Sail Upon the Land (37 page)

About time.

As you know I never found anyone to marry.

Not surprised.

So I have been exploring other ways of becoming a parent, including fostering.

Margaret’s shoulders sagged. As the years went by she had walled up the memory of whisking away what turned out to be Damson’s one chance at motherhood. It had been Damson’s decision though, hadn’t it? An acceptable alternative to abortion. The trouble was, she comforted herself, Damson had never made an effort to be normal and attractive to men. An unwelcome thought began to intrude. How old would the little girl be now? In her twenties. She wondered what had happened to her.

She read on:

Last year Dr Grimsby, who is near retirement, offered me a partnership, and I was considering buying into the practice. I am very glad I didn’t, because I have decided not to live in Fenning any longer.

All her usual jauntiness deserted Margaret. What was coming?

And the good news is that a little boy became available for fostering more rapidly than I had anticipated.

Ah.

So we will need somewhere to live temporarily while I decide what to do next, and I wondered if the North Lodge was habitable. I know no one has lived there for years, but thought it might be OK to do it up a bit and stay there while we sort ourselves out?

Margaret took refuge in immediately renovating the North Lodge in her mind. Why hadn’t she thought of it before? Probably because it was a dull Victorian building, and anyway it was all a bit overgrown up there as the North Drive had not been used in living memory. The two South Lodges, both delightful thatched Gothick beehives, had been done up years ago, with Smallbone kitchens and Farrow & Ball colours everywhere. Both brought in an income as picturesque holiday lets, and were useful as extensions when the Castle itself was rented out. If the Castle was full at the weekend, she and Munty would stay in one of them themselves.

Not so the North Lodge. It wasn’t a pretty building. The roof was regularly checked, but the windows were boarded up. Perhaps something should be done about it. She brought her reluctant attention back to Damson’s email.

If that is OK, I would like to come down to discuss our options. Can you let me know if you will be at the Castle in ten days’ time, and if I can come and stay? I will have the baby with me, but can bring all the equipment I need in the car. The contents of Swine Cottage will be packed up and stored by Pickfords until I have somewhere to put it. The cottage is on the market, but no buyer yet. I want to move fast now, so would like a response as quickly as possible, please. Otherwise I will need to make different plans. Hope to see you soon. Love from Damson.

Well, thought Margaret, sitting back in her chair. What to do? She reviewed her relationship with Damson over the years, from sulky teenager to reluctant deb. And then the awful shock of the baby, and the danger to her twins’ reputation. She shuddered when she imagined what Nigel Dempster would have made of ‘the Hon Damson’s mystery love child’ had the
Daily Mail
got hold of the story.

Luckily Damson had made no impression on the society columns while she was a deb. What on earth had the girl been up to in India? She’d never dared ask.

She had done her best, hadn’t she? Made sure that Damson was properly looked after. Organised the adoption. She desperately hadn’t wanted Munty to see his only child obviously pregnant. It would have upset and embarrassed him she was sure. Unmarried Damson with a huge belly? So common as well – a teenage pregnancy. She’d been his little girl such a short time before. It was a pity those homes for unmarried mothers had been shut down.

Margaret had made sure her husband didn’t have to worry about the poor little bastard. Neither of them had ever seen it, of course. Thank God she had been there to rescue him. Poor man, what would he have done without her? What with Melissa dying like that he hadn’t had much luck with the women in his family until she arrived.

She was pleased at least that Damson had included her in the email. After all she could have written a private letter to her father. Not that she and Munty had any secrets between them of course.

She clicked Print. When the sheet of paper had spooled out, she went downstairs to share it with Munty. His study was to one side of the hall, a comfortable room unchanged by Margaret. She’d wanted to add a club fender and other leathery paraphernalia, but he had resisted and she soon gave up. After all, the rest of the estate was her playground.

Her heels clicked more and more slowly on the polished York stone floor of the hall, until she hesitated outside the mahogany door with its egg-and-dart edged panels. In all their years of marriage, she’d never been at a loss for words, and he’d always gone along with whatever she organised. To begin with she had been very careful to make sure he agreed with her decisions, but it became a habit just to get on with all her excellent ideas. He hardly ever objected or questioned anything. Melissa’s death must have knocked all the stuffing out of him.

