Kathryn should have been in the airport lounge waiting to board her flight, arriving home in time to take Oliver to his piano concert, but instead here she was driving along a stony track towards All Saints’ Church with her grandmother, to meet the grandfather she never knew she had.
Chris had been as shocked as she was when she called, waking him in the early hours, apology stumbling along with explanation. But as soon as he’d realised that his feelings were insignificant compared with hers, he had stopped the interrogation and asked with thoughtful concern if she was alright—if there was anything she needed.
Time was the only thing that was of any use to her now: time to take it all in, time to be here to support Eleanor when she saw Jack for the first time in countless years, and time to be here when they delivered the bombshell to Abigail the next day. The flight was booked, and Kathryn would be the one picking her parents up from the airport and preparing them before they saw Eleanor.
Today would just be about Eleanor and Jack. They had a lifetime to catch up on, and unanswered questions of their own to be addressed, before they were ready to share their love story with anyone else—even the family they had created.
Kathryn’s hands felt clammy, the wheel sliding beneath her grip as she turned it to the right, spotting the sharp angles of the church and spire as they reared over the bank of trees. Her stomach clenched as though she was excited, but that quickly turned to fear and, with it, the vague childhood memory of doing something wrong and the anticipation of being caught.
Eleanor was beside her in the passenger seat, her eyes centred on the road ahead, and Kathryn wondered what on earth could be going through her mind. She had exchanged her usual attire of trousers, smock and house slippers for a cream silk blouse decorated with vertical lines of tiny pink and purple flowers, and a long, straight navy skirt. Large, creamy pearls hung from her earlobes, while a gold locket—a gift from Edward, containing pictures of him and their children, which she never took off—hung loosely around her neck.
Eleanor and Kathryn had looked through the 1945 diary that Stephen had given them after he left and seen more references to Jack’s ‘darling girl’. And they had learned how Jack had spent the last year of the war: hospitalised in Italy with malaria. But it was his life in between, the one barely touched on by Wikipedia or the history books, that they wanted to discover.
After they had finished, Eleanor revealed something else: she had searched for Jack in London for months and finally given up, returning home to Lancashire for a hastily arranged marriage.
As Kathryn eased the old Rover into the All Saints’ car park, they saw the black Mercedes tucked into the corner. She parked close to the church gate and opened the door to help Eleanor from the car, wondering how she was going to explain any of this to her parents when she saw them the next day. New questions constantly sprang to mind: had her great-grandparents known, and what about Great-Aunt Cecily and her great-uncles?
Eleanor had suggested All Saints’ because she didn’t want Jack to come to the house she had shared with Edward and her family, and it was a comfort that she knew the church well. Even Kathryn had attended services there with her family, when they too had admired the magnificent stained glass. It was lucky for them that it was the only church in the world to have all of its twelve windows decorated by the great Russian artist Marc Chagall; it had been sad, though, for the parents of the young woman who had commissioned the artist to commemorate her life.
Eleanor stepped from the car and pulled her camel coat tighter, as composed and as confident as she had ever been. Kathryn had helped with her make-up: a quick brush of powder and a dab of rouge had given her fragile skin a renewed glow, and the thin line of mascara drew attention to her emerald eyes.
‘Are you ready?’ Kathryn asked.
Eleanor smiled. ‘Yes, dear.’
‘How could you have kept the secret for so long?’ Kathryn said without thinking.
‘You tolerate the sacrifices because of the rewards,’ Eleanor replied instantly. ‘And because your child is blossoming, growing and becoming more than you ever imagined they could be.’
A flock of widgeons wheeled overhead, passing once before heading east towards the coast. They reminded Kathryn that she wouldn’t be travelling home tonight but that it was okay. Speaking to Chris had made her long for him and their lovemaking, and this had surprised her; it was the first time she had felt that way in months.
She had seen the sacrifices that Eleanor had made and knew with certainty that she wanted to make her marriage work. Hopefully, this new discovery wouldn’t make the pull to stay in England and find out about her new family any stronger than the one to leave, because she knew that after what her grandmother had been through, she had to do what was right for Chris and Oliver.
