A Song Twice Over (59 page)

‘But he doesn't need money, Cara.'

‘Don't be stupid, mother.'

‘Cara.' Odette had clasped her hands in anguish, her face blanched by her need to be understood. ‘He is not poor …'

‘Mother.'

Taking a deep breath, her eyes half shut like a child repeating a lesson, Odette began to speak rapidly, disjointedly, refusing, by the simple process of talking on and on, to be silenced.

‘He is not poor – not rich – not yet – but comfortable. It is the bakery, you see. He finds it congenial and his sister has come to depend on him – as he expected. She is not young and, after all, they are of one blood – who else should she trust, who else should she want beside her when her health is failing, but her brother? Quite natural – surely …?'

‘So
he
says.'

‘He says that his relationship with her is a joy to both of them. Not all at once, of course, for she was understandably suspicious …'

‘Understandably.'

‘… of his intentions. And what did he know of the bakery trade? Would he settle? Of course not, she first thought …'

‘Rightly.'

‘Wrongly. He settled. He worked. He learned – and quickly. As one always knew he could learn anything, if he chose to apply himself. Now he has chosen. None of this is new to me. He has told me of it, over and over, in his letters which you would not read, Cara – would not even touch …'

‘There was no money in them, mother.'

‘There was hope.' Odette's teeth were chattering, her twisted fingers painfully showing their knuckles. ‘There was a new life. There was a challenge, which he did not shirk. There was a sense of responsibility – yes, yes, the hardest lesson of all for him, I know – but he has learned that too.'

‘A clever schoolmistress then, my New York aunt.'

‘Oh no,' she shook her head. ‘Clever, certainly. A woman much like yourself, Cara, in some ways. But I believe it was his time to learn.'

‘You
believe
…'

‘I do. These things come in their season. As it says in the Bible. A time to be born. A time to die. A time to learn, also. A time to settle. A time for the spirit to mature. I believe it.'

Cara made a dismissive gesture with an angry, empty hand. ‘Of course you believe him, mother. If he told you black was white you would believe him – because it pleases you. So tell me why he is in Leeds? For his health? Yes, very likely, since my New York aunt and half the city bailiffs will be after his blood by now – which is as much as they'll be likely to get in any case …'

‘No, Cara …'

‘Why then? To wheedle his way back into my good graces because
you
have told him I can afford it? To come back here and lord it over me at my expense – free board and lodging – dressed like a dandy –
my
workwomen at his beck and call stitching him fancy shirts and waistcoats – letting me earn the money for him to spend …?'

‘No. He has come to take me back with him, Cara.'

Silence fell.

Staring through it Cara did not know how it could be broken, did not even realize she had started to laugh until she heard the ugly sound.

‘Shall we talk about the Easter bonnets, mother?'

‘Cara – I have agreed to go.'

‘Yes. I dare say. But it's not likely to happen, is it mother? Because even if he had the passage-money when he landed – which I doubt – he certainly won't have it now. It will have gone in a card game, or on a horse, or just on making himself king – for a day – in Leeds. Well – won't it, mother?'

‘No, Cara.' And it was the sudden absence of her mother's tears, the relaxation of those tortured hands, a new and very quiet determination in her voice which opened Cara's mind to dread.

‘I have tried to tell you, Cara – to prepare you. So many, many times have I tried. He has come to fetch me because he knows I wish to go with him. It was decided between us in our letters. My darling, from the very first we have always known that if we both survived we would eventually be together again.'

‘No, mother.'

‘Yes, darling …'

‘
No
. And how can you talk about survival when he left you here to die? Well – didn't he?'

Very slowly Odette nodded her head.

