Authors: Leah Fleming
Lady in the Veil (13 page)
This was a private wake between the two of them. She poured herself a large glass of the wine before she sank down to open the letter addressed to her. Her heart lurched to see that familiar
scrawl. From out of the envelope a postcard fell to the floor. She picked it up. It had an old British stamp with a King and Queen’s head on it and it was addressed to ‘Master Desmond
Lloyd-Jones c/o Mrs Kane, Ruby Creek, South Australia’.
Opposite, the message read: ‘TO DARLING DESMOND . . . from Mummy with lots of love’.
She flipped over to the picture, a sepia-tinted photograph of some village by a lake.
She picked up his letter with trembling fingers.
Dear Mel
Sorry to spring all this on you but I wondered if you were up to solving the mystery I never got round to sorting in my life. I feel I owe you an explanation . . .
I’ve had this postcard for years. Found it when I was clearing out old Grandma Boyd’s effects. It was stuffed in with Pa’s love letters. She’d kept it for a reason
and when I saw the picture and the name, I just knew it was something to do with me. Don’t ask me why, I got a tingle of something, a fuzzy memory that just wouldn’t surface, but
when I asked Pa he just laughed and offered to chuck it out. He said she liked the picture. It reminded her of her home in Scotland before the war. I knew he was telling fibs so I kept the
postcard, and the other bits.
I don’t recall much how I came to be in Australia. My memories are like shards of broken glass: fragments, flashes of colours in a kaleidoscope. I recall the taste of the metal of a
ship’s railings, flaking grey paint, salt spray on my cheeks; these are images that come to me in dreams. Some bits are heavy as lead, dark memories. It’s as if I am peering
through a hole in a huge wall at a garden full of flowers. I’m not one for flowery lingo, as you know – don’t know one plant from another – but I can tell the smell of
roses anywhere.
I’m not making excuses, but there are memories and bits of my life I’ve worked hard to blot out. Perhaps if I could have faced up, I might have made you proud of me instead of
ashamed. The Boyds were kind folk but not ones to lavish the praise and affection I craved. It was your mom who opened my heart. I wish things could have been different for all of us . . .
I’m handing on the baton to you. You have a right to know what made me the way I am, warts and all. There’s a Berlin Wall between me and my past.
I know once you get your claws into a job you see it through, but don’t let this interfere with your future. Have a wonderful life. I just hope you are curious. If you can find out
who I really am, you’ll know where you belong too. The answers are out there somewhere but time may not be on your side.
Remember I never stopped loving you both, so forgive the apology who was your father, Lew.
The room swam around Mel as the tears flowed for all the misunderstandings and arguments they’d had in the past. Now she was completely alone.
Eventually, she gathered herself to see what else the box contained. At the bottom were swimming badges, snapshots, a postcard of some old-fashioned lady in a cartwheel hat smiling up at her,
and a medal, its ribbon faded, its inscription in a foreign language.
For one angry moment, she wanted to ditch the whole box of tricks into the bin. What had all this junk got to do with her? Why should she burden her new life in London with a search for mystery
ancestors? She knew in her heart, however, that she could not let her father down.
Perhaps fate was taking her to England for a reason.
Darling boy. Mummy is safe and coming home to you soon.
