“Doesn’t she want to come home?” Samuel’s voice was barely a whisper.
Ruth didn’t answer right away; she seemed to be thinking. Then she said, “Well, of course she does. What a thing to say.”
Samuel felt a great tide of anger rising up toward his mouth. He knew better than to yell but he felt certain there are some things a boy couldn’t be expected to control. Because sometimes it seemed as if the more he missed his mother, the more he loved her, the farther away she got. “She didn’t even say goodbye,” he said, coming as close to shouting as he dared. “Why would she do that, Ruth? She just left while I was sleeping. She didn’t say goodbye.”
“Samuel Clay, lower your voice.” Ruth took her hands off the dough and a cloud of flour rose up toward her face. “You know very well why your mother didn’t say goodbye. The trip to America was very sudden and she had to be in London by the morning, which meant leaving here in the dead of night. I helped her pack in a great hurry and I know for a fact she looked in on you, sat on your bed and stroked your face. But she didn’t want to wake you because you were sleeping so soundly.”
“She hasn’t written a letter. Not one.”
“What about those postcards you love so much?”
Samuel looked down at his school shoes. “It’s not the same thing.”
“Does that mean you wouldn’t be interested in receiving another one?”
This caused a spark to light up behind Samuel’s green eyes. “You mean?”
Ruth nodded, returning to the dough. “I put it on your bed.”
Samuel had no time to respond; he was already running for the stairs.
3
Boston Harbor sparkled like gemstones under a sun so perfectly round and golden it looked like an egg yolk. Samuel sat down on the bed, the postcard wrapped between his fingers. He always studied the picture first, leaving his mother’s handwritten note until last. It was like enjoying the roast chicken while every part of you could hardly wait for the dessert. His mother’s note was always dessert. But like any delicious treat, once it was within reach, it proved impossible to resist.
Samuel turned the card over. His eyes swept across her ornate handwriting and he felt that familiar rush, warm and quick, washing through him. Her hand had pressed each and every letter onto that postcard. She had probably sat at a desk in her hotel room or in a tea shop somewhere, thinking only of him, and writing this message. These were her words. Her words, just for his eyes. Samuel took a breath and started reading as slowly as he could manage.
July 20, 1961
Dearest Samuel,
How I miss you, my little man. I have arrived in Boston and it is damp and dreary, just like my spirits. As yet there is no end in sight to my business here in America. But I promise that I will be home as soon as I am able. Be good for Ruth.
With love and kisses,
Mother
The last he heard she was still in New York. Now she had moved on to Boston. He would need to update the atlas. Samuel turned the card over, then over again, as if he might find some other message from his mother, something hidden that might offer a clue. People did that sometimes—plant clues. But there was nothing. No end in sight to my business here. Why was there no end in sight? Why was it taking so long?
Samuel knew that there had been a lot of trouble with the steel mill in Lincolnshire. They owed more than owned, that’s what his father always said. Then after he died, the banks, which were run by appalling men with ice-cold hearts, expected his mother to sell everything, accept her losses and walk away. But his mother had a head for numbers; that’s another thing his father used to say. And so she had gone to every corner of England trying to raise something she called capital. When that didn’t work, she decided to try her luck in America. Samuel’s grandfather lived in New York, though Samuel had never met him, on account of the old man being sour as a lemon. Samuel’s father said that, as well.
I will be home as soon as I am able. She promised that at the end of every postcard. There had been eight in all, including this latest one. All declaring that she would come home as soon as I am able. What did that mean? Why wasn’t she free to come home whenever she chose? Was someone holding her against her will? He hoped not. Well, mostly. A small part of him, a wicked part he was certain, wished that she had been locked away. Perhaps by his grandfather, who hated the English. Or one of those American bankers. Because then it wouldn’t be her choice to be away so long.
Samuel put the card down on the bed, then picked it up again. Waiting for someone to come home was an awful thing. The boy sighed. Then he turned it over and began reading again.
* * *
“‘Be good for Ruth. With love and kisses, Mother.’” Samuel took a drink of milk and wiped his mouth. “Shall I read it again?”
“You’ll wear the ink out if you keep reading it over.” Ruth was using an empty peach tin to press the dough into circles, which were the only shape shortbread ought to be, as far as Samuel was concerned. “Still, I’m glad you know where your mother is and that she’s well.”
“I wonder what Boston is like,” said Samuel.
“The head housekeeper at the first home I worked in, Mrs. Delaney, she’d been the governess for a family from Boston in her younger years. She said they were ghastly.”
“Are all the people from Boston ghastly?”
“I doubt it. People are much the same everywhere you go—good and bad and everything in between.”
“Do you think Mother will be there long?” Samuel had propped the postcard against a large jar of flour and was gazing into the picture of Boston Harbor.
“How should I know, Samuel? You wanted to hear from your mother and now you have—be glad of that.” Ruth tried to sound stern but Samuel thought she sounded rather pleased. “It’s a lovely card and mind what she says about being good for me.”
