Postcards from the Past

by Marcia Willett

  She undoes the buckle, lifts back the flap and looks inside. There’s a solid, white object: something quite big that takes up most of the room. Carefully, Tilly draws it out. A brown envelope is pulled out with it, and several pill bottles roll on to the bed. These might be medication and Tilly puts them into the grip. She peers into the satchel and sees a wallet. This could contain information about relatives so she opens it. At the back, with some twenty- and ten-pound notes, is a photograph. A blond young man smiles out at her, eyes creased against the bright sunshine. He’s casually dressed and behind him is a line of boats as if he has posed for the photograph in a harbour or at a marina. There is a prescription but no other information. She lays the wallet down and looks at the big envelope. Cautiously she opens it, slides out a stiff document and stares at Elinor St Enedoc’s last will and testament. Perplexed, she reads it through twice. She lays it on the bed, still puzzling over it, and then she draws the Perspex tray towards her and opens the lid. To her absolute shock, she recognizes Ed’s miniatures. He has told her the history of them, pointed out the family likeness he was so proud of when he was a little boy.

  Tilly makes a lightning decision. She closes the lid, puts the miniatures back into the satchel along with the big brown envelope, and slides it under the bed. She picks up the wallet and the grip and hurries out, locking the door behind her.

  She goes into the bar where a little group have now formed around Mr Marr, who seems to be unconscious. She shows the grip to the landlord and gives him the wallet.

  ‘I’m just going out for a moment,’ she says to him in a low voice. ‘I feel a bit shaky.’

  He nods understandingly. ‘Paramedics on their way,’ he says. ‘But I don’t like the look of him at all.’

  ‘There’s medication in the grip and a prescription in the wallet,’ Tilly tells him, and with another look at the unconscious man she slips out to the back of the pub. Sitting in her car she takes out her mobile and phones Dom, but there is no reply. She remembers that he was going to see Ed and Billa so she phones the old butter factory. Billa answers.

  ‘Listen,’ Tilly says. ‘I’m at the pub. This is going to sound really weird. There’s a man staying here who’s just collapsed. He’s called Christian Marr. Billa, he’s got your John Smart miniatures in his satchel. I’m sure it’s them but before I make a fool of myself, could you go and check?’

  There is a silence.

  ‘What did you call him?’ asks Billa.

  ‘Christian Marr. Look, could you just go and check? He’s being carted off to hospital any time now.’

  ‘Wait,’ says Billa sharply, and Tilly can hear the sound of voices in the background.

  ‘Tilly.’ It’s Dom’s voice and she heaves a breath of relief. ‘Ed’s gone to check. Did you say this man’s collapsed?’

  ‘Yes. I’d just followed him into the pub and he kind of keeled over. He was clutching his satchel. He’s always got it with him. I went to pack a case ready for the ambulance to come and I looked in the satchel, just to make certain there was nothing he might need in it, and there were the miniatures in a proper little tray with a lid. Like it had been made for them. And, Dom, this is bizarre: there was a will made by Elinor St Enedoc.’

  ‘I know about that,’ says Dom. There is the sound of an urgent voice in the background and Dom says, ‘Listen, Tilly, Ed says the miniatures have gone. You’re at the pub? Well, stay put. I’m coming straight over. Don’t part with the satchel.’

  ‘It’s still in his room, under the bed. I’m in my car. Round the back.’

  ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can.’

  Tilly switches off her phone and sits holding it with her hands clenched between her knees. She’s trembling. She thinks about Christian Marr, who Harry said was an energy consultant, and of the miniatures and the will in the satchel. Slowly, slowly, the minutes pass. There’s the wail of a siren, the paramedics arrive and hurry into the pub. Then Dom’s old Volvo slides around the corner of the wall and parks beside her.

  He climbs out of the Volvo, leans back in and brings out a rucksack. Tilly leaps out of her car and dashes round to him.

  ‘What’s going on?’ she asks. She feels trembly and weak, and so relieved to see him that she puts her arms round him. ‘Who is he, Dom?’

