Postcards from the Past (4 page)

‘Or that Andrew had used his own man for their affairs after they were married?’

‘There was no evidence of that,’ says Billa quickly. ‘Our solicitor advertised, you know. He had to do that because there was no divorce.’

‘Which was odd, too.’

‘Yes, well, Mother couldn’t face it and there were no real grounds…’

‘Apart from desertion.’

‘Yes, but I think she always believed he’d come back. She wouldn’t face the truth and by then she was already in the first stages of that terrible depression.’

‘So there might be a will leaving something to Andrew.’

She stares at him fearfully. ‘But he must be long dead. He’d be, what … ninety at least?’

‘Lots of people live beyond ninety, Billa.’

‘I know that,’ she cries. ‘For God’s sake, Dom. Are you trying to comfort me or what?’

‘I’m trying to think why Tris should send you a postcard after fifty-odd years and the only thing I can think of is that his father has died and something has been found amongst his papers. Remember, I was working out in South Africa when Andrew left your mother, and by the time I came home your mother was dead and everything settled.’

‘Or so we thought,’ says Billa grimly. ‘Oh my God. What if there was a will leaving everything to Andrew?’

‘Then I suppose he would leave everything in turn to Tris. But why has there been such a long silence? If Andrew knew he was a beneficiary, wouldn’t he have been keeping an ear open for what was happening down here? Perhaps they went abroad.’

She shakes her head. ‘I’ve no idea where they went. Perhaps there wasn’t a will, or perhaps she didn’t leave him enough to signify. She would never have cut me or Ed right out.’

‘No,’ he agrees. ‘No, she wouldn’t have done that…’

But he hesitates.

‘What?’ she says at once. ‘What are you thinking?’

‘I’m just painting a worst-case scenario,’ he says carefully. ‘Remember your mother was crazy about Andrew to begin with. Even I can remember that much. And people in love do some very silly things. I suppose we have to be prepared to think that it’s a remote possibility that she made another will under a bit of pressure from Andrew and drawn up by his solicitor. Maybe she left everything to him, trusting he’d do the right thing by you and Ed. Maybe she didn’t leave him much. Maybe she assumed that once the relationship was over it didn’t matter so she never revoked it. But it might be enough to bring Tristan back.’

Billa drops her head into her hands. ‘So what can we do?’

Dom gives a short laugh. ‘Nothing. It’s pure Tris, isn’t it? He’s creating the smoke screens, holding all the cards. We can only sit and wait for him to show his hand. You’ll have to tell Ed.’

‘Yes, I know. I just wanted to talk to you first. Get it straight in my head. It was a shock.’

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Yes, I can see that.’

‘It’s odd, isn’t it?’ she says. ‘Just the three of us again. Just like it was all those years ago when Tris arrived. I must admit that it’s stirred up so many memories.’

‘Me too. I was remembering those first words he said to me out in the lane. “So you’re the bastard.” How did he know about that? OK, Ed and I were very much alike – we still are – but he couldn’t have jumped to that conclusion. He knew.’

Billa shrugs. ‘But that was Tris, wasn’t it? He listened at doors, he pried and poked about and read letters and cards. I expect Mother told Andrew about you once they’d agreed to get married and Tris just happened to be within earshot. We had to be so careful what we said or what we left lying around. D’you remember? And then he’d tell Andrew that we left him out of things or were being unkind to him. Oh, the joy when Andrew left and took Tris with him. It was like being let out of prison.’

‘We’ll have to rely on Tilly,’ says Dom, trying for a lighter note. ‘She’ll see him off.’

‘Tilly’s a clever girl,’ Billa says. ‘I wish I’d had a Tilly working for me in London. They don’t know what an opportunity they’ve missed, those hotel people. I hope she finds something else soon. Or that this scheme with Sarah works, although I can’t quite see Tilly being satisfied with that. She’ll be wonderful with the clients but she needs to be a part of a bigger canvas.’

‘She’s certainly not letting the grass grow. She’s firing off applications and someone will give in soon out of sheer exhaustion. Meanwhile she’s quite happy working with Sarah. Sarah is a very switched-on girl, too, by the sounds of it. It can’t be easy, trying to get a business up and running out of a tiny cottage, whilst managing two small children, and a husband in the navy who is away at sea for most of the time. D’you want some more coffee?’

‘Yes, please. No.’ Billa shakes her head. ‘No. I shall go back and show Ed the postcard before I lose my nerve.’ She stands up, hesitates. ‘But what if Tris should turn up without any more warning, Dom? It would just be his style, wouldn’t it? Catching us on the back foot.’

