by Tracy Rees
Another thing that is not simple is this treasure hunt! Amy, please forgive its inevitable imperfections. I am calm about leaving Louis with his parents, but I am not calm when I think that if I figure this wrongly you may never find him.
I am trying to grapple with a clandestine past, a present that is full of obfuscation, a fictional journey and an unknowable future. The surest thing would have been to let the secret die with me, yet I could not have you ignorant of all this, never knowing my son, nor he you. So I must take the risk of engineering this outlandish scheme after all. I must bring together the two people I love most, or die trying.
By the time I came home all the puzzle pieces I needed had appeared in my life; they needed only to be ordered so that the treasure hunt was transparent enough for you but too cloudy for anyone else. And as I contemplated the pieces, I realized that it would not only be a means to obscure the truth about Louis. Somewhere along the way of planning it, it acquired a further purpose. By the time I began planting the clues I knew the treasure hunt was for you, as well as for my child. Money was not enough to give you, nor even friends. I wanted you to have choices. Experiences. Freedom. I want you to meet the people I have met, have your horizons expanded as mine have been, and share everything as you could not do at the time, so that you might benefit. No doubt it is presumptuous of me, but I have been changed and strengthened by all that has occurred. I want the same for you.
And so it took shape, gradually, like a piece of clay becoming a pot. A crucible, in fact, from which you can emerge phoenix-like – wealthy, travelled, strong and free to choose any life you want. I pray that it is so. I pray you will derive the benefits I dream of, and not merely think yourself inconvenienced in the extreme. I pray so many things for you, Amy.
Eventually the final shape was before me. I wrote to beseech the various parties and when I had received the agreement of each and every one, I wrote your letters, one at a time. I have worked swiftly, Amy, never knowing how long I might have. At least my rapid decline has dissuaded my parents from attempting to find me another husband. I no longer look hale and hearty and marriageable.
And so the treasure hunt is at a close. This last letter goes to Joss tomorrow and his part is very easy. He need only stow it away until the day that Amy Snow comes walking up his garden path. I have asked a very great deal of you, Amy – perhaps more after my death than I ever did alive. You understand why, now. Henceforth I request nothing of you.
I do not ask you never to speak of this to a living soul, for I trust your discretion utterly. I know you would never share it with anyone I would not also trust. You may certainly tell the Wisters all you wish, for I should like them to know why I left so hurriedly and kept in touch so little.
I hope that you will be a joyful part of Louis’s life and he of yours, wherever you may find yourself. I know that you will love him, for his own sake and for mine. Please look after him, Amy, in whatever way you see fit and the situation allows. Make sure that he is happy. He has wonderful parents, I know, but how it comforts me to imagine you, with your loving heart and staunch loyalty, also watching over him like a fairy godmother.
Having a child must be the most commonly occurring miracle there is – just one small life – it is not as if I have changed the world. And yet the world is changed indeed, because Louis Capland is in it. In this I feel satisfied in how things have turned out in the end. He will do great things, I feel sure, but that he is happy is all I desire.
This is goodbye at last, little bird. In fact, I can call you ‘little bird’ no longer – you are flown. You have become a woman, and the world is better, too, for having you in it. Just as my life has been the better for you. You know how I love you. I shall be watching over you, Amy Snow, you may be sure.
Now and for ever,
AV
Chapter Seventy
A week after my walk in the garden with Louis, I depart the Jupiter to stay with the Caplands for an unspecified time. The hotel has kindly agreed that I may continue to receive my post there; I shall call to collect it once a week. It is no doubt an unnecessary precaution but the habit of covering my traces is not so easily shed. I am heartily glad that I am no longer obliged to be secretive in all I do, but there is still Louis to protect. Aurelia’s decision to keep him from her family I applaud with all my heart. Perhaps I should have more sympathy for the Vennaways, kept from the one thing they have always wanted with all their cold hearts, unaware that it even exists, but I have been a child in that house. Not for any reward would I see Louis grow up there.
Now I am settled as one of the Capland family, an arrangement enthusiastically welcomed by Louis, who has identified me as an easy source of stories, games and every indulgence. I believe, as ‘Aunt Amy’, close family friend, that is my prerogative.
It is a little like being at Mulberry Lodge, except more far tranquil. I have that same feeling of soaking up friendship, rest and laughter like a thirsty summer garden. But now I have all the answers I need and the relief of knowing that if and when I move on, it will be my own decision.
The days are delightful and varied. Mostly I stay with Elspeth and the children. Sunny days pass in the garden or fields. Rainy days confine us to the house but are filled with chatter and music, congenial visitors and the acrobatics of cats. Sometimes I go to the shop with Joss to learn about the business. I find it fascinating: the sourcing of different textiles, the lengths to which suppliers will go to command the highest prices, Joss’s tales of his eccentric London contacts. Best of all are the free samples of ribbon, buttons and lace that arrive like sweets, and which I am very happy to appropriate.
