Paradise
St Meriadoc
Cornwall
8th June 1947
Vivi, darling,
Yes, this is where I am. In Paradise. Will you ever believe the things that have happened to me? To be honest, I don’t know where to start my story – or at least how to start. In one way it seems very adventurous, romantic, the stuff films are made of, and then again, it could look shabby and underhand. Now that I need to write it down, the adventurous feeling is fading and the wrongness – and the danger! – of what I have done presents itself more forcefully. I am masquerading as another woman, you see. I am no longer Madeleine Uttworth – or Madeleine Grosjean, that was – I am Honor Trevannion. And Lottie is no longer Charlotte Uttworth but Emma Trevannion.
They died, you see – first Hubert, then Emma, then Honor – in Karachi on the way to catch the boat. Hubert hadn’t yet been discharged and he was coming back to Multan but he was determined to get Honor and the children away. They were to spend a week in Karachi so that Honor could do some shopping, spend their last few days on holiday together, but then Hubert fell ill. I think it was botulism, probably from some tinned food. It was certainly quick enough. Honor managed to get a telephone call to the hospital in Multan asking me to come to them, to help her with the children. I packed my few portable treasures and caught the first train out. Oh God! I shall never forget that journey, the crush of people, the noise and the heat, Lottie bored, cross, thirsty – I thought it would never end. I can still recall certain images as we passed through the Sind: the brown dry scrub on the dunes, a sand-coloured camel, the sense of absolute stillness. There were little mud villages, flat-roofed, quiet – and then an unexpected splash of colour – a bright, singing red as a woman appeared between the huts. When the train stopped to replenish the water, and we got off to stretch our legs, the heat seemed to deaden voices, weighing down upon us, killing the desire to speak. On again and, at the edge of a flood of water like brown stew, a man, dressed all in black, sitting on his horse: man and horse both immobile, indifferent, watching the train pass on its journey to Karachi.
And by the time we got there, Hubert and Emma were dead and Honor was ill. There was a young Indian doctor with her, rather out of his depth and very relieved to see me. He promised to return in the morning but by then Honor was dead. He made out the certificate and hurried away again, leaving me to deal with everything else.
It was Honor who told me to use the tickets to get us back to England. I’d been in such a dither wondering what to do (I’d written to you by now, of course, but I just had this feeling, though your letter was very practical and charitable, Vivi, that you couldn’t quite see me and Lottie fitting in with your new life in America) and, as you know, things are bad in India: riots, killings, and Multan in particular is a trouble spot. In March, after some particularly ghastly murders, the Army was brought in and introduced a twenty-four-hour curfew. Honor begged me to get Bruno back to Cornwall.
‘It is what Hubert would have wanted,’ she said again. ‘He’d want you all to be safe.’
He’d been so unhappy about Lottie and me staying on. ‘If you haven’t sorted something out with your sister in America by the time I go home then you’re coming with me,’ he’d said. He was such a super person, Vivi. So alive, so confident, and so generous. You know, I couldn’t believe that Hubert would die …
Poor Bruno, poor little boy. He’d lost all his family in a matter of days and we were all that he had left. Lottie and me. And I’d lost my two dearest friends and little baby Em. I tried not to allow my own grief to show because of the need to comfort poor Bruno but I was frightened about what would happen to the three of us – and then, quite suddenly, the way seemed so clear. There, in that hotel room where Hubert first became ill, were all their papers: the tickets, the Trevannion family passports. I don’t think that Honor had been thinking things through clearly, she was too ill, but she’d been insistent that I should get us all on the boat somehow. My idea was that we should actually become that family, the three of us together. I thanked God that they’d called me Mutt. M. Uttworth, do you see? Muttworth. Mutt. It was Hubert who’d started it and Bruno thought it was terrific fun – even Lottie chanted Mutt, Mutt, rather than Mum, Mum. Honor never quite got used to it and continued to call me Madeleine – but Honor was dead.
I explained to Bruno that someone might take him away from us if they didn’t believe I was his mother – oh, I wasn’t deliberately trying to frighten him, Vivi, I really thought we might be separated, that I wouldn’t be able to use their tickets, and I wanted to get us out. What else was I to do? Take them back up-country to the hospital and try to go on working, with two babies to look after and the British about to be thrown out at any moment? Send Bruno, not yet five, home on his own? It was a kind of revelation, standing in that hot, sticky hotel room, with Lottie wailing and Bruno, silent and afraid, curled up on the bed beside her, watching me. The means to escape was right there under my hands with Hubert’s and Honor’s blessing. Paradise or Karachi? Which would you have chosen, Vivi?
Perhaps there was another way. Perhaps I should have gone to the Commissioner and explained or talked to the purser on the ship, but I didn’t. The ship was due to sail, packed to the last square inch with people trying to get out, and I wanted to be on it, not sitting in that stuffy, fly-ridden room, helplessly tied up with red tape. And we were on it: Mrs Honor Trevannion and her two children. Almost at once I saw the danger. Some of the women wanted to talk to Bruno and I knew that he was frightened of saying something he shouldn’t. Oh, the poor darling! I kept thinking: Let’s just get home and then I’ll try to think more sensibly about all this, but meanwhile, those kind women, mainly army, accepted that Bruno and I were just too shocked and grief-stricken to be able to communicate properly. At that point I could still barely take it in that I’d lost the two people dearest to me: my closest friends. In the end the other passengers left us to ourselves and this gave us a little breathing space to adjust.
Somewhere in the Indian Ocean Lottie became Emma. Remembering to call her Emma wasn’t too difficult for Bruno – she was so like his own little sister that he’d often muddled their names – but it was very hard for me. I felt that I’d killed her. But when I saw Paradise, Vivi, I knew I’d made the right decision and Bruno is back where he belongs. I shall look after him, never fear. I loved Honor as if she’d been my sister, and I shall love Bruno as if he were my own son.
How I wish I could see you, again, and meet your American husband. Will it ever happen, do you think? God bless you, darling.
Your loving sister,
Madeleine
Vivi, darling,
I’m wondering whether to keep the first letter until I’ve written a bit more and then send it all on to you. When I read the letter through I realized I hadn’t told you about the actual homecoming and I dithered, wondering whether to post it just as it was or to add some more. Anyway, I decided to wait a bit so that you can get a fuller picture of what happened and see how I finally finished up here at Paradise. You must believe that I fully intended to give myself a day or two, once we got to Liverpool, to reconsider the whole situation. After all, it wasn’t too late and I wanted to be absolutely certain that it was right for all three of us. I prayed about it, Vivi. Do you remember Sister Julian at the convent? Oh, how we loved her. During those long weeks of the sea voyage I found myself thinking about her, remembering things she said to us when we were children, but does God hear us, do you think, if we’re deliberately deceiving people?
What I didn’t expect was to be met at the dock. There we were, struggling with cases, Lottie Emma screaming her head off, and suddenly this man appeared. He was so kind, so quick. He dealt with the porters and swept us through Customs and into a taxi. Simon Dalloway.
‘Hubert asked me to get you sorted out this end,’ he said. ‘I’ve only just heard the sad news. I am so terribly sorry …’
Something like that. I can’t remember his exact words, I was too shocked. Fortunately, so was he. Apparently the purser had explained the whole situation about Hubert’s sudden death to him and he completely took over: sent a telegram to Cornwall, hurried us away. It was all taken out of my hands. That’s when it first began, you see. I’d told that first untruth to get us on the ship, I’d said I was Honor, that Lottie was Emma, and now it was impossible to admit the truth. And what about Bruno? I felt responsible for him – more than that: I’d promised Honor that I’d look after him and I love Bruno as if he were my own child.
Simon was kind, so kind. So sweet to Bruno and Emma, very gentle with us all, putting my confusion down to grief. I went along with it, let him shepherd us all on to the train bound for Bristol. He’d got the tickets, organized a hamper, and I suddenly realized that Honor would have known that this had all been planned for her and the children. Following Hubert’s instructions Simon had booked us into the Royal Hotel for the night before the final leg of the journey to Cornwall the next day. At dinner, with the children in bed, he talked about St Meriadoc – and the pitfalls began to open at my feet – but, even then, I felt I could manage. It was when he began to talk about Hubert, how they’d been at school and gone on to train together, that I began to see that, although I knew Hubert very well, I didn’t know him in the same way as a wife would know him. The thought of Hubert – thinking of what I’d lost – reduced me to tears and, like the army wives on the ship, Simon backed off sharply at the sight of them. I was still so shocked by grief, oh, the horror of waking to it new each morning; and the realization that I’d never see Honor or Hubert or baby Em again was terrible.
Bruno had had a strained, wary look while Simon was with us, and I was afraid that the deception might be too much for him, but I also wondered what might be waiting for him in Cornwall. I decided that it was only right to escort him home and see what awaited him there. There was still time to tell the truth. I even found myself wondering if they might take me on as a nanny.
I can imagine your face, Vivi, the shaking of your head. It was always you, wasn’t it, that stopped me plunging into trouble, making a fool of myself. I thought of writing to you the first time Johnny disappeared but something stopped me writing then; admitting to you that Johnny had let us down. I felt ashamed and couldn’t bring myself to write the words. I could imagine your old, critical way of looking at me that was rather like Mother’s judgemental, assessing glance at our father when he’d been overgenerous with presents for us or had drunk a little too much wine. Sensible, steady people don’t seem to realize that when you’ve been a fool you don’t need anyone to rub it in: you feel quite inadequate enough without that. When I received your answer to my letter, back there in Multan, I sensed your anxiety; that you didn’t really want your destitute sister and her child rocking the boat of your shiny new life. I didn’t blame you for that. Despite writing to each other and exchanging photographs over the last eight years, we’d drifted a bit, hadn’t we? Me, with my missionary zeal, rushing away to be a nurse in India and you enrolling in a secretarial course and then joining the WAAF when war broke out. Neither you nor Mother approved of my going to India, did you? You thought there was something histrionic, not quite suitable about the whole thing. Honor said that her people felt exactly the same. She was an only child and her parents were killed in the Blitz. When you wrote to tell me that Mother had died of that ghastly cancer Honor was such a brick. She and Hubert saw me through so many things. What would she think of me now, I wonder. I’m sure she’d see that I’m thinking of Bruno, trying to do what Hubert wanted.
Do you remember Goblin Market, Vivi? You were Lizzie, weren’t you, ‘Full of wise upbraidings’? And I was Laura, tempted by forbidden fruit. I still have the copy you gave me for my fifteenth birthday. I’ve always kept it with me and it was one of the very few things I brought from Multan in that hastily packed bag. Remember that Easter holiday, Vivi, just before the war broke out? I was torn between becoming a missionary or eloping with Robert Talbot and you would wait up for me each evening with those ‘wise upbraidings’.
Dear, you should not stay so late,
Twilight is not good for maidens;
In the haunts of goblin men.
It always makes me think of you letting me in through the garden door, both of us weeping with silent laughter as we crept upstairs, quiet as mice so as not to wake Mother. But you were right about Robert. Because of him I lost my longing for God and fell between all the stools in the end. What a fool I was, Vivi …
I miss you so much.
My love, darling.
Madeleine
Paradise
30th June 1947
Vivi, darling,
I write these letters in the evenings when the children are in bed and Hubert’s father is in the drawing-room reading the newspaper or listening to the wireless. I haven’t posted the other two letters yet. Silly, isn’t it? It comforts me to write to you, like this, but I’m still drawn to the idea of building up the picture as a whole. I’ve decided to bring you right up to date and then send them all off together.
To be absolutely honest with you, Vivi, it’s the least bit terrifying. The real problem is that, once you start down a road like this, things get away with you and carry you along with them. Arriving here with Simon, it seemed suddenly impossible to explain the situation. Hubert’s father, James, was so pleased to see us all and so overcome by the sight of the children. Over and over again he’d touch Emma’s hair or tip Bruno’s chin so as to look at him. ‘Just like Hubert at that age,’ he’d say. And you could see that he was struggling to keep back the tears.
He is a darling old boy, often with his head in a book and rather frail, but you could see that the children were like a breath of new life to him. There was never quite the right moment to explain to him at the beginning and, as each day passes, it becomes more and more impossible. It seems as though I might destroy some of the comfort he’s getting from it. And he loves Emma. She makes him laugh; she is so natural and takes everything in her stride. I really feel that it would be almost cruel to take her away and leave him and Bruno by themselves.
We don’t talk too much about Hubert: James is typical of the stiff-upper-lip generation – remember Mother after Papa left us? Nothing is to be talked about which might be classed as emotional – but he loves to hear about Hubert’s work. That’s easy for me, of course, because I worked with him for six years but I still have to watch what I say and this is the exhausting part. I have to be so vigilant. And the real danger comes not from him but from Hubert’s cousin Mousie. I had no idea that there would be other people apart from Hubert’s immediate family – and I knew that he was an only child and that his mother had died – so you can imagine the shock to find an aunt and two cousins living ten minutes away! The aunt is a kindly soul and Rafe is a fairly standard fourteen-year-old boy, still at school, but his older sister is a different proposition.
Oh, Vivi, can you imagine anyone more observant, more judgemental, than a seventeen-year-old girl? Mousie loved her cousin Hubert and she is critical of his widow – and there are so many tiny traps, zigzagging across my path like the sticky strands of a spider’s web. I get caught in them and then I have to twist and turn and struggle to extricate myself. She watches me, as if puzzled, and I am frightened of her.
‘You!’ I hear you cry. ‘You’ve never been frightened in your life.’ Oh, but that was before I had my baby, Vivi. Once you have a baby you have a hostage to fortune and nothing is ever the same again. But now I have found Paradise and I can tell you that it is worth the struggle. I want to describe it so that you can picture us here. Paradise is part of a small estate, you see, hidden in a sheltered valley. It’s approached from a long deep lane which plunges down and down, with glimpses through farm gates of the sea and of high, wild cliffs. Down you go, between two grassy banks, high and straight as a wall with a wild thorny hedge on top, until you run into the little cove. It’s U-shaped, like a narrow horseshoe, as if the sea has crept up secretly one night and taken a bite from the land. First, on the seaward side, there’s a boatyard that is no longer used and next to it a row of four cottages, called – imaginatively – The Row. Each has its wash-house, like a rather large porch, extending into the small yard in front, and running along behind them, just one big step from the door, is the sea-wall. This is the north coast, Vivi, and the houses turn their backs to the wild Atlantic. Across the road from the cottages there is an old quarry and this secret magical valley widens and runs inland. High up in this valley is St Meriadoc’s Well: a tiny, bubbling spring, half hidden beneath a few granite slabs, moss-grown and half buried in tall, feathery grasses. A thousand years ago the saint’s disciple built a cell beside the well and this is all that is left of it. Mallow still grows here, eight feet high with big rosy-purple flowers, and I like to think the disciple used it as a medicine. Its sap can be used as a soothing ointment and its leaves to draw out wasp-stings. There’s comfrey nearby too, and Aaron’s rod. On a hot June afternoon it is possible to imagine him here at the door of his cell, watching the kestrel that hangs motionless in the dazzling blue air above him and listening to the lark, as he prepares his simple meal or sweeps the bare floor of his cell with a twiggy broom made from the branches of the tamarisk trees which cling along the valley’s sides.
The spring grows into a little stream that runs down towards the sea and beneath a little bridge, so narrow that you can only just drive a car across it, and which divides this cove with its row of cottages and the boatyard from Paradise and The Lookout, a Victorian folly built halfway up the cliff, rather like a miniature lighthouse. It’s a funny old place, perched high on the rocks as if defying the gales and the tides, but empty at present. Beyond the bridge, the path splits into two: one branch goes up to The Lookout, and then on across the cliffs, and the other takes you along the lane and through the big gateway into the driveway to Paradise. At last, we are here, Vivi, on ‘The Walk to the Paradise Gardens’. Hubert loved that music, you know. There was an Englishness about Delius, he said, that transported him back to all he missed most and he had a record of A Village Romeo and Juliet and ‘On hearing the first cuckoo in spring’. I grew to love it too. Anyway, here is Paradise, Vivi, which is now my home.
Imagine, then, a tiny Queen Anne house, grey stone washed white, slate-roofed. It has a demure look, like a very smart doll’s house and it is set amongst a great climbing tangle of rhododendrons, although across the gravel from the front door is a little lawn, green as an emerald, but plush and soft underfoot. I was in time to see the rhododendrons in flower, Vivi, creamy white, crimson, and a yellow one with the most heavenly scent that I can smell from my bedroom window. The rooms are cool and elegant: drawing-room and dining-room on either side of the long hall and behind them the kitchen – square, roomy, looking north – and a charming little parlour behind the drawing-room which James uses as an office.
He lets me sit here at this lovely old desk to write my letters but I should like to have all this clutter out and make it such a pretty little room. I call him James, Vivi. He asked if I would like to call him ‘Father’ but how could I? I thought at once of our father and knew that it would be impossible. The word stuck in my throat. I feared that he might think ‘James’ too informal but, luckily, he rather likes it. I think it makes him feel young again, and rather dashing. I tease him a little, very gently, deferring to him over certain things – my hat for church, a frock for afternoon tea with some neighbour – and his back is a little straighter, his eye brighter, because of it. He’s a darling.
He’s calling for me, Vivi. I’d no idea it was so late. More next time but, for now,
All love, darling,
Madeleine
She puts down the pen and looks about the room, folding the letter hastily and tucking it into the writing case. She is beginning to grow used to the fact that she owns very little – she brought so few belongings with her from Multan – but it seems strange and a little frightening to have nothing familiar to connect her to her life with Johnny and India. She has Honor’s things, of course: that little bag with its label ‘Wanted on Voyage’ contains objects that constantly remind her of Honor. This writing case is amongst these, along with her pretty gold fountain pen. Mutt screws on its lid just as James appears, pushing open the door, smiling half enquiringly, half apologetically.
‘Not interrupting anything?’
‘Heavens, no.’
Her smile is warm with affection and he beams back at her gratefully; she is quick to love, this girl of Hubert’s, and her presence is already easing his loneliness. His son’s death has been far more of a blow than he will ever show but the arrival of his family is a blessing.
Mutt slips a hand within his arm – Dear old boy, she thinks – and wishes that she were not deceiving him.
‘I think we need our nightcap,’ she says, drawing him into the room. ‘Just a tiny one for me, of course, but it helps me sleep.’
‘Well, of course it does.’
He likes to feel her fingers on his arm, strong and comforting, and he straightens his back a little as he makes for the cupboard. This last drink ritual was a solitary affair when Margaret was alive; she’d go upstairs, leaving him beside his little fire to brood over the events of the day whilst she prepared herself for bed. He misses her dreadfully, of course he does, but he admits to himself that this is rather fun: Honor perching on the corner of the desk and watching him whilst he measures out a finger of the precious whisky. He begins to tell an amusing wartime anecdote relating to rationing and she chuckles appreciatively.
Inside herself, Mutt is marvelling at the little scene: can it be true that she is sitting here with Hubert’s father? She imagines how his face would change if she were suddenly to interrupt his story with her own. ‘Listen,’ she might say. ‘I’m not really Hubert’s widow. It’s all a terrible mistake …’
Instead she nods encouragingly, laughing with him, and the odd thing is that she is comforted by a sense of rightness, of being where she truly belongs. It seems so much like home, this lovely valley, and already she has a strong affinity with this dear old man. He is very like Hubert, although the thick black hair is now white. His thin, clever face is still lively and the brown eyes have a twinkle: just so will Bruno look in the distant future. She smiles, filled suddenly with tenderness, and it is as if he instinctively knows that this special smile has nothing to do with his story but is an acknowledgement of some passing connection with his son and his grandson. He smiles back at her, raising his glass as if in a salute to her thought, and she swallows some whisky quickly.
