Will you take this letter for me, please, and put it in the post? Here, you’ve forgotten your carrier.’
‘I reckon I’m not thinking straight yet.’ She sounded spent, her voice as flat as if she was talking about the week’s groceries. ‘And I never did get to help you with the cleaning. There’s that wicked old woman’s room still to do. It can wait. I couldn’t bring myself to lay duster to it after this.’
‘Forget it. I told you I shut the door on it. If I do buy the cottage I’ll have to get the vicar to do a spot of exorcism. I wonder if he knows how?’
It was a feeble attempt to break the emotional tension, but it did the trick. We laughed, and then hugged one another – something we had seldom done – and she went to the door, pausing on the threshold to say, hesitantly, ‘I don’t somehow like to leave you alone.’
‘I’ll be all right.’
‘I ought to be at home anyway, in case’ – that flash of joy again, this time for Lilias – ‘well, in case. But are you sure? Maybe I could ask Davey to come down
– oh, no, maybe not.’ A pause, and then she went back to the question that still lay silently between us. ‘I got it wrong, didn’t I? You and Davey don’t have an understanding at all?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘Then I’m sorry. I was hoping, and I let it run away with me. I can see it wouldn’t be right for you.’
I said quickly, ‘It isn’t that. It just hasn’t come up. I – I never thought about it. I had no idea he felt that way.’
‘Then for mercy’s sake don’t let him know I told you.’
‘Of course I won’t!’
Another brief pause, then she suddenly reached up and kissed me. ‘Well, if it’s not to be, it’s not to be. But believe me, I’m as happy for you tonight, child, as I am for myself. Good night, and I hope she comes soon.’
24
I scrambled eggs for my supper, and ate Prissy’s two remaining peaches. It was a meal that took me back a few years, eaten as it was on the bare table top, and with the ‘cooking’ plates and cutlery which were all I had kept out for my own use. After I had washed up I did a leisurely tour of the cottage, ostensibly to check that everything had gone that should have gone, but in reality to do something – anything – to occupy me and keep my mind from turning over and over in the same treadmill of speculation.
If we were right. If she should come. If we were wrong, and no one came. If she did not come tonight, then when? How long to wait and wonder? If we were right …
And so on. By the time I knew that I had totally failed to fix my mind on anything else except the possibility of my mother’s return I was back in the kitchen, where only the table and chairs and the Unseen Guest, along with the fireside tools and the cracket, remained to offer any kind of welcome.
Welcome? It looked, in the failing light, inexpressibly dreary. But it suggested something to do.
Flowers. That was it. Flowers, the loveliest ornament of all, guaranteed to charm any place to life. There was no vase to be had, of course, but a couple of Mr Blaney’s milk bottles would do very well. Flowers and a bright, freshly lighted fire. No better welcome anywhere.
I found the bottles and rinsed them, leaving them ready in the back kitchen. Then I went out.
It was nearing nine o’clock, and dusk was drawing down. Behind the trees the first star pricked out, low and brilliant. The light breeze of day had dropped, and the evening was very still. The stream sounded loud. I walked down to the gate and stood leaning on the top bar, enjoying the scent of the roses, and straining to listen for any sound from the lane or the road beyond.
There is nothing that wakes memory so quickly and vividly as scent. If my solitary supper eaten off the bare table top had taken me back a decade or so, the fragrance of the roses took me back still further. Some of the bushes, I knew, had been in the old rosery at the Hall, which Sir Giles – the present baronet’s father – had had cleared and replaced with the modern varieties that to his gardener were very much second best. My grandfather had brought a good many of the old bushes here to his own garden. Fashions had changed, in plants as in other things, and some of the roses were rare now, but not his favourite, the tough, ubiquitous old cottage rose that (if Davey and I were right) Lilias and her husband had dug up and taken to the cemetery for him.
If we were right. Back it came, the wearisome round of preoccupation. Would she come? Could we be wrong? And if we were right, then how, dear God, how to meet the situation? How cope with it?
Action again indicated. I went to gather the flowers, the still flourishing survivors of a season of neglect. There were lupins and irises, and some columbines soon to go wild, and, loveliest of all, the double white lilac that hung in scented clouds over the toolshed roof.
I was just about to make my way back to the cottage when I heard the sound I had been waiting for. A car turning in from the road and coming slowly down the lane. The toolshed was behind the cottage, so from where I stood under the lilac tree I couldn’t see the lane or the gate. Nor could I see lights, though by now it was almost dark. I wondered briefly if it might be Davey, come down for some reason, but he would have used headlights, and this was a much quieter vehicle than the van. Clutching the flowers to me, I stood still, waiting.
