by Lea Wait
“The scandal?”
“Between 1938 and 1970 social welfare people in the UK sent about ten thousand children abroad. The foster system in the UK was overburdened, and the children were sent to former British colonies like Canada and Rhodesia and New Zealand—and Australia. The idea was that those countries could use cheap labor and, some said, wanted to increase their white populations. Some of the children—they called them the child migrants—had been abandoned in Britain. Some had been born out of wedlock. Many had one or even two parents who couldn’t care for them temporarily. Some were as young as three; most, like my dad, were between the ages of seven and ten. Still young enough not to remember a lot, or to question that they were orphans. But most of them had living relatives.”
“Didn’t those relatives ask questions?”
“That’s one of the saddest parts. They were told their children had died in foster care.”
I put my needlepoint down and took a sip of beer. “That’s awful! And no one knew?”
“Not until several child migrants who’d been sent to Australia went back to Britain as adults to try to find out who they were. In 1987 Margaret Humphreys, a social worker in Nottinghamshire, met with them and started putting the pieces together. Her search ended up as an international investigation.”
“She was able to prove what happened?”
“She was. I was still a child when it all broke, but Grandmum, bless her, knew it was important. She registered me as the child of one of the migrants. The idea was to try to connect the children, now grown, of course, or their children, with family members who might still be alive in the UK. A trust was set up to help make that happen. A few years ago the British government finally apologized for the program.”
“A little late for that,” I pointed out. “So what did you do?”
“When I was growing up I knew my dad had been one of the child migrants, but I didn’t think much about it, and I didn’t want Grandmum to think I didn’t appreciate her bringing me up. I was happy, helping her with the store. Then when I was twenty-five Grandmum died.”
I shuddered. What would my life be like without Gram? I didn’t want to think about it.
“I decided I wanted to know about my father’s background. Find out whether I had family in the UK. So I applied to the Family Restoration Fund.” She paused. “It took two years before they were able to help me.”
“And did they find your family?”
Sarah nodded. “They found Dad’s mother. Of course, she was an old woman by that time. Grandmum had left me a little money, and I sold her store and its contents, so I could afford to do whatever I needed to do. The Fund helped me get to England to see my other grandmother.”
We’d stopped drinking or eating. I focused on Sarah.
What if I’d been separated from Gram? She’d raised me after Mama disappeared, the way Sarah’s grandmum had raised her. But what if there’d been another woman I’d been related to? A woman in another country? Would I have traveled around the world to find her?
Sarah’s voice was taut. “Meeting my English grandmother wasn’t easy. She was almost ninety, and she’d had a hard life. Her sight and hearing were going. She was living in a home for the destitute elderly. At first she didn’t understand who I was. After all, she’d been told her son had died years and years before.” Sarah picked up her beer and took several swallows. “She had a picture of him, though. He was with her at a park, on a swing. Dad would have treasured that. He didn’t have any pictures of his mother, or of himself as a child.” Sarah got up. “Would you like to see it?”
“I’d love to.”
When she returned from her bedroom she handed me a small framed black and white photograph. It was out of focus, but the smiles on the little boy and his mother were clear.
“I couldn’t change my grandmother’s life, but I wanted to know more about her, and about how my dad ended up in the foster system.”
“It must have been very hard. Being in a new country, talking to an old woman about events seventy years ago.”
“I kept thinking my dad would have wanted me to be there, with his mom. Getting to know her a little.”
“Did she tell you what happened?”
“She told me she’d been a teenager during the Second World War. Poor. She’d met an American soldier stationed near London. He was an artist, working with the British Army, sketching, documenting the war in England.”
“Sounds like a romantic movie.”
“It does. And, at least at first, they were happy. The times were awful, but they shared them. He even asked her to marry him. But then she found out he was already engaged to a woman back in the States, and she broke off the relationship.”
“So no happy ending.”
“No. And by that time she was pregnant.”
“Did she tell him?”
Sarah nodded. “He even sent money for a few years. Money for his son. But postwar England was hard for an uneducated woman with a child but no husband. She told me that when her son was five she was desperate. She’d lost her waitressing job and couldn’t pay for her flat. Her little boy was hungry, so she gave him to the social services ladies. They promised it would be a temporary placement. Her son would be cared for while she saved enough to start over.”
“Did she ever see him again?”
“Once or twice. Then one day when she arrived at the children’s home where he’d been living he was gone. They told her there’d been a measles epidemic. They were sorry. He’d died.”
“How awful for both of them! And she never married?”
“No. She wrote to Bob—that’s what she called him—and told him their son was dead.”
Sarah’s hands were clenched. “She wouldn’t tell me what she did after that. I don’t think she had a good life. At the nursing home they said she’d been a charwoman until she was too old and weak to work anymore.”
“So sad.”
“I was furious,” Sarah said, getting up and striding from one side of the room to the other as though she’d like to hit someone. “This poor woman—my grandmother!—had lived a horrible life, and even lost her son, all because she’d fallen in love. If only I’d known sooner, I might have been able to make her last years a little easier. But I hadn’t known.” She turned to me. “She died a month after I met her.”
