‘Self-absorption,’ Milo had declared, tempted from his newspaper for a bit of the action, ‘is the phrase that leaps to mind. No good talking to him when he’s got his head full of a story. Ever since a child he’s been the same. The eyes glaze over; the attention wanders. Might as well talk to yourself.’
And Lottie had told the story about the writer she’d met at a wedding. He’d talked about himself right through the wedding breakfast and then he’d said: ‘Well, that’s enough about me. Let’s talk about my book.’
It had been clear that Annabel had been torn between joining in with her own amusing experiences about writers, and defending Matt.
‘It’s all worth it, though, isn’t it?’ she’d asked. ‘Look at the terrific success Matt’s had.’
She’d smiled understandingly at him, a kind of ‘I’m on your side’ smile that had been excruciatingly embarrassing, and the other three had been silent for a moment before one of them had changed the subject. Ever since, she’d been determined to show that, however antisocial, tiresome or peculiar writers were, she was made of the stuff that could support and encourage them: and him in particular.
Now, she looked over her shoulder at him and he made himself smile at her.
‘I love your little house,’ she said. ‘And it’s such a romantic story, isn’t it? Milo’s great-grandmother having it built specially so that she could paint.’
‘Lots of people have had follies built,’ he answered idly. ‘That’s what it was, I suppose.’
He’d realized right away that he didn’t want to talk in any depth about the Summer House, though he’d been obliged to show it to her. She’d been thrilled with everything, even the kitten.
‘Oh, Matt, he’s so sweet,’ she’d cried. ‘I didn’t know you were a cat person.’
‘Neither did I,’ he’d said, pretending indifference. ‘He just appeared from nowhere and I’m waiting to see if someone in the village is going to claim him.’
He’d known then: he hadn’t wanted her to know about the kitten, or Helena, or George and his ghost twin. And he certainly didn’t want her to know about his own history. There on the veranda of the Summer House he’d taken the decision, and now it only remained to tell Annabel.
‘Perhaps we’d better get a move on,’ he suggested, ‘if we’re going to have tea with Im.’ He got up and began to pack the hamper, to shake out the rug. He glanced back towards Hurlstone Point, but the dance was over and the silken wings were folded.
Annabel helped to pack up the picnic feeling furious. Whatever she did or said, she got nowhere, and she simply dreaded getting back to London and having to tell her friends that she and Matt were no further on. Whilst she collected the plates, she brooded on the last twenty-four hours. For a start, she hadn’t been prepared for the ghastly Venetia to be a fixture at the High House; the old witch made her feel nervous, as if she could see right through her, though Lottie and Milo were quite sweet and made her very welcome, though not exactly as Matt’s girlfriend; not as though she were special to him.
And then, it had been something of a shock, and not a good one, when she’d discovered that Matt’s little house was right next door, so to speak, and that the gardens connected, and that there was all this matey to-and-fro stuff going on. Of course, it was a very, very nice little house, and definitely worth having to put up with the communal bit to have it plus the swish London pad. It was perfect for the bolt hole; the weekend retreat. But there was still this block where Matt was concerned. He treated her like a friend but nothing more; nothing personal, nothing intimate. Apparently, he’d had a couple of relationships, neither of them very long-lived, and she’d heard that both girls had been very sad when he’d finished with them. Perhaps, since Epiphany, he was wary that any woman would be after his loot.
Annabel gave a mental shrug: if that was the case she’d simply hang around until she’d won his confidence. She was good at waiting. And now they were off to see the sister and the tiresome child, and, if that weren’t enough, a puppy as well. She wasn’t really an animal person, to tell the truth, but she could put on a good show with them if she had to; like she’d had to with Pud and that wretched kitten. There was nothing worse than the smell of cats in a house, unless it was dog hair everywhere. She might have to do something about the kitten if things moved on a bit. She wished Matt would come back to London. It was so much more her scene, and she so loved his flat.
The packing-up was done, and the car bumped down the track and into the lane. The robin hopped out from the sheltering gorse and began to peck up the last of the crumbs.
‘It’s been a bit odd,’ Im said. ‘I can’t help thinking about Mum and wishing I’d been a bit, well, kinder. If anything happened to Rosie I’d be out of my mind and when you think about it, Matt, he must have been about her age, mustn’t he?’
They stood together at the big doors that led into the garden, watching Annabel playing with Rosie and The Dodger.
‘Why do you say that?’ asked Matt. He didn’t question who the ‘he’ was; he knew that.
‘Because you were at the age where you could remember some things but not others. You can’t remember his name but you can remember watching Mum playing and laughing with you both. And, of course, nobody ever referred to him afterwards so he never entered into a collective family history. Your memory is bound to be very patchy under those circumstances. I think you can’t have been more than eighteen months at the very most. An awful lot of our earliest memories are bound up with what other people tell us. Received wisdom underlines things we can recall and puts the flesh on the bare bones, so to speak, and builds up pictures for us. You didn’t have any of that. Poor Mum. I just thought that it was all about Dad and that she should have been able to pull herself together a bit for our sakes. After all, think of all those young army widows. And I know they lost their sons too, and still coped without drinking themselves to death, but I still wish that I’d known.’
