I'll Be Seeing You (33 page)

‘Cancer. She didn't tell us, though.'

‘Us?'

‘The family. My brother, Andrew, my daughter, Flavia.'

‘And her husband – your father?'

‘He died several years ago.'

The waiter brought the lobster thermidor, served it deftly and went away.

‘How old is your daughter?'

‘Twenty-four.'

‘Married?'

‘No. Not yet. She lives with someone at the moment. An actor.'

‘My two sons are married and I've six grandchildren. They all live nearby so I get to see them pretty often.'

It was obviously a happy family set-up. Happy and healthy and wealthy. How would the two sons and their wives and the six grandchildren take the news of an interloper gatecrashing the enchanted circle? I could imagine how. Even without all the wealth, the Hamilton family would be bound to have mixed feelings;
with
it, they were definitely going to think I was after a share, or, worse, that I was some sort of con artist.

‘You're not eating very much,' he said. ‘Would you prefer something else?'

‘No, it's very good, thank you.'

He was still watching me all the time, observing, assessing . . . mistrusting? ‘How about your husband? You haven't mentioned him.'

‘We were divorced a long time ago.'

‘I know what that's like. My first wife, Lola, and I divorced early on – soon after the boys were born,' he said. ‘Then my second wife died in a car crash six years ago. Some junkie hit her on the freeway. I've been on my own since then. How about you? Do you live alone?'

‘Not exactly. Flavia and I share a house in south London. She lives downstairs with her boyfriend and I live and work upstairs.'

‘What sort of work do you do?'

‘I illustrate books and I teach art.'
I can draw because of you
.

He set down his fork. ‘What medium?'

‘Usually watercolour.'

‘That's a tough one,' he said. ‘One of the toughest. I've tried it. I usually go for pencil, or pen and ink. Charcoal sometimes, crayon, maybe chalk. But these days I mostly collect instead. Modern American artists. It's interesting discovering new talent.'

‘Yes, it must be.' The oil paintings I'd seen had probably been some of his discoveries. I had no doubt that he had a very discerning eye.

I struggled on with the lobster. It
was
very good but it was rich and I had no appetite. And, of course, I drank too many glasses of wine. I could feel my head begin to swim, hear my words begin to slur. He, on the other hand, drank very little. We skipped dessert and had coffee which helped. But what was the point of prolonging this meeting for much longer when I had already made up my mind not to tell him? It was painful for me, and probably tedious for him. His love affair with my mother had happened almost fifty years ago. He'd had two wives since, sons and grandchildren, a golden life out here in California, far away, in every respect, from the grim and grey wartime England he'd known, and especially from Halfpenny Green.
I've never been back. Never wanted to
. So far as he was concerned, the past was past.

I looked at my watch. ‘It's been a lovely lunch and so kind of you, but I really ought to be getting back.'

‘I don't think we've quite finished yet, have we?' he said. ‘Let's go back to the house – if you can spare me a little more time.'

It would have been ungracious to refuse. Jose drove us back again in the Rolls and I was given a tour of the house – room after beautiful room of uncluttered and sophisticated elegance. Adrian would have approved no end.

‘A Swedish architect designed it,' he told me. ‘It's built of four components – glass, slate, architectural concrete and limestone from the Lake District in England.'

I wondered how many millions it had cost and I thought of the ugly, rambling Victorian house in Oxford with its dodgy plumbing and its sulky heating and its old-fashioned everything. The home Ma had lived in happily for so many years. Would she have been as happy here? Yes, she would, because she would have made it her own and she would have been happy anywhere with him.

He opened yet another door. ‘This is where I spend most of my time.'

It was a very different sort of room with bookshelves, worn leather armchairs, a TV screen, music centre, family photographs on a desk and artwork on the walls. Not the giant canvases but small drawings that I recognized instantly as his; some watercolours too. He took one down – a California scene of Spanish houses, purple bougainvillea, palm trees, the blue ocean in the background. It was uncannily like my own work. ‘Santa Barbara,' he told me. ‘Just north of LA.'

