He pulled a chair back and placed his flushed, teary-eyed mother in it. ‘I’ll find Dad,’ he said and burst out into the fresh air, a fighting strength and purpose in his step as he strode to meet his father. He was a man, not a boy any more. He was strong. He had made himself strong while he was away, and he could work now as hard as Johnnie had ever done. He would have to. He was here to take his place, in the midst of his shattered family, and be big enough to carry Johnnie’s memory as well. He had to do it, and he could. Everything would be well.
‘It’s good to see your face again,’ Michael’s father reached up to put his hand on his son’s shoulder, touching his cheek with the back of the other. Michael’s father’s skin was rough and hard, like rock. The older man’s face had sunk in the years Michael hadn’t seen him. Hardship had knocked hollows under his eyes and graven age in fissures on his face and hands, but his ribcage was as flimsy as a dandelion clock when Michael embraced him, and he wanted to button up his jacket to stop the wind taking his father away in fragments.
He had been back a month before he got in touch with her. Janey was waiting for him at the King’s Head in Blythe. He saw her, a fair head bent over a book at the end of the smoky room, no hat. She looked vulnerable somehow, and he caught his breath. It was as if time had frozen since they last met, and he had stepped sideways to a different universe. Approaching her, he took in the shadow of her hair falling across her cheek as she read, the movement of her wrist as she turned the page, and his throat was dry and tight. She was both familiar and a stranger.
‘Janey.’ His voice came out strained.
‘Oh.’ She jumped up, caught her knuckle on the table edge and dropped the book. They both crouched to pick it up, he saw the glitter of her ring. Michael pressed her fingers as he returned the book, and she smiled her thanks. Her green coat was adorned with a small silver brooch shaped like a horseshoe.
She saw him looking at it. ‘Your mother gave me this, do you remember?’
He nodded, although, in truth, he didn’t know what he remembered and what he imagined any more. Tea arrived, the waitress sniffing as she dumped a heavy tray between then.
‘The sandwiches don’t have crusts,’ she announced without preamble.
Janey giggled. Michael froze, stole a look at her as she moved the cups on the table. She was graceful. Everything about her was light: her colouring, her soft hair like sunlight streaked across sand, her clothing, her movements. She was, he thought, a gentle soul. He’d like to salute that. Come to think of it, that was the answer. He needed a brandy, he looked at his watch. Four o’clock. What the hell. ‘Shall we have a drink instead?’
Janey poured tea. ‘Go ahead,’ she said coolly.
He opened his mouth to pretend that tea was fine, and saw she was trying not to laugh. He shrugged and called the waitress. He had no idea what he was doing, no plans, and no one to turn to. He had come back. His mother had told him Janey would want to see him, and he was here. Janey had kicked a shoe off. She glanced, at him, and perhaps hoping he wouldn’t notice, slid a hand down to scratch her instep.
He grinned at her. ‘Itchy feet?’
Laughter lit up her face. ‘Always. The places I keep meaning to go—’ She flicked a glance at him, friendly, uncomplicated. Her nose had a charming tilt to it, insouciant, happy-go-lucky. He owed her some form of certainty. A flutter of hope moved in his chest. She owed him nothing.
‘You look different,’ she said. By now they had drunk a cup of tea each, and a Horse’s Neck. Janey didn’t believe him when he asked the barman for this phenomenon.
‘What is it?’
‘It’s brandy and ginger ale,’ Michael explained. ‘It’s a failsafe when you’re nervous.’ He hadn’t meant to say that. He didn’t look at her. The glass was placed in front of him, a curve of lemon peel see-sawing on the rim. He flicked it. ‘That’s the horse, you see, leaning in for a tipple.’
Janey’s peal of laughter turned the heads of two men at the bar.
‘I want one,’ she said. ‘It sounds like something from the movies.’
Her tea went cold as she drank it, chattering, animated, rushing out comments on her favourite films, the books she’d read, the stories she’d come across. She was easy company. Michael ordered another round of drinks.
