Bruno couldn’t sleep. Emma had gone yawning upstairs hours ago and still he paced the big room, lights switched out and curtains open to the clear night, whilst Nellie watched him from the sofa. As he walked to and fro, or paused to stare out into the darkness, he wrestled with the problem that now confronted him. How was he to juggle the complications of the inheritance with the need to protect Emma?
In all his conversations with Mutt down the years, she’d pleaded with him that Emma should never know the truth: that somehow, after her death, the deception should be maintained.
‘You belong, Bruno,’ she’d said. ‘This is your home and these are your family. I know that what I did would seem unforgivable to most people but you’ve always understood why I did it, haven’t you, darling? What will Emma feel once she knows that she doesn’t belong here? Or that you aren’t her brother?’
Her very real distress had never failed to move him. Despite the terrible loss of his own family he’d always been able to understand her dilemma and why she’d acted so impulsively fifty years before during those last terrible days in Karachi. Even now he could feel the prickle of terror on his skin, the despair deep in his gut: he could still remember his overwhelming relief when she’d appeared in their hotel room with Emma jabbering cheerfully in her arms. The thought of being without Mutt, that vital living link between the unknown future and the shocking past, was not to be borne.
Only he, watching her down the years, had sensed the struggle. Some instinct showed him that her guilt would never let her rest: that she took nothing for granted. She looked after them all and the valley had become not only her sanctuary but also her true home. Her creative spirit expressed itself in the Paradise gardens where she and Rafe had worked so tirelessly, and in her tapestry work that now adorned the local churches. He knew, too, that sailing was her greatest joy: that as the gap between the boat and the shore widened so this same joyful spirit, passionate and carefree, shook off the shackles of capable widow and mother who held the cares of family and estate in her hands.
It was odd, thought Bruno, that he should be the one who knew her best and loved her most. Because of her he’d been obliged all his life to lie, to be on his guard, to watch his tongue. He’d had to deny the memory of his own mother and sister, to accept and live the deception into which she’d plunged them. Yet from the earliest days he’d been aware of her courage – the more so because he suspected that it was hard won and that to be assured and sensible did not come naturally to her. Those odd quirks of memory, fifty years old, showed him his father putting an affectionate arm around her and saying teasingly, ‘You are a Mutt. What a woman!’ He’d felt a kind of empathy with her even then, hearing in that tone of voice the implication that Mutt, though grown up, was still capable of foolish things that seemed to make her an ally with him. She was down there with the children, laughing, loving, ready for fun, whilst the grown-ups watched indulgently from their higher plane.
As Emma grew up he’d seen the same qualities in her that he still glimpsed in Mutt. She too was passionate, given to laughter, generous, which made it not only sad that Mutt could never let the barrier slip with her daughter but almost tragic that Emma was more fiercely Trevannion than any of them. She loved Paradise, adored Bruno and Rafe and Mousie, and told everyone who was remotely interested about her father’s work as a doctor in India. After she was married she’d come racing down to Cornwall at every opportunity, insisting that St Meriadoc was her real home and where she most belonged.
They’d almost quarrelled over Raymond Fox, Bruno and Mutt. This was the first time his sympathy for Mutt had given way before a genuine sense of anxiety for Emma. He’d already had a shouting match with Em, each of them deriding the other’s lack of taste when it came to choosing a marriage partner, and later he’d gone up to Paradise to have it out with Mutt. Now, listening to the sea’s rhythmic shush-shush against the rocks below the window, he saw the scene in his mind’s eye as clearly as if it were being enacted on the black glass in front of him.
‘She loves him,’ says Mutt, not looking at him, opening the drawers of her desk and closing them again with a bang.
‘Emma loves everyone,’ he answers impatiently. ‘She’s always falling in love. Ever since she was about twelve she’s imagined herself in love. I’ve never known a girl like her for needing to love someone and to be loved in return.’
She turns then, staring at him almost fearfully across the back of the chair as if some new idea has occurred to her. ‘But she’s always known how much we’ve loved her, hasn’t she?’ she asks anxiously. ‘Oh, Bruno, do you think that she’s missed having a father? More than we realized?’
He guesses that she is feeling inadequate, worrying that she hasn’t managed to fulfil all Emma’s needs, and he is seized with a mixture of irritation and compunction.
‘I’ve no idea,’ he answers restlessly, not in the mood for soul-searching. ‘She’s never given me that impression. The point is whether this wretched Fox loves her, and in my opinion he doesn’t. He’s a cold, calculating type. She won’t be happy with him, Mutt.’
He sees her expression change from worried introspection to thoughtful consideration of his words.
‘He’s steady,’ she says at last. ‘He won’t do anything foolish or make a fool of her with another woman.’
His laugh is short and explosive. ‘You’re dead right about that,’ he answers crudely. ‘He wouldn’t know what passion was if it struck him in the face.’
‘You’re young,’ she says quietly. ‘You can’t imagine what it’s like to be abandoned or to have no security. I don’t want that for Emma.’
He studies her, realizing that he knows very little about Mutt’s own past except in relation to his own family. Some tacit agreement from those early years has cast a cloak of silence over the years in India and, until now, he had the impression that her husband had died in an accident. Now he wonders if it had been more complicated.
