by Ann Bennett
THE FOUNDLING’S DAUGHTER
Ann Bennett
First Edition 2018
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by the copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2018 Ann Bennett
All rights reserved.
Edited by John Hudspith
Cover design J.D. Smith
All Enquiries to: [email protected]
Contents
Prologue
1. Sarah
2. Connie
3. Sarah
4. Connie
5. Sarah
6. Sarah
7. Sarah
8. Connie
9. Anna’s Diary
10. Connie
11. Sarah
12. Sarah
13. Sarah
14. Sarah
15. Connie
16. Connie
17. July 1932
18. Sarah
19. Sarah
20. Connie
21. Sarah
22. Connie
23. Connie
24. Sarah
25. Anna’s Diary
26. Connie
27. Sarah
28. Sarah
29. Connie
30. Sarah
31. Sarah
32. Sarah
33. Sarah
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Other Books By Ann Bennett
Prologue
ANNA
Bombay, 1934
I stood at the rail, absorbing the frenetic activity on the quayside as the ‘SS Neuralia’ cast off from Victoria Dock. The deck shuddered beneath my feet from the vibrations of the great engines. The ship began to move, and the stretch of murky water between the grey stones of the dock wall and the white steel hull of the liner gradually widened. Smoke from the funnels mingled on the steamy air with the familiar smells of India: spices and cooking and drains.
Other passengers, jostling beside me at the rails, were waving and exchanging farewells with people on the docks.
‘Say hello to Blighty for me!’
‘Give my love to Auntie Doris!’
‘Don’t forget to write!’
Some women were sobbing, dabbing their eyes with handkerchiefs before turning away.
I had no one to wave to on the quayside. I felt so alone, a world apart from all those noisy, friendly, normal people. To them I might have appeared self-possessed with my carefully applied lipstick, my linen suit and a solar topee shading my face. Inside I felt far from it. Although my eyes were dry, there was a dull ache in my heart.
I stayed there by the rails as the ship gathered speed along the seafront with a deafening blast of its horn, past the great arched edifice of the Gateway to India, and out across the bay towards the Arabian Sea. People were still waving their hankies and shouting. The docks became a blur against the backdrop of the city, its white colonial buildings crowding the seafront, lining the semi-circle of the bay. Gradually, the buildings and then the hills behind the city melded into the misty blue of the Deccan mountains.
The other passengers drifted away, to the bars and restaurants, or to their cabins. As the ship gradually put distance between itself and land I stood there alone, enjoying the cool sea breeze on my face after the sweltering heat of the docks, transfixed by the parting with the land I’d grown to love. The mountains and the whole land-mass of India slowly became enveloped in a blue-grey mist, until it was just a smudge on the horizon, receding into a thin grey line. All there was to look at then were the twin furrows of white water left by the ship’s propellers, and the sea-birds wheeling and crying in its wake.
I kept reminding myself how short a time it was since I’d stood at an identical spot on another liner, sailing in the opposite direction. On that day, barely two years before, I’d been entranced as I watched the coast of India and its blue mountains emerge from the haze, and the great city of Bombay come closer, revealing its detail to me minute by minute as my long voyage from England drew to a close. I’d had butterflies in my stomach, knowing I was about to discover a new exotic land; that I was on the brink of something truly wonderful.
How I’d changed from that naive, impressionable girl who’d stepped off that liner. I hardly recognised myself as the same person. And what a mess I’d made of things; an unutterable, stinking mess.
The words Aunt Nora had said to me during my first month on the sub-continent echoed in my mind. You need to be very careful in India, Anna. You don’t know its ways. Things often aren’t what they might first seem here. I hadn’t heeded what she said. I thought I knew better.
I fingered the letter in my pocket and resisted the urge to slip it out and read it. I knew its contents off by heart anyway. I’d read it so many times that the words in their flowing, flamboyant writing were etched on my mind, and the signature, Rev. Ezra Burroughs sent a chill through me just thinking about it.
It was risky to look at the letter in public. Anyone might come up to me out here on the open deck. I’d glanced discreetly at the other first-class passengers as they boarded and as far as I could make out there was nobody I recognised. That wouldn’t guarantee that no one would recognise me, though. British India was a small, incestuous community. There was bound to be somebody who knew Donald, or had connections with the station at Kandaipur. I couldn’t afford tittle-tattle about me to spread back there. After all, it was precisely to avoid scandal and gossip that I was making this journey halfway across the world.
An elderly couple reclining in basket chairs raised their cocktail glasses to me as I made my way across the deck. By the way they smiled and nodded I could tell that they were eager for me to join them. I smiled politely and said a quick ‘Good afternoon,’ as I hurried past and clattered down the metal steps towards my cabin on the first-class deck.