‘Yes – in the sense that I would have died had you not come to me. Yes, he did. But he did not mean to hurt me, Cara. He acted rashly, unwisely. I know. But what I also know is that he acted in the only way he could.
Yes
, Cara. Please hear me out. You would not have left me here alone had you been in his place. You would have stood your ground beside me. I know that. I am grateful for it. I love you for it. I love
him
for entirely different reasons. You are strong and steadfast and determined. He is none of those things. He is weak and often very much afraid. He has spent his whole life walking on sand with the tide coming in. And he knows he cannot swim. Occasionally the knowledge overwhelms him and he runs away. Knowing this has never seemed to be a reason for loving him less. And I do love him. My life is with him. When I saw him again in Leeds, the other day, I was my true self again. As I have not been – not at all – since he went away. And whether you choose to believe it or not he has only ever wanted one thing. You have often heard him say it. “I'll make you a queen, Odette my darling” – in Edinburgh – or London – or Frizingley – or whatever great city had caught his fancy. Every time he believed – if only for an hour or two – that he could do it. The fact that I knew he could not has never blinded me to his sincerity. He saw me as a queen and that has always been enough. So, when he left me here to die, as you say, it was not without making provisions for me which
he
believed to be adequate. That they did not seem very adequate to me, and certainly not to you, takes nothing away from his good intentions. He left me money which I allowed to be taken away from me. I had employment which he did not foresee that I would lose. And, above all, he trusted you. He knew you would not fail me. I knew it too.'

‘I dare say. But what if the ship had gone down on the way from Ireland, and me with it? What then, mother?'

Incredibly Odette smiled.

‘You must know him well enough, my dear, to realize that he would never think of that.'

‘Yes, I know him.'

‘Then you must also know – as I have so often tried to tell you – that he never intended our separation to be final. He simply went ahead, as he has done often enough before, to pave the way for us … Oh yes, Cara, for
us
, not for me alone. The Adeanes. As we were before. The four of us. Only this time he went further, the risk was greater, the time longer. The money is certain, Cara. I have letters from his sister confirming it. I have letters from his banker and his lawyer. They are intended for you, I think, rather than for me since he knows I need no assurances.'

‘You trust him, then, do you?'

‘I love him, Cara.'

‘Oh splendid, mother – that answers everything –'

‘Yes. For me, it does.'

She did not want to believe her ears. She did not want to believe that her mother could do this, feel this, say this. She did not want to believe that Odette could feel so little bound to the dutiful daughter, so totally by the feckless husband. The lover.

‘You are being ridiculous,' she said. ‘At your age. You are behaving like a fifteen-year-old houseparlourmaid slipping out at night to meet a chimney sweep.'

‘What is so wrong with that, Cara?'

‘You are behaving like Marie Moon.'

‘Ah no – poor Marie.'

‘You are throwing back in my face everything I have done for you …'

Gravely, very sweetly, Odette looked her full in the eyes and smiled.

‘But you did it for love, my darling, did you not?'

‘
Yes
. So what are you saying? That love is its own reward?'

‘My dearest, of course I am saying that. It is the only reward I have ever looked for …'

There seemed to be a slight explosion in Cara's head, a flash of light which, although clearly illuminating her mother's sincerity, gave her a stab of pain.

‘Oh good,' she said. ‘So now you'll just take yourself off without a backward glance, will you, to the man you love? Very pleasant for you, mother. Have a wonderful new life together. And whatever else you do, please don't give a thought to the man
I
loved – once. The man I met on the boat from Ireland when my father tricked me into coming here. When he lied to me and cheated me and cared not a damn about the trap he was leading me into. No, mother, don't think about that. Don't upset yourself about the man I sent away, because of you – because I couldn't abandon you like your precious husband had abandoned you – because to take what I wanted would have meant killing you … Or so I thought. So I didn't kill you. I killed myself instead. Yes, I did. That's how it feels to me now.'

Once again her heart and her head were pounding, her breathing laboured, hurting her chest as she began to pace up and down the room, down and up, while Odette stood motionless, her face pale and pitying yet very quietly, very gravely resolute.

‘And I wanted Daniel Carey, mother. Make no mistake about it. No mistake. I wanted him.'

