Postcards from the Past (29 page)

‘I don’t want you to be a part of anything you’re unhappy with,’ he says. ‘You agree that they are Ed’s miniatures?’ She nods solemnly. ‘We’re not going to make a fuss about this. Tris is dying and he is Ed and Billa’s stepbrother so we shall simply return them to Ed. You don’t have a problem with that?’

‘No. They’re definitely Ed’s.’

‘OK then.’ He puts the Perspex case into the rucksack and opens the envelope. There is Elinor’s will, and the photographs, which he looks at carefully. ‘He must have had these for years. Black-and-white. Andrew must have taken them as insurance against a rainy day. Are you happy if we take these, too? This could be construed as theft.’

‘Don’t be a twit,’ she says. ‘We’re all in this together, whatever it is.’

He puts the envelope into the rucksack and throws the satchel back on the bed.

‘There was nothing else?’

She shakes her head. ‘Just a wallet with some money and a prescription in it. Oh, and a photograph of a boy with some boats. Like he was in a harbour somewhere.’

‘Ah,’ says Dom, ‘that must have been Léon. OK. Now I’m going to ask you to take the miniatures and the envelope and drive straight to Billa and Ed. I’ll see you later.’

‘Where are you going?’ she asks, taking the rucksack carefully, still feeling rather trembly.

‘I’m going downstairs to see how Tris is. I shall follow the ambulance to the hospital. Sure you’ll be OK?’

She nods and they go out and lock the door. Dom takes the keys from her and she hesitates.

‘Go on, Tills,’ he says. ‘I’ll tell them you feel a bit shocked and you’ve gone home.’

He disappears through the door that leads to the bar and she goes out and gets into the car. She wedges the rucksack very carefully on the passenger seat, drags on her seat belt and starts the engine. As she drives out of the car park she can hear again the distant wail of the ambulance siren.

*   *   *

‘He completely betrayed us,’ Billa says much later.

Dom has come back late from Treliske Hospital, where Tris is not expected to last the night, and he and Tilly have gone home.

‘I explained the relationship to the duty doctor,’ Dom told them. ‘Said we hadn’t seen Tris for fifty years but assumed he’d made the visit just to tie up loose ends. There’s nothing suspicious about his death, nobody will know about the miniatures, though there might be a copy of the will somewhere. I can’t say I’m too bothered about that. It was never going to stand up and, anyway, it was a smoke screen. He wasn’t after the money, it was the miniatures he wanted. The box was made specially for them.’

Billa and Ed were still too shocked to react and Dom and Tilly left them alone to recover.

‘I feel such a fool,’ says Ed, after they’ve gone. ‘Just letting him walk out with them. And I’d had them reinsured last year because the value had suddenly shot up.’

‘He took us all in,’ says Billa bitterly. ‘Telling us about his mother and his half-brother and talking about dying.’

‘Well, that at least is true,’ offers Ed. ‘Did you hear Dom say that, apart from the tuberculosis, his body was destroyed by drug abuse? Those capsules were cocaine.’ He nearly adds ‘poor fellow’ but at the thought of his father’s miniatures, taken so cleverly from under his nose, the words are stillborn. ‘What a miracle that Tilly was there,’ he says. ‘My God, it was a close shave.’

‘Lucky he collapsed,’ says Billa fiercely. ‘If not, he’d have been long gone by now.’

She feels so angry that she could burn up with it. She feels disgusted with herself when she remembers how she felt yesterday, watching Tris get out of the car, when he held her wrist; how for a while she was able to identify with her mother and to allow some kind of forgiveness and understanding to comfort her. Now she feels as if she has been emotionally mugged. How he must have laughed behind their backs; to be able to walk into their lives for a second time and wreck them. She knows that this is an extreme reaction – Tris has not wrecked their lives – but at some deep level she recognizes that this hatred of him could destroy her. Yet she clings to it, allowing it to feed her rage and self-pity.

‘I suppose it was right of Dom to go to the hospital,’ Ed is saying. ‘It would have been awkward if they’d begun to ask questions at the pub. Best that it’s in the open. Though I don’t know how it will be explained that he was using another name. Another of his little jokes, I suppose. Tristan Carr. Christian Marr.’

‘Dom says his passport was in his jeans pocket in the name of Tristan Carr. I don’t suppose that Carr was ever their real name anyway. Oh, what does it matter? There might be a bit of local gossip but nothing’s happened. Dom has defused it all by acknowledging him. Well, don’t expect me to go to his funeral, that’s all.’

