London
Celia returned to London to face Aurelius Dupree. The crossing was tiresome for this time there was no Rafael O’Rourke to divert her, only the truth about her father which induced a slow hardening of the heart the more she thought of it. She resolved to keep the information she had gleaned from the rest of the family; she didn’t think her mother would survive the shock of learning that Digby had a black son called Lucky! The fact that Digby was a murderer too would finish her off, if knowing about Lucky hadn’t already. She would tell them instead the good news about the gold mine and watch their jaws drop when she announced that she was going back to South Africa to run it. She had called the Rothschilds, the Oppenheimers and all the other financial dynasties who had been friends with her father. Since mining companies were already investing in deep reef mining in Witwatersrand and now in the Orange Free State, and since they had known her father, she had begun to raise the money for what she had named the Free State Deep Reef Mining Company.
The mine would take many years of work, compromise and patience; she wasn’t under any illusion about that. But it would take a special determination to raise the money and Celia would have to learn everything for herself. She’d learn about the geology of gold in the deep mines, gold which was being found not in gleaming chunks but within iron ore. She’d learn how shafts were built and cages lowered to carry the men into the mines. She’d learn how they worked in the stopes and about the chemical process of melting the iron ore to extract the gold which was the fruit of this vast and complicated process. She’d learn how to build a small town where her workers would reside and she’d employ the technical experts to see that it was all done properly. Who would have thought that Celia, the self-proclaimed ‘bird-brain’ of the family, would do all of this?
The last thing she needed was Bruce and Tarquin thinking they could do it better and coming along with her so she would tell them that Digby’s man, Mr Botha, was going to oversee everything, although she had already resolved to find her own man as soon as she returned to Johannesburg.
The problem of Aurelius Dupree was not long in resurfacing. He knew she had gone and he clearly knew when she was back, because a day later he came knocking on her door in Kensington Palace Gardens. On this occasion he was invited in. Celia noticed how much he had aged in a couple of months. He seemed a little more bent, his cough had worsened and his hands shook as he steadied himself on the arms of the chair as he sat down. The fight had not gone out of his eyes, however, and he glared at her across the room as she poured the tea and handed him a cup. ‘I’ve been to South Africa,’ she told him. ‘I went to Johannesburg and met with my father’s old foreman, Mr Botha.’
Aurelius Dupree nodded and his thin lips twisted with resentment. ‘Your father’s monkey,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose he enlightened you with the truth.’
‘No, he didn’t,’ said Celia.
‘A long way to go to discover nothing, Mrs Mayberry.’
‘I could have stopped there. That would have been very much to my satisfaction. I would have returned believing you and your brother made up a whole heap of lies and maligned my innocent father, who was an honourable man in a dirty world of cut-throats and ruffians.’
Dupree raised a white eyebrow. ‘But you didn’t?’
Celia shook her head. ‘I didn’t. I dug deeper, Mr Dupree, and I discovered, much to my shame, that you are right.’
Aurelius Dupree put down his teacup and stared at her in bewilderment. ‘Sorry, Mrs Mayberry. What did you say?’
‘That you are right, Mr Dupree. My father cheated you out of money and had your brother murdered and you incarcerated for a crime you did not commit.’ Aurelius Dupree’s vision blurred as tears bled into the dry balls of his eyes and gathered there in shiny pools. ‘I will never speak of this again, not to anyone, and my words will never leave the four walls of this room, but I admit his crime on his behalf, and ask your forgiveness. I cannot pay you the amount you are owed and I cannot give you back the years you have lost behind bars, but I have discovered a gold mine in South Africa which my father was unable to mine because of the sheer depth of the gold. Now new machinery has made it possible and I intend to mine it. I have returned to London and have started to raise the funds. Therefore, what I can offer you, Mr Dupree, is shares. I will also make sure you get the best medical care London has to offer. You have a shocking cough, if I may say so, and your health is in a terrible state. I would like to make the years you have left as comfortable as possible.’
