Time Goes By

by Margaret Thornton

  The little town of Stowe, and the surrounding countryside, was as beautiful as Nat had described it to be, ringed by mountains and surrounded by woods and pastureland. The highest peak in the area, Mount Mansfield, could be seen from Barbara and Nat’s bedroom window. She never tired of the view: the verdant green of the spring and summertime, the glorious tints of autumn, and the pristine white of the winter snow.

  Winter began early in Vermont, as it did in all the New England states. There was a decided nip in the air when Barbara arrived in mid October. By November it was considerably colder, and in the middle of that month the first snow began to fall. When they awoke in the morning it was to a very different scene. The rooftops and church spires, pavements, trees and bushes were now clothed in a mantle of silvery white, glistening in the early-morning sun, virgin white in the places where no feet had trodden.

  Barbara soon learnt that the New Englanders adjusted quickly to the change in the weather. Houses were centrally heated, so there was no huddling round a coal fire, then feeling frozen as soon as you moved away, as was the case in England. The snowploughs were soon at work to clear the roads, and people took the weather in their stride, equipped with boots, fleece-lined coats and fur hats.

  The snow remained all winter, fresh falls arriving throughout the succeeding months. There was none of the slushy brown mess left behind when a thaw came, as there was back home.

  Nat was busy, not only with his duties at the hotel, but also as a ski instructor. He persuaded Barbara that she must learn to ski as most people did in Vermont. She promised she would do so, but not that year. Or the next as it happened …

  Winter continued until the end of March, and by that time Barbara knew she was pregnant again. Their son, Carl, was born in the November of 1946, on Thanksgiving Day, to the delight of all the family members.

  Another daughter, Anne-Marie, was born in the summer of 1949. Barbara and Nat decided then that their family was complete.

  She did learn to ski, but not until several years later when the children were old enough to accompany their parents on a skiing holiday to the Green Mountain range.

  They enjoyed many holidays, as a family, to some of the other New England states. To the city of Boston, where they walked the Freedom Trail, visited the State House of Massachusetts and climbed to the top of Beacon Hill; to the lake district and the mountains of New Hampshire; to Portland and the rocky coast of Maine; and to the beaches and quaint colonial villages of Cape Cod.

  Their holiday times were precious to them, a time for relaxing together as a family and following new pursuits. They were a happy family, and although there were, inevitably, minor disagreements as the children entered their teens, there was never any serious discord.

  Holidays were taken when it was convenient to Martha and Jake. Nat’s father, although he had been saying for ages that he would retire, did not do so for many years, not until 1960, when he was seventy-five years of age. He and Martha then went to live in a smaller house on the outskirts of Stowe, leaving the hotel in Nat’s capable hands.

  Barbara had helped there too, over the years, with various kinds of work. She became responsible for the office work and bookkeeping when Nat took control of the business. Their three children were still at school. Their parents had no wish to persuade them to take part in the family business unless they wanted to do so. Barbara and Nat had high hopes for them all, that they would go on to college and do well in their chosen professions.

  What was Katherine doing now? Barbara sometimes wondered about her, although the heartache had eased considerably over the years. Her firstborn child was there in her mind, though, as a poignant memory. She thought of her especially on her birthday each year, the last day of June. Now she would be eleven, eighteen, twenty-three … She might even be married.

  Nat had agreed with her that it would be better if their three children, Beverley, Carl and Anne-Marie, were never told of their half-sister back in England. Barbara had begun a whole new chapter in her life when she had come to live in Vermont. To tell the children about Kathy would only cause complications and give rise to endless questions.

  There were times – although only occasionally, and she never mentioned them to Nat – when Barbara felt a deep longing to know how Kathy was faring. Had she been happy with Albert and his parents, and with his sister, Winifred? Perhaps Albert had married again, in which case Kathy would have a stepmother. She felt, though, intuitively, that Winifred would have had a lot to do with the little girl’s upbringing. Barbara had always been fond of Winifred, and she felt sure she would have done her very best for the little girl entrusted to her charge.

  These times of anguish, fortunately, were of short duration. Barbara continued with her new life, keeping herself busy and forever seeking new interests. On the whole she was happy and contented, and she knew that Nat loved her as much as he had always done, just as she loved him.

  It was in the early spring of 1971 when Barbara discovered a lump in her right breast. She made an appointment to see a doctor – something she rarely needed to do as she was normally in very good health – and within a week she was admitted to hospital for an exploratory operation.

  Nat, as always, was a great support and comfort to her and did all he could to encourage her to be optimisitic about the outcome. ‘Now, don’t start getting all worked up about it, darling,’ he said. ‘It’s more than likely that it’ll turn out to be benign, and you’ll be fine once it’s been removed. You’re strong and healthy, and young as well.’

  She smiled. ‘Not all that young, Nat.’

  ‘You’ll always be young to me,’ he told her, with the same loving smile that had not diminished with the passing years. ‘Still the same lovely girl I met at the Tower Ballroom.’

  Barbara knew, though, that to be young – or comparatively so – was not always a good thing if what she was secretly dreading was diagnosed. The older you were, the slower the disease spread, or so she had heard.