Dom thinks about it. ‘I think it’s more like Tris to keep us waiting now. He’d like to imagine us wondering and worrying. And that’s just what we’re doing, of course.’

‘That’s why I wasn’t going to tell Ed.’

‘You must tell him. I might be wrong and Tris could walk in any minute now. Ed needs to be forewarned.’

She nods, her face downcast, and Dom gets up and gives her a hug.

‘We’re happy, aren’t we?’ she asks, holding on to him. ‘Me and Ed just muddling along together and you here, with the family coming to visit in the summer holidays, and your occasional waifs and strays staying in Mr Potts’ bedroom. I’m terrified that Tris could do something to spoil it. He always spoiled things. Birthdays, days out, Christmas. Somehow he always contrived to poison or destroy. Just small things, a whisper in the ear, a spiteful little joke, but enough to take away the joy. I’m afraid, Dom.’

He holds her tightly for a moment, the old rage seething in his veins as it had on that summer morning long ago.

‘Let’s not cross too many bridges,’ he advises. ‘Tell Ed, but keep it light, and we’ll hope that it’s just another Tris tease.’

‘Yes,’ she says, releasing him, resisting the urge to talk in circles. ‘I won’t tell him I’ve told you first. It’ll make it seem as if I’m worried. I shall pretend it came in today’s post and take it from there.’

‘Too late.’ Dom, leading the way into the hall, picks up some envelopes. ‘Postie’s been.’

‘Damn,’ she says. ‘OK then. Well, I’ll wait until tomorrow morning. It’s a foreign postmark and the date’s smudgy. Anyway, he’s going off to do some research on his book so it’s not the best time to tell him.’

He helps her into her old sheepskin duffel coat with the hood, she steps into her gumboots in the hall, and he and Bessie go out with her into the lane. It’s icy underfoot and she goes carefully. At the bend in the lane she turns to wave to him and, in her boots and her jeans, and the big coat with the hood covering her short fair hair, she might be the teenage Billa of fifty years ago.

Dom watches her out of sight. Suddenly, instinctively, he glances the other way, where the lane curls uphill to the village. He scans the hills across the valley. Some sixth sense tells him that Tris is already here; watching.

CHAPTER THREE

Tilly drives through the deep, precipitous lanes that twist and turn, and dive and climb around the edge of the moor. There are milk-white snowdrops under the thorn hedges and glimpses of gold: the first daffodils. She pulls into a gateway, to make room for a tractor coming towards her, and sees a huddle of lambs beneath the spreading branches of a huge fir. The sunlight slices down, sharp and bright, but frost rimes the brittle grass in the black shadows of the ditch and the rutted verges are frozen and icy. As the lane tips down into the village she can see the rooks swirling like cinders in the cold blue air, their nests tossed high in the beech trees: spiky black balls caught by bare bony fingers.

Tilly parks in the small cul-de-sac near the church and takes out her iPhone to check her notes.

Mrs Anderson: widowed last year. Only daughter now lives in New Zealand with her husband – a New Zealander – and their two children. Wants to be shown how to Skype. Rather nervy and diffident.

Tilly glances at the neat little bungalow with its neat little garden. A figure stands at the window watching Tilly, who waves cheerfully as she climbs out of the car. The figure disappears, the door opens and Mrs Anderson is revealed. She is as neat as the bungalow and the garden, and the room into which she shows Tilly is achingly tidy. Mrs Anderson is talking rapidly, explaining how she’s never understood computers, how her husband dealt with all that sort of thing, but now, with her daughter and the grandchildren so far away …

Tilly listens and nods sympathetically, and her heart is riven with the unspoken loneliness that reveals itself in Mrs Anderson’s bleak eyes and in her hands that twist and twist. There are photographs everywhere: a wedding group, a beaming young couple with two small children, a much older man with the same two children, a bride displaying a set of rather prominent teeth in a happy grin, the two children again, in school uniform.

‘I never thought they’d go,’ she’s saying, ‘not with the children settled so well here at school, but there’s such opportunity out there, isn’t there? And then my Donald died last year just before Christmas. Three months to live when the cancer was diagnosed.’

Her eyes are bright with pain, she is brittle with suppressed grief, and Tilly longs to put her arms around her.

‘They’ve been going on about this Skype,’ she’s saying, ‘and Donald always meant to do it, so when I saw your advert in the local paper I made up my mind to have a go.’