Aurelius Dupree pushed himself up and staggered over to where Celia was sitting and took her hands in his. The tears had now overflowed and trickled down the lines and crevices in his skin like hesitant rivulets. ‘You are a good woman, Mrs Mayberry,’ he said huskily. ‘I accept your offer. When I first laid eyes on you many months ago I didn’t think you were made of anything other than pretty stuffing, but you have proved me wrong. You are a woman of substance, Mrs Mayberry. It takes courage to do what you have done. Indeed you cannot give me back the years, but you have given me something else which is almost more important: credence. I’ve spent thirty years protesting my innocence and my protests have been met with derision and disbelief. You have swept all that away with three blessed words. You are right. You cannot imagine what those three words mean to me.’ He coughed some phlegm from his lungs. ‘I’m undone, Mrs Mayberry. Undone.’ He coughed again and Celia settled him onto the sofa. He was trembling so violently now that Celia asked one of the maids for a blanket and the butler to light the fire. She gave him a warm drink of milk and honey and some hot soup. The man who had failed to remove his hat at the funeral, who had sneaked his way into the church at the memorial service, who had terrorized her with threats and accusations, was now nothing more than a homeless old vagabond with deteriorating health and a fading heart full of gratitude. ‘You must stay here until you are better,’ she said, her own heart overflowing with compassion. ‘I won’t take no for an answer. It is the least we can do.’
‘Then let me give you some advice about your mine,’ he said weakly. ‘I know a thing or two about mines and a lot about the men you’re going to have to deal with.’ Celia listened as he shared his wisdom and for a while his pallid cheeks flushed with renewed life and his eyes flickered with forgotten pleasure, like the sudden reviving of embers in a fire that appeared to be dying. But as the day approached evening his energy waned and his eyelids drooped and he sank into a deep slumber, his breath rattling ominously in his chest.
Celia knew he wouldn’t live to see his shares, nor would he require the best medical care London had to offer. She sensed that he wouldn’t even survive the night. Aurelius Dupree could finally give up the fight for he had at last found peace.
The secrets of Digby Deverill’s past which threatened to devastate the family’s reputation were buried with Aurelius Dupree. Only Duchess knew the truth and Celia did not doubt that she would take it to her grave. Celia informed her family of her plans to return to Johannesburg with her children and no one was more surprised than Harry and Boysie. They lunched with her at Claridge’s and noticed a solemnity about her now, a depth she hadn’t had before. Gone was the girl who wanted to dance at the Café de Paris and the Embassy, for whom life was ‘a riot’, and in her place a woman who had lost so much but discovered through her loss something that she had never known was there: the Deverill spirit – the ability to overcome despair and rise beyond the limits of her own frailty. Not only had she found strength but she had found a future. She was going to restore the family fortune and Harry and Boysie realized, as they listened to her, that she really meant to do it. ‘The past is gone,’ she told them. ‘And there’s no point crying about it. One has to look ahead and keep one’s eye on the horizon. As long as I do that, and don’t look back, I’ll be okay.’
‘But what will we do without you?’ Boysie asked.
‘Life won’t be the same,’ said Harry sadly.
‘You have each other,’ she told them with a smile. ‘It’s always been the three of us but you’ve never really needed me, have you?’
‘But we like to have you around,’ said Boysie.
‘I’ll come back when I’m rich and powerful.’
‘You’re very brave, Celia,’ said Harry.
‘Who’d have imagined it?’ said Boysie.
Celia thought of Aurelius Dupree and smiled. ‘I didn’t,’ she agreed. ‘But I’ve changed. There’s nothing left for me here except you two and a frivolous life I no longer want. I’m going on an adventure, boys, and I’m excited. I’ll write and tell you all about it and perhaps, if you both want an adventure too, you can come and join me. In the meantime, you must look after Mama and Kitty and write to me often. I want to know everything so that one day, when I come back, I won’t feel I’ve been away.’