She wanted him now. And her father was to blame for it. She would never forgive him – never – for anything. She went on at great length, enumerating the occasions on which he had deceived her, listing his faults, his failures, his crimes, continuing to pace the floor, exhausting herself, making herself cough until at last – to her own relief as much as her mother's – it ended in a storm of weeping, a grand explosion which, after some initial resistance, sent her into Odette's arms to be comforted.

And then it was Odette's turn to speak quiet words, many of them meaningless except for their soothing quality, their whisper that everything would seem better tomorrow.

It did not, except that the morning brought a certain calm, no pleasant thing in itself, far too cold for comfort, but containing its measure of resignation. She had accepted, during the uneasy night, that her mother would certainly leave her. But she was by no means inclined to forgive her for it.

‘So – will you be going at once or can I rely on you to finish the beading on Magda Braithwaite's Spanish bodice?'

‘I would like you to come to Leeds with me and see your father.'

‘I think not.'

‘He wants to take you with us, Cara. A princess in New York. He believes he can do it.
I
believe that, at last, he can give us a comfortable life. As a family. As we were.'

‘Then he'll just have to come and buy me back from Christie Goldsborough, won't he – since he's so rich. And since he it was – my dear father – who sold me to Christie to begin with.'

The morning wore on and became an afternoon in which Cara spoke so sharply to Madge Percy that the woman walked out in a huff, to her lover at the Rose and Crown, threatening never to return.

Let her go. Let everybody go. She didn't care. But Odette, very quietly, put on her hat and stepping over to the Rose and Crown made a sufficiency of soothing murmurs to bring Miss Percy back again.

‘You will need her, Cara. She is an excellent embroideress.'

‘If I can manage without you – as I can – then I can manage without her.'

Evening fell. The shop emptied of customers. The dog lay, growling from time to time as if he needed the practice, in his basket. Upstairs in the workroom Madge Percy, who had been promised a bonus, was at work on the Easter bonnets, assisted by a sad-eyed but, nevertheless blossoming Anna Rattrie. In the back-room, across the tidy, busy desk, Cara faced her mother again.

‘I shall be here, of course, mother, when you need me.'

‘Yes. And I know you would welcome me back with a good heart – barefoot and in rags as you are expecting me to be.'

She had not said ‘hoping me to be'although they both understood it.

‘It may well come to that,' said Cara stiffly.

‘It may. It is a chance I am used to taking. Will you not change your mind and see your father?'

‘No.' Her voice had the sound of a door slamming shut … ‘And don't encourage him to come here, either. I shall see you on your way with a full purse and a full trunk … Don't expect more than that.'

Another night went by. Another tender pink and green morning. A clear afternoon: Cara sitting at her desk again, Odette standing before her, their arrangements almost completed. The daughter's heart no softer, the mother's very full.

‘There is something else, Cara.'

‘Yes?'

‘Liam.'

‘Of course. I wondered when you would spare a thought for him. He will be miserable without you. It might even make him ill.'

‘I am sure of it.'

‘So am I. When you left him with me in Ireland he grieved so much that he forgot how to speak.'

Nor had he spoken overmuch since, she thought grimly. Or not to anyone but Odette.

‘Yes, I remember.' Odette's voice was sorrowful again and very gentle. ‘Which is why – my dear – it would be best … Cara – think carefully before you answer me … I want to take him with me.'

Think? There was no need to think, carefully or otherwise.

‘Never,' she bellowed, striking her closed fist against the edge of the desk, the snarling fury in her voice a menace in itself. Although timid, gentle Odette who so hated anger and loud noises, stood her ground.

‘Cara –
think
, Cara.'

‘Never.'

‘
Cara
– you hardly know him.'

‘And whose fault is that?'

‘Not wholly mine. You were just sixteen when he was born, with no man to look after you. A child yourself not ready to be tied down, and so I made you both my children. Be honest, Cara. Don't deny it.'