The widgeons were mere specks in the distance, their song fading until they finally disappeared from view.
Inside the gate, the graveyard was surprisingly large, with a wide-open lawn: not undulating layers of turf compressed against the church walls, like so many of the ancient parish graveyards, but lush with grass and scattered clumps of buttercups, clover and daisies. A handful of crooked headstones bordered three sides of the stone building, more like primordial signposts, so great were the distances between them, and plump bushes of pink hydrangeas swayed in the spaces between. An ivy-covered porch was visible from behind the low hawthorn hedge, and a noticeboard beside the entrance gave details of the regular services, issuing welcomes in English, French and German.
Kathryn stopped, letting go of Eleanor’s arm. ‘You go ahead…I’ll be here when you need me,’ she said as she leaned over and kissed Eleanor’s cheek.
What was it that she detected in Eleanor’s look? Not nervousness but quietude when she smiled and turned towards the church.
As Kathryn watched her walk away, a shiver crept up her spine, setting her hair on end. Eleanor was more courageous than she had ever realised; now she had to find the same strength, and after these past few days, she knew that she could.
It was after two o’clock and the sun was angling home, throwing its light behind the western windows and casting the church in a rich manganese glow. Blue waterfalls rippled down stone walls, bathing the altar in a pale watery light. The effect was so dazzling that at first Eleanor didn’t notice the figure sitting in the middle pews, mesmerised as she was by the stained glass. It told the story of the scriptures, and their words came to mind: You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet: all flocks and herds, and the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas.
That was how they all began and how they would end, and that was why she could bear this now; how she had borne it for all these years. She had understood it when she had painted seventy years ago, she had understood it when she had given up looking for him and taken a new father for Abigail, and she understood it now.
And then she saw him, a silhouette in the pews.
He looked up, with a tentative smile. There were flashes of the younger Jack, and memories of the man she had loved so very much.
It took her back to the time she’d first seen him in the attic, surrounded by black-and-white sketches of the children—his art not as beautiful as Murillo’s seventeenth-century street children, she remembered thinking, but still mesmerising, a fretwork of greys and blacks, and how she was drawn to the images, the startlingly intricate lines—and then she had noticed the artist as he turned and looked up, his dark hair falling across his face.
His hair was thick, although grey and thinning around the sides. He was still a handsome man. And as Eleanor sat beside him, her composure weakened. Wondering where on earth to begin, she simply said, ‘How are you, Jack?’
‘As well as you’d expect,’ he said with a smile. ‘What about you, Eleanor?’
‘Really good,’ she said, examining his face, noticing how he was doing the same to her.
‘Thank you for seeing me,’ he said.
‘Of course, how could I not?’ she replied. ‘I’m glad Stephen contacted me.’
‘Yes, so am I.’
Eleanor smiled.
‘He said you have something to tell me—that it’s something important,’ Jack said.
‘Yes, it is. But before I do, I need to know what happened to you. I tried to find you…’
There had been a lifetime between them to arrive at this point, and now it was here he had one more chance to get it right. So he started at the very beginning, from the day he went away. Eleanor listened, interrupting to tell him the parts she had learned about from the diary, or to ask questions, or tell him what Kathryn had discovered. But when he finished, and she knew for certain about Aubrey and the committee, she still couldn’t understand why she hadn’t been able to find him and why none of their letters had been delivered.
‘It was because I wasn’t over there just as a war artist, Eleanor. I was part of Churchill’s Secret Army.’
She considered him for a moment, thinking that perhaps he wasn’t quite so well after all. Perhaps he was suffering from dementia and Stephen had neglected to mention it.
‘It was known as that among some circles,’ he continued, ‘but you might have heard about it as the Special Operations Executive. I was an agent, Eleanor. I was working for the government.’
Then she remembered the diaries and the notations and the intricate drawings he had made. He told her about the Sicily landing in 1943, and how the campaign to secure the Balkans saw him stay until the Axis surrender in May 1945. How he reported to the SOE station in Brindisi, and later to the HQ in Southern Italy, as they fought to control the Balkans. She listened as he described his work in sabotaging the Italians, aiding secret armies that could help liberate the country with the Allied forces, but that he never considered himself to be an agitator, just an agent with special skills.