When Elspeth can pry Louis and Verity from my side, I spend time alone with Aurelia’s sketches, paintings and poems from her time in Yorkshire. When I compare them with the generic sketches and missives I received four years ago, I have to laugh. Here at last are the impressions and details that she would have sent to me if she could. Beautifully detailed sketches of Elspeth and Joss, of Mrs Riverthorpe (frightening in their likeness), of the wildlife on the moors. As I leaf through sparrow and jackdaw, squirrel and stoat, briar and pinecone, I feel her with me, turning the pages, pointing things out.
Then come sketches of Louis as a tiny baby, sleeping and cherubic, or wide awake and screaming, with flailing fists and gaping mouth. Aurelia has captured the beautiful innocence and tyranny of a newborn with equal degrees of love and fascination.
The only empty space in my landscape, the only cloud to cast a chill, is the absence of Henry. If I had thought I loved and needed him when I was unhappy and anchorless, it was as nothing compared with how I miss him now. Since I arrived in York I have been dreaming of the time when I will find him and put everything right. The possibility has enabled me to move through the days. Now that there is nothing to stop me going to him, I am frightened; what if I cannot find him, or worse, find him and cannot put things right? What would my life be then?
Chapter Seventy-One
In the evenings, after the children have gone to bed, I sit with Joss and Elspeth in their snug sitting room and they tell me everything they can remember about the time they spent with Aurelia. I recount every detail of my journey to find them. It is good to tell my whole story at last, to honour and complete it by giving it voice before sympathetic listeners. Inevitably this brings me to Henry. At first I am reticent to mention him but soon I find it is a relief to speak his name.
When I come to that last morning in Bath, I grow hesitant. It remains a very difficult memory. Mrs Riverthorpe pounding at my bedroom door and our last, curt words on the threshold. The entire overheard conversation between the drunken revellers. The mad flight from Bath. And the argument with Henry . . .
‘He said that he released me . . . that our understanding was at an end and he was going to continue his life as he saw fit. He said he would not be a fool who waits in the wings.’
‘And you have heard nothing from him since then?’ Elspeth frowns.
‘Not a word, although . . . he would not know where to write to me.’
‘So . . . you have not been in touch with him either?’
‘Well, no! I could not write. I did not know what to say! And I did not know where he was. But most of all, I am afraid. His words haunt me. I long to go and find him, every day, but what if it is all spoiled now? What if he looks at me the way he did before?’
Joss and Elspeth exchange glances.
‘Let me be clear on this, if I may,’ says Joss. ‘He insisted that you choose there and then between your loyalty to him and your loyalty to Aurelia? He wanted you to give up the treasure hunt for your new life together?’
‘Oh no! Not at all. He was very clear that I must do nothing of the sort, that I must honour my loyalty to Aurelia. But he wanted to come with me –’
‘And you did not want that?’
‘Oh, I did! Only I felt I must not . . . I had begun to suspect, you see, that there was a child. I already knew there had been . . . a lover. He did not know Aurelia and it is such personal information. So easily judged or misconstrued.’
‘Did you feel Henry would think badly of Aurelia?’
‘In truth I did not know what he might think of her. Our upbringing always taught us that such behaviour was utterly reprehensible in a woman.’
‘And yet such things happen every day,’ Elspeth smiles, rather as if she is glad that they do.
‘And if Aurelia had not acted as she did, I would not have a son,’ Joss adds with a shrug. ‘And what if Henry had felt differently, if he did judge Aurelia for her actions, what then?’
I bite my lip. ‘Well, then I would feel badly for her. And I would worry, I suppose, whether his regard for me might be so easily lost in a . . . um. . . similar situation.’ I blush and shake my hair back from my face. ‘And I wish to protect Aurelia, her memory, that is. Henry did not know how her life was – how our life was – and it would not be right to judge.’
‘So you did not give him the chance to prove himself either way?’ Elspeth reaches over and squeezes my hand. ‘I do not blame you, of course. These are delicate matters and you were quite without a confidante – Mrs Riverthorpe is hardly given to gentle guidance! Nevertheless, if you plan to marry the man, it would be as well to know what his thoughts are on such things, true?’
I look down at my lap. It sounds so simple, put like that. At the time, it did not feel simple.
‘But let me be sure of the situation,’ Joss presses, with a man’s taste for fact. ‘Was it also that you did not trust him with the confidence? I mean, did you not trust him to keep Aurelia’s secret?’
‘No! Henry would never betray me that way, even if he did not approve. I trust him completely.’
‘And you love him?’ Elspeth verifies.
‘With all my heart.’
‘So you love him, you trust him and you want to marry him. He did not tell you to abandon Aurelia’s quest for him, but he wanted to share it with you and help you?’ persists Joss, inexorable as Cook’s rolling pin.
‘Yes. I have made a terrible mistake, haven’t I?’ I ask in a small voice. ‘Henry was blameless and I have treated him shockingly and now I can’t find him and I will never see him again!’ My voice has risen by the end and I am breathing heavily. Guilt and heartache threaten to smother me once more. Louis and the Caplands have been balm and distraction but I cannot hide from my feelings any longer – I can’t further postpone looking for Henry and discovering my fate.