  ‘We won’t tell the children just yet,’ she said. ‘Let’s wait until I’ve had the first op, then we’ll know the worst … or the best,’ she added, trying to be optimistic.

  The children by now were grown-up and no longer living at home. Beverley, who had trained to be a teacher, had married young and now had a two-year-old son. Carl, who was an accountant, had also married at an early age and he and his wife were expecting their first child. Anne-Marie, aged twenty-two, was still single and enjoying herself too much to marry and settle down just yet. She had taken after her father with her interest in all kinds of sports. She was a qualified swimming instructor, and in the winter, as her father had used to do, she taught skiing to the locals and the many visitors who came to the town. She was sharing an apartment with a girl she had met at college. And so Barbara and Nat had found themselves alone, apart from the few live-in staff that they had appointed when Nat’s parents had retired.

  Barbara seemed to recover well from the operation and they waited in some trepidation for the results in a few days’ time. Then came the news that Barbara, secretly, had been dreading all along. The cancer – for that was what it was – had spread further than had been anticipated. A mastectomy of the right breast was deemed necessary and it was imperative that it should be done quickly.

  By the autumn of 1971 it seemed that she was well on the road to recovery. She had adjusted well to her incapacity and she was hopeful that the treatment she was receiving would make sure that the dreaded disease did not recur. She had started dealing with the hotel office work again, and she and Nat were planning a trip to New York in the late spring of 1972. She had wanted to see the city for a long time, but with their commitments at the hotel and with their family, it was a visit they had never got round to taking.

  She found New York to be fascinating, wonderful, awesome … and all so unbelievably big and bold, just as she and Nat had joked about when they first met. She loved it all: Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s, the huge department stores; the shows o
n Broadway; Central Park and Fifth Avenue; Manhattan Island; the Statue of Liberty (which she had seen, briefly, on her arrival twenty-seven years ago); the blaring horns of the taxicabs; the gigantic steaks and beefburgers; and the pancakes with maple syrup and ice cream. She was no stranger to that delicacy, but here it seemed even more tempting and delicious. It was all like a dream coming true, the other face of America that she had long imagined, so different from the quiet beauty of Vermont.

  She did not tell Nat that she was feeling tired, more so than she knew she should, although it was truly an exhausting holiday. She had started to feel pains in her back and abdomen, and she thought – or had she only imagined? – that there was a small lump in her left breast. She knew that it was not likely to disappear and that she must not delay to do something about it as soon as they returned home. The pains in the other parts of her body, that she hoped might be due to tiredness, did not improve either.

  Nat was devastated when she told him, the day after they had flown home. She could tell how concerned he was by the look of horror on his face, which he quickly tried to hide with a show of optimism.

  The operation was done quickly, a partial mastectomy, but Barbara knew, this time, that there was no point in trying to convince herself that it was not serious. All the members of her family knew too, although they tried to hide their deepest fears with brave attempts at cheerfulness.

  By the autumn of 1972 she was spending more and more time resting – she was often too weary to do much else – although she was not confined to bed. She remembered how her Aunt Myrtle had used to say, when she was feeling not too well, ‘I’m not going to bed! You die in bed!’ Barbara’s illness, of course, was much more serious, but she was determined to keep going and remain cheerful – at least from outward appearances – as long as she was able.

  Thoughts of the little daughter she had left behind in England started to loom large in her mind. How old would Kathy be now? Twenty-nine years old, probably married by now with children of her own. And what of Albert? Barbara calculated that he would be sixty-seven, not a great age at all. Surely by now he would not be as bitter as he had been about what she had done? Surely he would understand if she tried, at long last, to contact her daughter?

  She sat in an armchair near the window of their bedroom, one afternoon in late autumn, looking out at the view of which she never tired. The distant mountains were already capped with white after the first snowfall, and, nearer to the house, the trees that lined the road glowed with the glorious tints of the fall: russet, scarlet, orange, gold and amber. A thick carpet of leaves covered the ground, and two boys were scuffling through them, crunching the leaves underfoot and sending them scurrying away in little flurries.

  She experienced a sudden feeling of joy and contentment amidst the sadness and the fear that she sometimes felt at what she knew was inevitable. Nat was wonderful, though, at helping her to keep her spirits up. She was alone, though, at the moment, and knew that there was something she must do.

  She opened the drawer of her bedside cabinet and took out a notepad and pen. The urge to write to her firstborn child was so great that it could not be ignored.

  ‘My dear Katherine,’ she began. ‘I have no idea how much or how little you have been told about me …’ She went on to explain what had happened and how she had been compelled to leave her behind. As she wrote of how she had loved Kathy and had never forgotten her, Barbara’s eyes began to mist with tears. She felt overwhelmingly sad and so very tired.

  She closed the pad and put it back in the drawer underneath her private documents and photograph albums. She would finish the letter another time …

  Chapter Thirty

  1973

  Beverley hurried away to find her father. He was not very ill, just suffering from a bad cold which threatened to turn to bronchitis if he didn’t take care. He was not in bed, just resting in his favourite armchair in the bedroom, looking out at his favourite view, now at its best, resplendent with all the glowing colours of the fall. Beverley remembered how her mother had used to sit there drinking in the beauty of the scenery, almost to the very end.

