Apple Blossom Time (43 page)

*   *   *

‘Did you find out anything?’ asked Geoffrey, as he accelerated down the drive, leaving tyre tracks in the raked gravel.

I shook my head. ‘He wasn’t there.’

He wasn’t a fool. He knew that I was lying and I knew that he knew. But we agreed to leave it that way.

*   *   *

I went to find a martyr and I found a man who had chosen the place where he wanted to be. I went to find a young warrior, crusader knight, and I found a lost, gentle man with dirty hands. I came carrying the flame of vengeance and found that my zeal wasn’t wanted.

*   *   *

I couldn’t. I couldn’t tell him. It would have been grotesque.

Why did I go?

Because … so that …

So that I could throw my arms round him, shouting ‘Daddy darling, I’m your long-lost daughter’?

Don’t be absurd.

Then if I wasn’t looking for a father, was I trying to bring back my mother’s husband?

She’s got a husband. She may not be legally married to him, but she thinks that they have already celebrated their silver wedding anniversary.

Then, for Christ’s sake, what was I doing there – just meddling? Satisfying my own selfish curiosity?

I was looking for a ghost. Don’t you understand? I didn’t want to find a real man, a man with grey hair and arthritis and a woman he calls his wife. He was a person, not an icon, unexpectedly human. I had been prepared to pity him. I had longed to love him. I didn’t expect to
like
him!

*   *   *

‘Mother, did you love my father?’

‘Darling, you do ask the most personal questions.’

‘I asked you once before and you didn’t answer.’

‘Because I think that the answer is my business, not yours.’

‘But I need to know. Stop it. Stop being so busy.’ I took the iron from her and propped it upright on its asbestos stand. I took her moving hands within my own hands and held them tightly. She struggled for a bit, not too seriously, and then gave up. ‘Don’t hide from me, Mother, please. Please…’

‘Yes. Then, yes, if you have to know, I loved Edwin Ansty.’

‘Very much?’

‘Laura, please…’

‘How much?’

‘Laura, you’re hurting. Let go … I loved him … oh, you wouldn’t understand how much I loved him.’

‘Why not? Am I so different from you? Why wouldn’t I understand?’

Mother sighed and rubbed her wrists. ‘Because you’re older, a woman and I was a child. Because nothing hurts so much, nothing is so wonderful, nothing is so terrible, nothing passes so quickly, nothing lasts so long as when you’re young. Let me work, Laura. I couldn’t talk to you if I thought you were looking at me.’ She unrolled one of Tom’s shirts and sprinkled water on it from a jam jar with holes punched in the lid. It steamed as she slid the iron across the first sleeve. ‘It’s no criticism of you if I say you wouldn’t understand. The world was so different then and girls had such different lives.

‘I was fifteen when I first met your father, fifteen and living at home, the only child of elderly parents, a father away at war, a vinegary spinster for a governess. The only male I met, very occasionally, was my cousin Victor. He was quite sweet to me, but very boring and spotty. Edwin was still a schoolboy, too, but to me he was like a young god. He was tall and handsome – everything an impressionable girl might dream about – but he was kind, too…’ She smiled, with her face turned down towards the half-ironed shirt, but I could see the way her left cheek curved. ‘He didn’t tease, or mock, or make me feel stupid because I was only a girl and didn’t know anything. Victor took me to tea and Edwin came too. I remember … I remember everything. I remember the way he leaned forward to listen to me, as though everything I said was important. I remember the way his hair would flop forward as he leaned and he’d push it away impatiently. His hands were beautiful, narrow and long-fingered. His eyes were hazel, flecked with light, green and gold and grey. I thought he was wonderful. I remember … Oh, darling, why do you need to know these things? It was all so long ago.’

‘Please…’

‘And then he went away to war and I knitted socks and packed little parcels and hoped – prayed – that he wouldn’t forget me. And that first Christmas he was away – 1916 – he sent me a little brooch, a copy of the regimental cap badge, silver, worth nothing, but priceless to me and I wore it on my vest, because I knew that my mother would not approve. I was so young, you see. And silly. It was all so exciting. Secret letters. Photographs. It made me feel very grown-up. I kept his picture in my prayer book.’ She folded one shirt, flattened it and ironed in the creases, then began on the next. ‘We didn’t meet again for a year and a half. His letters were changing, I realize that now, but at the time, I never noticed. I thought that he would still be the handsome boy I remembered. Well, he was still handsome, of course, but not a boy.