Once inside I bolted the door, sat down on an armchair, and finally gave way to the tears that had been threatening since I’d left Kandaipur by train three days earlier. The last few weeks had been a living nightmare. And the next phase of that nightmare was just about to begin.
I thought about Donald, far away on his military station on the North-West Frontier, oblivious to everything I was going through. I’d written to tell him I was going home for a few weeks.
It seems a good time to go, with you so far away in Quetta, I wrote. There isn’t much for me to do on my own here on the cantonment. Mother has written to ask me to stay with her. She hasn’t been very well lately.
I’d hesitated before writing that last part, which wasn’t strictly true. Mother rarely wrote and was quite unlikely to ask me home to stay, but it was true she was unwell. She usually was. What was one more white lie anyway, in the face of everything else?
Donald’s reply had arrived a few days later written in his stiff, military handwriting. Like all his letters it was short and concise. As I read it, I had a clear picture of him sitting at a table in his quarters in the Officer’s Mess, in full uniform, his thinning hair neatly oiled, bending carefully to his task.
My Dear Anna, I received your letter by first class post this morning. I agree with your decision to take leave. I have to tell you that because of the tense situation on the Frontier, all officers’ leave has been c
ancelled until further notice. Therefore, now would be as good a time as any for you to make the journey home for two months or so. May I advise you to speak to Captain Williams in the Regiment’s transport office on the military station who will arrange your trains and passage by P&O. Please refer him to me in the case of any difficulties.
I read between those stiff lines that Donald was secretly relieved I was going. It meant he would no longer have any obligation even to travel back to Kandaipur to spend whatever days of leave he might eventually get with me. While I was away from India, he could devote himself completely to his first love, the Regiment, with a clear conscience. I imagined him blotting the ink carefully, sealing the envelope and calling his bearer to run it to the post office. Then he would smooth his hair in the glass on the bedroom wall, a brief smile spreading beneath his toothbrush moustache, and stroll down to the Mess for tiffin without giving me a second thought.
How ironic then that I was embarking on this journey for him. I was doing it in order to preserve that shell of a marriage that we had constructed between us.
Sighing deeply, I took the letter from Ezra Burroughs out of my pocket and slipped it into the drawer beside the bed. Then I went over to the trunk that the porter had brought on board from the train, and opened the lid.
Manju, my ayah, had helped me pack the trunk back in my bungalow in Kandaipur. Her tear-stained face swum before my eyes now. She’d gripped my hand as we parted, and had said in a pleading voice, ‘Please take great care, Memsahib. Come back very soon to Kandaipur. Please… for Manju.’ It was the nearest she had got to saying that she understood why I was going, that she knew what I had done and what I was going to do.
On the top of the trunk lay a sumptuous smoking jacket wrapped carefully in tissue paper. I folded back the paper, ran my hand over the smooth cloth and sat back on my heels. It was of rich burgundy, of the finest quilted silk, made with exquisite skill by the Kandaipur tailor. He’d made it for a tall man, six foot one inches in height, forty-inch chest, broad-shouldered.
‘He will expect a present or two from India, the Rev Burroughs. A smoking jacket or something like that will probably do the trick,’ I’d been told.
Looking at the jacket brought the events of the past few months back to me now, all too vividly. It was a physical reminder of everything that had happened. Lying there in its tissue paper, the luxurious garment seemed to rebuke me. I slammed down the lid of the trunk.
One
Sarah
Sarah pulls off the road and parks up on the High Street in front of the old house. She switches off the engine and sits in her car, listening to the steady drum of the rain on the roof, taking deep breaths. She needs to steady her nerves, to empty her mind of everything that has happened over the past two days. Of the stress and the anger, and of Alex.
She knows she’s delaying things, not quite ready to face anyone yet. As she sits here, parked in this anonymous place, nothing is final. She’s spoken to no one about it, at least not to anyone who matters to her. She isn’t quite ready to drive on to her father’s house yet, to tell him what has happened, to face his questions and his sympathy.
She fumbles in the glove compartment, groping for the comforting smooth feel of the cigarette packet. The one she keeps for emergencies. This surely must count as one of those.
‘Shit!’ It’s not there. She remembers now, taking it out when the car went in for a service. The need for a cigarette is becoming overwhelming.
In the wing mirror she spots a newsagents’ shop in a row opposite. She gets out of the car and without stopping for her coat, rushes across the road and into the shop.
The middle-aged woman behind the counter eyes her curiously.
‘I saw you parked up opposite. Have you come to look at the house, love?’
Sarah stares at the woman, trying to focus on what she’s saying.
‘The old house?’ the woman probes, ‘The one you’re parked in front of. I just assumed… I saw them put up the sign this morning.’
Sarah slips the change into her purse and takes the cigarettes. ‘I’m just passing through.’