His irritation subsides a little but he has no intention of giving way yet.
‘Emma will never be abandoned while I’m alive,’ he says, ‘but even the fear that she might be doesn’t mean she has to marry a man like Raymond Fox. There are other decent men who will love her in return. Don’t imagine I’m doing a “no-one is good enough for my sister” act. I simply want her to have a reasonable chance of happiness.’
Mutt rises from her chair and begins to wander about the room, tidying some books, picking up a newspaper; her fingers trail idly across a tapestry that lies on the oval, inlaid table.
‘You’re not looking at Raymond as a woman would,’ she says at last.
‘Clearly,’ he says crisply.
‘When it comes to marriage, Emma might want more than charm and fun …’
She sits down abruptly at the desk again and he wants to ask her if those were the qualities she looked for in marriage and whether they failed her. He sees her fumbling with some papers, clearly distressed but not wanting him to see, and he sighs with frustration.
‘He’s wrong for her,’ he insists stubbornly.
‘That’s what she says about Zoë. That you married her for all the wrong reasons. I did question it myself, if you remember, but you answered – quite fairly – that you had the right to do what you liked with your own life. Emma feels exactly the same.’
The tiny core of him that always stands apart – watching his own life as an onlooker might, taking notes – observes her restless fingers folding and refolding an old envelope, records that the easy intimacy between them born of shared secrets has slipped behind the cooler, controlling persona that Mutt uses when she needs to take charge of a situation. It is a defence mechanism to be employed when she feels vulnerable and unsure of herself but he is too young, too inexperienced, to wrench it down and to insist that they discuss this matter as equals.
Nevertheless, because it is Emma’s happiness at stake here, he tries again, pushing against that barrier in an attempt to extend the boundaries of the trust between them.
‘So you have actually discussed it with her?’ he asks lightly. ‘That you think that she might be marrying for the wrong reasons?’
He watches her averted face, sees her bite her lip, and has an odd impulse to go to her and put his arm about her.
‘Come off it,’ he might say. ‘You are a Mutt, aren’t you? Can’t we talk about this properly?’
He might say it, if he were ten years older or more confident, but his own insecurities hold him back. The silence between them is stretched, tense.
‘We’ve talked about it,’ she answers evasively at last. ‘Of course we have. She’s in love with him and he loves her.’ Her chin goes up a little higher, her back is a little straighter, and his heart sinks as the gulf is widened and her confidence grows. ‘Oh, yes he does. After his fashion Raymond has given his heart to Emma. She’ll be looked after and he’ll be a loyal husband and a responsible father.’
‘Sounds like fun,’ he says, his voice brittle with defeat. ‘You don’t think that a bit of passion might be nice or even some kind of meeting of minds?’
The silence this time is of a different quality. Something else has joined them in the parlour: a gentle remembrance of times past that relaxes Mutt’s shoulders and softens her expression. When she speaks her question takes him completely by surprise.
‘Have you heard from Simon recently?’ she asks. ‘It seems a long time since you had any news of him.’
‘Yes,’ he says, confused. ‘Well, I had a letter a month or two back. He sent a photograph of the twins with Tessa on the beach at Bondi. I meant to show it to you.’
She turns to look at him. ‘Don’t be too harsh on me,’ she says gently. ‘Passionate people need a framework of stability. Emma loves the good things of life and she likes to share them. Raymond is in love with her and he will want to make her happy, according to his lights. She will be able to entertain, give parties, dress well. He’ll see to that because it will be good for business but there will be times when Raymond’s stolidity and lack of imagination will be invaluable to Emma. She’ll use them – and him – as a defence against her own mistaken passions. Friends and enemies will blame him and she’ll be free to be loved for herself.’
‘It doesn’t sound a particularly honest way of going on,’ Bruno says after a moment.
Mutt chuckles. ‘We have to do the best with what we’ve got. Your father used to say, “Never let the best be the enemy of the good,” and it’s worth remembering at times, especially when it comes to relationships.’
He smiles back at her. ‘That sounds particularly cynical to me.’
‘To me too,’ she admits.
She gets up, light and quick as a girl, and comes to him with arms outstretched.
‘It’s so hard to get it right for other people,’ she says almost desperately. ‘Especially when you love them so much. You and Emma. Should I have stopped you from marrying Zoë?’
He puts his arms about her, knowing that his unchanging love brings her some kind of comfort.
‘You didn’t have a hope,’ he says. ‘You’re quite right, Mutt. Why do we think we can get it right for other people when we get so much wrong for ourselves? If Emma’s made up her mind there’s no more to be said about it.’
They look at each other, unity restored – but both still suppress private fears.
A door opened upstairs and Bruno tensed, listening: the lavatory was flushed, water gurgled in the cistern, and he heard footsteps overhead. Presently the bedroom door closed again and there was silence. All at once he made up his mind. Taking Nellie through to her bed in the kitchen, shrugging into his coat, all the while he was listening for any further sound from Emma.
‘Stay,’ he told Nellie, ignoring her beseeching expression. ‘Good girl, then. Stay.’
Shutting the door gently behind him, pausing to glance towards The Row, where all was dark and quiet, he set off up the cliff-path that led towards Paradise.