He raised his glass to her. ‘We’ve both changed,’ he said.
She nodded. A flush had crept into her cheeks. ‘You’re bigger. No, that’s not quite it, there’s just more of you. You’re more visible. You’ve got life all over you now.’ She frowned, bit her lip. ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t say—’
He interrupted, her, leaning to touch her knee. ‘No. Yes, yes you should. Say anything to me. Please.’
She trembled and moved her leg fractionally away. Her ring clinked the side of the glass as she finished her second drink. She took a deep breath, and shifted to face him, holding his gaze.
The room fell away around them.
‘Michael. I have something to say. I’ve been thinking, and I know – well I don’t really know actually, but I think.’ Confusion and the hot room and the brandy added a shine to her eyes, roses to her cheeks. He nodded, even though he didn’t know either. She twisted her ring, it was on her middle finger and hung loose, but her hands couldn’t be still, so she moved it round and round as words rushed out. Without thinking, Michael reached out and rested his hands on top of hers, stilling them, pressing them together.
She looked down at their joined hands, and back at his face. ‘I want you to know that I won’t ask you anything, ever. I don’t know what you’ve done or who or where you’ve been. And it isn’t for me to know. If you want to tell me, please do, but for my part, there’s no need.’
She finished speaking, and they sat a while longer in the bar.
Chapter 12
Kit hadn’t moved for some time. He had been lying dozing on the sofa as the sun had travelled from one side of the window to the other, and absorbing its rays. The lighthouse cushion was warm against his cheek, and smelled of wool and also of some floral fragrance. Probably Dora’s perfume. Dora. His sister. He buried his face in it again, searching for some essence of Michael. There was a faint mustiness that made him think of mothballs, and of the cupboards he had emptied in his mother’s house, but he knew he would be fooling himself to say that it actually had anything to do with Michael, he had died more than thirty years ago.
It was midsummer, swallows flickered around the Lighthouse, darting to their nests beneath the eaves. Kit locked the front door, placing his gothic key under a watering can in the shed. Luisa and Luca were coming by this morning to drop off some furniture for his tenants who were moving in next week. He’d decided to leave the cushion, and the picture, with Dora. She would look after them, she would be the keeper of the flame for him.
Kit sauntered down through the field towards the sea. He liked the fact that he could leave the key there. He didn’t have to give it to a solicitor or anything like that. Luisa had suggested it.
Luisa. God almighty. Luisa. He dragged his hands through his hair. He was in shock, he hadn’t been able to speak to her, he didn’t know what to say. Tom was his brother. Never having had a brother before didn’t stop him understanding what a massive betrayal it could have been. He didn’t want to think about the texts, the dancing, the magic he’d shared with Luisa. While it was going on, he’d fooled himself that he was just making a new friend, but it wasn’t true. Madness. Not just married, but married to his own brother. His brother. Christ, that in itself was enough to deal with. A whole new family for a man who’s spent a lifetime as an only child. Big stuff.
Kit scrambled down the path towards the sea. Shingle undulated like a frozen wave, and beyond it the surface of the sea was smooth and inviting. Why not swim? It would clear his head. Purge him. His mind roamed around the new characters he had in his life. He couldn’t deal with the next generation yet, it was his siblings he had to come to terms with first. They were good people. Welcoming and kind.
He liked them. This morning he’d met his sister Bella on Skype. If Dora looked like the photographs he had seen of Janey, and Tom was said to be like their father, then Bella, born just three years after Michael had returned to his family and therefore nearer Kit in age than Tom, also looked like Michael and, oddly, like Kit himself.
Kit skimmed a pebble and it bounced five times before sinking. He’d been groggy when the call came through, a Skype session at seven in the morning was not his idea of an easy introduction, but Bella launched straight in.
‘Hi Kit. Hey bro!’ she grinned. ‘I guess you weren’t expecting me, but Luisa and I were chatting and she told me all about you. I had to get in touch. I’ve wanted to for years. You know who I am, right?’