‘Oh.’ The woman doesn’t look convinced. ‘Dreadful mess the place is. Good job it’s being sold. That’s what I say.’
Sarah lights up as soon as she’s back on the pavement and takes a long grateful drag, savouring the sensation of nicotine creeping through her veins. She crosses the road and is about to get back into the car but something stops her. It would be good to stretch her legs, to get some fresh air and calm herself down. Dad won’t be expecting her just yet.
She’d managed to hold the anger in check as she’d driven through London, around the North Circular, along the Westway and out onto the M4. Once on the motorway, though, she’d been so overwhelmed by the sheer physical force of her feelings that she’d turned the car stereo up to maximum volume and simply screamed. And as she screamed, she’d pushed her foot to the floor and watched the speedo rise through the seventies, eighties, nineties and beyond.
It was only when she’d realised the car in front was slowing down and had to slam on the brakes that she drew back, shaking and sobbing.
There must have been an accident up ahead. All three lanes were blocked, the traffic hardly moving. She’d pulled off the motorway at the next junction, but was still trembling as she’d swung onto a side road, not sure of the way.
She’d found herself driving through the outskirts of the little town of Weirfeld-on-Thames and had hardly recognised the place at first, it had changed so much. As she drove through the town centre, she slowed down out of mild curiosity, trying to remember where the orphanage had been.
The site is now covered by an estate of neat modern houses. Anyone who doesn’t know would be unaware of the austere red-brick building that once occupied a half-mile plot. But Sarah knows. She remembers driving past it as a child, before the motorway took the traffic away from the through road.
Now she stares at the rusting front gate of the old house. She doesn’t remember noticing this house when the orphanage was here, but it must have always been its neighbour, tucked away behind those tall hedges, shaded by great cedar trees. She notices the For Sale sign, half-hidden in the unruly hedge.
She peers over the gate at the house, dark and brooding, its roof glistening in the rain. It looms over the garden. It’s unmistakably Edwardian; three stories with twin bay windows either side of a solid front door with a stained glass window. There are no lights on inside and judging by the state of the lawn, no one lives there.
The cigarette is burning down between her fingers and rain is seeping through her thin sweater. No one’s going to notice if she pops into the garden and finishes smoking it on the porch.
She lifts the rusting latch. The wrought iron gate has dropped on its hinges and as she eases it open, flakes of rust and green paint rub off on her jeans. She steps into the wet garden and pauses on the flagstone path beneath the dripping cedars. Mingled smells of damp grass and mouldy autumn leaves rise to meet her. She hesitates, taking in the shabby paintwork, the missing roof tiles, water spurting from broken guttering, then takes a few steps up the path.
Greying net curtains hang limply in the bay window. A sign on the front wall, half-obscured with moss pronounces, Cedar Lodge.
A sudden gust blows a shower of raindrops down from the trees. Sarah hurries onto the front porch and takes another drag on her cigarette. A note is fixed onto a plastic milk crate with a clothes peg. One pint only from now on please is scrawled on it in spidery writing.
‘Can I help you?’
Sarah jumps and spins round. A man in a raincoat is approaching, holding an umbrella. She can’t see his face in the gathering dusk. A pang of guilt makes the blood rush to her cheeks.
‘I …I was just having a quick look,’ she stammers ‘I saw the For Sale sign.’
‘Excellent. It’s doing its job then.’
He holds out a hand and comes closer. Sarah quickly drops the cigarette on the
step and grinds it with the heel of her boot.
‘I’m Jonathan Squires, of Country Squires, the estate agency in town. I just popped over to check if the sign had gone up as a matter of fact. I can see we need to clip the hedge a bit.’
His handshake is warm and firm.
‘I’m Sarah Jennings.’
‘Would you like to have a look inside while I’m here?’
‘Oh no, I was only passing through.’ How can she explain that she’s not interested in the house when here she is standing on the front porch?
He flashes her a bright white smile.
‘It would really be no trouble at all Mrs Jennings if you’d like to take a peek. I was going to have a check around inside anyway. You’ll have to excuse the state of the place though,’ he moves towards the front door, concentrating on a large bunch of keys.
‘Old lady who owns it had to go into hospital suddenly a few weeks ago. It’s only just coming onto the market. No one’s had a chance to have a proper clean up yet.’
Before Sarah has time to find an excuse, they’re standing inside the dark entrance hall. She shudders. It’s as cold as the grave.
The man fumbles on the wall beside the door and clicks the light on. A single bulb spreads a sickly glow around the room. Sarah takes in the parquet floor and wooden panelling and the smell: mould and cat pee. She can see the man properly now. Close up he looks older than she’d first thought. Fine lines score his face and she wonders if his luxuriant dark hair is quite natural.