Ed looks alarmed. ‘Would we be expected to?’

‘Dom says he’ll go. That it’ll draw a line under the whole thing.’

And a few days later, when Dom brings back Tris’s ashes in a plastic box, Billa stares at them with distaste.

‘What are we supposed to do with that?’ she says, wrinkling her nose.

‘I don’t know yet,’ he says. ‘But I thought you might want to know that I’ve got them.’

‘Won’t his family want them? This nephew, Léon, he’s so proud of?’

‘According to Sir Alec, any ashes sent out of the country have to be accompanied and it’s a very complicated procedure. I’ve taken the executive decision that we’ll deal with them here.’ Dom stands the box on the dresser, pushing it under the lower shelf. ‘Forget it for the moment, Billa. Come out for a walk round the lake.’

*   *   *

One morning, at the end of her first week at Chi-Meur, Tilly comes downstairs just in time to see a few people going quietly into the chapel for Terce. She hesitates, then on an impulse she follows them in and sits just inside the door at the back. The Sisters have already come in through their own private entrance: Sister Nichola sits at the end of a pew in her wheelchair with Sister Ruth beside her. Mother Magda and Sister Emily sit together.

There is a sense of deep-down peace here and Tilly relaxes into it, welcoming it. She stands and sits when the nuns and the visitors do, half-listening, half-dreaming. Someone has given her an Office prayer book but she doesn’t know her way around it and simply listens. She is aware of Sister Emily’s voice, rising and falling, those delicate inflections she places on certain words, and suddenly Tilly’s attention is caught by a new emphasis; a lilting joy:

The Lord is my strength and my song:

He has become my salvation.

I shall not die but live,

and declare the works of the Lord.

Tilly can hear a blackbird singing in the lilac tree, and finds herself thinking about Tristan Carr, who died a week ago in Treliske Hospital. He never recovered consciousness, Dom said. He’d been cremated, disposed of, with only Dom to say goodbye to him. Tilly thinks of Tris looking so alive, so vital; chatting to Harry in the bar; nothing now but ashes. She feels a terrible sadness but Sister Emily’s voice is breaking through it, lifting her: ‘I shall not die but live…’

Now, Mother Magda is speaking the blessing: ‘May Christ dwell in our hearts by faith,’ and Tilly gets ready to slip out, to hurry away to her office.

She is settling in very quickly, loving the Priest’s Flat, getting used to the way everything is held within the structure of the Daily Offices. From the back gates of the convent the cobbled road leads directly into the village and she can walk down the steep hill to see Sarah or to see Sir Alec, and, of course, Clem and Jakey.

Yesterday, she and Dossie broke the news to Jakey that they won’t be having a puppy. Tilly sat beside him on the sofa while Dossie cleared up the tea, and they discussed it together.

‘Just to begin with,’ Tilly said, ‘it would be too difficult. We need a dog who can be with me, and with you, and with Dossie. That would be a bit confusing for a puppy, don’t you think?’

Jakey looked downcast: he’d set his heart on a puppy.

‘It’s better to have an older dog,’ Tilly went on, noticing the downturn of his mouth, praying for wisdom, ‘so that we can have lots of fun without worrying too much.’

‘I did want a puppy, though,’ he says wistfully, testing her.

‘A puppy is very hard work and makes a lot of mess,’ said Dossie firmly, appearing in the doorway. ‘You need to have someone practically full time with a puppy. Daddy’s much more likely to agree to an older dog, so don’t push your luck, Jakes.’

Jakey looked resigned and Tilly glanced at Dossie admiringly. Dossie gave her a little wink.

‘There’s a nice little black Lab at Blisland looking for a home,’ she said casually. ‘You might like to go and meet her. See what you think.’

Jakey looked up at Tilly. ‘Have you seen her?’ he asked eagerly.

Tilly nodded. ‘She’s an absolute sweetie. I think she’d be just the thing for us.’

‘Has she got a name?’

Dossie laughed. ‘She’s called Bellissima Beauty of Blisland,’ she says, and Jakey and Tilly laugh, too.

‘But they call her Bells,’ Tilly says.

‘Bells,’ repeats Jakey. Bells is a cool name; a name Harry might have used.

‘When can we go?’ he asked. ‘Can we go now? Can we?’

Dossie glanced at Tilly: they’d been leading up to this.

