Postcards from the Past

by Marcia Willett

  ‘Dom will sort Tris out,’ said Ed eagerly. ‘Tris the tick; Tris the toad. Dom will put him in his place.’

  And a few months later, as Dom hurried along the lane with the good news of his place at the Camborne School of Mines, the shadows moved under the ash tree and a boy stepped out.

  ‘So you’re the bastard,’ said Tris.

  * * *

  Now, Dom comes out of his small study into the hall and glances through the half-open door that leads to the parlour that Granny kept so neat and clean. Sitting in a deep, comfortable armchair, one foot tucked beneath her whilst the other rests on the back of Dom’s golden retriever, his goddaughter Tilly is watching television. Her long, thick, fair hair is plaited and she holds the end of it, drawing it through her fingers as she watches a wildlife programme. Her father was Dom’s junior assistant at Camborne twenty-five years ago, when Tilly was a baby, and it is he who phones when Tilly throws up her job at the hotel in Newquay. He and Tilly’s mother have just taken up a post in Canada and he asks his old friend and mentor if he will look out for his daughter.

  ‘You know Tilly,’ he says ruefully to Dom. ‘She was asked to organize the place and bring it into the twenty-first century and she took them at their word. She really believed they meant it and she was so excited about it. Of course, there have been all sorts of rows and now Tilly’s given in her notice. Which means she has nowhere sensible to stay and she refuses to leave Cornwall and her friends and come out to us. She’s sleeping on a friend’s sofa. Could you manage for a week or two? She’ll get herself sorted out very quickly. She won’t want to be a nuisance.’

  ‘Tilly wouldn’t know how to be a nuisance,’ Dom says. ‘And I’d love to have her here if she wants to come. Though she probably won’t.’

  But Tilly does want to; and she turns up in a rather battered little car with all her worldly possessions – including her surfboard on a roof-rack – and moves into the bedroom at the end of the cottage that once belonged to old Mr Potts. She sets up her laptop to work on her CV. She already has a part-time job with a friend who is running a private scheme – U-Connect – that helps non-computerate and elderly people in rural areas to come to terms with the internet. It’s still rather experimental but Tilly is enjoying it, though she doesn’t quite see it as her life’s work. For three nights a week she works at a local pub.

  ‘This is just so grim,’ she says now to Dom, hearing him in the doorway but not looking round. ‘These huge frigate birds have flown into the gulls’ nesting site and are simply walking about eating the babies while their parents are out foraging. Poor little things; they’re so helpless. I can’t bear it.’

  ‘Yes,’ says Dom. ‘Well, it’s tough being part of the food chain.’

  Tilly looks round at him, frowning. ‘That is just so callous.’

  He shrugs. ‘What d’you want me to do about it? It’s how nature works.’

  She stares at him. ‘Why are you grumpy?’

  ‘I’m not grumpy.’ He has no intention of telling her that he’s been on an excursion to the past. ‘Don’t watch it if it upsets you. Like a cup of tea?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ she says, turning back to the carnage. ‘Oh, look. It’s the bower birds. That’s much better. Don’t you just love them? Isn’t his bower beautiful? He looks like a really camp dress designer in his atelier.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  Dom goes out into the kitchen, followed by Bessie, and pushes the kettle on to the hob. He opens the back door and lets the dog out into the cold night. The white moon hangs like a lamp high above the mist that pours along the valley floor, rising above the stream, curling across the garden; downstream, an owl’s wavering cry echoes in the silence.

  Dom leans in the doorway, waiting. A hungry vixen, her lean belly low to the frosty earth, her tail dragging, slinks along the hedgeline. She pauses, turns to look at him, then vanishes up the bank. Dom waits; the kettle behind him begins to whistle.

  What does Tris want? he thinks.

  Bessie reappears, tail wagging, and they both go back into the warmth and the light of the kitchen.

  * * *

  ‘But what does Tris want?’ asks Billa, the next morning. ‘After all these years? What can he possibly want?’

  They sit together at the oak gate-leg table that belonged to Granny, in the small square room off the narrow kitchen where the French window leads into the garden. Today it is closed against the bitter chill of the February day but the sunshine picks out the colours of the cushions in a wicker chair and gleams on some pieces of china arranged behind the glass doors of an old oak wall cabinet. Bessie lies by the door, nose on paws, watching a robin pecking up the crumbs that Dom scattered earlier.

