‘My mother is planning to name a port after you,’ she told him.
‘I am not sure I understand.’
‘We are developing an iron-ore mine. We need a port for the vessels that will take the ore to the countries buying it.’
‘And your mother intends to name it after me?’
‘Port Anthony.’
He brushed cake crumbs from his lips. ‘I am not sure I deserve the honour. I have always felt guilty that I did not give her more support when she was living here.’
And so he should, thought Peace. Even now he spoke of her more as a slight acquaintance than his daughter. She remembered her mother telling her of those early days, and how ineffectual he had been. Not that Bella had ever held it against him. All her resentment had been directed at the countess. It still was; if the opportunity came to pay Charlotte Richmond back for the malicious things she’d done, Peace was sure Mother would grab it with both hands. Good on her, Peace thought, and to hell with the bloody countess.
‘My mother asked me to enquire about a friend of hers,’ Peace said. ‘Charles Hardy and his wife. Are they still alive?’
‘Charles? Oh, very much so. I don’t get out much nowadays,’ the earl explained, ‘but the last I heard he was in excellent health. Yes, Charles and your mother were very close, at one time. But there’s no wife.’
‘Is she dead?’
‘He never married. Quite the confirmed bachelor, Charles Hardy.’
‘My mother heard he had married your sister-in-law.’
‘My wife would have liked to arrange it, but it never happened. Your mother must have misunderstood the situation.’
That bloody countess, Peace thought. Mother would never have misunderstood anything like that. The bitch must have lied. And jumped the gun, too, putting that false announcement in the paper.
The question was what, if anything, she should do about it. She played with the idea of going to see him herself but there was no point. Also she disliked the idea of Mother having been close to anyone but Father. She would tell her about it, of course; what she chose to do would be her business.
Grandma Jenny was a different matter. Having seen one grandparent, Peace was determined to find the other one. It took some doing but eventually she tracked her down to a small house in Whitstable.
It had a green-painted door and a white doorstep, and stood in a little court off the main street. A boy cycled past, whistling, as Peace rang the bell.
She heard the shuffle of feet, the rattle of a chain, and the door opened a crack. A woman’s face, pale and hollow-eyed, peered out.
‘Mrs Such?’
‘Yes?’
‘I’m your granddaughter,’ Peace said.
And the old lady, staring, let out a small shriek.
‘My dear life!’
As though she had seen a ghost.
Peace was horrified. She had expected surprise, perhaps even pleasure, but not this. ‘I’m sorry if I startled you. I should have warned you but there was no way.’
The old lady had opened the door now but was swaying in the doorway, her face whiter than ever.
‘Please… Let me help you.’
Peace stepped hastily across the threshold and took her grandmother by the arm. Beneath the frayed cardigan the bones were as thin as sticks. The front door opened directly into the sitting room; she led the old lady to an armchair and sat her down in it, while Grandma Jenny continued to stare at her in wonderment.
‘My dear life,’ she repeated in a pale voice.
Does she know who I am? Peace thought. Or has her mind gone? ‘Peace Tucker,’ she said. ‘Your granddaughter from Australia.’
‘You give me such a shock,’ Grandma said. At least she was smiling, now, if only tentatively.
‘I’m sorry,’ Peace said again. ‘Can I get you anything?’
‘Don’ matter. I’m over it now. I’ll make us both a nice cup of tea directly.’ But she was shaking her head slowly, still looking at Peace with an expression of wonderment. ‘An’ what brings you to the old country?’ she asked.
‘I’ve been studying over here. I shall be leaving soon but wanted to see you before I left.’
‘That’s nice.’
‘I had a job finding you.’
‘You would. Mr Such sold ’is boat ever so long ago,’ Grandma told her. ‘Fishing’s a young man’s trade, so ’e decided we should move into town and we been ’ere ever since.’
She insisted on getting them tea, despite the effort it obviously took her, for Grandma Jenny, although not as frail as the earl, was sick.
‘Cancer,’ she explained. ‘I’ve had it on and off for years but this time I reckon it’ll see the finish of me.’
