Grace Hardie (34 page)

She had left her bicycle at Oxford station, and interrupted the ride home to call at the yard of the old mason who was giving her lessons in his craft. Since she first approached him for help he had shown her how to choose a piece of stone: how to recognize possible defects and to turn any variation of strata or graining to advantage. He provided tools and instructed her in their use, making her first of all practise on fragments, and then allowing her to assist him in carving a series of gargoyles. He did it for the pleasure of passing on his skill and would never accept payment. But he was glad of the fruit and vegetables which she usually brought him.

In recent months she had been tackling a piece of her own, finding it easier to work in the yard, with tools and advice at hand, than to make her own studio dirty with stone-dust. She had drawn a dragon encircled by flames from its own mouth, and cut it away as a relief. Now, pulling on a sacking apron, she studied the design with a critical eye, to see where improvements were needed.

‘New vicar called by this morning,' said the mason, without interrupting his own work. ‘Needs a good bit of repair on that old barn of his. That there dragon of yours caught his eye. Asked if it were for sale, he did.'

‘It isn't finished,' said Grace. ‘I've
got
to cut it away.' She had carved the relief from the front of a large block, and now would need to slice the panel off.

‘He'd like it as it is. For me to put the whole block into the wall, where I'm making good. To frighten away the rats, he said, laughing like – but he was serious about having it.'

‘How much would he pay?'

‘Didn't say. Asked what you might be wanting for it.'

She stared at the dragon, wondering what to suggest. It
was the first stone carving she had completed unaided. She was pleased with the result and had intended to keep it. But what she had done once she could probably do again, and this, of all times, was when she needed money. Her mother would be horrified at the thought of a young lady selling her wares for cash; but what was the difference between that and an income derived from selling bottles of wine?

‘How much should I give you for the stone?' she asked. She had not so far been charged for her materials, because she had taken nothing off the premises.

‘Vicar'll be paying for that anyway, to fill his holes. Makes no difference to me if he has this block or another. Difference to him is in the decoration, and that's all yours.'

‘I'll come back tomorrow and tell you,' said Grace. She took the apron off again without having done any work. There was too much to think about.

That night she lay for many hours awake in bed. The burden of guilt and anxiety was made heavier by her feeling of being alone, with no one to share or even discuss the problems. Her father must certainly be dead, and her mother's return could not be expected for many months. David would be no help unless she agreed to do what he wanted. Mr Witney would take the view that a mortgage was needed, to safeguard the business and his employment, and Aunt Midge must now be expected to support him.

How about Philip then? But no, Philip could not be asked for advice. To make him anxious would be unkind. Kenneth was unlikely ever to return to England. Frank was dead and Felix trapped in perpetual infancy.

That only left Jay. He was twenty years old and had been earning a living of sorts on the stage for three years already. But his income was precarious, and he seemed to live for the most part in lodgings or other people's flats. If he had an address of his own, Grace did not know what it
was, but always had to wait until a light-hearted letter announced that he would be working in Oxford – or not working at all – and could be expected to stay for a week, or indefinitely. He could certainly not be asked for financial help; nor even for practical advice. She must make her own decisions.

Felix was the first consideration. The vicar's liking for her dragon provided a temporary solution to the problem of keeping him in a familiar place where he was happy. The difference between the new fees and the sum provided by the trust was not great, so the sale of her carving would give her a few months free from anxiety on this score.

Still thinking about the boy who would never take the step into adult life, she saw a parallel with herself. All these years she had been living as the child of the house, shielded from the outside world. But she was twenty-three years old. It was more than time she grew up!

Marriage was the event which carried most girls into the grown-up world – although not, even then, towards the kind of responsibilities which Grace would now face; for she was more determined than ever to preserve Greystones unencumbered. But in her case it was the discovery of so many secrets which had jolted her out of carefree girlhood.

Within a short time she had found that her family's business was near bankruptcy, that Greystones was her personal property, that Felix was still alive and that her aunt had not been as completely satisfied with a spinster's life as she had always pretended. Were there other discoveries still to come? She amused herself by considering each member of the family in turn, inventing revelations – but believing none of them. No: by now, surely, every secret must have been revealed.

Silently at first, Lucy Hardie wept. The tears ran down her cheeks to splash over the hard earth on which she knelt. Her head bowed lower and lower until it touched the ground, so that to the Chinese who watched curiously over the wall of the tiny Christian cemetery it must have seemed as though the foreign woman were kow-towing to a wooden headboard.

Five months had passed since she sailed into Shanghai and looked down from the upper deck of the ship to see Kenneth, bronzed and bearded, waiting to embrace her. Together they had first of all followed the route which she had originally taken with Gordon on their honeymoon; up the Yangtse River, whose cataracts were as terrifying in 1920 as they had been thirty-three years before.

After arriving in Chungking, though, she deviated from that earlier route, making not for the place where Gordon's first expedition had begun, but the point where it had ended. It was on the very last day of that exploration that he discovered the glorious white and golden lilies which were unknown in England at the time. She had always thought it likely that he would choose to begin his new trip in the mountainous frontier area, and the agent in Shanghai had confirmed this intention.

Before leaving Shanghai she marked on her map all the Christian missions near the frontier with Tibet. The Chinese would be unfriendly to strangers and unlikely to answer their questions honestly. British missionaries would offer safe lodging and sympathetic help in questioning both local people and travelling traders on her behalf.

Many weeks and visits passed before her quest came to an end, and certainty proved to be the confirmation of her fears, not of her hopes. In the little town of Kuan Hsien, to which Tibetan traders brought furs to trade for musk and tea, was a medical mission run by the Church Missionary Society. Here, on the morning after her arrival, she told her story and asked her questions for the twentieth time.

