Boston Harbor sparkled like gemstones under a sun so perfectly round and golden it looked like an egg yolk. Samuel sat down on the bed, the postcard wrapped between his fingers. He always studied the picture first, leaving his mother’s handwritten note until last. It was like enjoying the roast chicken while every part of you could hardly wait for the dessert. His mother’s note was always dessert. But like any delicious treat, once it was within reach, it proved impossible to resist.
Samuel turned the card over. His eyes swept across her ornate handwriting and he felt that familiar rush, warm and quick, washing through him. Her hand had pressed each and every letter onto that postcard. She had probably sat at a desk in her hotel room or in a tea shop somewhere, thinking only of him, and writing this message. These were her words. Her words, just for his eyes. Samuel took a breath and started reading as slowly as he could manage.
July 20, 1961
Dearest Samuel,
How I miss you, my little man. I have arrived in Boston and it is damp and dreary, just like my spirits. As yet there is no end in sight to my business here in America. But I promise that I will be home as soon as I am able. Be good for Ruth.
With love and kisses,
Mother
The last he heard she was still in New York. Now she had moved on to Boston. He would need to update the atlas. Samuel turned the card over, then over again, as if he might find some other message from his mother, something hidden that might offer a clue. People did that sometimes—plant clues. But there was nothing. No end in sight to my business here. Why was there no end in sight? Why was it taking so long?
Samuel knew that there had been a lot of trouble with the steel mill in Lincolnshire. They owed more than owned, that’s what his father always said. Then after he died, the banks, which were run by appalling men with ice-cold hearts, expected his mother to sell everything, accept her losses and walk away. But his mother had a head for numbers; that’s another thing his father used to say. And so she had gone to every corner of England trying to raise something she called capital. When that didn’t work, she decided to try her luck in America. Samuel’s grandfather lived in New York, though Samuel had never met him, on account of the old man being sour as a lemon. Samuel’s father said that, as well.
I will be home as soon as I am able. She promised that at the end of every postcard. There had been eight in all, including this latest one. All declaring that she would come home as soon as I am able. What did that mean? Why wasn’t she free to come home whenever she chose? Was someone holding her against her will? He hoped not. Well, mostly. A small part of him, a wicked part he was certain, wished that she had been locked away. Perhaps by his grandfather, who hated the English. Or one of those American bankers. Because then it wouldn’t be her choice to be away so long.
Samuel put the card down on the bed, then picked it up again. Waiting for someone to come home was an awful thing. The boy sighed. Then he turned it over and began reading again.
* * *
“‘Be good for Ruth. With love and kisses, Mother.’” Samuel took a drink of milk and wiped his mouth. “Shall I read it again?”
“You’ll wear the ink out if you keep reading it over.” Ruth was using an empty peach tin to press the dough into circles, which were the only shape shortbread ought to be, as far as Samuel was concerned. “Still, I’m glad you know where your mother is and that she’s well.”
“I wonder what Boston is like,” said Samuel.
“The head housekeeper at the first home I worked in, Mrs. Delaney, she’d been the governess for a family from Boston in her younger years. She said they were ghastly.”
“Are all the people from Boston ghastly?”
“I doubt it. People are much the same everywhere you go—good and bad and everything in between.”
“Do you think Mother will be there long?” Samuel had propped the postcard against a large jar of flour and was gazing into the picture of Boston Harbor.
“How should I know, Samuel? You wanted to hear from your mother and now you have—be glad of that.” Ruth tried to sound stern but Samuel thought she sounded rather pleased. “It’s a lovely card and mind what she says about being good for me.”
“She hates it there and wants to come home, that’s what she says.” Samuel picked up the card and turned it over. “‘I have arrived in Boston and it is damp and dreary, just—’”
“‘Just like my spirits,’” said Ruth, interrupting him. “I know it by heart myself, you’ve read it out so many times. Let’s talk of something else.”
Ruth could do that. Make a decree, like a queen or something, that certain topics had reached their end and that would be that.
“I won’t read it aloud again because you don’t want me to,” Samuel said, “but Mother says she misses me and that she wants to come home. That’s what she says.”