It might have been a cold in the head, the way she spoke.
‘You should have let Mother know,’ Peace said. ‘Maybe she could have arranged something.’
‘No address. Then there was the war, no way to know whether letters got through or not. I was never much for writing,’ Jenny said. ‘Besides, I didn’t want to bother her. My generation, we sorted out our own problems. Nothing to be done, anyway. This thing gets its claws in you, sooner or later that’s it. Not complainin’, mind. I’ve ’ad a good life. I’m glad you come, though, afore it’s too late. How is your mother?’
‘She’s fine. Active as ever.’
‘Maybe I’ll write her a letter now,’ Jenny said. ‘Just a few lines. Hold on a sec and you can take it with you.’ She smiled. ‘Save the cost of a stamp.’
Five minutes later she brought back the sealed envelope.
‘Give it to her direct, won’t you? Can’t have no one else readin’ our secrets, can we?’
She cackled, seemingly recovered from her shock, although every so often her eyes slid back, frowning, to examine Peace afresh.
Peace had not definitely decided to return to Australia at all, at least not immediately, but one look at Grandma’s anxious expression and she thought that maybe she should. ‘I’ll put it straight into her hands.’
‘That’s right, dear. So tell me about yourself.’
They talked: about Peace’s plans, about Australia.
‘And you,’ Jenny said. ‘Not married yet?’
‘Not yet.’
‘You still got time,’ she said consolingly.
Peace mentioned Charles Hardy.
‘She was that keen on ’im,’ Jenny said. ‘I didn’t know nuffin about him until just afore she went to Australia but I reckon it hit ’er ’ard when they split up: although maybe I shouldn’t say so, seein’ ’e’s not your dad. I blame that woman,’ she said fiercely. ‘A right evil bitch, that one. I loved ’er ’usband,’ she said. ‘You never saw a more handsome man when I first met him. Just afore the First War, that was. The Tankerton girls reckoned I must have bewitched ’im.’ She smiled reminiscently. ‘Maybe I did. But if I did, ’e done the same to me.’ She looked up at the clock on the wall and was suddenly on her feet. ‘Look at the time! I don’t like to seem unfriendly, dear, but I’m going to shoo you aht now. Mr Such’ll be ’ome directly and I got to get his tea ready. Don’t like to be kept waiting for ’is tea, Mr Such. Never mind, ’e loves me, an’ that’s all any woman can ask, ain’t that so? Pity you won’t get the chance to meet ’im, but there it is.’
She was obviously determined to get Peace out of the house as soon as possible. It was strange: Perhaps she doesn’t want me to meet her husband, Peace thought, although she couldn’t imagine why, but if that was her plan it failed, because Luke Such turned up half an hour earlier than expected.
Peace met him and smiled and said how nice. He was stronger looking than his wife, his hair grey but still brown in patches, his squat build and square shoulders as solid as a rock. He had nothing to say for himself but that didn’t matter: Peace had seen the person she had come to visit. She made sure she had the old lady’s letter and took the train back to London.
Two weeks later, having said goodbye both to England and Greg Terblanch
e, she was back in Perth.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
‘I promise you,’ Bella said. ‘I had no idea.’
Jenny’s letter lay on the table between them. Whether she was talking to herself or her daughter, Peace could not tell. Bella’s face was deathly white; the contents of the letter had clearly shocked her to the core. It was a notion that Peace found astonishing.
Lower lip caught between her teeth, Bella took up the letter and read it a second time. When she was finished she sighed heavily and held it out to Peace. ‘Read it,’ she said.
Peace took it, her eyes still fixed on Bella’s face. Mother had always been such a cold fish, never showing any real emotions; privately Peace had sometimes wondered whether she had any emotions to express. Now her reaction to the letter revealed she might not be so bulletproof, after all.
Peace began to read. Halfway through she sat back in her chair and stared at her mother before continuing to read.