“She hates it there and wants to come home, that’s what she says.” Samuel picked up the card and turned it over. “‘I have arrived in Boston and it is damp and dreary, just—’”
“‘Just like my spirits,’” said Ruth, interrupting him. “I know it by heart myself, you’ve read it out so many times. Let’s talk of something else.”
Ruth could do that. Make a decree, like a queen or something, that certain topics had reached their end and that would be that.
“I won’t read it aloud again because you don’t want me to,” Samuel said, “but Mother says she misses me and that she wants to come home. That’s what she says.”
“Of course she wants to come home.” Ruth set aside the peach tin and began to place the cut pieces of dough onto a baking tray. “But as I’ve told you too many times to count, before she can, your mother has important business to see to.”
“Doesn’t she know how long it will take?” said Samuel. “She must have some idea when—”
“Why must she? These things are very complicated and...” Ruth sighed. “Your mother is seeking a large investment and bankers don’t hand over big sums of money without giving it a great deal of thought.”
“Why doesn’t she ever tell me where she’s staying so that I can write back?” A frown had set in, the boy’s nostrils flaring. “Why, Ruth?”
“Well, I can’t say for certain.” Ruth cleared her throat the way she always did when something was making her uncomfortable. “Perhaps she didn’t think of it or she isn’t properly settled in yet, and if she did tell you, well, I expect she wouldn’t have the time to be answering letters.”
“I’ll telephone her, then,” declared Samuel.
Ruth rolled her eyes. “Don’t they teach you anything at that village school? I can hardly get a call through to my sister in Surrey without a dozen operators and an earful of crackle, let alone America.”
“I’ll send her a telegram. You don’t need a dozen operators for that, do you?” He nodded. “I’l
l send a telegram to Boston and ask her when she’s coming home.”
Ruth smiled faintly. “And how are you planning to do that? As you’ve just been grumbling, you haven’t a clue which hotel she’s staying at.”
The boy glanced up at the housekeeper and his face was now a mask of suspicion. “Do you know?”
“Me?” Ruth’s mouth dropped open and she huffed. “If I knew that, I’d be sending her a telegram myself so that you’d stop asking me these infernal questions.”
When Samuel got worked up about his mother, all sorts of thoughts bubbled up in his mind. Sometimes they were just things he felt—the ache of missing her or the resentment that she was gone. Other times they were things he wanted to know. Things he had a right to know. And he would ask them, even when a part of him dreaded what the answers might be.
“Why didn’t Mother take me with her? If she knew she was going to be away for so long, why did she leave me here?”
Ruth stopped placing the dough onto the tray. “You think too much, young man. Naturally your mother wanted you with her—there’s no question about that—but how could she take all of those important meetings with you by her side?”
“You could have come, too,” said Samuel.
“And who would look after this house?”
“Olive,” said Samuel.
“Enough.” Ruth’s voice was low and firm. “I won’t have you working yourself into a state. We know how that ended last time.”
Samuel remembered. He had gotten upset and said things and done things that had made Ruth cross—and there had been consequences. So, he knew he should stop. Only, he couldn’t. “I want to call Uncle Felix.”
Ruth stood up. “Whatever for?”
“He might have heard something. He might know where Mother is staying or when she’s coming home.”
His uncle Felix was his father’s only brother, and though Samuel didn’t see him a great deal, he liked him well enough. Felix would play cricket with him and sneak him extra sweets and make a joke of almost everything. But since his father died Uncle Felix hadn’t been around much. He lived just a few miles away in Penzance, but being pathologically sociable, he was rarely home.
“I spoke to your uncle just last week and he’s had no word from your mother.” Ruth walked to the oven and slid the tray inside. “In fact, he was envious of your postcards.”
“I want to talk to Uncle Felix,” said Samuel again.
“You’re not going to bother him with this nonsense.” Ruth wiped her brow and Samuel saw that the flour had coated her hands like a pair of gloves. “I’m running this house single-handedly and I’ve got more important things to do than argue with the likes of you, Samuel Clay. Take yourself up to your room and change out of that school uniform and then see to your homework.”
Samuel knew the stern look on Ruth’s face very well—it meant there was no room for argument and that her patience had reached its end. So he stood up. But he pushed the chair back in such a way that its hard scraping along the stone floor would demonstrate his condemnation, without resorting to backchat. Ruth didn’t tolerate backchat.
“Put that chair under the table just like you found it,” Ruth said.
The boy did as he was told.
“That’s more like it. Now off you go. March.”
Samuel walked quickly from the room, his face a storm of grievances, and he knew, even though he didn’t have eyes in the back of his head, that Ruth was watching him leave the whole time.
4
He didn’t go to his room and change out of his school uniform, not right away. Instead, Samuel took his mother’s postcard to the study at the far end of the house. This room was where his father did most of his worrying, and after he died, all of those worries were handed to Samuel’s mother, so she took the study for herself. She had removed the heavy curtains and had the dark bookshelves painted white—stocking them with all the books she had brought with her from America. To cheer the place up, she said.