It has always been so, she thinks; love sweeping over her, lifting her on its warm sparkling wave, engulfing her senses and her reason. And this love is not only to do with attractive young men but embraces the elderly and children too: those Indians in Multan, in their poverty and need, and her own friends. The flood of emotion always carries her along with it, and she is buoyed up with her longing to help, but occasionally the current is too strong for her. Often someone is at hand to hold her head above the water – Vivi, perhaps, and later on, Honor and Hubert – but sometimes she is left, out of her depth, struggling against the undertow.
James finishes his story without showing that he senses a quenching of her spirits. He thinks he understands it, knowing how a joyful memory has its twin face of grief and loss. Just so has he felt about Margaret – looking with delight upon the first open flower of the camellia; remembering that she will never share it with him again – and his compassion stretches out to this girl who still smiles bravely though her eyes are shadowed with fear. He cannot speak any words of comfort, however; that is not his way. He gets to his feet with a remark about the lateness of the hour, but he touches her shoulder as he passes on his way to the hall.
‘Good girl. Good girl,’ he mutters, as though she might be a favourite horse or a well-loved dog. ‘Sleep well, my dear.’
She watches him go and then carries the glasses into the kitchen.
12th July
I’m feeling very low tonight, Vivi. James has gone out to dinner with some friends, and I’m alone for the first time at Paradise. You’d think, wouldn’t you, that I’d be glad to be alone? No pressure, no need to think before I speak; nobody to put on an act for; but the truth is, actually, I feel unbearably lonely. The children are in bed and I’ve had a couple of whiskies and, just suddenly, I felt the need to talk to someone who really knows me, so that I don’t have to pretend. Do you remember how we’d try on each other’s clothes and experiment with make-up and laugh and laugh about such silly things? Remember when you chopped off my hair with nail scissors? How wonderful it was to be free of all that weight of hair but Mother almost screamed with shock, hand over her mouth, eyes popping, which set us off even worse. Thank God, Honor was dark and had brown eyes. Mine, as you know, are hazel but the Customs man only glanced at the passport photograph and I’d pulled on a silly hat, tilted over my eyes, and carried Lottie in my arms as a kind of shield. She hates to be carried and I knew that she’d struggle and scream and distract the attention away from me. In the end everyone was glad to push us through as quickly as possible. I mustn’t call her Lottie. I only do it when I’m tired – or when I’ve drunk too much whisky.
Vivi, I feel so guilty. What am I doing here? Why ever did I think I could pull this off? Some wretched woman turned up here this morning, her husband was one of Hubert’s chums, thought I’d like to go over for lunch and so on. I was terrified that I might slip up. She began to talk to Bruno, saying how like his daddy he was, asking how old his little sister was and I can’t forget the expression on his face. I sometimes kid myself that Bruno thinks Lottie is his sister, that he’s forgotten Emma. Oh God! I have to remember that Lottie is Emma, don’t I? What is he thinking, Vivi?
Anyway, I burst in with some nonsense and distracted her but I can’t get over it. If I can’t bring myself to call James ‘Father’, how can I expect so much from this poor little boy? How he must resent me for trying to take his mother’s place, yet I know that he loves me and I think he would miss me if I were to go. In an odd kind of way, James protects me. He’s so courteous, so old-fashioned, that he wouldn’t dream of asking me personal questions. It would never occur to him that a lady could do the things I’m doing and so, you see, he’s made it safe for me. He’s the angel standing at the gate of Paradise with his flaming sword, turning this way and that, except that I’m still inside even though I’ve eaten of the tree of knowledge. Or is it the fruit of Goblin Market?
I think I’ve drunk too much whisky and I’d better get to bed before James comes home and finds me like this. More later. Goodnight, darling.
Joss put the letter aside and then picked it up again, folding it mechanically. There was too much here to understand all at once: Mutt wasn’t Honor Trevannion. Yet Joss was distracted from the sheer shock of this by other impressions that were affecting her so powerfully. Mutt’s dilemma, her warm personality and humanness, struck Joss forcibly. Almost she’d been able to forget that she was reading about her grandmother and had identified with this young woman who’d taken such a chance, torn by doubt and fear, yet driven by some deep-down conviction that what she was doing was right.
Mutt’s granddaughter caught her breath: how had Mutt dared to risk so much? Glancing back at the pages Joss was touched by the description of the flight from Karachi. She tried to picture the atmosphere of terror in India in those hot, unstable days, and the scene in the hospital room: she envisaged the long voyage home and tried to imagine how Mutt had lived with a permanent fear of discovery.
Somewhere in the Indian Ocean Lottie became Emma.
What must it have felt like, giving your daughter a different name and a new persona? And this child, Joss was obliged to remind herself, was her own mother – who wasn’t Emma Trevannion at all but Lottie Uttworth. Mutt had counted the risk worth it to give her daughter security.
Once you have a baby you have a hostage to fortune and nothing is ever the same again.
And what about Vivi, to whom Mutt wrote with such intimacy and affection? Joss was touched by Mutt’s need to communicate with her childhood companion, reminding her sister of their shared past, seeking approval. Was Vivi still alive, out in America, imagining her sister and daughter long dead? Clearly the letters had never been posted …
Unable to grasp it all, Joss postponed the necessity to come to some serious judgement and reached eagerly for the next letter.
Much better today, Vivi. I simply mustn’t allow myself to get morbid, and this morning I feel confident again that I am doing the right thing. Bruno gave me such a hug after breakfast and I held him very tightly and just whispered, ‘I know how much you must miss Mummie and Emma, darling. I’m just trying to look after you.’ And he looked at me, Vivi, so solemn and kind, and he said, ‘It’s all right, Mutt. I’m glad you’re here.’ Oh, I felt such a flood of relief and gratitude, as if he’d given me absolution. And I love him as if he were my own son. I am his godmother, you know. And Simon is his godfather, although it was all done by proxy, of course. Simon reminded me of that and I was able to look intelligent about it. He sent a beautiful, little engraved mug, and I could remember Honor showing it to me.
It is so odd being called Honor. I hoped that the children’s nickname for me might be taken up by everyone but no-one seems able to be quite so intimate. Even Mousie can’t quite bring herself to use it. I am afraid of Mousie, Vivi. She watches us as if some instinct warns her that something is wrong but she doesn’t know what it is. I become nervous when she is with me and I retreat into silence. Aunt Julia, who reminds me of a very dignified peahen – a bosom like a jelly-bag and a long, long neck with a tiny head perched on top – puts my shortcomings down to grief and encourages Mousie to be kind and patient. And poor Mousie is trying very hard to deny all her instincts and to be sweet to me. I realize now that I’d never have brought this off if Hubert’s mother were still alive. Men are uncomplicated and direct and much easier to deceive than women. They say exactly what they mean and assume that we are doing the same thing. Apart from this, both James and Simon are affected by a show of grief or of fear and act accordingly: with a rather anxious kindness and an immediate change of subject. Women see through all that kind of thing immediately and though some of them might be polite about it they are not so easily taken in. You can’t deflect women with those tricks.
Mousie must have loved Hubert so much; she knows everything about him, his passions and his dislikes, his tricks of speech and his habits. Yet she can’t have been more than a child when she last saw him. He wrote to her from time to time – you might imagine how that tiny piece of information made me feel! – but, with the war and the distance between them, communication was very patchy. Luckily there aren’t too many photographs: they have the wedding group – remember the one I sent to you? – and also a family one with Bruno as a baby. This is more worrying because Honor isn’t wearing a hat but fortunately she is gazing down at the baby so you don’t get a full-face shot.
I said at once: ‘Gosh, I looked so much younger then, didn’t I? But of course it’s nearly five years old.’
I felt so ashamed of myself, Vivi. Thank God Bruno wasn’t there. Mousie has several snapshots of Hubert before he went to India and one or two little keepsakes – an old wristwatch, broken, that belonged to him, and a book of poetry, Browning, with Hubert’s name on the flyleaf – which she treasures. She’s actually rather a sweetie but she has a knack of keeping me on my toes. I have no idea which was Hubert’s favourite walk, or about the pony he had, and oh, countless tiny things which I should have known after six years of marriage. That’s why I say I’d never have fooled his mother. It became clear fairly early on that he’d never mentioned me by my nickname, which is a terrific relief, nor by proper name as far as I know.
Mousie is puzzled but because of Bruno she doesn’t come near the truth of it. I feel horrid, holding her at arm’s length like this, but what am I to do? I just pray that I cease to be a nine days’ wonder and we settle down more naturally. There’s so much to describe to you, Vivi, so much to tell. I haven’t really explained about Johnny, have I? I don’t know how to go about it, I suppose. Looking back, I think he reminded me of our father: he was such fun, so happy-go-lucky, and very good-looking. He wasn’t French, though, he was very English, and I was so proud to be seen around with him. Hubert and Honor were a bit cautious about him and I know you would have been too. You would have said that he wasn’t ‘sound’. As you know, he did something in tea – he had an office in Lahore – and had all sorts of connections but there was something elusive about him and I think that they felt he should have joined up once the war was really under way instead of disappearing on business for weeks at a time. He didn’t want children straight off and I continued with my nursing but once Emma was born he simply vanished more often and for longer periods.
At one point we wondered if he’d been killed but after a while we heard some rather unpleasant rumours about him setting up with another woman. Well, I’d had to face the fact that there were other women, Vivi, but it was all quite horrid. I’d begun to suspect that he was a gambler as well as a few other undesirable things, and then I began to have dunning letters from people I’d never heard of and discovered that the rent hadn’t been paid for months. I believe, now, that he was the black sheep of someone’s family, sent out to India before the war to a friend or relative. He was always a bit cagey about what he did and where he went but he did it with such an air and with enormous charm. I must admit that it was beginning to wear a bit thin, though, and the rent was the last straw. Hubert and Honor bailed me out, as usual. They were such good people, which sounds a bit stuffy, doesn’t it? But they were. Hubert was so clever with people. He’d get straight on to their wavelength and he was such a comfort. Honor was very motherly, warm but sensible. I often think about her and then I feel hot under the collar, imagining her looking at me from the shadows, as I walk in the Paradise gardens with her child. She was so straight, so sweet – but she’d have wanted Bruno to be properly looked after, not by an old aunt or his grandfather, but by someone who knew him from a baby and shares his history. He simply loves it when I talk to James about Hubert’s work.
I can hear the children’s voices; they’ve been with Aunt Julia and Mousie down at The Row.
God Bless, darling.
Madeleine
She stands for a moment, watching from the kitchen doorway. The little group have walked up from The Row over the cliff path, Emma being wheeled in the little collapsible pushchair that hasn’t been used since Rafe was a small boy, and they are all rather hot and tired. Mousie kneels before Emma, smoothing the child’s fair, tangled blonde hair and dabbing with a handkerchief at some smears upon her cheek.
Mutt is touched by the tenderness in Mousie’s gestures and filled with anxious love at the sight of her daughter. She is shouting with excitement – ‘Baa, baa black sheep’ – and her face is bright with anticipation. Aunt Julia’s capacious bag contains some tea-time treats and Emma is greedy for sweet things.
‘Stand still,’ implores Mousie – but she is laughing too, and she gives Emma a quick kiss on her rosy cheek before standing up with a gesture of helpless resignation.
‘Your sister,’ she says to Bruno, ‘is a little monkey.’
Just for a second his expression freezes into a kind of still watchfulness and then he looks at Emma – still chanting the one line of the nursery rhyme – and he smiles with an extraordinary adult affection.
‘She can’t help it,’ he tells Mousie with a rueful tolerance. ‘Daddy used to say …’ He hesitates awkwardly, stumbling over his words, and Mutt comes swiftly to his aid.
‘Have you had a lovely time?’ she cries, as if she has only at that moment appeared. ‘Do be quiet for a moment, Emma, darling, we’ve all heard your rhyme. Poor Mousie.’ She smiles sympathetically at the younger girl. ‘Are you exhausted yet?’
She sits on one of the kitchen chairs and puts an arm about Bruno, giving him a quick hug, her heart beating fast. These are the moments she dreads, fearing that Bruno might be caught unawares. She is filled with guilt each time she sees the expression on his small face change from innocence to uncertainty, hating this need to be continually on guard, but she manages a smile as she watches Aunt Julia unpack her bag. She knows better than to suggest that this formidable woman might find the children wearying; their noise makes as much impression on her as the waves have upon the rocks in the cove. Tall and stately, as she stands at the table, her presence is both formidable and reassuring. Emma climbs onto a chair, hoping that there will be a pot of jam in the bag and looking eagerly for the little cakes that Aunt Julia brings out with a small flourish. Mousie steadies Emma as she screams with delight and the chair rocks unsteadily beneath her.
‘She screamed all the way home,’ says Bruno, almost admiringly – and indeed he is impressed by Emma’s cheerful determination to have her own way. He finds her ignorance of what has happened in India restful. The horrid memories that trouble his dreams coupled with his terror that Mutt might be taken away from him are like shadows waiting at the edges of his waking hours. In Emma’s company, he too is free of these fears; her passionate love of life carries him along with all the natural force of some great element: water or wind. She and Mutt have always been part of his world and he is prepared to go to any lengths to keep them with him. ‘She doesn’t like riding in the pushchair unless she’s tired,’ he explains to Mousie and Aunt Julia, wondering if they can understand that terrible frustration of being pinned down when you need to run and jump and climb. Emma has no words yet to explain this, but he knows exactly how she feels. ‘She likes to be in charge.’
‘She insisted on pushing the chair herself and I was afraid that she might topple over the cliff with it,’ admits Mousie. ‘The walk back was a bit of a tussle but she agreed to ride the last bit. I brought something to show you.’
Mutt watches with apprehension as Mousie opens the satchel bag she wears over her shoulder on a long strap and brings out an envelope. The photograph shows Hubert on the deck of a large ship in a group of other young men: he half frowns, half smiles at the camera, his hands stuck in the pockets of his trousers.
Mutt pretends to study the photograph, her cheek pressed against Bruno’s head as if for comfort – although whether it is to console him or herself she cannot tell.
‘Hubert sent it from India,’ says Mousie. ‘It was taken on voyage.’
She waits for a moment but there is no response from Honor, who appears to be engrossed in the photograph yet unwilling to comment on it. Mousie experiences a now-familiar sense of confusion. Hubert’s widow sends out conflicting signals – now friendly warmth, now cold rebuff – and she is puzzled. Anything to do with the past seems to be out of bounds and Mousie longs to talk about Hubert, whom she loved so much. Even Bruno seems reluctant to talk about his father. She hopes that the photograph might ease the path to reminiscence and that she might learn something more about him; it seems terrible that he might be forgotten, his name never spoken again.
When Mousie mentions this privately to her mother she is not encouraged to dwell on it.
‘Give her time,’ her mother says. ‘Remember how we were when Daddy died …’ and, though she could argue that the memory of her own father is not shrouded in silence, Mousie allows the subject to drop. Nevertheless, her instincts warn her that there is a mystery here that she cannot fathom. She studies Honor secretly, envying her easy graceful way with Uncle James and observing the genuine affection with which she charms Jessie and old Dot. Mousie longs for that kind of mature sophistication although, at present, she feels more comfortable with the children than with the older members of her family. She likes young men, though she is rather shy with them, but she cannot help comparing them unfavourably with all that she can remember of Hubert. Her early bitter reactions to the news of his marriage have faded but she is fascinated by Honor. Mousie sees, from the few photographs Hubert sent, that Honor has changed; the long bell of hair has been cut short and curls very prettily; the face looks thinner and the eyes deeper set.
‘It’s the grieving,’ says her mother. ‘The poor child has lost weight, you can see that by the way her clothes hang on her.’
Mousie feels guilty; ashamed at her readiness to be critical of the woman Hubert loved and who must miss him so terribly. She misses him too, hoarding up her few mementoes and remembering her cousin with a longing adoration. He would have been disappointed in her reaction she tells herself now, bracing herself against her own grief and smiling at Honor whose arm cradles Bruno so tenderly.
‘I thought you’d like to see it,’ she says casually, though still confused by the silence. ‘Later on, Bruno might want it.’ Gently she retrieves the photograph, replaces it in the envelope and puts it away.
‘Tea-time,’ says Aunt Julia firmly – and Mutt breathes a huge silent sigh of relief and her hold on Bruno relaxes.
3rd August
Vivi darling,
We’ve been having rather a busy time here in Paradise. First of all, guess what. Simon came down to stay for a long weekend. He comes at intervals to see everyone, which I think is rather sweet of him, and James is so fond of him that it’s quite touching really. They talk about Hubert and the things he and Simon used to get up to, cricket matches and sailing and goodness knows what, and dear old James relives it all over again. Simon and Rafe took us out sailing – they keep a boat in the old boatyard – and we took it in turns with the two of them: Mousie with Bruno and then me with Emma, who was utterly silent with joy and amazement. She sat so still next to me on the thwart – or whatever the seat is called! – as we skimmed across the silky silvery water, out past the sharp black rocks, the gulls swooping and screaming round the cliffs towering above us. It is so odd, Vivi, to look back at the shore from the sea. Odd and terribly exciting. I felt a wild, piercing sense of freedom, as if some umbilical cord had been cut, and I was able to soar, untrammelled by earthly cares. The triangular white sail was like a bird’s wing, stretched taut over the crumpled surface of the sea, while the clean, fresh wind fled past me, tingling on my skin. Oh, how I loved it.
Simon said, ‘I expect you didn’t get much chance to sail in India’ and I was able to reply confidently, ‘No, none at all.’ He said: ‘Hubert would have missed that,’ and I just nodded but Rafe could see how thrilled I was by it all and he smiled so sweetly at me and said rather shyly, ‘Now that we’ve broken up for the holidays I’d be very happy to take you out any time you like.’ ‘I’d simply adore it,’ I replied at once – and then prayed quickly that there was no record anywhere of Honor suffering from seasickness!
On Sunday afternoon we went picnicking up the valley to the Saint’s Well. Fuchsias grow wild here, tall bushes of delicately arching stems with red, bell-shaped flowers – and there are butterflies everywhere. We laid the rug down where we imagined the door of the cell might have been and Simon rolled up his sleeves and built a little fire on a flat stone beside the stream to boil the kettle. Bruno was beside himself with delight and made a dam while Emma paddled, being very splashy and noisy and refusing to hold Mousie’s hand.
I wondered if Mousie might be attracted to Simon but she made no sign of it, no silly shyness, or sidelong little glances; no showing off or flirting. She’s training to be a nurse at Truro but – although she’s direct and practical and wonderful with the children – she seems much younger than her age and I am fearful that she might find herself trapped here with her mother and uncle. You might think it odd that I use that word ‘trapped’ when it’s clear that St Meriadoc is such a spectacularly beautiful place but I know that when we were seventeen, Vivi, we’d have wanted a bit more from life than this group of older people – however sweet they are – and a younger brother, even in a paradise like this one. If someone like Simon had shown up when we were her age we’d have fought over him like cats.
He’s awfully attractive. Quite tall, very tough-looking, nice hands, and I think his legs would be good; straight and strong. He shows no interest – not that kind, anyway! – in Mousie. It’s as if we’re the two adults, he and I, and the others are all children. Perhaps it’s because he’s known her for ever. I’d like to take her in hand a bit. Her hair is thick and a quite pretty colour, light brown with gold and reddish lights in it, but she bundles it into a plait without much care. Eyes a lovely, dark slatey blue and a clear, creamy skin, but no touch of make-up, not even a little slick of lipstick. The trouble is, I’m afraid to get too close; she sees too much.