I wasn’t sure I should tell you because I wasn’t ever certain, but now I’ve met my granddaughter I know I won’t rest easy until I do. The fact is, my darling girl, the earl is not your father. When I got news he’d been killed in the war nothing seemed to matter no more, so when Luke Such wanted to comfort me I let him, only it went further than I meant it to. Then straight away Anthony come back after all and I was that glad to have him home I never even thought the baby I was having could be anyone else’s. I suppose I should have thought it odd that with all the times we was together I only fell pregnant once but it never entered my mind. Then, when your Peace turned up, I took one look and there was no doubt. She’s got Luke’s looks, the spitting image, which means I have lied to you, to Anthony and to my husband. I feel that bad about it but there’s nothing to be done. I know it’ll come as a shock but I hope you can forgive me, because I swear to you, Bella my love, that I never knew.
Peace put the letter down. Eyes wide, she stared at her mother, each woman as flabbergasted as the other.
‘Surely she can’t be right?’ Peace said.
‘It’s like finding a stranger hiding inside your skin,’ Bella said. ‘But she must be right. She would never have written that letter otherwise.’
‘Then that man I saw in Yorkshire wasn’t my grandfather at all.’
‘Apparently not. Until this minute I’ve never thought of him as anything but my father but the truth is after I went to the Grange I was always closer to my grandfather anyway. The man I thought was my grandfather. Frankly I don’t care if he was or wasn’t: he’ll always be Grandpapa to me.’
Bella was gobsmacked; there was no other word for it. She thought: I shall always be a stranger to myself now. She lifted her hand and stared at it, seeing each vein separate and distinct, the skin taut and white over each knuckle. Her hand. No one else’s: hers. Yet in her head, where this newly discovered stranger lived, there was only turmoil. How could Mumma have done this to her? It was one thing to keep her secret when she was unsure of the truth. But why let it out now?
The truth was that Mumma had turned her back on the truth because she had not wanted to believe.
Bella thought, it worked out all right for you, though, didn’t it? Without the lie, there would have been no Ripon Grange, no Miranda Downs, no anything. Bella – this Bella – wouldn’t exist. Yet she still had the same body, the same blood and heart and brain. Nothing had changed.
Everything had changed.
Why had Mumma done it?
Because of the shock of seeing Luke Such in her granddaughter’s face. And because she was dying.
Oh God!
Unknowingly, Bella had clenched her hands. Now she straightened her fingers. Mumma was dying; whether she should have kept her secret or not, that was what mattered. Mumma was dying.
Bella looked at her daughter. ‘There is one thing I must do.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Whoever my father was, Grandma Jenny is my mother. I shall go and see her again before she dies.’
‘And Charles Hardy?’ Peace asked, greatly daring.
Bella’s expression gave nothing away.
‘We shall have to see about Charles Hardy,’ she said.
She flew to Singapore, Singapore to Bangkok, finally to London. Even first class it was an exhausting business. Deborah had arranged a hire car to meet her but by the time the Daimler dropped her at the Ritz Bella felt as though she had just gone through a dust storm with five hundred of the wildest cattle on Miranda Downs. Fortunately she had never found jetlag a problem; she slept the clock round and the following day, with autumnal London cool and wet, with fallen leaves blowing in the street, she arranged for a hire car to drive her to Whitstable.
She had Jenny’s address and found the house without difficulty. It turned out worse than anything she could have imagined.
A strange woman opened the door.
‘What do you want?’
No nonsense was written all over her but Bella could have handled a regiment like her.
‘Mrs Such, please.’
‘Mrs Such ain’t receivin’ visitors.’
‘She’ll receive me,’ Bella said.
‘You from the welfare?’
‘I’m her daughter.’
It was less than a month since Peace had seen Jenny but it was obvious she had gone steeply downhill in the interval. She lay in bed and looked like death. Her face was grey: a skull stripped by suffering.
The shock made Bella gulp. For a second she swayed, then took hold of herself. ‘Hullo, Mumma.’
Jenny looked at her daughter, unspeaking, then held up her arms. Bella held her, Jenny so wasted that it was like holding nothing at all. Bella was a woman who never allowed the world to see her feelings but now the tears ran down her face.
