Postcards from the Past

by Marcia Willett

  They get up and start to clear the table, each getting in the other’s way, terrors rattling like marbles in their heads. Ed fills the dishwasher, clattering and clashing the plates in his nervousness, and Billa drops a handful of knives on the floor. She swears beneath her breath and Bear climbs off the sofa and comes to see what she’s dropped. She is comforted by his huge presence and drops down on one knee so as to put an arm around his neck and hug him as she gathers up the knives.

  ‘We’ve got to try to be prepared,’ Ed is saying. ‘We mustn’t let ourselves be stampeded by whatever he says or does. We know he’ll try to wrong-foot us, probably threaten us, and we simply mustn’t let him.’

  Billa looks up at him. She feels the familiar sensations of affection for him and the need to protect him. Yet he looks quite strong; quite tough now that the moment is at hand. Billa remembers how Ed at twelve defended their father’s study, stood up for his memory, and she nods and tries to smile at him.

  ‘You’re absolutely right,’ she says. ‘Whatever he says, we won’t be fazed. Or at least we won’t let him see if we are. We’ll just pretend we think he’s looking us up for old times’ sake. Play him at his own game. After all, you won when it came to the study. Never forget that.’

  Ed nods back. Now that it’s happening, he feels that same anger rising. Yet when Tris taps smartly on the kitchen door and opens it, just as if he is a member of the family, his gut churns again. And the real shock to both of them is that he looks so much like Andrew. They stare at him as if he is a ghost come from the past to mock them.

  Tris grins at them; that old wicked grin that dares and provokes. He hangs his leather satchel on a chair.

  ‘Well, well,’ he says. ‘Just like old times. So what’s new?’

  Bear, who has been drinking at his bowl, comes forward to inspect the visitor and Tris steps back a little, making a comical face and raising both hands in mock defence.

  ‘Whoa,’ he says. ‘Now this chap’s new. What the hell is he? A bear?’

  ‘That’s exactly what he is,’ says Ed. ‘Bear, this is Tris. You have my permission to kill him if he tries any nonsense.’

  ‘Hey,’ says Tris, laughing protestingly. ‘Well, now, there’s a welcome. And it’s nice to see you, too, Ed. And you, Billa.’

  Billa is completely nonplussed. The fact that Tris is so like Andrew has completely knocked her off balance; she simply doesn’t know how to react. She remembers the postcard of Bitser and wants to scream at him and turn him out of the house. At the same time some deeply ingrained tradition of hospitality makes her try to smile back at him.

  ‘We’ve just finished lunch and we’re going to have some coffee,’ she says. ‘Would you like some?’

  ‘Thanks. Yes, I would. It’s really weird being back here, you know. Nothing’s changed. It’s like walking into a time-warp. Of course, I never got to say goodbye to you guys, did I?’

  Billa pushes the kettle on to the hotplate and Ed sits down again. He is determined to remain calm, unmoved by this sudden time shift, but there is a sense of unreality here. He looks into those light frosty eyes and his spine stiffens in readiness for the attack.

  ‘You certainly disappeared very suddenly,’ he agrees. ‘We never quite knew what happened.’

  Tris grins at him. ‘But I guess you didn’t care much, eh? Too glad to see the back of me. Good riddance to bad rubbish. Wasn’t that the phrase back then?’

  There is a little silence and he laughs out loud, as if he has scored a point. Billa puts the jug of coffee on the table with some mugs.

  ‘Milk?’ she asks him. ‘Sugar?’

  He shakes his head. ‘Black’s just fine, thanks.’

  Billa pours three mugs of coffee and sits down. ‘Yes, we were glad to see the back of you,’ she says coolly. ‘But it’s always puzzled us. What happened?’

  Tris sits back in his chair; he visibly relaxes and the smile fades from his eyes.

  ‘It’s quite a story,’ he says rather grimly. ‘How long have you got?’

  Billa and Ed stare at him warily; once again they are confused by conflicting emotions. They don’t want to trust him but there’s some expression of veracity in his face now that unsettles them.

  ‘Long enough for a story,’ says Ed, picking up his mug.