She was aware of Simon and me lounging on the rug with our cigarettes whilst Rafe helped Bruno with his dam and Emma paddled. It was so good, there in the hot sun, with the cold clear water bubbling out of the well and a lark so high that we couldn’t see him but could only hear his golden voice, the notes falling, tumbling down to us through the blue air. I was reminded of Meredith’s poem and recited a few lines to Simon:
’Tis love of earth that he instils,
And ever winging up and up,
And he the wine which overflows,
To lift us with him as he goes.
It fitted so perfectly with this glorious valley and the lark’s song, and I could see that Simon thought so too.
‘There he is,’ he cried suddenly, and he leaned, pointing upwards, so that his bare arm brushed my cheek.
Oh God, Vivi. That warm touch of his skin against mine, I can feel it now. I actually jumped, my heartbeat was all over the place, and he looked at me, just one look, and then got to his feet, very calm, very natural, and strolled over to the dam.
‘Pretty good,’ he said. ‘You’ll make an engineer yet, young Bruno.’
I couldn’t have moved, my legs wouldn’t have supported me, I simply lay back in the sunshine, shielding my eyes with my hands – which trembled slightly.
But that’s quite natural, isn’t it, Vivi? After all, I’ve been married and I miss having a man to lie with and hold me. My body missed Johnny terribly after he’d left, it still does, even though I know with my brain that I wouldn’t want him back. I’m only twenty-seven and it’s not wicked, is it, to be attracted to a man? Of course, I can quite see that everyone here, including Simon, would see it as disloyalty to Hubert’s memory – after all, he’s only been dead for a few months – but the truth of the matter is that I’ve been alone for nearly a year and I do get so lonely. It’s not just the physical side, though I do miss it, it’s the company and the jokes that I miss; knowing he’s your person, whatever his faults and failings. It’s sharing his cigarette and driving in the rain with him, dancing to ‘Whispering’ all close and romantic, and waking in the night and watching him sleeping.
I was grateful when Emma stamped up out of the stream and simply threw herself on top of me, all damp and warm and shrieking with delight. It broke the tension and I was able to pack up the tea things and pull myself together.
We’re all having supper together this evening, a real family party, though goodness knows what dear old Dot and Aunt Julia are concocting. The rationing is really bleak and if it weren’t for Home Farm and the herring from Port Isaac I’m not sure how we’d manage to feed ourselves. Dot looks after James – well, all of us, now – and she’s an old sweetie. Her husband worked most of his life at the boatyard and died at the beginning of the war. On the other side of Aunt Julia is Jessie Poltrue. Like Julia she’s a war widow, although her children are grown and gone, one son working the fishing fleet at Port Isaac and the other at Padstow. Dear James is a kindly old pasha to all us women but I think he’s delighted to see Simon and have some adult male company for a change.
And so, dear Vivi, am I. Simon speaks my language, that’s the point. He’s young and witty and attractive and he shows me what I’m missing. But I’m not going to complain or start regretting things. I’m so lucky to be here, in one piece, with kind people and my baby safe. Sitting there beside the little stream, pretending not to be looking at Simon, I remembered Goblin Market and poor Laura longing once more to hear the goblin cry and to taste the fruit again. And Lizzie says to her:
‘You should not loiter longer at this brook:
Come with me home.
Let us get home before the night grows dark:
For clouds may gather
Tho’ this is summer weather,
Put out the lights and drench us thro’
Then if we lost our way what should we do?’
I’ve left a bit out in the middle but you know what I mean, Vivi. It was just as if you were warning me. I miss you so much. And Honor and Hubert too. I feel that I’ve lost you all at one stroke.
I love you, darling.
Madeleine
The supper is a great success: each person sitting round the dining-room table is aware of an undercurrent of excitement though only Mousie, sitting between Bruno and Emma, can accurately guess at its source. Beyond Bruno is Rafe and then Honor who sits beside James at the head of the table. Julia is on the other side of Emma next to Simon on James’s left hand. Jessie’s older son has bagged a brace of rabbits and Dot has concocted a delicious pie.
Julia, helping Emma to a minute portion of pie, is convinced that the conviviality is the result of the cocktails Simon produced earlier. He usually brings a bottle or two with him to Paradise, much to James’s delight, and this evening everyone apart from the children has a drink. Julia enjoys her measure, it reminds her of naval parties and Ladies’ Nights, and she feels young again and rather frivolous. It is she who persuades Honor to allow the children to join the party, arguing that it is unfair that they should miss the pie and that such treats in these times of rationing are few and far between. Smiling at Honor’s look of surprise – Julia knows that she is looked upon as a strict disciplinarian – she adds that, after all, Simon is Bruno’s godfather, which adds to the occasion.
Nevertheless, she restrains Emma securely in her highchair and provides her with the glass snow scene, a charming object with which she is allowed to play on only very special occasions. Julia, keeping her occupied with the snow scene and mouthfuls of rabbit pie in turn, is too busy to notice Simon at her right side. She cannot see, as Mousie can, how often his eyes rest on Honor or his strange restlessness as if he is subduing some need deep within himself.
Honor, on the other hand, is devoting her attention to James, although she exchanges remarks with Rafe from time to time when he is not explaining to Bruno the art of sailing. Mousie sees that Rafe is taking a great deal of trouble with Bruno and her heart warms to her brother. He is a keen sailor and it is clear that Bruno has enjoyed his first experience on the water; Rafe is describing in vivid word pictures how Hubert taught him to sail in the Kittiwake when he, Rafe, was no older than Bruno is now. The little boy’s eyes are alight with interest and pleasure and Mousie smiles with approval upon her young brother and looks again at Simon.
He is good-looking, she is prepared to acknowledge that much, and he has very good manners, yet her loyalty will not allow him to be Hubert’s equal. The girls she is training with are not in the least inhibited when it comes to describing their boyfriends and she can see that Simon has sex appeal but, although she cannot quite put it into words, she feels there is something missing at a deeper level. He hasn’t Hubert’s attractiveness; that quality that drew old and young to him is missing in Simon, despite his glamour and sophisticated good looks. She can easily imagine Simon working in the big city hospital or being fascinated by research but he would never be satisfied, as Hubert had been, to work with the poor and the inarticulate. He would be too restless for the patience required in a country practice where stopping to pass the time of day, to discuss the weather and the crops, are all part of the duties.
Mousie swallows a piece of rabbit with difficulty, remembering how she’d dreamed that Hubert would come back to St Meriadoc and work here amongst his own people. When she started her training, she’d hoped that one day they might even work together. With an effort she turns her attention back to Simon. He has finished his helping of rabbit pie and is leaning forward now, talking seriously, whilst Honor and Uncle James listen intently: Honor’s gaze is fixed on Simon’s face whilst Uncle James, chin dropped, eyes hooded, turns his glass round and round. It is interesting, notes Mousie, that Honor has that same quality of attracting everyone to her: no wonder Hubert loved her.
Simon is thinking exactly the same thing: no wonder Hubert fell in love with her. Even as he talks he is aware of Honor’s interest in him; a special form of concentration that somehow invests him with an ability to be rather witty and clever. He has no doubt that she makes dear old James feel exactly the same and that it has absolutely nothing to do with the cocktails. She has a magic, this girl, that reaches deep down inside and brings out things you didn’t know you had in you: you want to shine for her. He saw it with young Rafe too, earlier, when they were having a drink in the drawing-room; she was encouraging him to talk about sailing – not merely flattering him but leading him to describe not only the skill involved but also his feelings about it. Rafe glowed in the magic beam of her interest and that too had nothing to do with the drink he was enjoying at the same time. It might be old Jessie with her bunions or Bruno with a broken toy – to each was given that special exclusive attention: no wonder Hubert fell for her like a ton of bricks.
Simon sips some wine: poor old Hubert, what damned rotten luck. Though they hadn’t stayed closely in touch through the war – both of them were busy and neither was a natural letter writer – yet they’d remained good friends right through school and their training together and he’d been deeply touched when Hubert had asked him to stand godfather to his son. Now, as Honor describes the working conditions in the hospital in Multan, he tries to recall what, exactly, Hubert had written about this wife of his. Of course there was the usual stuff about how lucky he was and what a lovely girl she was but nothing had quite prepared him for Honor. He likes the children’s name for her: Mutt. Oh, dear old Julia might huff and puff about it being unsuitable but there is something rather charming about the nickname and it suits her. There is a slight austerity about the name ‘Honor’ and, though she can be wary, he has seen behind that façade she uses to protect herself. The nickname makes her more accessible.
‘It was Hubert’s fault,’ she’d told him. ‘You know how he uses nicknames.’
Well, he does know – and he doesn’t intend to tell her that Hubert’s rude nickname for him had been Vlad the Impaler because of Simon’s innumerable conquests at the nurses’ home whilst he and Hubert were training at Barts. Remembering, he hides a smile with his napkin, pretending to wipe his lips and catches Mousie’s gaze. There is another of Hubert’s victims. He wonders if anyone remembers that her name is Mary and, as he smiles at her, he also wonders if he might have had a little fling with her had Honor not suddenly appeared upon the scene. Something in Mousie’s clear, slate-blue gaze makes him feel that he probably wouldn’t have risked it: anyway she is almost like a sister to him.
He doesn’t feel like that about Mutt. By sending that telegram Hubert practically passed her into his care and he feels that it is quite fair to chance his arm once the mourning period is over. Not that he intends to use his Vlad the Impaler technique here: goodness, no. Old James would have him out on his ear double quick and, anyway, that’s not the way he’s feeling; he wants more than that. She’s got under his skin, this Mutt, with her sweetness and her sudden flashes of wit. They speak the same language and he knows that she feels the way he does; he’s sure of it even though it’s early days and she’s behaving very properly … But, good God, that moment up by the well when she’d been lying beside him on the rug and laughing at the children! He’d lit her cigarette and they’d listened to the lark, oh, way up above them, and she’d recited some poetry to him; well, that didn’t mean much, he’d never been one for poetry, not like dear old Hubert, but it was rather nice – something about the valley being the golden cup and the lark’s song the wine pouring into it – and then he’d seen the lark.
‘There he is,’ he’d cried, and his arm had brushed her cheek as he’d pointed, and he could feel the contact as though his flesh was on fire from her touch, though her cheek was cool and soft …
Julia is murmuring to Simon, offering him a second helping, and Honor turns to speak to Rafe and to Bruno so that James is left to himself for a moment. He looks down the table, savouring the atmosphere, wishing that his dear Meg could have been in her place to smile back at him with that little secret look of contentment she wore when all was proceeding happily. Julia misses her sister too; he knows that. Not that she talks about it – goodness, no, neither of them would feel quite comfortable about that – but they understand each other and have their own ways of conveying sympathy. He looks with affection at his sister-in-law as she helps Simon to pie before turning back to administer to Emma. It is clear that Julia approves of Hubert’s little family and is doing her best to make them feel at home.
His heart constricts a little as he looks at Bruno’s absorbed bright little face: he might be Hubert sitting there, years ago when Margaret was a pretty girl of a wife and he, himself, just back from the war and glad of the peace of this quiet valley. How she would have loved the boy – and Emma too. She’d longed for a daughter but they’d been blessed with only the one child – who, when he was grown, had this calling to work abroad. Neither of them had attempted to dissuade him though they’d both hoped that he’d come back to them before too long. It had broken Margaret’s heart – never very strong – to think of her grandchildren so far away and separated further by war. How she’d missed Hubert. They rarely talked of it, that wasn’t their way, but the house wasn’t the same once he’d gone and they’d both been ready to welcome Julia and the children in their own moment of tragedy. Margaret had been glad to have her sister nearby: they’d always been close friends.
James sighs and smiles rather sadly at Honor, who is watching him with that particular brand of empathy that so characterizes her.
‘Do you have a sister, my dear?’ he asks. ‘Or brothers?’
Her stricken expression recalls him at once to the present. He remembers that her parents were killed in an air raid, and she has no siblings, and curses his tactlessness. Before she can answer, he apologizes.
‘I remember now,’ he says remorsefully. ‘I am so sorry. I was thinking about my wife and how close she and Julia were.’
He rambles on, trying to hide his clumsiness, aware that the atmosphere is not quite so sparkling, and then Dot comes in with some confection she’s made specially, and the cries of admiration and delight get the whole show back on the road again. James heaves a sigh of relief and reaches for his glass. Damned good wine Simon’s picked up somewhere; better not to question him too closely.
‘Good boy,’ he murmurs approvingly – and is pleased to see that Simon has attracted Honor’s attention, something to do with Emma and the pudding, and is making her laugh. He smiles upon his family, raises his glass to Julia, who smiles back at him. All is well.
15th August 1947
Today is Independence Day in India, Vivi, and I’ve felt so strange all day. Honor and Hubert would have understood these mixed emotions. We worked so hard in that little hospital and had such a strangely intricate relationship with those dear, infuriating people. We – the British – relied heavily on the loyalty of the Indians yet always, underneath, was the profound fear of treachery. In Multan – always a bit of a trouble spot – it certainly brought the three of us, me and Honor and Hubert, very close.
Have you wondered, Vivi, how I am managing for money? Well, there was some for the journey that I have eked out very carefully, but James has realized the embarrassment and is coming to my rescue. He won’t hear of my working – he insists that the children need me here – but he has opened a bank account for me and gives me a small allowance and, this was a shock, has begun enquiries into Hubert’s pension. I had a jolt of terror when he talked about that.
‘Do you have Hubert’s death certificate?’ he asks.
Well, yes. I have all three death certificates. Honor’s and Emma’s are taped carefully between the backboard and the paper cover of Goblin Market along with my own papers. I sent a telegram back to Multan saying that Dr Hubert Trevannion and Mrs Madeleine Uttworth and her daughter had died of botulism and that his wife and children were on their way home to England.
I had to think quickly but I’ve always been good at that, haven’t I? You were the sensible, practical one, but in a real crisis I was the one to have all the bright ideas. Do you remember how Mother used to say, ‘To be a successful liar you need a long memory’? Well, it’s true. Once I was married to Johnny I needed to be able to get us out of scrapes quite often – and without warning – and I learned to think on my feet. It’s not just a question of remembering what you’ve said but also being able to look ahead so as to see the pitfalls. He had this ability, Vivi, to invest rather questionable acts with a kind of glamour; to make the upright, moral types seem flat-footed and dull. Yet underneath I had a tiny nagging sense that it was all a bit grubby. To begin with it didn’t matter. I loved him, you see. I utterly adored him and he could get round me with no trouble at all. Once Lottie was born things changed. I didn’t want muddle and cheating for her, can you understand that?
I used to envy Honor and Hubert. They’d achieved what I’d wanted when I decided to go out to India with the IMS rather than going through the army route. I wanted to be amongst the Indians, to work where it really mattered, but somehow Johnny pulled me off course. I worked hard, make no mistake, but there was a wholeheartedness about Hubert and Honor which was lacking in me and, when Johnny came along, his love and approval was more important than all the rest. It was like Robert Talbot all over again, distracting me from my wondering about being a missionary.
Honor and Hubert managed to balance their lives and I envied them so much. Sometimes I feel that I’ve become a part of their lives now and that some of their goodness and wisdom is rubbing off on me. I admired Honor so much. I don’t mean physically. She had no s.a., if you know what I mean – and she was inclined to put on weight, especially after the children – but she had a serenity that nothing could shake. She was compassionate without going off the deep end and bursting into tears of sympathy like I did sometimes. Oh, Vivi, the poverty and the cruelty we saw! And she was so wise and practical without getting personally involved and taking on too much. I used to do that, try to be all things to all men, and then be unable to do my work properly.
Honor and Hubert loved me, though. That always surprised me.
‘Look after the children if anything happens to me,’ she’d say. We’d promise each other that we’d do that – it was terribly important out in India in those times to know that we had each other.
‘Mutt’s the right name for you,’ Hubert would say after some disaster. ‘What a woman!’
But, at the end, I was the one Honor wanted. I was the one she sent for and she knew I’d get there like I’d always promised I would.
I’m even wearing her clothes. I brought with me what I was standing up in but not much more and rationing is so strict that I have to wear Honor’s things. I’ve explained to everyone that I lost weight after Hubert’s death and I’m using his mother’s Singer sewing machine to take in seams and I’ve had to let down the hems.
‘Have you got taller too?’ Mousie asked – and all I could think of to say was that I felt it was a bit of a change from short skirts. Goodness, I feel so frightened at times.
Are you living like a queen in America, Vivi? I hope so, darling.
All love,
Madeleine
30th August
I wakened early this morning, Vivi. How I wish I could show you Paradise. Leaning from my bedroom window, looking out beyond the gardens, I can see tall, fragile trees – all spindle-limbs and feathery arms – drawn in a smudgy charcoal against soft, dense mist which rolls up the valley from the sea. A woolly bundle moves in the meadow below, ambling down the slope as it follows in a rabbit’s track; a dark narrow path marked in the silvery dewy grass. Other sheep appear and a crow alights, walking stiff-legged and jaunty, glossy head on one side as it peers sharp-eyed for a tasty breakfast snack. And now the scene is washed in gold, as the sun edges up over the rim of the world, and dazzling light floods along ‘the golden cup’ – our valley – and into the shadowy corners of the garden.
When Margaret – Hubert’s mother – died, James moved permanently into his dressing-room at the back of the house. He says he likes to hear the sea on wild nights, and all his things are there, but I feel rather guilty having this wonderful room as my own. We had a touching little ceremony yesterday (Honor’s birthday – I can’t tell you how odd and unreal it all was) when he offered me Margaret’s jewels and one or two precious items. She owned some good pieces: a lovely double string of pearls with matching ear-rings, a pretty garnet necklace set in silver, a few rings – one diamond, a ruby and a charming sapphire engagement ring.
‘I know she’d have been so happy for you to wear them,’ he said, rather gruffly – it was all got over very quick because I could see that he was deeply affected by the little scene – and I kissed him and said I would be very touched to have them.
You can imagine, Vivi, how I felt! I tell myself that it will all be passed on to Bruno and so, in the end, it will be as it should be – but then I wonder how Emma will feel when that day comes and nothing is for her. I’m trying not to think about that at the moment.
I can hear her upstairs singing to herself in her cot. She’s a happy child, warm and loving, and she and Bruno adore each other. I’m beginning to believe that Bruno is trying to forget about India. He no longer wants to talk about those small things that formed his life and I think it’s because he’s afraid of being confused and letting something out of the bag. I know how he feels! His father’s work is apart from this – he likes to hear about that, but more and more he gently and politely discourages conversations about Sushila and old mali and I wonder if it’s because it reminds him of Honor and other happier times.
Emma is getting noisier, I must go and fetch her.
In his own room, listening to Emma’s imperious shouts, Bruno brings the story he is telling himself to a good stopping place and wonders if there will be time for a walk to The Lookout before tea. He loves the strange old house on the cliff and it features in many of the stories he makes up in his head. Jessie has told him about wreckers and smugglers, and he weaves these tales together with the things he remembers about India so that the frightening parts are somehow disarmed, their terror made bearable. Sometimes, if it is a really good story, he acts it out as a game that can last for several days. The grown-ups often have roles, although they don’t know it, but Emma is too young to play – and, even if she weren’t, he has a feeling that she wouldn’t quite understand the seriousness of his make-believe. This feeling, which comes from the same place inside him as the ideas for his stories, tells him that, young though she is, she is already rooted very firmly in the real world. Her small feet are planted squarely on the earth and her needs are the needs of the body: food and warmth and company. If he is busy working out a story, or letting words make shapes in his head, he will forget everything else but she is never utterly entranced, as he is, by music or by the magical twilight hush; only wild elemental things – the sea pounding the cliffs or a wild westerly gale – excite in her that particular deep-down delight. He knows that when she screams like a steam train or roars like a lion she is trying to express that joy.