‘I like it very much.'

He looked down at me with his half-smile. ‘Is that an honest opinion, Juliet, or are you just being a kind teacher?'

‘It's honest.'

He rehung the picture. ‘Sit down. I want you to listen to something.' I waited while he hunted in a cupboard, hit buttons. Then he sat down as well and the voice of Frank Sinatra began to sing. We both listened in silence. At the end, he said, ‘It's the same recording that your mother kept, isn't it?'

‘Yes, it is.'

‘It always reminds me of her.' He got up, walked away from me and stood staring out of the window. I stayed silent, waiting, and, after a few moments, he started to speak.

‘I fell in love with Daisy when I first saw her in the Mad Monk. It took a while for her to feel the same way about me, but in the end she did. We were going to be married – just as soon as I'd done my tour. We'd got it all planned. She'd come back here. I'd give up Berkeley and go straight to work for my father. We'd look for a house in a good neighbourhood around LA. I was going to show her around and let her pick whatever pleased her. We talked it all through. In spite of the golden rule.'

‘Golden rule?'

‘A strict rule I had – a superstition, if you like. So many crews were getting killed, it didn't do to think about the future too much, let alone talk about it. It was like tempting fate. And I guess that's what we did.' He crooked one arm against the windowpane, rested his forehead on it. ‘I got shot down on our twenty-first mission. Posted Missing In Action, presumed dead. There was another crew that might have seen parachutes come out of our plane but they were brought down themselves soon after. I didn't know that until a lot later. Everyone else figured we were all burned to crisps in the wreck found on the ground. My co-pilot, Ray, and I had got out – somehow – but he didn't make it. I was the only one. I'd been injured in the leg and a French family hid me for months. Then I got passed from place to place until, finally, I met up with the American army after they'd landed in Normandy.' He paused for a moment. ‘As soon as I got back to England, I tried to phone your mother at Halfpenny Green. I still thought somebody would have seen the chutes and that she'd have kept on hoping. It was then I found out that she'd already got married. I wrote her an angry letter and she wrote back, saying she'd thought I was dead. I was bitter as hell, Juliet. I couldn't forgive her for doing that – for marrying some other man so fast. When I got back here, I got married even faster. But I'll tell you something. I've never forgotten her.'

I said, ‘She never forgot you either. She went back to Halfpenny Green when she knew she was dying – I found her signature in the book there. She kept your photograph and your sketchbook and she played the record. She was listening to it in the days before she died.'

He turned round. ‘I think you should show me her letter, Juliet. Don't you? It's only fair.'

It seems only fair to him now
 . . .
Though perhaps it's not so fair to you?
If I opened this particular door, it could never be shut again.

He said gently, ‘You're my daughter, aren't you? That's what she told you.'

I gave him the letter and he read it, and then I could see that he was reading it through again and again. Just as I'd done myself. At last, he said, ‘Thank you for showing this to me.'

‘There's no proof, of course. She was taking strong drugs . . . she may have got confused.'

‘She wasn't confused, Juliet. It happened exactly the way she told you – only I never knew the truth until now. I was too busy being mad at her and I was too damn stupid not to realize that there had to be some good reason.' He looked at me. ‘But you weren't going to tell me that you were the reason, were you?'

‘No. I wasn't.'

‘Why not?'

‘I wasn't sure you'd believe me. Or that you'd be pleased.'

He said quietly, ‘It's the most wonderful news I've ever had in my life. Wait till we tell the rest of the family.'

‘Could we keep this to ourselves for the moment, do you think? Just between us?'

‘But I want them to know, Juliet. I want you to meet them, them to meet you. For you all to get acquainted.'

I said, ‘It might be a shock for them. They might not be quite so pleased about it as you. They might resent me – and I'd
hate
that. Don't you see? Don't you understand?'