She was speechless as he described the methods he used and how he helped to pass on intelligence with maps and sketches, cryptic notes, invisible ink and, occasionally, forged identity papers. How he rarely knew what the intelligence was used for or where it went but that they had to stay flexible, responding to the demands from HQ. Only later had he learned how many of his colleagues were women and how so many of them had given their lives.
His eyes never left hers, not faltering for a second, and she could see that he was telling the truth. She felt relief and pride and had a hundred questions, but she still couldn’t make the mental leap as to why this had had to come between them.
She finally found words. ‘If only I had known.’
‘You couldn’t know, Eleanor. No one could—not Mother, not Beth, no one. The organisation evolved but there was one thing that never changed: the secrecy. Even after the SOE was disbanded, it was rarely spoken about until much, much later.’
She understood what it had taken Jack to reach the heights that he had, to become a war artist and an SOE agent, to bring credit to his country and his profession, promoting their success and their cause—but she still didn’t understand. ‘We were engaged, we were going to be married…and then I never heard from you again.’
‘I found you, Eleanor, but it was too late. I saw you with another man, and a child. And I knew I was too late.’
‘When was that?’
‘Late 1946. I didn’t get back until November 1945—I was sick in hospital.’
‘You should have come to me. I always wanted to know what happened to you.’
‘I’m sorry, I can see that now, but back then…well, I didn’t think there was any point.’
‘There was a very good reason you should have. One that I know will come as a shock to you, Jack.’ She paused, her mouth suddenly dry, knowing she had to speak now before she lost her nerve. ‘The child you saw me with then…she was your daughter, Jack.’
‘We had a child?’
‘Yes, Kathryn is your granddaughter. She’s outside—she’s waiting to meet you.’
‘I don’t believe it,’ he said, casting his eyes downwards. ‘I came here to give you your paintings back. I wanted you to have an exhibition so you could finally have what you wanted…and you tell me that I’m a father—a grandfather.’
‘I have what I always wanted, Jack. I have my family.’
He shook his head as he looked at her. ‘I never did. I married but there weren’t any children.’
‘I’m sorry, Jack. I did everything I could. I looked for your mother and Beth too.’
He leaned back against the pew, his face collapsing, eyes clouding.
‘Stephen told me they moved out of London.’
‘Yes. Battersea wasn’t safe anymore, so they were rehoused in Essex. Ma was in a nursing home there,’ he answered, before returning to Eleanor’s bombshell. ‘And what about our daughter, is she still alive?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Eleanor said, ‘her name is Abigail and she’s very much alive. She lives in Spain with her husband, Martin. And you have a grandson too, and three great-grandchildren.’
They sat quietly for a moment and took in all that they had shared.
‘Do you want to see a family photo?’ she asked.
‘Do you have one?’
Eleanor opened her bag and pulled one out from two Christmases ago, the last time they had all been together. She was on the sofa, Abigail and Martin one side of her, Tom and his wife on the other, the grandchildren behind and the great-grandchildren cross-legged on the floor; for once their smiles were synchronised and everyone looked happy.
Jack studied it for a long time before looking back at her. ‘Say, I don’t think this is a very good deal, actually.’
‘What do you mean?’ she said worriedly.
‘Well, I came here with a couple of old paintings for you,’ he said, gesturing towards the package on the pew next to him. ‘And you give me a whole family…’
She thought her tears could be disguised with laughter, but Jack somehow still knew her well enough to know how she felt and took her hand in his.
What magnificent poetry it was for their lives to intersect again, and who knew what would happen. But, for the most part, she had lived the life she had chosen and she hoped that was how Jack had lived his too—with truthfulness, integrity and splendour.
They had talked for so long that the sun had moved around the building. It suddenly flooded through a different window, brighter than before and capturing their attention with the cadmium yellow, the crimson, and the Prussian blue, yellow ochre and Renaissance gold they had once used to tell their part of a story.
Eleanor looked back at Jack as she laid her hand over his, the church now ablaze, saturating them in colour.