The Legacy (37 page)

“She’s
tiny
,” I say, breathlessly, and Honey rolls her eyes.

“I know. All that heaving and all this flab for a five-pound midget!” she says, but she can’t hide how pleased she is, how proud. This initiation over, the atmosphere in the room seems to ease.

“She’s beautiful, Honey. Well done you! Is she a screamer?”

“No, not so far. She’s been pretty chilled out.” Honey leans toward me, can’t stay even arm’s length from the child for long. Up close I see the dark shadows under her eyes, skin so pale that blue veins show through it, winding across her temples. She looks tired, but thrilled.

“She’ll get the hang of the yelling, don’t you worry,” Mo says ruefully, and Honey flashes her a mildly rebellious look.

“I’ll put another brew on,” Keith says, levering himself from his chair and collecting empty mugs onto a tin tray. “You’ll take a cup, Erica?”

“Oh, yes please. Thanks.” I can feel eyes on me and I look to my right. Dinny watches me, still. Those dark eyes of his, black as a seal’s again now; unblinking. I hold his gaze for two heartbeats and then he looks away, stands up abruptly. I suddenly wonder if he minds me gatecrashing his family like this.

“I have to get going,” he says.

“What? Why?” Honey asks.

“Just . . . things to do.” He bends down, kisses his sister on the top of her head, then he hesitates, and turns to me. “We’re all heading to the pub tomorrow night, if you and Beth want to come?” he asks.

“Oh, thanks. Yes—I’ll ask Beth,” I say.

“Raise me a glass,” Honey grumbles. “New Year’s Eve and I’ll be at home and in bed by nine.”

“Oh, you’ll soon get used to missing out on all sorts of occasions, don’t you worry,” Mo tells her brightly, and Honey’s face falls in dismay.

“I’ll be back later. Bye, Mum,” Dinny smiles, briefly presses his hand to the side of Mo’s face and then stalks from the room.

“What have you done to him, then?” Honey asks me, and she smiles but she’s guarded.

“What do you mean?” I reply, startled.

“He jumped like a rabbit when you walked in,” she observes; but her attention is back on Haydee, and I pass the baby back to her.

Keith returns with a fresh tray of steaming mugs, and the lights on the Christmas tree in the corner wink on and off; slow, then fast, then slow again. Mo asks me about the house, about Meredith and Beth and Eddie.

“Nathan tells me young Eddie was out playing with our Harry, when he was here,” she says.

“Yes, they got on brilliantly. Eddie’s such a great kid. He never judges,” I say.

“Well, Beth was always such a good girl. It’s no wonder really,” Mo nods. She blows on her tea, her top lip creasing like Grandpa Flag’s did. It gives me a shock to notice this resemblance, this sign of how much time has passed. Mo, becoming an old woman.

“Yes. She’s . . . a wonderful mum,” I say.

“God! It makes me feel ancient, to see you all grown up, Erica; and Beth too . . . with her own child, no less!” Mo sighs.

“Well, you are a grandma now, after all.” I smile.

“Yes. Not something we were quite ready for, but I am a grandma now,” she says, giving Honey a wry glance.

“Oh come
on
, Mum. We’ve had this conversation about a
hundred
times already,” Honey says, exasperated. Mo waves a conciliatory hand at her, then passes it wearily over her eyes.

“God, haven’t we though?” she mutters; but then she smiles. We sit quietly for a moment, as Haydee murmurs in her sleep.

“Mo, I wanted to ask you about something—if you don’t mind?”

“Fire away,” she says, but she laces her fingers in her lap, as if bracing herself, and there is tension around her eyes.

“Well, I was wondering if you’d tell me again why Grandpa Flag was called Flag? I know someone told me before, when we were little—but I can’t remember it properly now . . .” At this she relaxes, unknots her hands.

“Oh! Well, that’s an easy enough one to tell. His proper name was Peter, of course, but the story goes, as it was told to me, that he was a foundling. Did you know that? Mickey’s grandparents found him in the woods one day, in a patch of marsh flags—those yellow flowers, you know them? It was something like that, anyway. He’d been ditched by some young lass who’d got herself in trouble, no doubt”—a mutinous scowl from Honey, at this—“so they picked him up and took him in to raise as their own, and called him Peter; but more often than not Mickey’s grandma just called him ‘her baby of the flags,’ or some such fancy, and the name just stuck.”