  ‘I can think of no good reason,’ answers Dom, who has been awake most of the night worrying about it. He reads the postcard again. ‘I see that he doesn’t use your married name. There has been no contact at all, has there, since Andrew walked out taking Tris with him?’

  Billa shakes her head. ‘Once the honeymoon period was over the rows began. Married bliss lasted a year, maybe two. Perhaps Andrew believed that there was much more money than there actually was, though he always seemed very well-heeled. Our father left all the shares in the company to Ed and me although, by the time he inherited, Grandfather had been quite profligate. And then there was the war. Perhaps when Andrew saw that there wasn’t that much cash around he decided to get out.’

  ‘And your mother kept everything in her own control? It was odd, wasn’t it, that there was no will when she died? I remember you writing and telling me something about the will.’

  They stare at each other and fear flickers between them.

  ‘There was a will but it was the one she made before Daddy died. She left everything to him and, if he died first, everything was left equally to me and Ed. Our solicitor thought it was odd that she never made another will after she remarried but in the end we decided that she simply hadn’t got around to it…’

  ‘Or that Andrew had used his own man for their affairs after they were married?’

  ‘There was no evidence of that,’ says Billa quickly. ‘Our solicitor advertised, you know. He had to do that because there was no divorce.’

  ‘Which was odd, too.’

  ‘Yes, well, Mother couldn’t face it and there were no real grounds…’

  ‘Apart from desertion.’

  ‘Yes, but I think she always believed he’d come back. She wouldn’t face the truth and by then she was already in the first stages of that terrible depression.’

  ‘So there might be a will leaving something to Andrew.’

  She stares at him fearfully. ‘But he must be long dead. He’d be, what … ninety at least?’

  ‘Lots of people live beyond ninety, Billa.’

  ‘I know that,’ she cries. ‘For God’s sake, Dom. Are you trying to comfort me or what?’

  ‘I’m trying to think why Tris should send you a postcard after fifty-odd years and the only thing I can think of is that his father has died and something has been found amongst his papers. Remember, I was working out in South Africa when Andrew left your mother, and by the time I came home your mother was dead and everything settled.’

  ‘Or so we thought,’ says Billa grimly. ‘Oh my God. What if there was a will leaving everything to Andrew?’

  ‘Then I suppose he would leave everything in turn to Tris. But why has there been such a long silence? If Andrew knew he was a beneficiary, wouldn’t he have been keeping an ear open for what was happening down here? Perhaps they went abroad.’

  She shakes her head. ‘I’ve no idea where they went. Perhaps there wasn’t a will, or perhaps she didn’t leave him enough to signify. She would never have cut me or Ed right out.’

  ‘No,’ he agrees. ‘No, she wouldn’t have done that…’

  But he hesitates.

  ‘What?’ she says at once. ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘I’m just painting a worst-case scenario,’ he say
s carefully. ‘Remember your mother was crazy about Andrew to begin with. Even I can remember that much. And people in love do some very silly things. I suppose we have to be prepared to think that it’s a remote possibility that she made another will under a bit of pressure from Andrew and drawn up by his solicitor. Maybe she left everything to him, trusting he’d do the right thing by you and Ed. Maybe she didn’t leave him much. Maybe she assumed that once the relationship was over it didn’t matter so she never revoked it. But it might be enough to bring Tristan back.’

  Billa drops her head into her hands. ‘So what can we do?’

  Dom gives a short laugh. ‘Nothing. It’s pure Tris, isn’t it? He’s creating the smoke screens, holding all the cards. We can only sit and wait for him to show his hand. You’ll have to tell Ed.’

  ‘Yes, I know. I just wanted to talk to you first. Get it straight in my head. It was a shock.’

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Yes, I can see that.’

  ‘It’s odd, isn’t it?’ she says. ‘Just the three of us again. Just like it was all those years ago when Tris arrived. I must admit that it’s stirred up so many memories.’

  ‘Me too. I was remembering those first words he said to me out in the lane. “So you’re the bastard.” How did he know about that? OK, Ed and I were very much alike – we still are – but he couldn’t have jumped to that conclusion. He knew.’