He can hear her now, singing loudly as she tramps up and down in her cot. He hears, too, Mutt coming upstairs and he thinks about the little scene yesterday, when Grandfather gave her Grandmother’s jewels. He is getting used to these moments when Mutt gets flustered. ‘Flustered’ is an Aunt Julia word and it means exactly how Mutt behaves when the India story crashes into the Paradise story. He can quite understand why Mutt has her own pretend game and he is very happy to play it with her. Much though he loves Aunt Julia and Mousie and Rafe, he couldn’t bear to be without Mutt and Emma. Even when he deliberately reminds himself that Mummie and Daddy and baby Em are gone for ever, the knowledge that Mutt and Emma are here with him makes it not quite true. It’s as if they have all become mixed together and though he feels badly – as if he doesn’t care enough about Daddy and Mummie and baby Em – something tells him that he has to allow this acceptance to happen.
‘Do exactly as Mutt tells you,’ Mummie said to him in that terrible place of heat and terror, and he’d felt her relief that he would be going to safety with Mutt.
Sometimes, now, Mummie and Mutt seem to be one and the same person, just as Emma – who was once called Lottie – now seems to be baby Em too. He is glad, though, that Daddy is just Daddy and can be talked about with Mousie or Grandfather, even though he has to be careful that it doesn’t lead on to other things. This is why the stories are good – because he can make the terrible sadness into something exciting or brave and then he feels better. He wonders how Mutt manages and sometimes hugs her consolingly to show that he understands how frightened she must be. She has that look, then; an odd look of someone who is grateful and ashamed at the same time. Flustered.
Bruno climbs off his bed and goes into the nursery where Mutt is lifting Emma from her cot, and Emma is crowing with satisfaction, and he feels safe and happy.
Downstairs, James folds his newspaper and rouses himself. Although he is often glad to slip away to the peace and quiet of his study, he likes the sound of the family bringing life back to this old house. Listening to the footsteps overhead, Emma’s shouts and Bruno’s childish treble, he smiles to himself with satisfaction as he relives the gift ceremony.
It was Julia who nudged him into awareness.
‘It would be a nice touch,’ she said. ‘Hubert’s wife should have Margaret’s jewels and it would be a very generous gesture. Welcoming her here, James, d’you see? A little formality in showing her that she belongs. Margaret would have wanted it.’
He was distressed that he hadn’t thought of it for himself but hastened to gather together the few pieces Margaret had treasured. Not that she’d set much store by it, his dear Meg, being more concerned with the garden and her tapestry work than with personal adornment. Julia was right, though. He’d never been very good at flowery speeches but this time he’d made a pretty good fist of it, all things considered, and Honor was moved by the gesture.
As he sits listening to the noises above him, James thinks about how she gazed at the trinkets with a kind of humility, as if reluctant to accept them. He had to be quite firm, saying that Margaret would have wanted her to have them, and then he was knocked sideways again by the thought that his dear old Meg would never know this lovely girl or Hubert’s children and he came over choky and gruff. Honor saw his distress and thanked him very sweetly, overcoming her own emotions and ignoring the fact that he damned near broke down, just giving him a quick kiss and saying that she’d love to have the gewgaws. Nothing more: no gushing or anything of that kind. He was grateful for that: couldn’t be doing with all that fuss and nonsense.
He puts the newspaper aside and goes out to greet them as they come downstairs.
‘Rafe telephoned,’ he says. ‘Wonders if you’d like to go sailing?’
Later
Rafe took us sailing today. I am at my happiest on the water, Vivi, free of the land and all the responsibilities it holds. We row out past the rocks – I’m getting strong and can manage quite well although Rafe and I usually take an oar each – and then, once we’re past the headlands, we raise the sails. The boat was built here in the boatyard before the war. It’s odd to think of a boat as beautiful, I suppose, but the Kittiwake is. She has such lovely lines. Rafe is so proud of her, and he is teaching Bruno to sail. He allows him to take the tiller and shows him how to watch for a breeze, the cat’s-paws dimpling across the water. Emma is simply ecstatic, laughing with delight, rapt with the wonder of it all.
One day I shall take the Kittiwake out alone – oh, what freedom that will mean to me; to feel her responding to my touch, to see the sails filling with wind. One day – but not yet. I have a great deal to learn. I know now that the sea is strong – not cruel but simply indifferent – and I understand that it has to be respected. Rafe knows so much that I am completely in awe of him but he loves to share his skill and is thrilled when we make progress.
The children are rosy with sun and sea air, falling asleep over their tea, whilst James sits by and smiles benignly upon us. His flannels fall sharply from his thin, crossed knees and his faded shirt is as soft as butter. I lay my hand upon his shoulder as I stand up to fetch something and he smiles at me, heart-breakingly like Hubert.
‘I loved Hubert so much,’ I say to him – just suddenly. And it’s true, Vivi, I did love Hubert, though not in that way. Is it wrong to deceive James so badly? We comfort him, I’m sure of it. He looks so kindly at me and says, ‘So did I, my dear.’ Bruno is watching us, across the table, and I feel that familiar sensation of guilt. I can’t explain it to him, yet, you see; he’s too young. Suppose he grows up hating me for making him a liar?
No, no, don’t think of that. Think of the sea, the exhilarating sensation of the soft warm air pouring over my skin, the chuckling sound of the water beneath the keel. Hubert would love to see Bruno sailing the Kittiwake – perhaps he does see him. I have this deep-down conviction that, despite everything, God still watches over me.
Lots of love, darling,
Madeleine
15th September
Such fun, Vivi. Simon is here for a few days. We’re all so pleased to see him. Did I tell you that he’s a GP – he has a practice in Exeter – and spends one day a week at the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital? It’s nice because it means that I can talk intelligently to him about his work. It is clear that he takes his duties as godfather to Bruno very seriously, and asked me all about schools and so on. Well, you can guess my reaction as these new pitfalls opened up before me. Apart from the fact that I had no idea where Hubert had been at school, I also began to see how tricky this whole area of education might be. Imagine taking Bruno along on his first day and saying, ‘I’m Bruno’s mother.’ How shall I deal with that? How will he?
James stepped in with, ‘Well, of course he’ll go to Truro just as Hubert did,’ which gave me a clue – and then they were off, discussing schooldays, and giving me a chance to pull myself together. Thank God that Bruno’s not five until December, which gives us another year to prepare for that first ordeal. On the other hand Emma has her second birthday while Simon is with us. Can you imagine how odd it is, Vivi, to celebrate your child’s birthday on the wrong date? Lottie was born on 13th October, and now will spend the rest of her life exactly one month older than she really is. I tried not to think about it and, despite the rationing and the difficulties of buying anything really good, she had a splendid time. Dear old Dot had saved up everyone’s fat and sugar ration and made a wonderful cake – with two candles on the top – and Aunt Julia had knitted her the most delightful dolly stuffed with old stockings for which Emma immediately conceived an enormous passion. I was so pleased to see Aunt Julia’s face – utterly gratified but trying not to show it. Rafe, bless him, had made a wooden cradle for the dolly and Mousie and Jessie between them had sewn tiny sheets and pillows and crocheted a coloured blanket.
I can’t tell you how emotional I felt seeing this combined effort: a true family present. I had to slip away into the kitchen, on the pretence of putting the kettle on the range, and wept briefly but violently into the dishcloth. Do you remember our birthdays, Vivi, and our father always thinking up the most wonderful surprises? Do you remember Flopsy, the angora rabbit, and your fairy bicycle? Oh, how I envied you that bicycle; I was speechless with desire for it.
Well, I had made Emma a party frock from an evening gown that I’d seen Honor wear only twice: a pretty blue-coloured taffeta and not at all my kind of thing. I was able to detach a length of trimming which, with careful removing of the old stitching and then washing and pressing, Bruno was able to give her as a hair ribbon to match the frock. He’d also done some negotiation over his sweet ration with the baker in Polzeath and had obtained a pink sugar mouse. What riches! James was rather baffled by the whole event, his idea of a decent present being a book, but rather charmingly picked a posy of flowers from the garden and put them in a tiny vase by her breakfast plate.
To be honest, she hadn’t really any idea as to what was happening but enjoyed herself enormously. We sang to her at tea-time as she stood on her chair in her party frock, her eyes blazing as blue as the taffeta and the dolly clutched to her chest, and when the cake was brought in with the candles alight she positively screamed with excitement. Bruno helped to blow out the candles and then Simon produced his present. Two tortoiseshell kittens, Vivi, the prettiest you’ve ever seen. It was so sweet and clever of him to bring two because, the moment he saw them, Bruno’s eyes simply shone with joy.
‘One each,’ Simon said firmly. ‘I expect you to take care of them, Bruno, until Emma’s a little older.’
Emma was fascinated by them, but – to my relief – her affection was not transferred from the dolly, which might have hurt Aunt Julia. Oh, it was good to see Bruno going off with Simon to find a box for the kittens to sleep in and an old blanket. He suddenly looked taller and older – Bruno not Simon – and I wished that I’d thought of it earlier. It’s exactly the thing to distract Bruno from his terrible loss and give him responsibility. Thank God we eat so much fish here!
When I looked in on Emma later that evening she was fast asleep – still in the frock from which she’d refused to be parted – with Dolly clutched to her stained and crumpled chest and a blissful smile on her face.
Once Bruno was in bed Simon took me out to dinner at one of the hotels in Polzeath and we danced.
She puts down the pen and rests her elbows on the desk, wondering how to continue. Simon will be leaving very soon, to drive back to Exeter, and yet she needs this small respite from him; from all of them. The letter is an excuse – ‘Long overdue,’ she says ruefully. ‘Must catch the evening post’ – and she slips away, hoping that if she tries to put down the events on paper it might help her to be more rational. It calms her to write like this to Vivi; in analysing her feelings to her sister she is able to see things more clearly. She pushes her hair away from her face, closing her eyes: what with Emma’s birthday party and the dance, it has been a very emotional weekend.
The light knock makes her jump and as Mousie puts her head round the door Mutt hurriedly shuffles the paper away, turning quickly with a smile.
‘I wondered if you’d like me to take your letter to the post?’ Mousie smiles back at her. ‘I’ve got my bicycle with me so it won’t take me long and I’m off home now.’
‘That’s very sweet of you.’ She makes a face of comical despair. ‘You know, I still haven’t finished it. Utterly hopeless but I’m simply not in the mood. Thanks anyway.’
Mousie nods and leaves her sitting there but she frowns to herself as she slips on her cardigan and goes through the kitchen and out into the dusk. She reflects on Honor’s reaction; how she instinctively made as if to hide the letter just as a schoolchild might shield her work from a neighbour she suspects of cheating. The invisible barrier is always there between them and Mousie feels partly saddened and partly irritated by Honor’s behaviour.
In attempting to analyse it she wonders if perhaps Hubert and Honor were not happy together and whether Honor has to make an effort to hide the fact that the marriage wasn’t all that Hubert’s family assume that it was. Deep down she suspects that this is a rather horrid kind of wishful thinking, all a part of her jealousy, but she cannot account for Honor’s reluctance to talk about Hubert and her own instinctive feeling that something is wrong.
As Mousie hoists herself into the saddle, freewheeling down the drive and into the lane, she wishes that they could be friends. Intermittently she catches glimpses of a different Honor, light-hearted, warm, funny, and she believes that they could become much closer if only the barrier could be dissolved. She guesses that Simon sees this other Honor too, and is very much attracted to her. Today there has been an odd restraint between them as if they are afraid of showing too much of their true feelings to each other and to the family.
Mousie wonders if anyone else has noticed but has no intention of bringing it to her mother’s attention. She has been accused too often of an overactive imagination, and her mother is very protective of Honor’s widowed state. Nevertheless, as she sweeps over the little bridge towards The Row, Mousie can’t help remembering Honor’s reaction and she wonders to whom she is writing.
In the drawing-room at Paradise Simon is wondering too. He is rather put out when Mutt murmurs something about a letter and slips away. Good manners dictate that he should smile and nod at her as she goes, whilst continuing to listen politely to James, who is holding forth on Denis Compton’s fine batting form this season, but he has been hoping for a few minutes alone with her and he feels frustrated. Soon Mousie says that she must go home; she has been helping to bath the children and put them to bed and now she says that she’ll be late for supper if she doesn’t get a move on. After she’s been gone for a decent interval, Simon begins to indicate that he too must be on his way. James glances at the clock, apologizes for monopolizing the conversation and begins to get to his feet.
‘No hurry,’ says Simon quickly. ‘I’ve got to get my bags down. I’ll look in when I’m ready to go.’
James nods, settles back in his chair and picks up his newspaper. Simon goes out into the hall and stands for a moment, listening. He hears a noise on the landing and, glancing up, he sees Bruno staring down at him.
‘Hello, old chap,’ he says quietly. ‘Got a problem?’
Bruno comes slowly down the stairs, one step at a time. His hair is peaked and his eyes are wide and confused. Simon goes swiftly up to him and sits down on a stair near the top.
‘Bad dream?’ he asks sympathetically – and when Bruno nods, he slips an arm about him protectively and gives him a hug. ‘Want to tell me about it?’
Bruno shakes his head but sits beside Simon, leaning against him. As they sit together Simon looks down into the hall, holding the child gently but mentally planning ahead. It’s a nice little house, a charming gentleman’s residence, and the valley is a delight, but he can’t imagine settling here. He is interested in cardiovascular research, which might mean studying abroad in America or Australia. He wonders how Bruno would react to another move after such an upheaval and whether he would resent being taken from his father’s home to a far-off country. Emma is too young to remember her father, and he has no doubts that she will adapt very readily, but Bruno is a different proposition. He is an imaginative and sensitive child and it might be difficult for Mutt to explain her new allegiance …
Simon grimaces to himself. He’s jumping the gun a bit, taking a lot for granted, but he could tell when he was dancing with her that she wasn’t indifferent to him. Oh, they behaved very properly, stuck to all the social conventions, but underneath all that he felt her response to him. He mustn’t rush her, he reminds himself – that could be fatal – but she is too warm, too much in love with life to spend the rest of it as a widow here in this backwater, no matter how beautiful it is; and she’s intelligent, that’s so important, and can talk about his work.
He smiles reminiscently as he sits there waiting for Bruno’s nightmare to fade. When he took her out she’d looked so beautiful in her strange-coloured frock, apparently unaware of the other men’s admiring glances, but the really good thing was that they had a wonderful time together. It was such a relief to be away from the family, to be able to relax, though just at first they were tongue-tied with a kind of shyness. But once they’d had a drink they loosened up; they laughed at the same things and he loved the naughty twinkle in her eye that mocked the rather stuffy couples, so proper and upright as they danced.
‘This has been such fun,’ she said – but then she got that stricken look, probably remembering poor old Hubert and feeling guilty, and he had to remind her that she was still a young woman and was allowed to be happy now and again. He was very restrained and he could see that this was winning him points. She was so grateful that he’d found the kittens and brought them along for the kids and they got a lot of amusement out of thinking up silly names for them.
‘Bruno wants to call them Pipsqueak and Wilfred,’ she told him.
Remembering, Simon looks down at Bruno, who leans against him, relaxed now and half asleep.
‘OK now, old chap?’ he asks.
Bruno nods and Simon takes him back to his room, tucks him in and goes to fetch his bag.
In James’s study, Mutt stares at the sheet of paper, rereading the last sentence but quite unable to continue with the letter. Now it is Simon’s turn to knock, telling her that he must be on his way back to Exeter, and she folds the sheets into the writing case and comes out to him, shutting the door behind her.
It’s over a week since I wrote that last sentence, Vivi. You’d have guessed at once, wouldn’t you, if you’d read it? Guessed that it wasn’t a bit as casual and straightforward as it sounded just written down like that in one easy sentence. I simply didn’t know what to write after it, you see.
Oh, the heaven of dressing up in something pretty – another of Honor’s frocks but this one made of a dark prune-coloured silk and only needing a little effort to make it fit properly. Thank goodness that Mother made us work hard at our dressmaking. I can’t wear Honor’s shoes, though. Her feet were bigger than mine and I’ve been able to say – with some truth – that since we mainly wore sandals in India I shall have to get some sensible shoes before winter. I’ve hidden quite a lot of her stuff in a trunk in an old lumber room and one day I must destroy it. Meanwhile I had to do my best with an old pair of strappy sandals although I did find her very pretty black velvet beaded bag that added a little glamour.
He looked so handsome in his dinner jacket. Simon is not quite as tall as either Johnny or Hubert, but he has very dark hair and disturbing brown eyes. So different from Johnny, who was blond and ruddy-looking. We took each other by surprise, once we were dressed up, and suddenly we both felt shy. There was an absolute silence in the car – until he suddenly announced that he’d been saving up his petrol ration for weeks for this visit – and it wasn’t until we’d had a drink or two that we began to relax. I pulled myself together and began to ask about his work, which I find fascinating, and it wasn’t until we got up to dance that I lost my self-control.
It was a typical seaside hotel, with a tiny orchestra playing behind the potted palms and the guests rather staid and polite, so that quite suddenly I felt a terrible desire to giggle and behave badly. I knew that Simon felt the same and he kept catching my eye and daring me to laugh. It made me feel young again – do you remember how we used to get a fit of the giggles in the most unsuitable places? – and I felt a huge affection for him. I told him how clever he’d been over the kittens, and how Bruno wanted to call them Pipsqueak and Wilfred. Pip, Squeak and Wilfred are characters in a comic strip and Bruno loves them. Then we began to think of names and we got sillier and sillier.
The thing was that just for a short time we’d both forgotten that I was the grief-stricken Honor Trevannion and I could just be me, Madeleine. Oh, the glorious relief of it. He’d begun to call me Mutt, catching it from the children, and it was wonderful to be there, just firmly in the present, enjoying ourselves.
And then we got up to dance. A week later and still I sit here not knowing what to write. I don’t know how to describe the sensations I had when he put his arms round me. He’s one of those dancers that hold you very close but not in any way suggestively. He stooped slightly above me so that his cheek was almost touching my hair and I could hear him humming just below his breath. Beside those other terribly formal men – chins held high, eyes on the far distance, hands planted firmly in the middle of their partners’ shoulder-blades – he had a very sophisticated kind of shuffle, which was both intimate and relaxing, and it was impossible to put a foot wrong. I felt terribly feminine and sexy and I wanted the music to go on for ever. It was ‘The Way You Look Tonight’ and just out of the blue I remembered dancing to it with Johnny at a party in Lahore.
When we sat down I was very quiet and he looked a bit anxious and asked if I was OK. I said lightly, ‘Oh, just memories,’ and his expression changed as if he’d suddenly recalled that I was Honor Trevannion, a grieving widow of just a few months. But that wasn’t what I wanted and I didn’t know how to recreate the atmosphere we’d shared without seeming like some hard-faced bitch. After all, Hubert was his friend. I wondered what he was thinking about me, I couldn’t bear to think he was suddenly despising me, and I just blurted out, ‘I can’t tell you what it means simply to enjoy myself again.’
Of course, the minute I’d said the words I realized that they could have been misunderstood but, bless him, he didn’t react like that at all.
‘You’ve had a terrible time,’ he said, ‘and there’s no harm in trying to forget it for an hour or two.’
I was so grateful that I wanted to burst into tears. Crazy, isn’t it? I think it’s the strain beginning to tell.
