‘Mutt looks better today,’ said Emma hopefully. ‘Don’t you think so, Mousie? I don’t quite know what it is but she seems calmer and her mind is surprisingly clear.’
She was busy at the ironing board, pressing and folding sheets with swift, economical movements, whilst Mousie sat at the kitchen table, peeling and dicing vegetables for soup; heaping the vegetables together in a bowl, saving the peelings for the compost heap. Although she understood that Emma’s diagnosis was coloured by wishful thinking, nevertheless she was inclined to agree with her. Following that early attack of breathlessness and sweating, Mutt was less distressed; she was sleeping more deeply.
‘The antibiotics are helping,’ she said – yet she felt that it was something more than that: rather as if a burden had been lifted and Mutt had truly relaxed for the first time in several days. For the first time since the letter and the photograph had arrived … This unbidden thought had the impact of a sudden shock and Mousie looked thoughtfully at Emma, who was now carefully ironing one of Mutt’s nightgowns.
‘Did Joss tell you about our American pilgrim?’ she asked lightly.
‘Yes, she did.’ Emma paused from her work, setting the iron on its rest and turning to look at Mousie, whose fingers continued to chop busily. ‘A rather good-looking chap, I gather, who was trying to track down an aunt or something.’
‘Great-aunt,’ said Mousie, almost absently. ‘Does the name Madeleine Grosjean ring any bells?’
Emma frowned. ‘I don’t think so. Was that her name?’
‘Apparently. He said that she knew your parents out in India.’ Mousie deftly scraped the last peelings into some newspaper. ‘She might have been a nurse.’
‘Oh, well.’ Emma shrugged and turned back to her work. ‘That’s a closed book to me, you know. I wasn’t quite two when we came home. I think I can remember things, sometimes, but then I wonder if I confuse them with stories Mutt and Bruno have told me. Do you know what I mean?’
‘Mmm.’ Mousie seemed to be distracted. ‘Did you ever see any photographs? I know you all came away in such a hurry that you didn’t bring much with you but I just wondered …’
‘Hardly anything. And, of course, very little had been sent home. Mutt’s got a few photos but those little black-and-white snapshots aren’t very revealing, are they? Bruno and I were too young to go in for souvenirs, though we’ve each got a very nice cabinet-size photo of Daddy taken when he first went out.’
Mousie stood up, carried the vegetables to the sink, rinsed them and turned them out into a large saucepan containing a rich, meaty stock. Emma smiled at her with enormous affection. She liked being here, ironing whilst Mousie prepared some lunch, bringing life to this rather cold, functional room at the back of the house. Mutt had never been a kitchen dweller, preferring her little parlour or the drawing-room, and so no atmosphere pervaded it. However, since Joss had moved temporarily into Paradise, there were one or two signs of new life: two or three cards from her friends ranged along the window-sill; her plaid shawl flung over the back of a chair; a tiny bunch of snowdrops crammed into a small blue pot. Emma was oddly touched by these signs of her daughter’s presence. Privately she hoped that, one day, Joss might live at Paradise, bringing up her own children here; re-creating those happy times when she and Bruno had been growing up together. She sighed in pleasurable anticipation.
‘It’s nice, isn’t it?’ she said spontaneously to Mousie. ‘Being together like this, I mean. The clean smells of the ironing and delicious food cooking on the Aga, and having a good old gossip. Bruno would say that it all goes back to the hunter-gatherers. All those millions of years with women gathering and spending all that time together while the men were off hunting. He’s got a thing about it.’
Mousie slipped an arm about Emma’s shoulder and gave her a little hug but she was not distracted by Bruno’s theory. An idea was growing in her mind but for some reason she was afraid of it: she couldn’t get to grips with it, yet the shadow was there.
‘Have you ever seen a photograph of their wedding?’ she asked. ‘Honor’s and Hubert’s? It was a double wedding, you know. Hubert sent us a photograph at the time. My father had just been lost with the sinking of the Hood and we came back to St Meriadoc. One of the cottages was empty so we were able to move in. You know all that, of course, but it was just at that time that Hubert got married and sent the photograph.’
‘I love all these stories about the family.’ Emma folded the night-gown and placed it on the pile of crisply laundered items. ‘How terrible it must have been for you all, Mousie. I do wish I could remember more. Do you know I can hardly even bring Grandfather to my mind? But then he died quite soon after we got home, didn’t he? Thank goodness we had all of you. It must have been such a comfort for Mutt to come back to a ready-made family, especially when she’d lost her own parents so tragically in the Blitz.’
‘We were very lucky,’ agreed Mousie. ‘All of us.’ A pause. ‘So you haven’t seen the wedding photograph?’
Emma looked at her curiously. ‘Have you still got it?’
‘Not the one Hubert sent to us. Or, at least, if we have I don’t know where it is. I just wondered if Honor might have had one somewhere. The American sent a copy of it. It was very odd, seeing it again after all these years.’
‘I’d love to see it,’ said Emma. ‘Joss didn’t show me the photograph, she just said he’d called.’
Mousie went out of the kitchen, crossed the hall to the drawing-room, and picked up the large leather bag which was lying beside an armchair. She stood quite still for a moment, the photograph in her hand, before returning to the kitchen.
