1963: London, England
‘Must you embarrass me like that at every turn?’ Lucy could tell Aunt Cynthia was trying to control her voice, but it was shrill enough to carry over Spencer’s slamming of the car door. The box handbag hooked over her elbow quivered with every word.
Spencer and Ruth ran inside the house in a tangle of noise, sensing their mother’s mood. Lucy, who wasn’t as quick, was held up by sharp fingers that gripped her upper arm.
‘You know it’s not appropriate to mention her and what she did in polite society. In any society.’
‘You mean my mother?’ Lucy said. Aunt Cynthia flinched. ‘I don’t even know what she did. I was just saying—’
‘I don’t care what you were saying! You’ve been told time and time again not to mention that woman. Now get inside and wash your face. There’ll be no tea for you tonight.’
Lucy felt a sinking sensation in her chest, but didn’t dare sigh. She hated going to bed without tea. She watched the rubber toes of her plimsolls through a curtain of dark, limp hair as she walked towards the house, glancing back once to see Aunt Cynthia checking down the street that no one had witnessed the ruckus. Lucy knew she would pay double if anyone had.
Obediently, she made her way into the kitchen where she splashed water on her hands and face. Spencer—almost a man, although not above pulling Lucy’s ponytail if she got too close when he was in a mood—had already disappeared behind the closed door of his bedroom. But she could hear Ruth trying on the new shoes her mother had just bought for her.
Lucy knew very little about her own mother aside from the fact she was dead. The things she did know she could probably count on one hand: her name was Evelyn Bell; she was sister to Lucy’s aunts Cynthia and Maureen; she had died when Lucy was still only a baby; and she’d done something so bad it was forbidden to speak of her. What that something was, Lucy could only guess at. She liked to imagine her mother as some sort of exciting adventurer who had got herself into one too many sticky situations; or perhaps a government agent who had gone undercover in the war.
Or perhaps the father she knew nothing about—not even a name—had killed her, and that’s why he was kept such a secret. While mention of her mother would get Lucy no tea and an early night, a question about her father resulted in the sharp snap of a leather belt on her tender skin. In the end she’d found it easier not to think of either of them much at all. That way she wouldn’t accidentally slip and get into trouble. Again.
Her cousins and the children at school thought her odd and called her names like ‘orphan’ and ‘bastard’, becoming frustrated when Lucy wasn’t hurt by them. Lucy didn’t tell them that the only mothers she’d ever known were her aunts, and if that’s what mothers were like she was happy to go without one, thank you very much.
She was just drying her hands when she heard the doorbell chime. She threw the towel into the sink—something Aunt Cynthia would berate her for later—and raced to be the one to answer it. If it was a delivery person, she might get a joke, or even a smuggled treat.
But it wasn’t a delivery person. At least, he didn’t look like any delivery person Lucy had seen before. In fact, she had never seen anyone like him at all.
The man wore a neat suit and still had marks from his comb in his hair. His pale skin, which rested in gentle folds like a tissue that had been crumpled then smoothed back out, was marked by a pink flush that gave his otherwise solemn face a jolly look. But it was the black eyepatch with a silver tear embroidered on it, covering his right eye, that dazzled her. There was something otherworldly yet dignified about it.
Lucy stood with the door open, staring at the patch without saying a word.
‘Hello, Lucy,’ the man said.
‘How do you know my name?’
A second after gasping this question, Lucy realised she was being rude. Not only had she not welcomed the man, she’d been staring at his eyepatch in a very obvious way. She glanced behind her, checking Aunt Cynthia hadn’t seen, then opened the door wider and politely asked him to come in.
She showed him to a seat in the lounge room, then went running through the house to find Aunt Cynthia, her eager curiosity making her footsteps heavy on the rug-covered timber floors.
Aunt Cynthia reprimanded Lucy for her thundering feet before following her to the lounge room. They collected Ruth along the way, her cousin always ready to nose into anything interesting that might be happening.
Lucy knew it would be proper to introduce the man to her aunt by name, but realised she’d forgotten to ask his. Thankfully, he took over, standing up and reaching his hand out.