The three of them held hands around the table and agreed to that. ‘Out of sight but not out of mind,’ said Boysie.
Harry picked up his glass. ‘Let’s drink to that,’ he said.
‘Good Lord!’ Hazel exclaimed. ‘Celia’s off to live in South Africa. She’s going to become a miner.’
‘A miner?’ said Laurel in horror, glancing at the letter in her sister’s hand.
‘That’s what it says. She’s going to dig for gold in an old mine of Digby’s.’
‘What, on her own?’
‘That’s what it looks like.’
‘Does she know anything about mining?’
‘Of course she doesn’t.’
‘Oh dear. It sounds very alarming,’ said Laurel, sipping her tea.
‘She says there’s nothing left for her now that the castle has gone.’
‘She’s running away,’ said Laurel with certainty. ‘How very disastrous. Do you think someone should go and bring her back? When did she leave?’
‘My dear Laurel, she left weeks ago. I’m sure that when she realizes what it is to mine for gold she will be back. It simply isn’t the place for a woman.’
There was a long pause as Hazel folded up the letter and replaced it in the envelope. The silence, which had been kept at bay for the duration of their short conversation, now returned to hang heavy and sad between them like a fog. In that fog was the unavoidable presence of Ethelred Hunt.
Hazel glanced at her sister. ‘Are you all right, Laurel?’ she asked quietly.
Laurel inhaled through her nostrils and lifted her chin. ‘I’m all right,’ she said. ‘And you, Hazel, are you all right?’
‘Yes,’ said Hazel but her voice quivered like the string of a badly played violin.
‘No you’re not, I can tell.’
‘No, not really.’
‘Me neither,’ conceded Laurel.
‘We agree on that then.’
‘We agree on everything these days,’ said Laurel with a joyless laugh.
‘I love him,’ said Hazel. ‘I love the very bones of him.’
‘And I love him too,’ said Laurel. She reached out and took her sister’s hand. ‘But we have each other.’
‘Thank God for that,’ said Hazel. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you.’
There was a knock at the door. ‘Goodness, are we expecting anyone?’ Laurel asked. Hazel shook her head and looked worried.
‘Who could it be?’ said Laurel, getting up from the sofa.
‘Let’s go and see,’ said Hazel, following her sister into the corridor. They reached the front door and took a while to release the chain and unlock it. Since the Troubles neither Shrub had been casual about the security of their home. They opened the door a crack to see the sorry face of Ethelred Hunt who was standing with his hat in his hands. Just as Laurel was about to slam the door in his face he wedged his shoe in the gap.
‘May you permit me to speak?’ he asked. The Shrubs stared through the crack with wide eyes, like a pair of terrified birds. ‘I have come to the conclusion that I love you both and I simply can’t live without you. I can’t decide between you and it seems to me that you are a job-lot, that you come together and are impossible to separate. So, I have an outrageous but frankly delicious suggestion. Would you like to hear it?’
The women looked at each other. ‘We would,’ said Hazel.
‘Go on,’ said Laurel.
‘What would you say to the three of us living together?’ The two sisters blinked at him in amazement. ‘I know it’s unconventional and I’m sure my daughter will have a lot to say about it, but I can’t see another way. It’s all or nothing and I’m not a man to settle for nothing. It’s either the three of us or . . .’ He hesitated. ‘Or unhappiness. The last few months have been deeply unhappy. I don’t regret one moment of the past; I only wish I’d had more of it. What do you say, girls? Are we on?’
There was a brief scuffle and then the door opened. ‘How about a cup of tea?’ said Hazel happily.
‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ said Laurel, making off towards the kitchen.
‘Oh, I think something stronger,’ said Ethelred, placing his hat on the hook in the hall, sandwiched between two pink sunhats with blue ribbons. ‘After all, we’ve got something to celebrate.’