‘This has been such fun,’ I told him. ‘It’s heaven here in Cornwall, and it’s such a relief to feel safe again after the riots and the killing, but there’s so much I miss.’
I stopped then, Vivi, because I’d been going to say that I missed my work, and that particular camaraderie I’d had with Honor and Hubert, and I could see myself getting into difficulties. I miss all sorts of things about India: the Hindu spring festival of Holi, when people threw coloured dyes over each other in celebration of love and fertility, and Diwali, their October festival of lights; and the Muslims’ great feast, id ul-fitr, after the fasting of Ramadan. So much, Vivi, I try to deny because remembering is dangerous – and painful. Johnny and I used to travel to Kashmir when we went on leave; a long train journey from Lahore to Rawalpindi, to begin with, and then on by taxi to Srinagar. We’d hire a shikara – a huge house-boat complete with servants – on the Nagin Bagh. It was so beautiful, Vivi; the gardens full of tangled roses, the lake fringed with willows and the water reflecting the pink and white of the orchards of plum and cherry and almond trees: we saw bulbuls and kingfishers and hoopoes and, breathtaking in the distance, the Himalayas with their highest peaks covered in snow. We had such fun.
Looking at Simon across the table I knew that there was so little I could tell him – or anyone, apart from you – about those years. He put my hesitation down to a different kind of confusion.
‘You must remember that you’ve had a terrible shock in very frightening circumstances,’ he said, ‘but you’re still a young woman and you must think of that too. Give yourself the chance to be happy now and again.’
‘Oh, I am happy,’ I reassured him – and then could have bit my tongue out again. ‘As happy as I can be, anyway, in the circumstances,’ I added quickly. ‘Everyone’s so kind to me.’
He smiled at me, then – oh, such a smile, Vivi – and said, ‘I’m sure they are.’
I felt myself blushing, right up into the roots of my hair, and he stood up and held out his hand to me and I followed him back onto the dance floor without another word. They were playing ‘Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye’ and dancing with him was different this time; he held me just the same as before but there was an electrifying sense of awareness and I was convinced that he could hear my heart hammering away. If he did then he gave no sign of it, and when we went back to our table because the food had arrived – we had fish again, it’s always fish! – he began to talk about some research he’s working on and to describe an elderly patient who’s allowing himself to be used as a bit of a guinea-pig. It restored us both to normality – well, nearly – and I blessed his social sense.
Afterwards, I wondered how Honor would have behaved. She was great fun, very warm-hearted, but there was something left out; a lightness of touch. I’ve put that badly, haven’t I? By saying that something was ‘left out’ I’m implying that she lacked something good or important. Actually, it’s quite the reverse. Even before we were married, when we were training together, men were always very respectful towards her; they never went too far with her. She had a deep-down goodness, which held them naturally at arm’s length. My trouble is that I’ve always loved men, loved to be in their company.
Anyway, I tried to think of how Honor would have reacted to Simon and exactly how much Hubert had told his old friend about her. Somehow, I simply couldn’t imagine the Hubert I knew sitting down for long enough to write lengthy letters to anyone – though I have to remember that he did do just that occasionally for Mousie – and if Honor ever wrote to his family then no-one has told me about it so far and she certainly didn’t mention it to me.
This is the problem, Vivi; this waiting for the unexpected to jump out at you. That brief time with Simon, when both of us forgot everything except our two selves, was the most wonderful relief. The trouble is, I daren’t forget that I’m not myself. I’m not Madeleine Grosjean, not even Madeleine Uttworth: I’m Honor Trevannion.
We said goodnight sensibly – he just lightly touched my cheek with his lips – and we had a nightcap with James, all very friendly. And that’s that.
Love, darling,
Madeleine
Joss got up from the desk. She felt stiff and tired and she was aware of an inclination to weep. She’d given up all attempts to assess the rights and wrongs of Mutt’s actions and had given herself wholly to the narrative of the letters. The little scene by the stream, described with such tenderness, had touched Joss deeply. How often she’d longed for that very kind of intimacy with George that Mutt described: ‘… the company and the jokes … knowing he’s your person … dancing all close and romantic … watching him sleeping.’ Oh, how often she’d imagined the luxury of such a relationship with George, knowing that it must be denied whilst every instinct cried out that it was right. How well she could imagine that light brushing of Simon’s warm bare skin against Mutt’s cheek and the mad, wild heartbeat; and how comforting to be able to hold the damp, wriggling body of your small child in your arms so as to give yourself a chance to recover.
Poor Mutt had lost her husband and her closest friends yet something was giving her the courage to hold on despite her terrors.
Faith is the conviction of things unseen.
Even though she’d hidden the roots of her faith it had continued to uphold her.
Joss took a deep, shaky breath and went out, through the hall and into the kitchen. Filling the kettle, she relived the birthday party scene: her own mother, Lottie-Emma, standing on her chair whilst the family sang to her. Joss smiled tenderly: it wasn’t difficult to imagine the small Emma in such a state of excitement. Her mother was still just as capable of joyful celebration and delight in a party frock – even if she no longer insisted on wearing it to bed.
Joss made some coffee, thinking now of the young Mutt upstairs dressing for the dance: turning before the looking-glass, assessing herself in Honor’s made-over frock. She imagined Mutt, filled with apprehension, humming to herself as she picked up the black velvet bag whilst Simon waited downstairs in the drawing-room, tall and handsome in his dinner jacket. She could identify with that breathless excitement, forbidden yet irresistible; the delicious shyness breaking out into giggling and wild, foolish happiness.
And then we got up to dance …
Joss shivered, hugging herself. ‘George,’ she muttered with wistful despair. ‘Oh, George. I do love you.’
The kettle was boiling. She made some coffee and carried it back to the parlour.
2nd October
How you would have laughed, Vivi, if you could have seen us today. It would have taken you back to our childhood: Indian summer days in the hot, dusty Wiltshire lanes, picking blackberries for Mother. Out we went with baskets, Emma and Dolly riding in an antiquated push-chair that once was Hubert’s, with Aunt Julia in command. The juicy fruit, each one like a cluster of shiny black pin-heads, was picked with care; even Emma was allowed to help, although she invariably squashed the fruit between her small fingers and her mouth was stained purple by the time we’d finished. Honeysuckle is still flowering in the hedges and I picked a crown, delicate and pale, and threaded it through the buttonhole of my shirt. Bruno pressed on faithfully with Aunt Julia but Emma soon wearied of gleaning and began to wrench the last few blooms of summer from the dry ditches, running to and fro until she was exhausted and glad to climb back into the push-chair with Dolly and her booty.
Aunt Julia would have made a splendid general: no spray was too high, she simply hooked the poor things down with a walking stick, and no effort was too great. Bruno was not allowed to miss a single berry; each one was pointed out to him, spotted by her eagle eye. He has a great fondness for her and they worked together very companionably whilst I brought up the rear, encouraging Emma onwards and pushing the little chair. Julia’s very sweet to me – after all, she too lost her husband during the war – but she has James’s horror of any display of emotion. They both have ways of showing their sympathy – a brisk pat on the arm, a murmured ‘well done’ of approval – but I can’t tell you, Vivi, how much I sometimes long for a hug. Hubert was good at hugs. ‘Daft old thing,’ he’d say, ‘You are a Mutt,’ and Honor would smile, but they were both affectionate, loving people. Having our babies brought me and Honor particularly close and I miss that closeness with people of my own age. That’s why it was so good with Simon.
We were allowed a little treat for our labours: a picnic by the Saint’s Well. Aunt Julia had managed some little fairy cakes, milk for Bruno and Emma, and a Thermos of tea. I think that she and Jessie and Dot save all their fat and sugar rations to make these things for the children, who loved the little party, although Emma had to be forcibly restrained from paddling in her shoes and socks.
We left Aunt Julia at The Row and crossed the little bridge to Paradise. Bruno always likes to visit The Lookout. It’s more like a lighthouse with its great bowed window curving out over the sea. The boatyard manager lived in it before the war and it’s quite sound, though rather damp. For some reason it fires Bruno’s vivid imagination and he uses it as a kind of playhouse. I must admit that it’s a wonderful setting for make-believe games. We didn’t have the key with us so he had to content himself with running up the rocky path to peer in at the kitchen window while we waited in the lane.
Coming home across the meadow, clouds of tiny white moths fluttered up from the long damp grass: Emma reached for them, trying to catch them, chuckling with delight. I sometimes have ideas of getting a pony for the children – Hubert had one when he was a small boy – but I don’t know how expensive it might be to feed.
I’ve had a letter from Simon. It was simply to thank me for the weekend, saying how lovely it was for him to spend some time away from his work in a family atmosphere. Right at the end he suggested that I might accompany him to the wedding of a friend of his: he makes it very clear that he’ll be staying with this friend – Simon’s to be the best man – and points out that, whilst I might not like the idea of being left to my own devices whilst he’s doing his duty, the rest of the time could be rather fun. He says he’d book a hotel for me, organize the travelling, and wonders – this is in a PS – if we might go to the theatre.
It’s rather sweet of him to think of me, isn’t it?
Anyway, a good day here in Paradise. I wonder if I will ever show it to you. Oh, what joy to imagine you here, if only I could see you face to face, Vivi, and explain it all properly. You would understand. I know you would.
God bless you, darling.
All my love, Madeleine.
23rd October
Knowing how clear-eyed and practical you are, Vivi, it will surprise you to read that I actually spent several days considering Simon’s invitation. You would have said at once, ‘You can’t possibly go,’ having seen the complications immediately. I think I knew too, deep down out of sight, but I wouldn’t acknowledge it; I wanted to go so much, Vivi. I could imagine it all so clearly: the opportunity to dress up a little, the fun, the company of people of my own age. I’d had that moment with him, you see; that moment of stepping apart and being simply us – Simon and Madeleine – with none of the responsibilities we all carry with us. For that moment I wasn’t anyone’s mother or wife or widow, I wasn’t pretending to be another woman, I was just me – and it was wonderfully releasing. I’ve tasted the goblin fruit, Vivi, and I want more of it. Do you remember?
‘I ate and ate my fill,
Yet my mouth waters still;
Tomorrow night I will
Buy more:’
Except that I didn’t eat my fill, it was just a little taste, and Simon’s invitation offered more. I did actually believe that I could go to London. I went into my bedroom to look at a tussore silk costume – Honor’s, of course – which might be pressed and tweaked into respectability, and wondered if I might have enough clothing coupons for a pretty hat or a new blouse to freshen it up a little. I think that the suit must have been a little tight for her because it’s practically unworn and I won’t need to alter it, except that the skirt is a tiny bit short. I was trying it on, humming ‘Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye’, when Bruno suddenly came through the doorway behind me.
I didn’t turn round. We simply stared at each other through the glass and I could see that he was looking at the suit. Do you know, Vivi, I was simply unable to speak: I couldn’t think what to say to him. I felt so cheap, planning my little outing in his dead mother’s clothes, and I could think of no words to explain the situation to a small boy of not quite five years old.
He disappeared as silently and quickly as he’d arrived and I sat down on the edge of the bed, still in the costume, and faced the fact that I wouldn’t be going anywhere. As I sat there, the horror of what I’d been contemplating made me shiver: after all, Simon’s friend is a doctor too, and it’s possible that there might have been someone at his wedding we’d trained with who might still remember me or Honor. It occurred to me that, outside Paradise, I am very vulnerable and in that bleak moment I felt the bars closing round me.
I changed out of the suit and went straight downstairs to reply to Simon’s letter. I wrote things like, ‘It’s rather too soon to trust myself on such an emotional occasion’ and, ‘I think I might feel a little out of my depth amongst so many strangers’ and then I went to look for Bruno.
I could hear Dot in the kitchen talking to Emma who loves to ‘help’ her cook; this means licking spoons and running her tiny fingers round the mixing bowls to catch any remains of the delicious cake-mix. There was no sound of Bruno’s voice and, not wanting to disturb them, I passed through the hall and out into the porch. It was a quiet, still afternoon, after a week of wild gales from the west, and the garden had that peaceful, waiting atmosphere of late autumn. It’s such a different kind of waiting from the breathless expectancy of spring; that is a yearning, restless time when you can feel the tremendous energy that is about to be released. There’s a pulsating violence about the early spring, isn’t there, Vivi? Shoots – delicate but tough – force their way upwards through the cold, heavy earth, whilst tender new buds are breaking open their armour casing so that they can burst into leaf. Birds, which have spent the winter months peaceably together in flocks, will fight their erstwhile companions over a mate. Then, a wild urgency possesses the countryside so that the waiting seems almost intolerable.
Now, with the last showers of gold still waiting to fall from the beeches at the bottom of the drive, and smoky-blue drifts of Michaelmas daisies in the border under the wall, this autumnal waiting is a growing, contented detachment from things achieved: a serene acceptance of the much-needed fallow time ahead.
I saw Bruno at once. He was riding Hubert’s old tricycle down the drive: elbows akimbo, feet pedalling furiously, he was really pushing it along. At the gate he turned the handle-bars sharply, so that the gravel flew beneath the rubber tyres, and then he stopped: head on one side, legs straddling, he held a long, earnest conversation with nobody I could see. Presently he took hold of the handlebars again and came back up the drive. His head was down and he was muttering furiously but, halfway along, he paused again to shout to his invisible companion and I caught the word ‘Badmash’. With a great sigh – as if at someone’s incompetence – he slid from the saddle, opened the little hatch at the back of the tricycle, brought out a small catapult and loosed off a pebble into the shrubbery. Leaping back onto the tricycle, he came on at great speed and I quickly stepped out of view, reappearing as he reached the house as if I had only just arrived in the porch.
One glance at his flushed, eager little face told me that he was in the grip of some exciting game of his own invention, a world away from me and Honor’s silk costume, and I felt quite weak with relief. I saw a moment’s confusion in his eyes, as the two worlds collided, and I smiled at him.
‘I think there might be Cornish splits for tea,’ I said to him, ‘with blackberry jelly and clotted cream. I hope Pipsqueak and Wilfred haven’t got at the cream. Shall we go and see?’
He slipped from the saddle, watching me, and I went down on one knee and held out my arms to him.
‘I love you,’ I told him – oh, how I hugged him – ‘and I want you to be happy.’
‘I am happy, Mutt,’ he said, quite seriously as if to reassure me. ‘I love it here with you and Emma and all the family.’
And he took my hand, Vivi, and we went into the house together.
As he dips toast fingers into his egg, Bruno is thinking about how he felt when he went into Mutt’s bedroom and – for one heart-stopping moment – saw Mummie standing with her back to him. The costume, the smell of the silk, triggered off so many tiny memories that he’d been knocked off balance: the Paradise world colliding with the Indian world with a terrific shock. Then he’d seen Mutt’s face in the mirror and he’d felt relieved but confused and he’d run away again quickly. He’d known that if he’d allowed it he might have burst into tears, because the memories were making him remember all the people and things that he’d lost, but another part of him was already making up a story that distracted from the hurt. He’d let himself go along with the story, finding his tricycle and dashing off on it, acting out the story while it unwound itself in his head. It was a good story and when Mutt had appeared he’d almost forgotten what had happened earlier. He could see that she hadn’t, though. She had her flustered expression – caught between feeling sorry that they had to play this game of pretend but not knowing what else to do. She’d hugged him.
‘I love you,’ she said, ‘and I want you to be happy.’
He knows that this is quite true and he tried to comfort her, explaining that he is happy here with all the family round him.
Now, eating his egg and watching Pipsqueak and Wilfred playing on the floor, he knows that he wouldn’t want anything to change.
Emma’s face is smeared with jam that has somehow got into her hair and Mutt is laughing at her. She looks at him, making a face that says, ‘Isn’t she hopeless?’ and he makes it back at her. He likes the way she makes him feel grown up.
‘We might go down to The Lookout after tea,’ he says casually. This is cheating because he knows that when Mutt’s had a flustered moment it is easier to get his own way over certain things. ‘Just for a minute,’ he adds quickly.
The thing is that he gets his best ideas in that strange house, standing in the great window staring out to sea; stories and odd words and memories of things people have read to him all swill in and out of his head, just as the sea floods in over the rocks.
‘We’ll see,’ says Mutt. ‘Perhaps just for a minute’ – and they smile at each other with complete understanding.
December
It’s nearly Christmas, Vivi, and more than six weeks have passed since I wrote that last letter: a month of storms and rain and a beastly influenza which knocked Jessie and Dot and Julia down like ninepins in a row – or The Row – and then proceeded to attack James and the children. Mousie, Rafe and I escaped it and, between us, we nursed the old and the young back to health. Poor Bruno’s birthday passed almost unnoticed and we intend to make it up to him at Christmas. Goodness, I am exhausted and I’ve lost some weight, rushing between The Row and Paradise, but it was good to be useful and to try my nursing skills once more. Mousie will make a very good nurse, that’s certain, and Rafe is such a blessing.
I don’t have to tell you, dear Vivi, that I’ve always got on better with the male of the species. They are less complicated than we are – ‘And,’ I can hear you saying rather tartly, ‘much more susceptible.’ Well, yes, I can’t deny that. I think Rafe has a little bit of a crush on me at present – violent blushing if I brush his arm, slight stammering if we are alone – it’s very touching. Mousie is contemptuous and, embarrassed for him and defensive of his self-respect, she blames me for it and is furious with him. Fifteen is such an uncomfortable age for a boy, although Rafe is very independent and mature for his age. With no father he has had to grow up quickly and Julia sees to it that he shoulders the family responsibilities in his father’s stead. She is very tough, very much like the army wives I knew in India, and I suspect that she considers me rather easygoing and emotional with the children.
There’s something missing in me, Vivi. I never acquired that maturity which implies superior wisdom simply because – between one day and the next – I happened to become an adult, or a married woman, or a mother. When does this magical transition take place? Perhaps it’s a conspiracy and everyone feels as I do but they simply don’t admit it. Actually, Honor had that adult quality, a kind of gravitas that made you feel safe with her, yet she could be fun too. Sometimes, when I wear particular items of her clothing, a little of that gravitas rubs off on me like fairy dust. In her tweeds I feel a little more sober, more ready to deal with emergencies and – you’ll laugh at this, Vivi – on certain days that I know are going to prove difficult I deliberately choose those garments. In her grey flannel coat and skirt, along with sensible brogues, I am Honor Trevannion; going off to Polzeath to buy stamps at the post office and collect the children’s orange juice from the surgery.
Well, I am Honor Trevannion now. I have her name, her clothes, her home and her son, and it’s only fair to try to do as she would have done with them all.
I discovered something else, Vivi, once I’d made the decision about Simon’s invitation. I can’t send you these letters, can I? Perhaps I knew that too, but couldn’t face it. Writing to you is my lifeline to the truth, to what I really am, and I’m afraid to cast it off in case I forget the truth and lose myself utterly. I think we all long to have one person in our lives who truly knows us and, despite everything, loves us unconditionally. How can I send the letters? Will you feel you must tell your husband and, if you do, what then? One more person who knows the secret – and it’s not just my secret, Vivi. At night, alone, I rack my brains and try to see a way out. I pray for a miracle: I long to go to Mass this Christmas. If I were to make my confession how could I go on afterwards, still living a lie? What I really want is to be let off; to be given a blessing on what I am doing here at Paradise.
Have you guessed that it’s one of those rare evenings when I am alone and I’ve had one too many glasses of James’s whisky? I miss him when he’s not here. He protects me from myself.
I think about you, dear Vivi, and wonder what you’re doing this Christmas.