‘Edwin came back for seventy-two hours. I told my mother that I was staying with a friend in Richmond, a girl I’d met through Victor’s sister. So deceitful. I don’t know where I’d learned to tell lies like that. But the thought of
not
seeing Edwin was more than I could bear. He was so different. Quieter. Harder. Older. He laughed a lot at things that weren’t funny, but wouldn’t tell me anything I wanted to know. He took me to dinner at the Berkeley and I had to wear my best dress – brown velvet with a lace collar – that made me look about twelve years old, even with my hair up. All the men were in uniform, but Edwin’s medal ribbon made him special, and all the women seemed too glamorous to be real. We had champagne. I’d never tasted it before. There was an orchestra, playing songs from
Chu Chin Chow.
It was so exciting. If it hadn’t been for the uniforms, you wouldn’t have known there was a war on. We were going to go dancing afterwards, but Edwin was very tired.

‘He was staying – camping, really, there was only one servant left – at a house belonging to the parents of a chum of his. The furniture was in dust covers and the chandeliers in holland bags, looking huge and ghostly. It was cold – our breath made puffy clouds around our lips – and we were still hungry. We rummaged around and found some sardines, a couple of apples and a half-full decanter. Edwin lit a fire. We sat on the hearthrug with blankets around our shoulders, eating sardines with our fingers and drinking whisky, watching the flames, making plans, never once mentioning the war, talking, talking, and I missed the last train to Richmond…’ She was looking over my shoulder towards the window, but I knew that she saw nothing and her hands were still at last. ‘… I was so young and he was so unhappy…’

And then there was me. I didn’t say that, of course. She was silent for a while.

‘Is that what you wanted to know?’ she asked, briskly shaking out a pyjama top. ‘I hope you’re satisfied at last.’

‘But you married Tom.’

‘Of course I did. You still don’t understand, do you? Sometimes I think you were born without normal human emotions, Laura. You have to have everything laid out neatly in front of you. Love isn’t like checking off a laundry list, you know. Oh, darling, I’m sorry. That was cruel. Your father was a knight in shining armour. I’m not sure I’d have been able to live up to that. I’m rather dull, you know, and very ordinary. Tom has been faithful, kind, considerate – not always sober, I know – but always loving for twenty-five years. If I had to decide between the hero and the ordinary man, I think I’d have to choose Tom.’

*   *   *

Tom had kept his secret for nearly twenty years. I had kept mine for two days and I wasn’t certain how much longer I could cope.

*   *   *

Greentops was like a magnet. It called me like the siren song that lured Odysseus’s crewmen. If stopping my ears with wax would have drowned it out, I would have done that. I could sense it drawing me so strongly that I felt as though I would soon be forced to hang on to the door lintels by my fingernails.

I had found my father.

He wasn’t the man I thought I’d been looking for. We’d stood in the enchanted circle of trees and everything he’d said sounded perfectly sane – then. Now, I wasn’t so certain. But he was alive and well and I couldn’t just turn my back and forget him. I hadn’t thought about what I was going to do next. The quest had been enough. I’d made no plan for the future. Now, I could see that I had reached a fork. Without my realizing it, my path had led to this.

I could choose to admit that I had reached the end. I’d found what I had been looking for and that should be enough. All Pansy’s useful little sayings – least said soonest mended – urged me to take the safe course, the sensible one. Or I could pursue the other path to the bitter end – discover why and by whom my father had been left to fester since he was twenty years old – in the knowledge that the end might be very bitter indeed.

I was too close to the problem to be able to see clearly. I needed someone else. If I could only have talked to Martin. But Martin was back in Germany and not expected home, his mother told me, until Christmas.

‘And not for long, then,’ she complained. ‘He’s got himself a job with
Picture Post,
starting in America in the New Year, and it’ll take him all over the world, he says. I don’t know. You’d think he’d’ve had enough gadding about by now. You’d think he’d be glad to settle down, at his age, with a nice wife and kiddies.’ And she glared at me, accusingly.

I deserved that.

I wrote and told him what I’d discovered, but it wasn’t the same. I had such an ache to hear his slow, soft, Wiltshire voice. He didn’t answer my letter. I hoped until I grew weary of hoping. What did I expect? He had a life to lead. How long did I expect to be able to dangle him on a string?