  He holds her tightly for a moment and then lets her go. His voice is quite calm. ‘His real name is Tristan Carr. His father married Elinor fifty years ago and then left her a few years later. Tristan came to see us yesterday. He came again today unexpectedly, appeared to have some sort of heart attack and took the miniatures when Ed went to get his medication from the car. Now we must be quick, Tilly. Where’s the satchel?’

  Tilly leads him in through the back entrance and up the stairs. She unlocks the bedroom door and they go in.

  ‘I put it under the bed until I’d spoken to you,’ she says. ‘I couldn’t imagine Ed giving them away but I didn’t want to make a prat of myself.’

  She pulls the satchel out from under the bed and gives it to Dom. He turns back the flap and looks inside, then he draws out the Perspex case. He opens the lid and shows the miniatures to Tilly.

  ‘I don’t want you to be a part of anything you’re unhappy with,’ he says. ‘You agree that they are Ed’s miniatures?’ She nods solemnly. ‘We’re not going to make a fuss about this. Tris is dying and he is Ed and Billa’s stepbrother so we shall simply return them to Ed. You don’t have a problem with that?’

  ‘No. They’re definitely Ed’s.’

  ‘OK then.’ He puts the Perspex case into the rucksack and opens the envelope. There is Elinor’s will, and the photographs, which he looks at carefully. ‘He must have had these for years. Black-and-white. Andrew must have taken them as insurance against a rainy day. Are you happy if we take these, too? This could be construed as theft.’

  ‘Don’t be a twit,’ she says. ‘We’re all in this together, whatever it is.’

  He puts the envelope into the rucksack and throws the satchel back on the bed.

  ‘There was nothing else?’

  She shakes her head. ‘Just a wallet with some money and a prescription in it. Oh, and a photograph of a boy with some boats. Like he was in a harbour somewhere.’

  ‘Ah,’ says Dom, ‘that must have been Léon. OK. Now I’m going to ask you to take the miniatures and the envelope and drive straight to Billa and Ed. I’ll see you later.’

  ‘Where are you going?’ she asks, taking the rucksack carefully, still feeling rather trembly.

  ‘I’m going downstairs to see how Tris is. I shall follow the ambulance to the hospital. Sure you’ll be OK?’

  She nods and they go out and lock the door. Dom takes the keys from her and she hesitates.

  ‘Go on, Tills,’ he says. ‘I’ll tell them you feel a bit shocked and you’ve gone home.’

  He disappears through the door that leads to the bar and she goes out and gets into the car. She wedges the rucksack very carefully on the passenger seat, drags on her seat belt and starts the engine. As she drives out of the car park she can hear again the distant wail of the ambulance siren.

  * * *

  ‘He completely betrayed us,’ Billa says much later.

  Dom has come back late from Treliske Hospital, where Tris is not expected to last the night, and he and Tilly have gone home.

  ‘I explained the relationship to the duty doctor,’ Dom told them. ‘Said we hadn’t seen Tris for fifty years but assumed he’d made the visit just to tie up loose ends. There’s nothing suspicious about his death, nobody will know about the miniatures, though there might be a copy of the will somewhere. I can’t say I’m too bothered about that. It was never going to stand up and, anyway, it was a smoke screen. He wasn’t after the money, it was the miniatures he wanted. The box was made specially for them.’

  Billa and Ed were still too shocked to react and Dom and Tilly left them alone to recover.

  ‘I feel such a fool,’ says Ed, after they’ve gone. ‘Just letting him walk
out with them. And I’d had them reinsured last year because the value had suddenly shot up.’

  ‘He took us all in,’ says Billa bitterly. ‘Telling us about his mother and his half-brother and talking about dying.’

  ‘Well, that at least is true,’ offers Ed. ‘Did you hear Dom say that, apart from the tuberculosis, his body was destroyed by drug abuse? Those capsules were cocaine.’ He nearly adds ‘poor fellow’ but at the thought of his father’s miniatures, taken so cleverly from under his nose, the words are stillborn. ‘What a miracle that Tilly was there,’ he says. ‘My God, it was a close shave.’

  ‘Lucky he collapsed,’ says Billa fiercely. ‘If not, he’d have been long gone by now.’