Whenever Samuel entered the room his eyes tended to fall on all the empty spaces. The mahogany cabinet where his father kept his papers, the pair of vases with shells on them and the paintings of Greek myths. They were all gone now, sold and shipped out, because there were bills to pay and what good is a painting or a vase without a house to put them in? There were empty spaces like this all over the house. Samuel wasn’t very interested in the old paintings or vases but he did wonder where they were now and if they were happy. Which he knew was stupid.
Next to his mother’s desk, by the bay window, was a small table. On it sat a very large book. The atlas had been a gift from Samuel’s father to his mother—no one knew why—and even though she never really looked at it much, she kept it there by her desk. Samuel supposed this was on account of it being a treasure.
The atlas was open at a double page. There was England, France, Spain and parts of Africa on one side, the Atlantic Ocean in the middle, and the Americas on the other. The atlas had a crowd of pins stuck in it with tiny green flags at the top—green being his mother’s favorite color—marking all the places she had been on her journey through America and Canada: California, Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania, Toronto, New York. Across the sea there was another pin fixed into the page, this one with a white tag. It was planted in West Cornwall, on the outskirts of Penzance, which was as close to their village as Samuel could manage.
Even though the atlas was his mother’s, it was Samuel’s father who had taught him to use the book. When Samuel was four or five—he wasn’t exactly sure—his mother went away to Bath for a rest. She was very tired so she went to a place where there would be peace and quiet and time to breathe. Samuel had once heard his father talking to Uncle Felix on the telephone and he said that Margot—that was Samuel’s mother’s name—was not suited to domestic life. He said that she had a restless soul. When Samuel asked what that meant, his father had ruffled Samuel’s hair and told him it meant his mother was always looking around the next corner, waiting for the next thing. What was the next thing? His father had smiled, though he didn’t look especially cheerful, and said he really didn’t know.
While she was away Samuel missed her very much. He would look out of the window, waiting for her return all day and call for her in the night, as if his cries would carry her from Bath and spirit her back to him. Asking again and again where she was and when she was coming back and why she was gone. He was always like that with his mother—even when she was near him it was never quite near enough. So his father showed him the atlas, planting a pin in West Cornwall near where their house was and another in Bath, where his mother was resting.
“Now you can see how close she is,” his father had said.
And though it was just a drawing on a page and a few pins, seeing where she was and how small the distance was between them made Samuel feel better. Just a little. He did try to understand, about his mother being a restless soul and always looking around the next corner, but sometimes it felt like she was always someplace else. Traveling, resting, visiting friends, taking a break to do something his parents called rejuvenate. After his father died, Samuel’s mother disappeared again. His father had fallen one night coming home from his club, hitting his head on the front steps of their home in Berkeley Square. Samuel’s mother said that her husband didn’t drink to excess as a general rule, but he was especially sad because the London house, which had belonged to his grandfather and was therefore horribly sentimental, was to be sold under orders from a group of scoundrels she called the creditors.
She stayed away for seven weeks and three days. In London, mostly, settling things up. She wrote to Samuel two times, short letters commenting on the rain and how there was a great mess that needed sorting out. So Samuel had stuck a pin in London and looked at the atlas every day, reminding himself that his mother was barely a hand’s length away, which wasn’t so very far when you thought of it like
that.
And now she was gone again. She didn’t want to go away—she hadn’t planned it—but then business was like that, wasn’t it? No, she didn’t want to go away. But who was going to fix things, if not her?
Samuel opened the drawer of his mother’s desk and retrieved the box of pins. His father had cut the colored tags for him, storing them in an empty box of matches, so he selected a green one and attached it to the top of the pin. Then he located Boston on the map and pushed the pin down into the paper like he was planting a flag. His eyes traveled over all the cities she had visited in the exact order she had visited them, landing, finally, in Boston. Where she was at that very moment. He wondered what she was doing right now and if she thought of him as endlessly as he thought of her. He figured she must.
He was here and she was there, and even though it didn’t look so very far away, Samuel couldn’t pretend she was as close as a hand or even a forearm. After all, he was nine now. Once more, the boy took the voyage across the sea, this time from Boston to Cornwall, his finger drifting back and forth across the Atlantic, marking out the miles as he went and all the distance between them.
5
After Samuel had changed out of his school uniform, his mind turned to places he had no business being. This presented something of a challenge because Ruth had a knack for being everywhere all at once. He would need to be careful. Which is why the door to his bedroom opened with great caution. Samuel stuck his head out, peering up and down. It wasn’t quite dinnertime but the sun had dropped away and now the only thing passing through the windows were shadows, fixing themselves along the long corridor like curtains of milky gloom.
Samuel was hoping to hear Ruth in the kitchen clunking pots and pans or opening cupboards. But it was too far away and all he heard was his own breaths and the grandfather clock at the far end of the hallway. He walked carefully, which he knew was stupid, because wasn’t he allowed to be walking down the hall? And besides, he hadn’t done anything he wasn’t supposed to yet. With that in mind, his stride picked up and he walked as carefree as he could manage, even running his hand along the paneled wall as he went, which he felt was something a boy with nothing to hide would do.
The Boy at the Keyhole Page 2