  He looked round as she entered the room. He was reading, one of his favourite Jane Austen novels. Her mother, Barbara, had stimulated his interest in this very English authoress, who had long been a favourite of her own. No doubt it brought back memories now of the wife he had loved so very much.

  ‘Dad, I’ve just had an intriguing phone call,’ she began, ‘from England. From a young woman who lives in Blackpool. That’s where you met Mom, isn’t it?’

  ‘It sure is,’ replied her father. ‘Who was it? What did she say?’ His voice was a little hesitant; he sounded almost nervous.

  ‘She’s called Katherine Leigh; at least, that was what she was called before she was married. She’s called Katherine Fielding now. She said that she knew you’d been in Blackpool during the war and that you knew some members of her family. She said she would like to speak to you, Dad – to Mr Castillo, she said – but I explained that you’re not too well at the moment.’

  Her father’s face, already pale, had blanched. ‘So … what did you tell her?’ His voice sounded husky with emotion. ‘Did you say I’d get in touch with her? You’ve got her address, I suppose?’

  ‘Yes, and her telephone number … Who is she, Dad? Did you know her? She sounded very sure of her facts.’

  Nat sighed, such a deep sigh that seemed to come from the very depths of his being. ‘Yes … I knew her. At least, I met her when she was just a tiny girl. They called her Kathy. It’s a long story, Beverley. A very sad story that perhaps your mother and I should have told you. But we decided it was best not to.’

  ‘Who is she, then, this Kathy?’ Beverley asked again. She was perplexed, and concerned too, at the shock that this had clearly been to her father.

  ‘Your mother’s name was Leigh before she married me,’ he replied. ‘I don’t think you ever knew that.’ He shook his head. ‘We didn’t tell you, any of you, that Barbara had been married before.’ He paused and took a deep breath; then, ‘Kathy Leigh is your half-sister …’ he said.

  ‘What!’ To say that Beverley was surprised would be a vast understatement. ‘You mean … Mom had another child, back in England? But why … how …? I don’t understand. Why didn’t we know about it?’

  ‘Because it was too painful for your mother ever to talk about it.’ Beverley could see that her father was very distressed and close to tears. ‘Look, Beverley … this has come as a great shock. But it’s only right, now that it’s happened, that you should all know about it. Let the others know, will you, honey? Tell them I’d like to see them; I mean Carl and Anne-Marie. Come here tomorrow night, all of you. I’ll probably have recovered a bit by then. As I say, it’s been a shock. Then I’ll tell you all about what happened; I know it’s what Barbara would want.’ He nodded slowly, seeming to have aged a few years in those last moments.

  ‘OK, Dad,’ she said. She kissed his cheek. ‘I’ll phone them right away. I won’t say what it’s about, just that you want to talk to us all. Now, you’ll be all right, will you? I must get along because Freddie will be due home from nursery school.’

  ‘Sure, don’t worry about me.’ Nat smiled. ‘I’ve been spoilt rotten these last few days, Sam and Ellie waiting on me hand and foot. They’re worth their weight in gold in the kitchen, those two. We haven’t many folks in at the moment, fortunately, but I hope to be up and doing in a day or two.’ He nodded, seeming now a little more composed. ‘I’m OK, honey, honestly I am. See you all tomorrow.’

  It had certainly been a bombshell, though, Katherine phoning like that, out of the blue. Dear little Kathy … What an enchanting child she had been. The image of her mother, with the same dark curls and lovely warm brown eyes. He and Barbara had not spoken of her very much as it would have been upsetting for his beloved wife; but he knew that the little girl had always been in her thoughts. He knew the times when she had been thinking particularly abo
ut her, so well attuned had he been to her various highs and lows.

  He had wondered what to do ever since he had found Barbara’s half-written letter to Katherine in her bedside drawer, soon after his wife’s death. He had realised then how she must have longed to contact her firstborn child when she knew that her life was drawing to a close, although she had not told him, Nat, what she wanted to do. Had she changed her mind, he wondered, or had she become too poorly to complete the letter? He would never know. He had done nothing about it partly because there was no address and, also, it was unlikely that the Leigh family would still be at the same place after all these years. Maybe it was best, he had told himself, to leave well alone. He had no idea what Katherine, as a child, would have been told about her mother; there would be no point in contacting her now that her mother had died.

  He was aware now, though, that he could not leave the matter unresolved for any longer. Katherine, too, must have had a desire to find her mother, although it was he, Nat Castillo, that she had asked to speak to. But why now, after all these years? Maybe she had only just found out … It was no use speculating. He knew he must get in touch with Katherine, either by letter or by phone. First of all, though, he had to speak to his family.

  Beverley, Carl and Anne-Marie all came round the following evening, the elder two having left their spouses and children at home. Anne-Marie was still single, but was now engaged to a fellow swimming instructor. They planned to marry the following summer.

  The other two were stunned, as Beverley had been, to hear the news, but their reactions were somewhat varied.