It is true that Rafe has a crush on Honor. Something about her vulnerability and courage awakens his chivalry and he does what he can to make life easier for her. He helps in the garden, splits logs, takes letters to the post box up on the Polzeath road. His mother expects him to do these things for her as a matter of course – he is the man of the house now his father is dead – but Honor reacts differently when he helps her. ‘You are a blessing,’ she might say – or ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you.’ He is warmed by her gratitude, although he tries not to show his pleasure.
Mousie sees through him, though. His sister thinks that he’s making a bit of a fool of himself and, when she overhears Honor’s grateful endearments, she shoots those sisterly glances at him – which are an odd mixture of amusement, indignation and embarrassment – and he feels foolish. He knows it’s because she can’t bear to see him behaving without dignity but he doesn’t see it like that. Ever since his father died his mother has expected great things of him, and Mousie helps her to keep him on his toes, so that he always feels slightly stretched. He can relax with Honor; she has an odd knack of treating him as an equal and yet that sense of expectation he feels with his mother and sister is missing with her. He especially loves taking her out in the boat, teaching her to sail it, encouraging her to be confident in handling the Kittiwake. He senses the freedom she experiences when she’s at sea and it gives him enormous pleasure to help her towards being independent.
One evening after an afternoon on the water, with James out with friends and the children in bed, she makes him some supper: just the two of them. She talks so naturally to him, not asking him what he’ll do when he leaves school or treating him like a child but really talking to him. They exchange thoughts and ideas, and presently she pours drinks for them both. He watches, rather shocked, as she tips a finger of whisky into a glass and then pours some water on top. He drinks it, though; he’s too shy to say that his mother wouldn’t like to see him drinking and rather proud that Honor looks upon him as one of her grown-up friends; like Simon, for instance.
‘It’s been such fun,’ she says when he gets up to go home – and she kisses him lightly on the cheek, one hand resting on his shoulder.
At those moments he can feel himself blushing and guesses that he looks what Mousie would describe as ‘a prize idiot’, and he is filled with a whole confusing mix of emotions. He goes home by the cliff path, so as to give the fresh wind from the sea the chance to cool his cheeks, and when he gets in he gulps back cups of cold water from the tap in the hope that his mother won’t smell the whisky on his breath.
I’ve just reread that final paragraph, Vivi, and, despite its rather dreary note, we had a delightful Christmas. It was a replay of Emma’s birthday, but with a tree and charming home-made presents for everyone – and Simon brought a goose. Did I say that he was coming for Christmas? James invited him and I have to admit that he added considerably to the fun. He’s so good with the children and had found lots of tiny treats that we hadn’t managed to rustle up in Polzeath or Wadebridge. It was good to be home for a traditional Christmas and Bruno was enchanted. I wish you could have seen him carefully examining the tree decorations, the same ones with which Hubert had decorated the tree when he was the same age as Bruno is now: delicate, frosted glass balls in different shapes – an owl, a clock, a mouse – and Victorian papier mâché bells, hand-painted red and green, and with tiny clappers. There were tiny carved wooden musical instruments and little birds, and each branch held its own candle. When they were lit on Christmas Eve, and we brought the children into the darkened drawing-room to see the finished tree, the gleaming, magical look of it quite took my breath away. Simon and James stood one on each side, beaming proudly, and I have to say, Vivi, that I was glad of the shadowy darkness. Looking at the children’s awed faces – one of those rare occasions when Emma is silenced by events too great for her – I thought of Honor and Hubert, and I wept.
Fortunately, Emma’s silence, never very long-lived, was broken by the sight of the angel at the top of the tree and her demanding to be lifted up to look at it. I could see Simon watching me across the room but, surprisingly, it was Mousie who slipped an arm about my shoulders and gave me a hug.
‘It must be a bit strange after India,’ she said – and I nodded gratefully, although it was much more complicated than that.
‘It’s wonderful,’ I answered honestly, wiping away my tears. ‘You’ve made us feel so much at home. I don’t know how to thank you all.’
‘You don’t have to thank us,’ she answered in her direct way. ‘This is your home. You’re our family now.’
It was one of those moments in life where you can go deeper in with someone, move the relationship on to a different plane and allow it to grow, and I can’t tell you how I longed to do it. She’s closest to me in age, she’s following my own profession, she adores the children: yet as we looked at each other I felt fear. Of all the family, Mousie is the only one whose intuitiveness tells her that something is not quite right. It would be impossible to come really close to her and be able to hold anything back: when she gives her friendship it will be all or nothing, uncompromising and total, and she will expect the same in return. It was a valuable gift she was offering me and I was unable to receive it from her.
I couldn’t risk it.
I returned her hug and made some remark about the children – but we both knew. She smiled at me and went to Bruno, leaving me alone. For a moment I didn’t know what to do, where to go: I was outside the magic circle, cold and alone. Then Simon was beside me, offering me a glass of sherry, murmuring something nonsensical but bringing me to life again. His words, just for me, were as warming as the sherry, and I felt close to him because he is an outsider too. Simon, bless him, doesn’t suspect anything is wrong but he hopes that I can imagine him taking Hubert’s place, once a decent interval has elapsed, and, man-like, he’s going to seize his opportunities when they come. His intuition – different from Mousie’s – tells him that I am not indifferent to him and that in due course I shall reward his patience. In his own way he’s just as clear-sighted as Mousie but, though his demands are different ones, it would be just as impossible, in the long term, to deceive him either.
Simon would have given me true companionship – emotional, mental, physical – and more babies. It’s clear that he wants his own children and he would have been wonderful with Bruno and Emma; it would have meant friendship with other people of our own age and simple ordinary fun.
I sometimes wondered, once my passion for Johnny was spent and I saw him for what he was, whether I was in love with Hubert. I certainly loved him but as if he were my brother – or so I told myself. Later I wondered if it had been more than that, but now I know it wasn’t. I’m in love with Simon, Vivi.
A Happy New Year, my darling.
She’s in love with him, thinks Mousie, watching them from across the room. Perhaps, after all, this is Honor’s secret. Did she fall in love with him when he met the boat? Perhaps she’s been afraid that the family will find out and be shocked. After all, Hubert had been dead only a few weeks when they arrived at Liverpool.
Mousie feels the usual mix of irritation and sadness. Just for a moment, when she saw the tears in Honor’s eyes, her own petty emotions were washed away in a genuine surge of affection. It might have simply been a result of the magic of the tree, the children’s awed expressions, the pride on Uncle James’s face, but she experienced something bigger than her own jealousy of this older, sophisticated woman; a feeling that overcame her annoyance with Rafe’s obvious adoration for Honor and her own suspicions of Hubert’s widow. The naked loss on Honor’s face showed Mousie that judging other people might lead to terrible injustice, and she’d instinctively put an arm about the older woman.
‘This is your home,’ she said. ‘You’re our family now.’
Just for a moment they looked at each other, unhampered by preconceived ideas and emotions, and then Honor withdrew herself. She returned the hug, made a joking observation about the children, but the moment in which they might have gone forward in closer friendship passed and they are no further on.
Or is that true? Watching Honor, standing alone for a moment in the shadows, Mousie knows that something deep inside herself has changed. She is hurt by Honor’s withdrawal and feels the foolishness that accompanies rejection but, as Simon moves to Honor’s side and they begin to talk in that peculiarly intimate way together, Mousie also feels a great compassion for Honor. She sees that Honor’s need for Simon is as all-consuming as Emma’s passion for the angel on the Christmas tree that she is now clamouring to hold. Simply being held up to look at the angel isn’t enough: she needs to possess it. There is a similar expression on Honor’s face: as if she has seen something magical but forbidden.
Poor Honor, thinks Mousie. Whatever the truth of her life with Hubert, she is in a very difficult situation now.
Watching Emma’s storm of tears, which is a result of the denial of the angel, Bruno is glad of Aunt Julia’s rock-like presence. Her unchangeability soothes him. It doesn’t occur to her to give in to Emma’s passionate wails but simply stops her mouth with some small edible treat. Emma’s cries turn to a pathetic, intermittent wailing but her cheek bulges satisfactorily and her pudgy hands grasp willingly at one of the smaller wooden toys that she is allowed to hold. He doesn’t know the word ‘hedonist’ but he does know that Emma likes life to be a succession of small treats: tiny islands of pleasure placed at regular intervals in the humdrum sea of day-to-day. Such is her generous delight in sharing these treats that most people are glad to grant them for the pleasure they derive from her overwhelming joy.
‘Enjoying yourself?’ His grandfather is smiling at him and, from behind that lined, worn face, Bruno can see his own father like some young, vigorous ghost smiling out at him.
He nods, suddenly unable to speak, and his grandfather pats his arm understandingly.
‘Good boy. Good boy,’ he says rather gruffly and turns away to talk to Rafe.
‘Look,’ says Mousie, showing him the tiny carved toy, whilst Emma beams at him.
‘Birdie,’ she says rather thickly, her mouth still full of toffee, wanting Bruno to share in her pleasure of the tiny bird. Aunt Julia gives him a toffee and pats him on the head in passing and Bruno knows that this gesture is the equivalent of Grand-father’s muttered ‘Good boy,’ and is indicating her approval because he doesn’t shout to get his own way. He sees dimly that Emma’s passion somehow results in undeserved rewards for himself and he feels a glow of gratitude towards her.
‘Good little chap,’ James says to his sister-in-law. ‘Very like Hubert, don’t you think?’
‘Very.’ Julia permits herself a smile as she looks at the little group. ‘Hubert would be proud of him. He’s a brave little fellow. Of course, Emma is too young to understand what’s happened but she’s a dear little soul.’
‘We’re not doing too badly either, Julia.’ He allows himself to share a moment of uncharacteristic self-congratulation with her. ‘Those two of yours are a credit to you.’
For a moment they think of past Christmases: Julia thinks of Hugh, home on leave, playing with Mousie and Rafe in those years before the war. James thinks of Margaret and the quiet, happy times together; and he thinks of his son. They exchange a long look, each silently acknowledging the other’s pain, and then the mantle of stoicism descends on them once more. They straighten their shoulders, lift their chins and look about them cheerfully. The party is a great success.
I’d forgotten how melancholy the English spring can be, Vivi. I sit in the drawing-room looking out into the twilight, a wood fire crackling behind me, watching the sky change colour: patches of gun-metal grey, robin’s-egg blue, salmon pink. The lawn is frosted with a light scattering of snow, icing the snowdrops and crocus that are flowering in the grass, and I can hear a thrush singing amongst the camellias. A blackbird flies swift and low over the silent garden, alighting with its stuttering, warning cry on a bleak, bare branch, and there are lambs crying in the fields below the house. Quite suddenly the crimson sunset colour drains out of the sky and I see the thin beaten-silver disc of the moon tangling amongst the black twigs of a thorn tree.
This is Paradise, Vivi, and the serpent is a worming, gnawing creature called Discontent: the sting of the wasp, the smarting of the nettle, the piercing of the thorn, all belong to him. Do you think that God punishes us? I don’t. We punish ourselves by making Him small; cramming Him into mansized boxes, making Him in our own image, and actually imagining that He thinks like we do. On evenings like this I catch a glimpse, just a glimpse, of what He is offering us. It’s odd, isn’t it, that Satan offers to Christ – and to us – those things that we believe are Godlike: empires, angels protecting us, freedom from starvation and want? He tricks us into believing that these things will make us safe and great and happy, whispering in our ears, creating a restlessness. God remains silent, continually offering a poverty of spirit, promising nothing but love.
Sorry, Vivi. I find that, more and more, I have to talk things through with myself so as to try to understand my feelings. It’s best when I sit and write to you like this, sharing everything just as we did all those years ago before the war. I hear your voice and imagine what you would be saying to me.
I love Simon.
‘Remember Robert Talbot and Geoffrey Stack,’ I hear you cry. ‘Remember the young PP, for whose spiritual top marks we vied and fought like cats, and the young man who taught us art for one whole, blissful term.’
I do think of them – and all the others too, including Johnny – but Simon is different. I can hear your snort of contempt and I long, oh how I long, to see your face. Did ever other girls love like we did, Vivi? It seems that from the age of twelve we were in a continual state of longing, whether the object of our passion dwelt between the pages of a book or ran the local riding school. I fell in love with Geoffrey simply for his long legs in jodhpurs and riding boots. Yet how innocent we were. Oh, the heart-stopping joy of those deliciously chaste kisses; the thrill at the unexpected – yet longed-for – touch of a hand. But I’ve eaten the fruit of Goblin Market and I want more, much more than that now.
We took Bruno to the pantomime at Bodmin for his belated birthday treat; he’d never seen anything like it and he was speechless with delight. His eyes never left the stage, Vivi, and nor did mine. He sat between me and Simon – Mousie and Rafe and Aunt Julia further along the row – and Simon laid his arm along the back of Bruno’s seat, oh, so casually and naturally, so that his fingers were just resting on my shoulder. It was all I could think about; the touch of his fingers burning through the thin material of my frock. Honor’s frock. It was this, oddly, which exerted control over me, the memory of her wearing it preventing me from covering his hand with mine, and I was able to pretend that I hadn’t noticed.
As I stared sightlessly ahead, unmoved by Aladdin’s plight, I thought about Honor and how she would have reacted. It was a pointless exercise: Honor would never have allowed herself to be in such a position. Yet the sight of the fine, blue wool stretched over my knee, the glimpse of its well-cut sleeve, held me steady. I clapped in all the right places, hands held high, smiling brightly, and bent solicitously to Bruno to share in his pleasure and explain the plot to him from time to time.
I knew that Simon was watching me, admiring me in my motherly role, approving my love and tenderness for my son. Honor’s son. Bruno’s rapt excitement, the way he clutched me when the genie shot up through the trapdoor, also held me steady. I love him too, Vivi, which makes it all so terribly complicated.
I imagine that I hear your voice telling me that it was already complicated, that, once I’d taken that decision in the hotel room in Karachi, my life could never be simple again. I make up little scenarios for myself; fairy stories in which everything comes right in the end and we live happily ever after. The serpent whispers in my ear and tells me that I can have it all, that I need only to stretch out my hand to take it, and his restless whispering drowns out the silence where God lives.
In returning and rest you shall be saved: in quietness and trust shall be your strength.
It’s surprising how much I must have taken in unconsciously during those convent years, and now comes back to comfort me.
It’s evening now. The moon is sailing free of the thorn tree, its cold light silvering the frosty grass, and the trees cast sharp black shadows across the drive. I can hear James coming out of his office, ready for a drink.
Today would have been my birthday, Vivi, and I would have been twenty-eight.
Love you, darling.
Simon can barely keep his eyes from her. She looks so beautiful but tonight there is a remoteness about her that both attacks his confidence and fuels his determination. The presence of the family is frustrating and he senses that she is holding him at arm’s length because – apart from James and Emma (who is being looked after by Jessie) – they are all here together, belatedly celebrating Bruno’s birthday. Simon grimaces ruefully to himself: ‘arm’s length’ is exactly the right phrase. He is unable to resist stretching his arm along the back of Bruno’s seat so that his fingers just touch Mutt’s shoulder. Oh, he’s done it very casually so that it looks like one natural movement combined with leaning back to make himself more comfortable. His height and length of limb have secured him the seat at the end of the row and his posture is very relaxed.
Bruno is far too preoccupied with the pantomime to notice what his godfather is doing but Mutt is aware of him: Simon knows that. She isn’t responding this evening as she has done in the past, though. She’s particularly maternal this evening, her whole concentration bent on ensuring that Bruno is enjoying himself. Simon is surprised that, despite his approval of her behaviour towards her son, he feels unusually jealous and becomes even more determined to get a reaction from her, however slight.
There’s something different, though: a new coolness has quenched the warmth of her personality. He finds himself studying her covertly across Bruno’s head. Is it something to do with her hair or her clothes? She watches the stage, apparently totally absorbed, unconscious of his stare, and he moves his fingers so that they touch the thin material of her frock and the warm shoulder beneath it. Suddenly he is aware of Mousie, further along the row, watching him. He smiles quickly and shifts in his seat, folding his arms across his chest.
Although he laughs and applauds in all the right places, he is thinking hard, planning ahead: somehow he must find the opportunity to be alone with her again.
Later
I never told you what James gave me for Christmas, did I? He’s not a man for gifts – and in these strict days of rationing it’s a problem anyway – but he presented me with his wife’s tapestry frame. I rather prefer this kind of gift, something special that has been used for years within the family, and I was absolutely thrilled with it. He was rather anxious that I might be offended that a half-done tapestry was still stretched over the big, tilting frame, but I was very moved to think that I should be taking up where Margaret left off. She was obviously very clever with her needle: dark red flowers of the japonica, held stiffly on a thick branch with bright green leaves, against a cream background. There’s also a small round frame and a workbox full of silks and wool.
I used to get top marks for needlework, do you remember, Vivi? You found it tiresome, fiddly work but it was one of the very few areas in which I could hope to please Mother. I see the evidence of Margaret’s work all over the house: an impressive set of chair covers in the dining-room, a big medieval-type tapestry on the landing, and smaller charming flower studies in lovely, plain frames.
James was so pleased at my reaction. I’ve taken the big frame and set it up in the dining-room. I should like to have it in James’s office – two big windows facing north and east, oh, I do envy him his privacy – but this does splendidly. He is so good to us; it can’t be easy having two small children suddenly wished upon you, yet he manages very well. He has a detached quality that enables him to drift above the day-to-day, absorbed in a book or in his office …
He told me yesterday that, after his death, the two farms would have to be sold to pay the death duties. You can imagine my shock at this subject so casually introduced into the conversation. I said I didn’t want to talk about his dying and he smiled, such a sweet, Hubert-like smile, and said that he didn’t actually have it in his diary but that we needed to discuss certain things.
‘Everything goes to you and the children,’ he said. ‘No change there. Of course, if you were to marry again …’
He hesitated and I knew that he was thinking about Simon. I felt my face grow hot and my stomach churned about.
‘I shan’t marry again,’ I answered.
I said it so quickly, with such certainty, and immediately afterwards I felt a great peace begin to fill me.
‘You’re very young to make that decision,’ James said. He looked so kind, so understanding. ‘You don’t have to rule it out but if you were to do so then I would make a new will. The estate would revert to Hubert’s children to be held in trust until they come of age.’
I saw then that he wouldn’t want Paradise and St Meriadoc being passed on to any children I might have by Simon and this whole, wretched deception came clearly into my mind. He wouldn’t want Emma or me to have any of it either, if he knew the truth of it, and my brief moment of peace was shattered.
‘It was simple for me and Margaret,’ he was saying, ‘having only one child. My dear, forgive me for speaking about it but I want to leave you safe if I can, and not in the hands of Bruno’s wife or Emma’s husband, so it will all come to you and I shall trust you to leave it to Hubert’s children. I’ve arranged a trust for their school fees but, beyond that, you’ll be hard pressed, I’m afraid. There are the rents from The Row, of course …’
‘I have my pension,’ I said quickly. ‘We shall be fine. Please don’t worry.’
‘The place is in good heart,’ he said, ‘I’ve seen to that, but things have changed since the war. Very well, we won’t talk about it any more at present. How about a drink?’
So Paradise is to be mine, Vivi, but not just yet. I had a letter from Simon this morning. He’s beginning to press me a little, suggesting a visit to Exeter. He shares a flat with a fellow medico, and his proposals are all very proper, but I have the feeling that he thinks the mourning period should be coming to a close. He’s coming down for Easter.
What shall I do?
Just as with Margaret’s jewels, it is Julia who prods James into action over his will.
‘You should let Honor know how she stands,’ she tells him. ‘We’re not getting any younger and she needs to understand how things are.’