‘If Tilly doesn’t mind taking you,’ said Dossie, ‘you could go and see her now. But I’ve got to get back to Mo and Pa. Could you manage it, Tilly?’

‘Oh, I think I could,’ said Tilly, smiling at Jakey’s expression. ‘If you really want to?’

But Jakey was already on his feet, yelling with excitement, ready to go.

And it was good. He was a cheerful companion, he adored Bells, and so the first step was taken.

Now, full of happy anticipation at the prospect of being a part dog-owner, Tilly switches on the computer and prepares to work.

*   *   *

It is Dom who suggests that they should consult with Sir Alec about the will. Alec is rather nervous, unwilling to act as any kind of judge in such a personal family matter, but Billa and Ed agree. So he drives to the old butter factory with great trepidation and praying for wisdom.

‘Alec’s checked Léon out,’ Dom says when they’ve all gathered around the big slate table. ‘There is a Léon, living with his mother in the Rue Félix Pyat, who works at the marina. Apparently he’s a decent hard-working boy, very popular locally, and he’s lived there all his life.’

‘And are you seriously suggesting,’ Billa asks incredulously, ‘that we should send him ten thousand pounds? For simply being a decent, hard-working boy who looks after his mother?’

There is a little silence whilst Alec thinks about things and takes the temperature of the meeting. He guesses that Ed has had a shock, been made to feel a bit of a fool, but has already put it behind him. His miniatures are back, no harm done, and he wouldn’t object to helping Léon financially. Dom has seen the whole thing as a contest in which death has come to his aid; part of him can’t help doffing his hat to Tris’s quick thinking and audacity. He is probably in two minds about whether the will should be honoured. Billa, however, is another matter; Alec feels Billa’s boiling anger, sees her bitter expression, and it saddens him.

‘The first thing we should get straight,’ he says cautiously, ‘is whether you feel that the wishes of the dead should be honoured. Your mother wanted Andrew to have ten thousand pounds, which would have been Tris’s and now Léon’s.’

‘But she didn’t really know Andrew,’ bursts out Billa. ‘He completely deceived her. She didn’t love him. It was a kind of physical madness and if she hadn’t become ill she would have changed her will.’

Alec glances at Ed, who is watching Billa with something like compassion. With a flash of insight Alec wonders if some of that same physical madness edged into the brief time Billa and Tris have shared recently. She is too intense about it; so hurt that she cannot remain unaffected even by the mere mention of his name – which might be explained by the theft of the miniatures or might not.

‘At least, according to you all,’ Alec says, ‘he loved the boy. I find that comforting.’

‘Why?’ asks Billa sharply.

‘Because it is a redeeming feature. It shows Tris wasn’t an utterly lost soul. If his mother hadn’t been killed and his life fractured, if he hadn’t been dragged from pillar to post and been forced to live with fear and exposure to danger, who can say what he might have been? What would we have been like in his shoes?’

Dom stirs, his eyes fixed on the table, and Alec suspects that he has already made this mental leap. Ed’s face is beginning to soften with his ready sympathy, but Billa’s remains stony. She stares at him.

‘So what are you saying?’

Alec debates with himself. ‘Tris’s life was ruined before he could begin it,’ he says. ‘He was weakened, damaged, and he acted accordingly. Perhaps he longed to be free of it but didn’t have the courage or the genetic make-up to make the leap for freedom. We often allow ourselves to be confined like that, don’t you think? Clinging to past hurts, rejections, cruel words. Hugging them to us, rooting around in them, and reigniting our anger and self-pity at regular intervals rather than casting them away from us. All those angry conversations we have in our heads that we choose to engage in. Tris couldn’t make the break and now he’s dead, and his body is confined to a small box of ashes, poor devil. Perhaps Léon might make a better fist of things. From what we’ve heard about him, it sounds like he’s made a good start; that he’d be a son we could all be proud of. Perhaps Léon makes sense of Andrew and Tris.’

Another silence.

Alec leans back in his chair and looks around at them. ‘None of my business, of course,’ he says mildly. ‘But you asked my opinion.’

‘And what would you do?’ asks Billa, but her eyes are less fierce now and her voice is quieter.

Alec gives a little shrug. ‘I’d do a few more checks, then I’d decide what I could afford and ask my lawyer to send the boy a cheque with a letter telling him how his uncle died and explaining that he has been cremated, his ashes disposed of and his estate has been wound up. Nothing else; no names, no pack drill. End of story.’

The St Enedocs look at each other.