“At least she died knowing she had a granddaughter.”
“Yes.”
“And she gave you the picture.”
“Her nurse did, after she died. I’d been my grandmother’s only visitor. She gave me the photo, and several letters my grandmother had kept.”
“Letters?” I leaned forward.
“They were crumpled and faded and hard to read. But they were from a man named Bob. She’d kept them all those years. They were postmarked ‘Haven Harbor, Maine.’”
“Did she know her Bob had become rich and famous?”
“All she knew was he was an artist,” Sarah said. “When she knew him, that’s what he was. An aspiring artist. That’s all I knew about him then, too. But after she’d died and I’d seen the letters, I decided to go to Haven Harbor. I knew he’d been here in the early nineteen fifties. He could have left long ago. But it was a clue. After all, I’d already traveled from Australia to England. Flying across the pond was simple. I wanted to find my grandfather, wherever he was, and tell him what had happened to my grandmother and to his son.” Sarah paused. “Tell him he had a granddaughter.”
“That’s why you came here.”
Sarah nodded. “I got here about five years ago, checked into one of the B and Bs, and asked my hostess if she’d heard of a Bob Lawrence. She laughed—said everyone knew who Robert Lawrence was. But I’d missed him. He’d died fifteen years before.”
“You must have been so disappointed.”
“I went to the library and looked up his biography. Dozens of books and magazine articles had been written about him and his art. I read everything I could find, but none of them
mentioned my grandmother, or anything about that period in his life except that he’d served in the armed forces in England during World War Two. After he came home he married and he and his wife—probably the American fiancée—had a son, Theodore. Ted. By the late nineteen-sixties his paintings had become famous.”
“Did you tell Ted Lawrence who you were?”
“I couldn’t just walk in and announce that I was the daughter of his father’s illegitimate son born at the end of World War II. The only proof I had was the picture of my father. And a story. And the letters, of course. But I’d found out what I wanted to know: who my father was, and where he’d come from.” She smiled. “And I’d fallen in love with this town, and its people. I’d cut my ties to Australia. I kept thinking that Haven Harbor was where my family was from. I didn’t think it was important that Ted Lawrence knew I was his niece. What was important was that I knew who my family was. Who I was.”
I nodded slowly. “I think I understand.”
“Then I met your gram at church. I knew I wanted to stay here, but I didn’t know how I could support myself and become part of the community. I told Charlotte about my grandmum and her business, and she encouraged me to use what I knew about antiques and the money I had left to start my own business. Antiques are popular in Maine. And when she expanded the Mainely Needlepointers I was one of the first to volunteer to help. Doing needlepoint made me feel closer to my grandmum in Australia. Somehow it brought the two threads of my family together. I was—content.”
“How did Ted Lawrence find out who you were, then?”
“That’s the next part of the story,” said Sarah. “Maybe the strangest part. Shall I put together the other pizza?”
Chapter Three
“Children, farewell, your sleep is sweet,
Yet still the silent tear will flow
’Tis well you were not doomed to meet
Life’s chequered scenes of care and woe.”
—An elaborate family register surrounded by roses. A list of family members, many of whom had already died, enhanced by a painted scene of a large home and a weeping willow, created by Janet Carruthers. Janet was born in Scotland in 1809. She and her family (her father was a minister) arrived in America in 1813.
Sarah picked up the empty platter that had held the first pizza she’d made. We must have finished it. I’d been so focused on her story I hadn’t noticed. But the lingering taste of oregano and cheese reminded me that we’d met to have dinner as well as talk.
“More. Yes,” I agreed.
She moved to the kitchen. I watched her quickly stretch the dough into a quirky circle on a pizza stone and cover it with a light layer of tomato sauce, several handfuls of grated cheeses, and sliced mushrooms.
Neither of us said anything until the pie was in the oven and she’d returned with another beer for each of us.
As the pizza baked, she continued her story.
“I’d gotten to know Ted Lawrence a little,” she said. “After all, his gallery is just down the street. I’d gone in a few times to see the paintings and I went to openings before the Chamber of Commerce suggested all Haven Harbor stores should stay open late on Thursday Art Walk nights, and I had to be at my store. I’d asked about his father’s paintings. My grandfather’s paintings, of course, although he didn’t know that. He told me about the hours each day his father had spent in his studio. That his paintings were based on real places, but their colors and shapes and energy were the way he saw them in his mind. He’d called more realistic paintings ‘postcard art.’” Sarah smiled. “Ted said his father taught him to see the world through shades and forms and emotion. But he knew his paintings would never be as great as his father’s.”
“Does he—Ted—still paint?”
“Not as much as he used to. He’s spent his life ensuring that his father’s work won’t be forgotten. Although his gallery here on Main Street shows a dozen other artists, the private gallery at his home is devoted to his father’s work. He says he’s too old and tired to focus on his own painting. His father’s legacy is his work.”