Instead of shaking his head, the Scottish doctor in charge of the mission revealed by the sympathy in his eyes that she had reached the end of the trail at last. He considered her questions in silence for a few moments, and asked some of his own to make sure that there was no mistake, before leading her and her son out to the little cemetery. Then he stepped back and stood beside Kenneth, leaving her to mourn alone.

The moment came when she could contain her grief no longer, but began to wail uncontrollably, gasping for breath and rocking her body so that her head banged against the ground.

‘Mother!' Kenneth stepped forward to console her, but Lucy found just enough strength to wave him back. The anguish she felt had been fermenting in her breast for many years, and the need to expel it noisily could not be restrained. She had been brought up as a girl to control her emotions; but it was impossible to remain calm in the first moment of understanding that she was a widow.

Little by little her groans and shudders abated. She felt empty, hardly seeming to inhabit her own body – which, for all she cared, could remain on her husband's grave while her spirit slipped into the air. She was only half aware of Kenneth on one side and Dr Mackenzie on the other raising her to her feet and supporting her into the mission house.

Mrs Mackenzie brought tea and tucked blankets around
her on the couch. Kenneth knelt beside her, his bearded face expressing anxiety and a desire to reassure.

‘You can't be sure, Mother. If no name was ever known …'

‘The initials are enough.' The letters G.H. had been burned into the headboard, together with the date: 1915. ‘And the fact that he was a European. Except for other missionaries, how many foreigners would pass through such hostile country in any year? It must be Gordon.'

‘But you don't
know'
Kenneth turned to their host. ‘How was it that he didn't tell you his name?'

‘He was only fitfully conscious when I first saw him, and was delirious for most of the three days he survived. A trading caravan from Tibet found him in a state of collapse near the frontier and brought him in on a litter. From the way he was dressed, they'd thought at first that he was a lama. When they realized he was European, they carried him here by night, afraid that they might be accused of harming him.'

‘Do you think they had in fact robbed him?'

‘No. He was suffering from extreme cold and hunger and exhaustion – quite enough to explain his condition. There was an injury to his head which might have been caused by a blow – but the dirt in the wound inclined me to the belief that he had fallen accidentally and injured himself. We did all we Could for him, naturally, but it was too late.'

‘So how did you know his initials?'

‘After he died, I examined his clothes in the hope that they'd give a clue to his identity; but there was nothing. However, he was wearing a gold ring – another reason to believe that his condition was the result of accident, not robbery. I took it off before burying him, in case enquiries were made later.' Dr Mackenzie crossed the room and took a small packet out of a bureau. He unfolded a paper
and handed the ring to Lucy. ‘There's an inscription inside.'

Already sure what she would see, Lucy held it up to the light. ‘L.H. to G.H. 1887.' That was the year she had run away from home to join Gordon on the first of his plant-hunting expeditions. She had had the ring engraved later with the date of their wedding. Had she held any doubts or hopes about the identity of the dead man, she must relinquish them now. For a second time she began to cry, but dabbed her eyes dry as Mrs Mackenzie bustled to her side to comfort her.

‘I'm being foolish,' she said faintly. ‘I've known for years that he must be dead. After all, what was the alternative? That he'd gone out of his mind and forgotten me? Or that he'd deliberately deserted me? Those were the only explanations for such a long silence. Perhaps there was a faint hope that he'd been imprisoned for some reason and that I might find him and arrange his release. But it was never more than a daydream. I knew, really, all the time. It's just that to accept the truth is harder than to guess at it.'

She sighed, and for a few moments no one spoke. ‘When he was delirious,' she asked at last, ‘did he mention my name?'

‘There was a name.' It was Mrs Mackenzie who answered, but she stopped abruptly when she saw the frown of warning on her husband's face. Lucy easily interpreted the exchange of glances. The name had not been hers.

‘Please tell me,' she said quietly.

‘Grace,' said the missionary's wife. ‘He called it over and over again. Grace.'

Lucy was bewildered by the news. It provided another proof, were any needed, that the dead man was indeed her husband; but that his last moments had been filled
with thoughts of Grace was surprising and hurtful. Gordon was fond of his daughter, certainly, but his children had taken third place in his enthusiasms; less important to him than Lucy herself and his efforts to find and breed new plants. Or so she had believed.

‘I'm keeping you from your work,' she said, realizing that at this time of day Dr Mackenzie would expect to be in the mission hospital and his wife would have her own duties in the Christian compound. ‘Kenneth will look after me.'

That was only a form of words. Kenneth could do nothing to console her. Their reunion in Shanghai after so long a parting had brought her joy, and as they travelled together she had been grateful for his protection and practical good sense. But for the moment she wanted only to withdraw into memory.

What she remembered was not the long period of her married life in England. The years of bringing up children in Greystones seemed dull and easily forgotten in comparison with the great adventure of her honeymoon. Those months were the high point of her life. Nothing before or since had aroused her emotions to such a pitch.

There had been the excitement of travel. There was sadness, for it was in this wild part of the world that her first baby was born: little Rachel, who had given one cry and then died. But most of all there was joy: the joy of loving Gordon and being loved by him.

‘The lilies!' she exclaimed suddenly, startling Kenneth by the apparent irrelevance of the words. Her memory had reached the moment when Gordon – forced by the news of her pregnancy to divert from his intended route – had glimpsed a valley carpeted with lilies. Back in England he had named his discovery for Grace, the daughter who had not then been born.

‘Perhaps your father came again to the valley where he
first saw the lilies,' she explained. ‘Perhaps that was what put the thought of Grace into his mind when he was delirious.' Ashamed of herself for finding the idea comforting, she stood up, throwing off the rug with which Mrs Mackenzie had covered her. That night, alone in bed, she could weep once more for her husband, but now she must be brave. She walked across the compound to the low, whitewashed room which served as a hospital, to see if she could be of help.