‘I can’t see a problem,’ he mutters, feeling that it might be embarrassing. ‘I changed my will when Hubert had a son. Everything goes to his widow, or if she’s died, then to Hubert’s children. It’s quite straightforward.’
‘But Honor doesn’t have second sight,’ Julia insists. ‘She might assume that when you die she’ll have to move out, d’you see?’
‘Nonsense,’ he says irritably – but he acknowledges the possibility of it and forces himself to discuss it with her.
First, he makes a little ceremony of giving her Margaret’s large tapestry frame. Honor frequently admires her needlework and it gives him pleasure to think that Margaret’s legacy will be put to good use. Honor is delighted and it is easier then to introduce the subject of the will. It is clear that she is just as uncomfortable as he is and tries to brush the subject aside. He is obliged to mention the subject of her marrying again – Julia has touched on this too – but she answers very promptly.
‘I shan’t marry again,’ she says – and he suddenly feels a deep compassion for her, left so young with such small children. Watching her laughing with Simon he has wondered whether the two of them are falling in love and, though he wouldn’t blame her in the least, he is determined that St Meriadoc must be held secure for Hubert’s children. Of course, if she marries again after his own death there will be nothing he can do about it and he wonders if he should make a new will leaving the estate in trust to the children. Yet she is so sure.
‘I shan’t marry again.’
Well, he’ll leave it a while and see what happens. He wants her to be safe as she grows older, not dependent on the whim of any future in-laws she might acquire, and she is happy here at Paradise. It is what Hubert would have wanted.
He is pleased to see that she’s already started work on the big half-finished tapestry and for some reason this gives him confidence that he’s made the correct decision and that he is right to trust her.
23rd March
We’ve been down to The Lookout today, by the cliff-path. The day starts with thick mist drifting smoke-like from the sea, blotting out the waxy faces of the magnolia, misting the windows. Quite suddenly a breeze ripples through the garden, tearing the cloudy vapour apart and revealing a patch of tender blue sky. An unexpectedly violent downpour, and then the wind begins to rise and the clouds are whirled away. We set out at last in brilliant sunshine and vibrant colours: the icy green of the wild sea, the gold of the forsythia and the pinkyred of the ribes – all is vivid where, an hour before, all was grey and dim. After the sheltered garden, the cliff-path is high and exposed: the wind tears past us, whipping our hair into our mouths and stinging our eyes, our clothes are whirled about our legs, and we have to shout to one another to make ourselves heard above its screaming. I pick Emma up, since she can make no headway on her short legs, and, with Bruno clinging to my free hand, we stare down through the flying creamy foam to the heaving, billowing mass of water which seethes around the cliffs and smashes into the rocks below.
We are quite grateful to reach the relative peace of The Lookout, to watch the magnificent drama of sea and sky from the great bowed window, although the gale seems to shake even this solid rock-built fortress.
‘I love it here,’ says Bruno, staring out, arms resting on the broad, low sill. ‘I shall live in The Lookout when I grow up, with Pipsqueak and Wilfred. You and Emma can be at Paradise and I shall come here.’
‘That’s a good idea,’ I answer lightly.
I never go too deeply into the future with Bruno, unlike Aunt Julia who is always asking him if he is going to be a doctor – like his father – or a sailor, like his uncle. It would thrill her if he were to join the Navy, keeping up her family’s tradition, but I never burden him with these things; time enough …
So, ‘That’s a good idea,’ I say, ‘and Emma and I will come to visit you.’
‘We’ll have tea at the table here,’ he says, his face lighting up at the prospect, pointing at the big deal table which faces out towards the sea, ‘and then we’ll sit by the fire and tell stories. Are we going to light the fire today?’
This is a big treat. James has given us permission to light the fire in this enormous room: it helps to air the house, he agrees, as long as we make sure it’s properly out by the time we leave. Bruno and I set to with twigs and matches and some paper spills and soon we have a jolly little blaze going. Emma droons about, singing to herself, wrapping herself in the dust-sheets which cover the few pieces of furniture. Presently the inevitable picnic will take place, after The Lookout has been thoroughly explored, the upstairs windows opened and the minimal amount of housework accomplished.
‘You could live here too,’ says Bruno out of the blue later, fearful perhaps that I have been hurt. ‘Only who would live at Paradise?’
‘Well, of course, Grandfather will be there,’ I tell him cautiously.
‘But not for ever,’ he answers anxiously. ‘Grandfather is old and sometimes he isn’t very well. You’ll be there too, won’t you, Mutt?’
And out of nowhere, Vivi, I hear Honor’s voice saying, ‘You’ll look after the children if anything happens to me and Hubert, won’t you, Mutt? You know I’ll have Lottie.’
We always promised each other and we meant it. We were like sisters and I used to think of Goblin Market then – and of you:
Afterwards, when both were wives
With children of their own;
Their mother-hearts beset with fears,
Their lives bound up in tender lives;
Laura would call the little ones
And tell them of her early prime,
Those pleasant days long gone
Of not-returning time:
Except that I can’t talk to anyone but you of those pleasant days long gone.
‘Of course I shall be there,’ I answer Bruno. ‘I promise.’
Emma who, with the aid of a chair, has managed to climb up onto the table, somehow tumbles off and sets up a great wailing. We both rush to rescue her and the moment passes in a necessity to get out the picnic in order to distract her. The sight of the tiny sandwiches filled with grated chocolate – it helps to spin out the ration – dries her tears at once; she sits on the table, her fat legs swinging, eating with great appreciation. The amazing blue-green light from the sea and sky reflects in her wide eyes and, watching her, I am seized with the familiar terror that every mother knows.
How would it work for Emma if I were to marry Simon and have other children? Would he love her as if she were his own? I try to imagine him living with us at Paradise and somehow I can’t: he won’t fit into the picture. He is passionate about certain areas of research, has already talked about working abroad, and I try to imagine explaining all this to Bruno: why I am marrying Simon and why we are moving on again instead of staying at Paradise. Would Bruno understand? Would he think I was cheating? Have I the right to take him from his home and how could I leave him but take Emma without everything being told? How could I leave him, anyway? I love him. He has returned to the window with his sandwich and is staring out with delight: his small, immobile figure seems to be part of the scene. He belongs here, Vivi, and I have promised him …
I wonder if you have children too. I’m sure you have: perhaps a son who is a small edition of your husband, Don, or a little girl who looks like you used to once. Everything changes once you have a child.
Apart from all that, Vivi, how could I risk marrying Simon? Imagine how easy it would be to make a mistake once the barriers were down and my guard relaxed. How natural to say something like, ‘Oh, I remember how Honor and Hubert used to …’ And think of the more personal questions Simon might ask once we were married. Of course, in one way it would solve the dilemma of who I am, wouldn’t it? I’d simply become Mrs Simon Dalloway. No more questions asked once those awful formalities – marriage certificates, death certificates, etc. – were out of the way, but the risks are simply too great. If I can’t trust his love enough to tell him the truth now, then I certainly daren’t take the chance of him discovering it later when there would be even more complications.
I hope he’ll believe me when I tell him that I don’t love him.
This time Joss was not quite able to hold back her tears. Some level of her consciousness continued to assess with dismay the threat these letters posed to her own security yet she still held the true realization at bay, enthralled by the predicament of her grandmother’s journey. Joss was impressed at the development of Mutt’s self-knowledge, her brave – if utterly human – way of dealing with her hopes and fears, and her unshakeable faith.
She didn’t need to read any further to know that Mutt’s and Simon’s love had had no future: Mutt had made her bed and must lie in it alone. With the true compassion of fellow feeling, Joss picked up the dwindling sheets and began to read the last remaining letters.
29th March
It’s done. He went back to Exeter this afternoon and now, although it’s late, I simply had to write about all this. I’m in such an odd state, Vivi: exalted and trembly and foolish because he told me he loved me. He took me by surprise, you see. Mousie had taken the children down to The Row after lunch on Saturday so that I could paint and hide the Easter eggs. We’d hard-boiled them earlier so that they were quite cold and I’d found an old paintbox with small squares of good bright colours, though the paint was hard and cracked.
Well, the children went off quite happily and I wrapped myself in an old apron and settled at the kitchen table. James had gone down at Home Farm, and Simon was expected in time for dinner. I was listening to the wireless, some cheerful dance music on the Light Programme, and quite suddenly the door opened and there he was.
Oh, Vivi, it was disastrous. I forgot my plan; forgot about being distant and sensible; forgot that I was Honor Trevannion. I simply sat there, my paintbrush held aloft, beaming at him with delight. I just said ‘Hello’ or something silly, still smiling at him, with my heart all over the place and thinking how dear he was. It was quite the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. He responded in the most natural way. He closed the door behind him, came round the table and kissed me.
Fool that I am, Vivi, I responded to that too. It was the shock, you see. I’d planned it all out in my head how it would be. I saw myself coming down for supper, the children tucked up and dear old Dot having left the dinner under way, and greeting him rather coolly but quite friendly, in a very Honor-ish way, so that the evening got off on the right note. Then, I’d planned to slip away to bed whilst he and James were having a nightcap so that the first evening was dealt with and I’d feel in control.
Sunday had already raised problems. Aunt Julia had suggested that she and I should go to St Endellion to Holy Communion together early on Easter morning (usually the whole family goes to Matins, or Evensong in the summer). How can I tell her that I can’t receive? It was bad enough at Christmas not going to Midnight Mass, but now, on Easter morning, I cannot receive. Anyway, I saw her have the idea that I hadn’t been confirmed and, after a moment of considering this and digesting it, she let the suggestion drop at once. I feel a traitor because I know very well that the family already suspect that I am almost an atheist, although none of them goes to the early service except on special occasions. Do you remember the Stations of The Cross each Good Friday with Sister Julian and how we’d all shout ‘He is risen’ on Easter morning? I feel as if I am denying Him just like St Peter. Even if I’d tried to bluff it out that Honor was a Roman Catholic (something Hubert would have almost certainly mentioned) I still can’t go to Mass again until I’ve been to Confession. And then what? What would a priest say to me, I wonder.
Anyway, my plan was to remain cool, in control, and in company. Sunday was to be a family day, with the Easter egg hunt after lunch followed by a special tea, and I’d suggested that Aunt Julia, Mousie and Rafe should all come up for dinner in the evening. I’d been so sensible, so clever in thinking it all out so that Simon and I should have no opportunity to be alone until the last moment when it would be too late. I was going to be distant and calm and then, at the last possible moment, make it clear that I’d been thinking things over and seen that I’d given him quite the wrong impression. I was very fond of him, I’d been planning to say, but I didn’t have any intention of marrying again.
Instead here he was, in the kitchen, kissing me. I was still sitting down, an egg in one hand and the paintbrush in the other, and kissing him back like any love-struck girl. No, that’s not true. I kissed him in the way any woman who’s had a lover kisses a man she wants – and no man can mistake that. Simon didn’t. He pulled me to my feet, paused briefly to relieve me of my egg and paintbrush and then continued where we’d left off. I remembered my plan far too late but eventually controlled myself enough to draw away from him. He pulled himself together too, and there was a moment of horrid embarrassment on both sides.
It needn’t have been like that. It could have been so nice if I hadn’t made up my mind that I couldn’t go through with it. It would have been so easy to smile at him and show him that it was quite all right; to make it clear that he wasn’t taking liberties but only responding naturally to the signals I’d given him over the last six months. In those brief moments I saw so clearly how wonderful it might be with him: love as well as passion and our minds tuned to the same pitch. It seemed to me, at the time, that it would be criminal to kill something so good.
No gold stars then, Vivi, if you’d guessed that I didn’t do it properly. I did the cowardly thing of telling him that I wasn’t ready to fall in love again whilst giving the impression that if he hung around long enough I might change my mind. I apologized for leading him on – naturally he said at once that it was his fault – and muttered something about being lonely and finding him very attractive. Dot arrived at the garden door just as he’d begun to say that he’d wait for as long as it took and I was saying that I had no plans to marry again. Fortunately we heard her in enough time to compose ourselves, I was back at my egg-painting before she actually appeared, and Simon was saying loudly that he’d take his bag up, was he in the usual room and so on, and suddenly it was all over.
If Dot suspected anything she didn’t show it. She got on with various preparations for dinner whilst I sat painting eggs as if my life depended on it, and letting her chatter away as she always does. It cast a different light over the weekend, though, as if we were both tingling with electricity that sparked between us. Neither of us could forget that kiss and, although I followed my plan and didn’t see him alone again, it was almost as if we’d started something rather than finished it.
I wonder if your marriage is working out for you, Vivi? You look so happy in your wedding photograph and he looks really nice in a tough, strong-jawed way. And I shall never know, shall I? How easy it is, once you have irrevocably lost something, to imagine that the one thing you can no longer have is the only thing you ever truly wanted. At this moment I long for the relationship we once shared, you and I: that odd, close – and often painful – comradeship that is peculiar to siblings. I long for my religion that was once as natural as breathing and so much a part of the fabric of my life. And I long for Simon.
I’ve lost everything that was important to me – but I have gained Paradise.
The Easter egg hunt is great fun although Emma cannot quite get the hang of it. Once Bruno has found the first egg – balanced carefully in the lower branches of the wisteria – she expects them to be anywhere she chooses to look and there are wails of disappointment punctuated by shrieks of delight. Rafe is there to help them, to guide them towards the painted eggs whilst pretending to be as amazed as they are each time one is discovered. Rafe is enjoying himself. Often he finds Mutt at his elbow, reminding him where she has hidden the eggs, and they laugh together at the sight of Emma staggering purposefully in Bruno’s wake, screaming encouragement. She is just as happy if he finds one, possessiveness having been entirely left out of her character, and anyway he shares them scrupulously between the two of them.
‘Because she is too small,’ he says seriously to Rafe, ‘to find them on her own.’
Rafe puts the egg into the basket with the others and grins at Mutt.
‘I hope Emma likes hard-boiled eggs,’ he says. ‘There must be a week’s ration here.’
Mutt makes a face. ‘Thank goodness for Home Farm,’ she says, ‘and Emma will eat anything. But I’ve been thinking, Rafe. Why shouldn’t we have our own chickens? There’s plenty of room out in the kitchen garden.’
For a moment they are drawn together in their mutual enjoyment of the garden. Mutt is beginning to love working in the Paradise gardens almost as much as she loves sailing, and Rafe is ready to encourage and assist. James is always ready to describe the glories of the past, and has gladly given his permission, and they have quite a few plans for the grounds, which have deteriorated since the war began. With no able-bodied man to help, and Margaret falling ill, large areas have been neglected, and Mutt and Rafe would like to see it all restored to its former beauty.
Emma sits down suddenly in a patch of long wet grass and begins to howl and Mutt runs to pick her up. Their discussion is abruptly brought to an end but Rafe feels that warm glow of sharing with her; the joy of all that lies ahead fills him with contentment.
Bruno, too, is happy. His sharing of the painted eggs with Emma is not totally altruistic: his natural generosity is assisted by the knowledge of the present that Simon has brought with him from Exeter. He has found a baker who has made two chocolate eggs on which the children’s names have been written in icing. There is a little silence when he opens the cardboard boxes to show them – such luxury has not been seen for years – and then everyone cries out at once. Bruno sniffs the special, delicious smell of the chocolate. All through church and lunch he thinks about the eggs; a lovely secret thought.
There’s something else too: something just for him. He puts his hand into the pocket of his shorts and feels the shape of the little red bus.
‘After all,’ says Simon, ‘you are my godson, old chap. We men have to stick together.’
Bruno doesn’t mind sharing his godfather with Emma – he can see that it would be unfair if she’d been left out of the kittens and the chocolate eggs – but it’s good to have something just to himself.
He can see that Simon is happy too, which is good, but it is to Rafe he instinctively turns now. With Rafe he feels the same sense of security he has in the company of Aunt Julia and with Mousie.
‘That sister of yours,’ says Rafe feelingly – and Bruno laughs too, shrugging and rolling his eyes just as he’s seen the grown-ups react to her escapades.
Watching Mutt swinging Emma into the air to distract her from her wet knickers he feels a deep sense of belonging.
‘Time for tea,’ Mutt is calling – and they all set off together towards the house.
9th April
I had a letter from Simon a few days ago. It was beside my breakfast plate and James watched me as I opened it, though he pretended to be absorbed in his own letters. It occurs to me that the chemistry I described, zinging between me and Simon during that weekend, might have been obvious to other people too, and I feel anxious and guilty. I wonder what James thinks of me, having told him I wouldn’t marry again, and I fear that he might misunderstand and disapprove in some way. In an effort to appear calm and unaffected I helped Emma with a few mouthfuls of her porridge and cut the top from Bruno’s egg before I opened the envelope.
We eat breakfast in the dining-room, and sometimes the sun streams in, circling Emma’s head with a fuzzy golden halo and smoothing the gleaming rosewood of the oval table to a deep richness. It glints on the dark blue and gold-leaf patterns of the eggshell-thin china teapot and strokes its way over the silky stitches of Margaret’s big tapestry hanging on the wall. Its warmth blesses and cheers us, making us eager for the day ahead and nourishing our plans and ideas.
The morning of Simon’s letter it was raining. The dirty grey sky leaked with an unrelenting drizzle and the room felt chill and bleak. We’d had a warm spell – the spring comes and goes here, tantalizingly showing us her glories and then retreating behind a sharp shower of hail or a wild gale from the west – and this sudden reversion to winter was depressing. Emma was grizzling – as irritatingly persistent as the rain outside – and Bruno was asking if we could walk over the cliff to The Lookout after breakfast. James smiled gently at nobody whilst managing to convey sympathy for me and tolerance towards the children.
‘We’ll see,’ I said to Bruno. ‘If it clears up, perhaps,’ and opened Simon’s letter.
To my horror I saw that my hands were trembling, just a little, and I quickly laid the sheets on the table beside my plate, pretending that I wanted to spread my slice of toast with some of Julia’s bramble jelly. I bent my head over the plate, my eyes scanning the lines of small, cramped writing. It was a sweet letter, Vivi, apologizing for taking advantage of my ‘vulnerable state’ and telling me that he’d fallen in love with me. He wrote: ‘I shouldn’t be so surprised that I feel the way I do. After all the things Hubert told me about you, I was half in love with you before I’d even met you …’
He went on to assure me, if somewhat clumsily, that Hubert would be pleased to think that we might be gaining comfort from each other, but a cold dread had already fallen across my mind.
All the things Hubert told me about you.
What things, Vivi, had Hubert told his oldest friend about his wife? My first reaction was one of overwhelming relief that I hadn’t already somehow given myself away to him. I looked up and saw that James was watching me. There was such far-seeing wisdom and affection in his eyes that fear clutched at my stomach. I knew then that I couldn’t bear to see disillusionment and disgust in those eyes and that I had no choice but to follow my chosen path.
I smiled at him. ‘A bread-and-butter from Simon,’ I said lightly, ‘thanking us all for such a lovely weekend.’ Oddly I found it difficult to speak: my chest felt tight and the words came out rather breathlessly. Folding the sheets and carelessly stuffing them back into the envelope I wiped Bruno’s fingers and danced Dolly upon the table to distract Emma. ‘Perhaps Bruno’s right. We should visit The Lookout and give it an airing. But we’ll go round by the lane, I think. Too wet for the cliff. What sort of morning have you got, James?’
‘Oh, an office morning for me, I’m afraid.’ He drank up the last of his tea and pushed back his chair. ‘Humdrum, boring old paperwork.’