“I remember. In a patch of marsh flags . . .” I say, and everything else about the story I remember being told before, except this part. With a tingle of recognition, I realize that this detail is not exactly right. “Do you know when that was? What year?”

“Lord, no! Sorry. In the early years of the last century, it would have been; but I couldn’t say any surer than that. Poor little mite. Can you imagine, leaving a baby out like that? No knowing if anyone would find it or if it would just lie there and suffer to the end. Terrible thing to do.” Mo slurps her tea. “Mind you, in those days once you had a kid no one would touch you, I suppose. Not for work or for marrying or nothing else.” She shakes her head. “Rotten bastards.”

“Do you know where they found him? Where in the country, I mean?”

“Well, here, of course. In Barrow Storton. He was a local baby, whose ever he was.”

I take this in, and I almost tell them what I think, but I don’t. It seems suddenly too big, the incredible, disturbing, seasick idea that I have; and the way it chimes with something Dinny said to me in the café yesterday.

“Why do you ask?” Mo says.

“Oh, just curious. I’ve been looking into the history of the Calcotts, and what have you, since I’ve been back. Shuffling through what I remember, trying to fill in the gaps,” I shrug. Mo nods.

“It’s always the way. We wait until the people who could answer our questions are dead and gone, and only then do we realize we had questions to ask them,” she says, somewhat sadly.

“Oh, I’m not sure Meredith would have answered any questions of mine, anyway,” I say wryly. “I was never her favorite.”

“Well, if it’s the history of the house you’re after, you should go and talk to old George Hathaway, over at Corner Cottage,” Keith tells me, leaning his sinewy elbows on his bony knees.

“Oh? Who’s George Hathaway?” I ask.

“Just a pleasant old boy. He ran the garage on the Devizes road most of his life. Retired now, of course. But his mother was a maid at the big house, back in the day.”

“How far back?” I ask eagerly.

“Oh,” Keith flaps a gnarled red hand over his shoulder, “right back. You know, they used to go into service at an early age, back then. I think she was only a girl when she started there. Before the first world war, it would have been.” I breathe deeply, excitement tickling the palms of my hands. “You know which one Corner Cottage is? On the way out of the village, toward Pewsey, where the lane bends sharp to the left? It’s the little thatched place with the green gates just there.”

“Yes, I know it. Thank you.” I smile. I leave them shortly afterwards, as Honey starts to drowse on the sofa and Mo takes the baby from her, puts her down in the carrycot.

“Come again, won’t you? Bring Beth—it’d be nice to see you both,” Mo says, and I nod as the cold outside makes my nose ache.

I
go straight to Corner Cottage, which sits by itself on the outskirts of Barrow Storton; walls that were once white now streaked and gray. The render is cracking in places, the thatch is dark and sagging. The gate is closed, but I let myself in, cross the weed-choked driveway. I knock three times, hard; the heavy knocker so cold it burns my fingers.

“Yes, my love?” An old man, short and spry, smiles at me, keeps the chain on the door.

“Um, hello. Sorry to bother you—are you George Hathaway?” I say, hurriedly marshalling my thoughts.

“That’s me, my love. Can I help you?”

“My name’s Erica Calcott, and I was wondering if—”

“
Calcott
, you say? From the manor house?” George interrupts.

“Yes, that’s right. I was just—”

“Just a tick!” The door shuts in my face, opens a second later without the chain. “Never in all my years did I expect a
Calcott
to arrive at my door. What a turn up! Come in, come in; don’t dawdle on the step!”

“Thank you.” I step inside. The interior of the cottage is clean, tidy, warm. Pleasantly surprising, compared to the exterior.

“Come on through. I’ll put the kettle on and you can tell me whatever it is that brings you here.” George bustles ahead of me along a narrow corridor. “Coffee suit you?” The kitchen is low and crowded. The usual build up of paraphernalia—biscuit tins, spatulas, rusting sieves and onion skins; but other things besides. Things that speak of the absence of a woman about the house. A black and greasy engine part on the table. A set of spanners on top of the fridge. George moves with a speed and deftness that belies his years. Neat curls of white hair around a thin face; eyes a startling pale green, the color of a driftwood fire.

