She folded up the letter, and put it back inside The Arabian Nights. Then Juliet got up and left the room, to look for Sam.
Empty again, the room was still, the view unchanged. We paint our own reality, after all.
Epilogue
February 1919
Dearest Dalbeattie
You have a daughter. Her name is Stella.
I lied when I sent you away to Ottawa. I know that, because of what has gone before, you and I cannot ever have the life we wanted for ourselves. Perhaps one day, in another time but not now and so I, like the heroine in a rather melodramatic novel, have sacrificed myself for your happiness.
I had the babe but I am afraid I am not well. To be short, something occurred during the birth, which was rather more taxing than I’d thought it would be, Dalbeattie – it requires considerably greater effort than marching for Women’s Suffrage, I must tell you – I am lied to by doctors, always a bad sign. I have had six months with Stella – they have been everything to me. She is very like her father – her eyes are huge, she takes in everything. She makes juddering, peep-peep noises of great joy when I go to her in the morning. She loves her feet, and clutches them as she lies in her bed.
We are back in my little rooms in Hammersmith. I could not stay in the house alone without you, my darling. I know my end is not far away now. I cough most nights and keep Stella awake. Though till last week I was quite well but for some pain. I have made it very cosy, my dearest. I have sewn all Stella’s clothes. The ring you gave me I sold and it has kept me and your child most comfortable these last few months. You left me ample but not enough for the cost of a babe! I have a nurse, a dear woman called Mrs leFay. She is a war widow. Before he died at Passchendaele her husband was a painter, and studied at the Academy, and we have conversations about painting, and art, and all of it. With the water reflecting outside the window and the sound of boats and Stella’s smiles and the care of Mrs leFay I am not unhappy. She has made it all very nice, as they say. She will be with me until the end. You must not worry about me.
Next month I am giving Stella away. I am taking her to Nightingale House where I hope to prevail upon my sister to bring her up as her own. How will I persuade Liddy to do this, she who tore up my letters, who refuses to meet me these ten, twenty years, who rains curses down on my head? I shall dissemble. She already believes me to be a black-hearted wanton, lost to all sense of decency. I will put on a performance of such conviction she will gladly gather the child to her.
I reckon upon Liddy gazing into this little one’s eyes and seeing what I see. For Stella is so like our mother it quite takes my breath away. Besides, she gives Liddy one more chance. She gives all of us one more chance, Dalbeattie. She can be, all of us, our last child; she can grow up at Nightingale House, free and wild, surrounded by birds, flowers, fresh, fresh air. She can have what Pertwee, and Liddy and I, and dearest John and Eliza, never had. A childhood free of sorrow, in the very house you yourself made into a home. I am telling you so you understand, you must not contact her, you – like I – must give up your claim on her so she can grow up not knowing what she is.
I am going soon – I am not sad. For I will see you again my dear love: in that great garden where we will all be together again, one day, you and I and our daughter – Goodbye, my dearest one – thank you for loving me.
M
All morning she had delayed going to the graveyard. She had a cold, and a terrible toothache somewhere at the back of her mouth; she had spent most of the week with her head wrapped in a scarf, a wad of gauze soaked in clove oil gingerly pressing against the tooth. The gum was tender, inflamed, and she could not swallow; it was the pain of it being in her head she found most alarming. This was pain unseen, flooding you with sensation, making you wonder, self-pityingly she told herself, what life before it was like. But it was John’s birthday, and she must go some time. Besides, they had finished Ned’s gravestone a few weeks before and she still hadn’t been. She wasn’t sure why. The weather had been so bad, icy showers of sleet that turned the lanes into slides and flattened half the hopeful snowdrops on the lawn. But Liddy knew she must not put it off any longer, and so, at midday, when it was as light as it was going to get, she wrapped a moth-eaten shawl tightly round her head and gingerly set out.
She was careful all the time now; of walking, of lighting fires, of shutting doors, of pulling splinters. She was alone, the only one left, and she must live on, to remember them. So many regrets: the times she wished she’d gone to meet Mary, not burned her letters. That she had paid more attention to Ned, instead of ignoring him, and letting it happen. If she’d never gone to London that summer . . . if she’d urged John into a job away from the front . . . So many regrets that, on several occasions, she had thought about ending it all, but then no one would remember they were there, and the house would have to be sold – to a rich man who’d pull out the panelling and lay the entire garden to lawn, and – and change things. And his children would run about on the lawn – no, it was unthinkable.