  Tris shrugs. ‘OK. I’ll keep it short. I was born in France. My mother was French. My father killed her when I was four years old. I don’t know if it was an accident. He hit her, she might have fallen and cracked her head open, or he might have battered her to death. I’ll never know the truth about that. I heard cries one night and I got out of bed and went downstairs. My father was going out of the front door so I went into the drawing-room and found Maman lying on the floor. There was blood in her hair and she didn’t move, she wouldn’t answer me, and then my father came back with some old sacks and I hid behind the curtain while he bundled the body up and took it out into the grounds.’

  He pauses to sip his coffee. Ed and Billa sit in horrified silence. Instinctively they know that Tris is telling the truth.

  ‘I raced back to bed,’ Tris goes on, ‘and then he came up to say that there had been an accident and Maman was dead and that we must go away at once. He said that if we stayed I would be taken away from him and he might go to prison. He said that I must never, ever, tell anyone about Maman. He didn’t know that I had seen her, of course. After that we moved from place to place but each time I thought we might settle down, have a home again, we’d have to lift and shift. That’s what happened here. My father was tipped off that Interpol had tracked him down and that he would be extradited back to France to stand trial. I think that there were other things apart from murder that they were after him for, but he couldn’t wait around to find out.’

  He looks at them, raises his eyebrows. ‘Does that answer the question?’

  Neither of them can think of anything to say that doesn’t sound lame and ineffectual. Both of them feel certain that he’s being totally honest. He watches them almost sympathetically, as if he knows how they must feel.

  ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘Only you did ask and there’s no point to any more lying. I got so tired of the lying.’

  ‘But you were only four,’ says Billa. ‘How did you manage at four to stay silent about what you’d seen?’

  Tris looks amused. ‘Fear,’ he says briefly. ‘It’s a powerful incentive. My father was all I had. I couldn’t face losing him, too. He told people that Maman had died in a car accident and hoped that I was too little to make much sense about it if I talked. People might simply think I was muddled, confused, of course. But I didn’t talk. I just remembered her lying there with the blood in her hair.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ says Billa quietly. ‘It’s tragic. Awful. What happened after you left here? Where did you go?’

  ‘We went to Toulon, to someone my father knew very well indeed, where he could lie very low. I was happy there with Tante Berthe, happier than I had been since Maman died.’

  ‘And they didn’t catch your father?’

  ‘Not for a while. He went on the run again when I was fourteen but this time he went alone. I stayed with Tante Berthe and my baby half-brother.’

  ‘Baby half-brother?’

  Tris shrugs, makes a humorous face. ‘So I guess she wasn’t my aunt after all. But I loved her and I loved my baby brother and nothing was going to separate me from him. Father went alone. Then when I was twenty we heard rumours that he was caught up in something else and we never heard from him again.’

  After a moment Ed shakes his head. ‘There’s nothing to say, is there? What can we possibly say that isn’t trite? And this isn’t meant to be rude, but why have you come back? You can’t have been happy here.’

  ‘No, not particularly. By the time we got here I knew it would be just another place where I’d settle a bit, get fond of people and then have it ripped away. I was too damaged, I guess, to want to play the game any more. I wanted to hit back. I started as I meant to go on. But
your mother was very kind to me. I’ve never forgotten that.’

  ‘So why send the postcards?’ asks Billa, puzzled. ‘Why remind us of what you did?’

  Tris takes a deep breath. ‘I thought it was only fair,’ he said at last. ‘It was faintly possible you might have forgotten, and I wanted it to be all open and fair. You could simply chuck me off your land or we could have some closure. I wanted you to have time to think about it.’

  ‘Yes, but why now?’ asks Billa, muddled by conflicting sensations of residual irritation, sympathy and even compassion.

  Tris fetches another sigh, drinks some more coffee. ‘Well, this is the embarrassing bit. The trouble is that the big fella upstairs has called time. I haven’t much longer to live. I’ve got advanced TB, allied with years of substance abuse, and I’ve been trying just to sort a few things out and get some stuff off my conscience. But I didn’t want to blackmail anyone just to get the sympathy vote. So I sent the postcards so you’d remember what I was really like and then hope we could just sit round the table like we are now and try to sort it out.’

  ‘I thought TB was curable these days,’ says Billa.