“I’ve only just got back myself, last night—you’re lucky to find me home. Been at my daughter’s for Christmas, over in Yeovil. Lovely to see her, and the grandkids of course, but just as lovely to be home again, isn’t that right, Jim?” He addresses a small, fat, wire-haired mongrel, which waddles from its basket to investigate my legs. It has the penetrating aroma of elderly dogs everywhere, but I scratch behind one of its ears, all the same. Pungent grease gathers under my nails. “Here you go. Sit down, my love.” He passes me a mug of instant and I cup my hands around it gratefully, slide onto a chair at the enamel-topped table. “You’ve moved into the big house, now, have you?”

“Oh, not really, no. We’ve been here for Christmas—my sister and I. But I don’t think we’ll be staying on permanently,” I explain. George’s face falls.

“Now that’s a shame! Not selling up, I hope? Shame for the place to fall out of the family, when it’s been in it so many years.”

“I know. I know it is. Only, my grandmother was rather specific about the terms of her will, and . . . well, let’s just say it might be very hard for us to keep to them,” I say.

“Ah, well, say no more. None of my business. Families is families, and they all have their ins and outs, Lord knows, even the grand ones!”

“Perhaps especially the grand ones.” I smile.

“My mother worked for your family you know,” George tells me, pride in his voice.

“I know. That was why I’ve come to see you, actually. The Dinsdales put me on to you—”

“Mo Dinsdale?”

“That’s right.”

“Lovely lady, Mo. Bright as a button. Normally, it’s the menfolk that brings a car in for work—I used to run the garage, you know, on the Devizes road. But when that big wagon of theirs needed fixing it was always Mo that came in with it, and she watched me like a hawk! Needn’t have—I knew better than to try to pull the wool over her eyes. Lovely lady,” George chuckles.

“I was wondering if your mother ever used to talk about the time she spent working at the manor?” I ask, sipping my coffee, letting it scald my throat.

“If she ever talked about it? Well, she never
stopped
talking about it, my love—not when I was a lad.”

“Oh? Did she work there a long time, do you know? Do you know when she started there?” I am keen, I lean toward George. Beneath the table, Jim sits on my foot, plump and warm. George grins at me.

“It was the length of time she worked there that was the cause of all the natter!” he says. “She was let go, you see. Only eight or nine months after she started. It was a bit of a source of shame, in our family.”

“Oh.” I can’t hide my disappointment, because I doubt that she can have learnt much in so short a time. “Do you know why? What happened?”

“Lady Calcott fingered her for stealing. Mother denied it with every breath she had, but there you go. The gentry didn’t need proof back then. Off she went packing, with no character reference or nothing. Stroke of luck that the butcher here—my dad—was in love with her from the second he set eyes on her—she married him soon afterwards, so she wasn’t without means for very long.”

“Which Lady Calcott was it? Do you know the year your mother was there?”

“Lady Caroline, she was. 1905, as I remember Mother telling me.” George rubs his chin, squints into the past. “Must have been,” he concludes. “She married my old man in the autumn of ’05.”

“Caroline was my great-grandmother. Would you like to see a picture of her?” I smile. I have it with me, in my bag. The New York portrait. George’s eyes widen with delight.

“Why, yes, look at that! She looks much the same as I remember her! Nice to know the old gray cells haven’t packed all the way up just yet.”

“You knew her?” I am surprised at this.

“Not
knew
her, so much—the likes of her didn’t come around to tea with the likes of us. But when I was a lad we used to see her, from time to time. She opened the church fête a couple of times, you know; and then there was the big bash we had for the coronation in fifty-three. They opened up the manor gardens, put some bunting around and the like. About the only time I remember them doing something so community-minded. The whole village poured in to have a gander, since, even for a bunch of toffs, and if you’ll pardon my saying, miss, the Calcotts have always been tighter than a gnat’s chuff. None of us was ever invited in for any other reason.”