Two days later we took an early morning flight to Philadelphia. It had been a strange few days all across the north-east of the country, with sudden violent storms, the temperature alternating between cool and oppressively warm and humid, as if the weather couldn’t make up its mind whether it was still summer or whether fall had begun. The day we arrived was summer; it was already sticky when we touched down just after eight in the morning. Powalski rented us a car and we made the short drive along the Pennsylvania Turnpike towards King of Prussia, where Arlene had arranged for us to stay the night at the Radisson Valley Forge Hotel, a stone’s throw from the national park. I think she chose the place partly because she wanted to take the park tour, but it was unlikely we would have time this trip. We dropped our things at the hotel and set out to see Aunt Meg.
Aunt Meg lived in Conshohocken, a community in Montgomery County, just off the interstate. Her house was a large, three-story, rickety-looking wooden structure, the whole of which was surrounded by an enveloping porch. At the front was a collection of porch furniture – chairs and a couple of tables, all apparently of different designs – and there were hooks in the ceiling for a hammock, though the hammock itself was nowhere to be seen. On approach the house looked dark even in broad daylight, though the dark brown paint was recent, there was a pleasant herbaceous border in front of the porch, and the generous area of land around the house, which included some old oaks, was well kept.
Aunt Meg answered the door with another woman, a friendly soul with a full face and deep brown eyes, in her forties, I guessed.
‘Welcome to Montgomery County,’ Aunt Meg said. ‘Come on in.’ She kissed Sam fondly on both cheeks, and shook hands with the rest of us.
‘This is Alice, who comes in every day to make sure I’m still alive and not doing anything too stupid.’
‘I do some cleaning and drive once in a while,’ Alice smiled. ‘Aunt Meg doesn’t need much more than that, and I get told off if I fuss too much.’
‘As if I would tell anyone off,’ Aunt Meg grinned. ‘She does fuss too much though, sometimes. Come on back to the dining room. We’ll have enough room to sit in there. Would you like some coffee? You must have had an early start this morning.’
The idea of a cup of drinkable coffee sounded good to all of us. We’d grabbed a cup of a very indifferent brew and a plastic croissant at the coffee bar in the boarding area in the few minutes we had before our flight, and it hadn’t helped.
‘I’ll make it,’ Alice volunteered.
She left us alone with Aunt Meg. The dining room was formal, almost Victorian in its austerity. The dark wooden table could have accommodated twelve for dinner very comfortably; the matching chairs had high, straight backs, and hard padded seats in a dark mauve design. The carpet seemed to reflect the same colour. Two corner cabinets held collections of plates and glassware. The windows were covered by long off-white lace curtains, and the blades of two ceiling fans rotated in a leisurely sequence in the high ceiling above our heads. Aunt Meg fitted in with the room’s décor, wearing a long black dress, with a small white scarf tucked in at the top. We sat in silence for a few moments.
‘We came as soon as we could, Aunt Meg,’ Sam began.
‘Yes, I know, my dear. I also know that you don’t have a great deal of time, so I don’t plan on wasting any. But if you will allow me, I do have something to ask.’
‘Of course. We’re here all day. We’re not going back to Arlington tonight.’
‘Good, because before we get to what I have to show you, I’m going to ask you to indulge an old lady. I want to take you on a short drive. It’s not far. There’s something I want you all to see, something I think may make a difference.’
‘I’m not sure we can all fit in our car,’ Powalski observed.
‘It’s no problem. Alice will drive me and you can follow behind.’
Anxious as we were to see any evidence Aunt Meg might have, we could hardly say no, and in any case, it sounded intriguing. Alice arrived with our coffee and some delicious cinnamon-flavoured cookies of a kind I didn’t remember ever tasting before.
‘They’re called “speculaas”, ’ she replied when I mentioned how good they were. ‘They’re from Holland; not the kind of thing you find locally. I have to go into Philadelphia. But they’re worth it, aren’t they?’
‘She spoils me,’ Aunt Meg said.
‘So she should,’ Sam replied.
I think we all felt better after that. We piled into our car and Powalski pulled effortlessly into the light traffic behind Alice’s station wagon. She led us along Interstate 276, turning briefly on to State Highway 23, and finally taking an exit marked Fourth Street, which led us back under the Interstate’s overpass. We turned again into River Road.
And we came to the church I had visited in my dream: the church where I had seen Isabel.
I knew it instantly. There were some differences. If there had ever been a high wall enclosing the graveyard, it had gone. There was a low rustic stone wall as we entered the graveyard, but beyond at the far side, without any obvious boundary, were houses. Of course the area would have been developed since Isabel’s day. But the layout of the church and the graveyard was unmistakable to me. In my mind, at least, I had stood in this place before. And as I gazed at the setting of my dream, leaning a bit unsteadily against the car, I noticed something else. The roaring sound, which in my dream I hadn’t been able to turn to identify, was there. In my dream I’d speculated that it might have come from an aqueduct carrying water. Now when I closed my eyes, the sound was the same sound I’d heard in my dream. But my roar of water moving along an aqueduct was the roar of the traffic on the interstate.
Aunt Meg had gathered everyone except me together on the other side of the street, where a gate led into the graveyard. I knew the gate. I had used it in my dream, and just beyond it was the spot where Isabel had stood. I was shaken. I was feeling hot and clammy. Aunt Meg was looking back across the street at me. Somehow, I managed to force my body up from the side of the car, and I made my way slowly towards them.
‘You OK, Kiah?’ Sam asked.
‘Yes, I’m fine. Just got up a bit too early, not enough sleep.’
Aunt Meg was still looking at me.
‘This is the Old Swedes church,’ she explained. ‘Leastways, that’s what everyone has always called it. Its real name is Christ Church, and these days it’s Episcopalian, but it goes back a ways. As the name suggests, this was a Swedish settlement originally, and it’s always been called Swedeland or Swedesburg. Jacob would have been a man of about thirty when the church was originally built. It hasn’t changed too much since then; the tower was added after his day, but other than that, we’re looking at something Jacob himself saw many times. He would have worshipped here often. So did Washington, by the way, while the army was here. The river’s just over there, and we wouldn’t have had those houses then, so he may have come in by boat from his camp.’
‘This is where so many of the old van Eycks are buried?’ Sam asked.
‘Yes. Let’s go in, and you can see for yourselves.’
We didn’t have to walk far. There was a large collection of gravestones and memorials, not exactly grand but certainly well made and well kept, that bore the names of van Eycks, from the late eighteenth century to the mid twentieth, and we didn’t explore every inch of the graveyard, so no doubt there were others.
‘But nothing for Jacob,’ Aunt Meg said as we gathered around one large tomb. ‘He’s here somewhere. This is where they laid him. Everyone in the family agrees on that. But no grave stone.’
We looked around in silence for some time, as if trying to make some memorial of Jacob exist, to conjure one up from somewhere.
‘Why?’ Sam asked.
Aunt Meg shrugged. ‘Maybe they didn’t have the money, or maybe there was no record of exactly where they buried him. Who knows? But it’s a shame, don’t you think?’
And that was when I saw the other difference. In my dream, the whole graveyard had consisted of unmarked graves. I had seen no gravestones or memorials at all. But there were gravestones and memorials everywhere here. Just not for Jacob.