Separation, The (36 page)

‘How did it happen?’ Veronica asked.

I wanted to know too, but was startled by her bluntness.

My grandmother, for that is what she was, stood and started to pace up and down in front of the fire, rubbing her hands over and over. ‘My parents commissioned Charles to paint my portrait. It took us both by surprise – we fell in love. I was very young. He was not.’

‘And after the birth.’

‘I wanted to come home, but my father bought me a flat in London instead. I think it broke his heart. I got a cataloguing job at the British Museum, didn’t come back until my father’s death, left London and came to live here, and then Mother died five years ago.’

‘And the painter?’

‘I never saw Charles again. He knew nothing of Lydia.’

‘We saw two paintings of you,’ I said. ‘When you were young.’

She stopped pacing and gazed at me. ‘You’ve been there?’

I nodded. I wanted to be angry with her, but found I couldn’t. There was a long pause. Neither Veronica nor I was able to speak.

‘And you? Do you judge me harshly?’ she asked. Her features twisted slightly, and I caught a flash of fear in her otherwise still face.

I wound the tangles of my hair round my fingers. Something in her stirred up such pity. To be forced to give up a baby like that. I tried to judge her, but could not. ‘No,’ I whispered.

Her face lit up and she held out her arms. Without a moment’s hesitation I went to her, smelt a trace of perfume on her skin. She kissed my cheek, the lightest kiss you could imagine.

Veronica watched, her eyes full, and I came back to sit beside her.

‘And Alec. How did you know he was Lydia’s husband?’

‘Come, let me show you.’

Emmeline led us from the room and along a narrow corridor to the back of the house. She took a key from round her neck and unlocked a door into a room, where thin sunlight was softened by the snowy sky.

The walls were covered. Pictures of two babies, two little girls, a beautiful woman with flaming hair, and newspaper cuttings, were all pinned to a large corkboard. I took a step forward. My mother’s wedding. The announcement of my birth. My father’s short letter telling of my mother’s disappearance. Articles about Malaya, depicting its beauty, and the terror that stalked its jungles.

The blood drained from my face. I could hardly breathe. Images flooded my mind. Half remembered incidents, outings, moods, and on our way to the sea, the sun shining on orange roofed bungalows. Most of all, the smell of lemongrass, and my mother’s perfume.

‘So you know everything about us,’ I said, turning to her. ‘About Fleur and me and about Mum.’

She shook her head. ‘Not everything. I still don’t know where your mother is. As I said, I followed her progress as far as it went, via my solicitor, who had kept me informed throughout her life. I knew of her marriage, and that she hadn’t returned to England with the rest of you. I instructed him to conduct a search using whatever means it might take.’

She put a hand to her throat and held it there.

‘Please go on,’ I said.

‘Sometime later, when we picked up a trail, I went abroad to discover more. I hoped to visit Malaya, but didn’t get further than Australia. Ill health, you see.’

‘We must find her,’ I said quietly.

She looked at me steadily. ‘We shall, and I hope you, Veronica, will assist us.’

Veronica nodded.

Emmeline showed us to the door and I held her hand. It was cold as ice. Over her shoulder I saw the oil paintings again and wondered if they were my ancestors.

‘Why didn’t you tell her who you were after she grew up, after you came to live back here?’ I asked.

‘I always intended to. But the longer I left it …’ Her voice trailed off. ‘Well, events conspired to prevent me. There was the war, and they went out to Malaya so suddenly. I’m sorry.’

‘So when the solicitor asked if you’d be prepared to let it be known that you were paying my fees, why did you agree now?’

‘I wanted very much to meet you and your sister, and as I’d had no success looking for Lydia with Alec’s help, I felt it was time to reveal my interest in you both, whatever your father might say.’

She paused.

I saw her distress and kissed her on the cheek. It too was cold.

‘Come back in February, at half term, and I’ll see what can be found out by then,’ she said. ‘And if we have to go to Malaya to find her, we’ll jolly well go together.’

I grinned as I waved, and Veronica and I walked out into the winter landscape, where the sky had turned thin and milky, and
though it was freezing cold, my heart was on fire. I knew now who was paying my school fees, though that hardly seemed to matter at all. What mattered was that I had found Emma Rothwell. I had found my grandmother.

I wondered if Veronica was asking herself why Father withheld the truth. I knew I was.

‘What shall we do about Dad?’ I asked.