Margaret paused, thinking. Munty’s will left Margaret a life interest in Castle Hey, and then everything to Damson after she’d gone. The twins’ husbands were in receipt of multi-million pound bonuses and they got her residual Mullins estate. Margaret could have made sure Munty left her Castle Hey given what she had invested. But she hadn’t, had she. She was not a wicked stepmother.

Did she want Damson back here now with some baby nobody knew anything about? Surely what she had done all those years ago was to stop this kind of awkward situation?

Her debutante daughters had had such a wonderful social success – they hadn’t put a foot wrong. Then Damson had come back from her ill-advised trip to India, clearly having had some sort of breakdown, looking bizarre and being very difficult. Margaret had been so relieved when she’d gone off to Cambridge. Then there she was on the doorstep a few weeks later, pregnant.

The guilt, always tugging at her sleeve as Damson grew older and showed no signs of marrying or having any more babies, unveiled its white weeping face. Her eyes widened. She could no longer look away. Standing in the hall, surrounded by evidence of her revivifying powers – the well-dusted console table, the Persian rugs, the Hayes ancestors in oils tracked down and borne home triumphantly from auctions – she was confronted by what she’d done. She gasped. What business had she depriving Munty of his one true grandchild?

The breathless cheek of it and her just a girl from a Nottingham back-to-back. All these years she’d kept that thought in its place, filed under E for ‘Expedient’. And now this. Damson, back on the doorstep – or very nearly – clutching a baby. Whose baby? Perhaps it was her baby – she was only, what? Forty-one? Perfectly feasible. That would make it all right, wouldn’t it?

I must talk to him, I must explain why we had the baby adopted – it was what Damson wanted, wasn’t it? Oh, but I made it happen. I must apologise for what I did. I meant well, didn’t I?

She knocked on the door. Usually she would just walk in.

‘Come in?’ He wasn’t used to her knocking.

She pushed open the door to see him sitting by the fire.

‘Darling, I’ve just had an email from Damson.’

His face lit up. ‘Damson? Let me see.’ He felt for his half-moon glasses around his neck on a cord.

She handed it to him. As he began to read, she stood before him.

He said: ‘She wants to come and stay for a while? She hasn’t done that for years. How lovely. Have you replied yet?’

Then he went quiet, reading the rest of it. She watched him until he glanced up, saying, ‘Do sit down, Margaret.’ A log softened by fire collapsed with a soft sound into the grate.

Her legs gave way and she found herself kneeling before him. ‘I’m so sorry, Munty.’

He continued to look at her. Then he spoke. ‘We’ll do our best for her this time, won’t we.’

‘Yes, we will.’

She knelt there for a few moments. He stood up and took her hand, raising her to her feet and kissing her cheek.

‘Don’t worry, Margaret, I am equally to blame.’

She sighed, and he turned away and went to his desk, picking up the telephone and dialling. She heard him say, ‘Sarah? How are you? Oh, Damson’s been in touch with you? Yes, she’s definitely coming here to stay. Looking forward to seeing you here soon.’

Hurrying through the green customs channel at Heathrow, with Hari strapped to her front and pulling her big rucksack on wheels, Damson was nervous. To her relief, she had had an email from Munty, warmly inviting her to live in the North Lodge for as long as she liked. No mention of Margaret. So she had felt able to ask her grandmother to come and stay with her there and help her settle in.

Then, on impulse, she had emailed her grandmother from New Delhi just before she got on the plane to ask her to meet her at Heathrow, saying there was someone she wanted her to meet. Sarah was well into her eighties and Arthur, a few years older, was no longer alive. No more time to waste on keeping secrets.

Arthur had died one June morning two years before. He’d gone upstairs after breakfast and, according to her grandmother ‘just kept on going’. The practice long since closed, she had moved from Dorking into the granny flat of her son Julian’s house in Clapham. Damson would visit her in London a couple of times a year and they would go to the theatre or for walks. They would talk about all kinds of things, but never the main thing. Sarah mourned Arthur deeply but with her son and his wife for company she had been able to take pleasure in life once again. She never said anything to Damson that revealed any kind of uneasiness at the way her granddaughter chose to live, without love and without a man. She did not judge.