  Billa shrugs. ‘But that was Tris, wasn’t it? He listened at doors, he pried and poked about and read letters and cards. I expect Mother told Andrew about you once they’d agreed to get married and Tris just happened to be within earshot. We had to be so careful what we said or what we left lying around. D’you remember? And then he’d tell Andrew that we left him out of things or were being unkind to him. Oh, the joy when Andrew left and took Tris with him. It was like being let out of prison.’

  ‘We’ll have to rely on Tilly,’ says Dom, trying for a lighter note. ‘She’ll see him off.’

  ‘Tilly’s a clever girl,’ Billa says. ‘I wish I’d had a Tilly working for me in London. They don’t know what an opportunity they’ve missed, those hotel people. I hope she finds something else soon. Or that this scheme with Sarah works, although I can’t quite see Tilly being satisfied with that. She’ll be wonderful with the clients but she needs to be a part of a bigger canvas.’

  ‘She’s certainly not letting the grass grow. She’s firing off applications and someone will give in soon out of sheer exhaustion. Meanwhile she’s quite happy working with Sarah. Sarah is a very switched-on girl, too, by the sounds of it. It can’t be easy, trying to get a business up and running out of a tiny cottage, whilst managing two small children, and a husband in the navy who is away at sea for most of the time. D’you want some more coffee?’

  ‘Yes, please. No.’ Billa shakes her head. ‘No. I shall go back and show Ed the postcard before I lose my nerve.’ She stands up, hesitates. ‘But what if Tris should turn up without any more warning, Dom? It would just be his style, wouldn’t it? Catching us on the back foot.’

  Dom thinks about it. ‘I think it’s more like Tris to keep us waiting now. He’d like to imagine us wondering and worrying. And that’s just what we’re doing, of course.’

  ‘That’s why I wasn’t going to tell Ed.’

  ‘You must tell him. I might be wrong and Tris could walk in any minute now. Ed needs to be forewarned.’

  She nods, her face downcast, and Dom gets up and gives her a hug.

  ‘We’re happy, aren’t we?’ she asks, holding on to him. ‘Me and Ed just muddling along together and you here, with the family coming to visit in the summer holidays, and your occasional waifs and strays staying in Mr Potts’ bedroom. I’m terrified that Tris could do something to spoil it. He always spoiled things. Birthdays, days out, Christmas. Somehow he always contrived to poison or destroy. Just small things, a whisper in the ear, a spiteful little joke, but enough to take away the joy. I’m afraid, Dom.’

  He holds her tightly for a moment, the old rage seething in his veins as it had on that summer morning long ago.

  ‘Let’s not cross too many bridges,’ he advises. ‘Tell Ed, but keep it light, and we’ll hope that it’s just another Tris tease.’

  ‘Yes,’ she says, releasing him, resisting the urge to talk in circles. ‘I won’t tell him I’ve told you first. It’ll make it seem as if I’m worried. I shall pretend it came in today’s post and take it from there.’

  ‘Too late.’ Dom, leading the way into the hall, picks up some envelopes. ‘Postie’s been.’

  ‘Damn,’ she says. ‘OK then. Well, I’ll wait until tomorrow morning. It’s a foreign postmark and the date’s smudgy. Anyway, he’s going off to do some research on his book so it’s not the best time to tell him.’

  He helps her into her old sheepskin duffel coat with the hood, she steps into her gumboots in the hall, and he and Bessie go out with her into the lane. It’s icy underfoot and she goes carefully. At the bend in the lane she turns to wave to him and, in her boots and her jeans, and the big coat with the hood covering her short fair hair, she might be the teenage Billa of fifty years ago.

  Dom watches her out of sight. Suddenly, instinctively, he glances the other way, where the lane curls uphill to the village. He scans the hills across the valley. Some sixth sense tells him that Tris is already here; watching.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Tilly drives through the deep, precipitous lanes that twist and turn, and dive and climb around the edge of the moor. There are milk-white snowdrops under the thorn hedges and glimpses of gold: the first daffodils. She pulls into a gateway, to make room for a tractor coming towards her, and sees a huddle of lambs beneath the spreading branches of a huge fir. The sunlight slices down, sharp and bright, but frost rimes the brittle grass in the black shadows of the ditch and the rutted verges are frozen and icy. As the lane tips down into the village she can see the rooks swirling like cinders in the cold blue air, their nests tossed high in the beech trees: spiky black balls caught by bare bony fingers.