‘Maybe it’s best to keep this from your father, until we know more about the whereabouts of your mother.’

‘But he wants to sell the house.’

‘Don’t worry. I’ll work out a way to slow that down. I’ll pick you up at half term and we’ll go back to see your grandmother together.’

‘Do you still love him after this?’ I asked.

She nodded. ‘Love isn’t simple, and I know it’s hard to understand, but I think I do. He’s a complex man and he needs me.’

She was right; it was hard to understand.

When she couldn’t sleep for excitement, Lydia took two sleeping pills, left over from when she believed her daughters had perished in the fire. She slept well and woke splayed across his bed. The sun, slanting through the bedroom shutters, striped the room with bands of light, and she thought of how it had felt when Adil lay there with her. Her mind was full of him in the morning when she woke, but at night when she went to sleep, and throughout the day, she thought only of her daughters.

She heard voices coming from the living room, dragged herself up and stumbled to the door.

Cicely lifted a perfectly made-up face. ‘Hello, darling. Heavy night?’ She laughed pointedly and pulled a face at Adil. ‘Feel like joining us for coffee?’

Lydia felt awkward. Cicely always knew how to rattle her. She frowned and went to stand at the window, to avoid the teasing in Cicely’s eyes. She stared at her own hands, as if wholly absorbed by her new red nail varnish, then looked out of the window. It was unusually blowy. Unsure how to be, she watched as the wind made puffy white clouds fly about, but suddenly remembered that she owed Cicely her thanks, if nothing more.

She spun round. ‘I never thanked you for introducing me to Clara. If I hadn’t met her, well, it doesn’t bear thinking about.’

‘No need for thanks, darling.’

Lydia looked at Cicely’s face in the harsh sunlight and felt sorry for her. It seemed as if the fan of lines around her eyes had deepened, and she looked her age.

‘Better be off now. Good luck, darling.’ Cicely laughed, tilting her head at Adil. ‘Enjoy!’ She lifted a brow and with a quick flick of her bangled wrist was gone.

Lydia pulled a face.

Adil winked at her. He was dressed in burgundy and blue and the colours accentuated the brown of his eyes. ‘Don’t let her get to you.’

Maz, peeling a satsuma, spun round on his stool and an orangey fragrance filled the room

‘What did she want, other than wanting to embarrass me?’

He shook his head and held up an envelope. ‘You’re too easily embarrassed. But it was this. She came with this.’

Lydia blinked. ‘Who’s it from?’

He shrugged and passed the telegram over with unconcealed curiosity.

She read it and frowned.

‘So?’

‘I don’t understand. A woman is asking for details of my whereabouts.’

‘Who is she?’

‘Her name’s Cooper-Montbéliard. She says it’s on behalf of my family. There’s a P.O. box number in Worcestershire for a reply.’

‘Why did she send it to Cicely?’

‘Search me. But what does she mean?’ She glanced down. ‘
On behalf of my family
. She must mean Emma and Fleur.’

There was a moment of silence. She read it several times before glancing up again. He held out his arms to her. She went to him, buried her head in his chest. Maz jumped on to the coffee table, squealing and flapping his hands.

‘Maz, you’ll break it.’ Adil held out a hand, and the boy scrambled down. ‘And tidy up the camp bed, for goodness sake.’

‘What are we waiting for?’ Lydia said, pulling away. She scribbled the P.O. box number on a scrap of paper.

‘Do you know this woman?’

She shrugged and held up her hands. ‘I don’t care. I’m sending a reply today.’

‘Will you go immediately? To England I mean.’

She nodded and a pulse throbbed at her temple. She wanted to touch him again, feel his heart thump as she lay her head against his chest. But the sound of her daughters’ voices drew her back.

‘Has anyone ever told you, you have the most extraordinary eyes?’ he said, with a grin.

‘I thought you’d never notice,’ she said, head tilted to one side. She laughed, but there was a tremor in it. She’d been told she was beautiful before, but with Adil it meant more.

In the silence, nobody moved at first. Her feelings for him had grown slowly, and with them, the strange sensation that whatever she felt, he felt too. Her chest constricted. Unable to breathe, she kept her back to him and busied herself with the washing up. Torn at the thought of leaving him, there were things she needed to say, yet the words just wouldn’t come.

Maz spun round and round, back on the stool again, and she heard Adil talking to him.