‘You’d best get a chair,’ said Jenny.
Even to say that had exhausted her. She lay for a minute, eyes closed, breath harsh, then looked at the child who had returned to her across so many years and miles. A ghost of a smile. ‘You read me letter?’
‘Peace gave it to me.’
‘Come as a shock, I daresay.’
The biggest shock of my life. But now was not the time to say so.
‘It didn’t bother me, if that’s what you’re asking. I was a bastard before, I’m a bastard now, so what’s new?’
‘I ’ope,’ Jenny whispered, ‘that you don’t plan… to mention it to your dad?’
The effort to speak was painful to see.
‘Not to Luke, not to the earl,’ Bella said. ‘It’s our business, no one else’s.’
‘That’s good.’
‘Don’t talk,’ Bella said. ‘You don’t have to talk.’
‘Not good fer much.’
Her words were barely audible. Yet, while breath remained, Jenny was determined to have her say and Bella recognised herself in her mother’s determination not to admit defeat.
‘You plannin’ on seein’ the earl while you’re ’ere?’
‘Probably not.’
Especially now. But that Bella would not say. ‘I was closer to Grandpapa than I was to him.’
‘’E was a lovely man when I first knew ’im.’ Jenny’s eyes were closed again; it was difficult to know whether she was talking to Bella or herself, yet from somewhere she seemed to have gathered new strength. ‘The war mucked ’im up. ’E weren’t never the same afterwards.’
Her eyes opened. A skeletal hand rested on Bella’s arm.
‘Your ’ubby’s dead, too, I ’ear.’
‘Almost six years ago.’
‘Footloose and fancy free, that’s you.’ Jenny smiled wanly. She drew a shaky breath. ‘What about that Charles ’ardy you was so keen on?’
‘What about him?’
‘Not good for a woman to live alone,’ Jenny whispered. ‘Maybe you should look ’im up, while you’re over ’ere?’
Bella shook her head. ‘I doubt we’d have anything to say to each other after all this time.’
‘One way to find out. Sat
isfy your curiosity, like.’
Jenny’s mouth sagged. Strength had run out. Intelligence still glowed in the faded eyes but words were beyond her. A thread of saliva ran from the corner of her mouth.
‘She needs to rest,’ said the woman who had let her in.
‘I’ll come and see you again,’ Bella said to the dying woman. ‘Tomorrow.’
She walked heavily to the door.
‘Do we know how long?’ she asked the woman.
‘Nurse said could be any time.’
‘And you are?’
‘Mrs Nunes. A neighbour. I keeps an eye on ’er while ’er ’ubby’s out.’
All the years of childhood travelled with Bella on the journey back to London. She thought about Mumma and Charles Hardy. She had also thought about him during the flight. The news that he had never married had hit her like a fist. Now, her wits scrambled like a dozen eggs, she did not know what to do for the best. The best for Charles Hardy; the best for her.
She ached to see him yet Bella, who was seldom afraid, was afraid now. The centre of Charles’s life was here, in England; hers was in Australia. Neither would wish to change that, even if they could. She remembered England with affection but it was still the past, and so was Charles. It would be better to retain her memories of the boy he had been rather than the middle-aged man he had become. The boy and girl who had been so much in love no longer existed; by not seeing him, she could keep her memory of that love alive, but if they met she might not have even that.
No, she would stay in London, visit Mumma every day, do what she could to comfort her. And wait.
The car dropped her at the Ritz. She had examined herself in her handbag mirror during the drive. Her eyes were pink and slightly swollen, but nothing that anyone would notice.
She walked into the lobby and stopped at the concierge’s desk. ‘Any messages?’
‘Two, Mrs Tucker.’
She looked at the slips. Perth had been on the phone. Twice. The messages were marked most urgent. She looked at her Longines.
Three o’clock. That would make it ten at night in Perth. Too bad. If it were that urgent they would be expecting her call.
Dust of the Land Page 39