‘Good afternoon, Mrs Begley. My name is Humphrey Walsh. You’ve never met me before, but I am—I was—from the Victory.’
Aunt Cynthia drew in her breath, a sharp whistle between her teeth. Both Lucy and Ruth looked at her; something was happening, something they didn’t understand.
Aunt Cynthia must have felt their looks, for she turned a hot glare on them. ‘Upstairs. Now.’
Lucy turned. Today was not a day to obey slowly.
‘You too, Ruth. And tell your brother to stay in his room until told otherwise.’
Ruth choked out a little sound of disbelief.
Lucy understood why. It was always her being sent away, always her voice that was silenced; never Ruth’s or Spencer’s.
Her cousin’s face clouded with thunder, but she followed Lucy upstairs, her feet making sounds as heavy as she dared to show she wasn’t happy.
Lucy sat on the twin bed in the room she and Ruth shared, her hands bunched in the rough fabric of her skirt as she bounced up and down nervously. She could hear Aunt Cynthia’s voice below, but not make out what she was saying.
‘We should sneak out and listen,’ Ruth said, looking sideways at Lucy. She was sitting on her own bed, legs curled on the ex-army issue blankets Aunt Cynthia hated but had to use because there was no other option. Behind her sat a collection of dolls, their lifeless eyes staring at the dark wooden furniture of the room.
Lucy’s own bed had no dolls. She didn’t like them anyway, with their dull frozen faces always looking at her like they were waiting for her to do something wrong. She much preferred the one toy she did have: a rather worn spotted dalmatian with a drooping face, once-red tongue, and a bow around his neck. Lucy didn’t know where the dog had come from. Certainly not from Aunt Cynthia, who hated the ‘ratty old thing’ as she called it, and only let Lucy keep it so she didn’t have an excuse to complain about having no toys to play with.
Lucy stopped bouncing and considered Ruth’s suggestion. Her cousin only ever wanted to team up when there was something bad to be done. That way, if they were caught she could blame it on Lucy and escape trouble herself. Still, Lucy was tempted. She’d never seen Aunt Cynthia react to a visitor in such a manner, not even when a woman in an expensive-looking dress and tears smearing her make-up all down her face had come looking for Uncle Charles.
‘Come on, don’t be a scaredy-cat. Besides, I think I heard them say your name.’
Ruth’s look was cunning, but Lucy lifted herself off the bed a little anyway. ‘Really? You think they’re talking about me?’
Ruth shrugged, flopping down casually on her stomach. The springs of the bed squeaked underneath her. ‘I don’t know why they’d want to. But that’s what I heard.’
Lucy bit her lip, looking from her cousin to the door that muffled the voices. She shouldn’t—she knew that. But if Ruth was telling the truth and they were talking about her, she wanted to know what was being said.
‘Let’s go,’ she said, her heart already tap dancing at the thought of getting caught. ‘But we have to be quiet.’
Ruth rolled her eyes, annoyed at Lucy acting as though she knew more about sneaking around. She stood up, pushed Lucy out of the way, and opened the door quietly. Aunt Cynthia’s voice was instantly louder.
‘I don’t know what you think gives you the right to show up after all these years and demand—’ her aunt was shouting.
Ruth widened her eyes and looked back at Lucy. Aunt Cynthia hadn’t sounded this angry even when Lucy had used her best gravy boat to dig tunnels in the dirt outside.
Lucy, a little scared now, hesitated, but Ruth grabbed her hand and pulled her out of the room after her.
The two girls tiptoed to the top of the stairs and crouched down. Lucy could feel the warmth of her cousin’s skin against her own, and wished they were the type of friends who could put an arm around one another. But already Ruth had let go of her hand, wiping it on her tartan skirt out of habit.
‘… kept secrets from her and made her think things that aren’t true.’ The man—Mr Walsh—wasn’t yelling like Aunt Cynthia, but he was definitely angry. It was a quiet sort of anger, Lucy thought, like a low rumble of thunder before lightning lashed out.
‘I’ve done nothing of the sort! And if you think you can just—’
‘Calm down, darling,’ came another voice. ‘There’s no need to get so worked up. I’m sure we can sort this out.’