He slipped away and I smiled at the children. These two were now my life, my work, my whole future, just as I had seen it in that hotel room in Karachi, and nothing must distract me from it. No goblin cries, no delicious fruit, no more kisses …
After lunch I wrote back to Simon while the children were resting upstairs and James was nodding over the newspaper in the office. I sat at the dining-room table and wrote to him that there was no future for us, that my mind was quite made up, and that, having experienced true love and companionship, I knew that I didn’t love him in that same way. I asked him not to pursue it but to be kind about it, although I added that I was very fond of him and hoped that we would always be friends.
By writing to me he let me off the hook, because it is always so much easier to do this kind of thing at a distance, but I couldn’t have gone to Exeter to see Simon so I decided that it was quite in order to write to him. Don’t think it was easy, though, Vivi. I hated it. All that morning whilst I was winding the children into scarves and pushing their warm little feet into gumboots I was mentally writing that letter. Phrases and sentences jostled about in my head as we went down the drive, Emma jumping with passionate glee into every puddle, and I rehearsed it a thousand times as we lit our little fire and Bruno chatted non-stop to me and to the variously imagined friends with which he peoples his life.
Aunt Julia came up to Paradise after tea, as she sometimes does, to help to bath the children and put them to bed. I left her reading a story to them and slipped away up the lane to post the letter at the box up on the Polzeath road. I was afraid I might lose my nerve if I didn’t send it straight away.
It was a cold, sweet evening with a new moon already setting away in the west. Honesty was flowering in the lane, sheltering with ragged robin and campion beneath the bare thorny hedges, and the rough wild cliff-top land was criss-crossed with great banks of yellow-flowered gorse and the foamy-white blossom of the blackthorn. Oh, the peace of it all. The sea leaned gently against the sheer, steep cliffs and the hoarse croaking of a raven drifted up from the valley near the Saint’s Well.
I stood beside the post box for a good five minutes holding the letter in my pocket. I prayed then, Vivi. I prayed for guidance and wisdom so as to do the right thing for all of us, and all the time I was held by a kind of peacefulness. The walk and the silence and the beauty had made me calm and just then I wanted nothing more than to stay here, safe from the torment of passion and the agonies of love. That sense of peace remained with me all the way home.
Aunt Julia finishes Bruno’s story, hears his prayers and then tucks him firmly into bed.
‘Goodnight, dear boy,’ she says. ‘Sweet dreams,’ and hurries downstairs.
James is reading peacefully in the drawing-room but he looks up as she comes in and sets his book aside: her expression indicates that all is not well. Julia closes the door firmly but quietly and sits down on the sofa.
‘I’m worried about Honor.’ She comes straight to the point. ‘She seems rather distrait and ever since Easter I can’t help wondering whether she’s fallen in love with Simon. What do you think?’
This is very straight talking, even for Julia, and James crosses his legs whilst he decides how to answer her. It is quite true that during the Easter weekend he began to notice that Honor and Simon were sharply aware of one another, and when his letter arrived earlier in the week James was unable to ignore her reaction to it.
‘A bread-and-butter from Simon,’ she’d said lightly – but he’d seen how her hands trembled and noticed her distraction with the children.
He feels such compassion for her, imagining how wretched she must feel to be torn between several loyalties. James suspects that Honor believes that Hubert’s children should grow up here at St Meriadoc and he wonders how Simon would approach the tricky situation of assimilating himself into this place where he’d been a guest and, even more difficult, taking over his old friend’s family. It would be a daunting prospect even for someone as confident as Simon.
He stirs, aware of Julia’s eyes fixed upon him.
‘I think it is a possibility,’ he begins cautiously. ‘But even if she has I don’t see what we can do about it. I think we should trust her.’
‘It would be quite wrong for Bruno to be uprooted again,’ Julia says strongly. ‘He is just beginning to recover from his father’s death and I think it would be disastrous for him to adapt all over again to a new father and away from his family. Emma’s too young to be a real problem, but even she is settling so happily here.’
‘But what can I do about it?’ asks James helplessly. ‘I can’t forbid them to fall in love.’
Julia puts up her chin – he is reminded of Margaret – and stares him squarely in the eye.
‘It might be necessary to tell her that you can’t afford any muddle when it comes to the children’s inheritance.’
He looks at her, dismayed. ‘I’ve already explained to her that, should she marry again, the estate will be held in trust for Bruno and Emma. She said that she had no intention of marrying again and I believed her. I told you about it.’
‘So you did.’ Julia frowns. ‘Even so, watching them over Easter I would have said that there was something between them that went beyond friendship. She’s been preoccupied and jumpy all week, and this evening she’s been in another world entirely. Don’t think I’m criticizing her, James. Simon is a charming, attractive man and she’s young – don’t imagine I don’t sympathize! – but she needs to see the whole situation clearly. She’s such a warm-hearted girl and I don’t want her swept off her feet.’
‘You think that this might be a reaction to Hubert’s death?’
Julia is silent for a moment. ‘It might be,’ she says at last. ‘I remember how I felt when Hugh was killed. It would have been heaven, occasionally, to put the burden onto a strong man’s shoulders and leave it all to him. Luckily for me, I had you and Margaret to turn to before I could do anything foolish. Honor is younger than I was and, I suspect, much more susceptible. I don’t want her to make a mistake.’
James looks at her curiously. ‘Don’t you like Simon?’
‘Oh, he’s a nice enough fellow. She could go further and fare worse but I don’t want her rushed into anything. Simon is behaving very well, very properly, but you just look at that jaw of his! He’s a man who gets what he wants and, at this moment, he wants Honor.’
‘I was fairly certain that Simon was in love with her but now I think that Honor is beginning to feel that way towards him too. To begin with I thought that it was too soon, and that her love for Hubert would protect her, but I wonder if there’s an element of falling in love on the rebound here. Responding to Simon takes her mind off her grief. It gives her something exciting to think about. Totally understandable, in my opinion.’
‘Yet you still feel it would be wrong for her.’
‘It might be wrong for her,’ Julia corrects him. ‘She needs time and I have this feeling that once Simon sees his advantage he’ll push it.’
‘Perhaps you could speak to her,’ James ventures. ‘Surely this sort of thing is better from another woman?’
She shakes her head. ‘We’re not on those terms. And Mousie is too young. Despite her natural friendliness Honor still keeps herself a little distant from us. Fair enough, I’m not a one for messy emotions all over the place either. That’s why you should approach it from the point of view of the will.’
‘I don’t know how I should start,’ says James wretchedly. ‘Good grief, Julia! What could I say? I’m not her father.’
‘You are the children’s grandfather,’ she says – but she can see his dilemma. ‘We need something which will make her review the situation carefully. She needs something with which to protect herself if Simon pushes too hard.’
Julia pauses, raising her hand warningly, and presently Honor comes in through the hall. She smiles at them almost dreamily as if possessed of a great inner contentment.
‘Whoever called this place “Paradise” is right,’ she says. ‘It’s the most beautiful place in the world. I can’t get over how lucky I am to be here.’ Her smile becomes more practical and she looks with great affection upon the older pair. ‘I’m going to get the supper.’
They remain silent, until they can hear movement in the kitchen, and then James raises an eyebrow questioningly and Julia shrugs.
‘Perhaps,’ he suggests gently, ‘she has something with which to protect herself after all.’
12th April
He came to Paradise yesterday whilst the family was at church. I met him at the top of our valley by the Saint’s Well. He telephoned, Vivi. I had a feeling that he wouldn’t just accept the letter and after a day or two I began to feel edgy. The sense of peace wore off and I felt tense and expectant. It would have been simpler if he weren’t attached so firmly to the family by other relationships but as it is he can’t simply fade out of all our lives. I began to wonder how he would handle it and from there it was a short step to a kind of expectation: imagining how it would be when I saw him next. My peace was shattered and my nerves were stretched. Each time the telephone rang I jumped and trembled – and then, at last, it was Simon.
‘I’m coming down,’ he said at once. ‘I’d like to see you on your own, Mutt. Don’t argue about it, please. Just give me this one chance. I have an idea …’
His idea was that I should miss Matins, giving a headache as an excuse, and meet him high up in the valley. He could leave the car up on the Polzeath road and walk down the track.
‘I’ll see you by the well just after eleven,’ he said, and simply hung up.
I see now that it would have been wiser simply to explain to James that Simon had proposed and I had refused but I complicated matters further by going along with Simon’s plan. As soon as they’d set out for church I slipped away. All the way along the valley I was thinking about that picnic where it had first started, this thing between us, with Mousie playing with Emma in the stream whilst Rafe and Bruno were building the dam. I remembered the hot sun and the lark singing, high up above in the still air …
Our valley is his golden cup …
He was waiting for me. It was a chill, dank morning, no larks singing, and he stood with his hands thrust down into the pockets of his British Warm. He was nervous, of course, defensive, but his posture was aggressive and that helped me. Acknowledging my own weaknesses I’d put on Honor’s tweed coat and skirt and sensible walking shoes and, as usual, some essence of her rubbed off on me. It enabled me to keep my shoulders back and my chin up. This time I wasn’t listening to sentimental dance music and painting eggs: this time I was prepared.
I knew just how Honor would have behaved, in the unlikely event that she would ever have got herself into such a situation in the first place. She would have been firm and kind and rather sweet; not that brutal, straight-from-the-shoulder treatment which you used to deal out to your poor swains, Vivi, but just as effective. From the beginning there was an unreality about the whole meeting and I suddenly saw that he’d been wrong in insisting on it. Somehow his instinct had utterly failed him. He would have been much wiser to allow a little time to elapse and then turn up again for one of those jolly weekends, bringing little presents for the children and reminiscing with James over a glass of whisky. A kind of rapport would have gently established itself between us. We might have gone sailing or taken a walk, and then the old magic would have crept in and undermined me again.
There was no magic by the Saint’s Well that morning: only the clear, cold sound of the water and the sharp, strong scent of the ramsons. He watched me walking up our valley, his head lowered slightly, his face expressionless. I didn’t change the rhythm of my pace when I saw him but I made my expression friendly, even affectionate. I think he’d counted on my previous reaction and when he didn’t get it my coolness unnerved him even more and I saw his shoulders hunch beneath the camel coat.
I felt quite strong and in control of myself although I was praying ‘Help me! Help me!’ beneath my breath, whether to the saint or to God I still don’t know. The help I was already getting from Simon’s unwelcoming stance was reinforced by the way he began by calling me Honor. Nothing could have recalled me more firmly to what I was trying to achieve. It reminded me of the children and my responsibility towards them, of dear old James and the family, and even of Honor and Hubert themselves. Again his instinct failed him: the familiar, friendly nickname ‘Mutt’, which he’d used until now, would have softened me: called my true, weaker self into being. Her name, which he repeated almost nervously at regular intervals, was like a shield thrust into my hands and, as my courage grew, a verse from one of the psalms repeated itself in my head.
‘He shall defend thee under His wings, and thou shalt be safe under His feathers: His faithfulness and truth shall be thy shield and buckler.’
The sense of unreality continued, rather as if we were actors in a play, and all the passion that had flamed between us in the kitchen at Easter was now quenched into a cool exchange. Something about me, perhaps to do with Honor’s clothes and the way I had slipped into her persona, had a paralysing effect on him. It made him believe the phrases I’d written in the letter and I saw his confidence waver and fade. He behaved as if a chasm lay at our feet and he spoke to me across it. He talked about the future he’d planned for us: he has been offered a research post at the Baker Medical Research Institute in Australia and he described a new life for us all, free from sad memories of the past. The more he spoke the deeper and wider the chasm grew until, confused and angry, he accepted defeat.
At the end the only thing I feared was physical contact – his kisses might slip beneath my guard – but yet again his instinct failed him and he merely turned away with a brief gesture of frustrated farewell and strode off towards the Polzeath road.
I can hardly remember getting back to Paradise but quite suddenly I felt weak, no longer upheld by that inner strength I’d had at the well, and I lay down upon my bed. The children found me there, bringing me flowers picked in the lane, and Emma scrambled up beside me and patted my face with her soft, pudgy hands, crooning a little song. Bruno stood stiffly beside the bed, his face taut with anxiety.
‘Are you really ill, Mutt?’ he asked.
I roused myself, wondering if he were remembering that tiresome influenza, and managed to smile at him reassuringly.
‘Just this wretched head,’ I said. ‘I’ve been reading too much again. Don’t worry, darling.’
And then Aunt Julia came in, bringing me a hot-water bottle and an aspirin, and shushing the children, and after that there was silence. It was then, with my shield lowered and my defences weak, I realized that I would never hear that goblin cry again, nor taste the sweet, delicious fruit, and I thought of poor Laura trudging home, creeping to bed and laying silent until Lizzie slept:
Then sat up in a passionate yearning,
And gnashed her teeth for baulked desire, and wept
As if her heart would break.
I wept too, Vivi, cradling the hot, comforting bottle in my arms, with the sheet over my head so that nobody would hear me. I wept not only for myself and Simon but also for Hubert and Honor and Bruno and all that we’d lost. It wasn’t until later that I wondered if Bruno hadn’t been thinking about the influenza but of the hot, airless hotel room in Karachi and remembering how quickly he’d lost his parents and his sister. Perhaps he feared that I too might die. It was this thought that roused me out of my storm of self-pity.
I got up, washed my face, put on some make-up, brushed my hair and tied a scarf over it. It was a bright yellow and blue cotton and I found a navy-blue high-necked jersey that had once been Hubert’s and pulled it on with a grey flannel skirt.
When I opened the drawing-room door, Julia, James and Bruno were seated at the gate-leg table in the window playing Monopoly. They turned and their expressions – cheerful, welcoming, relieved – warmed my heart and gave me courage. Bruno scrambled down and came to me.
‘Are you better?’ he asked eagerly.
‘Quite better,’ I answered. ‘And when you’ve finished your game we’ll go for a walk over the cliffs to The Lookout to blow the last cobwebs away.’
I sat down on the sofa where Emma was curled, fast asleep, her smooth perfect limbs carelessly disposed, her tiny flushed face peaceful. Sitting there, watching her sleep, listening to the murmuring voices from the table, I made my commitment. The decision had been taken for good or ill, back there in India, and now I must live with it: no more goblin fruit – ‘honey to the throat but poison in the blood’ – but an acceptance of that decision once and for all. Can I stick to it?
All the morning, whilst he is in church and on the walk home, Bruno is worried about Mutt. She says that she has a headache but he senses something more, much worse, and he feels anxious. When they get back to Paradise and find her in bed he is filled with fear: the memories press in on him and he can recall how Father fell ill first, then baby Em, and then Mummie; lying amongst the damp, crumpled sheets too weak to comfort him. His throat seems to close up with tears and he knows that he simply couldn’t bear it if anything were to happen to Mutt. He stands beside the bed, stiff with fright, his bunch of flowers wilting in his clenched hand.
‘Are you really ill?’ he asks her, and though she tells him again that it is just a headache he doesn’t believe her.
Aunt Julia hurries him and Emma out of the bedroom, telling him that Mother needs to rest and he realizes that now he has almost accepted that Mutt is his mother and it is impossible to imagine life without her. He can barely swallow any lunch and afterwards Aunt Julia and Uncle James play Monopoly with him whilst Emma falls asleep on the sofa. Rafe has gone sailing and Mousie is on duty at the hospital but Bruno is quite content with these two old people, who talk quietly as they play, giving him the chance to think about Mutt.
And then suddenly she is there, opening the door and smiling at them, and his relief is so overwhelming that he can hardly speak.
‘Are you better?’ he cries, and she says that she is quite better and that when the game is over and Emma wakes up they’ll go over the cliffs to The Lookout.
He goes back to the game, reassured and quite cheerful now, and it is he who suddenly mentions Simon, asking when he will be visiting again. He is aware of Aunt Julia’s hand on his shoulder, gripping tightly whilst he makes his move, but he doesn’t think too much about it: all is well.
Julia watches Honor as she sits down beside the sleeping Emma. Her older, wiser eyes see the result of bitter weeping that the make-up and the gay headscarf cannot quite disguise and there is something in Honor’s down-turned face, as she looks at her sleeping child, that rends Julia’s heart. She tries to analyse the expression – renunciation? resolve? – and when Bruno asks his question so innocently she is filled with dread. Honor glances up quickly.
‘Do you know I quite forgot to tell you,’ she says lightly. ‘He’s been offered a research post in Australia. Very exciting for him but very sad for us. You won’t be seeing much of your godfather from now on, Bruno, but I’m sure he’ll write to you. We shall miss him, won’t we?’
Neither James nor Julia asks Honor how she has suddenly acquired this information; instead they study the board with great concentration, answering Bruno’s questions about Australia, and, presently, when Emma wakes up, the three of them set off to The Lookout.
At last James and Julia look at each other.
‘I think we underestimated her,’ says Julia after a long moment.
James resists the desire to point out that he has never been in doubt; he simply nods in agreement and begins to put away the board.
‘She’s a good girl,’ he murmurs.
His instincts have not played him false: Paradise will be safe in her hands.
8th June 1948
Darling Vivi,
This is the last letter I shall write to you, exactly one year since I first arrived at Paradise. After all, this had to be part of that acceptance, didn’t it? The goblin fruit includes pretending that I am communicating with you properly, that one day you will receive these letters and reply to them. Yet I can’t bring myself to destroy them. These letters to you contain the last record of who and what I truly am, and the truth of what happened, but if I am to fully commit I must also finish with Madeleine Grosjean. After all, she disappeared out there in India.
A man arrived at the door the other day – just a stranger who had lost his way whilst out walking the cliffs – but I was filled with a sudden unreasoning terror. Supposing Johnny were to try to track me down, through Honor and Hubert, or suppose you and Don made some enquiries? I imagine that the news that Lottie and I died in Karachi with Hubert has filtered back and that nobody will bother to question it. Nevertheless, it made me see that I am still vulnerable and I was frightened. Trevannion is an uncommon name and I have yet to brave the moment when the children go out into the world and face the new dangers that could arise with the making of friends who just might recognize the name.
I must become Honor Trevannion. I must allow her firm kindness, her decisiveness, her strict way of loving gradually to sink into my character. I’ve managed quite well so far but I cannot afford any distractions.
So no letters, Vivi. I must do without the comfort of sharing with you. Do you remember how we used to chant those last lines of Goblin Market, laughing at them whilst deep down believing in them?
For there is no friend like a sister
In calm and stormy weather;
To cheer one on the tedious way,
To fetch one if one goes astray,
To lift one if one totters down,
To strengthen whilst one stands.
I shall miss you, Vivi. When I lie awake at night wondering how I shall answer Bruno when he’s old enough to see the flaw, to ask the real question ‘Why did you pretend to be my mother?’ then I shall wish that I had you to help me through. I hope he’ll understand the panic and the way those decisions were taken and how the smallest deception can entrap so quickly.
I think he will understand, though. There’s something wise about Bruno, some grace which is far beyond his years, which even now casts its healing over me. When he smiles at me, hugs me – knowing the truth as he does – I feel as if I have been granted the absolution I can no longer receive from Confession.
And there’s something else, Vivi, I cling to when I feel myself, Madeleine, being slowly but inexorably rubbed out. I remember words that Sister Julian read to us.
Do not fear, for I have redeemed you,
I have called you by name; you are mine.
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
And when you pass through the rivers,
They shall not overwhelm you …
Do not fear, for I am with you.
If He knows me by my name then nothing else really matters, does it? This is my antidote to the goblin fruit.
There will be so much I shall want to tell you: all those small but significant events that shape the pattern of our lives as our children grow up. I shall be thinking of you, Vivi, and wondering if you will be telling your own children about the way we were and the fun we had. Perhaps I am already an aunt, and Emma has a cousin she will never know and I shall never see.
I love you, darling. That will never change.
Your sister,
Madeleine