The cold air was sharp, and smelled of wet earth, and something else – a fresh, metallic tang, of spring. As Liddy staggered up the lane towards the lych-gate she could see the lilac buds from the vicarage opposite, tiny, green-brown cracks on the black branch, but they were there. And the snowdrops, and the narcissi. Somewhere, in the trees behind her, a lone bird chirped.
Liddy loved spring. So had Ned, after they came here. The countryside had filled him with ideas, like water flowing from a tap into a jug. She pushed the lychgate open and crossed the frozen, crunching lawn of the graveyard, which in the summer swayed with orchids, meadow-grasses and fritillary butterflies. Liddy pulled her coat around her. It was Ned’s coat, a military affair lined with bright, pillar-box red, which he had worn to paint in the Dovecote. Ned had bought it from Pertwee many years ago – she suspected it was a way of giving Pertwee money. It was a coat of excellent quality, a sign of her brother’s taste for the finest things. Poor Pertwee. It had lasted over twenty years or more now.
There were catkins on the silver birch tree over past the church, where the Coote family vault stood set apart from the rest of the graves. Catkins . . . snowdrops . . . Liddy inhaled, trying to gauge the level of pain in her tooth, gingerly touching her cheek. It was all rather overwhelming and she tried to remember the last time she had left the grounds of the house. Weeks, probably. Since Christmas, but not for a long time. Days seemed to blur, really, now she was alone. She thought she felt better for being outside, in the fresh air.
‘Liddy?’
A shapeless small figure in a brown cloak moved suddenly, below her elbow, and Liddy gave a cry of fright, and jammed her hand against her cheek. She looked down.
A tiny, white face stared up at her, caked in thick face powder. The eyes, those lovely brown eyes, were huge, almost half out of their sockets. Beneath the face, the cloak moved again, restless. ‘Liddy?’ it repeated.
‘Mary?’ Liddy whispered, the name catching in her throat.
Mary nodded. Her cheeks were red spots in the moon-like face. ‘Sit down a while, Liddy, dearest,’ she said, patting the bench. As if they were children again, in Liddy’s room, and she, the youngest, was looking after her big sister. As she had for years. ‘Are you in pain? Is it a tooth?’
Liddy nodded, and sat down. She noticed, with a twist of fear, the slow, careful way her sister moved along to accommodate her, the odd bulge of her cloak, the tendons in her white neck.
‘Why are you here?’ she said, finally.
‘Aha, she senses the truth. Liddy, dearest.’ She gave a faint laugh. ‘I come on a mission of mercy. You wouldn’t meet me.’
Liddy swallowed. ‘I was worried about John. I did not want to—’
‘I know, sister. But I needed to see you.’ Mary patted her hand, reassuringly, and Liddy thrilled to her sister’s touch. Her quiet, lilting voice! Her presence, the calm certainty of her, still – and then she turned and stared at Mary’s white skin, stretche
d tight over the cheekbones, the forehead, the bones of skull visible underneath . . . the long, skeletal fingers, like bleached twigs. They were plucking at the rough brown hessian cloak, fumbling, parting it like curtains on a stage – her awful huge, white eyes, staring at Liddy, looked down between the folds of the parted cloak.
Liddy followed her gaze.
She found herself staring at a soft, downy head. She blinked. There was something moving next to it. Fingers, tiny fingers, part of a small arm, in scratchy raspberry-coloured wool. The fingers opened and closed. The nails were jagged, flimsy, they needed cutting; the knuckles indentations like little dashes in that plump small hand.
The child was pressed against Mary’s chest. Mary wore a white cambric lace blouse; Liddy could see, underneath the thin fabric, her sister’s heart, fluttering wildly, like a bird’s wing. Mary covered the cloak again and said:
‘It’s a girl. She is six months old. I have stopped being able—’
She stopped, breathing heavily, as though overcoming some powerful sensation, then she looked up. ‘I have stopped being able to look after her. I can’t do it. I didn’t ever want her. I tried to get rid of her. But you know – she clung on. She’s here now and she needs milk, and I don’t want to feed her any more. I’m not a mother. Not me.’