  She feels so angry that she could burn up with it. She feels disgusted with herself when she remembers how she felt yesterday, watching Tris get out of the car, when he held her wrist; how for a while she was able to identify with her mother and to allow some kind of forgiveness and understanding to comfort her. Now she feels as if she has been emotionally mugged. How he must have laughed behind their backs; to be able to walk into their lives for a second time and wreck them. She knows that this is an extreme reaction – Tris has not wrecked their lives – but at some deep level she recognizes that this hatred of him could destroy her. Yet she clings to it, allowing it to feed her rage and self-pity.

  ‘I suppose it was right of Dom to go to the hospital,’ Ed is saying. ‘It would have been awkward if they’d begun to ask questions at the pub. Best that it’s in the open. Though I don’t know how it will be explained that he was using another name. Another of his little jokes, I suppose. Tristan Carr. Christian Marr.’

  ‘Dom says his passport was in his jeans pocket in the name of Tristan Carr. I don’t suppose that Carr was ever their real name anyway. Oh, what does it matter? There might be a bit of local gossip but nothing’s happened. Dom has defused it all by acknowledging him. Well, don’t expect me to go to his funeral, that’s all.’

  Ed looks alarmed. ‘Would we be expected to?’

  ‘Dom says he’ll go. That it’ll draw a line under the whole thing.’

  And a few days later, when Dom brings back Tris’s ashes in a plastic box, Billa stares at them with distaste.

  ‘What are we supposed to do with that?’ she says, wrinkling her nose.

  ‘I don’t know yet,’ he says. ‘But I thought you might want to know that I’ve got them.’

  ‘Won’t his family want them? This nephew, Léon, he’s so proud of?’

  ‘According to Sir Alec, any ashes sent out of the country have to be accompanied and it’s a very complicated procedure. I’ve taken the executive decision that we’ll deal with them here.’ Dom stands the box on the dresser, pushing it under the lower shelf. ‘Forget it for the moment, Billa. Come out for a walk round the lake.’

  * * *

  One morning, at the end of her first week at Chi-Meur, Tilly comes downstairs just in time to see a few people going quietly into the chapel for Terce. She hesitates, then on an impulse she follows them in and sits just inside the door at the back. The Sisters have already come in through their own private entrance: Sister Nichola sits at the end of a pew in her wheelchair with Sister Ruth beside her. Mother Magda and Sister Emily sit together.

  There is a sense of deep-down peace here and Tilly relaxes into it, welcoming it. She stands and sits when the nuns and the visitors do, half-listening, half-dreaming. Someone has given her an Office prayer book but she doesn’t know her way around it and simply listens. She is aware of Sister Emily’s voice, rising and falling, those delicate inflections she places on certain words, and suddenly Tilly’s attention is caught by a new emphasis; a lilting joy:

  The Lord is my strength and my song:

  He has become my salvation.

  I shall not die but live,

  and declare the works of the Lord.

  Tilly can hear a blackbird singing in the lilac tree, and finds herself thinking about Tristan Carr, who died a week ago in Treliske Hospital. He never recovered consciousness, Dom said. He’d been cremated, disposed of, with only Dom to say goodbye to him. Tilly thinks of Tris looking so alive, so vital; chatting to Harry in the bar; nothing now but ashes. She feels a terrible sadness but Sister Emily’s voice is breaking through it, lifting her: ‘I shall not die but live…’

  Now, Mother Magda is speaking the blessing: ‘May Christ dwell in our hearts by faith,’ and Tilly gets ready to slip out, to hurry away to her office.

  She is settling in very quickly, loving the Priest’s Flat, getting used to the way everything is held within the structure of the Daily Offices. From the back gates of the convent the cobbled road leads directly into the village and she can walk down the steep hill to see Sarah or to see Sir Alec, and, of course, Clem and Jakey.

  Yesterday, she and Dossie broke the news to Jakey that they won’t be having a puppy. Tilly sat beside him on the sofa while Dossie cleared up the tea, and they discussed it together.

  ‘Just to begin with,’ Tilly said, ‘it would be too difficult. We need a dog who can be with me, and with you, and with Dossie. That would be a bit confusing for a puppy, don’t you think?’

  Jakey looked downcast: he’d set his heart on a puppy.

  ‘It’s better to have an older dog,’ Tilly went on, noticing the downturn of his mouth, praying for wisdom, ‘so that we can have lots of fun without worrying too much.’