‘There.’ She laid the print on the table and Emma bent over it eagerly. ‘Have you seen it before?’
‘Never.’ Emma was smiling. ‘Those ridiculous hats! But don’t they look happy and – good gracious, Mousie, doesn’t Joss look just like Mutt at that age?’
‘That’s what struck me,’ agreed Mousie. ‘It was quite a little shock … Do you recognize the other woman at all?’
Emma picked up the photograph, holding it towards the light from the window.
‘I don’t know.’ She looked puzzled. ‘There’s something about her … Isn’t it odd, though, Mousie … ?’
The sound of Mutt’s handbell sounded through the house and the two women instinctively tensed.
‘I’ll go,’ said Emma. ‘I’ll shout if I think you should come up.’ She dropped the photograph on the table and disappeared, running up the stairs. Mousie picked up the print and stared at it.
She thought: I wonder what happened to Madeleine Grosjean.
George Boscowan parked his car in the old quarry and sat for a moment, summoning up the courage required to break the news to his parents.
‘You have to tell them,’ Penny had said. ‘No, I can’t come with you. I just can’t face them. Sorry, George. Anyway, it simply wouldn’t work with Tasha screaming her head off or whatever.’
‘Please, Penny.’ He’d made another effort. ‘Look, I don’t have to stay in the Navy if you hate it that much. Of course I can imagine how much you miss your family, especially when I’m at sea. Look, we can all go to New Zealand. Why not? Make a new start together.’
‘Are you crazy?’
She’d stared at him in such horror that he’d realized with a shock that the idea of him being with her in her own country, amongst her own people, was completely unacceptable to her. Mentally she’d already moved into a new life; a life where her lover, Brett Anderson, had usurped him. It was because Brett had broken off their engagement that Penny had come to England in the first place. Now he wanted her back.
‘I think I must have been in love with him all the time,’ she’d said pathetically, seeing the reaction on his face at her instinctive response, quickly trying to engage his sympathy and divert his anger. ‘Only I did love you, George. I still do. Oh Christ! This is terrible. Can you love two people at once?’
‘Yes,’ he’d wanted to shout. ‘Yes, you bloody can. I should know. But you can at least try to fight it.’
Instead, he’d grimaced bitterly, unable to hide his feelings but feeling betrayed by her readiness to break up their marriage at Brett’s sudden reappearance.
‘He left you before,’ he’d said, ‘he might do it again. And what about Tasha? She’s mine too. How often am I going to see her with you in New Zealand?’
‘You don’t see her much now,’ she’d answered unforgivably, upset by his pain but determined not to give an inch, ‘you’re away at sea so much.’ And then, seeing his expression: ‘I’m sorry, George,’ she’d said sadly but with finality. ‘I just belong back there with my family and friends – and with Brett. I realize that now. Please don’t make it difficult for me with Tasha. She needs to be with me. What sort of life could you give her? You’d have to put her into some kind of childcare so you could work, wouldn’t you? After all, you could hardly expect your mother to manage, and you’re away for months at a time. You couldn’t put a three-month-old baby into someone else’s care for months on end. Please George, if you really love her you’ll do what’s best for her.’
He’d felt so angry by this manipulation of his love for her and their baby that he’d been obliged to walk out: striding away from the little house on the edge of Meavy village, climbing up on to the moor above Burrator. An icy wind pinched, cold-fingered, at his face and passed on across the waters of the reservoir, shivering and splintering the reflections on the surface. Black-faced sheep, with tiny, jug-eared lambs pressed against their woolly flanks, huddled in the lee of humped boulders. The tall stately conifers at the water’s edge made a dark green wedge of colour in this bleached, dun landscape; patches of bracken, rich and bright in the late-afternoon light, rusted on the slopes of Sheep’s Tor where a scattering of snow iced the granite peaks.
Staring westwards, beyond Plymouth far into Cornwall, where the sunshine showered insubstantial shafts of dazzling gold upon the distant, mysterious hills, he’d thought of Joss – and felt the balled fist of guilt deep in his gut. It was Joss who’d listened whilst he’d talked, pouring out his worries that Penny missed her family, was lonely when he went to sea, wasn’t managing too well with the baby: Joss, with whom he had fallen suddenly in love, between one glance and the next, realizing with a blow to his heart that his feelings for Penny were a dim reflection of this shattering experience. However, he’d been determined that it should not be allowed to affect his commitment to Penny.
This is what Penny feels for Brett, he’d told himself later, when Brett had reappeared and Penny was clearly being drawn back to him. George believed that they should fight for what they shared and for the security their marriage gave their baby. Yet, the moment Brett beckoned, Penny had been prepared to jettison it all without a backward glance: he could almost laugh at the irony of it all. The guilt was there, though: had he, in any way, allowed his feelings for Joss to colour his relationship with Penny? If he had never loved Joss in the first place would Penny have succumbed so quickly to Brett’s overtures? And part of him, if he were truthful, longed to chuck it all in and turn with relief to Joss …
Now, he reached for his overnight bag, took a gasping breath to steady his nerves and climbed out of the car.