‘What? Christ, yes, of course. Bella. How are you?’ Kit had been asleep, and had taken a moment to come to his senses. Bella caught him on the hop, and he had to struggle to meet her cheerfulness. She’d talked to Luisa. What might she have said about him?
‘Morning Bella.’ He hauled himself out of bed and moved to start up his laptop to see Bella more clearly, then changed his mind.
‘Just give me a minute to get dressed,’ he said to the small image on the phone screen.
She raised a beer bottle in greeting and her bracelets clattered on the glass. ‘Welcome to the family. Cheers.’ She poured the beer into a glass. ‘Don’t worry,’ she added, ‘remember the time difference. This is a sun downer, not a drink problem.’
Kit’s laughter was muffled as he pulled his shirt on. ‘I’m not worried. It looks good to me at breakfast time in England I can tell you. Where are you?’
‘Tuamarina. New Zealand wine country. I don’t know what the others have told you about me, but I’m their sister.’
‘And mine now too.’ Kit pulled on his shoes and went down the stairs, holding his phone in front of him.
‘I’m going to make coffee, and you’re coming with me. Did you say you’ve wanted to get in touch for years, or was I dreaming?’
Bella hooted with laughter. ‘Hang on there, you’re the oldest, so I’m someone’s little sister at last,’ she said. ‘Feels good too, you look like a decent-enough guy.’
Usually taciturn until his first cup of coffee, Kit was surprised to find himself making an effort with her. ‘It feels nice to me too. I never imagined having siblings.’
Bella adjusted her screen. ‘Okay, she said, ‘I don’t know how much you know about our father, but I’m guessing, from what Luisa said, that it’s not much, and it doesn’t surprise me. He kept things separate, and I don’t think he told anyone except me about you.’
Kit tensed throughout his body, he was surprised by how much emotion he carried. ‘He told you about me? When? What did he say?’ He thought he might cry, but instead he sneezed.
‘Bless you.’ Bella lit a cigarette. ‘I don’t know if it was because I’m the eldest – well, apart from you – but he talked about his brother, how he blocked everything out. Couldn’t face his death at all. All that came out when he visited me here, and then he talked about you.’
Kit fumbled with the coffee, his eyes never leaving Bella’s face. He wondered if she was alone at her house in the middle of some giant New Zealand valley surrounded by zillions of sheep. Sheep again. Obviously a family failing. She was married, Tom had told him that much, with grown-up children. With her silver jewellery and mass of grey-streaked hair, she looked like a Red Indian chieftainess, harnessing the wind and the sun to serve her outback farm. Hard to imagine her living a domestic life back here in Norfolk.
‘He must’ve found it hard keeping all that to himself,’ he said.
‘He said it had been, but he had my mother to think of, and us growing up. He said the more he loved us, the more he thought of you.’
Bella’s voice had a New Zealand twang Kit liked, he could listen to her for hours. It would be great, he thought, to meet her and her family. His family now.
Kit gulped a glass of water, and pinched the bridge of his nose. Bella’s expression was kind.
‘This is all a shock, I can imagine,’ she said. ‘It is for me and I left home a long time ago.’
Kit gave her a shaky smile. ‘Go on, I want to know all I can about him,’ he said.
‘I don’t suppose Dad would ever have told me if I hadn’t removed myself so far from Blythe, and Mum and everything he wanted to protect. Anyway, he came out on his own. It was the year after Drew and I got married. Dad said he wanted to help us build the wine store. He loved making stuff with his hands. You know, with wood and saws and so forth. I didn’t realise at the time, but he knew he wasn’t well. He had a bad heart, probably from all the stuff that happened in the war.’
Kit was surprised to find his chest was tight with emotion. ‘I knew he made things. He was part of the group that built the Newlyn Studios after the war. My mother always said he built the structure for her life. Her work, I suppose is what she meant.’