Behind me, a little voice says, ‘Aunt Amy? Who’s Henry?’
Joss stands, scoops his son up and removes him, but not before pausing in the doorway to shrug, bewildered. ‘What do women want of us?’ he demands to nobody in particular, before leaving me alone with Elspeth before the open window. A jasmine-laden breeze blows in and an owl calls somewhere outside. I laugh shakily.
‘I love him still, Elspeth, heart, body and soul. No other man will ever be like Henry. What have I done?’
‘Amy, Henry was not blameless. Not blameless. It was not a usual circumstance in which you found yourself and he knew that from the outset of your acquaintance. And don’t listen to Joss! Only consider – men and women never truly understand one another, for we are different creatures. That is part of the adventure! If you imagine you may find a husband with no faults, and never a misunderstanding between you . . . well, you will not. It is intention and the orientation of the heart, I think, that matters.’
‘I see,’ I say, but only after I have given it some serious thought and hope that I really do see. ‘It makes sense, of course. He told me he was stubborn, I know he is impetuous. He is not given to compromise. Yet I love him, for all of that. He said that he never wanted to be parted from me, and that if I loved him it would be the same for me. But we ran too far along the road of our dreams while I was still bound up in the past.’
‘Of course you did, for you were young and falling in love. That’s what falling in love is, Amy – an ecstatic departure from any kind of sense or circumspection! But after falling in love, actually being in love – marriage – those things require thought and sensitivity and patience. Henry was impatient, and that impatience was one burden too many for you at a difficult time, so you fled. You may be forgiven! Only his impatience came from loving you and caring about you, I think. Perhaps, then, he may also be forgiven?’
‘Oh, I have already done that. I forgive him with all my heart, Elspeth. With all my heart!’
‘Well, that’s lovely, dear. Only, might he not want to know that too?’
Chapter Seventy-Two
That night I write a very long letter to Henry. When I have finished, I copy it out again. I address one copy to Albert Crumm and the other to the Longacres in Bath. I put a brief note in each envelope begging that if they know where Henry is they will forward the letter to him without any delay at all. The following morning I rise early and travel to York with Joss.
I go to the post office and see the precious letters into the hands of the postmaster, thinking of Aurelia as I do so. I have not committed Aurelia’s secret to paper but I have committed all else that is precious to me: my feelings, my regrets, my love, my hopes. I have told him that if he wishes me to come to him he need only tell me where and I will be at his side as soon as is humanly possible. I have told him that when I see him I will tell him everything, and exclude him from nothing, not ever again.
Despite this, I feel desolate. I feel I have wronged him by agreeing to share my life with him and then, at the first test, insisting that I manage things alone, running out on him at only a moment’s warning. In my mind’s eye, I see him rumpled and bewildered in his nightshirt, running his hands through his hair, watching me slip through his fingers.
‘You will not leave me like this, Amy.’ It was not a command, I realize now; it was a plea. The memory is almost enough to make me lose hope, except then I remember Elspeth’s wise words: we were both at fault, both only human. Perhaps he can forgive me, love me despite my faults, as I do him.
I find myself feverishly calculating dates. When might I hope to hear from him? If he is with the Longacres or his grandfather, I might receive a reply in just a very few days. If he is not, but they can send my letter straight to him, it will be a little longer. If they do not know his whereabouts, it may be weeks before my letter even finds its way into his hands. It may be months! How might I be patient so long?
I have never been in love before. I do not know what is forgivable and what is not, but I do not hold out any great hopes that I can reasonably expect a reprieve. Still, I have promised myself at least to try to believe that love and happiness can be mine, even if precedent suggests otherwise. I have done what I can for now, and if he does not reply, or if he is still angry with me when he does, then I shall go to London and speak to his grandfather. I shall ask him to persuade Henry to listen to me, just once, out of the goodness of his heart.
But if he no longer loves me, if there is someone else who can make him happier
or if he simply does not wish to take the risk that is Amy Snow, I shall let him go, indeed I shall, and wish him well at all times from the bottom of my heart. But not until I have done everything in my power to win him back.
So I vow, as I set off back to Fountain Cottage. I did not intend to walk; I had thought to ask Joss if he might spare his apprentice for a short while to drive me. But, lost in my ardent ruminations and silent, fervent promises, I have somehow missed the shop altogether and passed beyond the city walls. I hesitate, then decide to walk. It will pass more time and the way is a pleasant one. I realize how sweet solitude is when it is not enforced, how contented it is possible to be in one’s own company when it is not the only possibility one has.
The day grows warm, so I take off my bonnet and swing it as I walk. I am surrounded by green and there is no one to see. Besides, I could not spend so long with Mrs Riverthorpe without coming to relish flouting convention even a little.
By the time I reach the lane that leads to the house I am warm and no doubt a great deal flushed. I can feel my rebellious hair hovering about my head like a cloud of bees and I promise myself a seat in the shade, a book of poetry and a comb, when I return. I feel a little embarrassed when I see that Elspeth has had a visitor in my absence.