The times Mary had soothed Liddy’s night terrors; the hours she had spent smoothing back her hair, secreting little items of food into her room, watching out for her impulsive sister at roads, guarding her from Bryant’s notice . . . Not a mother.
‘Were you able to feed her?’ said Liddy, after a long pause.
‘Oh, yes, for a while.’ She was fiddling with the ribbon on her cloak; it fell around her, and Liddy saw the child properly for the first time, and her sister’s wasted frame. She had to bite down on a nail she was chewing to keep from crying out in alarm. The child was held tightly, swaddled against Mary in a scarf tied to Mary’s body. Mary undid the scarf, and handed her to Liddy, whose arms immediately adjusted to holding a baby, the old hold. She looked down into the dark-brown eyes then up at Mary, whose cheeks were even more flushed now, under the thick face powder.
‘I am hot.’
‘It is a freezing cold day, dearest – please, you must wrap up again.’
‘No, don’t make me.’ She raised her hand, and Liddy followed her gaze, and saw a long, green car, waiting in the lane the other side of the church. ‘Dymchurch waits for me, he’s a great one.’
‘Dymchurch?’
Mary began coughing, and swallowed it down. She smiled. ‘Yes. He’s a friend of – of Dalbeattie’s. Now, listen to me, my dearest sister, for the boat leaves this evening. I ask a favour of you. Dalbeattie has written to me, now he is settled. He cannot have an illegitimate child with him in Canada you understand, it would not do. I am to join him there and this is why I have come. You must take her if she is not to go to an orphanage. She is called Stella.’
Liddy pressed a hand to her aching jaw, almost to steady herself, anchor herself back down in the reality of this pain. ‘S-stella?’
‘Yes, a little star.’ Something convulsed her again, a whooping-cough wheeze that sounded like a sob. But she was grinning again, that manic, half-crazed grin. Liddy did not understand. She held more tightly on to the baby, who looked so very like Mary, so like Pertwee – the same dark expression around the eyes, and the thoughtfulness of their mother. She was snug in Liddy’s arms, blinking slowly, up at the grey March sky.
‘I cannot have a baby,’ said Liddy, slowly. ‘People will ask where she came from.’
‘Why not?’ Mary stood up suddenly, and gave a cry, which she muffled with her fist. ‘I am fine, Liddy – it is merely cramp. You can do anything if you set your mind to it, my sister, of that I’m sure! Go to London tomorrow with her and stay at Galveston’s. Lie about her age. She can be three months old, surely. Say she came as a surprise after Ned died. Say you are in town to buy her things. Stay with them for a month. Then come home and present her to the village. She is your child –’ She put her hand on the baby’s front, for a moment, moving her thumb up and down, and Stella opened her eyes. ‘You are all alone, Liddy. You have no one. I want her to grow up with you. At the house.’
Liddy stared at her sister. ‘How can you simply give her up, Mary?’
‘You’ll give her a good life, here, won’t you? Better than she’d have with me on my own, in my rooms. There’s barely room for me, let alone a baby. And I’m so tired of that life. I want to be with Dalbeattie. It’s our turn now.’ She gave another strange smile. Liddy could see her yellow teeth.
‘Dearest,’ said Liddy. ‘Tell me honestly. What is wrong with you? You are so very thin.’
‘Oh. I have had the influenza, and it has taken its toll. But the doctor advises sea air and rest, and Eno’s Fruit Salts, and so I have spent the last of my money on this trip.’ Her low, melodic voice washed over Liddy. She is really here, I am with her, after all these years, and she lies, I know she lies. ‘Dalbeattie says he will make everything fine for me when I arrive. I am to have three new dresses, he said, and a hat trimmed with fur to keep me warm. And I am to cut my hair, for it is quite the fashion. They will all believe I am his wife after that.’
‘Will you not send for her then?’
Mary cocked her head on one side, and glanced quickly at her child. ‘No! Goodness, no, she’ll be better off with you if you will have her.’ She clasped Liddy’s wrist in her bony grasp. ‘Perhaps we’ll have other children, but I am old, Liddy, I was forty-two when I delivered her.’