Lucy and Ruth glanced at each other; neither of them had heard Uncle Charles come home. It was too early for his workday to be over.
‘Don’t speak to me like that,’ Aunt Cynthia spat. She always got angrier when Uncle Charles called her a nice name. ‘You can’t possibly be thinking we should go along with this?’
There was a pause, then Charles said with a sigh, ‘Having Lucy here does seem to leave you a little … overworked. Are you sure you wouldn’t be happier with a new arrangement?’
Lucy gave an involuntary shiver. Ruth had been right: they were talking about her.
‘Are you saying I’m not capable of running my own household?’ Uncle Charles was smart enough not to answer, and there was another pause before Aunt Cynthia spoke again. ‘How do we even know this man is who he says he is?’
‘I’d be happy to give you proof I’m Humphrey Walsh,’ the man said. ‘As for the rest—there are many things I could tell you that I couldn’t know if I wasn’t who I say I am. Would you like me to tell you the date Evie left this house? Or made her last visit to it? Or perhaps who fathered—’
‘That’s enough!’ Aunt Cynthia screeched.
There was silence. Lucy’s ears were hot and reverberating with the angry words, desperate to hear more.
‘You called her Evie?’ Uncle Charles asked. His voice had gone soft and, to Lucy, sounded a little sad. ‘I thought she hated to be called anything other than Evelyn.’
‘It seems, then, that you didn’t really know her at all.’
For some reason, this sentence and the silence that followed made tears sting at the backs of Lucy’s eyes. She bit the inside of her cheek, determined not to let her cousin see her being a cry-baby.
‘What about school?’ Uncle Charles asked.
A weird sound echoed his question, probably from Aunt Cynthia.
‘There’s a school in Bonchurch,’ Mr Walsh said. ‘She’ll start at the beginning of the new school year, with everyone else. Until then we’ll school her at home.’
‘And he … he’ll be there?’
‘I wouldn’t have any right to ask for the child if he wasn’t.’ Mr Walsh’s voice was disdainful, and another silence followed.
Lucy didn’t think she’d ever heard a conversation punctuated with so much quiet. Usually, the gaps when Aunt Cynthia and Uncle Charles weren’t speaking to each other were filled with the noise of the television set.
‘You are determined to go ahead with this ridiculous plan, regardless of what I say,’ Aunt Cynthia finally said. She was no longer shouting, but her voice had a bitter, hard edge.
No one replied.
There were a couple of footsteps, and Lucy and Ruth both rose slightly, ready to make a run for it. But the footsteps stopped, and Aunt Cynthia spoke again.
‘She’ll be trouble for you, mark my words. She’ll turn out just like her mother. And when she does, you’ll come running back here, begging us to take her back.’
Then Aunt Cynthia was striding out of the living room and towards the stairs. It was too late for Lucy and Ruth to run. Aunt Cynthia glanced up, saw the both of them, and her face went rigid.
‘Lucy made me do it,’ Ruth yelped, darting back to their shared room and slamming the door behind her.
Lucy, unable to move, stared at her aunt. She was moving again now, her feet hitting every stair with a heavy, final sound. Thump. Thump. Each one made Lucy jump a little, until Aunt Cynthia was standing right in front of her, her pale bird-like face even whiter than usual.
‘Stand up straight,’ she ordered.
Lucy obeyed, her weak knees locking into place thanks to years of practice.
Her aunt raised a trembling hand, and Lucy winced, bracing herself for a smack. But it didn’t happen, and after a second she opened her eyes again. Aunt Cynthia still had her hand raised, but she was looking at Lucy with narrowed eyes, as though she’d forgotten the punishment she was midway through delivering.
‘Go to your room and pack your clothes,’ she said in a cold voice. ‘Your uncle will bring a case in.’
She dropped her hand and pushed past. Lucy grabbed her skirt, trying to get her to stop. It was the first time she’d wanted to keep her aunt close to her.
‘Where am I going?’ she asked in a barely audible voice.
Aunt Cynthia stared at her a moment, as if considering whether or not to answer. Then her upper lip lifted and she gave a small shrug.