Her brave smile is heart-breaking and Tilly smiles back at her.

‘It’s really easy,’ she says reassuringly. ‘Honestly. And it’ll be lovely to be able to see them when you talk. Much better than the telephone, and calls are free. It helps to keep more closely in touch as the children grow. And they’ll love to see Granny. Do they call you Granny or Grandma?’

Quite without warning, Mrs Anderson’s eyes brim with tears which overflow and stream down her thin cheeks. Tilly stands still for a moment, biting her lips.

‘Don’t hug the clients,’ Sarah has warned. ‘I know you, Tilly; you’ll get yourself into trouble and waste hours. No, I’m not unfeeling, I’m just being rational. It’ll take you all day if you start doing the tea and sympathy stuff. There are some very lonely people out there.’

Sarah’s voice is very clear and loud in Tilly’s head as she puts an arm around Mrs Anderson’s bony shoulder and holds her tightly. Mrs Anderson rests her head against Tilly and cries in earnest.

‘Life,’ says Tilly, staring at the photographs, ‘is absolute hell, isn’t it?’

*   *   *

‘Don’t forget,’ says Sarah, ‘that the clients pay us on an hourly rate.’

She is a small, dark girl: had been head of house, head of school, a demon on the lacrosse field. The baby, George, is slung across her shoulder as she prepares some lunch for herself and Tilly.

‘I know,’ says Tilly, unmoved by Sarah’s fierceness. ‘But Mrs Anderson is a slow learner. Poor old duck.’

‘And I know what that means,’ says Sarah, resigned, slotting George into his bouncy chair. ‘You are hopeless, Tilly.’

‘How’s Dave?’ asks Tilly, stroking George’s cheek. ‘When’s he getting some more leave?’

‘The ship’s due back in three weeks,’ says Sarah, ladling soup into bowls, allowing herself to be distracted from Tilly’s weakness of character. ‘He’ll be home for a bit then. Not actually on leave but around. D’you want a sandwich?’

Tilly shakes her head. ‘Soup’s fine.’ She feels more comfortable in the cheerful disorder of Sarah’s kitchen than in Mrs Anderson’s tidy bungalow. ‘So how are we doing? Any new punters?’

‘A very posh new punter,’ says Sarah, sitting down at the table, pushing a wholemeal loaf on its wooden board towards Tilly. ‘Sir Alec Bancroft, no less. Retired diplomat. He lives down in the village and he’s a friend of my mum. He wants to organize a database for all his contacts. Hundreds of them, by the sound of it. Quite a few people wanting to learn how to send emails. Someone else is keen to do her shopping by internet.’

‘Gosh!’ says Tilly. ‘By next week we could be millionaires.’

‘Not,’ says Sarah, repressively, ‘if we spend hours with people because they’re lonely. Time is money. After lunch we’ll look at the diary.’

George squeaks plaintively and Tilly leans to tickle his cheek with the end of her thick butter-yellow plait.

But it’s
my
time, she thinks. And I can afford it at the moment.

She remembers Mrs Anderson in the painfully tidy little room, staring with eager intensity at the computer screen.

‘Now you simply need to let your daughter know when you’re going online. Try to have a regular time each week for it. Factor in the time difference…’

Tilly sits up straight, cuts herself some bread, grins at Sarah.

‘I’m really hoping this is going to work,’ she says. ‘I can’t sponge off Dom for ever. Though I have to say that, after your sofa, Mr Potts’ bedroom is positively luxurious.’

‘And you’re still pulling pints at the pub?’

‘Three nights a week. Is there any more soup?’

‘Help yourself.’ Sarah pulls an A4 notepad towards her. ‘You’re keeping a record of your petrol costs, aren’t you? That’s our major outgoing. The ad was worth it, though. There’s been a good response.’

Tilly sits down at the table and they lean together, looking at the notes on Sarah’s pad, whilst George sleeps peacefully in his chair. The telephone rings and Sarah leaps up to answer it. She makes a thumbs up sign at Tilly and begins to make notes: another client.

‘Did you get my message about Mrs Probus?’ she asks when she sits down again. ‘Her son says that she still hasn’t quite grasped the finer points of emailing and isn’t answering his messages. I said you’d be there about half past two.’

‘She’s an old darling,’ says Tilly, ‘but she simply isn’t part of this brave new IT world. He’s bought her this lovely new laptop and she’s frightened to death of it. She’s got about fourteen cats and she seems curiously unmoved about being unable to receive messages from her son. OK. I’ll go and see what I can do.’