What if Sarah had known her grandfather? Would he have taught her to paint too, as he had his son? Would she be an artist today instead of a dealer in antiques?
My thought was interrupted by the beeping of the oven timer. As Sarah went to get the second pizza, I stared at her Robert Lawrence painting. I knew he’d based it on the Haven Harbor Light. But the closer I looked at it, the more I realized the lighthouse had never looked the way he’d painted it. His lighthouse was a swirl of shades of white and gray, as though winds were surrounding the building, above the force of the breakers arching toward the ledges below it, daring ships to approach.
Sarah’s pizza was delicious. No wonder we’d finished her first pie so quickly. “When did you tell Ted?” I asked. “Tell him his father was also your grandfather.”
“After you came back to Haven Harbor in May,” Sarah said, “I started thinking about families again. Charlotte—your gram—welcoming you home, and you searching for the truth about your mother reminded me of my grandmum, and my searching for my dad’s family. For my family. That’s when I decided to tell Ted.”
“So you told him ’way back in May? Four months ago?”
“Not until early July. Late one afternoon I went to his gallery. I told myself I was going to look at the paintings, but really I was getting up enough courage to talk with him. He isn’t at the gallery all the time; Jeremy takes care of most of the customers. But that afternoon they were both there. Ted and I were talking about the paintings as usual, and then, suddenly, he suggested I come back to his home to see his other, private gallery, where he kept his father’s work, including pieces he owned that he didn’t plan to sell. It was where he took his best customers.”
“The ones who could afford his father’s work.”
“Some of them, of course. But also people he thought would understand the paintings. Would appreciate them. Jeremy told me later than many of the guests invited to The Point, the Lawrence home, were artists themselves, looking for direction. Ted thought his father’s work might help them to find their passion.”
“And so you went to The Point,” I said, wanting Sarah to hurry. To tell me less about the art and more about her family.
“I did. That day was the first time I saw this painting.” She gestured at the lighthouse. “And he showed me many more. And even, after a while, some of his own work.” She took a sip of beer. “Ted didn’t paint the way his father had hoped, or the way he’d aspired to paint. But I liked his work. His paintings were quieter than Robert’s, more delicate. They had a different sensibility.”
“And?”
“We drank wine, and ate shrimp he defrosted, and he asked the question you’ve wondered about: Why did I come to Maine? How did I end up in Haven Harbor? I told him my story, the way I’ve told you today. At first I didn’t tell him that my dad’s father was his father. But then he guessed.”
“He guessed?”
“He told me to wait. Then he went to a small room between the main house and the gallery, and rummaged through a lot of paintings and sketches. He was gone maybe twenty minutes before he came back with a small painting. I knew immediately it was a portrait of my grandmother. She was young and her hair was curled up and under, the way women did it in the forties. She looked the way she had in the photograph of her and my father.”
“What did he say?”
“He told me that after his father died he’d inventoried all the work that was left. A lot of pieces had been done years before; his father hadn’t wanted them exhibited or sold, but kept them for sentimental reasons, or to remind him of techniques he’d used years before. Ted found the portrait among those. At first he didn’t think anything about it. It was dated 1944 and he knew his father had been in England then. He’d found other sketches of England, too. But no other portraits.” Sarah threw her head back a little, as though remembering. “Ted also found several letters from England tha
t his father had saved. One of them included a picture of a young boy, maybe two years old.”
“So Ted knew!”
“He suspected his father had an affair when he was overseas, and there had been a child. But that’s all he knew. He had no proof. No return address. And by that time both his parents were dead; he had no one to ask. But he saved everything. He said he hoped someday the mystery would be solved.”
“And it was. You solved it.”
“He had no doubts.” Sarah’s smile was wide. “He welcomed me, the way I’d dreamed he would. Said he’d always wanted a brother, and wished he’d known my father. Said my eyes were like his father’s.”
“How incredible. You must have been walking on air.”
“I was. Haven Harbor had seemed like home from the beginning, you understand. But now I had a family. An uncle!”
“How could you have kept it a secret for so long? I’d have wanted to shout it to the heavens!”
“That first night, that’s exactly how I felt! Ted got out old books of photographs and started introducing me to my family. It was all so amazing. I couldn’t keep all the stories straight, and we laughed . . . but even that first night we both realized there might be a problem.”
“A problem?”
“Ted has three children. None of them are artists, or are involved with his business, or live in Haven Harbor. He hardly ever sees them. But Ted’s house alone must be worth a fortune. His father’s paintings certainly are. And here I’d just arrived and we’d decided I was a member of the family. A member no one had known about. Ted immediately said I should share his father’s estate. That I was Robert’s granddaughter, and that was only fair.”
“Wow! You’d be rich!”
Sarah shook her head. “I told him I wasn’t interested in the money. I had a life. A business. A cat. Ruggles is hiding under the bed, by the way. I’d been looking for a family. For connections to the past. Not for an inheritance.”
“And he said?”