‘And how will people—’ Liddy blinked, overwhelmed at it all, struggling to stop her head from spinning. ‘How will I explain it to people, that I am forty-four, nearly forty-five, and have suddenly produced a babe of my own?’
‘You created Nightingale House. You made your own world, Liddy, dearest. Tell the story you decide to tell: people will believe what they want. Were you not at the centre of the painting?’ She gave a careless shrug, and stuck her bottom lip out. Liddy almost believed her then.
A loud horn sounding made both sisters jump. Liddy clutched her burning tooth; the pain came back, with a jolt. Mary stood up now, slowly. ‘I’ll take her back, if you want. I’ll find someone—’ Her eyes were burning; she closed them, slowly, and drooped against the bench, and in a soft, desperate voice said, ‘Oh my dearest Liddy . . . Please take her. Please make her your own, raise her here, give her a happy life. Give yourself some happiness. A fresh start. Hope. Please.’
And the two sisters gazed at each other and for one second Liddy saw Mary’s expression shift, saw the dark eyes imploring, the gentle curve of the mouth press into an O. She saw her true sister as Liddy knew she really was: the kindest, the best of women, who fought for what she thought was right. Who had loved Liddy and Pertwee when no one else did. Who cared for them, when no one else could. Whom she had driven away after Eliza’s death, who had been a stranger to her now for almost twenty years. And yet, as they stared at each other, the years rolled away – they were as nothing, nothing at all.
Liddy swallowed. Very quietly she said, ‘I will take her – but you are not well and you must come back with me and have some beef tea, and rest—’
‘No! I have not been well, it is true, and I am dreadfully thin – but Dalbeattie knows all, and will look after me!’
‘Mary – you must come back with me,’ said Liddy, steadily.
‘I will run away if you make me. You know you cannot imprison me against my will.’ There was the faintest hint of a smile in her eyes. ‘Not after all these years. I will write to you – oh, yes.’
She bent over the child, and kissed the smooth forehead, her lips lingering for just a second too long. Hot tears fell down Liddy’s cheeks: Mary had none. She straightened up, and looked around. ‘Isn’t it funny,’ she said. ‘We grew up next to a graveyard, too.’
Then she wrapped the cloak around herself, again, gritting her teeth for a second.
‘No,’ Liddy cried,
unable to hide her desperation now. ‘Please come back with me, my love. Come back—’
Mary had begun to try to run away, over the gravestones, as they had done as children, skipping over graves in Highgate Cemetery. Liddy chased after her, clutching Stella tightly. She thrust Mary’s daughter at her one more time, whilst she removed Pertwee’s thick coat, and then flung it around her sister’s shoulders.
‘It was—’
‘Pertwee’s. I know. I remember it.’ Mary stood at the gate, wrapping the warm coat around her, swamped by its thickness, the red lining flashing bright in the dull light. The car engine rumbled and reverberated. ‘God rest his soul. We – we three, we were not bad children, were we?’
‘We were good children, and our mother loved us, as we have given love back,’ said Liddy. Tears ran down her cheeks freely now. She took Stella from her mother.
‘Must you really go?’ she said softly, one more time. ‘Can you not—’
‘I cannot,’ said Mary, her voice breaking. She tucked the paisley shawl around her daughter’s shoulder, one last little gesture, her knuckles brushing her cheek. ‘I must leave now. Dearest – dearest, Liddy—’
She hurried down the steps, a tiny, stumbling whirling cloud of dark navy, into the waiting car. A taxi cab. Liddy saw her face, once inside, collapse, the hunched way she leaned forward to speak to the driver, the strain in every movement as the car juddered into life, lurching off. Mary was flung backwards. She gathered her tiny hands into her lap – Mary’s old, patient way – staring straight ahead as she was driven down the lane. And she did not once look up at her sister, holding the bundle in her arms.
Liddy stood at the edge of the churchyard staring at the child she held. Her hair was fair, silken like fur against the contours of her baby skull. Her cheeks were plump – she leaned forward, inhaling, feeling the satisfying peach-coolness of the skin.
The Garden of Lost and Found Page 49