*   *   *

When Vee came back, I selfishly thought she’d been sent from heaven.

‘He divorced me, the bastard!’ she spat, slinging her expensive leather luggage on to Kate’s old, protesting bed. ‘Straight off the boat and into the divorce courts. I blame his mother. Right battleaxe. She thought that there wasn’t an English girl born that was good enough for her Carlton. Dammit – he was
my
Carlton by then. She said I was a hooker, only after his money and why couldn’t he have settled for a nice, clean American girl. The bitch. She’d poisoned his mind before I even arrived. I didn’t stand a chance.’

‘But the children? Surely she must have loved them when she saw them? They’re her grandchildren, after all.’

‘Oh, Laura, they looked so sweet. Little Carlton had his sailor suit on and looked just like Swee’Pea and Jennifer had bows in her hair and I’d taught her a little speech.’ Vee began to cry and brushed the tears angrily away with fingers still dirty from travelling. ‘I’d taught her to say, “Hello, Gran, my name is Jennifer” and then to go and give her gran a kiss. And the bitch said, “How do you do, little girl?” just like she was the Queen or something. And Carlton gave a sickly grin and I knew then … And that night she said … she said how did Carlton know they were his children. From what she’d heard about English girls, they could be anyone’s. Hell’s bells and buckets of blood! I swore I wouldn’t cry any more.’

‘But how could he divorce you, just like that?’

‘Easy. If you’re rich and your name’s Carlton H. Riversdale II you can do anything you bloody well like. His mother had already got a nice little blonde lined up for him – sweet and suitable and biddable – and no tits.’

I put my arms around my friend and let her have a good cry. It might not do any good, but it’d make her feel a lot better. She rocked in my arms and howled. Poor Vee. She’d adored her Carlton and she’d have made him a fine wife – funny, loving, sexy, motherly, efficient. I hoped with all my heart that he’d regret what he’d done. But I don’t suppose he ever did. I hoped the biddable blonde would lead him a dog’s life. I began to cry in sympathy. After a while, the sobs became sniffs and sighs. Then Vee sat up and blew her nose violently.

‘Bloody Uncle Sam. The only good thing the American government ever did for me was to give me a return ticket.’

‘That’s the spirit. How long can you stay? Make it as long as you like.’

‘Well, with my mum and gran in a prefab in Rainham and my sister Beryl’s kids in the other room and Beryl and her husband sleeping on the floor and my sister Brenda and
her
husband staying with his mum and dad … We’ll try ever so hard not to get in your way, Laura.’

She rummaged in her case and pulled out a bottle of Jack Daniels. A quarter of it was missing already. ‘Now the kids are asleep, why don’t we give this a thrashing? I could do with a good sleep myself tonight.’

So we made off to Tom’s potting shed and locked the door, like a pair of naughty schoolchildren with their first cigarettes. And I told Vee about everything she’d missed.

‘And Pansy’s going to marry the new vicar.’

‘Never! That’s just perfect. When?’

‘Well, she doesn’t know it yet – and neither does he. But they will.’

We clinked toothmugs. ‘To Pansy and Peter.’ Vee laughed. ‘Pansy and Peter – they even sound right together, like children in a story book.’

The fruity smell of whisky mingled with the scent of over-ripe apples, dusty cobwebs and potting compost into a rich, desirable aroma. You could have spread it on bread. You could have chewed it. It was comforting, secure, as soothing as a cup of cocoa. Yet, for the first time, I felt uneasy. Under the familiarity, I was aware of something disturbing, something that brought out a prickle on the back of my neck. And I couldn’t think what … Silly …

We pulled the sacking over the window, as though blackout was still enforced, but really we were trying to hide our lamp from the house. It was very cosy, very intimate, an ideal place to swap secrets.

‘And what about you and gorgeous Martin?’ she asked, with a wink. ‘When’re you two going to name the day?’

I gave her a little smile that was supposed to be enigmatic and courageous, but now I suspect that it just looked tipsy. ‘Oh, Martin?’ I said, coolly, as though I scarcely ever gave him a thought. ‘Maybe Martin’s got tired of waiting.’

‘I don’t believe it. I always thought you were made for each other.’