The wheels stopped at the gate. The car door opened, and shut gently. Then came the click of the gate latch, and the squeak of hinges. Footsteps, almost inaudible on the weeds, but recognisably a man’s, trod up the path. Then a tap at the cottage door.
I was just about to move to answer it, when I heard the door open, and after a moment, the sound of someone moving about in the kitchen.
The back window of the cottage, which faced towards the toolshed, showed a crack of light; the kitchen door must be half open. My heart thumping, I moved forward and peered in through the window.
There was nothing to see but that crack of light, and the movement of shadow across it as the visitor crossed the room. A man’s voice called, ‘Is there anyone there? Kathy?’
I pushed open the back door and went quickly through into the kitchen.
The visitor was a tall man, a total stranger to me, and he was standing by the fireplace, apparently examining the framing and stitchery of the Unseen Guest. As I entered he turned quickly, self-possessed and smiling.
‘Well, hullo there! I guess you must be Kathy?’
I stared at him. Dark eyes, dark hair with a dusting of grey. Fifty years old, maybe; tall and thin, with skin tanned brown. American, by the voice and the clothes; light drill trousers, a casual, expensive-looking jacket, and a scarf knotted at the neck. He could have passed as a gipsy for Miss Linsey’s ‘vision’ at the graveyard, but more certainly he was my mother’s respectable gentleman from Iowa.
I cleared my throat, but found myself unable to speak. I stood there, clutching the flowers to me, staring at him.
He spread both hands in a placatory kind of gesture. He might have been saying, ‘Look, I’m not armed.’ He spoke again, with a calming sort of social ease, obviously attempting to bring a bizarre situation under control.
‘I hope you’ll forgive me for walking in like this, Miss Kathy, and I’m sorry if I gave you a start, but I’m real happy to meet you. I don’t have to ask if you’re Kathy, do I? Yes, I think I’d have known you. I’d have known you anywhere.’
I found my voice. It came out none too steadily, and with no attempt at all at bridging the situation.
‘Is she here with you?’
His brows went up, but he answered readily in that pleasant drawl. ‘She certainly is. She’s right there in the car. But—’ this as I started towards the door – ‘no, please! If you’ll wait just a moment? I guess she’s just as nervous as you are, so she asked me to come in first and see if you were home, and kind of break it to you. But it looks like I don’t have to? You were expecting this? You know already?’
‘Not know. Guess. You’re Larry, of course?’
‘I am. Larry van Holden. I sure am happy to meet you, Miss Kathy.’
He put out a hand and, rather bemusedly, I took it. I was wondering how much, in the end, she had told him about me. ‘Make it Kathy. You’re my stepfather, after all.’ I turned back from the door and put the flowers down on the table. ‘All right, then. It’s not just an easy meeting, is it? Perhaps you’re right, it might be better to clear one or two things up before my – before we meet. I found it out only yesterday, that my mother was still alive, I mean, and that she’d married you and was living in America. It was when Davey Pascoe – she’ll have mentioned the Pascoes? Yes? – well, when we were clearing Aunt Betsy’s room to pack things up for the removers, we found some letters, letters from my mother, hidden away. We worked things out from that, and from what we’d heard in the village, so we knew you’d been here. It was you who took the things from the safe in that wall, wasn’t it?’
‘It was.’ He hesitated. ‘I must tell you, we hadn’t planned to visit here at all. It was my idea to come over to England, to look up traces of my mother’s folks from north of
here, near Hexham. The trip was a kind of holiday, and Lilias was two ways about it, a bit homesick, you can imagine, and wanting news of you and her mother, but being scared to come anywhere near the place in case she wasn’t welcome. Then we saw something in a local paper, that the Hall here was to be made over, and this cottage fixed up as a rental, so Lilias began to wonder if her mother had moved away, or had maybe even died, and we hadn’t heard a thing. So we came over – it had to be after dark so that no one would see her – and you know what we found. The cottage was empty, no sign of anyone, and poor Lilias – well, I don’t have to tell you how she was feeling. So we went up to the village and she sent me to ask at the Pascoes’ house, but there was no one there, so I went to the vicarage, and from what the girl there told me I took it that your grandmother had died, and your Aunt Betsy had gone back to her folks in Scotland.’
‘I knew about that. She said the same to me. “The old lady died and the sister went back to Scotland.”’
‘That’s it. So we came back here. Lilias knew where the keys were, of course. No one had said anything about you being expected here. Lilias figured that your aunt hadn’t known about the safe-cupboard, so she wanted to get the things from it, but we had no way of getting at it right then.’
It was like coming alive again to feel that twinge of amusement. ‘Because the tools had all gone from the toolshed?’