“Of course she wants to come home.” Ruth set aside the peach tin and began to place the cut pieces of dough onto a baking tray. “But as I’ve told you too many times to count, before she can, your mother has important business to see to.”
“Doesn’t she know how long it will take?” said Samuel. “She must have some idea when—”
“Why must she? These things are very complicated and...” Ruth sighed. “Your mother is seeking a large investment and bankers don’t hand over big sums of money without giving it a great deal of thought.”
“Why doesn’t she ever tell me where she’s staying so that I can write back?” A frown had set in, the boy’s nostrils flaring. “Why, Ruth?”
“Well, I can’t say for certain.” Ruth cleared her throat the way she always did when something was making her uncomfortable. “Perhaps she didn’t think of it or she isn’t properly settled in yet, and if she did tell you, well, I expect she wouldn’t have the time to be answering letters.”
“I’ll telephone her, then,” declared Samuel.
Ruth rolled her eyes. “Don’t they teach you anything at that village school? I can hardly get a call through to my sister in Surrey without a dozen operators and an earful of crackle, let alone America.”
“I’ll send her a telegram. You don’t need a dozen operators for that, do you?” He nodded. “I’ll send a telegram to Boston and ask her when she’s coming home.”
Ruth smiled faintly. “And how are you planning to do that? As you’ve just been grumbling, you haven’t a clue which hotel she’s staying at.”
The boy glanced up at the housekeeper and his face was now a mask of suspicion. “Do you know?”
“Me?” Ruth’s mouth dropped open and she huffed. “If I knew that, I’d be sending her a telegram myself so that you’d stop asking me these infernal questions.”
When Samuel got worked up about his mother, all sorts of thoughts bubbled up in his mind. Sometimes they were just things he felt—the ache of missing her or the resentment that she was gone. Other times they were things he wanted to know. Things he had a right to know. And he would ask them, even when a part of him dreaded what the answers might be.
“Why didn’t Mother take me with her? If she knew she was going to be away for so long, why did she leave me here?”
Ruth stopped placing the dough onto the tray. “You think too much, young man. Naturally your mother wanted you with her—there’s no question about that—but how could she take all of those important meetings with you by her side?”
“You could have come, too,” said Samuel.
“And who would look after this house?”
“Olive,” said Samuel.
“Enough.” Ruth’s voice was low and firm. “I won’t have you working yourself into a state. We know how that ended last time.”
Samuel remembered. He had gotten upset and said things and done things that had made Ruth cross—and there had been consequences. So, he knew he should stop. Only, he couldn’t. “I want to call Uncle Felix.”
Ruth stood up. “Whatever for?”
“He might have heard something. He might know where Mother is staying or when she’s coming home.”
His uncle Felix was his father’s only brother, and though Samuel didn’t see him a great deal, he liked him well enough. Felix would play cricket with him and sneak him extra sweets and make a joke of almost everything. But since his father died Uncle Felix hadn’t been around much. He lived just a few miles away in Penzance, but being pathologically sociable, he was rarely home.
“I spoke to your uncle just last week and he’s had no word from your mother.” Ruth walked to the oven and slid the tray inside. “In fact, he was envious of your postcards.”
“I want to talk to Uncle Felix,” said Samuel again.
“You’re not going to bother him with this nonsense.” Ruth wiped her brow and Samuel saw that the flour had coated her hands like a pair of gloves. “I’m running this house single-handedly and I’ve got more important things to do than argue with the likes of you, Samuel Clay. Take yourself up to your room and change out of that school uniform and then see to your homework.”
Samuel knew the stern look on Ruth’s face very well—it meant there was no room for argument and that her patience had reached its end. So he stood up. But he pushed the chair back in such a way that its hard scraping along the stone floor would demonstrate his condemnation, without resorting to backchat. Ruth didn’t tolerate backchat.
“Put that chair under the table just like you found it,” Ruth said.
The boy did as he was told.
“That’s more like it. Now off you go. March.”
Samuel walked quickly from the room, his face a storm of grievances, and he knew, even though he didn’t have eyes in the back of his head, that Ruth was watching him leave the whole time.