‘The thing is,’ Matt said after a moment, ‘that we still might not have been that patient about it. Perhaps you have to have a child yourself to truly understand what she was going through.’
‘Perhaps.’
Im stood in silence. In her hands she held a toy: a garishly painted Russian doll which she turned and turned about, smoothing it with her fingers, her eyes still fixed on Rosie. He watched her, something teasing at his memory, and then Rosie called to them and Annabel waved.
‘I still don’t think she’s right for you,’ Im murmured.
‘Neither do I,’ he agreed. ‘Sad, isn’t it?’
‘Then tell her,’ she said sharply. ‘Don’t drag it out.’
‘I’m not going to,’ he said crossly. ‘I decided this morning and I’m waiting for the right moment, that’s all. She’s going back to London tomorrow morning.’
‘Well, as long as you don’t do it by text or email,’ she said, and she put the doll on the table and went out into the garden.
Matt hesitated, picking up the doll, unscrewing it and seeing the smaller doll inside: and two thoughts clashed in his mind. One was a mental picture of the painted, wooden cat that had been kept in his mother’s rosewood box but the second was a much more profound shock. If his mother had taken the photographs in order to act out a fantasy, then who had taken and sent that last photograph? He’d almost forgotten about it – but who had taken it, and why send it to the agency with no message or explanation? Had he been wrong about the photographs?
The group in the garden were calling out to him, and, making a great effort to control his shock, he went out to them.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
The journey to Taunton had been a difficult one. Luckily, Annabel had needed to catch the first London train so as to arrive at the office by lunchtime, and this had meant an early start. Matt had explained, on the way to the station, that he wouldn’t be seeing her again; not like this, anyway: that he didn’t want to be giving her the wrong idea. She’d sat silently, biting her lips, her
hands wringing and twining, as she stared ahead. He’d told her that it was not fair to allow her to believe that their friendship was anything more than simply that. She’d broken in then, saying that she didn’t want anything more just yet, but that surely they could go on seeing each other, that they had fun together.
Desperately, he’d agreed that they’d had fun, of course they had, but it was best that she shouldn’t be misled; that he had lots of women friends and that he wasn’t ready for any kind of commitment; that he had a book to write. He’d hated the sound of himself but all his self-preservation instincts were warning him that he mustn’t give an inch here and that it was cruel to give her any kind of hope.
She’d climbed out of the car in stony silence and taken her bag. ‘Please don’t wait,’ she’d said icily; and he’d merely checked that the train was due on time and driven home.
He’d felt such relief as he’d let himself into the Summer House and the kitten had come to meet him, purring and winding round his ankles. He’d made coffee and taken it out on to the veranda. The garden was soaked in heat, and, some way off, he could hear the cuckoo. He sat in silence allowing the peace to fill him, opening his mind and emptying it; the gentle presence was close at hand, comforting him, preparing him. Visions filled his head: the kitten, stripy and tigerish under the lilac tree; Im turning the Russian doll in her hands; the last photograph.
Matt opened his eyes. He sat quite still, puzzling over these images, and then got up and went inside. The rosewood box, which he’d fetched from London on his last visit, stood on a shelf in the sitting room. He picked it up and took it back to the veranda. Opening the lid he was instantly transported back in time; running to his mother with treasures: ‘Shall we put them in the box, Mummy?’ and then the ceremonial fetching of the key, which he’d left in its tiny lock.
The envelope containing the letter from his father was still there, and the suede pochette with his grandmother’s silk handkerchief. The small treasures that he’d been allowed to put in the box were long withered and gone, but the carved and painted wooden cat was there. He took the striped, tigerish-looking object into his hands remembering how his biggest treat had been to play with it. Like Im’s Russian doll it separated into two halves, though in this case it would reveal a smaller cat, and then another, until the final, delightful surprise: a tiny mouse. Gently, Matt twisted the two halves of the cat but it remained firm and he was obliged to use more pressure in order to separate them. As soon as he managed it he could see why. Around the next cat a piece of paper had been wrapped: a very thin, blue sheet of airmail writing paper.
Matt unwrapped the sheet and smoothed it out on his knee: he stared at the words, hardly able to take them in.
Forgive me. Your son David is here with us. He is safe. No harm will come to him. Knowing that I am barren and unhappy because I long for a child, Taji brought him to me. She is my niece and she will stay with us as his nurse. She has done wrong, great wrong, but she loves him too, and she says you have a son and another child to be soon born. My husband is high up in the government and believes that David is Taji’s love child. He will give him a good, happy home. He will want for nothing. Already we love him but I think of your pain and fear. I can do nothing. No scandal must touch my husband. But I will send proof of David’s safety and happiness through your husband’s news agency. We love him so much and we call him Vladimir. Forgive me.