  ‘Yeah, well, if you take the triple therapy drugs in the right combination it can be. If you don’t, and I didn’t, it becomes resistant to the treatment. And it’s a very complicated treatment. One pill out of sync and you’ve had it. It’s very easy to get it wrong, especially if you’re getting stoned at regular intervals.’

  Once again Billa and Ed sense that Tris is telling the truth. They are utterly confounded.

  Tris pushes his mug away and stands up. ‘Look,’ he says. ‘I’m going now. I’m staying at the Chough. I’ve booked in for a week. If you want to see me again I’ll leave you my card.’

  ‘Well, hang on,’ begins Ed uncomfortably. ‘Wait a minute. You don’t have to rush off.’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ says Tris firmly. ‘You both need time to think about this. I’d love to come back and have a look around the old place and have a cup of tea. But if you can’t hack it I shall quite understand. There’s my card. Thanks for the coffee.’

  He smiles at them both, gives a little nod as if to say ‘That’s it. No nonsense,’ picks up his coat and satchel and goes out quickly, closing the door quietly behind him.

  There is silence. Billa and Ed look at one another.

  ‘So how do you read that?’ asks Ed after a moment.

  Billa shakes her head. ‘It’s … bizarre. But I felt that it was all true. Did you?’

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  Billa takes a breath. ‘So what now?’

  ‘Well, it’s a kind of olive branch, isn’t it? And what harm can inviting him back and having a cup of tea do?’

  ‘Poor Tris,’ says Billa suddenly. ‘How utterly appalling. No wonder he was such a ghastly little tick. What a terrible life he’s had. I thought it was rather touching that he still calls his mother “Maman”. How do you get over something like that?’

  ‘You probably don’t,’ says Ed. ‘But it explains why Andrew left so suddenly.’

  ‘I can’t wait to tell Dom,’ says Billa. ‘Gosh. I feel as if I’ve been hit on the head.’ She pours them both some more coffee. ‘But we’ll invite him back, won’t we? Just like he says, as closure. Perhaps we all need it.’

  * * *

  Tris climbs into his car, drives a short way and then pulls into a farm gateway and stops. He’s laughing so much he can barely see to drive. He wheezes helplessly, his hands pressed against his chest, gleefully reliving the scene. And the beauty of it is: it’s all true. Everything he told them was the truth. As he sat there at that big old slate table, feeling their hostility, testing the depths of their wariness, he suddenly saw that the one way to disarm them totally was by telling the truth. Tris laughs till he cries. He is confident that there will be another invitation. The St Enedocs are such foolishly decent people; good manners and right feeling will overcome their natural suspicion and their instinctive dislike, and will guarantee that he gains entrée – and after that …

  Tris gets out his handkerchief and mops his eyes. He knows he’s in danger of overdoing it, and that he’s being a bit too free with the magical stuff his contact in Bristol has given him, but he can’t resist. He feels so good, so strong. There’s nothing in the world so sure to get the adrenalin pumping as taking this kind of risk. He’d even given them a clue by using Billa’s mobile number. How did they think he’d got that?

  Tris starts the engine again and pulls away. He makes a bet with himself that he’ll get a phone call in the next twenty-four hours giving him an invitation to go back to the old butter factory. He stretches an arm sideways and pats the satchel.

  ‘Then it’ll just be you and me, baby,’ he murmurs.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  ‘Are you OK?’ Tilly asks Dom at breakfast.

  He was out last evening when she got home and it occurs to her that he’s been rather distracted this morning, though she’s been preoccupied with her own thoughts, too. Yesterday, after she’d dropped in to see Sarah, she’d seized her courage in both hands and driven down to the vicarage. Clem wasn’t there but Dossie and Jakey were. They welcomed her so warmly that she was still glowing with the memory of it.

  Jakey had invited a school friend and, once they’d had tea and were settled in Jakey’s bedroom with various games and toys, Dossie and Tilly were able to have a quiet moment to themselves. They sat together on the sofa, Dossie turned towards Tilly, one leg tucked beneath her. She looked youthful in her jeans and an oversize jersey, and she was so like Clem that Tilly was aware of a great affection for her.