He went on looking at me for a moment. ‘You're so like her, Juliet. That's how she'd probably have figured it. All right, we'll play it your way. I guess we should take a while to straighten out everything between us, in any case. One step at a time. But I know the family would all love you and I'm not promising to keep it a secret for ever. And I'm not letting you go out of my life.'

‘We can meet again, if you'd like to.'

‘You bet I'd like to. I get over to London regularly and I stay at the Connaught. They do a pretty good lunch there too. Maybe next time you'll be able to eat it.'

I managed to smile. ‘I'll certainly try.'

‘How about my granddaughter, Flavia. Does she know about me?'

‘No, I haven't told her.'

‘I'd still like to meet her.'

‘I'll introduce you.'

‘As what?'

‘An old friend of her grandmother's.'

‘Well, that's true enough. Tell me something, Juliet. The other guy – the one Daisy married – did he make her happy?'

‘Yes. He was a good man. Kind and gentle. They'd known each other since they were children – he lived next door, you see. And I think he'd always loved her . . . that's why he offered to marry her.'

‘In the letter she says he was a wonderful father to you. Is that true?'

‘Yes. I loved him very much.'

‘Did she love him?'

‘In a different way,' I said. ‘Not like she loved you.'

I asked him later whether he had ever gone back to France.

‘Not for twelve years – after Lola and I were divorced. I found some of the places where I'd been hidden – a restaurant in Rennes, two old ladies near St Malo. I owed them money that I wanted to repay, but they'd already died. It took me a while to find the first place – a farmhouse near Caen – and the family that saved my life. The old grandmother had died and the farmer, too, but the wife was still alive and the little girl I'd known had grown up and married. She and her husband ran the farm. They dug up my old flying jacket for me.'

‘You mean you still have it? The one in the photo?'

‘Sure.'

He went away. After a moment or two he came back carrying the jacket. It looked worn and battered and there was a jagged tear in one sleeve.

‘I guess that happened when I bailed out. Otherwise, it's in pretty good shape. They'd buried it in an old tin trunk.'

I said, ‘Do you mind putting it on?'

‘OK. Let's hope it still fits.'

It did. He turned the heavy sheepskin collar up round his ears and made fists of his hands at his waist, just like he'd done in the photo. Then he smiled at me. And it wasn't sunny California any more. It was a freezing cold day in England and he was standing in the snow at Halfpenny Green, nearly fifty years ago. Oh Ma, I thought. Oh, Ma . . .

When I left, he held my shoulders, looked down at me in silence for a moment, and kissed my cheek. ‘Thank you, Juliet.'

‘For what?'

‘For finding me.'

‘I think she wanted me to.'

‘Yes,' he said. ‘I think so too.'

Jose drove me back in the Rolls. Halfway there I asked him to take me to the beach house in Malibu instead of to Georgina Avenue. Rob opened the door. He took me upstairs to the living room, sat me down and handed me a fistful of Kleenex. I mopped my eyes, sniffed and snivelled.

‘I'm sorry, Rob.'

‘Don't be,' he said. Just tell me about it.'

‘Well, it
was
him. The photo is of him and his crew, and the sketchbook is his. He knew my mother. They were in love and going to get married, then he was shot down over France, and everybody thought he was dead. When he finally got back to England she'd married someone else. There's no doubt about it.'

‘Did you tell him who
you
were?'

‘I wasn't going to. I'd made up my mind to say nothing – to leave the past alone. But then he told me his side of the story. How bitter he'd been – how he couldn't understand how she'd gone and married someone else so soon. I wanted him to know why she'd done it, but I hadn't the courage to tell him. You know what a coward I am, Rob.'

‘You've got plenty of guts, Julie. Or you wouldn't have come here in the first place.'

‘Anyway . . . Then he asked to see the letter. I
still
wasn't going to show it to him, only he suddenly said that he'd already guessed that I was his daughter.'

‘So you handed it over. What did he say then?'

The tears started again and Rob passed more Kleenex. ‘He said it was the most wonderful news he'd ever had in his life. He wanted to tell his family, and for me to meet them.'