  Tilly parks in the small cul-de-sac near the church and takes out her iPhone to check her notes.

  Mrs Anderson: widowed last year. Only daughter now lives in New Zealand with her husband – a New Zealander – and their two children. Wants to be shown how to Skype. Rather nervy and diffident.

  Tilly glances at the neat little bungalow with its neat little garden. A figure stands at the window watching Tilly, who waves cheerfully as she climbs out of the car. The figure disappears, the door opens and Mrs Anderson is revealed. She is as neat as the bungalow and the garden, and the room into which she shows Tilly is achingly tidy. Mrs Anderson is talking rapidly, explaining how she’s never understood computers, how her husband dealt with all that sort of thing, but now, with her daughter and the grandchildren so far away …

  Tilly listens and nods sympathetically, and her heart is riven with the unspoken loneliness that reveals itself in Mrs Anderson’s bleak eyes and in her hands that twist and twist. There are photographs everywhere: a wedding group, a beaming young couple with two small children, a much older man with the same two children, a bride displaying a set of rather prominent teeth in a happy grin, the two children again, in school uniform.

  ‘I never thought they’d go,’ she’s saying, ‘not with the children settled so well here at school, but there’s such opportunity out there, isn’t there? And then my Donald died last year just before Christmas. Three months to live when the cancer was diagnosed.’

  Her eyes are bright with pain, she is brittle with suppressed grief, and Tilly longs to put her arms around her.

  ‘They’ve been going on about this Skype,’ she’s saying, ‘and Donald always meant to do it, so when I saw your advert in the local paper I made up my mind to have a go.’

  Her brave smile is heart-breaking and Tilly smiles back at her.

  ‘It’s really easy,’ she says reassuringly. ‘Honestly. And it’ll be lovely to be able to see them when you talk. Much better than the telephone,
and calls are free. It helps to keep more closely in touch as the children grow. And they’ll love to see Granny. Do they call you Granny or Grandma?’

  Quite without warning, Mrs Anderson’s eyes brim with tears which overflow and stream down her thin cheeks. Tilly stands still for a moment, biting her lips.

  ‘Don’t hug the clients,’ Sarah has warned. ‘I know you, Tilly; you’ll get yourself into trouble and waste hours. No, I’m not unfeeling, I’m just being rational. It’ll take you all day if you start doing the tea and sympathy stuff. There are some very lonely people out there.’

  Sarah’s voice is very clear and loud in Tilly’s head as she puts an arm around Mrs Anderson’s bony shoulder and holds her tightly. Mrs Anderson rests her head against Tilly and cries in earnest.

  ‘Life,’ says Tilly, staring at the photographs, ‘is absolute hell, isn’t it?’

  * * *

  ‘Don’t forget,’ says Sarah, ‘that the clients pay us on an hourly rate.’

  She is a small, dark girl: had been head of house, head of school, a demon on the lacrosse field. The baby, George, is slung across her shoulder as she prepares some lunch for herself and Tilly.

  ‘I know,’ says Tilly, unmoved by Sarah’s fierceness. ‘But Mrs Anderson is a slow learner. Poor old duck.’

  ‘And I know what that means,’ says Sarah, resigned, slotting George into his bouncy chair. ‘You are hopeless, Tilly.’

  ‘How’s Dave?’ asks Tilly, stroking George’s cheek. ‘When’s he getting some more leave?’

  ‘The ship’s due back in three weeks,’ says Sarah, ladling soup into bowls, allowing herself to be distracted from Tilly’s weakness of character. ‘He’ll be home for a bit then. Not actually on leave but around. D’you want a sandwich?’

  Tilly shakes her head. ‘Soup’s fine.’ She feels more comfortable in the cheerful disorder of Sarah’s kitchen than in Mrs Anderson’s tidy bungalow. ‘So how are we doing? Any new punters?’

  ‘A very posh new punter,’ says Sarah, sitting down at the table, pushing a wholemeal loaf on its wooden board towards Tilly. ‘Sir Alec Bancroft, no less. Retired diplomat. He lives down in the village and he’s a friend of my mum. He wants to organize a database for all his contacts. Hundreds of them, by the sound of it. Quite a few people wanting to learn how to send emails. Someone else is keen to do her shopping by internet.’