  ‘I did want a puppy, though,’ he says wistfully, testing her.

  ‘A puppy is very hard work and makes a lot of mess,’ said Dossie firmly, appearing in the doorway. ‘You need to have someone practically full time with a puppy. Daddy’s much more likely to agree to an older dog, so don’t push your luck, Jakes.’

  Jakey looked resigned and Tilly glanced at Dossie admiringly. Dossie gave her a little wink.

  ‘There’s a nice little black Lab at Blisland looking for a home,’ she said casually. ‘You might like to go and meet her. See what you think.’

  Jakey looked up at Tilly. ‘Have you seen her?’ he asked eagerly.

  Tilly nodded. ‘She’s an absolute sweetie. I think she’d be just the thing for us.’

  ‘Has she got a name?’

  Dossie laughed. ‘She’s called Bellissima Beauty of Blisland,’ she says, and Jakey and Tilly laugh, too.

  ‘But they call her Bells,’ Tilly says.

  ‘Bells,’ repeats Jakey. Bells is a cool name; a name Harry might have used.

  ‘When can we go?’ he asked. ‘Can we go now? Can we?’

  Dossie glanced at Tilly: they’d been leading up to this.

  ‘If Tilly doesn’t mind taking you,’ said Dossie, ‘you could go and see her now. But I’ve got to get back to Mo and Pa. Could you manage it, Tilly?’

  ‘Oh, I think I could,’ said Tilly, smiling at Jakey’s expression. ‘If you really want to?’

  But Jakey was already on his feet, yelling with excitement, ready to go.

  And it was good. He was a cheerful companion, he adored Bells, and so the first step was taken.

  Now, full of happy anticipation at the prospect of being a part dog-owner, Tilly switches on the computer and prepares to work.

  * * *

  It is Dom who suggests that they should consult with Sir Alec about the will. Alec is rather nervous, unwilling to act as any kind of judge in such a personal family matter, but Billa and Ed agree. So he drives to the old butter factory with great trepidation and praying for wisdom.

  ‘Alec’s checked Léon out,’ Dom says when they’ve all gathered around the big slate table. ‘There is a Léon, living with his mother in the Rue Félix Pyat, who works at the marina. Apparently he’s a decent hard-working boy, very popular locally, and he’s lived there all his life.’

  ‘And are you seriously suggesting,’ Billa asks incredulously, ‘that we should send him ten thousand pounds? For simply being a decent, hard-working boy who looks after his mother?’

  There is a little silence whilst Alec thinks about
things and takes the temperature of the meeting. He guesses that Ed has had a shock, been made to feel a bit of a fool, but has already put it behind him. His miniatures are back, no harm done, and he wouldn’t object to helping Léon financially. Dom has seen the whole thing as a contest in which death has come to his aid; part of him can’t help doffing his hat to Tris’s quick thinking and audacity. He is probably in two minds about whether the will should be honoured. Billa, however, is another matter; Alec feels Billa’s boiling anger, sees her bitter expression, and it saddens him.

  ‘The first thing we should get straight,’ he says cautiously, ‘is whether you feel that the wishes of the dead should be honoured. Your mother wanted Andrew to have ten thousand pounds, which would have been Tris’s and now Léon’s.’

  ‘But she didn’t really know Andrew,’ bursts out Billa. ‘He completely deceived her. She didn’t love him. It was a kind of physical madness and if she hadn’t become ill she would have changed her will.’

  Alec glances at Ed, who is watching Billa with something like compassion. With a flash of insight Alec wonders if some of that same physical madness edged into the brief time Billa and Tris have shared recently. She is too intense about it; so hurt that she cannot remain unaffected even by the mere mention of his name – which might be explained by the theft of the miniatures or might not.

  ‘At least, according to you all,’ Alec says, ‘he loved the boy. I find that comforting.’

  ‘Why?’ asks Billa sharply.

  ‘Because it is a redeeming feature. It shows Tris wasn’t an utterly lost soul. If his mother hadn’t been killed and his life fractured, if he hadn’t been dragged from pillar to post and been forced to live with fear and exposure to danger, who can say what he might have been? What would we have been like in his shoes?’