  ‘Congratulations on getting the job,’ Dossie said. ‘You’ll love it. I promise you, it will be like nothing you’ve ever done before.’

  ‘I believe you,’ said Tilly, thinking of her interview with the Sisters and Father Pascal. ‘But I’m very excited about it. I’m sure we can do so much more on the marketing front and organization in general. And I love the Priest’s Flat.’

  ‘Janna will be thrilled,’ said Dossie contentedly. ‘Have you seen her quarters in the Coach House?’

  Tilly nodded. ‘She invited me over to see where she is after my interview with them all. She seems very happy there.’

  ‘She used to live in a caravan in the orchard, which she loved, but she was persuaded to move in when the Sisters transferred over to the Coach House and the retreat house was opened. They’re so lucky to have her.’

  ‘But it seemed to me that it works both ways and she feels lucky to have them.’

  ‘Absolutely right,’ agreed Dossie. ‘Janna came to ChiMeur looking for a family and she’s found one. But it’ll be lovely for her to have you not so far away, too. You can both have a moment together when you’re feeling fed up with community life.’

  Tilly laughed. ‘I can see that we might need to let off steam from time to time.’

  ‘And what’s this,’ asked Dossie, looking mischievous, ‘about you and Jakey sharing a dog?’

  Tilly knew the colour was rising in her cheeks. ‘It was a bit crazy,’ she admitted. ‘He and I were both saying how much we’d like to have a dog and Jakey thought that if he and Clem were at the Lodge and I was up at the house we might manage it between us. I’m feeling a bit guilty about that one. I honestly don’t know how it could work, though Clem agreed that it might be managed.’

  ‘Well, I’ve been thinking about it, too,’ said Dossie. ‘Between us all, it could be a possibility. Mo and Pa’s old Lab died last year and they miss him terribly. I’m wondering if we could help out when it gets really difficult. It would have to be a very adaptable dog, though, and definitely not a puppy.’

  Tilly shook her head. ‘Definitely not a puppy. Maybe a rescue dog. At least we’ve got time to think about it. Nothing can happen until Clem is priested and moves back to the Lodge. Jakey knows that, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Mmm,’ said Dossie. ‘But he won’t forget about it. We need to have a plan of action.’

 
; ‘That sounds good, but where do we start?’

  ‘I’ve got an idea,’ said Dossie. ‘Give me a chance to make a phone call. I just wanted to be really sure you were up for it, or whether it was just Jakey.’

  ‘I think it would be great,’ Tilly said. ‘But it’s got to be practical.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Dossie. She stretched and sat up. ‘Come on. The sun’s come out. Let’s take the boys down on the beach for half an hour before it gets dark.’

  * * *

  ‘I’m fine, Tilly,’ Dom says now. ‘Really. An old friend from the past has resurfaced and last evening Ed and Billa and I were exchanging notes about him.’

  ‘Oh, that’s nice,’ says Tilly. She gets up from the table and takes her porridge bowl and coffee mug through to the kitchen. ‘I’m off to Bodmin this morning and then to Wadebridge. See you later.’

  She comes back into the parlour, bends to kiss his cheek and grab her bag, pauses to stroke Bessie and hurries out. Dom watches her go. He’s still in shock at what Billa and Ed have told him and their reaction to Tris’s story. He wants to believe them when they say that Tris is telling the truth; that even the reason for the postcards is plausible. He remembers his own reaction when his postcard arrived; how he’d wondered then what had made Tris the destructive child that he was. Nevertheless, Dom remains cautious. He is not quite so ready to be convinced that Tris is a reformed character.

  They have all agreed that Tilly must be kept out of it. She’s completely absorbed in the prospect of her new job and all that goes with it and now, with Harry gone, she might just as well move into the Priest’s Flat and take up her new position. There’s nothing to stop her except her own sense of guilt at leaving Dom alone. She knows he’ll be missing Harry and she doesn’t want him to be lonely. Also she thinks she should wait for Sarah to move at the end of the month so that they can properly wind up U-Connect.

  However, with Tris not far away, Dom almost wishes that Tilly was at Chi-Meur. He can’t quite accept that this is simply an opportunity for Tris to kiss and make up. He’d said as much to Ed and Billa.