Twice, unbelieving, Matt read the letter. He dropped it and snatched up the packet of photographs from the box: one sent every year to assure his mother of David’s continuing existence and his happiness. Again and again he picked up one, and then another; not his own face, after all, but David’s face: smiling, laughing, looking away at something distant; a happy, confident face. At first he experienced a shock of anger. He’d readily believed in a dead twin, but the proof of this live boy, mirroring so exactly his own face and expressions, filled him with a deep, atavistic anger, as though his identity had been stolen; as though he were no longer unique. Very slowly, as the anger subsided and he studied the photos again, the tight, familiar knot of loneliness in his heart began to uncoil; slowly he allowed himself to reach out towards the boy who gazed back at him with such openness and trust.
‘David,’ he murmured – and remembered his mother’s anguish when he’d named his own fictional child’s alter ego ‘David’.
‘Why did you call him that?’ she’d cried, and he’d imagined that it was because it had been his father’s second name that she’d been so distressed. At some subconscious level he’d remembered his twin’s name and used it innocently. How she must have suffered: every time she’d looked at him she would have seen David at his shoulder, like the little ghost in the paintings. He tried to imagine her horror when she’d received the letter; the anguish she and his father had suffered, knowing that David was still somewhere in the world and that they might never see him again. They must have tried to track him down but, in such a country as Afghanistan, with its miles of borders into Russia, they would have had little chance of finding him; and the Cold War was still in its last stages, hindering any easy communication, refusing to allow any damaging information to escape. So at last, when hope was gone, they’d come home and tried to start afresh. Nobody at home would have known much about it; back then, a child’s disappearance in a distant country would not have made the front pages as it might now. And those who had known had kept silence at Helen’s request.
And David was alive: he was alive now. The continuing shock of this fact struck again at his heart. That photograph he’d received a few weeks ago was the latest assurance that David was a strong, happy young man. Matt remembered it, wondering if it had been taken on one of his own book-signing tours abroad. He remembered the cheerful face, half-turned over his shoulder, laughing into the camera. David was alive.
And then another name – ‘Taji’. He repeated it, and instantly memories stirred and shifted: a smiling face bending down to him; small, strong hands lifting him; a pretty singing voice. And now he saw his nightmare’s vision: David being lifted from the other end of the pram by those same small, strong hands and whirled away, whilst he, Matt, remained alone, strapped in the pram, crying until people came running; and then the screams and cries and anguish of the discovery of David, gone.
The kitten jumped up on to his knee and head-butted his hand, curling into the crook of Matt’s arm. He settled, blinking out at the bright sunshine, and Matt stroked him absent-mindedly, yet taking comfort from the warmth and companionship. What now? He must tell them all, Im, Lottie, Milo, about this new discovery; but not quite yet. He needed time to adjust to the shock, to come to terms with this new information.
He smoothed the letter, read it again and folded it. His mother had left it for him to find; she’d left the box to him hoping that he’d open the packet of photographs first, because it was new to him, and then be led onwards to discover the truth. He put the letter back into the box with the photographs and took out his father’s letter. It was a short one and he could remember it almost word for word. A letter from a father, far away, telling his son to be a good boy and to look after his mother and little sister; it had made him feel proud and strong. He took it out, with its familiar photograph of his father standing in a dry, dusty, arid place, holding his camera in his hand.
And here was another heart-stopping shock: now there was a second photograph. His father smiled at him, a child sitting on each arm; twin boys staring into the lens, puzzled and alert. Helen stood beside them, her face turned lovingly towards her boys and Tom. Matt stared at it. This must be the only record to exist of all of them together. The others would have been destroyed before they returned to England lest questions were asked and curiosity roused. Yet she’d kept this one secretly all her life, in hope and faith and love, and passed it on to him at the end.
Matt held the photograph on his knee, staring into the sunny garden; and at last he wept, painfully, agonizingly, for his mother and for his fath
er; and for himself.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
They sat around the table in the breakfast room – Matt, Lottie and Milo. The photographs were scattered between them, the two letters lying side by side. Earlier, Venetia had been picked up by a friend and taken out to lunch, and now the three of them sat contemplating the photos and the letters. The words of Matt’s extraordinary story and their shocked response to it seemed to echo in the silence.
‘So this Taji,’ Milo broke the silence at last, ‘she was your nurse?’
‘As far as I can remember anything, I think she was. The name, when I read it in that letter, gave me an immediate memory jolt. That’s the trouble, you see. I can only see flashes of things. Everything is so fragmented.’
‘Well, that’s fair enough. You can’t have been two. And she was in a prime position to take David, wasn’t she?’
Matt was still finding it odd to hear David referred to so naturally but Milo had grasped Matt’s story with an acuity that had surprised him, and was now working it out for himself.
‘It would have been carefully planned,’ he was saying. ‘Taji would have had some help. She’d have wheeled you somewhere away from home in your big pram where she knew you’d be safe. Then she’d have taken David out, hurried down some little side street and probably into a waiting car, and then she’d have been away and over the border into Russia. Calling David “Vladimir” is the clue there, isn’t it? Vladimir is Russian for David, if I remember rightly. I wonder where it all happened. In the bazaar? Somewhere it was safe to leave Matt but that gave her long enough to get some distance away before the alarm was raised.’
Matt nodded; that sounded perfectly reasonable. He could tell that Lottie was anxious lest he was finding Milo’s down-to-earth approach painful, and he smiled reassuringly at her.
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