There was Granny, upright in her brown brogues, face pink and hair quite silver in its bun at the back of her head, smiling and waving beyond the barrier. Damson sighed with relief and hastened towards her, faster and faster. Layers of concealment streamed away from her peeling like sodden bandages from a hidden wound.

‘Darling, there you are.’

Her grandmother looked startled for a moment.

‘You look wonderful.’ She smiled. ‘And who is this?’ Her large and capable hand, roped now with veins visible beneath transparent skin, reached out towards the baby at the same time as kissing Damson.

Damson lifted him slightly away from her body revealing his face.

‘This is Hari, the person I wanted you to meet,’ she said. ‘Let’s go and find somewhere to sit down. Thanks so much for coming out to Heathrow.’

‘Not at all, I couldn’t wait to meet the new person. And you look so different, Damson. What’s happened?’

‘Let’s sit down somewhere, and I’ll explain.’

Soon they were sitting with cups of coffee, Hari released from his baby carrier and seized by Sarah to be perched on her knee.

‘Now, darling, tell me all. He can’t be yours? Or have you adopted him in India? Isn’t he gorgeous? I thought you were going to introduce me to a boyfriend!’

‘Oh no, not that. I need to tell you something complicated. I’m not sure where to start.’

Sarah kissed Hari’s curls and reached out a hand to press Damson’s.

‘Take it slowly. I’m listening.’

‘Well, do you remember when I went to India in my year off?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘What else do you remember?’

‘You cut off all your lovely hair. Then you went up to Cambridge. I remember not seeing nearly as much of you as I would have liked. Arthur and I thought it was as well to let you go. We always had a policy like that with our own children, in their late teens they must have their freedom. Not good to have them hanging around at home, stunts the growth. We pushed them if they didn’t jump by themselves. Your mother went to do her nursing. Julian and William were sent to opposite ends of the earth to get away from each other in their year off. No contact for months. It just seemed a bit abrupt with you. One minute we virtually shared your care with your father. The next we didn’t see you at all.’

‘I’m not sure how to say this.’ She looked at her grandmother who was gazing at her with pale blue eyes.

‘Well, I came back from India that time pregnant.’

‘Was that it? Oh, my darling, why didn’t you tell me? We could have helped. Did you have the baby?’

‘I had a little girl, I called her Mellita.’

Damson caught the look in her grandmother’s eyes. Her jaw seemed to tighten. ‘Go on.’

‘She was adopted by an Indian family over here. This is her child, my grandson.’

The words had tumbled out. Sarah gave a small gasp and, having been holding Hari casually, she pulled him close and wrapped her arms around him. Her eyes closed. He wriggled and then settled, tucked beneath her chin, reaching up for her silvery hair and sucking his fingers.

‘I’m so sorry. I didn’t want to hurt you. I had to give Mellita away. It seemed like the best thing at the time. But she came back last year to find me and ask me to look after her baby.’

Her grandmother’s eyes were pressed shut.

‘Thank God,’ she whispered into the top of Hari’s head. ‘Damson, what you must have been through. Who looked after you? What happened?’

‘Oddly, Margaret.’

‘What about Munty?’

‘I don’t know, we never discussed it. I just wanted you to know before you come to Castle Hey. I must get everything wrapped up in Derbyshire now, but we’ll be together there. I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you. I thought you’d had enough grief with my mother, you didn’t need to know about Mellita as well.’

‘Darling, we would have looked after you and done whatever you wanted. Although we may have been a bit old to offer to take her on. I assume Margaret didn’t offer that option?’

‘No, she was too busy.’

‘I see. And you would have wanted to get back to Cambridge as well.’

Sarah gazed into the past. Then she said:

‘When you’re my age, twenty years seems a very little time. And I’m holding a baby of the family right now in this place and he wouldn’t be here if it hadn’t been for Mellita. And Melissa.’