‘I have to speak,’ she said suddenly, in a voice choked with tears.

They stood facing each other across the room. Adil listened with absolute stillness, as if his whole body was absorbed by her.

‘I failed my husband, failed my daughters.’

‘If you did, you didn’t do it all on your own.’

‘Maybe not. But I do need to do this alone. See my daughters again. I’m sorry. I mean –’

He took a step towards her. She’d hoped his feelings for her were as real as her own, that she hadn’t simply convinced herself that he cared. Now a flood of emotion caught in her throat, and she waved him away with the dishcloth.

‘I have to put my children first,’ she said. ‘If I’d done that from the start, none of this would have happened … Whatever do you see in me?’

‘I see the woman I want to be with.’

There was a short silence. Even Maz ceased spinning on the kitchen stool.

‘Knowing everything about me, Jack, the girls, you still say that?’

He came across, put an arm round her waist and kissed her lightly on the forehead. ‘Lydia. Put the dishcloth down. Go and get dressed.’

She gazed at him, gripped by the look she saw on his face. He cared.

After going to the shipping office, and back at the flat again, Adil was relaxed and smiling.

‘You’re sure you don’t need me to come?’ he said.

Her heart felt like it was trying to jump from her chest, as she smiled and blinked the tears away. ‘I already have my little travelling companion.’

Maz looked up and grinned. ‘I am going on a ship.’

‘Thank God the Suez Canal is unblocked,’ Adil said. ‘Would’ve taken you a month otherwise.’

She hadn’t thought of that. Thank goodness too for Maz’s birth certificate. With it, Adil had managed to secure the necessary travel documentation, and it left just enough time, before the sailing, for a reply to come from England. She hoped it’d tell her exactly where to go.

‘You’ll like going on a big ship won’t you, sweetheart,’ she said, and ruffled the boy’s hair. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll look after you.’

She glanced over Adil’s shoulder at the sea mist and the clouds spreading over the ocean. She turned from the view, took in his high cheekbones and wide set eyes, then watched his loose limbed walk, as he started to move about the room.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said in a quiet voice.

His face was still as he ran a palm over his head. She waited for something more, a subtle shift in his expression perhaps, or maybe she waited to understand herself a little more. She hardly knew. But then, besides the familiar lines of his face, there was something. A slight movement in his eyes, a deep warmth as he smiled, hardly noticeable, but enough to show her his feelings were real. And knowing it gave her permission to breathe more freely, as if the tight knot of pain had started to come undone in
her. She smiled, picked up a box of sugared dates, and went to the window. Maz and Adil came over, and the three of them ate the dates, watching gulls riding in the suddenly cloudless sky.

‘No more regrets,’ he said.

‘None at all.’

‘You’ll write? Let me know. Soon.’

‘Very soon.’

The sweet scent of melons rose from the street, and a burst of birdsong outside the window made her glance out again. In a funny way she’d be sad to leave Malaya.

‘Thank you,’ she said, her mouth suddenly dry.

He leant down, and she held his face in her hands. She kissed both eyelids. ‘You’ve always been what you said you were – a true friend. But you are far more than that. I don’t know how you did it, but you made me see myself clearly.’

‘I will be here when you’re ready,’ he said. ‘One word from you and I’ll be on the next boat. We can decide what to do as soon as you’re settled. Nothing will change that.’

She nodded and put a finger to her lips. This was a new grown-up kind of love. There was a certainty that needed no explanation. Something Emma once said came back to her. When a couple she and Alec had known well in Malacca separated, Emma had put her head to one side, and said, very sadly, ‘It’s because they’re not with their
proper
people.’

Reminded of it now, Lydia grinned.

‘What’s so funny?’ Adil asked.

‘You. You are my
proper
person. I hope you won’t mind the cold in England?’

He laughed. ‘I’m tough, Lydia.’

She couldn’t picture her life without him now. The future rose up before her and in every place she saw herself, he was there too, and even if she’d wanted to, she couldn’t paint him out. It was going to be all right. They would see each other again and it wouldn’t be long. The sun appeared through the clouds, the air cleared and that was it. She closed her eyes and smiled inwardly,
feeling intensely light. Over at the edge of the shore, a woman in a pale blue dress waved. At the back of her mind, the ghost who hovered over her life faded, and Lydia turned towards the future. God willing, she was about to see her daughters again. Life had given her a second chance, and that was what mattered now.