Bella had brushed away imaginary ash from the front of her shirt, and said gently, ‘He told me about your mother. And about you.’
The sea hissed hypnotically. Kit lay down on the shore and stretched out on the sand. It was damp, and moulded to his shoulders and legs while the salty tang of ozone curled around him. His thoughts ran back to the conversation. A surreal way to meet your sister, on a small screen while you sit in a lighthouse drinking coffee at the other end of the day from her, and she on her verandah with a beer. He wanted to make sense of everything she had told him. She’d said one night in New Zealand all those years ago, Michael had opened up.
Bella explained. ‘I think it might have been why he came to see us, you know. All the way across the world on his own, it must’ve been a helluva big deal. He said he’d been trying to come to terms with the fact that his brother had died and he didn’t, and that it haunted him. He said he wouldn’t ask me to keep his secret, but that whatever I decided to do, I must remember it wasn’t his story alone. He gave me a watch, and I think it should really be yours.’ She unbuckled it from her wrist and held it up for Kit’s scrutiny.
‘Mine? Why?’
‘I don’t know if you can read it, but it’s engraved on the back. “To CWD. Time will run back and fetch the age of gold. TWD”.’
Kit frowned. ‘You mean Michael had it? I wonder if my mother gave it to him. CWD is Christopher William Delaware, her brother. He died in the war.’
‘I think you should have it back,’ said Bella. ‘I kind of feel that’s what Dad wanted.’
Kit sat down, propped his chin on his hands. ‘Dad. I can’t believe there was a real man behind all the stuff I’m hearing, it’s hard to take on board. When he gave it to you, who did you tell?’
‘No one. Except Drew, my husband.’ She paused, a shadow fell across her face. ‘It never felt like any of it was mine to tell.’ She sighed. ‘Are you all right with all this? You know, the new family and all?’
‘Yes. Of course. It’s just a lot to absorb,’ said Kit.
Bella twisted her hair over one shoulder and moved her laptop screen as the sun cut lower in the Tuamarina sky. She explained to Kit how Michael had talked to her about his time in Cornwall, how happy he had been there, how meeting Felicity had saved him. How even so, he had always known he would return to Norfolk, and that having a baby had made that more urgent.
‘It was because he loved you so much,’ said Bella, her gaze steady, her eyes a flash of jet in the shadows.
‘He understood how much his parents needed him.’ Michael had told her he had not known what he was doing when he arrived in Britain after the war. He didn’t know where he was going when he took the train to Cornwall, he just knew he couldn’t go home, he couldn’t face his parents without Johnnie. When he did come back to Norfolk, he hadn’t expected to find Janey waiting for him. That she was, he’d said, was more than he deserved.
‘He told me about the Lighthouse, and I couldn’t believe it. I was actually really angry.’ Bella had opened a second bottle of beer, her acc
ent was becoming more antipodean. The sun had set and her face glowed blue from the lit computer screen. Kit had abandoned his coffee and poured himself a slug of whisky. Eight in the morning and drinking. Thank God no one could see him. Except Bella, who, he thought, wouldn’t be phased by anything.
‘Angry? Why?’
‘I don’t know now. None of it matters in the bigger scheme of things, but I was young, Drew and I were newly married. I guess I had ideals about being honest. I didn’t think it was right of him to keep something as big as that from Mum.’
Kit was angry too. How could his own mother have kept him in the dark? It was his story too, and he had never been told. Had his father ever wanted to get in touch with him? Had he tried? What kind of man was Michael? And what kind of man did that make him? The whisky hit the back of his throat and he grimaced, it was all a bit hard core, frankly. He was out of his depth. ‘So what happened exactly?’
Bella blew a smoke ring. ‘About five years after Dad came back to Norfolk, the Lighthouse came up for sale. I was a baby, and Dad was running the farm himself and taking night classes to become a teacher. He did become an art teacher in the end, I don’t know if you knew that?’
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